In Defense of Monarchy

 

All nations operate on shared delusions. I see this perhaps more clearly than most because I have lived in several different cultures.

One dangerous delusion Americans share is that there is something fundamentally wrong with monarchies. I heard it just recently from a panelist in a US news show: “no matter what the problems with our democracy, surely it is better than living under a dictatorship or a monarchy.”

Is it?

For that matter, are monarchies and democracies different systems? A democracy is not the same thing as a republic.

This prejudice has caused America much grief. When they left Iraq, for example, they could have saved many lives and much treasure by handing the keys over to a monarch and going home. Instead, they stayed and tried, absurdly, to impose a democratic republic. A contradiction in terms: to impose democracy.

A monarchy is a valuable asset to a stable democracy. Most of the world’s strongest democracies are monarchies: the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, Malaysia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium. There are reasons for this. Democracies require unity and trust: you have to know your political opponents will deal fairly with you out of power. A monarch is a useful point of unity; a shared loyalty and a referee for the transition of power. The monarch has more often than not been a backstop preserving democracy under threat. The flag never falls into the street to be seized by the strongest arm. Compare the great republics of France and the United States; compare republican Spain or Weimar to royalist Spain or Germany. The republics do seem more prone to dissolve into revolution or civil war, or be taken over by some dictator.

A monarch gives the nation a human face; a royal family makes the state feel more like one big family. Everybody is brother and sister. This is humanizing. This preserves civil peace. People naturally care about people, not pieces of paper. And more about people than ideology.

Without a royal family as the focus for a nation, the obvious alternative is ethnicity. This is bad news for any ethnic minorities. At best, they must feel left out, never at home. At worst, you have Nazi Germany.

If not ethnicity, you have a nation unified by ideology or religion. The United States managed this. So did the Soviet Union, or Maoist China. So did the several Muslim caliphates. But there are only so many ideologies or religions powerful enough to preserve consensus among a large group of people. And you necessarily risk limiting freedom of thought. The situation becomes difficult for minority religions.

Accordingly, monarchy is best at allowing diversity, and at preserving peace and equality in any diverse state.

It also introduces an element of glamour and magic to everyone’s lives. Monarchies are romantic. Lacking one, America has obviously compensated with their “stars” and “idols.” But this system seems terribly damaging to those caught up in it. Unlike monarchies, these celebrities are not groomed for the role, and their fame almost inevitably fades. The psychic strain must be incalculable. Many crash and burn.

A monarchy also seems to inoculate a nation against nepotism in politics. There is some instinctive craving, that in republics throws up political “dynasties,” like the Kennedys, Bushes, or Clintons in the US, the Gandhis in India, the LePens in France, the Marcoses and the Aquinos in the Philippines. Compare Britain. With a monarchy, this seems much less common. The need is met, and does not interfere with meritocracy in government.

For democracy to function requires a high-trust society, with established traditions of gentlemanly debate. If a society has not developed the necessary traditions, monarchy is again the best alternative, and the one most likely to peacefully and naturally segue into democracy when conditions allow. Either a dictator or a democratically elected leader is there because of a burning interest in acquiring power over others. This is just the sort of personality we do not want in charge. A monarchy will throw into power random personalities. The average person is not very interested, if at all, in power over others. A dictator, or even an elected leader facing defeat, has every incentive to loot the treasury before he leaves, is ousted, or dies. But a monarchy passes on to the son; it is natural instinct to preserve the inheritance for the next generation.

All systems are imperfect, as families are imperfect, but monarchy has natural safeguards.

Compare the various monarchies in the Middle East, where there is no democracy, to the republics; notice who is doing well, not persecuting minorities, and who weathered the “Arab Spring” without chaos or civil war. Compare Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Jordan, Morocco; with Libya, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza. See the difference?

Surely the monarchic system proves its worth. It is time-tested, and our ancestors were not fools.

Dives and Lazarus and the Resurrection

 

Jesus said to the Pharisees: 

“There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores. 

When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried, and from the netherworld, where he was in torment, he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he cried out, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.’ 

Abraham replied, ‘My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented. Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.’ 

He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment.’ 

But Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.’ 

He said, ‘Oh no, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ 

Then Abraham said, ‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.'”

Luke 16:19-31.

This passage, the gospel reading at last Sunday’s mass, is rich with significance. Because Lazarus is named, it does not appear to be a parable. From it we understand that either hell or heaven are eternal fates: one cannot move between them. 

It strongly suggests that suffering in this life will be rewarded in heaven. Nothing here indicates that Lazarus led a particularly moral life, full of good deeds. No, he is given heaven as a reward expressly in recompense for his suffering. “Now he is comforted here.”

This speaks against the self-satisfied “happy happy joy joy” form of Christianity that I so dislike. To be contented in a world of want is an indictment.

It also seems to me to endorse Judaism. Jesus was not sent for the Jews. There is no need for Jews to convert. So long as they listen to Moses and the prophets, they are good. If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, Jesus’s coming will make no difference to them.

This also affirms my own dislike of the argument that the resurrection is proof of the Christian faith. The passage itself says it is not sufficient proof, and not necessary proof. One believes in Christianity because one listens to the words of Jesus, or listens to the words of Moses and the prophets, and knows one is hearing the voice of God. One knows in one’s heart. And of course one knows, because God created us to hear and respond to his word. “Let those who have ears to hear, hear.”

This also seems  to be the point of the tale of doubting Thomas: “blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.”

Whose Free Speech?

So famous he still needs a name tag?

Many on the left have said that ABC suspending Jimmy Kimmel was or would be a violation of his freedom of speech.

I think we need to make some distinctions. If you say ABC cannot cancel Kimmel no matter what he says, you are ignoring ABC’s free speech rights. That would be compelled speech. ABC is a publisher; it has a right to publish whom they choose, because Kimmel represents them to the public. Imagine if a corporation hired an advertising firm, and then was legally required to run their ads no matter what they sent in.

The issue is different for online platforms like YouTube or Facebook or X. They are considered to merely be providing a service, like the phone company or an ISP. This gives them special legal protections. They are the “public square.” Nobody simply speaking on YouTube represents YouTube. So if they silence anyone, they are indeed violating their freedom of speech.

And the issue is different for “blacklisting”—that is, cancelling or silencing someone not for what they are saying, but for something they said at some other time or on some other platform. That does seem a violation of freedom of speech. It has a chilling effect on public discourse.

If government steps in and requires ABC to cancel Kimmel, openly or behind the scenes, on pain of retribution, this is a violation of freedom of speech—of ABC’s freedom of speech as well as Kimmel’s.

But even the government has the right to block slanderous speech, libel, incitement to violence, or pornography. Slander, libel, or incitement to violence are not just speech, but also deed; they are performative, and can materially harm others. Pornography is not necessarily performative, but may be socially undesirable. Similarly, the government has the right to arrest someone for walking about naked or masturbating in front of children. And no inalienable rights are violated in censoring it. Freedom of speech protects opinions, information and artistic expression, for the sake of public discourse and conscience, and not personal fetishes. 

I hope this clarifies matters. 

Should Kimmel be fired? I urge ABC to do so.

On Being Spiritually Bullied

Friend Xerxes, the formerly left-wing columnist, who has now mostly eschewed politics, wrote recently objecting to the evangelical Protestant “born-again” concept of sudden conversion. He considers this “bullying,” and says it is not in the Bible.

Pressed on how this is bullying, he emphasizes the demand to repent past sins. That is the bullying; and that is what is not in the Bible.

As a Catholic, I really have no dog in this fight. Instant conversions are not the expected norm in Catholicism. Catholicism is dubious about recognizing sudden conversions, because they may not be sincere. The usual advice is to sit on it for six months to a year, and spend that time walking the walk and studying the faith, before going public. 

But surely there is much Biblical warrant and saintly testimony for sudden conversion. Even outside Christianity: consider the case of the Buddha. Or the legend of Newton under the apple tree. Or Archimedes’s famous “Eureka!” Everyone has had such experiences in minor matters.

And the Bible gives several examples, aside from the famous one of Saul on the road to Damascus.

See Matthew 4:

“18 As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 19 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” 20 At once they left their nets and followed him.

21 Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, 22 and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.”

“At once.” “Immediately.” James and John even left their father Zebedee sitting in the boat. The gospel seems to actually be emphasizing how sudden this conversion was. And this, the calling of the first apostles, is presumably the intended template for Christian conversion.

See again Luke 19:8:

“But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, ‘Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.’”

Again the suddenness seems to be significant. The tax collector converts “here and now.”

See too the mass conversion at Pentecost, very much like a modern revival meeting. Acts 2:38-41.

“Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.”

Saul’s conversion is most obvious because it represents a 180 degree turn. But compare the conversion of the good thief; or the centurions who, after crucifying Jesus, conclude, “this surely was the son of God.”

Consider too St. Augustine’s account of his conversion, after hearing a child’s voice say “take and read.” 

“For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away.”

So too with Old Testament prophets: most famously, Moses surprised by the burning bush on Sinai.

Xerxes objects that these conversions do not involve the element of repentance. So they are not bullying, and the born-agains are still bullies.

He is right that Simon, Andrew, James and John were not asked to repent their sins when they were called to follow Jesus. 

Does this mean that the modern Protestant model is flawed? That repentance is not necessary?

Surely Zaccheus was called to repent—or at least he did repent, instantly, and make reparations. For him, conversion and repentance seems to have been the same act. As, surely, it was in the case of Saul/Paul. After his vision, Paul refused food and drink for three days—surely an act of penance. And the Roman centurions must have repented of crucifying the son of God—kind of goes without saying. In the case of the Good Thief, his admission of guilt is explicit: “And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes.”

Augustine also repents, before conversion: “I was sick and tormented, reproaching myself more bitterly than ever, rolling and writhing in my chain till it should be utterly broken.”

The need for repentance does seem to be clearly present in the New Testament taken as a whole. This is the commission of John the Baptist. “In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”

And people from the whole region responded. “People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.”

Quite plausibly, Simon, Andrew, James and John were among those who had gone to the Jordan to be baptized. That would mean they had already repented of their sins. As a matter of fact, the Gospel of John cites Andrew and John as disciples of the Baptist. So that seems to explain it.

So it certainly seems Biblical that true conversion requires the admission of sins—that one is a sinner.

So where is Xerxes’s bullying?

Religion, in the sense of belief or faith, by its nature simply cannot be imposed on another. It cannot be compelled. So bullying is not possible.

Religion in the sense of certain rules of conduct, like fasting or public prayer or going to church, can be imposed by government or family: but in Canada or the US, religions are always voluntary associations.

Now consider this from the point of view of the missionary. If he or she is indeed a Christian believer, he is not bullying in calling on you to repent and give your life to Jesus. He is offering you eternal salvation and saving you from eternal damnation. To paint him as a bully, you must not just deny the truth of Christianity, but deny that anyone could believe it. It is like accusing the nurse of bullying for bringing a dying patient food and adjusting her pillow instead of leaving her to die alone—only infinitely worse. It is like blaming a fireman for rescuing someone from a burning building.

This example touches me personally. I had a great-uncle who converted and received extreme unction on his deathbed. The thought of it gives me great solace. It is never too late for salvation, this side of the grave.

Xerxes objects that there are religious cults, and they at least do bully: “They smother potential members with pseudo love and care. They never left the newbie alone. Until their victim succumbed – and felt huge relief that it was over.”

There was a great deal of concern about this back in the Seventies and Eighties. Hare Krishna, People’s Temple, Scientology, Heaven’s Gate, the Moonies, the Children of God, and the like. Parents hired “deprogrammers” to recover their children from such groups.

But such groups cannot kidnap anyone; they cannot hold anyone anywhere against their will. If someone wanted to leave, and were prevented, all they needed to do was approach the nearest cop. Or contact their family. They were necessarily there of their own free will. Who has the right to overrule their own judgement and freedom of religion and conscience?

I have known several ex-Moonies, one ex-Scientologist, and one ex-Children of God. They had migrated to other faiths, and had no reason to defend their former denomination. But they insisted this claim of brainwashing or constraint was bosh. They had never felt any kind of compulsion. And nobody tried to prevent them from leaving.

The objection to young people joining “cults” echoes the common experience of Catholic saints. St. Thomas of Aquinas’s family kidnapped him and confined him to prevent him entering the monastery. St. Francis of Assisi was kidnapped, confined, and tortured by his father when he sought to become a mendicant friar: his father “laid hands on him very shamelessly and disgracefully, and carried him off to his own house. And so, without any mercy, he shut him up for several days in a dark place, and thinking to bend his son’s spirit to his own will, urged him at first by words, and then by stripes and chains.”

The two groups that can get away with holding people against their will are the government, and the family. To most who entered the supposed “cults” of the seventies and eighties, I suspect this was their escape from bullying at home. An escape that has been shut down, by the persecution of the “cults” and their leaders. The bullies are now more firmly in control.

It is of course entirely possible, and likely, that some cults are sinister. Al Qaeda is a cult. People’s Temple was a cult. The Manson family was a cult. At the same time, these cults were not really religious. They were primarily political in their aims and interests, and this is how they claimed the right to bully and control.

As to bullying someone by asking them to admit that they are a sinner, it stands to reason that any Christian conversion must involve repentance. Nor is it unreasonable to point this out to one who wants to convert. Jesus says “call no one good but your Father who is in heaven.” The acknowledgement of God involves the acknowledgement that we are not ourselves God, that we are imperfect by comparison. We are all sinners.

Someone who will claim they have never sinned, is clearly not telling the truth, and is not prepared to stand before God, who sees all things.

In sum, there is nothing wrong or unreasonable or unbiblical with the evangelical Protestant concept of sudden conversion. And it is certainly not a form of “bullying.”

Kimmel Refuses to Apologize or Correct the Record

 

Jimmy Kimmel’s “apology” show, after his brief suspension, was not an apology. He did not admit he had said anything wrong. He lied about the initial lie. And he maintained that Christians must forgive him anyway.

This cannot stand. This makes it an imperative matter of principle to condemn his behaviour as severely as possible.

This is not to say that Brendan Carr and the FTC should step in and pull licenses, or threaten to. Although there is an argument for this, since the airwaves are a public trust. This would not be, moreover, a matter of cancelling someone for their opinions. There is a critical difference between an opinion and an objective fact. It can be demonstrated objectively, as in a court of law, that Kimmel told a lie, and with the intent to slander his political opponents. That is not fair game. Nevertheless, it is unwise to set this precedent.

On the other hand, it is also not enough just to boycott, to resolve not to watch Kimmel anymore. Who watches him now anyway?

It is not enough to boycott ABC. Who watches it now anyway?

It is not enough to boycott Disney, the parent company. Most on the right are already boycotting. Most are not very interested in watching anything from Disney now anyway.

If lack of viewership were enough to get Kimmel cancelled, he should have been cancelled by now.

He has been propped up this long because the left have claimed for themselves the moral high ground.

What we need is a moral appeal, an appeal to conscience, an “appeal to heaven.” Every decent person who has voice must publicly condemn his behaviour. Those who do not have any public platform can at least write in to their local ABC affiliate, if in the US, write to his advertisers, and express their ire. Those watching online can put comments on videos. Express clearly that his apology is not acceptable.

This is not, and need not be, a call for cancellation. If Kimmel were even now to admit wrongdoing, apologize, correct his initial statement, and pledge to avoid such partisanship in the future, we could and should forgive. I would certainly be ready to. But he has now publicly refused to do so.

Just as souls choose Hell rather than admit their sins, Kimmel has chosen his fate.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms Was a Mistake

"The most dire predictions of what it would mean for Canada, the wholesale transfer of legislative authority from elected politicians to unelected judges, have become almost fully realized."

 Carson Jerema explains in today's National Post.

 

On the Morality of Murder

 

Chatting with a relativist the other day, he asked, “Do you think the killer of Charlie Kirk believed he was doing something wrong?” 

His intended point, of course, was that the killer no doubt thought he was doing a good thing. 

I have heard this argument from relativists before. A religion professor back in grad school actually wrote a piece for the student newspaper arguing that morality was nonsense. After all, if we thought something was wrong, we would not do it in the first place, would we? The fact that anyone did anything proves it was not wrong. They were simply following their own moral lights.

Another relativist friend, himself ethnically Jewish, held that Hitler no doubt thought he was doing the right thing.

Of course the Kirk killer knew he was doing something wrong. Of course Hitler did. Everyone has a conscience, an internal moral compass, and although we can rationalize, we know the moral truth. Those who do wrong will be plagued by their conscience, by the Erinyes, by their instinct for justice.

This is why, for example, serial killers always lay clues, growing more and more reckless until they are caught; and show relief when they are caught. Law enforcement sources say they usually sleep like a baby that first night in detention. Their conscience is no longer plaguing them—at least at the same level. Dostoyevsky understood this well, and had Raskolnikov’s own conscience lead him to Siberia. Edgar Allen Poe understood this in “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

This is why villainous people, like Stalin, like Hitler, or like those on Death Row, descend into paranoia. While they may have objective reason to fear retribution, it is also their conscience being projected on the world. This is why bad people commonly hate those they have harmed.

To suppose we always do what we believe is right is to suppose there are no impulses tempting us to do wrong. That there is no such thing as self-interest, cupidity, intemperance, or ego. Or rather, I suspect, in most such cases, that there is no force nor consideration the theorist will answer to but cupidity, self-interest, intemperance, and ego.

Erika Kirk Is Wrong

 

Erika Kirk’s speech publicly forgiving the murderer of her husband turned my stomach. It was the height of pharisaism. If she meant it, will she be asking that all charges be dropped? The words cost her nothing; they were virtue signalling. “Look how holy I am.” A Pharisee praying loudly in the temple. To me, whispering the words “that young man,” she reeked of insincerity.

Worse, she is being congratulated for it all over the right-wing blogosphere. This discredits Christianity and encourages more murders. We are learning who the phonies are, the poseurs. There are a lot of them.

To his immortal credit, Trump alone was not going along with this. This is why we need him: he always calls out the B.S. He called Kirk out in the gentlest, most self-deprecating way. He stated he could not forgive his enemies; “so I guess Charlie hates me.” He was not about to make a show of fake piety. And it is ironic, because Trump has a long public record of forgiving those who had previously been his enemies. Notably, at this very event, Elon Musk. He personifies the true Christian virtue. He forgives instantly.

Christians are to forgive others their trespasses only if they repent and seek forgiveness. Otherwise, you are endorsing sin. It is not noble to say it was okay to kill your husband; it is a betrayal of him. It is also a betrayal of God, for it is a denial of God’s law. And it is as bad as cursing the sinner to hell.

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

Jesus does not condemn the woman taken in adultery: but only once she has stood there ready to accept her punishment, and only with the admonition, “go and sin no more.” Forgiveness is the proper response to repentance, not to sin.

Mrs. Kirk cited Jesus’s words on the cross: “forgive them, father, for they know not what they do.”

Note the qualification: they are forgiven because they do not know what they are doing. Otherwise they are not forgiven. Does anyone want to argue that the killer of Charlie Kirk did not know what he was doing?

The reference is to the Roman soldiers crucifying him, and casting lots for his clothes. They are just doing their job; they cannot know they are crucifying an innocent man, let alone God himself.

If Mrs. Kirk were a true and sincere Christian, she should have read and pondered her Bible better than this. Or failing that, she should, as a sincere person, have listened to the voice of her conscience, and known in her heart that what she said was not right.

It is sad that even at this moment of apparent revival, Satan was already present, and speaking from the podium.

Global Depopulation

 In case anyone was not aware, these two maps give some idea of the rate at which birth rates are collapsing everywhere.

A Public Justification for Kirk's Murder

 

The venerable Guardian has weighed in on Charlie Kirk’s murder, under the odd headline:

The students who debated with Charlie Kirk: ‘His goal was to verbally defeat us’ | Charlie Kirk shooting | The Guardian

Apparently, the fact that Kirk debated with people was at least partial justification for his murder. The left now openly objects to debate itself.

The piece quotes Trent Webb, a professor of writing studies and rhetoric and director of the speech and debate team at Hofstra University, to say “In a good faith debate, the final goal is to reach consensus. If that doesn’t happen, then a lot of academics would consider it to be an exercise in futility.”

The intention of a good faith debate is not to reach consensus. It is to reach truth. Consensus is the opposite of debate. “Consent” is the opposite of “dissent.” “Consensus” generally means that all present are required to agree with whoever is in charge. No dissent is allowed.

Which perhaps indeed describes the typical current university or high school classroom.

“Dr Charles Woods, a professor of rhetoric and composition at East Texas A&M University, and the host of The Big Rhetorical Podcast, said Kirk distilled nuanced topics into stifling, good v bad arguments.”

“Charlie turned myriad opportunities for meaningful dialogic transactions rooted in civility and turned them into confrontational interactions by amplifying binaries in his argumentative structure,” Woods wrote in an email. “What we know is that there is a spectrum of ideologies and worldviews, not just two: Charlie’s and whoever is on the other side of the microphone.”

In other words, Kirk committed the crime of disagreeing with those who stepped up to the microphone. Who, of course, stepped up to the microphone because they disagreed with Kirk. Why is it he, and not they, who are being reductive, binary, and adversarial?

Debate is by it nature adversarial and binary. A proposition is advanced; one side argues pro, the other con. If either side simply agrees with the other, they are not debating. This is an important concept to grasp. Our parliamentary system is founded on it. Bills are debated in parliament.

As someone who teaches rhetoric, it is shocking to me that our educational system has deteriorated to the point that professors of rhetoric are opposed to debate. But then, professors of history are opposed to teaching history, professors of literature are opposed to the concept of literature, and ministers of religion are opposed to the Christian religion, so it is of a piece. 

However, if one side in the debate is refusing to accept the basic rules and premises of debate, they are a danger to civil society. As Kirk’s murder clearly demonstrates.

How to Be Happy

A recent student exercise was on a study of happiness: what makes you happy? It is presumably central to human existence, since it is one of the three inalienable rights listed in the Declaration of Independence: “the pursuit of happiness.” The Alpha course introductory session I recently attended started with the same question. It seems the thing everyone is asking.

The academic study cites a “wide variety of factors.” “Income, job satisfaction, and possessions”; “wealth, jobs and relationships.” It notes that these are the factors used in the World Happiness Report.

Which is not really helpful, since it is tautological. It begins with the unproven assumption that these are the factors that lead to happiness. 

I think the factors cited are somewhat off the mark. It is pretty well established that wealth or possessions do not lead to happiness. Relationships do, but then relationships can also be the source of deep unhappiness as well.

The answer is so simple; yet the misdirected focus on the material is why so many people are unhappy currently. This is why the rates of depression are soaring year by year.

Three things bring happiness: art, religion, and relationship. 

Art: we feel happiness listening to some music we like, or watching an engrossing movie. Even if it is just “entertainment,” we are transported to some other, better place. There is a world we connect with then, and that is where joy comes from. It is the spiritual world, the world of the imagination.

Religion: one could substitute the more generic, “meaning.” If you have a sense of meaning or purpose in your life, happiness ensues. Materialism strips the world of meaning. 

Relationships: a materialist perspective will hear this as “sex.” Substituting sex for relationship is devastating to happiness. All that is left is constant betrayal—relationships become a source of unhappiness. 

Happiness is from the spirit. Unhappiness is being dispirited.

On Not Being a Poet

"A poet is the most unpoetical thing in existence"--John Keats

I recently attended a public reading by a quite well-established Canadian poet.

It made me depressed. Which is not the effect one gets from art.

To my mind, there was nothing there. I heard only prose, and pedestrian reflections on one man’s daily life. No sound qualities, no vivid images, no deep thought.

It showed the derelict, debilitated state of poetry now. It was not poetry at all, and the somewhat celebrated poet was not a poet.

Reminds me of something Yeats said: “You can either live the life of a poet, or be a poet. You can’t do both.”

Like most contemporary poets, this man was a self-promoter, a marketer, not a poet. Good at dropping names. And that seems pretty much what “poetry” has become. The marketers have driven out the poets.

Don’t misunderstand me. He seemed to be a nice personable guy, enjoyable to be around. Fun to have a beer with, no doubt helpful and encouraging to others. Like any good salesman. It is a legitimate skill, and admirable in its own way. But it is incompatible with poetry.

People are driven to poetry because they have, in some way, been silenced. Because they cannot otherwise say what they need to say. The thing that must be said then develops force and power, like steam in a boiler, and comes out as verse. 

Anyone who is garrulous and talkative is already habitually saying whatever is on their minds. There is no force left over for poetry. What they present as poetry is just more of their usual pedestrian thoughts, without art.

And it is all about them. The focus is on being a poet, not the poem. Which is killing the craft.

You reveal yourself as a poet because you speak little. Poets live with silence, and every poem is ripped out screaming.

A poet must also always tell the truth, painful as it may be, to themselves or others. Without truth there is no beauty. A poet is a prophet. A good salesman, by contrast, says whatever they think the audience wants to hear. 

The two approaches are incompatible from the womb.

What we commonly call poetry now is essentially the opposite of poetry.

In the end, what makes me most depressed about the evening is the thought that this man has wasted his life. He has invested his identity entirely in being a poet. And he was never a poet, and could never be a poet. What could be sadder than seeing someone who has lived his whole life as a lie? And, not having any sense of poetry, he probably has no idea.

On Calling an Indian an Indian

 

Can you spot the racial slur?

A correspondent asserts that the term “Indian” is derogatory. This is indeed a common view; but I hold it is arbitrary and nonsensical.

If, after all, the term is derogatory, it should be offensive to use it to refer to the natives of the Indian subcontinent. Which nobody holds it to be.  If you consider the same term offensive when used on or by one group, but not offensive when used on or by another group, the problem is not with the term. It is with you: you are treating people differently on the basis of race. You are a racist.

The original concern with the term is that it is supposedly inaccurate—Columbus supposedly mistakenly thought he had reached India, and declared the land the “West Indies.” This does not make it derogatory, any more than mistakenly calling an Australian an Austrian would cause offense.

But even this objection to the term is actually wrong. The very term “West Indies” shows Columbus did not think he was in the subcontinent—that was the East. The people of the Philippines were also referred to in Columbus’s time as “Indians.” So were Malaysians, and Indonesians, the Arabs in the Middle East, and the people of sub-Saharan Africa. “Indian” meant roughly what we currently mean by “native.” If “Indian” is offensive, then so is “native,” or “aboriginal,” or “indigenous.” Or “First Nations.”

Another objection is that it presents the misleading impression that all Indian cultures were similar, when in fact they were widely diverse. One should instead say “Innu,” or “Dogrib,” and so on. But if this objection is valid, it applies equally to the terms “white,” “Caucasian,” “Asian,” “European,” or “African,” all of which are common and not considered derogatory.

Is it objectionable because it is a term from English, and not from a native Indian language? But this is the same for all other  groups, and all other languages. “Irish” is not the term in Irish for the Irish: “Greek” is not the term in Greek for the Greeks; “English” is not the term in Korean for the English; and so on. English, like any language, has its own terms for various groups.

So what are we to call this group of people?

As it happens, “Indian” is, in both the US and Canada, the proper legal term. Unlike any other term, it has a clear legal definition. It is therefore the correct and precise term; who or what counts as “First Nation,” or “aboriginal,” or the like, is ambiguous and open to dispute. “Indian” is also commonly and historically used by Indians themselves, as in the “American Indian Movement.”

So why does anyone object to the term “Indian”? It is only a bit of academic snobbery, of cant or jargon, showing you are a member of an in-group who “knows better” than to use the common and familiar term.

A good writer and a good editor should resist and discourage all such cant and jargon. Given that writing is communication, we should always prefer the common and the most accurate term.

How We Know Christianity Is Truth

I recently attended the introductory session of the Alpha course. The Alpha course is making waves in the Christian sphere; it is a course of videos and discussions for those sniffing around on the fringes of faith. Developed by an Anglican pastor, but non-denominational in tone, on the “mere Christianity” model of C.S. Lewis. And this session was so well attended, the organizers were trying to turn people away, suggesting they come instead for the next session, expected some time this winter.

Bad advice, I suspect. I suspect that one will be even better attended. The change has begun.

However, I was troubled by the tone of the introductory video. It kept citing scientists to establish the credibility of Christianity. “I’m an established scientist, and when I looked at the evidence…” “Look at all the well-known scientists who were Christians.”

This might make some kind of evangelical sense, talking to people where they are now--materialists. But to my mind it concedes the game before the start of play. If you are using scientists to establish the credibility of Christianity, your religion is scientism, the worship of science as the font of all truth, not Christianity. This is upside down. There is a reason science emerged in Christian Europe, not elsewhere.

Science, for all its usefulness, cannot establish truth. Every claim it makes is provisional. Because its method is inductive, even its strongest claims might be disproven tomorrow by some “black swan event.” And they commonly are. I am old enough to know that much of what I was taught in high school science classes is now held by science itself to be wrong. We were told the world faced an overpopulation crisis. We were told a new ice age was imminent. We were told the world was about to run out of oil, and water, and food. We were told there was no such thing as continents moving, as continental drift. It was mere coincidence that the coastline of Africa seemed to match the coastline of South America like jigsaw pieces. We were told that the human embryo in the womb looked just like a lizard, and this proved evolution. We were told eggs were bad for our health. We were told to get as much sun as we could, and many of us got skin cancer as a result. My grandmother was told to take up smoking for her health. 

If it was all wrong then, and all wrong fifty years earlier, and all wrong fifty years before that, how can we assume it is all right at this point?

Moreover, science relies on prior assumptions: that our sense perceptions correspond in some consistent way to real objects external to us. That everything, including our memories, did not come into existence five minutes ago. That we are humans who dreamt last night we were butterflies, not butterflies dreaming right now we are humans. That the simplest explanation is most likely to be true.

Moreover, as arbiters of truth, scientists, as illusionists from Houdini to the Amazing Randi have often demonstrated, are naturally gullible and easy to mislead by appearances—because that is what they go by.

Science also depends on strict adherence to ethical standards by scientists—not faking their data, not logrolling their friends, not injecting their own interests or preferences. Yet science itself eschews moral education; it scoffs at moral concerns. How can we trust scientists?

My faith therefore does not rely on any scientific approach to “the evidence.” This includes the evidence for the resurrection, which Alpha seems to emphasize as critical, as does William Lane Craig. 

If I remember it correctly, I believe the video misstates that either the resurrection or the life of Jesus is the single best-corroborated event in history. There are certainly many more recent events for which there is more evidence. We obviously have more evidence, for example, that John Kennedy was assassinated, or that an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. It is, rather, the best-established event in ancient history. 

But that is still not enough on which to build a firm faith. That Is also, in principle, vulnerable to a “black swan” event. Suppose tomorrow someone excavated the corpse of Jesus? Such a faith is at best provisional.

My faith is based on the one hand on the dozen compelling logical arguments that God exists. Indeed, I would go further and assert that the existence of God is a self-evident truth. If many deny it, I hold that they are doing so on emotional, not rational, grounds. They are like Adam and Eve hiding in the bushes, imagining God could not find them there. People often do not WANT God to exist.

If one retreats from the world and meditates on this silently, the truth becomes obvious.

Given that God exists, by his nature, He would not hide himself from us. He would give us clear guidance. He would reveal himself to us in some way. Where?

Logically, in Christianity and in the Bible, on the grounds that that is the theological and cosmological system most directly available to the most people over the longest time. God would put the solution as much as possible in plain sight.

But in terms of my actual conversion to Catholicism, this was not the key. To be clear, I was raised Catholic. However, from about age 15 to 17, I considered myself an atheist. I was not prepared, nor should anyone in good conscience be, to simply accept something as truth without examination, because you were told so by your parents or your school or your culture or those around you.

What made me realize Christianity was truth was the Sermon on the Mount. I suddenly saw these words as both perfectly true, and not obvious, not mere truisms anyone could say. Indeed, they went directly against what I had been taught as “true.” Apart from any “evidence,” of this or that event or name, somebody said these words originally, and whoever did was unquestionably God incarnate, truth incarnate.

“He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.” (John 10: 3-4)

I recognized the voice. And I suspect this is the way true conversion must happen. 

The Protest in Liberation Square

I have been invited by a musician friend to join a protest “against injustice, fossil fuels and the billionaires that fund them.”

“We refuse to stand by while the government and Canada's richest corporations hoard wealth, gut our public services, fuel climate collapse, attack migrants, exploit Indigenous lands, and prop up a genocide in Palestine.”

“Climate justice, migrant justice, economic justice, Indigenous rights, and anti-war movements are uniting to prove them wrong.”

Their list of demands follows: “fund our families and communities.” “Refuse ongoing colonialism. Uphold indigenous sovereignty.” “Stop blaming migrants. Demand full immigration status for all now.” “End the war machine.” “End the era of fossil fuels. Protect Mother Earth.”

It seems an oddly random set of concerns, and vague demands, with a lack of specifics. Which makes me think the main impetus here is tribalism: “virtue signalling.” Or rather, an abdication of responsibility for the problems of the world. It is all the fault of governments and big corporations, and it is up to the governments and the rich corporations, not me, to fix it.

I do not believe the government of Canada is hoarding wealth. Quite the reverse: they are running an annual deficit, and there is a large public debt. 

If a corporation is hoarding wealth rather than reinvesting or distributing it to shareholders, I think this is bad, but it is a matter for their shareholders to deal with. I don’t think they need me to step in and protect their interests. 

Presumably it is the government, and not rich corporations, that are gutting our public services. But money does not come from nowhere; that is a childish thought. If money is being taken out of some public service, is it going to some better use elsewhere? One needs to consider both ides of that equation.

I do not see either the government or rich corporations attacking migrants. The government is inviting them into the country in unprecedented numbers, and the corporations are accused of exploiting this for cheap labour.

I do not see either the government or rich corporations exploiting indigenous lands; although perhaps this hinges on what you consider to be indigenous lands. If you hold that all Canada is indigenous land, then of course any land use in Canada is “exploiting indigenous lands.” But economic development, exploitation of resources, is a good thing, if you are on the side of humanity.

Legally, and morally, “indigenous land” means land the title of which is held by some indigenous person, or on behalf of some tribe or band—the reserves. Are there examples of exploitation here without permission or compensation? If so, I am opposed. But I would need to hear specifics.

As to “propping up genocide in Palestine”—there are several issues here. To begin with, is there a genocide in Palestine? Is the IDF trying to wipe out the Gazan Arabs? Or is this a war against Hamas, or a suppression of a terrorist group? If it is a genocide, the obvious immediate solution would be to open the Egyptian border to Gazan refugees. If that is not the proposed solution, I must suspect some ulterior motive. And that the Gazan Arabs are considered expendable.

The next question is whether Canada is propping up the Israelis. We send no foreign aid. We sell them weapons; which actually means they are funding us. The Canadian government announced in March 2024 an embargo on arms shipments to Israel; although this seems not to have been honoured.

“Fund our families and communities”? But government funds come from our families and communities. The solution is to leave the funds with them in the first place. Again, there seems a childish assumption that money just comes from nowhere.

“Refuse ongoing colonialism. Uphold indigenous sovereignty.” It is an interesting idea: this would mean each reserve declaring independence, and running their own affairs. But if it was racist in South Africa with their bantustans, if it was racist in the US South with segregation, surely it is racist in Canada now. And I doubt any of these tiny countries would be economically viable without outside subsidy.

“Demand full immigration status for all now.” But this is an obvious injustice: why should this particular group of people be allowed free entry into Canada, above others who might want to come? 

Or is the proposal just to open the borders and let anyone in? This is incompatible with having a social safety net. The incentive to immigrate will be far greater for those wanting or needing public assistance. Other countries might outsource all their problems, all their antisocial or indigent residents, to Canada. And other countries might even try to take us over by simple force of demographics, as the US took Texas from Mexico, or Morocco seized the former Spanish Sahara.

“End the war machine.” Canada is conspicuous for how little it spends on defence; we are in trouble in our alliances because of it. And when was the last time Canada started a war? The military industrial complex is probably the least of our worries.

“End the era of fossil fuels. Protect Mother Earth.” Here I must recoil. “Mother Earth” is obvious idolatry. Nor does Earth need protecting from us. We could not destroy it if we wanted to. The worst we could do is destroy ourselves.

There is an argument that there is something wrong with fossil fuels, other than that they will run out. The idea is that burning anything produces carbon dioxide; carbon dioxide causes global warming; global warming is a bad thing on balance. This seems to me a slender thread; there are more pressing things to worry about. And what is your solution? Even if fossil fuels cause global warming, and global warming is bad, there is nothing any one government or rich corporation can do about it. If Canada were to ban the burning of fossil fuels altogether, manufacturing would simply move to China, or India, or whatever country allowed it. If any corporation stopped using them, they would just lose their competitiveness and go out of business to some rival. The only solution is improved technology that makes some other energy source more economical. 

I have perhaps gone into too much detail; I feel these things are obvious. But obviously not to everyone.

Both Sides?

 

Someone has done a bit of research.

Everybody Knows...

 That the left is the party of violence.

On Right-Wing "Cancel Culture"

"Dead Rabbits" riot in NYC.

The right in America is currently undergoing some soul-searching, under accusations of hypocrisy from the left. People are getting fired for their online reactions to Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Some are being doxxed to their employers. Isn’t this the very cancel culture the right has been complaining about?

This is a conundrum always faced by a liberal democracy. It was pressing during the 1920s to 1950s. Can you allow a Nazi Party or a Communist Party to openly organize and compete in elections? After all, they are rejecting the electoral system itself. How do you handle a political movement that advocates political violence? That commits it?

If political violence is allowed, the electoral system itself disintegrates. The decision devolves to mobs in the streets.

Celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk is endorsing political violence; and advocating political violence, implicitly or explicitly.

Inciting violence in any context is criminal. Inciting or advocating political violence steps that up to something like treason.

The right in America is currently undergoing some soul-searching, under accusations of hypocrisy from the left. People are getting fired for their online reactions to Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Some are being doxxed to their employers. Isn’t this the very cancel culture the right has been complaining about?

This is a conundrum always faced by a liberal democracy. It was pressing during the 1920s to 1950s. Can you allow a Nazi Party or a Communist Party to openly organize and compete in elections? After all, they are rejecting the electoral system itself. How do you handle a political movement that advocates political violence? That commits it?

If political violence is allowed, the electoral system itself disintegrates. The decision devolves to mobs in the streets.

Celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk is endorsing political violence; and advocating political violence, implicitly or explicitly.

Inciting violence in any context is criminal. Inciting or advocating political violence steps that up to something like treason.

The right in America is currently undergoing some soul-searching, under accusations of hypocrisy from the left. People are getting fired for their online reactions to Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Some are being doxxed to their employers. Isn’t this the very cancel culture the right has been complaining about? 

This is a conundrum always faced by a liberal democracy. It was pressing during the 1920s to 1950s. Can you allow a Nazi Party or a Communist Party to openly organize and compete in elections? After all, they are rejecting the electoral system itself. How do you handle a political movement that advocates political violence? That commits it? 

If political violence is allowed, the electoral system itself disintegrates. The decision devolves to mobs in the streets.

Celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk is endorsing political violence; and advocating political violence, implicitly or explicitly.

Inciting violence in any context is criminal. Inciting or advocating political violence steps that up to something like treason.

The Underlying Reality of the Current Moment

The murders of Charlie Kirk and Iryna Zarutska still physically sicken me. But this morning I have a new sense of calm. This was the last lunge of a dying beast. Charlie was killed because he won the debate. There may be further violence, we cannot let down our guard, but we are now in the mopping-up phase..

The trans movement is dead.

Materialism is dead.

Scientism is dead.

Islamism is dead.

Multiculturalism is dead.

Climate change is dead.

The powers and principalities of this world are in panic.

The materialist demons who inspired Iryna's murderer are in panic.

Christianity has won; or Judeo-Christianity.

The culture war is won. 

The evil is exposed, and the majority is repulsed by it. And we know who the ultimate baddies are now. There is moral clarity.

The Narcissists Speak

 

The audio conversation between the killer of Iryna Zarutska and his sister is available online. And it is striking that the killer shows no remorse. If he really did it in a fit of insanity, he should now be deeply remorseful for the poor innocent woman. Instead, he is concerned that the government must figure out what alien material is in his body that made him do this. The death of another human being just does not matter.

The killer of Charlie Kirk too showed no remorse in messages sent after the assassination. He was joking about it with his friends. No concern, even if he really thought Kirk’s views were dangerous, that innocent children had been left without a father. No sense of what the loss of Charlie Kirk might mean to the many who followed him.

And the same is alarmingly true for many people who have been openly celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death. Somebody is compiling a growing list of 50,000 who did so online. You have probably seen this yourself.

Can you imagine people celebrating openly when JFK was shot? Did anyone celebrate openly when MLK was shot? When John Lennon was shot? Even when Mussolini died, Churchill condemned the killing.

Something has changed.

What has changed is an epidemic of narcissism. There are a lot of them; now we see this plainly. They see other people as no more than objects. Only their own feelings matter. They have no empathy for anyone else.

The good news is, these events, the killings of Charlie Kirk and Iryna Zarutska, are revealing them to us, and the general public sees what they are. And, even better, in many cases there has been instant pushback: people are losing their jobs and being ostracized for this.

Yes, this is “cancel culture”; but turnabout is fair play. It is reminiscent of the turning against Robespierre and the Jacobins in Revolutionary France.

The Motive Behind the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

I had been puzzled over the motive behind Charlie Kirk’s assassination. There was no sign of mental illness. There was no prior criminal record. The assassin was not some desperate loser like Lee Harvey Oswald or Sirhan Sirhan whose only hope of fame was to kill someone famous. This guy had been an A student. Why did he kill Charlie Kirk?

Now it makes sense.

It turns out he had been living with a trans lover. Now it makes sense. He was necessarily part of the “LGBTQ community; although he was probably not sure himself which letter properly referred to himself. His “trans” “partner” initiated him into the trans ideology, and he had to embrace it to be in that relationship. And the trans ideology is in effect extreme narcissism: the idea that one’s personal will must override biology, mut override physical reality itself. This is in effect an assumption of godlike powers, the right to control reality. 

God naturally also has the right to kill; God kills all of us, after all, sooner or later. As God, the assassin could kill or destroy anyone who stood in his way.

Charlie Kirk denied he had the right or ability to control the world. So Charlie Kirk had to die.

Transgenderism is endemic in the culture now because he conviction that you are God is endemic in the culture now. A recent Facebook post--from a close acquaintance and in a sense a friend!-- expressed the common New Age sentiment. I encounter it at least monthly, it not daily, in Canada. I quote:

“We are divinity itself…we are here to take FULL responsibility for Ourselves, we are the ones we've been waiting for, we are here to save Ourselves…We are the manifestations of Source expressing and experiencing itself in the form of Infinite Many-ness. We are already ‘That.’ … There is no God outside of you. It is nonsense to worship that with you are a literal living, breathing expression of... It's a mind control program propagated to keep the masses feeling less then, keeping them disempowered and continuously beLIEving that ‘God’ or ‘the power’ is ‘out there’ - It's all nonsense, tools of control.”

Here is a whiff here of Advaita Vedanta Hinduism: “tat tvam asi,” “Brahman-atman.” But Vedantic Hinduism has been mostly superseded in India itself by devotional Hinduism: it has over the centuries lost the competition of ideas even there. It is of course incompatible with Christianity, Judaism, or Islam; and with Buddhism. 

And with Western paganism.

This is the sin the ancient Greeks called “hubris”: thinking you are a god. Bad news: it leads inevitably to madness and disaster on a social scale. It was also a crime in Athenian law; it was understood to lead automatically to the abuse of others. 

It is moreover the original sin with which Satan tempts Eve: “when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” And it is Lucifer’s own original sin. From this sin all other sin emerges.

It is also an untenable claim. As Descartes pointed out in his Meditations, it is immediately obvious to us that it is false.

“If I were independent of every other existence, and were myself the author of my being, I should doubt of nothing, I should desire nothing, and, in fine, no perfection would be wanting to me; for I should have bestowed upon myself every perfection of which I possess the idea, and I should thus be God.”

And this, however much the narcissist might wish it, is transparently not so. We know we do not know everything; we know we make mistakes. We know we cannot fly. We know things happen to us that are unexpected, even against our will. 

Hence the inevitable retreat into bitterness, anger, depression, and hostility towards the universe. And to violence towards others.

There is another emotional issue with the belief that we are God: it leaves us alone in the universe. I recall Ramakrishna’s emotional objection to monism: “I want to taste sugar. I don’t want to BE sugar.” There is no possibility of Martin Buber’s “I-Thou” relationship, which is the entire point of existence. God is love, and now there is no one to love, and so no love, and no God.

We must pull out of this tailspin. 

The Tell-Tale Heart

 

I am not a fan of Edgar Allen Poe. To me, his writing is over the top—fear-jerking, cheap thrills.

But I just went through “The Tell-Tale Heart” with a student, and I think Poe may have a lead here on the true nature and cause of what modern psychiatry calls “paranoid schizophrenia.” 

In the story, the narrator is driven to psychosis by a guilty conscience. And not only guilt over murdering an old; he murders the old man in the first place out of guilt. A bad conscience made him imagine the old man saw into his soul and was judging him.

Poe does not tell us what he feels guilty about in the first place; but the clue is his insistence throughout the tale that he is not mad. He is more concerned about this than about being convicted of murder—he is resisting the obvious insanity defense. Why?

Out of pride. It is literally vitally important to him to convince the reader that his version of reality is the correct one. He must have the ability to impose his will on reality, and not concede to it.

In other words, a schizophrenic is a narcissist overwhelmed by his guilty conscience.

This is consistent with a mystery I read of a long time ago, in a book about Florida’s “death row.” It claimed that virtually everyone on death row seemed fully insane, delusional. Even though they were all judged sane and able to stand trial when they were convicted. And this included contract killers, mob killers—people who did it professionally, as a job. It seems implausible that such people were psychotic at the time they committed their crimes; a psychotic cannot plan well enough for a mob hit. 

Possibly the fear of death drove them mad; but most of us see death coming at the end of our lives, and do not go mad expecting it. It seems more likely the psychosis was provoked by having the chance to meditate over their former deeds.

M. Scott Peck, and Robert Fleiss, have both observed that narcissists when challenged can become psychotic. After all, their everyday assumptions, if examined closely, are already delusional. They all secretly think they are better than everyone, a Napoleon, or the god Siva, or the virgin Mary, or the promised Messiah. They will delude themselves with ideas of their own exceptional talents: like Poe’s narrator boasting of his extremely sensitive hearing, and of how clever he was in how he committed the murder and hid the body. This is how narcissists talk.

Shake them up enough, and the mask they wear to hide these assumptions from others slips. They openly declare themselves Napoleon, or Siva, or the Virgin Mary.

Paranoia comes with schizophrenia. Paranoia is itself a clear expression of egotism. It is the belief that everything is about you. Someone on the television is speaking directly to you. The CIA is trying to control you—obviously, they consider you that important. Everything is a message for you personally.

This is all the opposite of depression, which is caused by a sense of inferiority.

But in either case, the obvious and necessary cure is the same: to bring God and submission to God into the mix. 

The Murder of Charlie Kirk

In the face of the death of Charlie Kirk, I am consoled by the ancient saying, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church”; and by the more modern saying, “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." 

Some fear this will make public discourse impossible; and America will of necessity dissolve into general violence. 

I am hopeful that, instead, this might be the tipping point beyond which no decent person will admit to being on the woke left. The moral high ground counts for everything; and the left has now lost it decisively. 

I see signs of this. MSNBC fired their analyst Matthew Dowd within hours for commenting on air that Kirk deserved to die for his supposed “hate speech.” And they issued a public apology. U of T professor Ruth Marshall posted on social media “Shooting is honestly too good for so many of you fascist c–ts.” And has already been placed on leave.

Whether the left has developed a conscience or not, businesses know how their bread is buttered. They have belatedly gotten the message that the public mood has changed. They have learned the lesson of Bud Light, Disney, Target, and Cracker Barrel. Nobody wants to be next.

And the fact that some leftist has resorted to murder shows that Kirk won the argument. So they had to silence him. But did this work with Martin Luther King? Mahatam Gandhi? Socrates? Jesus Christ?

When they fight you, then you win.

I suspect that, two years from now, nobody will admit to ever having been “woke” or voting for Kamala Harris.

The Murder of Iryna Zarutska

Although barely being mentioned by the US legacy media, the murder of Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte LRT is all over the internet. This is because it resonates with the moment; it is deeply symbolic. It is of a piece, I think, with the current violent uprising against the government in Nepal. Ordinary people have had enough, and are ready to rise against wokery in all its forms. It is about being fed up with censorship and government propaganda and misinformation and suppressing the truth. The video of the innocent white woman suddenly being stabbed to death by a black man, unprovoked, expresses visually and incontrovertibly something we have all known to be true, but forbidden to say, for years.

Anti-white racism is the real problem. 

Beyond that, government contemptuous of and hostile to the common people is the real problem.

The one point I would add to the ferment is that this is not about mental health. The lame common excuse that the killer was let down by the system in not being given “help” is diabolically wrong.

Stop and think for a moment. Claiming that mental illness leads to violence is a grave slander against the mentally ill. They suffer enough already. It is like saying lepers are violent, or cancer victims are violent.

It also denies them the dignity of human agency. It excuses all attempts to control them and ignore their concerns. It treats them as lesser beings. It might even eventually excuse their extermination.

The mentally ill are no more violent, statistically, than the general population.

Moreover, whenever it is revealed that this or that killer is mentally ill, this also reveals that they have been through the system, in order to have that diagnosis. They have already been given whatever “help” the mental health system has to offer. The problem is that the mental health system does not know how to help; throwing more money after it is money wasted.

And as a matter of simple justice, the mentally ill must be held responsible for violent actions against others. Otherwise it is easy for anyone of malicious mind to use this as cover. It is like saying “the devil made me do it.” It is an abdication of responsibility, and in itself is gravely immoral. This is why, historically, the Church has resisted most claims of demonic possession. 

The devil can tempt; he cannot force you to do the thing. You still have your own conscience and judgement.

I can imagine someone hallucinating that they are being attacked by aliens or devils or other hostile forces and needing to defend themself. I can see this happening if police advance on a schizophrenic, for example, with their uniforms and their weapons; or doctors or male nurses in white coats. 

But that cannot be maintained in this case. The poor woman was sitting there minding her own business. The killer felt malice, and acted on malice.

His presumed insanity is no defense.

Solving the Health-Care Crisis

The Commonwealth Fund’s annual health policy survey has ranked Canada very poorly among 31 high-income countries with universal health care for timely access to services.

How to fix our health-care crisis?

The obvious first move is to abandon the odd political shibboleth that we must not permit private care. “No two-tier health care.” Why not? Canada is the only universal-care country that severely restricts private options. In Britain, the rich are publicly shamed if they resort to the public system.

As a practical matter, the Canadian rich currently often head down to the States for private care. This is an unnecessary travel expense for them, and it drains money from the Canadian economy.  Better to let private firms set up in Canada. The rich will be able to “jump the queue,” but as a result, the queue will be shorter for everyone. To object is mere self-destructive envy.

Then if a privately-run clinic or hospital can provide a service for less than the public system does, as may well be the case, the government plan too should cover the private option. 

Most of what doctors do, however, is diagnosis, and prescribing pills. AI can already diagnose and prescribe more accurately than a human doctor. Accordingly, we need much less training than we currently demand for a medical doctor; all we really need is basic computer competence. We need nurses, dispensing pharmacists, and technicians to run the diagnostic machines. We do not really need doctors.

We should also institute a nominal fee, a deductible, for a doctor or hospital visit, to discourage unnecessary use: say $5.

And we should not cover unnecessary non-health procedures like sex changes or abortions.

What God Asks of Us

 

Great crowds were traveling with Jesus, and he turned and addressed them, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’ Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms. In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

This was the Gospel reading at today’s mass.

The priest began his sermon by assuring us that salvation is a free gift, we were ransomed by the cross, and we need only trust in Jesus to be saved.

It seems to me he was deliberately speaking against the Bible passage. No doubt he feared it would not go down well with the congregation.

But you don’t get to ignore or contradict the Bible.

The Catholic church holds that we cannot achieve salvation by our own merits; this much is true. But that does not mean everyone gets into heaven. Otherwise, what is the point of the created world? Why not just have us all born into heaven?

This world has to be a time of trial, as the Bible says here.

Following Jesus does not just mean a verbal acknowledgement, “I believe in God,” or “I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savoir.” That is meaningless; that “Jesus” or “God” is just a word.

You must “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”

Here is an analogy suggested by John Lennox: compare loving your wife. Your commitment to your wife is profound, according to the Bible and the marriage vows. You must put her above your father and mother, your brothers and sisters, your birth family. You must stay with her in sickness or in health, for richer or for poorer, in old age, when she is no longer physically attractive to you. You must put your life on the line if necessary to protect her; you must eschew all others until death do you part. That is the vow you make.

Your commitment to God must be at least as strong as this, or you are not loving him with your whole heart.

It follows that you must be prepared to lose everything for his sake; for the sake of our relationship with him.

And you had better think carefully of this at the outset, just as you had better enter marriage with a serious intent.

This is the import of the passage in the Lord’s Prayer that Pope Francis seems not to have understood, and objected to: “Lead us not into temptation.” 

It is our plea that God not demand all this of us, as he did of Jesus, or of Job, to test our love.

But he often will, perhaps especially if he cares enough about us.

Man the Creator

 Julia James Davis argues that men are better creative artists than women; and her argument makes sense. I just dare not make it as a man. Moreover, it seems objectively true. Most great artists are men.

As she points out, this is no more remarkable than that most great athletes are men. The male body is different from the female body; the male mind is different from the female mind. 

Men are creative; women are receptive. 

Art must express truth to be great. Female artists generally lack a sense of truth, and express only prettiness. Their art tends to be decorative.

Dysfunctional Governments and Dysfunctional Families

The majority of world governments are dysfunctional. They promote lies, mass delusions, propaganda, to their people. They do not respect human dignity and human rights. They do not practice social justice—that is, merit is not reliably rewarded. 

In my youth, there was the Soviet sphere, and the Third Word, and only a rough third of the world was “free.” and free of corruption to a dysfunctional level. It might seem that things have improved since the fall of the Soviet bloc; but it seems to me that things have been getting worse quickly in some of the supposedly “freest” countries: Canada, the UK, France, Australia, Germany. And until the modern era, there were no or almost no “free” countries. All governments were dysfunctional.

The Gospel warns of this: the Devil is the prince of “this world.” Government is better than no government, but government is given over to Satan.

The great value of studying history is that there you see the human truths writ large. The state is a proxy for the family; which is why we speak of “patriotism”—from the word “pater,” “father.”

So the lesson of history and politics is that most families, similarly, are dysfunctional. They promote shared delusions; they are not nurturing; they do not reward merit.

By my reading of the Old Testament, the inevitable failure of the family is the conduit for original sin: “the sins of the father are visited on the sons unto the fourth generation.” All the families of the patriarchs are obviously dysfunctional. Abraham abandons his son Ishmael, and is ready to slaughter his son Isaac. Isaac plays favourites between Jacob and Esau. Jacob plays favourites between Joseph and his brothers. Lot sleeps with his daughters. Noah curses his son Ham. Eve tempts her husband Adam into sin. The Bible is making a point, if subtly. Let those who have eyes to see, see.

Richard Mackenzie, who grew up in an orphanage, thought his own childhood without a family had been pleasant enough. And he became a successful economist. So he decided to investigate, using the economist’s toolset. What did he find out?

“Alumni [of orphanages] reported that they had done better than the general population on almost all measures, including education, income, attitude toward life, criminal records, psychological problems, unemployment, dependence on welfare, and happiness…. The alumni reported that they had an overall college graduation rate 39 percent higher than the general population in their age group … They also reported 10 to 60 percent higher median incomes than those in their age cohort. ”

Twice as many said they were satisfied with their own lives, and twice as many felt they had achieved “the American Dream.” 

Shocking? But that was the data. 

Accordingly, associating Christian values with “family values” seems diabolical. Just as we should not idolize the state, we should not idolize the family.