Kennedy on SSRIs

 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is getting a lot of heat during his current confirmation hearings for having criticized SSRI antidepressants in the past. Specifically, he is alleged to have said that they cause school shootings, and that they are addictive.

Obviously, there is a lot of money for drug companies in SSRIs, because people who take them are usually on them for a long time, often for life. We ought to be suspicious.

Doctors, in turn, like pills; it is their entire business. You go to your doctor with a complaint, and they will prescribe one, even if they do not believe it will do anything. You have to keep the customer satisfied. They pride themselves on the “placebo effect.”

And insurers, patients, and the government like pills too. A pill for depression looks ideal: no expensive and intrusive therapy sessions with a psychiatrist. No need for any life changes.

Moreover, “Big Pharma,” the drug companies, finance the campaigns of many politicians. Their advertising sustains a lot of the media. So they are in a position to silence any doubts, as they seem to be doing here.

We ought to begin from the suspicion that SSRIs are being overprescribed. 

RFK Jr. is right. 

Whenever another mass shooting happens, there is always an outcry to ban guns. Which is either folly or deliberate misdirection. There are lots more guns in private hands in countries like Switzerland or Israel than in the US, yet no more school shootings there. The number of mass shootings per capita is actually pretty constant country to country across the developed world, despite varying gun laws and levels of gun ownership. Even take away all guns: those intent on mass murder can resort to cars, or IEDs. The UK government has actually, absurdly, recently introduced a bill banning the sale of knives. Guns are not the issue.

Those wanting to defend the right to bear arms then resort to blaming the shootings on mental illness. After all, the shooters invariably have a history of mental illness. So what is needed is not fewer guns, but more money for mental health. These people must get treatment.

This idea, however, is equally folly or misdirection. The killers have a history of mental illness. That means they have been diagnosed; they are in the system; they have been receiving treatment. Treatment has not worked. The incidence of mass shootings or mass killings is consistent across jurisdictions despite varying levels of investment in the mental health system. Lack of treatment is not the problem.

Further, this association of violence with mental illness is profoundly discriminatory towards the mentally ill. The mentally ill as a demographic are actually statistically less likely to be violent than the general population. Stigmatizing them as violent and dangerous gives them more stigma and more problems when they are already the most stigmatized and suffering among us. It is scapegoating the most vulnerable.

RFK has rightly deduced that the problem has to be with the treatment. These killers are all taking SSRIs.

And it is not hard to see what is going on.

So far as we know, there is no such underlying disease as “depression.” This is true of everything we class as “mental illness.” What we have is a set of symptoms, listed in the DSM, which may be caused by all kinds of underlying conditions. We prescribe SSRIs for a certain set of symptoms, called “depression,” in the same way we might prescribe aspirin for pain or fever, without knowing what is causing the pain or fever.

This means SSRIs are at best only suppressing symptoms while leaving the underlying condition to fester and perhaps grow. Without SSRIs, the problem might instead be addressed and solved. Instead, tragically, modern psychiatry, given their present SSRI approach, expects most with symptoms of depression to recur in time and only get worse as the patient ages.

The initial thesis on which they were introduced, that depression was caused by a “chemical imbalance in the brain,” specifically a lack of serotonin, has been disproven by subsequent research. If they work, we do not know why they work.

But what they do, subjectively, is to deaden emotions. This includes happiness, love, laughter, but also unpleasant emotions like anxiety, fear, and sorrow—the symptoms labelled “depression.” 

This means that, rather like alcohol, they also deaden the conscience. They deaden feelings of guilt.

This is good for those feeling unwarranted anxiety and sorrow, usually as a result of being abused. 

This is bad for those feeling anxiety and sorrow due to their past bad actions or their overblown self-esteem being frustrated by the realities of life.

The former, when they feel bad, want to kill themselves. They see themselves as worthless. The SSRIs, unfortunately, can make them more likely to commit suicide, by taking away their fears and inhibitions. This problem is well known.

The latter, when they feel bad, want to kill anyone around them, as many other people as possible. Hence, mass shootings.

And the awful truth is that either form of “depression” does have a cure, that SSRIs, psychiatry, and the pharmaceutical industry suppress.

It is called religion. Religion can recalibrate one’s sense of values and self-worth. It has worked for thousands of years. 

We have been moving away from it in recent years, largely due to the rise of psychology and psychiatry as a “scientific” substitute.

Mass murder is only one of the results; along with a rising tide of depression, mental illness, drug addictions, social breakdown, family breakdown, and suicide.

Love Me, Love Me, Love Me--I'm a Liberal!

 

Ruby Dhalla

Last Saturday I joined the Liberal Party to vote for Ruby Dhalla. 

This is not a cynical move. 

Some Conservative commentators are urging people to join the Liberal Party to vote for the candidate they think least likely to beat Poilievre. I cannot do that. The end cannot justify the means. 

Besides, rumour has it that many Democrats backed Donald Trump in the 2016 primaries, thinking he was a joke candidate, and their weakest possible opponent. The “weak” candidate you vote for might end up Prime Minister.

I want to vote for her because I think Dhalla might be the Liberals’ best hope. And I want the best for the Liberals. I have at times voted Liberal in the past. She is attractive, charismatic, and well-spoken. She is reasonably qualified as a past MP, but unique among contenders in genuinely having no connection with the current unpopular regime. She represents a new start; if she cannot win this time, no one can. She is best positioned to rebuild the party anew. 

Most importantly, she is running on a new platform, to move the Liberals back to the centre. The platforms offered by the other contenders are identical and more of the same.

The politicos will object that I am sabotaging the right.  By moving to the centre, the Liberals will take votes away from the Conservatives. I think this logic wrong. For the recent past, since Reform and the PCs merged, Canada has had four viable parties on the left, the Liberals, NDP, Greens, and BQ. It has had one or two (if your count the PPC, who have never won a seat) on the right. 

And who has usually won elections? Has the left ceased to be viable? Just the opposite: Canada has been rushing to the left.

It all has to do with the “Overton window”; what counts is what issues actually get discussed, and what views get heard. Four voices for the left and only one for the right drowns out the right and pulls the country to the left. 

Dhalla might surprise in the leadership vote. Any Canadian could join the Liberal Party without charge and vote on the new leader. The Liberal Party has been running to the left of the average Canadian, and Dhalla is now the only centrist option. 

Chandra Arya was also running for the centre, but was disqualified. Rumour was that he was raising more campaign donations than frontrunner Mark Carney. Despite the insurmountable obstacle that he spoke no French and showed no intention of learning it. His support should now all flow to Dhalla. And there is perhaps an ethnic vote too that he and now she can tap into: although Arya was Hindu, and Dhalla Sikh, they are both Indo-Canadian. Sikhs in Canda are highly politically organized.

I’d wager she places a surprise third on the first ballot. 

And even if she does not win, positions herself as ready to take over after the Liberals’ inevitable defeat.

Forgive Me, Father, for I Have Sinned

 

Yesterday I wrote on the nature of original sin and “original blessedness.” “Man is born to love, but learns fear,” the theme of a recent talk I attended, is wrong. Man is born with an inclination to sin.  Nor is this inclination eliminated b baptism, nor by faith in Christ. As the Bible says, we must “work out our salvation in fear and trembling.” 

Even leaving aside the Bible, consider the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.”

“The whole of man's history has been the story of dour combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God's grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity.” (Gaudium et Spes, 37 § 2). 

Of the heresy of Pelagianism, the Catechism notes: “Pelagius held that man could, by the natural power of free will and without the necessary help of God's grace, lead a morally good life; he thus reduced the influence of Adam's fault to bad example.”

Which is what our sermonizer of the last post did: he reduced original sin to the example of our parents.

“Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature, inclined to evil,” the Catechism warns, “gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action and morals.”

This is the fatal flaw in left-wing thinking since Rousseau. His notion of original blessedness led to the excesses of the French Revolution, Romanticism, Marx and Communism. It fosters the tragic mirage of a paradise on earth, created by human effort. It has killed tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions in the attempt.

To give the Devil his turn at the podium, our speaker cited the parable of the Prodigal Son as evidence of God’s readiness to forgive.

The prodigal spent all his inheritance. Yet his father, representing God the Father, did not reject him, but welcomed him home and killed a fatted calf in his honour.

The first common misunderstanding is that the son’s fault was in taking his inheritance and leaving home. No, it was being prodigal—that is, he spent all his inheritance. ”He squandered his property in reckless living.”

And it is essential to notice that he did not just come running to Abba to be embraced. Like Job, he repented in dust and ashes. He prepared this speech for his father, and delivered it: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.” 

God cannot forgive our sins unless we are both fully repentant and prepared to accept just punishment. No Get out of Jail Free. This is the step the evil ones always elide in the telling.

Compare the Good Thief, who died on a cross next to Jesus. He was granted heaven despite his sins. 

Why? 

Because he accepted that his punishment was deserved and just. He rebuked the third thief, who mocked Jesus: “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes.”

This is why the sacrament of Confession/Reconciliation includes penance. This is why there is a purgatory, or we must believe there is. Only then can we hope for God’s forgiveness. We cannot expect it. “Thou shalt not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Nor is the repentant prodigal of the parable, significantly, going to get another inheritance to replace the one he squandered. Too many miss this, wanting to stress forgiveness. He does not achieve equal standing with the brother who had not sinned. When the son who had remained objected to the feast his errant sibling was getting in his honour, the father responded by telling him, “all that is mine is yours.” 

That, surely, suggests that the prodigal gets no second inheritance. He gets, no doubt, secure food and lodging; but will remain now forever a lodger.

In terms of the afterlife, this suggests that the repentant sinner achieves heaven, the Divine Presence, reconciled to God. But there are ranks in heaven. We know this from the listed ranks of angels, the reference in Revelations to those “close to the throne,” and Jesus’s reference to “the least in heaven” when speaking of John the Baptist. 

He, the repentant sinner, will be given no authority.

God does not spoil his children.

Original Blessedness and Original Sin

 

I am disturbed by a Catholic sermon I listened to recently. The repeated theme was “you were born for love, but learned fear.” The audience was given to understand that God’s love for us is infinite and unconditional, and our existential problem was simply not understanding that Daddy, “Abba,” is always here ready to embrace us.

The clear message being that guilt, not sin, is the problem. Spoken like Martin Luther, who famously declared, “Love God, and sin boldly.” The speaker was a convert from Protestantism, and he may have brought Luther’s sola fides doctrine with him: salvation by faith alone.

He was preaching ”original blessedness” instead of original sin. In fact, his slogan seems to echo Rousseau’s in praising the natural man: “man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.” Rousseau’s philosophy was in direct and deliberate opposition to the Christian message. 

The doctrine of original blessedness faces an obvious problem: if each of us is born innately good, how did evil ever come into the world?

The speaker did address this problem. We learn fear from our parents. This is the “original sin.” Our parents are scary, presumably because they do not show unconditional love for us, and we project this lack of love on our image of God.

But this does not solve the problem: it’s turtles all the way down. How did Adam and Eve ever sin, then, since they had no parent to falsely teach them to fear, only God himself?

Adam and Eve feared God because they had sinned. And so this inclination to sin must also be in us. 

The speaker had skipped an essential step, like those Protestant churches that will not display a crucifix, but only an empty cross: they want the resurrection without the crucifixion. He made the original sin fearing God, which is to say, feeling guilt over having sinned.

Compare what the Bible says:

Proverbs 9:10: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

And Saint Paul:

“Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”

We are not born blessed, ready and able to love. We are born fallen, imagining like Eve that we are gods, and must learn to love. It is a hard and painful process; one that needs divine intervention.

And the first step is to learn to fear. 

“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.”

My grandmother used to recite Francis Thompson’s poem, “The Hound of Heaven.”

“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’”

God treats us like a father, not a too-indulgent mother. He does not spoil his children.

Musk's Nazi Salute

 

Heil General Public? Heil Republican voters?

About Elon Musk’s “Roman salute.”

Obviously, given the fact that in the popular mind “Nazi” is currently a synonym for pure evil, and Nazism is solely about obtaining power, the last thing a real Nazi would do is anything that would formally associate them with the Nazis of history. The last thing an actual Nazi would do is to give a Nazi salute in public.

Instead, Nazis would insist publicly that they are the anti-Nazis, and our protection against the Nazis. Just as the historical Nazis of Weimar Germany snuck into power by presenting themselves as the strongest protection against those horrible Bolsheviks.

The real Nazis would call themselves something like “Antifascists”—“Antifa,’ perhaps, for short.

The fact that Musk made a gesture that looked alarmingly like a Nazi salute obviously without thinking what it might look like to some is a testament that the man does not have a Nazi thought in his head. 

If it was a dog whistle to Nazis, pay attention to which dogs are barking.

The View from China

 

They left out Greenland.

One of my Chinese students asked me this morning whether Trump is really planning to take over Canada. And how I would feel about that.

Good question. It seems it is on everyone’s mind now, worldwide.

I don’t see why Trump would back down, now, on the devastating tariffs on Canadian goods. By imposing them, he wins any way you look at it. 

At a minimum, it cajoles the Canadian government into making a real effort to close the border, and improve our national defense. 

But I suspect this is not his preferred option. And, luckily for Trump, the Canadian government is determined instead to enter a trade war that only Trump can win. They really are that stupid.

Imposing and maintaining the tariffs gives Trump a major new source of government revenue. This allows him to lower income taxes, turbo-charging the American economy.

Trump says the US does not really need cars from Canada. He is surely right. The Auto Pact was always a gift. Trump wants to pull as much auto manufacturing as possible back across that border into the declining rust belt.

Trump says the US does not really need Canada’s oil and gas. That was supposed to be Canada’s trump card. But on paper, he is right. During the last Trump term, he made the US a net exporter of hydrocarbons. Fracking has opened up vast new reserves. Cutting off Canadian supplies encourages their development, boosting the US economy and keeping the money in the States. Those who think the US needs Canadian oil are thinking short-term, looking at how the infrastructure is currently set up for Canadian imports. But Canada is at least as dependent on this infrastructure: we do not have the transportation capacity, thanks to prior government decisions, to sell oil and gas in volume to anyone else. We have to sell it to the US, and if the US imposes tariffs, we may have to lower our prices to compensate, to preserve our market.

Some point to the electricity grid in the Northeast, dependent on purchasing hydro power from Quebec. And gloat over the Americans having to sit there in the cold with only candles. But here we have the same issue: if Canada cannot sell that hydroelectric power to the US, it just goes to waste. Meanwhile, Trump’s tariffs will be stirring the building of new nuclear plants to supply this need. An economic boom for America. For Canada, there is no up-side.

This will all cause the Canadian economy to fall into recession. Why is that Trump’s concern? If Canada gets poorer, it will have to sell everything it produces to the US at lower prices. If it collapses, all the better. Trump may lose the tariff revenue, but he can walk in and take all Canada’s resources. And he gains a far more defensible perimeter, from either foreign invasion or illegal immigration and drug smuggling: oceans on three sides and half of a fourth.

If Canadians were smart, they would clamour to join the US now as soon as possible. We may grumble, but it is the best option we have. It might call Trump's bluff, causing him to back down. He may not really want Canada.

And that is what I told my Chinese student.

He was more disturbed by the prospect than I was. “Not good for China,” he concluded.

Which, given the global competition, may be another reason to recommend it.

Bishop Budde

 

Anglican Bishop Mariann Budde

I cannot look at my X feed currently, because it is flooded by video postings of that female Anglican Bishop, Mariann Budde lecturing Donald Trump in her inauguration sermon. I really can’t stand to hear her voice, so full of self-righteousness.

I am happy to hear Trump has demanded a public apology from the Anglican/Episcopal Church.

She called on Trump to “have mercy on the people who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives.” I had to find the written transcript in order to stand to look that up.

This is the typical leftist fallacy, that we are responsible for the feelings of others, even if our actions are reasonable and those feelings are unreasonable. Feelings trump facts. Or at least, we are responsible for the feelings of certain favoured groups, while our own feelings must be suppressed. 

There is of course no rational or sane reason for any gay or lesbian or transgender person to fear for their life because of anything Donald Trump or the government might do. If they fear for their lives, that cruelty has been inflicted on them by ideologues and propagandists like Budde, who are terrorizing them with phantoms, conspiracy theories, and black legends, not Trump.

Many young people might now be rescued from mutilation and sterilization because of Trump’s policies refusing to officially recognize multiple genders and gender switching. Many women and girls might be freed from legitimate and rational fears of rape by supposed transgenders in their bathrooms, locker rooms, or prison cells; and physical injury from being forced to compete with them in sport.

Nor are people who imagine themselves to be “transgender” caused any harm by these measures—let alone anyone who is gay or lesbian. They are, at most, only losing special privileges they had been given, to choose which bathroom they wanted to use, which sports league they wanted to compete in, and so forth. The rest of us cannot.

There is a fundamental but always overlooked principle here. The bishop claims to be calling on Trump to have mercy on the powerless. But the powerless in a society are never those given special acknowledgement and preferences by government, by definition. The powerless will be the ones the government is not acknowledging, nor supporting, or those it is even actively suppressing. Currently, the unborn, for example, or white males, or to some extent the working class. Groups to whom Trump has brought some hope, and whom I daresay Budde probably distains. Ironically, Christians are also among those groups. Making Budde a Judas figure.

Budde then asks Trump to show mercy on “The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals.” Interesting perspective: Budde clearly sees herself as a member of the elite, the upper class. In her mind she owns the crops, the office buildings; she eats in restaurants. Trump is supported by just these people, the poorest of the working class, because he is taking their perspective and trying to help:  by cracking down on illegal immigration. Illegal immigration forces down the wages of the poor, to the advantage of the rich.

“They…may not be citizens or have the proper documentation,” she goes on to say. “But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”

Trump wants to stop illegal immigration, and deport illegal immigrants. He also says he wants to let in more immigrants. Budde does not seem to understand this. By definition, 100% of illegal immigrants are indeed criminals. Budde does not grasp the distinction between legal and illegal immigration; it suggests she also cannot distinguish between sin and virtue. Or refuses to make such distinctions. This is troubling in a prominent member of the clergy. It marks her as a false shepherd, someone leading her flock astray.

“I ask,” she continues, “that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.”

Of course, America should offer asylum to those fleeing persecution, as America always has, more than any other nation. And there is no indication that Trump would change this policy, as she seems to imply. 

But it is a different matter to offer asylum to those fleeing war zones. Our current governments do not seem to understand this. Offering asylum to both sides in some distant war is to import the war. It is hard to imagine a more stupid immigration policy.

Then too, if you restrict your offer of asylum to one side, the one you consider the victim in the war, you are doing harm to that side. You are depriving them of needed soldiers by importing their young men. Unless you restrict your offer to women and children.

And of course it is even worse if you restrict asylum to the side you feel is doing harm. Give asylum to Nazis or belligerent aggressors, and what do you think you are importing?

I do believe the bishop is quite stupid. But that is only a partial defense. She is also immoral, and, worse than that, masquerading as a religious person, indeed a religious authority, to lead others astray.

The deepest pits of Hell are reserved for such Pharisees.

A Test for False Prophets

 

Simon Magus, who exorcised in Jesus's name.

Some years ago, friend Xerxes objected to George Bush Jr.’s supposed attitude, which he said was “anyone who is not with me is against me.” And this he said was starkly opposed to Jesus, who said instead “anyone who is not against me is with me.”

I corrected him then. Jesus actually said both. See Matthew 12: 30; Mark 9: 40.

Presumably in Xerxes mind, had he known this, he must think Jesus contradicted himself; or else the Gospels are inconsistent. One must be unreliable.

But both are true. There is such a thing as the fallacy of the false dilemma. But here we have a true dilemma, a situation in which there are only two choices. Either you are with Jesus, the Truth, or you are against it. There is no third option. Creation is a constant war between truth and falsehood, good and evil.

Bob Dylan makes the point in song: “It may be the Devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

Anyone who is committed to Truth, which is to say, necessarily, the one true God, is on the same team. Anyone who is not so committed is, consciously or not, worshipping and working for the Devil.

This point comes to mind from noticing several talks on YouTube by Rabbi Tovia Singer. His entire programme seems to be to debunk Christianity. I say those who try to debunk or discredit any monotheistic faith are really of the Devil’s party. Their agenda, even if not themselves conscious of it, is to drive others from faith in the Lord; they are doing the Devil’s work.

Does this mean there are no possible errors in the creed of this or that denomination? Of course not; this is categorically impossible. So long as they disagree on any point, and they do, one must be right, and one must be wrong. But in comparison to the fundamental issue, of being of the party of God, any such differences must be trivial. To focus on them is to turn away from God yourself, and to attempt to turn another away. You are of the Devil’s party, even without knowing it.

This applies to nominal Jewish rabbis like Singer; they are really wolves in sheep’s clothing. It applies to those many Protestant ministers whose chief interest seems to be in criticizing Catholicism rather than asserting their faith. They are attacking faith.  It applies to any who claim to be Christian, who scapegoat Islam as intrinsically evil. Although so ffar as I can see, the strongest criticism of Islam comes not from the fellow religious, but from secularists. It applies to any Muslims who claim that Christians or Jews are evil—the “Islamist” terrorists. They are not true Muslims; they are secularists. Like the psychiatrist who drove his car into a Christmas market in Germany: these people hate Islam as well, if they hate Christianity.

I note too the conclusion to the story of the rich man and Lazarus, told by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke:

“They [i.e., like the Jews] have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, [i.e., like Jesus] they will repent.’

 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

A good Jew is a good Christian. A good Christian is a good Jew. 

It is important to me that the post-Vatican II Catholic church has a good record of not criticizing other faiths. I went through the Catholic schools, and never heard a peep in criticism of any other denomination. 

I had a Jewish friend in grad school who refused to believe this. She assured me that, regardless of my actual experience, all Catholics are taught that the Jews murdered Christ.

Her supposedly Jewish teachers were in league with the Devil.

This is a good test, like the test for discerning the spirits. Does the teacher support and nurture faith, or does he spend his greater energy criticizing faith?

There are many false shepherds.

The Deterioration of the Western Mind

 

The Deterioration of the Western Mind:

1. Modernism: “We have lost our direction. We no longer know what is true, or good.”

2. Existentialism: “We can create our own reality. We can create our own meaning. Morality is just social consensus.”

3. Postmodernism: “Nothing is true or good. Oppose all truth claims. Any claim of truth is authoritarian.”

The Response: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

Put on the Full Armour of God

 

The Jerusalem Cross

As a Christian, I am offended by the controversy over Pete Hegseth’s tattoos: the Jerusalem Cross, and the Latin slogan “Deus Vult” (“God wills it.”)

The objection is based on the fact that “Deus Vult” was the slogan used to promote the First Crusade; and the Jerusalem Cross is so called because it was the official emblem of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.

So the objection to Hegseth’s tattoos is an objection to the Crusades.

I believe the Crusades were honourable and worthy of celebration in the history of Christendom. The objection to them is simply prejudice against Christianity and Christians. If “Islamophobia” is a problem, and “antisemitism” is a problem, then “Christianophobia” must also be condemned. It is at least as prevalent, and as dangerous.

The Crusades were a defensive war. To fight in defense of one’s country or religion is deeply honourable. It is courageous and selfless. The Crusades were a time when the Christian world put aside its divisions and united to keep the general peace. 

You might object that the Crusades were an invasion of foreign, Muslim, lands. You would be wrong. They were summoned to defend the Byzantine Empire, which was under attack by the Muslims. The great majority of the occupants of Palestine at the time would have been Christian or Jewish, not Muslim. And the Muslim caliphate had cut off the right of Christians to make pilgrimages to the Holy Land.

And even if you see the Crusades as an attempted conquest of “Muslim” lands, if this is illegitimate, you must first condemn the systematic and more successful Muslim attempt to conquer Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian lands, from the seventh through the fifteenth centuries, and to the gates of Vienna. Over the previous three centuries, the Muslims had overrun perhaps half of the Christian world, taking by conquest, not conversion. With the Crusades, the Christian world was then only belatedly and less systematically adopting the Muslim tactic of spreading their faith by the sword.

It is true that the Crusades involved war crimes—on both sides. The modern rules of war were not established, and the rules of war understood by Christians were different from the rules of war understood by Muslims, so that either side might think anything was permitted in dealing with “infidels.” In some ways, the Crusades were more humane than modern warfare. For example, prisoners could be ransomed. If besieged cities were put to the sword, this was at least no worse than Hiroshima or Nagasaki: the argument was the same, that it saved far more lives than it cost. Sieges were devastating. 

We need to recover the spirit of the Crusades. This world is a battle between good and evil, and we are all called on to be soldiers.

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”

Playing 4D Chess

 

Trump really is “playing 4D chess.” He learned how to swing a deal as a real estate developer. Consider the Gaza deal. He framed it all as a threat against Hamas: “if the hostages are not freed by inauguration day, there will be hell to pay.” But behind the scenes, the pressure was really on Netanyahu to accept a partial deal. This way, Netanyahu has made concessions, but can frame it as a victory. It’s a win-win, at least for the short term.

He is doing the same with Greenland. Greenland is a financial liability to Denmark, held only for prestige, and Greenland for its part feels colonized. Trump sees the opportunity. Denmark saves face and looks righteous by giving Greenland independence. Greenland can afford this pretense of self-determination now, with US backing. Then it gets to cut a better deal with the US. The US gets to cut Denmark out of any deal, buying wholesale. It’s a win-win.

I think Trump should and will offer Greenland immediate full statehood, to preserve the sense of self-determination.

Now how about Canada? 

Alberta’s situation is like that of Greenland. Alberta has been subsidizing the rest of Canada with their energy resources. At the same time, with their carbon tax and their environmental regulations, the Canadian central government has been hobbling the Alberta energy industry. 

Perhaps Trump was clever enough to check and realize that energy was a provincial responsibility. Perhaps he was clever enough to see that Canada has recognized the right of provinces to separate. Perhaps he was clever enough to school himself on Western alienation.

With his tariff threats, Trump is shaking that fruit from the tree. He can appeal to Albertan alienation. They have the one card to play against the Trump tariffs.

He can offer Alberta a separate deal. He says he wants to annex Canada; but the value to the US is all in Alberta. Moreover, they are more politically aligned than the rest of Canada with the US; they would probably vote Republican. He can now offer them statehood. Alberta gets to escape their subsidies to the rest of Canada, escape the carbon taxes and the environmental regulations, lower their taxes, and start pumping oil like gangbusters. 

Okay, this one isn’t quite win-win. The rest of Canada is left in the lurch, cut off from Alberta’s subsidies and facing stiff tariffs from the USA. 

Unless they quickly end equalization payments, kill the carbon tax, end supply management, cut environmental regulations, and start severely restricting immigration.

All of which would be more or less what the Canadian public is demanding.

So, again, win-win. Unless we are governed by idiots.

Uh-oh.

World Historic Figures

 

Alexander the Great. Not to be confused with his purple cousin Alexander the Grape, nor his nephew Alexander the Merely Adequate.

We live in interesting times. Victor David Hanson was saying online that Elon Musk’s accomplishments make him a world-historic figure comparable to Alexander the Great. And he probably has many more years of major accomplishments to go.

And then there is Trump. Trump just seems to have gotten the war in Gaza ended before even taking office. It looks as though he is going to get Greenland to join the US, an acquisition that ought to put him on Mount Rushmore alongside Jefferson—the amount of land is equivalent to the Louisiana Purchase. And I think he has a good shot at getting Canada as well.

I think he will indeed go ahead and impose those heavy tariffs; because his main concern is not the terrorists or the drugs coming across the Northern border. What he really wants is to fund the US government with tariffs so he can lower taxes; although he would be delighted to annex Canada as an alternative. The Canadian economy will collapse. Even more so if the Canadian authorities impose tariffs on American goods in retaliation, as they seem intent on doing. They are alarmingly talking much more about that than about improving the situation on the border. Perhaps, to be fair, because they realize that they cannot satisfy Trump’s demands. But escalating a trade war with the US is walking into a trap. Canada cannot win.

I think the general population of Canada will soon be desperate to join the US to escape the hardships. Trump probably realizes this.

For generations, we have been governed by lawyers and bureaucrats, the clerisy; and to some extent by academics. The problem is that one does not rise in the bureaucracy, or the law, or in academics, through merit. So we are not getting the best minds leading us.

We are now discovering the talents of the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs rise from sheer merit, their ability to plan complex systems and see opportunities. Trump demonstrably has those talents; Musk demonstrably has those talents. Putting them in service to government is liable to bear rewards.

Rape is Not a Part of Islam

 

Islam is getting a bum rap in the UK grooming gang scandal. Islam does not enable or endorse the behaviour of these young men. That is the reverse of the truth. It is culture shock.

Coming from a culture with strict rules for the separation of the sexes, severe punishments for rape, strict traditions for female dress, the typical Muslim view of the West is that here, by contrast, everything is permitted. My Pakistani friends used to refer proverbially to “the wicked West.”

We always think this way of proximate foreign cultures: to England, France is always synonymous with sexual license. In Barcelona, a strip joint is named “Baghdad,” and nude dancers are called “exotic.” The most famous stripper in Montreal once had the stage name “Fawzia Amir.” In early Canada, sex fantasies centred around the Indians. No surprise if Muslims think the same about us: in the West, all women are available and everything is permitted.

This is a common expression of culture shock. Finding in some new culture that many familiar norms do not apply, you can easily assume that here there are no norms at all, and everyone is free to do as he pleases.

The initial reaction is to act out your fantasies, here where nobody knows you. The second reaction is to despise these immoral and crazy people, and feel righteous in doing them harm.

This sense is that much more severe when coming from a culture with strict social norms.

So young Muslim immigrants are a bad risk for violence and sexual predation, criminal behavior, and mental illness.

And we are making the same mistake they are, by imagining that such outrageous behaviour is endorsed by and part of Islam.

The fault is in our governments, who are blind or deliberately blind to the importance of culture and cultural difference. And this has nothing to do with racism: race is not culture, and those who suppose they are the same are the most profound racists.

It is callous folly to let in large groups of immigrants from quite different cultures. There will be social breakdown and immense suffering, not least for the immigrants themselves.

We should, in all sanity, prioritize immigrants from cultures with social norms most similar to Canada’s. That means we should give absolute preference to Christians, Jews, Americans in the broad sense of that term, and Europeans.

Failing that, we should give preference to those who have a strong religious commitment. That is, just the opposite of our current thinking, that the problem has something to do with religious “extremism.” A strong faith anchor inoculates against culture shock, and ensures the individual does not act out selfish desires. If these Muslim men in Rotherham and other British cities were good Muslims, they would not behave this way despite temptation.

Sea and Sky

 

Saint John has a seaside sculpture walk. This is one of the sculptures, randomly chosen.

Why? What is the point of this?

The point of art is to express beauty. This is not beautiful. None of the sculptures along the walk are beautiful. 

You will object that I am a Philistine who cannot appreciate an abstract sculpture. But that is not quite the issue here. An abstract sculpture is less likely to be beautiful, but it might still be beautiful. Any building is an abstract sculpture, and some architecture is beautiful. I.M. Pei’s purely abstract forms are nevertheless beautiful. A well-cut gemstone is beautiful. 

This sculpture, and all the others along this walk, lack the obvious elements of beauty, as defined, for example, by Saint Thomas Aquinas: symmetry, proportion, or balance; clarity; and integrity or a sense of completion. Most modern sculpture seems to deliberately violate all of these elements, actually striving to look off-balance, incomplete, and indistinct in form. 

The point of it all seems to be to protest against beauty itself. 

Why on earth would anyone want this in a public installation? And, worse, why on earth would anyone want to actually pay for having it?

The present sculpture is titled “Sea and sky.” Nobody needs even a beautiful sculpture simply to express “sea and sky.” We can see both plainly enough. We need art solely to express the unseen. 

And there it is, in perfect irony, obscuring the pedestrian’s view of sea and sky. 

It illustrates how decadent our culture has become.

For contrast, some beautiful public art in Saint John: the war memorial.

Liberal Leadership Stakes

 

The Liberal leadership race is underway. 

Were I a Liberal, I would have thought Dominic Leblanc their best choice. He is likeable, projects calm in a tumultuous time, and a good communicator. But Leblanc has rightly and honourably taken himself out of the race because his cabinet responsibilities are too important, given the tariff threat from the US. Running now would look irresponsible. There is, in any case, likely to be another race in a year or two; he might as well keep his powder dry.

Leblanc pulling out in order to tend to his cabinet responsibilities has neatly taken any other current cabinet ministers out of the race. Otherwise his example makes them look bad.

The Liberals’ next best choice, to my mind, was (not is) Christie Clark. She too is likable, and an experienced campaigner. But I think she blew up her candidacy at the gate by lying about never joining the Conservative Party. In a campaign as short as this one, I don’t think she has time to recover. I wonder if she will now bother running. Again, there should be another shot in a year or so, after the collapse; and once people have had time to forget her lie.

This leaves Mark Carney as the next best choice the Liberal have available. Not a great choice. He has the advantage of not being associated in the popular mind with the perceived failings of the Trudeau government. He has the advantage of a financial background, and people are alarmed about the economy. But he has no political experience. His likability or campaign skills are unknown, but unlikely to be good; he has had no chance nor reason to develop such skills. And he must come across as an establishment candidate, an elite globalist, as a former central banker for two nations; at a time when the general mood is populist and highly suspicious of elites. 

I can’t imagine why it is worth his while to run. He would surely be wiser to let someone else take the loss, preserve his reputation, and run in a year or two. He was cautious enough not to take the role of finance minister last summer, when he was being talked about as a savior figure, and again when Chrystia Freeland resigned. I expect him to continue to show the same caution. I say he decides not to run.

Given the short time frame and the high bar for entry, I don’t see a chance for a dark horse; or even any candidate not seen as top tier from the start.

Leaving Chrystia Freeland. 

She will not do well in the next election. She is closely identified with Trudeau’s policies, and a too-familiar, stale  face of the past government. Her public persona is unlikeable, and her manner is irritating.

But she will get her claim to be the first female Liberal leader, and PM, if only for a few weeks.

Let’s see if I’m right.

One Canada or No Canada

 

John Diefenbaker

I used to respect Andrew Coyne. But he now seems to me to be out of touch. He has grown too comfortable with the CBC and the rest of the commentariat. He now only promotes their narrative. In a recent CBC “At Issue” panel, he observed that Donald Trump had managed to unite Canadians with his proposal for annexation—that is, against Trump.

That is the line the politicians want us to believe. Patriotism, as Johnson said, is the last refuge of the scoundrel. It is always the political move to wrap yourself in the flag.

It is true enough that all the federal party leaders and all the premiers came out immediately saying this would never happen, and talking about tariffs on American goods. But we now, thanks to the Internet, do not need to rely on the politicians to tell us what ordinary Canadians think. I find that the mood on social media is entirely different. I think Coyne is in the Ottawa bubble. Trump has in fact driven a major wedge between the good old Laurentian elite and the people they claim to represent.

If X is a guide, ordinary Canadians seem split into two camps. Both agree the current situation in Canada is untenable. Both believe that Canada is broken. Both believe it is not enough just to vote out Trudeau’s regime. We have discovered with shock that we have no protections for our rights. Another tyrant might always come to power. Moreover, there is no real reason for Canada to exist: the government itself has stripped Canada of any sense of pride or national identity.

One party in this dispute says the best course is to fold the tent, accept Trump’s offer, and get the protection of the US Constitution. The other camp says we should instead try to recover a Canadian nationality, an unhyphenated Canadianism without multiculturalism, the “One Canada” Diefenbaker advocated. And then we must throw out the current constitution in favour of one that has a stronger protection for our rights. 

Of the two, the first option seems to me the more realistic. The Canadian constitution is devilishly difficult to amend, and trying to do so in the past has led to periods of political paralysis.

Just wait until Trump’s tariffs take effect. If I had to place a bet, I bet Canada is on it sway to annexation. Perhaps within the term of Trump’s mandate.

Why Nothing Rhymes Anymore

 

Newman's "Voice of Fire," in the National Gallery of Canada: your tax dollars at work.

 Bought for $1.76 million in 1990.

At a recent meeting of a poetry group, the moderator warned a new participant against using rhyme. She had warned me too some time ago, although I ignored it. She did not give any reason why rhyme is bad; she just knew you weren’t supposed to do it. She explained that rhyme is frowned upon by those who have been through any MFA programme, and by journal editors. So you won’t get published. 

I believe this is why Leonard Cohen left poetry for songwriting. He had been publicly pilloried by fellow poet Louisa Dudek on the grounds that his poetry was not experimental enough; it was too conventional. He figured he had no future in poetry then. Writing song lyrics permitted him to rhyme.

Joni Mitchell’s path to songwriting was eerily similar. She had started out wanting to be a painter. She dropped out of art school because they would not tolerate representational painting; everything had to be abstract.

The key to understanding poetry is that its proper medium is memory, just as the proper medium for prose is the printed page, and of plays the human voice. Rhyme, as a mnemonic, is therefore of value; a rhymed poem is in principle better than an unrhymed poem. It gives another hook to the memory, and another reason for that word to be there.

The lack of rhyme in modern poetry, and the lack of representation in modern art, probably explains why both have lost their popular audience. Nobody buys or reads poetry anymore; it used to be the most popular form of writing. And nobody really appreciates abstract art; people buy it as an investment, and praise it because they think it makes them sophisticated.

Representation is also rejected now in poetry: narrative poetry is discouraged. I had a poem rejected as an entry in one poetry contest, on the grounds that it was not really a poem, but a story, because it had a narrative line. The same poem later won the Mensa World Poetry Prize.

So why are rhyme and representation rejected? The obvious reason is because they are hard to do. It is always easier to write an unrhymed poem than a rhymed poem; to paint an abstraction than to paint a representation. So long as the element of needing to appeal to an audience is removed, it is in the self-interest of artists to discourage both. Even those who are capable of decent rhyme or representation: take away that requirement, and they can crank out product. It works best or artists who are in it as a career, instead of a vocation.

And that is what academics and credentialism does: it removes market forces, removes the customer, and frees practitioners to pursue pure self-interest.

And this seems to have destroyed not just contemporary art, but many other fields. The quality of teaching has collapsed since the emergence of schools of education. The quality of journalism has collapsed since the emergence of schools of journalism. 

Academic departments generally develop a contempt for whatever subject they are supposedly there to advance. It looks like work. Nothing compels them to work. They will find a way to toss it off, and do something else instead. Often politics.

And they will try to ruin anyone who wants to do a good job. They are scabs.

For the sake of civilization, it may be necessary to shut down the universities. Kill credentialism. Now that we have infinite access to information through the internet, there is no justification for them.

How Trump Could Actually Do It

 

Here’s how Trump can annex both Greenland and Canada.

Greenland: first encourage them to vote for independence from Denmark. Denmark can’t object: it’s the right to self-determination of peoples, established by the League of Nations and Wilson’s Fourteen Points. And Denmark has already admitted Greenland has this right.

Then, no longer needing to pay off Denmark, the US offers every Greenlander one million dollars to cede sovereignty to the USA. There are only about 50,000 Greenlanders. This would only cost the US $50,000,000,000—fifty billion. Good price considering Greenland’s strategic importance and mineral deposits. Not only would every Greenlander be a millionaire; the US would then also begin developing Greenland’s resources, providing jobs for Greenlanders, and continuing royalties. Like Alaskans, who all currently get an annual payout, a reverse income tax, from resource royalites. On top of this, of course, every Greenlander gains the right to live and work in the USA. The much coveted “green card.”

Why wouldn’t they go for it? It is not as though they are giving up their sovereignty; they are not independent now. And they would never be viable as an independent state.

Canada: there are too many Canadians for a similarly simple deal. But here’s how it could happen. The long Quebec sovereignty debate has established the principle that any Canadian province has the right to separate. Alberta gets a raw deal now within Confederation, forced to pay equalization to most other provinces. They will be especially hard hit by Trump’s stiff tariffs. They are probably most dependent on cross-border trade with the US, for their oil and gas and agricultural products. At the same time, they are most valuable to the US, for that oil and gas. Not to mention the Alcan highway heading north from Edmonton to Alaska.

Canadian nomination meetings and party leadership contests are ridiculously vulnerable to foreign interference, as the Chinese have demonstrated. It would not take that much money for the US to maneuver supporters of Alberta independence and annexation into power provincially, working like China through local shell organizations. Externally, offer Alberta stand-alone statehood, a pipeline south, and a complete lifting of tariffs. Probably attractive enough to convince a majority of Albertans, if the politicians are also pushing the idea.

So Alberta votes for independence and annexation to the US, as Texas once did from Mexico. 

Canada is now, for all practical purposes, cut in two, east to west; and it loses a huge part of its tax and resource base. 

At this point, the attraction of remaining independent diminishes rapidly for other provinces. They should start falling like dominoes. British Columbia will be stranded, in relation to the rest of Canada. They needed a rail link to convince them to join Confederation in the first place. Now that link is gone. 

Saskatchewan tends to move in tandem with Alberta. Saskatchewan will lose its route to market. Saskatchewan will want to join as well, if Alberta has joined. 

If Alberta, BC, and Saskatchewan have all left Confederation, there go most of Canada’s natural resources. The attractiveness of remaining in Canada falls further for other provinces, now much impoverished.

Manitoba will probably fall next, wanting to stay with its Prairie neighbours rather than become a remote outpost of Ontario.

If the momentum is now not yet enough to pull all the other provinces in, the game can repeat. If either New Brunswick or Quebec pull out of that rump Canada, it is once again cut in two. 

Target New Brunswick: small enough to subvert without too much financial outlay. If New Brunswick goes, PEI, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, stranded, will likely follow.

And as far as Quebec is concerned, there is no great loyalty to Ontario. Why not try for a better deal with Washington?

Leaving Ontario, and a landlocked Ontario. Not viable. Game, set, and match.

As for the Panama Canal, here’s a gambit: the US could put pressure on Panama by threatening to build a new, and wider, canal in cooperation with and through Costa Rica or Nicaragua; losing Panama virtually all its revenue from the present canal. Then it proposes, to forestall this, a deal with Panama in which Panama still gets a healthy remittance from the current canal under US management.

O'Leary's Gambit

 

An obvious political opportunity has emerged for someone in Canada. A new and vital issue is suddenly on the table: should Canada join the US? 

All the current national party leaders, Liberal, Conservative, NDP and Green, have adamantly rejected the idea.

This leaves an opening—indeed a need—for a Continentalist Party, prepared to negotiate the possibility.

Some will call this treason. But no more treasonous than Newfoundlanders campaigning for union with Canada prior to 1949; not to mention similar political campaigns in PEI, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, or British Columbia in their turn. Canada is founded on a celebration of unification. This is entirely within that tradition.

The standard political commentators will scoff—according to opinion polls, they will point out, joining the US has only 15% support in Canada.

Just as they pointed out that Poilievre could never win an election, because his views are too extreme. O’Toole and Scheer supposedly had the wise and winning approach: triangulate, and stay as close to the views of the current polls as possible, to win the centre.

Leaders—like Trump or Poilievre—lead. They do not follow the polls, they change opinions. All that is needed for such a party to prosper, I suspect, is a well-spoken, charismatic leader.

The more so since it looks as though the left is in collapse, in Canada and around the developed world. This leaves a vacancy for an opposition party founded on principles different from the current left-right divide, in Canada and around the world as well.

Indeed, the Trump unification drive seems to already be stirring echoes, if X is any indication, in Britain, New Zealand, and Australia, with locals suggesting this would be a good idea for their country too.

This sort of a shift in the political debate has happened before. At the beginning of the 20th century, socialism and “progressivism” emerged, and the old electoral divide between liberal and conservative was supplanted everywhere by a new division between conservative-liberal “free marketers” and Marxist “welfare state”/“New Deal” parties. In Quebec, for a generation or more, the divide was between sovereigntist and federalist. As we see in Scotland, Wales, or Puerto Rico.

This new divide in Canada would be similar to that in Quebec: should Canada stay sovereign, or merge with the States? 

All that is needed is a well-spoken, charismatic leader who sees the opportunity.

Kevin O’Leary is an entrepreneur. He is reputed to be skilled in spotting business opportunities; that is what he does on TV. He has always been interested in politics—he ran unsuccessfully for the Conservative leadership some years ago, failing by his estimation due to his lack of French. He is charismatic and telegenic.

I think he sees this opportunity, and may be on his way to forming such a new political party. He was shrewd enough to be first off the mark with a proposal for union, making himself the spokesman for the movement.

What O’Leary is promoting is not annexation, but an arrangement similar to the European Union. A shared passport, open borders, free movement of people and goods. 

But this looks like little more than a sales technique. The EU, after all, is based on the premise of an “ever closer union.” The goal is a United States or Europe; it is only a question of how quickly it can be completed.

Furthermore, the US is not going to agree to surrendering any of its sovereignty to some higher body. The US is historically hostile to such ideas; and there is no reason for them to treat Canada as an equal partner.

And furthermore, the US’s prime stated goal is a unified defense perimeter and tight external border. This will already require a closer union than the EU has yet achieved. 

No, no matter how it is framed, the governing authority for such a union would be the US government. All O’Leary is negotiating for is autonomous territory status instead of statehood.  A worse deal for Canadians, but perhaps more palatable. At least until he can acclimatize Canadians to the new view out the Overton window.

The Canadian Dependance Movement

 

A Scot has elicited comments from Canadians on Trump’s suggestion that Canada become the 51st state. 

I am surprised to see that almost all of the comments are positive. One New Zealander chipped in, “Can we be the 52nd?”

Is X a good reflection of the general Canadian public? Online polls are worth little in general, but recent studies indicate that X is quite a balanced sample of American opinion, just about equally representing left and right. So it is liable to be just as accurate for Canada.

More impressively, those in favour of union tend to give salient reasons. Lower taxes. A stronger currency. A stronger defense. More opportunity for careers.

Conversely, I have not seen anyone opposed to the union give any good argument against it. The opposition seems to be only emotional. Generally involving name-calling: accusations of treason or more general insults. One feels they have not thought about it.

I think something important is happening here.

I do feel regret over the possible loss of a distinct English-Canadian national culture, the culture of Anne of Green Gables, Mordecai Richler, Stephen Leacock, Al Purdy, and the like. But the Canadian government has already done everything it can to destroy that culture: declaring that Canada has no cultural mainstream, renaming everything, taking down statues, and subsidizing only aboriginal and alienated immigrant artists. A continental government might be more respectful. It could hardly be worse.

I Was Wrong

 

I got it wrong. I thought Justin Trudeau would call an election rather than step down; or at least, would not prorogue parliament, tacitly forcing his party to leave him in place to face the next election.

He did prorogue parliament, and he did announce he is stepping down. 

I think it is still significant that he called for a robust, nation-wide leadership contest. According to the Liberal Party constitution, a leadership contest must last at least ninety days, and must be called within 27 days of a leader stepping down. Prorogation lasts until March 24. That math says Trudeau will still be in place when the new Speech from the Throne is read, which Jagmeet Singh has publicly stated the NDP will vote against. And so it appears that Trudeau can still hope to be leader of the Liberals in the next election. If by some miracle he wins that election, all talk of his resignation will be forgotten.

I believe the party’s board of directors can amend and shorten that time frame with a 75% majority. But that’s a high bar. And there will surely be pressure not just from Trudeau, but from some possible contenders, not to do so. A shorter time frame favours the already better-known candidates.

In the meantime, there is talk of a court challenge to the prorogation itself. It looks constitutionally illegitimate to prorogue for such a long period, and transparently to prevent parliamentary accountability. Trudeau can hope for a court ruling forcing parliament back, if as I suspect he is hoping to hold the leadership into an election.

Trudeau may not be gone yet.

Journey of the Magi

 

The Journey Of The Magi

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

-- TS Eliot

Happy Epiphany

 

What Trudeau Is About to Do

 

Whatever I write now is likely to be obsolete before you read it. But let\s do this as a transparent test of my predictive abilities.

Rumours are everywhere that Justin Trudeau is going to resign as Liberal leader today or tomorrow.

He may have to, but it seems to me that doing this is to nobody’s benefit.

Trudeau obviously does not want to resign.

It is not good for the country, because it leaves us without leadership and for a protracted time, just as we are facing a grave external threat, with the Trump tariffs.

It is not good for the Liberal Party. Polls suggest they might do marginally better in an election under a new leader. But there is no saviour in the wings; in fact, no clear candidate who would be as good at campaigning as Trudeau; so it looks like a wash. Freeland has an annoyingly shrill voice and a habit of talking down to people. Carney is a grey bureaucrat. Nobody else has a public profile. 

Proroguing Parliament, either to hold a leadership contest or to delay an election under Trudeau, looks like a bad option. It again leaves Canada rudderless in a crisis, and the public will not be forgiving of that. It also looks desperate and undemocratic, a power grab, and the public will not be forgiving of that. And it means the government will soon run out of money—more chaos. And the public will not be forgiving of that. 

And from the point of view of any leadership candidate: it looks like suicide to run for the job now. They will have no time to introduce themselves to the public, will walk right into a massive electoral defeat, and will be tossed into the dumpster of history. Much better to let Trudeau take the loss, and rebuild starting next year. Or, if you are a prominent Liberal, skip this race and get ready to fight the inevitable next one in a year or two.

So since nobody benefits, why should Trudeau do this? It is also against his character: his entire mojo is self-confidence, and ignoring the blows. That was his strategy in boxing  Senator Brazeau, which won him the leadership; it is his signature move.

So I bet instead of resigning, he will call an election, and let the chips fall where they may. 

His caucus will resist. They know they will almost all lose their seats, and so would rather drag the mandate out for as long as possible. But they are being foolish, running around like a bunch of chickens in a rainstorm. “As long as possible” looks now like only a month or two, until Parliament passes a non-confidence motion. So why quibble? Best to get on with the rest of their lives.

So I predict Trudeau will not announce his resignation, but call an election. Or, if he feels he cannot brave the caucus, he will say he is resigning, but staying on as interim leader, and not proroguing parliament. Then he can expect that the government will fall before the new leader is selected, especially if the process is made lengthy, and he will still lead the party into the next election. That is better for the party, better for the country, and his one chance of staying on as prime minister. It actually worked for his father. Pierre Trudeau announced his resignation in 1979, then the PC government fell, and he agreed to lead his party into the next election. He won, and all talk of retirement was forgotten.

Now we’ll see how good I am at predictions.

On Altruism and Selfishness

 

Hello, Dalai!

Xerxes in his latest column claims he heard the Dalai Lama, through an interpreter, praise “selfish altruism.” Which Xerxes defines as “working so that the world will be better for you.”

By definition, altruism cannot be selfish; selfishness cannot be altruistic. M-W: “unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others.” Britannica: “feelings and behavior that show a desire to help other people and a lack of selfishness.”

What the Dalai Lama was speaking of, whatever word the interpreter used, seems to have been virtue. Which is a different kettle of worms.

There are traditionally seven capital virtues in the Christian tradition: faith, hope, charity, prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. Altruism relates directly only to charity.

Are the other virtues, those other than charity, “selfish”? They do tend to make the world better, and your own life in it better. They build character. Properly, however, it seems to me the term “selfish” should be limited to actions that seek a benefit to ourselves by harming others.

Selfishness does not map directly to vice either. There are seven vices: pride, anger, lust, gluttony, sloth, avarice, envy. None of them necessarily harms another; although actions inspired by them may. As an addiction to any one of them can take away your freedom of choice and destroy your life, it is not selfish to indulge them: it is suicidal.

For what it's worth, "selfishness" and "altruism" can have no meaning in a Buddhist context, either. The fundamental principle of Buddhism is anatman, anatta: "there is no self."

On Cliche

 

Cliches often annoy me. They spread through the media like viruses. A few that are pandemic currently:

Literally
Not on my bingo card
Obviously
Is no exception
Spoiled for choice
, Indeed.
Again,
To be honest,
I’ve got to be honest
Awesome
So,

The modern style condemns cliché. George Orwell’s first rule for better writing is “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.”

I generally agree, and watch out for this in my own writing. Surely every journalist is taught not to use them. But these things spread due to laziness and haste. It is always easier to use a canned phrase than one you have invented on your own. And the need for speed in journalism makes them especially tempting.

However, Orwell’s rule can also be misapplied. He is primarily a journalist, and he is thinking of news and opinion writing. Different forms of writing follow different rules.

Fairy tales, for example, are all cliché, all the time. And I love them. The fantasy genre deeply offends me exactly because it tinkers with the conventions, and introduces novelties. Friendly trolls? Misunderstood witches? Balrogs? No, it is essential to fairyland that everything there is eternal, unchanging, and follows strict rules. This is Tir na Nog.

The Western is another such genre. I once compiled for classes the opening scenes of a variety of famous Western films, to make the point. They all began with the vista of a large empty landscape. Then you see a single rider approach a farm or settlement.

And, of course, they all end with that single rider disappearing into the sunset.

Similarly, I once found a very good summary of the necessary elements of the Blues—another such conservative form. As is folk music; full of timeless conventions.

The beauty of these forms is their sense of eternity. Reading them, you are back in the familiar land of your imagination.

Nor is a stock phrase even necessarily a fault in a news story. Orwell’s description fits any idiom, and idioms are a valuable level of language. They make discourse both more colourful and more friendly, as author and reader have a sense of shared knowledge and camaraderie. “He hit that one out of the ballpark.” “Blair was put on his back foot.” They are often bits of preserved wisdom and culture, worth passing on. 

The real problem, and what grates in the examples above, is when a phrase starts being leaned on when it is not appropriate to the message. This degrades the language, our ability to communicate, and the culture.

“Literally” is now almost always used to mean “metaphorically.”

“Not on my bingo card” is now a tiresomely cute way to express surprise. And it does not make sense as an expression of surprise. One is probably more surprised when a number is on one’s bingo card. It would make more sense as an expression of disappointment.

“Obviously,” especially in British English, is generally used when one is about to say something highly debatable. In other words, far from obvious.

“Is no exception” is often used in UK promotional bumpf as well as journalism. It may well be true, but it violates the basic principle of either advertising or news: that you write about the exception, not about what everybody already knows.

“Spoiled for choice” is another dead phrase commonly dropped into advertising copy, or travel writing. “Whether you like X or Y,” “Whether your interests range to V or Z.” are like. These phrases are applied to every destination, every shopping place, and are always more or less true. The immediate message to the reader is actually that this place offers nothing special or unique--only the choices you can get anywhere. Which is the opposite of what they mean to say.

Ending a sentence with “Indeed” is a common British verbal tic. “You are very welcome indeed.” The impression left by that extra word is that the speaker had to think twice about whether the listener really was welcome.

“Again,” to begin a sentence, is almost always used when the speaker has not actually said the thing previously. Or anything much like it.

“To be honest” or “I’ve got to be honest with you” or “To be completely honest” is a red flag that the next thing said will be a lie. If not, it is an open admission that the speaker is usually a lying when he speaks.

“Awesome” is now used as a consolation prize for anything underwhelming.

“So,” is a common verbal tic among press agent types and politicians to preface any response to a question. It implies that what it then said logically follows, and is usually used precisely because the answer they are about to give does not answer the question.

You no doubt have your own list of pet hates.

Is Abortion Justified by the Bible?

 

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 12 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘If any man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him, 13 and a man has sex with her, and this is hidden from her husband, and she is defiled but keeps it a secret since there are no witnesses and she was not caught in the act, 14 and if a spirit of jealousy comes upon him, and he is jealous of his wife because she has defiled herself, or if a spirit of jealousy comes upon him and he is jealous of her even though she has not defiled herself, 15 then he will take his wife to the priest. He will also bring an offering for her, a tenth of an ephah of barley meal in which he has not poured oil nor put frankincense. This is a jealousy offering.

16 “ ‘The priest will bring her and have her stand before the Lord. 17 The priest will put some holy water in a clay vessel and he will put some of the dust from the floor of the sanctuary into the water. 18 The priest will have the woman stand before the Lord. He will uncover her hair and he will place the jealousy memorial offering in her hands. The priest will hold the bitter water that brings on a curse in his hands. 19 The priest will have the woman swear an oath saying, “If no other man has slept with you and if you have not gone astray, becoming defiled while married to your husband, then you will be free from the curse that this bitter water causes. 20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband, becoming defiled, and you have had sex with someone other than your husband,” 21 (at this point the priest will have the woman swear an oath to curse herself, and the priest will say to the woman) “then may the Lord make you a curse and a blight among your people. May the Lord make your loins rot and your womb swell;[d] 22 this water that brings on a curse will descend to your womb causing it to swell and your loins to rot.” The woman will then say, “Amen, amen.” 23 The priest will write these curses in a book and blot them out with the bitter water. 24 He will have the woman drink the bitter water that brings on the curse. The water that brings on the curse will enter her and will become bitter. 25 The priest will then take the jealousy offering out of the woman’s hand and wave the offering before the Lord and offer it upon the altar. 26 The priest will take a handful of the offering as the memorial offering and will burn it upon the altar. After that he will have the woman drink the water. 27 When he has made her drink the water, if she has defiled herself and been unfaithful to her husband, the curse in the water will enter her and be bitter and will cause her womb to swell and her loins to rot. 28 But if the woman has not defiled herself and she is clean, then she will be unharmed and will conceive children.

29 “ ‘This is the law of jealousy, when a wife goes astray while married to her husband and becomes defiled 30 or when the spirit of jealousy comes upon him and he is jealous of his wife. He will bring his wife before the Lord and the priest will fulfill all the prescriptions of this law upon her. 31 The man will be free from guilt, but the woman will bear her guilt.’ ”

 

I have heard this passage from Numbers 5 quoted more than once as proof that the Bible approves of abortion.

Don’t see it? The phrase translated here as “her loins to rot” is translated in the NIV as “make your womb miscarry.” Although King James has “thy thigh to rot.” A Jewish Torah online has “your thigh to rupture.”

Pro-abortionists who use this passage are relying on those words meaning an abortion. 

This reading is almost certainly wrong. It is not what the words literally say, in the first place. They mean “withered thigh.” If abortion were meant, why wouldn’t the Bible say so? Moreover, if the potion was an abortifacient, it would not serve its purpose. A woman who had been unfaithful had good odds of getting off scot free, when no dead foetus or discharge emerged. Most sexual liasons do not result in pregnancy. 

Obviously, a bit of dust in water is not going to wither your thigh, by any real physical or medicinal properties. No doubt that is why some translators changed it to “miscarry.” But this is knuckleheaded; no bit of dust in water is going to cause a miscarriage either. It only sounds superficially more plausible. 

Rather, this is an example of the old judicial practice of trial by ordeal. It worked reasonably well, and in any case was the best option available when there were no witnesses—just the situation carefully specified here. It depended on the accused believing that the potion and the curse would work. All the judge really needed to do was to watch the reaction of the accused when the trial was proposed. 

If the woman were innocent, and had a clear conscience, she would embrace the chance to prove her innocence, and accept the potion gladly.

If the woman were guilty, she would balk. She would more than likely confess. The penalty for adultery would be the same, whether she underwent it with a withered thigh or swollen belly, or in one piece. Either would make her unappealing to any more men, and if she was an adulteress, she probably put much store in her attractiveness to men.

Even if she did go through with it, her obvious hesitation and signs of fear would tell the tale. Probably at this point the judge would call it off, and pronounce sentence. It is unlikely that any adulteress ever actually went through the ordeal. 

If they did, and were brazen and cold-blooded enough not to flinch, at least the husband was reassured. 

Better ten guilty women go free than one marriage be unjustly terminated.

For the rest of us, it is pretty sinful to twist scripture to justify your sin, guys.