'Od's Blog!

American Religious Exceptionalism

2012-01-25T02:39:00.000-08:00

Americans, as anyone can fairly readily see, are more religious, more interested in and committed to religion, than Europeans. Why?

I just heard an interesting theory.

A podcast interviewee suggested that, in comparison to Europe, America has had a freer market in religion. Its many denominations and indeed congregations compete to fill their churches each Sunday. If they fail, their church must close its doors.

As a result, they have become and remained responsive to their congregations. But in Europe, there has been less religious diversity, and often, as in Britain and Germany, a state-supported church. Religion as government bureaucracy drifts out of touch.

This never occurred to me, but it sounds right as soon as I hear it.

The best argument for

1. separation of church and state, and

2. religious tolerance.

More on the Current Crisis

2012-01-20T08:50:00.000-08:00

... But there is a broader point. It isself-evidently wrong to apply “science” to man himself. What wecall science is fundamentally based on observation—in other words,what we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. The human soul, bydefinition, if it exists, cannot be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, ortouched, and neither, by definition, can God. The application ofscientific method to the human realm or to the divine, therefore, isjust as foolish as debating how many angels can dance on the head ofa pin.

Nor does the fact that science can tellus nothing useful about the human soul or the meaning of life meanthat there is no human soul and no meaning to life—any more thantrying to hammer in a nail with a knitting needle, and failing,proves there is no nail. Yet that is the silly Scylla and Charybdiswe have caught ourselves between.

Now let's look at that another way: ifscience is fundamentally based on observation, as it is, itnecessarily must also assume there really is an objective observer,apart from the thing observed and capable of interpreting sensationsfrom the sense organs meaningfully. A human mind, a human soul, inother words. The various strands of Modernism and of “socialscience” all hold one dogma in common: that there is no objectiveobserver, no human soul free of the observed world. Darwin held ourperceptions and consciousness to be developed, not to perceive thereal, but to aid in the struggle for survival. If Darwin is right,there is therefore no way of knowing, for example, whether Darwin'sown theories, or those of any other thinker, have anything to do withreality, or have simply been developed by his mechanicalconsciousness as a way to aid him in reproduction and survival. Inother words, Darwin is self-contradictory.

Marx, similarly, held our perceptionsand consciousness were radically determined by “ideology,” whichis to say, the beliefs and opinions that were most to the benefit ofthe ruling class: “aset of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to allmembers of this society” (Wikipediaentry on “Ideology”).There is therefore no way of knowing, similarly, whether Marx's owntheories pertain to reality, or have simply been developed by hisconsciousness to reinforce the interests of the economic system andclass into which he was born. He contradicts himself.

Freud held, like Darwin, that “Allsubjective reality was based … on the play of basic drives andinstincts, through which the outside world was perceived.” If so,were Freuds' theories, and those of all other scientists and thinkersof all kinds, based on any objective truth, or only the effusions ofhis subconscious trying to get laid by his Mum?

Just the three most obvious examples;but I submit that any form of “social science,” any attempt toapply the techniques of science to mankind himself necessarily hasthis logical contradition at its foundation: if the mind is theobject, it cannot also be the detached observer.

So you see, besides leading to massmurder and unimaginable human suffering, to wars and massacres, andbesides not producing any useful knowledge in its century or more oftrying, Modernism or social science is also immediatelyself-contradictory. It is also detrimental to true science. If socialscience is true, science cannot be. The Na'vi that Modernists soadmire, you will notice, are not especially hi-tech.

We are not machines, but free agents.

In practice, of course, the socialscientist is necessarily assuming that, while ordinary people, orperhaps everyone else, is an automaton following natural laws, he orhis class or professional cadre, for some unexplained reason, is not.They are the enlightened ones. This necessarily sees mankind asradically unequal, and can justify practically any level ofinhumanity, practically any level of compulsion imposed on the humansubjects.

A Statement of the Problem

2012-01-12T02:01:00.000-08:00

There is a Crisis

“One gets thefeeling some spiritual catastrophe has taken place…” – LeonardCohen.

In some ways, life is getting betterand better. In one important way it seems to be getting worse: in theexperience of what is called “mental illness.” Current NationalInstitute of Mental Health (NIMH) data state that 46.4% of Americanshave or will have some form of “mental illness”(http://www.nimh.nih.gov/statistics/1ANYDIS_ADULT.shtml).One in four, one quarter of us, is mentally ill in any given year.

Very little is really known by thescience called psychology about this thing called “mental illness.”I’ve been watching the field long enough to realize that the thingswe know one year turn out to be untrue by ten or twenty years later.We seem to be running around in circles on this. What causes mentalillness? Do the pills work? Do the new pills work better than the oldpills? What is the most common form of mental illness? Is mentalillness A really distinct from mental illness B, or are they twosymptoms for the same malady? And is the incidence of such thingsgrowing?

We don’t know. We don't know. Wedon't know. The entire field seems permanently behind a shroud,uncanny and mysterious.

All we are really sure about is that alot of people claim to be suffering a lot.

My own sense is that the incidencereally has been growing, rapidly, at least in the developed world. Ifind it hard to believe that, a hundred or two hundred years ago,nearly half the population was suffering from what we now call mentalillness, and nobody noticed anything in particular. Albeit it doesnot seem to attract the attention it deserves today either.

Perhaps the true experts on all thisare the artists. Artists, I expect, detect the zeitgeist wellbefore the rest of us do, because they are more sensitive to suchthings; like the proverbial canary in the mine. And Leonard Cohen isfar from the only artist to proclaim some sort of broad social orcultural breakdown—a “spiritual catastrophe.”

Duchamp's "Fountain"

Artists have been saying this withremarkable persistence at least since Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”(1917), WB Yeats’ “The Second Coming” (1919), and TS Eliot’s“The Waste Land” (1922), the three great original landmarks of“modernism”: things have fallen apart, everything has died, theculture is in broken shards. Some artists have celebrated this fact,and some have lamented it, but all seem to have been saying the samething ever since: “I saw the best minds of my generation ruined bymadness.”

So what has happened over the lasthundred years?

What is the Cause of this Crisis?

The obvious immediate cause of thecrisis reflected in Eliot’s and Yeats’s great poems was the FirstWord War and the revolutions that followed it—most notably theBolshevik Revolution in Russia. Yet this is not sufficientexplanation, since this spiritual crisis clearly is still with usnow. It has long ago gotten downright tedious: what is “Piss Christ”saying that Marcel Duchamp's “Fountain” was not already saying acentury ago? Yet the Great War is now several wars ago, and theBolshevik regime has faded into history. There must be a deeper causebehind this proximate cause.

Piss Christ

Nor is this deeper cause, I think,hidden. It is the philosophical tendency called “Modernism”—thelabel commonly applied to these three artistic works.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia,the term “Modernism” as it is modernly understood was coined by aprofessor M. Perin at the University of Louvain, in 1881. He definesthe term, primarily, as “the ambition to eliminate God from allsocial life” (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10415a.htm).

That is a Catholic viewpoint, and anegative definition. Perhaps it is clearer if we invert it: Modernismwas and is the ambition to inject science into all social life. TheModernists of philosophy, seeing the success of science andtechnology in the Industrial Revolution, wanted to set society, too,on a proper scientific foundation.

Wikipedia elucidates, in its entry onModernism: “Two of the most significant thinkers of the periodwere, in biology, Charles Darwin, and in political science, KarlMarx” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism). Darwin was publicly an agnostic. “Darwin's theory of evolution bynatural selection undermined the religious certainty of the generalpublic.” “The notion that human beings were driven by the sameimpulses as ‘lower animals’ proved to be difficult to reconcilewith the idea of an ennobling spirituality.” Marx’s atheism wasopen and strident: “religion is the opiate of the people,” andall our thoughts are entirely conditioned by the economic system.Both doctrines proposed, essentially for the first time, that“science” and “religion” were opposed systems.

Planet of the Apes?

Both theories were promptly applied tosociety, indeed were designed to be applied to society, on the notionthat society and culture could now be run on an efficient,“scientific” basis. Bad idea. People are not cogs. Marx gave usthe Bolsheviks; Darwin gave us the Fascists.

The tendency to view society and humansas machines was then exacerbated by the influence of Einstein andFreud. Mussolini, for example, appealed directly to Einstein. If, asEinstein said, the foundations of the physical world were uncertain,“relative,” then the doctrines that guide our thoughts and deedswere also “relative,” and everything was up for grabs. All normswere expendable as proved convenient—in practice, especially moralnorms. The very same argument is, of course, still made by thepostmodernists.

Freud, in turn, claimed that “Allsubjective reality was based … on the play of basic drives andinstincts, through which the outside world was perceived”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism).We could not perceive objective reality, if any existed; we wereanimals driven entirely by instincts.

I think one can see the appeal of thisdoctrine. If God does not exist, there is no moral law. If there isno moral law, I can do as I please. Whoopie! Cue the Jazz Age!

More or less literally, all hell brokeloose.

Now of course, it looks ratherreactionary, rather hindwards-looking, to suggest that we have beenon the wrong course for the past century. Heck, that makes me aVictorian. I am, for example, quite explicitly, calling for theabandonment of all “social science.” Sorry about that. I do notthink the Victorian times were a golden age. Their overconfidence inthe perfectability of man and society largely led to this. But Isubmit that some such backtracking is necessary and progressive inthe true sense: there is nothing discreditable in pulling your fingerout of an electrical socket. Since we went off on this Modernistpath, we have actually lost all confidence of social or culturalprogress. We now imagine that all of civilization has been a mistake,the past ten thousand years or so, and the feral Na'vi and theirreal-life hunter-gatherer counterparts are the folks who had itright.

Damned inconvenient that they so oftenhave such unfortunate habits as slavery, infanticide, cannibalism,and constant war.

Is this only a problem of “Westerncivilization”? It appears not. Eastern Europe and Japan seem at leastas subject to suicides and “mental illness”; one suspects Chinais too. Africa, the Muslim world, and perhaps India may have held outsomewhat better so far, but they also seem to be undergoing a majortrauma on this point. The fight against modernism is a useful prismthrough which to understand the rise of “Islamism,” for example.

The objection to modernism is not,note, an objection to science. Quite the reverse. The scientificclaims of Marx and Freud have long ago been exploded; nobody whobelieves in science should have anything more to do with their ideas.Einstein, in turn, right or wrong, was simply misinterpreted by thesocial and cultural relativists. Darwin alone seems problematic—thatdebate is too complex to dive into here.

But there is a broader point. Whatwe call science is fundamentally based on observation—in otherwords, what we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. The humansoul, by definition, cannot be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, ortouched, and neither can God. The application of scientific method tothe human realm or to the divine, therefore, is exactly asnonsensical as debating how many angels can dance on the head of apin. Nor does the fact that science can tell us nothing useful aboutthe human soul or the meaning of life mean that there is no humansoul and no meaning to life—any more than trying to hammer in anail with a knitting needle, and failing, proves there is no way tohammer in a nail. Yet that is the silly Scylla and Charybdis we havecaught ourselves in.

How Gingrich Could Still Win...

2012-01-11T00:55:00.000-08:00

Mitt Romney's achievement in winning the first two primary season contests is historic. But, as noted previouosly in this space, the rules this year have changed: few states are now winner-take-all. That means a strong early showing is not prohibitive to others any longer.

As others drop out, the anybody-but-Mitt faction--which seems to be about 75% of the Republican Party electorate--will inevitably coalesce around one candidate, and there may well still be enough delegates in play at that point to keep it interesting. In addition, oddly, Romney has not yet really faced the scrutiny and attacks others have. Now that he is beginning to, he may see the same drop in the polls as they. Takes about two weeks for this to have an effect. That two week lag takes us to about the time of the South Carolina primary.

Now, who is best placed to last long enough to benefit from this possibility? Santorum has the benefit of his strong showing in Iowa, but he did not do nearly as well in NH; so the momentum may be lost. One of today's headlines has him "crashing to earth in New Hampshire." And his campaign has always looked short of money. Perry reputedly has money, but his showing in both Iowa and NH has been dismal. Texas must be beckoning. Paul has a natural ceiling on his support; he cannot be an ABRomney champion. The same could be said of Huntsman--he can do rather well in an open primary like NH, where Democrats can vote for their favourite Republican, but he has been running to Romney's left, and that has turned out--to my own surprise--to be a very shallow pool in the Republican party this time around. In SC polls, he currently runs somewhere behind Steve Colbert. That leaves Gingrich. He at least seems to be picking up steam now instead of losing it--beat everyone else on the solid right in the NH vote, edging out Santorum. He will have the same advantage in South Carolina, of coming from the next state, that Romney had in NH.And he has just had a major new infusion of cash from a wealthy backer, apparently.

Imagine a win for Newt in South Carolina that surprises the pundits enough to become a big news item, like Hilary's win in NH last time, or McCain's. Things could then change. And the latest polling shows him only four points behind.

Imagine further that a relatively poor showing there forces Perry and Huntsman out of the race.

As they say, a week is a long time in politics.

Full disclosure: I personally want Newt Gingrich to win. Why? Because he is such an interesting character. I would love to hear what he has to say over the next four years.

Iowa

2012-01-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

Conventional wisdom about Iowa's caucuses is that they winnow the field: "Two tickets out of Iowa." But there is no reason why this should any longer be so. The rules have changed--primaries and caucuses are no longer "winner take all." This reduces a considerable advantage held by front-runners. Those in the back of the pack can now hang in longer before the mathematics eliminates them, hoping for a stumble or a surge. And the rapidity with which messages now get out makes late surges and stumbles that much more likely. A brokered convention also becomes more of a possibility, meaning it might pay to stay in the race in order to wield influence.

The only question is whether the candidates understand this. If they do, they will probably hang in there.

The Renaissance of the British Empire

2011-12-24T09:55:00.001-08:00

Bigger than a breadbox.

The recent exclusion of the UK from the latest deal to rescue the Euro moves us a big step closer to seeing the Anglosphere reunite--Britain is visibly and definitively pulling back from the EU now.

But then, a guest on the BBC was just quoted as saying the Euro itself is now doomed; it is only a matter of time. And the EU itself is likely to break up when this happens.

England may then not be the only European country interested in chipping in instead with NAFTA. Among those shopping for some new association might well be Ireland, Spain, and Portugal--all turfed out of the Euro as bad financial risks. All three have powerful New World connections.

I can see a possible reunion, not just of the old British Empire plus the US, but this also combined with the old Spanish Empire plus the old Portuguese Empire, for a that much more formidable free trade area. This free trade area would be far stronger than the EU, because it would combine areas with a great diversity of resources and economic strengths, along with greater unity of language and culture. It could include two important emerging powerhouses, India and Brazil.

It would permanently dwarf China.

2011-12-22T10:53:00.000-08:00

During an air raid.

Hereis the peroration of one of Churchill's most celebrated speeches,made in 1940:

“WhatGeneral Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect thatthe Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends thesurvival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own Britishlife, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. Thewhole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose thewar. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the lifeof the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if wefail, then the whole world, including the United States, includingall that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of anew Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by thelights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to ourduties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and itsCommonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This wastheir finest hour.'”

Iquote it because it makes clear what was understood as the two sidesto the conflict at the time: on one side, the Allied side, “Christiancivilization.” On the Nazi/Fascist side, “perverted science.” Ithink this is worth pointing out and remembering, because in recentyears this has been falsified. Many fashionable writers have triedinstead to claim that “Christian civilization,” (viz John RalstonSaul), or even, absurdly, the Catholic Church (viz ChristopherHitchens), was responsible for Nazism. But Nazism was openlyanti-Christian, as Churchill notes.

The Karsh portrait

Norwas Fascism, as I have seen claimed, anti-science. No, science, orrather, scientism, as Churchill says, was at its core: Darwin and thetheory of evolution was obviously and directly appealed to by Hitleras the essence of human life, and Einstein's Theory of Relativity wasused by Mussolini to claim that all values were culturally relative.Nazism was not a conservative movement, in any sense, but a“progressive” creed. It appealed to science for itsjustification, and held, like the “progressives” of today, thatscience had superceded old moralities.

Thosewho do not study history are condemned to relive it. And not as the guys on top.

Fourteen Reasons to Homeschool

2011-12-09T01:16:00.000-08:00

Bullying kids.

Bullying was always a problem at schools. It is quite possibly made worse by the current “self-esteem” movement.

Bullying teachers.

The job of teacher is tailor-made for bullies, control freaks, and terminal bores who cannot otherwise get anyone to listen to them. Unfortunately, we have created no defenses against this. To the contrary, the culture of the public school seems to promote bullies and control freaks.

Current public school teaching methods don't work.

See “Operation (aka Project) Follow-Through,” for proof; and the many studies that show that both private schools and homeschooling produce better results on a number of measures. We are at best simply wasting our children's time by sending them to public school.

Our system of public school teacher selection ensures the worst.

We know that certain teachers can make a huge difference to scores on standardized tests, and we further know that the best teachers are those who are best at learning and who know the subject best. But our system of teacher certification values courses in education over subject knowledge. Further, we know that those who enter ed schools have lower SAT scores than for virtually any other subject, and almost nobody fails. We are selecting for those who are worst at learning and who know the subject least.

The public school curriculum has been stripped of the culture. It has become culture-hostile.

A solid grounding in one's culture—in the wisdom of one's ancestors--is almost the entire point of education. However, the current attitude in schools is that culture is oppression by “dead white males.” This amounts to a systematic attempt to prevent children from becoming educated.

The public school curriculum has been stripped of essential skills.

Besides culture, children need facility with certain useful life skills: the proverbial “reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic,” not to mention logic, foreign languages, and such. The problem, however, is that all such skill acquisition requires memorization. Current educational practice is actively prejudiced against memorization and drill as supposedly “uncreative.”

The public school curriculum has been stripped of all religious references.

So currently public schools don't teach any culture, and they don't teach basic skills. Is there anything left? Indeed there is. But they don't teach that either. Even more important than such basic skills for employability and cultural context, the core of any real education is religion. Religion is systematically banned from the public school classroom.

The public school system does not teach any coherent set of morals.

This goes with the last point. It is essential that children be taught the difference between right and wrong; the public school is not even prepared to accept that there is a right and a wrong. To the extent that there is a morality taught, in any public school class, it will conflict with any known moral code, confusing and subverting any child being raised with one.

The public school system is designed to produce employees, not leaders or independent thinkers.

In response to the accusation that they fail to teach either important information (culture) or basic skills, I expet many defenders of public schools would claim that they instead teach students to think. That, at least, is supposed to be what the resistance to memorization is in favour of. But this is demonstrably false. To teach someone to think, you teach them formal logic, logical fallacies, philosophy, the rules of debate, and the rules of parliamentary procedure. Private schools teach this; public schools rarely do.

And why not? There is a historical reason. The public schools were consciously designed at the beginning of the last century to produce reliable workers for industry, not leaders. This was a way to preserve the ascendancy of that class that could afford to send their children to private schools. Woodrow Wilson said as much.

The public school system dehumanizes. It treats kids as objects to be molded to conformity, instead of individual souls.

The modern school was more or less consciously designed on the model of the assembly line, to produce workers for industry. This is one reason for the elimination of the old one-room schoolhouse—it did not fit the factory model. The “scientific” approach to teaching necessarily objectifies the students.

The public school system is hostile to boys.

Boys and girls have very different interests and learn in different ways. Thanks to feminism, almost everything that might interest boys has been banned from the modern classsroom. Boys are commonly told they are no good. This is exacerbated by the fact that elementary teachers are almost overwhelmingly women, who think like women and give boys no role model. Indeed, few men dare teach, because it makes them sitting ducks for career-ending charges of sexual harassment or child abuse, from which women are largely exempt.

The public school system is hostile to very intelligent kids.

The system, in the name of “equality,” is invariably more interested in raising the achievement of the slow than in raising the achievement of the quick. Given big classes and big schools, one size must fit all, and the quick are the ones who end up round pegs. They can have little in common with teachers who are not themselves very bright, and may, being control freaks, resent children who are.

The public school system indoctrinates into a specific political viewpoint.

Departments of education are commonly hotbeds of radical left-wing politics; a lot of teachers are quite open about their main objective being to indoctrinate. This, of course, works directly counter to the objective of teaching students to think for themselves.

The public school system is resistant to the new technology with which it is crucial for students to become familiar.

Because they essentially cannot be fired, having tenure, and face no competition, there is nothing impelling public school teachers to adopt new technology or new methods, other than a personal sense of responsibility or personal desire. Unfortunately, matters are very different in the real world of work most students will face. There, it is essential to keep up with the latest technological innovations in order to compete. This disparity leaves schools lagging further and further behind.

Revolution Truths

2011-12-04T03:39:00.001-08:00

Taking it to the streets.

Denial is more than just as river in Egypt, they say. It maynot be a popular thing to say in all the euphoria around the Arab Spring, butamong the popular delusions of our day is the common notion that revolution isgood. The cult of revolution is everywhere: on campus, and among the clericalclass generally. It forms part of the national ideology of bothAmerica and France, not to mention China, Mexico, and on and on.

But really, when has a revolution ever brought more goodthan evil? The Russian Revolution brought us Stalin. The ChineseRevolution brought us Mao. The French Revolutionbrought us Robespierre, then Napoleon. The English Revolution brought usCromwell. The Iranian Revolution brought us Khomeini and Ahmadinejad. There is a pattern: power goes soon to a strongman,not to the people. There is less liberty, not more liberty; and despite Potemkin villages, there is relative economic stagnation, not greater wealth.

This result is, moreover, perfectly logical and predictable. A full revolution more or less bydefinition kicks down the basic law, the nation's constitution, whatever it is. Everything is up for grabs in the street. Withoutlaw, what one has left is not freedom, but the law of nature: a natural struggle of all against all. And laws, in the end, are there to protect the weak. Inevitably, where there is no law, thestrongest and most ruthless will benefit, and the weak will be crushed. Think "Lord of the Flies": after much spilling of blood, some organized group with weapons will emerge to dictate. They will have triumphed by sheer ruthlessness and lust for power. They are going to be in the mood to exercise it.

Sounds like a good idea?

Unfortunately, the American Revolution can be pointed to as acounterexample. Unfortunately, because it gives revolution a cachet of morality and progress. But to see the American struggle as a revolution, rather than awar of independence, seems arbitrary. At state and local level, those in powerbefore the revolution, remained in power after the revolution, as did all thestate laws. That makes a crucial difference. Government never descended into the street.

And even then, did the American struggle for independence really produce more goodthan harm? For, besides the blood shed at the time, it surely set the precedentof a right to secession which then led directly to the American Civil War, notto mention that fuss over in France in 1789, and further tumult throughout the Americas. And for what, exactly?To avoid ending up like Canada?

Can one name a single nation that went directlyand peacefully from a genuine revolution to a liberal democracy? For one cancite many who went from a military junta or absolute monarchy to a liberaldemocracy without internal conflict.

Of course, this is a bitter pill for those saddled with agenuinely oppressive and corrupt government—a Muammar Ghaddafi, for example; himself, note, the product of a prior revolution. One might argue that a truly bad government makes revolution necessary. But any glorification of revolution for its own sake? Be careful what you wish...

Comrades in arms.

Britain's Choice

2011-11-11T04:50:00.001-08:00

The current “Eurozone” crisisreally does seem to be moving in an interesting direction. Theresponse of France and Germany seems to be to push for an “ever closer union,”but a more restricted one, to counter the sorts of stresses nowapparent in the monetary union. This is fundamentally a plan to breakup the EU.

Britain now faces the choice ofthrowing in its lot with a monetary union that has so far looked likea very bad idea, and surrendering a good deal of its sovereignty, orbeing relegated to a second-tier status within Europe.

Time to propose again my own preferredalternative: an Anglosphere union. Britain should instead leaveEurope and join what is now called NAFTA. Trade ties would probablyalmost automatically bring Ireland with it, possibly someScandinavian countries. Australia and New Zealand would find it hardthen to stay out, given the cultural ties. Most of theEnglish-speaking nations of the Caribbean would probably join in aflash if the opportunity was offered—they've ben seeking union withCanada, the US or Britain for some time anyway. Voila! More or lessthe union I've been speaking of.

It makes sense not just on grounds ofshared culture or shared trade, but a shared historic political andeconomic philosophy. The Anglosphere is the home of the socialphilosophies of John Locke and Adam Smith, not to mention the legaltraditions of Common Law and Magna Carta. I think they would find itmuch easier and more comfortable to work together in a tightereconomic or political union that Britain would with the ratherdifferent traditions of Europe.

The Sidewalks of New York

2011-11-10T08:23:00.000-08:00

One of the great things about Irish music is that the songs keep getting picked up again and reinterpreted in new ways. We have mellow versions, punk versions, classical versions, rock versions.

It's time someone went back and reinterpreted some of the songs of the fin de siecle up to the twenties in this way. There are some great songs with some great lyrics from that time, but they are only ever done as period pieces, which makes them sound like they are preserved in formaldehyde rather than being living songs, which I think they really could be.

"The Sidewalks of New York" really jumps out at me in this regard. So does "After the Ball is Over." "Ol' Man River." "My Blue Heaven." "Sweet Georgia Brown."

Note, I mean not done in repro style, but recast as modern songs.

There's a huge market niche for a new musical act there.

Why the Beatles are Bound to Fail

2011-11-07T07:44:00.000-08:00

Rock and roll is dead. That is so fifties. Folk is what young people want to hear now.

Nobody wants to listen to an ensemble. You need one human face on the act, for people to identify with. At least one obvious leader.

Neither McCartney nor Lennon can read music. How the heck can they write music?

McCartney is left-handed. Where is he going to get a left-handed bass guitar? Left-handed guitars are expensive, and he is from a poor family.

Lennon admits he has no sense of rhythm.

Rock and roll is black American music and alien to theEnglish experience. No white Englishman is going to be able to do it verycompetently.

Nobody in America is going to listen to an Englishman playingAmerican music.

English music acts do not play well in the US. Ever heard of Cliff Richard?

Nobody in their early twenties is going to be all that accomplished at their instrument, whatever it is.

Need I go on? Anything everybody knows is sure to be wrong, and the next big thing will always be something that goes against what everybody knows.

Oh, The Humanities!

2011-11-03T03:56:00.001-07:00

I recently downloaded to my iPod anepisode from TVO featuring an award-winning lecturer speaking on W.B.Yeats.

I'll grant that the talk wasentertaining, but this guy did not know his stuff. Is this the bestwe get in university Humanities departments these days?

For example: he referred to MichaelCollins as President of Ireland. He was Minister of Finance. He spokeof Padraic Pearse being strapped to a board because of injuries inorder to be shot. Pearse survived the Easter Uprising without majorinjuries; the lecturer is probably thinking of John Connolly, who wastied to a chair. Then he claimed that the Byzantine Empire wasdestroyed by Crusaders; it was overthrown by the Turks in 1453.

Okay, so history is not his field—evenhistory directly related to his field.

But he also asserted that Yeats' poem“Down by the Salley Gardens” was autobiographical, and referredto an island be used to enjoy visiting. Yeats himself pointed outthat the poem was a reconstruction of an old Irish poem, “YeRambling Boys of Pleasure,” in which the “salley gardens”already appear.

The universities have somehow becomeisolated, stagnant pools of misinformation, rumour, and urban legend.Truth is more likely to be found on the Internet. I chalk this up tothe free exchange of ideas and information.

The Second Coming

2011-11-02T12:56:00.000-07:00

What rough beast?

I am interested in Yeats' “The SecondComing” currently as it illustrates my thesis that WesternCivilization has never recovered from the First World War. It, alongwith Eliot's “The Wasteland,” is perhaps the great poeticstatement of this in English—though there certainly are manyothers. “There Will Come Soft Rains” was also written in the yearor two after the war ended.

I gather the usual interpretation of“The Second Coming” is that it speaks of Yeats' concept of “TheGreat Year,” with the idea that after two thousand yearsChristianity has had its day and is about to be replaced by some newpaganism. Fair enough; but there is no need to read it this way.After all, it is no suprise to any Christian that the Second Comingof Christ would involve first the appearance of a “roughbeast”--that much is in the Book of Revelations. There is to be aperiod of tribulation, and it is to last as long as a thousand years.All quite orthodox, in fact.

Durer's Apocalypse, with two rough beasts apparent.

I imagine the notion that the poem isnon-Christian, indeed somewhat anti-Christian, comes from theidentification of the “rocking cradle” that “vexed tonightmare” “twenty centuries of stony sleep” with the birth ofJesus. This would then imply that Christianity, if only overmillennia, actually caused the blood-dimmed tide now unleashed by therough beast of mere anarchy. But there are multiple problems withthis identification.

First, the birth and infancy of Jesusis not, theologically speaking, as important as his death andresurrection. So the poem, if this is its focus, would have slightlymisfired here. Second, it is common knowledge, and an essentialelement of the mythos, that Jesus was not born in a cradle, but in amanger. With Yeats' sensitivity to symbol, it seems incredible thathe would have muddled this—to actually make the synecdoche of acradle represent Jesus himself. This alone, I think, makes theidentification impossible, and care has been taken to ensure thatthis is so.

But it also makes no sense in terms ofcause and effect to see the cradle referred to as the cause of boththe “twenty centuries of stony sleep” and the “vexing tonightmare.” These are two different and quite disparate things. Ifthe twenty centuries of stony sleep refers to Christianity, thevexing to nightmare cannot.

Finally, Yeats himself elsewhereconsiders the height of civilization to have occurred in theByzantine Empire—a resolutley Christian context, the paradigm of atime and place where Christianity ruled both the intellectual and thepolitical world. If things started to go wrong, it must have happenedsometime after 1000 AD.

The essential question in the poem, therefore, the climax to which it all points, is the puzzle: who isthe baby in that rocking cradle?

Or, indeed, is there a baby in thatrocking cradle? For only the cradle, not the baby, is mentioned, asif it were empty. Indeed, implicitly, it must be empty, in order tobe filled by the “rough beast” slouching to Bethlehem “to beborn.”

If one wracks the good old SpiritusMundi for some obvious and necessary referet for this rocking cradle,it seems to me the first and strongest reference is to the best-knownEnglish lullaby: “Rock-a-Bye Baby.” This nursery rhyme alsorefers, in a way, to a cradle that is empty—at least, the baby andcradle both fall. This feature of the rhyme is quite odd, and soconspicuous—for centuries, people in English-speaking countrieshave in fact lulled their babies to sleep with a story of some poorchild coming to disaster.

Bad parenting.

But then who is the baby in ths nurseryrhyme?

There are a range of theories, and noagreed answer, but I thing the most valuable piece of evidence is thetune to which it is sung. It is a variant of an old Irish tune, asYeats would surely have known, “Lilibullero.” And Lilibullero isa song about the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which overthrew JamesII of England and replaced him with King William of Orange, withhistoric consequences for both England and Ireland.

It seems reasonable then to guess thatthe words of “Rock-a-Bye Baby” also refer to the same event. Andsuch coded references were indeed commonly necessary in suchturbulent times, and commonly used in Ireland. There are a lot ofhistorical examples of satiric rhymes used as political weapons inIreland.

It seems to me the suspicion isreinforced by the perfect irony of using what was composed as amilitary march, a war song, as a baby's lullaby. This sounds likedeliberate parody. It makes it all seem quite ominous.

Edmund Burke

If this is true, the tree in which thebaby rocks is the tree of state, an image of the nation popularisedby the Irish statesman Edmund Burke, and influential enough that itis still the logo of the British Conservative Party. The treerepresents a society's natural hierarchy: at the top of the tree, “inthe treetop,” is the royal family. This identificationis in fact explicit in one version of a later verse of the lyrics ofthe nursery rhyme: “Rock-a-bye,baby, thy cradle is green, Father's a king, and mother's a queen...”

British Conservative Party logo.

Thebaby, therefore, is a new heir born to the royal family. And this isjust what caused the Glorious Revolution in 1688. It was kicked offmore or less immediately by the unexpected birth to King James II ofa male heir, James Francis Edward. This caused great consternation insome quarters, because James II's wife was openly Catholic, andlittle James Francis was certain to be raised as a Catholic. The“wind” that blew this innocent child off the top of the tree ofstate, was then the famous “Protestant wind,” an unseasonablyfavourable wind that blew William of Orange's ships from Holland toEngland in 1688. This “Protestant wind,” a catch-phrase of thetime, is referred to as well in one popular version of the lyrics to“Lillibulero.” Parliament cut a deal with William, naming him thenew king in return for ceding a great deal of the royal prerogativesto Parliament, and James Francis Edward fled into exile.

James Francis Edward Stuart

Thiswould seem to make Protestantism and the Reformation the true causeof the rough beast of the Apocalypse. This may be so; Yeats wasnominally Protestant, but was not practicing, and was surrounded byan overwhelmingly Catholic mileu. While considerations of class mayhave prevented him from converting, a portion of his subconscious, atleast, might have favoured the old church. Nevertheless, thereligious angle does not quite fit. The Glorious Revolution and thedeposing of James II was not in this regard an epochal event in thehistory of the world, only of the British Isles. If the ProtestantRebellion was the trigger for the apocalype, it should have far morenaturally been traced back to something like the nailing of Luther'stheses to the door of Wurms Cathedral.

Butsomething else about the Glorious Revolution was epochal. Iteffectively transferred British sovereignty from the king to thepeople; and this was a first for Europe and for the post-Byzantineworld. Parliament, not the king, was now supreme, demonstrated by theability of Parliament to depose a king. At the same time, theGlorious Revolution established the principle that the civil societywas supreme over religion: the people could also depose a church, anddictate to the conscience of a king. This was both novel andrevolutionary. The Glorious Revolution led in a straight line, andquite soon, to the political musings of Locke, and quite explicitlyto the doctrine of “no taxation without representation” thattriggered the later American Revolution, faounded on Lockeandoctrine, which in turn triggered the French, which triggered thedoctrine of Marx, the many revolutions of 1848, the ideal ofnationalism, the Chinese Revolution beginning in 1911, the RussianRevolution of 1917, and the many revolutions, falls of monarchies,and general drowning in blood of all ceremonies of innocencefollowing World War I, at the time that Yeats was writing this poem.Indeed, the doctrine of nationalism can also be blamed for thecarnage of the Great War. Note that all the4se subsequent revolutionsalso shared the essential feature of believing that politics was andought to be supreme over religion. This poison pill of “Liberalism”caused it to be oppsosed by the Church for many decades.

Wideninggyres all beginning with the gentle rocking of one cradle.

Theloss of the religious centre of a society, “the ceremonies ofinnocence,” is indeed a cause of social decline. It implies afundamental failure of the social consensus which allows societies tofunction. This fact has been recognized almost everywhere and at alltimes. It was understood by the Romans to be the cause of the declineof the Roman Empire. Constantine then deliberately revived it for afurther thousand years through the formal adoption of Christianity.It was the reason for the sudden rise of Islam in the seventhcentury. It was the reason for the decline of the Koryo dynasty inKorea; and on and on. A society must be united in its ideals.

Constantine, founder of Byzantium

Themodern hope, which reached its apex in the nineteenth century, wasthat society could find a new centre around the doctrines of liberaldemocracy and science. New cathedrals were built, even higher thanthe early Christian ones: the Washington Monument, the Eiffel Tower.But this imagined centre has been losing mass rapidly since the FirstWorld War. The poets and artists saw it first, in the 1920s. Thegeneral population have taken a lot longer, busy destroyingChristianity in the name of false science and a false liberalism formost of the years since, but are gradually coming, I think, to feelthe same thing in their guts. Perhaps in another fifty or a hundredyears, it will even occur to the academics, naturally the mostconservative element of society.

Thewhole darned thing, Western Civ, looks like it is winding down to itsfinal whimper.

Liberal Books

2011-10-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

It's all quite simple. One of my Arabstudents explained today that he loved reading, and he read bothreligious books and “liberal” books. “What are liberal books?”I asked. Another student explained: “books that believe thatgovernment and religion should be kept apart.” “Bad books,”another student elaborated.

Nobody contradicted this assessment.

There's the current conflict betweenthe Muslim world and the West in a nutshell.

Tunisia, a few days ago, given theopportunity to select its government democratically, gave a pluralityof votes to an Islamist party. Get ready for this to happeneverywhere else in the Arab world. The West is going to have toaccept that this is what democracy will mean in a Muslim country.

Let's get this clear. There is no contradiction between Islam and democracy. Islam is democratic to its core. There is no contradiction between Islam and human equality and human rights--both are profoundly Muslim concepts. The problem is right here--with secularism.

The idea of the separation of churchand state has no status in Muslim culture, founded as a political andmilitary as well as a religious entity from the beginning. Islamcannot be happily positioned as just one more religious alternativeunder an umbrella of secular humanism on which everyone can agree—notwithout negating much of the spirit of Islam. While Christianity cancheerfully say “render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto Godwhat is God's,” Islam will not, but will insist that Caesar too issubject to God.

I consider myself a liberal, but I amalso troubled by secularism in the same way Muslims commonly are.Religious tolerance has in recent years been allowed to become in theWest a radical religious intolerance, a denial of religion and indeedmorality in public life, which is a recipe for both depravity anddisaster.

I think a solution both sides can live with is not hard to find. But we must understand what the sticking point is. No cant or rant or bigoted jive.

Political Correctness

2011-10-29T06:09:00.000-07:00

The one thing to understand about “politically correct”speech is that it is systematic lying. Otherwise there would be no need toqualify the word “correct.” Conversely, if politically incorrect speech weremerely incorrect, there would be no politics involved. If it were simply nottrue, nobody would get upset about it. If it were not true, it would be permissibleto say it.

It is, therefore, positively immoral to use politicallycorrect terms, let alone to enforce its use by others.

The War of 1812

2011-10-21T03:40:00.000-07:00

Coupland's "War of 1812," Toronto

I would have thought that commemoratingthe War of 1812 was a no-brainer. In fact, I have written in the pastabout my concern that it is not better commemorated. What future doesany country have that will not celebrate its history?

It seems, however, that there is realresistance to the idea in Canada today. Senator Grant Mitchell hasposted a strong dissent on the Liberal Senate website(http://www.liberalsenateforum.ca/blog/14326_rss).

His first and main complaint is thatremembering history is “dragging us back into the past.” This isan interesting variant of the usual politician's doublespeak thatthey are “leading us into the future.” Easy for anyone to say,but perfectly meaningless—time being one-dimensional, it isimpossible to lead anywhere else but into the future. Conversely, itis nonsensical to speak of “going back into the past.” Except inthe sense that all knowledge is necessarily a reach into the past,that is, into memory. To be against going back into the past in thissense is simply to be against knowledge. Which may suit some agendasperfectly, of course...

Mitchell then gives his objections inpoint form:

Given that the US is our friend, why would we want to remind them that they lost this war and that our forces set the White House on fire?

Burn, baby, burn!

First,let's clear up a common misconception. Canadian forces did not setthe White House on fire. The British Navy did, and no Canadians werelikely to have been involved. Time to put that old saw to rest.

Butas to the larger point, that Canada should not alienate a presentfriend by celebrating a past dispute: on this advice, Britain hadbetter pull up all those columns with Nelson standing at the top, andrename all those Wellington Streets. After all, France has long beena good friend and important trading partner. And France in turn hadbest can those D-Day celebrations; Germany is now their closest ally.

Butof course, nobody worries about this. It is precisely because thesenations are now friends and allies that such commemorations are notprovocative. And it is the general course of history, and a goodthing, that former enemies usually become friends later. This oughtto be pointed out, and celebrated, not suppressed. If it issuppressed, moreover, just about all history is impossible.

It bears no real relevance to the development of the Canadian nation.

Tecumseh

Thisclaim is a radical bit of historical revisionism. More commonly, ithas been felt by historians that the Warof 1812 was the true birth of Canada as a nation. In the words ofPierre Burton and the Canadian Encyclopedia, “Canadaowes its present shape to negotiations that grew out of the peace,while the war itself - or the myths created by the war - gaveCanadians their first sense of community and laid the foundation fortheir future nationhood. “ Byshowing they were preparedto fight, even against overwhelming odds, to preserve theirindependence from the US, Canadians showed their commitment toCanada. Anglophones, Francophones, and aboriginals saw a common causeand fought as one, shoulder to shoulder. If this all bears norelevance to the development of the Canadian nation, one must askurgently, what does Senator Mitchell imagine the Canadian nation tobe? Was it invented by Pierre Trudeau in 1982?

It glorifies war when the war was not necessary or justifiable (to the extent that any war ever is).

Ispacifism ever justifiable? It glorifies moral cowardice. The greatestsin of all is to stand idly by and let evil triumph. God forbid thatthis should ever become the Canadian way, for it never has been.

Asto the War of 1812 specifically, from the Canadian perspective, itwas a perfect example of a just war. The US declared war on Britain;Britain did not declare war on the US. The US might or might not havehad legitimate grievances against Britain that justified thisaggression, but if so, these had nothing to do with Canada. The USinvaded Canada; Canada did not invade the US. The Canadian strategyat the beginning of the war was purely defensive. If Canadians hadrefused to fight, the likely result would have been, quite simply,the end of Canada.

SenatorMitchell is saying, in sum, that the existence of Canada is notnecessary or justifiable.

If it means anything to anyone, it certainly does not have a national resonance of any kind, being pretty much irrelevant to the West.

The two-thousand-mile-wide battlefield (part)

Right.By that logic, the US similarly has no business commemorating its Warof Independence, which involved, after all, only 13 of the present 50states. We should also chuck out Canada Day and all this fuss aboutcommemorating Confederation in 1867, since it involved only 4provinces.

Niceto see the Liberals finally acknowledging that Canada has a West, andthat America is our ally, though. This could be a breakthrough.

Sigmund Freud Was in Denial

2011-10-21T02:34:00.000-07:00

Sigmund Freud was in denial about thecentral drama of family life, and perhaps the dirtiest secret ofhuman civilization. Freud claimed that children essentially allwanted to kill their parents—kill Dad, sleep with Mum, or kill Mum,sleep with Dad. But the plain message of both history and story isjust the reverse: parents essentially all want to kill theirchildren.

Goya: Saturn devours his children.

Freud missed this even in the Oedipuscycle. In the story, after all, Oedipus has no desire whatever toeither kill his father or sleep with his mother. Both happen bymistake, and he is utterly appalled. But Freud entirely glosses overthe fact that Oedipus's father deliberately tried to kill Oedipus inthe first place—leaving him exposed to die on a mountainside.

And, while parricide was essentiallyunheard of, then or now, and considered unspeakably evil, theexposure of unwanted infants was perfectly acceptable, then and, inthe form of abortion, now. It was standard practice not only inGreece, but in pre-modern China and Japan. The ritual killing ofchildren was everywhere among the nations surrounding Israel in theHebrew Scriptures; the Romans report is as prevalent later inCarthage. It seems to have been the standard everywhere before theadvent of ethical monotheism (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Wesee survivals and echoes in the story of Abraham and Isaac, or indeedof Jesus as the sacrificed Son of God.

Rembrandt: Abraham and Isaac

In Greek mythology, the motif isabsolutely primordial: Kronos/Saturn devoured his children. Tantalossacrificially killed his son Pelops. Jews were suspected of killingChristian children in order to make their Passover matzohs. Herodkilled all the male children; and so did Pharaoh. Atreus murdered thechildren of Thyestes and fed them to him. Agamemnon sacrificed hisdaughter Iphigenia. Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome, were leftexposed to die, but rescued by a she-wolf. Everywhere, the motif ofchild-killing is present, and primordial, at the beginning of everystory.

Moloch

We are all looking the other way onthis, and have been most of the time for millennia. But it simplymakes sense. It is not just that we all want unrestricted access tosex without having to worry about the responsibility and expense ofchildren. It is not just that children can sometimes be annoying. Thechild represents the mortality of the parent—it represents lifegoing on without him or her. And so there is a kind of sympatheticmagic that says, if you kill the child, you will live forever. If thechild lives, his life replaces yours. This is a sort of existentialtruth, and so ever in the back of our minds. And it is explicitly themath propounded by Gilles de Rais,who killed an uncounted number ofchildren in late Medieval France.

Gilles de Rais, Satanist.

It is perhaps also behind the many“hazing” or “coming of age” rituals of many cultures, whichseem unnecessarily cruel. Circumcision is the least of them. The longyears of schooling are perhaps the worst. If they do not kill and eatthem, adults at least seek to punish the young for their existence,to get a bit of their own back.

To be clear, most parents are good totheir children, and self-sacrificing. There are maternal and paternalinstincts, thankfully, that work against this dark urge, not tomention the influence of religion and conscience. But I would feel agreat deal more confident about our treatment of children generallyif we openly acknowledged this dark history and tradition. It seemssinister in itself that we do not. It is perhaps the great cause, notonly of our time, but of all time.

A Thought on the Unveiling of the MLK Memorial

2011-10-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

In theory and in popular mythology, the civil rights movement elevated black men to the same status as white men. But this is not what really happened. Instead, it lowered white men to the same status as black men, and left us with a much smaller social elite: white women.

Trumpets of Doom

2011-10-07T11:01:00.000-07:00

I am not any kind of expert on economics; but the current rumblings about sovereign debt sure have me worried. The head of the European Central Bank, after all, has said we are facing perhaps the worst economic crisis the world has ever seen, and it is his job to steady the markets by downplaying the dangers. Britain has begun, like the US, just printing money, and Britain looked more financially secure than the rest of Europe. We seem to be moving almost inexorably to a sovereign default by Greece, which looks increasingly as though it will set up a domino sequence that could cause Italy, Portugal, and Spain to default as well. If that happens, ... almost guaranteed to be a worldwide financial collapse, with huge amounts of wealth wiped away.

Edward C. Green - Condoms, HIV-AIDS and Africa - The Pope Was Right

2011-10-04T12:19:00.000-07:00

Edward C. Green - Condoms, HIV-AIDS and Africa - The Pope Was Right:

'via Blog this'

The British Empire: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?

2011-09-30T07:19:00.000-07:00

A Steampunk Vision of the New World Order

It is, in the end, rather odd that thesignificant English-speaking nations are not united, especially giventheir proven talent for creating federations. You will laugh, ofcourse. The idea of a united Anglosphere died with the United Empiremovement in the 1920s, didn't it? Instead, we all broke up intoindependent states.

I imagine, though, the preference forindependence may have had something to do with always having thegood fortune to have one of our number at our back as the world'sleading nation. This so, there was little need to unite, and someadvantage to complete self-government.

Suppose, though, that China does getclose to surpassing the US in economic or military power. What then?Might things then look a little different? Just as Europe, aftercenturies of fierce fighting, saw the wisdom of unity over beingsuperceded by Russia and America?

Speaking of which, of course, there isalso the awkward fact that Britain has already committed itself to adifferent union, the EU. But then, isn't the EU starting to look alittle frayed? Some are actuallty speaking of it coming apart overthe current sovereign debt crisis. Even if it does not, if the restof the English-speaking world began to coalesce, could Britain standto be left on the sidelines?

So why not a grand federation, with anImperial Parliament, after all? It might have been impractical in the1920s. Improved transportation and communicatrions make it much moredoable now. As with the EU, members might retain most sovereignty,but speak with one voice on trade, in defense, and in foreignaffairs.

I theorize four qualifications formembership in this federation, with prospective members needing tomeet three of the four.

First, English should be either themajority language or the de facto lingua franca. This for the sake ofsocial cohesion. It more or less automatically implies some sharedculture: a shared legal tradition, some shared history.

Second, the nation should be afunctioning democracy with respect for basic human rights. We want toavoid a dictator's club, for all the reasons the United Nations isineffective. Moreover, given this requirement, the union could serveas a guarantee of democracy and human rights for all member citizens.

Third, the nation should be an islandor peninsula. This is important for defensibility, with theassumption that the union would be primarily a sea power. Otherwise,a military union might get itself into commitments it could notafford to keep.

I would add a fourth qualification,personally: that a majority of the citizens of any member stateshould be declared monotheists. I think this is important as aguarantee of shared values, without which the federation as a wholewould lack direction, principle, or cohesion, and is the practicalbare minimum in this regard.

Who would be in the federation?Britain, of course: if it could be teased out of the EU. Ireland too,on the same condition. Just as the EU protects it from undueinfluence from the UK, so would this alternative. Australia and NewZealand plainly qualify. The USA fits, but for not being a peninsula.Canada, with or without Quebec; an assortment of Caribbean islands,from the Bahamas to Trinidad. It looks to me as though thePhilippines could get in, and ought to be welcome. Singapore seems toqualify as well. India looks like a marginal possibility.

A pretty formidable nation, if it werefully coordinated. One on which the sun might never set.

I hold out for Detroit as capital. Defensible, on the border with Canada, and lots of cheap real estate.

How to Fix the Economy

2011-09-29T08:15:00.001-07:00

Okay, we're all doomed. This current crisis over sovereign debt is not caused by the 2008 crash, and it is not just a cyclical downturn. The offal is hitting the ventilating system. Because of declining birth rates and growing government, we have rached the point of unsustainability, just as forecast by Ibn Khaldun, the founder of social science, four centuries ago. Government has outgrown the ability of the economy to support it. We cannot just keep borrowing money—there is a limit to the number of lenders and the amount of capital that can be soaked up, and it is being taken from more productive uses. We cannot just boost taxes—doing so will simply depress the economy further. The only option is to boost the non-government economy by cutting government.

Here's how.

Outlaw strikes in the public sector.
Set public sector pay rates automatically as a set percentage below the average rate for comparable pay in the private sector.
Rescind current pension rates in the public sector in the same way.

This will fix the specific problem that has most directly gotten us into the current situation. Strikes in the public sector are simply a blank cheque written out to public employees. If the current incumbents in the public sector do not like this, no problem. There is a backlog of unemployed. Fire them all and hire anew.

But there is a lot more we can do. The cost of education, for example, has been spiralling out of control, while the results obtained, by most measures, have been holding steady or declining. Here's how to fix it by actually spending less money:

Go to a full voucher system to introduce competition to the market.
Eliminate any legal requirement for teacher certification. With the market able to decide, there is no need, and this works only as a restraint on trade.
Remove any kind of government subsidy for the social sciences or the teaching of the social sciences at any level. They have had a couple of hundred years to show verifiable results, and have failed. They are conceptually in violation of human rights. Time to stop spending public money on them.

Health care is even more an area of spiralling costs. Here are a few simple ways to save:

Allow pharmacists to dispense without prescription. This automatically eliminates a huge number of unnecessary doctor visits, and is more in accord with basic human rights. Pharmacists are knowledgeable enough to advise in many cases.
Introduce a nominal user fee or deductible to discourage frivolous doctor visits.
Introduce competition by allowing private, for-profit care providers.
De-fund abortion.

Deregulation is the one obvious way to boost economic activity without spending more government money. A few simple ideas:

Remove all limitations on employers hiring whomever they choose. This is a human right in any case, the right of free association, ends unjust discrimination, would boost efficiency throughout the economy, and would do away with a large bureaucratic structure.
Remove all laws regarding sexual harassment in the workplace. Again, this eliminates a vast bureaucracy and a vast extra expense for most enterprises. Sexual harassment laws in their application are plainly sexually biased, and so produce systematic injustice. And they accomplish nothing of significance: if one is sexually harassed, one has the obvious remedy of finding a different job.
Go to a flat tax. Simplifying the tax code ends efficiency-destroying distortions in the free market and eliminates the need for enterprises to hire expensive expertise in order to play the system. It makes the future predictable, and so makes investing more secure. It would also eliminate another huge government bureaucracy.
Remove all restrictions on foreign investment. Investment is good.

It is perhaps too late to fix the demographic problem in the near term; but we need to give more support to the family in any case in order to allow it to replace government as the essential social structure.

One simple measure: strictly limit the liability for alimony or child support in case of divorce. This will remove an actual disincentive for wealthy people to marry and have children, and an actual incentive for some to divorce.

Fathers' presence linked to enhanced intellect, well-being among children

2011-09-08T05:16:00.000-07:00

Fathers' presence linked to enhanced intellect, well-being among children:

'via Blog this'

"Pro-science" and "Anti-science"

2011-08-31T09:22:00.000-07:00

Why does the Left get to pick which issues are the benchmarks for “science”? Why can’t the measure of being pro-science be the question of heritability of intelligence? Or the existence of fetal pain? Or the distribution of cognitive abilities among the sexes at the extreme right tail of the bell curve? Or if that’s too upsetting, how about dividing the line between those who are pro- and anti-science along the lines of support for geoengineering? Or — coming soon — the role cosmic rays play in cloud formation? Why not make it about support for nuclear power? Or Yucca Mountain? Why not deride the idiots who oppose genetically modified crops, even when they might prevent blindness in children?

--from NRO's The Corner

The Irish in Canada

2011-08-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

The size and significance of the Irish presence in Canada is widely underestimated. We are the invisible ethnicity.

Nicholas Flood Davin gives the math for 1877: Ontario then held 559,440 Irish, 328,889 Scottish, and 439,429 English. Canada at Confederation contained 846,414 Irish, 706, 369 English, and 549.946 Scottish—the Irish numbers second only to the French. In the West of Montreal, “les Anglais” of the day were in fact 19,394 Irish, 7,974 Scottish, and only 9,099 English. So, if we are indeed going to speak of “two founding nations” in Canada, those two are: French and Irish.

But even that is not the whole story. Estimates are that the “French” population of Quebec, through intermarriage, is up to one quarter Irish by blood. Marguerite d'Youville's stepfather was Irish. Loius Riel's ancestor changed his name to Riel from Reilly. Louis Saint Laurent's mother was Irish; so was George Vanier's.

I submit that this has left a massive stamp on the Canadian culture and character. There is a real mainstream Canadian culture, and it is essentially Irish.

Irish-Canadian culture is also different from Irish-American culture, or Irish-Australian culture, for several reasons. Notably, the Irish of Canada came mostly from Ulster, and were primarily Protestant. Those in America and Australia came mostly from the south and west, and were primarily Catholic.

Unlike the US, the Irish were also already well established in Canada before the Great Famine. However, even at the time of the famine, there were more Irish emigrants to Canada than to the USA, and those who landed in Canada tended to be the poorest and most destitute. The passage to Canada was significantly cheaper—because there were fewer safety and health regulations in Canada, and because the lumber trade meant many ships were otherwise empty on their westward journey.

Daycage

2011-08-26T07:03:00.000-07:00

Maclean's magazine, July 14, reports a survey in Manitoba showing "kids, after many of their parents began taking advantage of the province's new low-cost daycare, did worse on a basic vocabulary test."

We are sacrificing the rising generations for present comfort. This is a culture committing suicide.

Annoying Phrases/Terms/Words Adopted As Memes in Pop Culture

2011-08-24T14:59:00.000-07:00

Annoying Phrases/Terms/Words Adopted As Memes in Pop Culture

Putin sets sights on Eurasian economic union - FT.com

2011-08-17T02:53:00.000-07:00

I think this is inevitable, IF the EC is going to survive. Russia must become a member sooner or later, or the combination is unstable.

Putin sets sights on Eurasian economic union - FT.com

Common Sense Finally Infiltrates the Psychiatric Profession

2011-08-17T02:41:00.000-07:00

Is childhood abuse behind tough-to-treat depression? - HealthPop - CBS News

The Shiners' War

2011-08-13T13:58:00.000-07:00

Joseph Montferrant ("Big Joe Mufferaw") takes on the Shiners.

My native Eastern Ontario was torn in the earlier years of the 19th century (1837-45) by what is called the "Shiners Wars." The Shiners were recent Irish immigrants working in the lumber camps, who generally raised trouble and terror up and down the Ottawa Valley.

Besides raising hell, the Shiners apparently also had a political agenda. At one point they flooded a meeting of an agricultural society, and had their leader elected the society's president. At another they tried to take over Nepean Township, but were outvoted.

Canadian troops were actually called in to restore order.

Generally considered a case of the boys just getting rowdy. But nobody knows why they were called "Shiners."

I have a theory. The term "Shinner" was actually common in Ireland in the early 20th century. It referred to the members of Sinn Fein, the Irish nationalist organization. "Sinn" is pronounced like "shin." Could the "Shiners" be "Shinners"?

At first, it looks improbable. Sinn Fein was founded by Arthur Griffith in 1905, long after the days of the Shiners. But "sinn fein" is also an Irish phrase. It means "ourselves," with the implication "on our own." And it is found in English-language nationalist songs from early in the 19th century. It seems likely that Griffith, a speaker of Gaelic as a second language, because it already had a certain cachet, and it may have been quite common for some time in Gaelic.

So "Shiner" might have been a recognized reference, to the Irish of the Valley, to "Sinn Feiner." With the implication that the lumbermen's true aim was some form of self-government for themselves as Irishmen, in the new world if not in the old.

This was, in fact, a common thought among Irishmen throughout the Irish diaspora. We have all heard of the Fenian movement in the US, I presume? And you have heard of Ned Kelly, the famous Australian outlaw? Except he was not just an outlaw. His hope was to establish at least a part of Australia as an independent Irish republic. In 1798, inspired by events in the US and France, the United Irishmen rose in a rebellion that lasted for six years. In 1800--bet you never heard this--Irish in Newfoundland rose in the same cause.

Now note again the year the "Shiners Wars" began. 1837. Do you remember, from your history, anything else that was happening in Canada in 1837?

Two things, actually. In Lower Canada, the Patriots took up arms. Probably the only name you know from that rebellion is Papineau, and you imagine it purely a Francophone thing. Not so. As prominent as Papineau among the rebels was Edmund Bailey O'Callahan, the MLA for Yamaska and editor of the Montreal Vindicator. To make the matter plain, he was the leader of the Irish community in Quebec at the time.

And in Upper Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie also took up arms.

You can see something was in the air.

It is amazing how all this Irish Canadian history has been suppressed. I believe it has mostly been suppressed by the Irish themselves. Canada defines itself as the Loyalist half of North America; Being opposed to the British Empire has no doubt not always been a politically comfortable position. It became less comfortable thanks to the Fenian raids of the latter half of the 19th century, when being Irish in Canada must have put my ancestors under a suspicion similar to that German Canadians would have felt during the First World War, or Japanese Canadians during the second. Indeed, it must have been awkward for Irish Canadians again in the First World War, when the Easter Rebellion happened in Dublin. It was seen at the time by the British as treason during wartime, after all. And this on top of the usual prejudice against Irish and Catholics.

Someone needs to revisit this history, and tell the truth about it.

The Joys of Catholic Kitsch

2011-08-11T05:20:00.000-07:00

The Crescat...: Catholic Kitsch Contest...

Moloch Lives!

2011-08-10T05:14:00.001-07:00

In order to understand Western civilization, grasp one fact: the ancient peoples of the Levant killed their own children. They sacrificed their children to their gods. Every first born son was burned alive at age six or so.

Remember that the next time you hear that the God of the Old Testament seems to be a bit of a warmonger. Yahweh's moral revulsion towards the Canaanites is questionable only on the fashionable modern creed of cultural relativism, that all mortal cultures are created equal. Consider Nazi Germany, or Imperial Japan—worth preserving? Were we not justified in employing whatever means necessary to wipe them from the face of the Earth? How much more so a society that held the murder of innocents as its core cultural value?

Yahweh, God of the Bible was not the only one who was horrified. The pagan Romans were too, when they encountered the practice in the Carthaginians. Everywhere else, Romans were notable for their clemency in victory. But Carthage? They burned it to the ground and salted the fields.

Echoes ring through the Old Testament. Moses was a firstborn son, born under sentence of death. Abraham and Isaac? Understanding that sacrificing one's first son was the required custom in the land, its significance is the reverse of what you might otherwise imagine: Abraham's great proof of loyalty to Yahweh was not in preparing to sacrifice Isaac, but in staying his hand at the angel's command. This was the one thing that distinguished him from everybody else in his day.

The moral depravity of the surrounding culture made morality, ethics, that much more important to the Jews; it became, along with their monotheism, their defining religious characteristic. “Ethical monotheism.”

This factor also explains the uncanny result of the Punic Wars. As a rule, in any war between a land power and a sea power, the sea power wins. Control of the sea allows one to attack any enemy beyond it unexpectedly, at multiple points—his border is much longer than yours. But Carthage was a grerat sea power, at the beginning of the Punic Wars across the Mediterranean from Rome, and Rome knew nothing of ships. It should have been no contest.

The only explanation for Carthage's loss, it seems to me, is a lack of resolve—that, and perhaps deivine intervention i nthe cause of right. And that is, interestingly, just what the historical record seems to show. Several times, Carthage even sought to concede, but kept fighting only because the Roman terms were too onerous. In contrast, when Hannibal was stomping around Italy with his elephant army, the war looked lost for the Romans. But they did not sue for peace.

This, I think, shows the force of moral right. The Romans, in the end, were fighting for their children. The Carthaginians, in the end, might have half-hoped their gods could be proven ineffective.

The power of right is a real thing, so real that the joust or the duel were once considered a just resolution to most disputes. God and a clear conscience give greater resolve and greater strength.

Now here's the dark side of this thought. Who now is killing their children? Who is even holding it up as a core cultural value, part of the universal doctrine of human rights, “reproductive rights” or the “right to choose”?

A just God will need, once more, to wipe out such a civilization.

This is Getting Grim

2011-08-09T10:35:00.000-07:00

The US downgraded. Japan laid low by a tsunami and a nuclear meltdown. Italy on the verge of default. Rioting in London. It is starting to look a little like civilizational collapse.

I'm still betting it ain't, I say technology is going to pull us out of this one. But it looks like the times they are a changin'. I say it is a collapse of the current elite, the current ruling class, that we see happening.

From Today's Toronto Star

2011-08-09T02:35:00.001-07:00

"Orthodox Christians differ from Roman Catholics in their belief that the Pope is a human being, not a divine figure."

Religious illiteracy is everywhere!

A Thing that Badly Needs to Be Said

2011-07-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

There are two kinds of people in the world ...

Wendy Deng Has Just Revealed to the World Why Every Man Needs an Asian Wife

2011-07-22T12:26:00.001-07:00

Yes, they really are like this.

Blessed Kateri Is Heard From

2011-07-17T11:32:00.000-07:00

A Boy, An Injury, A Recovery, A Miracle? : NPR

Perfidious Albion

2011-07-06T02:27:00.000-07:00

Heading to the UK in a few days. Thinking about it, reading about it, I am aware of an overall sense of darkness. Why? Why does the UK, why has the UK always, frankly, given me the creeps?

It is the sense that there is no religion there, no spirit. The UK is the exaltation of the material and social above the spiritual. It is a nation without a soul.

I grew up strongly under the influence of British culture—in a Canada still conscious of Commonwealth, if not Empire. When I studied English Literature in college, they took the “English” part seriously. There were no Canadian authors on the curriculum, much less American.

Granted, I was also conscious myself of being Irish, not English; I was raised as a Catholic. And I was in some contact with an alternative culture in French Canada. That may have caused me troubles with the wider culture I would not otherwise have had—I doubt it—or it may have been my salvation.

It all begins with the separation from Rome under Henry VIII. This established the basic, blasphemous principle that the civil authority was supreme over the spiritual, and spiritual matters were under the state. This continues to this day: the Queen is still head of the English church, and its bishops sit in the House of Lords.

The situation in Catholic countries, even with an established church, is different: here instead the civil is at least nominally subservient to the spiritual--the reverse situation--because the supreme religious authority is beyond the mountains, in Rome, beyond the reach or control of the civil government.

In the mess of English literature, I could see for myself that Shakespeare was sound. Shakespeare, after all, was still culturally Catholic. But after him, if you strip English literature of all the Catholic and the Celtic (i.e., non-English) writers, there is practically nothing left. And English music and visual arts? There was practically nothing in the first place, until quite recently, and that recently thanks to Irish immigration. Art is not religion, but it is another expression of the spirit. The two are normally, and should be, working together. Both seek the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

There are many other consequences here, beyond the alienation of the arts from the rest of society. One is the resistance to intermarriage. The Portuguese, Spanish, or French, when they sailed about the world and built their empires, always intermarried with the inhabitants, tried to convert them, and, if converted, accepted them as equals. The English saw intermarriage as a sin and a crime—misogyny. Why? Because their religion was largely based on nationality; non-English were, essentially, profane, by their nature. Hence there was also no similar attempt by the English to convert. They either killed the inhabitants, or ruled and remained separate from them. The good news was, this made it easy for them to pull out of their empire when the time came.

Because they made the material and social world the foundation of their religious faith, the English rather naturally became very good at social and material things. They became the world authorities on how to organize governments, how to organize voluntary associations, how to organize corporations, markets, shops, economies; how to make money; how to borrow and lend, how to insure; how to engineer, for either military or civil purposes. The whole science and technology thing, on top of the whole government and economics thing. The rest of us have benefitted from their expertise in these areas, and ought to continue to respectfully learn from them. But their expertise here is based on the simple principle that one devotes the best of one’s efforts to whatever one holds to be most important. In the English case, the physical and the social world, not God or the spirit.

This is still all a reversal of values, so that it ultimately leads us in the wrong direction.

The peculiar English love for social ritual and convention also comes from their veneration of the social—ritual of this kind is normally a part of one’s religion.

The unwarranted emphasis on the material and social has been inherited by the Americans. I recently finished listening to Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street as an audio book. I think the reversal of the spiritual and the profane is the heart of the conflict in that book, between typical American social values, on the one hand, and a young woman who is naturally spiritual without, sadly, being able to associate this spirituality with religion. In Sinclair Lewis’s book, she finds no way out.

Her Lost Generation, when they could, found their escape in Paris. The nearest port beyond the Anglo-Protestant cultural sphere.

I think exactly the same problem, and the same spiritual conflict, produced all the tumult of the Sixties. Young people were aware there was something missing, that the world around them had things upside down, lacked spirit, without being able to see any solution. Instead, born and bred materialists and communitarians that they were, they mistook drugs for imagination, sex for emotion, and politics for religion. They never got past the bars of the cage, saving perhaps the Jesus freaks and the Hare Krishnas.

Wish me luck.

Silly Brits

2011-07-02T03:19:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, my current landlord has supplied me with a cable TV service that features only one English-language channel: BBC News. And it’s beginning to get annoying.

I don’t mean the BBC’s celebrated left-wing bias, or the odd fact that one rarely sees an Englishman on the BBC. I mean an overall lack of standards. Maybe I’m a naïve colonial, but I had always associated the BBC with a certain rigour—fact-checking, precision of pronunciation, and so forth.

And I’d especially expect them to get it right when the story is about Canada. After all, they used to run the place.

But no, BBC, “God Save the Queen,” when played in Canada in the presence of the Queen or her heirs, is not “the British national anthem.” It is the Canadian royal anthem. No, the Vancouver hockey team that so recently and so slenderly lost the Stanly Cup playoffs is not the CANucks; this is the standard nickname for Canadians, fercrissakes. The capital of Manitoba, once the third-largest city in the Dominion, and featuring frequently in your weather reports as the target of an impending cold front, is not “Winny-peg.” And the stress in “Newfoundland” is not on the second syllable.

Makes you wonder what else they get wrong, elsewhere. And these guys recently ran a quarter of the world?

Okay, the veneer of sophistication is now off. So while I’m, at it, let me also advise you pommies right here and now that “Fiona” is not an appropriate name for a human. Neither is “Penelope” or “Rebecca.” Anything more than two syllables is putting on airs, and nobody will like you for it. Proper people names are “Gordon,” Howie,” “Donna,” or “Anne.”

There’s more, while I’m at it. Ditch that pommy accent. Everyone thinks it’s gay.

Words end or don’t end in “r” for a reason.

Everyone knows you won the Second World War. Time to move on.

Those James Bond films aren’t fooling anyone. We know you’re not still secretly running the world.

And you had to hire Scots and Irish to play the part. The English are not suave. Two words: Mr. Bean.

And must you always say "thank you very much indeed"? When you always say it, it only comes across as insincere. A simple "thank you" will do.

Where are we? Your women are ugly, your food is inedible, and your weather is awful. No wonder you left to conquer the world. What choice did you have? I would have left too.

Winny-peg indeed.

Seriously, though, just kidding, guys. I really want to give all you Brits a big hug.

Only trouble is, if I did, you'd probably have a heart attack from the unfamiliar human contact.

Godel's Proof of the Existence of God

2011-07-01T04:01:00.000-07:00

Proof of the existence of God set down on paper

Introverts

2011-06-29T05:44:00.000-07:00

I'm a strong introvert. All of the points made in this post ring true to me:

http://www.carlkingcreative.com/10-myths-about-introverts

Reflections for Trinity Sunday

2011-06-22T03:02:00.000-07:00

The Trinity explained in stained glass.

The existence of God is self-evident and accessible to both reason and experience. Enough said.

But what of his Trinitarian nature? Seems “counter-intuitive,” doesn’t it?
When we look about at nature, saving the shamrock, we see it is binary: most living things are bilaterally symmetrical. That in itself is a strong indication of design, which is to say intelligent design. It seems only accurate, therefore, to say that the Logos of creation is binary. Day and night, heat and cold, light and shadow, male and female, Aristotle’s A and not-A, good and evil, right and wrong.

But when we analyze it at a deeper level, an inevitable threeness seems to be revealed. As opposed to individual beings, time itself is more mysterious and abstract—closer to the underlying logos of all. And we find it, no matter how you slice it, resolving into three parts: past, present, and future. Existence, similarly, even closer to being the essence of all things, has three parts: creation, duration, and cessation. Leaving aside hypotheses of higher physics, all of space, the entire visible, physical universe, is composed of three aspects: height, width, depth. All actions have three elements: subject, action, and object. All perceptions, all possible experiences, also have three elements: perceiver, perception, and perceived. All logic, all thought, similarly resolves to trinity: major premise, minor premise, conclusion. Can’t get around it: the number three is the essence of all existence.

It seems only sensible, therefore, to assume a threeness to God. It would actually be assuming God is uniquely not in some sense triune, that would seem arbitrary and need to be defended.

It might be argued that supreme unity is a necessary aspect of perfection—and this is fair enough. There can be only one perfect being, as there can be only one “greatest” and one “best.” But there is another side to this argument: If the created world had a beginning in time, it follows that there was a time before it existed. If God exists eternally, it also follows that there was a time when he existed, and the universe did not.
But that means there was a time when God was less than he is now; and that God can change. Once he was not yet a creator, and later he was.

Automatically, you have two Gods, one more perfect or complete than the other. Yet this is a logical impossibility.

The only logical way around this seems to be to assume that God is in some sense not a unity—but “eternally begetting” an element of himself, the Logos, a basic plan or incipient essense of creation. Hence we are forced to conclude that, within the divine unity of being, there are at least two distinct aspects. So why not three?

The Hindu Trinity: Brahman, Vishnu, Shiva

Christianity is not the only faith to perceive this. India’s traditional religion, Hinduism, too, assumes a Trinity, the Trimurti: Brahman, Vishnu, and Shiva, who can be fairly easily correlated to the Christian Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Taoism, the ancient religion of China, also has a divine trinity. Buddhism, not big on Gods, speaks of the “Threefold Path” to salvation: The Buddha, the Sangha, and the Dharma; and also features a common motif of three supreme Buddhas, although the identities of the three members seem to vary.

The Trinity also seems to exist in the Old Testament. The Hebrew word most commonly translated as “God” or “Lord God” in English Bibles is, in the original, “Elohim”--which is a plural. To how many persons does it refer? That’s made clear in the story of Abraham. When “Elohim” visit him and his wife Sarah in their tent, and share a meal with them, in Genesis 18, they are three. They are commonly referred to in English translation as “angels,” but they are “Elohim” in the original.

Modern Russian icon of the "Old Testament Trinity"

The same three are present at the creation:

1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. 3Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

Note that there are three divine elements here, all existing before the creation of the world: a creator God (the Father), the Spirit of God (the Holy Spirit) and the word of God (“Let there be light”) or Logos (the Son), through which the act of creation takes place.

Three persons in one God.

The Myth of a Male-Female Pay Gap

2011-06-21T07:17:00.000-07:00

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics: The Male-Female Wage Gap Myth | SwiftEconomics.com

Regrets of the Dying

2011-06-10T08:24:00.001-07:00

http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html

The World, the Flesh, and the Devil

2011-05-31T07:15:00.000-07:00

A friend asks where the idea that Satan rules in the earthly realm comes from. How can it be? Isn't the world created by a good God?

Biblically speaking, the idea comes from several places in the New Testament.

2 Corinthians 4:4
In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of those who do not believe to keep them from seeing the light of the glorious gospel of the Messiah, who is the image of God. (ISV)

John 12:31:
Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. 32But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” 33He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die. (NIV)

Ephesians 6:12:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (NIV)

Luke 4:6-7:
And the devil said to Him, “I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.7“Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours.”

It seems clear to me that this means those prominent or in power in this earthly, social realm are broadly the acolytes and agents of the devil. Like it or lump it. This also tallies with the Beatitudes—it is the “little people,” the “salt of the earth,” who are blessed.

This of course is directly against the Calvinist idea that earthly prosperity is a sign of heavenly favour.

How can a world created by a good God be consistently going wrong? Because man has free will, because it is a fallen world, and because we are all marked by original sin.

I think it follows from this Christian insight that political action in hopes of effecting some general improvement to the lot of man is a dead end. Put another way, the prime concern of Christian political action should be to limit the role of government.

That's not all as hopeless as it may sound. Though the devil is the god of this world, it is also true that God works through history; and that there is a human role in perfecting creation. It follows that, over time, if only in fits and starts, the world is indeed getting better. And this seems to be true from observation. The moral dignity of human life seems to have been gradually increasing over the eons, and the level of human suffering has been declining. Cannibalism is gone; human sacrifice is gone; slavery is gone; serfdom is gone; hereditary aristocracy is gone. Democracy is more widespread than it has ever been. We have many more material comforts than our ancestors had. We also have more great books, great art, great music, gradually accumulated over the centuries.

However, those who have been improving human life over the eons have usually not been the visible rulers or leaders of society. They have been individual, often anonymous, seekers of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

By an obvious logic, those who seek above all else the good, the true, and the beautiful, are those most likely to achieve the good, the true, and the beautiful, and therefore to advance human knowledge, human achievement, and human wellbeing. Conversely, those who seek above all else fame, wealth, and power, are those most likely to achieve fame, wealth, and power, and therefore become the leaders and prominent people of the world.

These are necessarily not the same people.

So the leaders of the world will almost never be the good guys.

And, sadly, there are almost always far more people going flat out for fame, or wealth, or power, than for truth, good, or beauty.

However, the accomplishments of those who seek only fame, wealth, and power, almost necessarily die as soon as they die; whereas the accomplishments of those who seek the good, the true, and the beautiful, however few they are, tend to remain after they go, and so to slowly accumulate, improving and ultimately perfecting the world.

Salt of the earth.

Where the 12 Apostles Died - Google Maps

2011-05-19T07:37:00.000-07:00

Where the 12 Apostles Died - Google Maps: "http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=201812973222981115902.0004a34723ee4dfea9853&source=embed&ll=34.597042,46.40625&spn=71.719851,113.027344&z=3"

Farewell to the Grits

2011-05-03T07:54:00.000-07:00

Now that the Canadian Liberal Party has suffered their worst election defeat ever, the question is, can they rebuild? Will they be back?

I think not--not unless the NDP screws up fairly quickly, and, not being in government, they don't have much chance to screw up soon.

The problem is, in order to hold together, a party as far back as third place needs an ideological core around which to rally. The Liberals don't have that. Their unique sales proposition for the past forty years has been: 1. the natural governing party, and so the natural vehicle for the best and the brightest who sought power, and 2. the party that understood Quebec, and stood the best chance of keeping Quebec in Confederation.

Both those justifications are gone. Without them, why would anyone run as a Liberal?

My Election Prediction

2011-05-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

Bare Conservative majority.

I think Layton and the NDP have peaked too soon. A large part of their polling figure is, I think, a "none of the above" protest. They have surged quickly enough, though, that now the possibility is evident that they might actually get into power. At that point, I think a substantial part of their support up until now may want to back off.

I think they will still edge the Liberals, in the popular vote, but it will be close.

The Sins of the Saints

2011-04-29T09:42:00.000-07:00

If there is one thing that gets up my nose, it is biographies of the saints that make them out to be sinless paragons. This is a complete falsification of what sainthood is all about, and is theologically blasphemous. It is also incredibly damaging to the spiritual lives of the rest of us, as it makes the saints inaccessible, inhuman, and, by setting the bar impossibly high, makes us despair of our own hope of salvation.

It also allows the enemies of Christ to point to a provable fault in a saint and seem thereby to cast doubt on the entire concept of sainthood, and the infallibility of the church.

Saints are never without sin. Nobody has ever been without sin, other than Jesus, Mary, and possibly Enoch and Elijah in the Old Testament. This has always been understood in the Judeo-Christian tradition. As a Jewish friend recently pointed out, all the Old Testament prophets were also clearly very imperfect men--and this was a point the OT was making quite deliberately. God loves us despite our sin and imperfection.

Father James Martin has recently written a healthy corrective:

http://www.slate.com/id/2164673

The NDP Surge

2011-04-28T10:36:00.000-07:00

The Canadian election is getting far more interesting than I expected. Some thoughts:

A lot of the NDP surge, I suspect, is a sympathy vote. It's Jack Layton's cane and bout with cancer. Especially in Quebec, voters are sentimental about such things. To their credit.

Some if it is also a Canadian equivalent to the Tea Party. In these times, it is not advantageous to have a profile as the "Natural Governing Party." At the same time, the Conservatives are in government, and so not the obvious recipients of a protest vote against the powers that be. The NDP becomes the obvious "none of the above" choice, since Reform is gone.

The Liberals are staring at the real possibility of sharing the fate of the British Liberal Party. If the NDP gets past them once, they may establish themselves as the clear left-wing alternative, as happened in the UK, and the Liberals fade to the chronic third-party status the NDP has suffered until now.

But can the Liberals even continue to exist, if this happens? Since it has scant chance of power, a third party must be held together by an ideological core. Does the Liberal Party really still have an ideological core, at least sufficiently distinct from the NDP's? Even to the extent that the old PCs did? Or has it lately only been a vehicle for power, the party of the ruling class, easily assimilating its Scott Brisons and Bob Raes from either side of the supposed left-right divide?

Memories of a Montreal Baby Boomer

2011-04-23T04:44:00.000-07:00

From CBC's Vinyl Cafe.

http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/vinylcafe_20110312_97899.mp3

Nostalgia is such a sweet, painful thing. Like playing with a loose tooth.

Frankincense Turns Out to be an Anti-depressant

2011-04-21T07:49:00.000-07:00

I am inclined to believe this is not so much an example of ancient wisdom as of a miracle of God.

http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2010/05/anti-depressant-found-in-every-orthodox.html

Two Word Poems

2011-04-15T01:55:00.001-07:00

Some titles are the finest poetry; it is really possible, it seems, for the very best writers to write two or three word poems.

Here are some examples that have always sounded terribly good to me:

Wild Feeling – Li Bai
Sixteen Inches of Rain – Ian Tyson
Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
That Old Gravel Road – Ian Tyson
Idiot Wind – Bob Dylan
The Hissing of Summer Lawns – Joni Mitchell
Voyage of the Dawntreader – C.S. Lewis
Slow Train Coming – Bob Dylan
Beautiful Losers – Leonard Cohen
The Book of Longing – Leonard Cohen
Blue Alert – Leaonard Cohen
Rolling Thunder Review – Bob Dylan

Carrie Lukas: There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap - WSJ.com

2011-04-14T00:13:00.000-07:00

Carrie Lukas: There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap - WSJ.com

China's coming collapse | Managing | Strategy | Canadian Business Online

2011-04-11T07:36:00.000-07:00

China's coming collapse | Managing | Strategy | Canadian Business Online

North American Karaoke

2011-04-11T00:09:00.001-07:00

Used to be a lot of fun...

The Ultimate Canadian Portrait

2011-04-08T00:51:00.000-07:00

Don't know where I originally found this--it was on an old hard disk. But I love it. Kind of captures the wonderful corn of Dief's character. Canadian pop art, worthy of Andy Warhol.

The Dark Night of the Soul

2011-04-08T00:23:00.000-07:00

My interpretation of the finest lyric in Spanish, St. John of the Cross's "Dark Night of the Soul.":

In blackest night, on fire with desperate longing—oh bliss of chance—

I escaped unseen; my household still and ignorant, like smoke suspended.

Safe in the covering darkness, by the secret ladder, disguised as someone else—oh bliss of chance—

Dark, unseen, unknown; my household sleeping still.

In the delirious night, unwhispered and unnoticed, troubling no beams

And stark with blindness, no light, no wayfinder but the torch burning down my heart.

This torch a truer guide than gaudy noon

To the place where I remembered he had always awaited me

A place where no one was, and none appeared.

Night itself led me—night lovelier than the dawn.

Brilliant night that interlaces lover and belovéd, both transformed.

Upon my scented breast, all his and his alone

He rested, sleeping; I caressed. The breath of distant cedars filled the room.

A wind swept in from high watchtower. My fingers parted hair;

His fingers brushed my neck: all senses left.

Someone remained, forgetting everything. My head was fallen, on his breast.

Everything ended, even me. All cares disappeared among lilies.

I disagree with St. John's theology, but he sure can write.

Top All-Time Donors, 1989-2010 | OpenSecrets

2011-04-07T23:30:00.000-07:00

Top All-Time Donors, 1989-2010 | OpenSecrets

The BBC Fights the Oppression of Women in Saudi Arabia

2011-04-01T09:24:00.000-07:00

A fine example of the BBC's legendary bias is on display currently. They are promoting a piece on the situation of women in Saudi Arabia with the tag line:

"Women in Saudi Arabia are among the world's most oppressed. But whose fault is it? The men, or the women?"

The idea that women are not oppressed in Saudi Arabia is simply not permitted. Even, you will note, if Saudi women themselves insist it is so.

The Supposed Evil of Individualism

2011-03-31T04:12:00.000-07:00

One more example of the way so many people get things exactly reversed: a friend feels guilty for nursing urged for freedom from community, and supposes such urges are immoral. He writes:

I don’t think it came from my church or my religious faith. If anything, they taught me to value community.
An oft-told sermon illustration says that a fire burns hot while its embers are gathered together. Remove any single ember from that fire, and that ember soon grows cold and lifeless.
The same applies to human interaction. I have been known to argue that a truly isolated individual can never be fully human. Our relationships make us who we are.

The error of thinking that communitarianism is more moral than individualism is an old one, as well as a very common one among the modern left: many of the ancient Greeks, including Plato, thought disciplined Sparta was somehow more moral than individualistic Athens on this basis.

But they were, and are, wrong.

In the gospel, it is pretty plain that Jesus took pains to cut all conventional tendrils of community. He did not marry. He rejected allegiance to family (“What have I to do with you, woman?”) and demanded that any true follower do the same (“Let the dead bury their own dead.” “Whoever does not despise his own father and mother for my sake is not worthy of me.”) He apparently rejected ties of nationality, speaking openly to Samaritans, praising Samaritans and Roman soldiers; and this stance was affirmed by the early church (“neither Jew nor Greek in Christ”). Given that, as an itinerant teacher and preacher, his occupation was “Pharisee,” he obviously felt no strong allegiance to his class or trade (“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees!”).

In this “rugged individualism,” he stands, of course, directly in the tradition of the prophets, who almost to a man left their settled communities and lived a life of wandering, often in the desert. Truly isolated individuals.

So it would seem that Christianity and Judaism (not to mention Buddhism) are clearly on the side of individualism being more moral than life in community. Not all communities, clearly, are equally bad—the church, too, is a community—but the need to reject community seems to be prior in all of this. A principled, strict, individualism comes first, and then voluntary communities can be formed by a conscious contract among individuals retaining their inherent individual rights.

The lesson of history agrees. The idea that community comes first was, as the names imply, the core ideal of both Fascism and Communism, not to mention the Cosa Nostra and the Ku Klux Klan. The greatest crimes of mankind have always been in the name of community and communitarianism.

The problem is that community--”peer pressure”--subverts conscience and free will. “Following community values” can be a great excuse for doing deeds that, if we accepted individual responsibility, would seem plainly immoral.

Every tie that binds us closer to the other members of a given group, after all, automatically and equally also loosens our bonds to all the members of humanity who do not belong to that group.

We will not be saved because we belonged to the right club.

Sparta is long gone, and there are few traces remaining. Fascism, too, is gone, and the old Soviet empire. Freewheeling, trading, Athens went on to found Western Civilization, and is still there, thriving.

The Muslim Oppression of Men?

2011-03-30T07:44:00.000-07:00

It is a fascinating truth that people don't tend to get things a little wrong; more often, when they are wrong, they believe or assert close to the perfect opposite of the truth.

This suggests to me that many people—it seems to be most people--are not honestly mistaken about things, but in full and conscious flight from truth.

One example is the common claim that Muslim women are oppressed by wearing the burkha.

Arab colour symbolism happened to come up in a class today. The students noted that, in the Arab world, black is the colour of kingship, as purple would be in Northern Europe. My Palestinian Arab officemate confirms the association.

Black; like every burkha.

So, to make the point clear: every Arab woman has the right to wear black. But only one man in any country has the same right: the king. Every woman dresses as a queen.

Arab women also have the right to cover their faces. Men may not; for a man, to do so would be a crime. Now, in Arab/Muslim culture, who else is conventionally shown with their face covered? God, and God's prophets.

Not exactly slumming it here, girls, are we?

Yes, women are, for the sake of modesty, expected to cover their hair, and their legs and arms—voluntarily, everywhere except some parts of Saudi Arabia and Iran, but there is some social pressure. But then, so are men.

Operation Odyssey Dawn

2011-03-22T09:17:00.000-07:00

Who's definitely engaged: Spain, Norway, Belgium, France, Italy, USA, Canada, Denmark. Four Qatari Mirages have engaged.

This information is probably incomplete, but I do not want to include any phantom aircraft--only definite participants, planes known to have already flown.

Canada: 6 F-18s
US: 12 F-16s, 10 F-15s, 3 B-2s, Tomahawks, cruise missiles
Denmark: 6 F-16s
Spain: 4 F-18s, 1 B707
France: 8 Rafales, 4 Mirage 2000s
Britain: ? Tornados, 10 Typhoons, Tomahawks
Italy: 4 F-16s, 6 Tornados, 4 Typhoons
Norway: 6 F-16s
Qatar: 4 Mirage 2000s
Norway: 6 F-16s

Why Ghaddafi Can't Win

2011-03-07T10:36:00.000-08:00

All the talk about 'humanitarian concerns” and “holding the Libyan government to account” is mostly jive. A lot more killing in Subsaharan Africa would never have raised such outrage among Western governments. The difference is that 1) Libya has a lot of oil that is very convenient to European markets, and 2) if Libya creates an ongoing refugee crisis, it will be European countries to which people will flock for asylum.

This being so, Europe cannot let the current fighting carry on for much longer. But it is far from a matter of indifference which way the battle goes. Ghaddafi has been about the worst possible customer for Europe to try to deal with—he was until recently an active participant in state terrorism. That's not just the Lockerbie bombing; he was also reputedly the primary funder of the IRA and the ETA for many years. So the powers of Europe would be delighted to be rid of him, and almost any other likely government would be preferable in their eyes, though no doubt they fear the “Islamist” option.

Moreover, several Western governments have been imprudent enough to already call for Ghaddafi's resignation, and indeed prosecution for war crimes. If we wins now, he is entirely likely, given his history, to bear a grudge, and to act on it. And, sitting on all that oil, he could.

So the governments of Europe simply cannot afford to let Ghaddafi win. If he looks like winning, they will necessarily intervene. The prospect is also attractive for the possibility of influencing the makeup and possible policies of a future Libyan government, and for establishing a case for a quid pro quo in future. The only reason they are not already on the ground is the sense that the rebels and their provisional government does not want them.

If the provisional government begins to lose, they will. They will get help more or less the instant it is clear they want it.

Can the Europeans, as a practical matter, make a difference? Sure they can. While on paper Ghaddafi might seem to command a large and well-equipped force, events to date have proven this is not so. Small, disorganized bands of untrained amateurs carrying little more than rifles have defeated them repeatedly. A no-fly zone might easily be enough to turn the tide; so, it looks, would a well-equipped and trained ground force of only a few thousand men.

Britain has already shown itself embarrassingly eager to get involved. they have announced the 600-man Black Watch is on 24-hour standby for deployment to Libya. So it seems likely they could scramble 1,000 if needed, and promptly; the distances here are not great. If Britain can send a thousand, and seems ready to, France would probably want to send an equivalent, if not indeed a greater force—France puts great store on its relations with the Arab world, with which it has a great deal of history. Germany can probably muster a similar number, now that it is past its taboo on military ops; and memories of the glory days of the Afrika Corps, on this same ground, may make the move temptingly popular with their voters and their officers. Italy is not often a big participant in such things, but Libya is a special case for them. As the former colonial power, their interests there, not to mention their dependence on Libyan oil, are massive. Throw in a thousand soldiers each, and you have a core European force of 4,000, probably enough already to carry the day—not just through fighting, but in training and arming the many eager local volunteers. Of course, other European nations will probably feel under some obligation to chip in—perhaps another 2000 combined? Spain, for example, might feel some romantic urge to get back into the lands of the Moors for a while, not to mention possible grudges over ETA. That's 6,000.

Now there's America. It's busy in Afghanistan now, but would not want to be entirely left out. Surely they can pull in 2,000 troops on short notice—8,000.

At that point, the likely umbrella becomes NATO, rather than the EU. And NATO includes Turkey. Turkey has a large and powerful military, and Turkey, also a former colonial power, also has vast interests in Libya. Turkey also has interests in impressing the Europeans, in hopes of achieving membership in the EU, and in impressing the revolting Arabs, in hopes of becoming the established model and centre of the current apparent Arab move to representative democracy. I expect they'd be eager to sent 2,000 troops if they were welcome. NATO would have good reason to welcome them—prevents the force from looking too distinctly Christian. Ten thousand.

Egypt also has a large and wealthy military. They are in a sense rather busy now, but not at military operations. Libya is only next door for them. As a matter of prestige, it would be awkward to be left out; they have every reason to hate Ghaddafi; they have every hope to also become a model for the Arab democratic movement; the participation would cost them relatively little, Libya being so close and over land; the enterprise looks safe, and like good training. A great opportunity to collect some fast prestige and popular support for the new government. Sounds like another two thousand would be reasonable. Twelve thousand. Not NATO, but the thing could be billed as a joint NATO-Egyptian enterprise.

A few others might be heard from: Canada hates to be left out, and would probably send a few. Australia would also feel some popular nostalgia for the days of the Desert Rats and the Siege of Tobruk. Other countries are likely to lobby to participate in small ways, as usually happens, in order to build up some credit with either the EU or US or both, and in order to give their military some combat training.

But we're already well above the number that is ever likely to be needed in order to drive Ghaddafi out.

Captain Capitalism on Men's Place in the World

2011-02-25T23:09:00.000-08:00

Captain Capitalism: When Men Leave the Market

The Irish of Canada

2011-02-24T00:06:00.001-08:00

It's Only a Westernized Elite

2011-02-22T07:21:00.000-08:00

When the young people gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square, my Middle Eastern friends assured me, and so did the BBC and CNN, that this was only the educated, Weternized, urban young. Out in the countryside, it was likely that everyone lstill loved Mubarak.

A few days ago, both my Middle Eastern friends and the BBC were saying almost the same thing about Libya and Ghaddafi. Okay, the folks in Benghazi didn't like him; but he was wildly popular. It was just a tribal conflict. They would never riot in Tripoli.

My Middle Eastern friends have been saying the same, of course, about Iran for years. Even though everyone I know who has actually been to Iran in the last few years comes back saying they cannot find anyone who will admit to supporting the Ahmedinejad regime. But my Middle Eastern friends assure me quite forcefully that he is very popular. The people love him; the people support his programme. It is only a few Westernized, educated urban types who are rioting in the streets.

And they belive the same about China, my Middle Eastern friends.

But surely the flaw in this logic is obvious. My English-speaking, professional, well-educated Middle Eastern friends—they are themselves precisely the type of people they are insisting is pro-Western and anti-regime. So are the Middle Eastern reporters on the BBC. And if you meet this type, you find them to be, like my friends, actually resolutely anti-Western and pro any leftist regime. Something here has gotten reversed.

Yet this is what one would expect: that they would be anti-Western and pro-regime. After all, these urbanized, educated types are the ones doing best in the system as it is; why would they oppose it or want to overthrow it? They are the ruling class. Moreover, as the ruling class, they have every reason to scapegoat the West. If everything is not the West's fault, if the West is not secretly controlling everything, then they are in power and in charge; the necessary alternative is then to blame themselves.

And so when we see protesters gathering in urban squares in countries like Egypt, Libya, China, or Iran, in any generally underdeveloped country, and they seem to be well-educated and articulate in English, we are very wrong to suppose this represents only a tiny minority of opinion. It does, in a sense—but it represents the ruling class. This is especially true in a leftist regime, becuase leftist regimes councentrate power in the urban, well-educated, which is to say the bureaucratic, class.

It is pure leftist fantasy, if not a conscious lie, to suppose that the poor support leftist regimes and oppose rightist regimes. The poor, whether in city or countryside, essentially always support regime change. If you are poor, there is nowhere to go but up, so any change is likely to be an improvement. And the poor are by definition those who are not doing well under the present regime.

So when we see this wealthy, well-educated, Westernized, urban elite too turn against the regime, in particular if it is a leftist regime, we see a regime that has lost the support of even its natural constituency. It is a pretty likely sign of a regime in its death throes.

Bernard Nathanson Dead at 84 | Daily News | NCRegister.com

2011-02-22T06:29:00.000-08:00

Bernard Nathanson Dead at 84 | Daily News | NCRegister.com

Hitchcock does Ghaddafi

2011-02-22T04:20:00.000-08:00

Muammar Ghaddafi has recently appeared on Libyan TV, for only 15 seconds, apparently solely to prove to Libyans that he is still in Tripoli, not in Venezuela or some other part of Libya.

So how do we know the video was indeed shot in Libya? Two reasons, according to Al Jazeera: first, because Ghaddafi is holding an umbrella, and mentions that it is raining. It was indeed raining in Tripoli last night, a fairly rare occurrence for Tripoli. Second, the building behind him is shown in some detail, as if to make sure it is recognizable, and is apparently a museum in Tripoli.

Two things make me wonder, though. First, Ghaddafi is holding up an open umbrella even though he is sitting inside the cab of a truck. He obviously has no need for it—methinks therefore it is a calculated prop. Second, the building behind him is apparently made of brick, yet there is a strong glare on the brickwork directly behind Ghaddafi from what appear to be studio lights. Brickwork does not produce glare; but a photograph would. The shadows also seem to fall on it flat, as if the building has no contours or even texture. In other words, it looks as if the building behind him is really a backdrop photograph set up in a studio. That studio could be anywhere, including Venezuela.

Egypt

2011-02-03T22:47:00.000-08:00

I am struck by how stupid the Egyptian Mubarak regime seems to be, particularly about public relations. But I shouldn't be. First, bad people are almost necessarily stupid people. Second, an oppressive regime almost inevitably loses all its survival skills over time by never having to fight for survival.

Their worst move yet was, now that all the televisions in the world had been trained on Tahrir Square, and everyone had started to identify with the protesters, to send in armed thugs--in full view of the cameras--to rough them up. Before that, Mubarak might have had a chance to hang on until September, and at least have chosen his own successor. Now, he'll be lucky to last a couple more days. Even if the governments of the US, UK, France, Germany Turkey, and so on, secretly wanted Mubarak to stay and feared the alternative, they need, being democracies, to heed popular opinion at home. And because Egypt currently relies on massive foreign aid, this matters in Egypt too.

Their second dumbest move was for the Prime Minister to publicly blame foreign news channels for at least some of the troubles, and to have the police start to rough up journalists. What could be dumber than to expect journalists not to report a story that makes them look like heroes, to their audience and to their boss? But at the same time, they have ensured that, given any possible chance to spin the reporting of events to the government's disadvantage, they will.

Really, these people are not fit for office on grounds of intelligence alone.

As to the protesters and how broadly backed they are, I can testify that they at least seem broadly backed by the Arab man in the street generally. I know this from conversations over the past few days with Bahraini cab drivers. Cab drivers, like barbers, are great for a quick reaction from the general public. There is no sympathy for Mubarak there; and the issue in their mind is clear, and can be expressed in one word: "corruption."

Mubarak's peace with Israel, or the idea of an Islamist state--that seems, in the minds of ordinary Bahrainis at least, to be purely a red herring. A fear Mubarak and his group is able to exploit just as South Africa's apartheid rulers, or Hitler, were able to exploit fears of Communism. According to my taxi drivers, religion is never a casus belli. Religious hatred is just something corrupt Middle Eastern rulers like to exploit to distract attention from their corruption. (This does not mean, mind, that the Arab man in the street is reconciled to Israel, itself in a sense a religious state).

Ripples: Algeria's president has promised now to lift that nation's eternal state of emergency. If Mubarak ends up being bundled onto a plane, as it appears will happen, those ripples will probably reach further.

How Glenn Gould Ended Communism

2011-02-03T22:21:00.000-08:00

An interesting piece on the political power of art.

Why Dictators Fear Artists

Al Jazeera

2011-01-31T08:30:00.000-08:00

Among other things, this crisis in the Middle East is making the reputation of Al Jazeera.

The Army Has Been Called In

2011-01-31T08:21:00.000-08:00

It appears as of today that the Bahraini army has been called into the streets as a precautionary measure. There's a soldier installed in the lobby of this hotel. There are two at each of the doors of the Gold Souk a block away, and a couple of policemen patrolling inside the enclosed souk a block in the other direction.

I cannot imagine any unrest here, but they are not taking any chances.

On the other hand, the BBC is back in business.

Never Let Me Go

2011-01-31T03:55:00.001-08:00

Watched a depressing movie on a recent long flight—the only chance I get to see non-family fare. Not that I'm complaining; I doubt I'm missing much. But this movie, “Never Let Me Go,” based on a novel by Japanese-British author Kazuo Ishiguro, struck me as important. It was unrelentingly dire, as only Japanese or British things can be, lacking either the Christian certainty of redemption by the movie's end, or even the pagan Greek sense of an inevitability and a justice to the fall. Yet it was right in this case—that is, it was accurate to the realities involved. It was just very hard to watch, and very hard to recover from watching.

The story is science fiction, but set in an alternative present. Cloning has been discovered, in the 1950s, and, in a society cheerily confident that clones are not human beings, a generations or two of clones have been raised by the time of the movie specifically to supply replacement organs until they “complete”--i.e., die from it. In this way, society has extended the life expectancy of the average non-clone to a wizened century or more.

The move is, inevitably, told from the point of view of the clones themselves: befriending, sharing childhood fears, falling in love, being murdered by degrees. They show an eerie acceptance of their fate which is itself profoundly disturbing—there is no thought of revolt or true escape; only attempts to bargain around the edges. They are held in check in part, as the truly oppressed always are, by self-loathing. They inevitably buy in to the socially dominant view and even believe among themselves that they are not entirely real.

I am amazed that the movie ever got made—though not suprised to hear it ended its first run as “an undeniable financial disappointment.” Did the backers understand what it is about?

After all, what really did happen in the 1950s? The sexual revolution. The movie shows more or less exactly what has happened to a significant portion of the generations since then, their lives and futures systematically sacrificed to the pleasures of those elders already here.

Imagine, in the first place, if all those aborted children, between then and now, had instead been allowed to grow up and only been aborted when their internal organs became useful. The principle is the same, and it would in a way be both more morally justifiable and more humane. And of course, the victims of abortion are as completely powerless as those in the movie; there can be no thought of revolt or escape.

But it is not just the aborted who are in this position, either. It is all the children raised without fathers, thanks to all those no-fault divorces with big payouts to the Mom and restraining orders given on a woman's testimony alone. It is all the children raised without much if any parental attention at all, thanks to mothers off in the workforce fulfilling themselves and making the big bucks; just like the hopeless clones of the movie, parentless, in their state schools. Overly rich and unfunded pension schemes locked in by law are the least of this shameless exploitation of the young, though they have been in the news a lot lately.

Am I the only one who notices that this film is a documentary, and not science fiction? After all, nobody else seems to realize this about the similarly bleak 1984, and it's been around since 1948.

As for the film, I predict it will live more or less as long as the civilization does. The best movies rarely do well on their first run.

All Quiet in Manama

2011-01-30T23:50:00.000-08:00

BBC still breaking up in Bahrain. The Bahraini government has expressed its support for the "government and people" of Egypt, presumably meaning they are still backing Mubarak. So are the Saudis. There is no sign of unrest here, and all the news is coming through. CNN, Al Jazeera, and the BBC are all fully available over the Internet, and the local newspapers are carrying full coverage.

Sudan Too...

2011-01-30T08:33:00.001-08:00

According to Al Jazeera.

The Man in the Street

2011-01-30T08:30:00.000-08:00

An interesting, and encouraging, observation from Syria, courtesy of Al Jazeera:

"The most important message is that people can make the change. Before it was always army officers that lead a coup."

"It may not be tomorrow or a few months but I'm sure it is like dominoes. Before there was always an ideology - pan-Arabism or being an enemy of Israel. But now people are simply looking for their personal freedom, for food, education, a good life. The days of ideology are over."

Let's hope so. No pie-in-the-sky, just getting rid of corruption and oppressive government regulation.

BBC is Breaking Up

2011-01-30T08:21:00.000-08:00

Currently sitting in a hotel room in Bahrain, trying to follow the news from Egypt. I find it a little unsettling that BBC is breaking up, virtually unwatchable. All the other channels are fine. The weather is fine. I see that Al Jazeera has been shut down in Egypt. Makes me wonder.

There is zero sign of any unrest here in Bahrain. The newspapers seem to be covering everything fully, all the news is available online.

Looks like unrest is spreading, though. Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, now Jordan.

Another Berlin Wall Falling?

2011-01-28T08:02:00.000-08:00

OK; looks to me as if Egypt's government is going down. I did not foresee this, either. But a long worldwide recession like the one we are experiencing is a time of the breaking of nations. As and if it continues, there will be more crackups. If Tunisia goes, and Egypt goes---? Egypt's influence over the rest of the Arab world is immense. My choice for next most likely domino is Yemen. I'd short any bets on Libya, Syria, Algeria, or Sudan.

I think the Arab monarchies are generally safe—they have done rather well by their populations in comparison to the republics, and are a different kettle of fish. The main concern here is corruption, and the monarchies, for predictable reasons, have been much cleaner than the republics. Make no mistake, the average Arab believes in and wants democracy—but the monarchies of the Gulf actually already have it, in its purest form, so long as their borders with each other remain open, and their citizens wealthy enough to cross them when they choose. It is the bigger, poorer republics that do not. The general dislike of Saudi Arabia among Western Liberals does not change this truth.

I would assume the hidden public discontent is greatest and the risk of a fall now is greatest for countries for which the military-republican-strongman government system of Nasser's Egypt has served as a model. Hence Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Algeria are the nearest dominoes, if that's the game we're playing.

This does not apply to Iran, but Iran is already highly unstable; there is a good chance shock waves within the larger region may shake free more anti-government forces in Iran as well.

Any revolution risks chaos, or producing worse repression. But imagine a world in which all those nations suddenly become genuine democracies, more or less as suddenly happened in Eastern Europe a generation ago. We then have a huge new Muslim democratic bloc across the Middle East: Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, all now joining the pro-Western and essentially benevolent monarchies of Morocco, Jordan, Saudi, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman—and perhaps also seeking new alliances with established Muslim democracies like Malaysia and Turkey. That would be a game-changer, in world terms, and it seems to me very much in a good way. We would have a vast new Muslim mainstream on a model very different from that planned and hoped for by al Qaeda. Dissident energies that might have been wasted on supporting al Qaeda's insanities may generally find an outlet now instead in building this prosperous new Muslim society. It seems to me we might suddenly no longer see a large rift between Islam and the West, any more than we see a large rift any more between Eastern and Western Europe. And there is no reason, to my mind, why a society cannot be both fully Muslim and fully democratic.

I would also expect Egypt, under any kind of new government that was not corrupt, to quickly and massively boom economically. So too for the rest of North Africa and the Levant. While held back by bad government, these countries have an extremely well-educated workforce; indeed a spectacularly well-educated workforce; and that is where true prosperity comes from.

Here's hoping.

A Brief and Sad History of the Modern Left

2011-01-25T17:49:00.000-08:00

1950s through 1960s – The Sexual Revolution. With the advent of what used to be called The Pill, many believed that everything had changed. Sex was no longer tied to childbirth, and could be purely recreational. For obvious reasons, this idea was attractive, regardless of its innate pausibility. In order to make this happen, of course, "conventional morality" could and should be changed. Feminism too emerged from this notion, along with its milder masculine equivalent, "the Playboy philosophy"—women were now "freed" from men and children and into the world of work.

1970s through 1980s – The Right to Choose. For whatever reason, darn it, women continued to get pregnant. Nature was not cooperating. Rather than abandon the "sexual revolution"—too many people had too much invested in it now—unrestricted abortion became necessary to keep the dream alive. This was an important watershed—it now because necessary, in order to stay on the left, to dismiss not just "conventional morality," but morality plain and straight up. Here is where the left split with the religious generally, and became openly anti-religious. Homosexual rights emerged at this time, mostly as a stick with which to beat
"conventional morality" as "prejudiced."

1980s through 1990s – Postmodernism. Though it became well-known as a specific, named, doctrine only circa the 1990s, "postmodernism" appeared almost immediately and concurrent with the move to permit abortion, as its necessary justification. I remember hearing it espoused already in the early seventies, and specifically as a justification for abortion. In a nutshell, the doctrine is this: there is no truth, and there is no right and wrong. One chooses to believe what is convenient. At this point, the left became, not just explicitly immoral, but also, for all intents and purposes, insane. It turned its back on reality.

1990s through 2010 – The Culture Wars. Postmodernism ended all chance at dialogue. When there is no possibility of appealing to conscience, evidence, or reason, a raw struggle for power is all that is possible. By embracing postmodernism, the ruling professional elite and those in power also generally removed all moral restraints and restraints of conscience on their own actions--an attractive thing in itself, for them. Postmodern thought therefore systematically and intentionally destroyed all ethical traditions, at least for those who bought in to postmodernism, leaving in academics, politics, and the professions, in places of power generally, only the reckless exercise of narrow self-interest and power for its own sake. This is crucial--ruling elites must be bound by a strong ethical tradition, or all hell breaks loose.

The present – The Tea Party. The great mass of the people are partly shielded from the intellectual currents of the day by class prejudice, ignorance (not stupidity) and lack of interest. Unschooled human nature, happily including basic conscience and common sense, is stronger here. This can be a good thing, when the intellectual elite has gone bizarro. To the average man, the left and the professions, inevitably, are progressively now revealing themselves—largely thanks to the new light and improved communication of the internet-- to be by and large both immoral and insane. This is also a matter of some immediate practical interest. When those in power are visibly incompetent and acting selfishly, the common man has every reason out of sheer self-interest to rebel.

Meanwhile, having rejected dialog and debate, contact with reality, and all tests of reason and evidence, the left and their client professions have systematically stripped themselves of any tools they would need to respond sensibly or to defend their position. They can only jabber nonsense.

This is interesting, if sad, as history; I think it is also interesting as a model of how insanity probably develops in an individual as well. A false premise leads one into sinful acts (the sexual revolution). Rather than repenting and returning to the path, one tries to cover up and to rationalize (abortion). This inevitably leads in the end to turning one's back on all objective checks—on God (postmodernism). One loses all touch with reality. Madness ensues.

Watching in Eerie Slow Motion as the Bomb Falls

2011-01-25T03:15:00.001-08:00

I get the growing sense that we are at one of history's great turning points. It is just hard to see how big it really is. But as whole lot of people seem to be heading right off a cliff.

There are turning points in history that seem to throw everything into relief: the fall of the Berlin Wall, Roe v. Wade, Altamont, the Lisbon earthquake (said to have ended the Romantic Era by suddenly demonstrating that Nature was not as cuddly as many thought). I think we have seen a succession of such moments just recently, a rapidly accelerating drumbeat of them.

Climategate was a big one, not just killing the Global Warming campaign, but throwing a lot of doubt on the trustworthiness of academics, experts, journalists, and governments. On the professional class.

The Tucson shootings-- or rather, the media reaction to them, trying to represent Loughner as a right-winger acting on orders or inspiration from the Tea Party—was a similar turning point, I think, visibly and audibly declaring the moral bankruptcy the legacy media and, to some extent, the entire political left.

Now the revelations about the abortionist Kermit Gosnell are going to be a tough one for a lot of people to forget. This is just the sort of thing that sticks in the mind whether you want it to or not. It may destroy the pro-choice (pro-abortion) movement, and it may even shake the common adulation for the medical profession.

I am well past feeling any joy about it all. No doubt, a lot of rascals are going to get their comeuppance, but most epochal changes also hurt a lot of good people. I think of the French Revolution.

As that sounded the death knell of the landed aristocracy, I suspect we are seeing the death knell now of the educated, professional class. And that is a much bigger deal. Just as there were some, indeed many, good people in the aristocracy, with their old code of gentility and chivalry, so there are some, indeed many, good people in the professions, with their Hippocratic oaths and Harvards and Confucian or Rabbinical ethical traditions. While I welcome the coming increase in human dignity and freedom from their (or rather, our) demise, I fear the good may be interred with their bones.

I Can Hardly Bear to Read This

2011-01-25T02:32:00.000-08:00

... but I guess it's important to acknowledge that it happened:

Horrific Details Come to Light about Philadelphia Abortionist - Marriage & Family - Home & Family - Catholic Online

Full Text of New English Missal Now Available Online

2011-01-23T19:51:00.000-08:00

https://wikispooks.com/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=2010+missal

Personally, I prefer it.

This new order of the mass will be implemented in the US in one year, starting with the beginning of the liturgical year in the Advent season, and probably in all other parts of the English-speaking world at about the same time.

As always, some folks are not going to like it. Changing the liturgy is always distressing, because it is changing a thing we all count on as the one eternal part of our lives. It should never be done lightly.

Still, from what I have seen, I like the new liturgy, and am looking forward to it.

The current English Mass, established in the early seventies, is kind of dumbed down. The concept seems to have been, in reaction to the general incomprehensibility of the old Latin, to go instead to the opposite extreme, and try to eliminate anything in the words of the Mass that might be even a little difficult to understand, even for the slowest slow learners in the congregation. What we have, as a result, is a kind of baby-talk mass, in which not only have the words been simplified into monotonously short, grammatically simple sentences, but any concepts that are a bit difficult or mysterious have been left out.

This might make sense for a technical manual, but it is probably not the best approach to a sacred liturgy. Liturgy is not the communicating of simple facts. It is an immersion in the good, the true, and—not incidentally—the beautiful. If some in the congregation do not fully understand what is going on... that is not the main consideration here. The mass is a sacrament, not a lesson. Not understanding is okay. Needing to understand is not.

So the new order of the mass has recovered such things as “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grevious fault,” “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof; but only say the word, and I shall be healed,” and “for many.”

You will no doubt be hearing more.

It's Baaaaack!

2011-01-23T04:16:00.000-08:00

Okay, all you fellow Baby Boomers. Do you remember thumbing through the Whole Earth Catalog back in your misspent youth?

All of it, in all the editions, is now available free online.

They warned us there'd be flashbacks.

http://www.wholeearth.com/issue/1010/

Citizens! Awake!

2011-01-20T00:30:00.000-08:00

Here is a cause that is near and dear to my heart. I cannot meaningfully sign their petition, but if you live in Ontario, Canada, please do consider signing it.

http://www.naturalmilk.org/

It is about allowing the legal sale of raw milk and raw milk products in Ontario. There are a number of issues here: the free market, the right of an individual to choose for himself, the right to work (as a farmer). And, as a practical matter, the right to the hobby of cheesemaking, which falls for some of us under the heading of the pursuit of happiness.

You just can't make decent cheese with pasteurized, homogenized milk, and preventing the public from acquiring it enforces a cheese monopoly.

Maxim

2011-01-18T22:01:00.000-08:00

All turns out well for those who love God.

St. Paul

Yep

2011-01-18T21:24:00.000-08:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8261740/Hedge-funds-bet-China-is-a-bubble-close-to-bursting.html

“We expect the economic fallout from a slowdown of China’s unsustainable levels of credit and growth to be as extraordinary as China’s economic outperformance over the past decade.”

I wish the Chinese people well, but I fear for their near-term future.

She Looks Smart in a Bikini

2011-01-18T04:24:00.000-08:00

True confessions time. Long ago, in my youth, my father once expressed the opinion that beautiful women are also more intelligent. This struck me and my siblings at the time, carefully trained to politically correct notions in the schools, as a laughable idea.

I have since realized that it is almost certainly true. It is true because, so long as society values both intelligence and beauty, intelligent men and women are going to have a better than average chance of mating with beautiful men and women, and vice versa. It follows that the next generation stands a better than average chance of being both intelligent and beautiful; and so it continues, the statistical advantage growing generation by generation.

Now a recent study confirms this:

http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2011/01/16/2011-01-16_beautiful_men_women_have_high_iqs_too_study.html

This logic, followed, goes interesting places. But we'd better just leave it there for now...

Tucson

2011-01-12T20:40:00.000-08:00

The shrillness and the utter unreality of the Mainstream/”Progressive” Media reaction to the Tucson shootings, it seems to me, show obvious indications of panic. It is as though in the back of their own minds is a nagging and growing voice of guilt that is issuing consciously in paranoia, specifically a paranoid fantasy that just about everyone in the general public now wants to kill them if given the chance, and in a wish to silence that voice of conscience by silencing all sounds of opposition.

It is the wild violence of a death rattle.

We may not hear much more from them after this. They have made themselves irrelevant.

And they will probably not be missed.

The Catholic Knight: FRAUD! As Many as HALF of all Sex-Abuse Claims Against Priests Are False

2011-01-12T09:35:00.000-08:00

The Catholic Knight: FRAUD! As Many as HALF of all Sex-Abuse Claims Against Priests Are False

The ultrasound that changed my life - Abby Johnson’s pro-life conversion in her own words | LifeSiteNews.com

2011-01-11T20:25:00.000-08:00

I just can't comment.

The ultrasound that changed my life - Abby Johnson’s pro-life conversion in her own words | LifeSiteNews.com

The Pulp.It

2011-01-09T01:00:00.000-08:00

A recent post, "What Did Jesus look like?" was recently featured by this aggregator. They are new, and readers may not be aware of them. Their service is a great way to keep up with the latest in Catholic thought generally. I visit regularly.

Oh, The Humanities--A Practical Illustration

2011-01-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

Jared Loughner--Arizona Daily Star.

A terrible thing has happened in Tucson, and six people are dead. Who's at fault?

Perhaps not the man who fired the gun, Jared Loughner, 22. It seems clear from what he has posted on Facebook and on YouTube that he was schizophrenic. He may have had no idea what he was doing. He certainly does not seem to have been motivated by any coherent, recognizable political philosophy. His main political concern seems to have been that too many people were illiterate.

But I do believe someone is to blame. As I have noted before on this site, there is some kind of “spiritual catastrophe,” to use Leonard Cohen's phrase, going on, since the Second World War ended, with rates of “mental illness” of all kinds ballooning. Surely, whoever or whatever is responsible for that spiritual catastrophe is responsible, at one remove, for this expression of that mental illness as well.

Jared Loughner, from the list of favourite books he left on Facebook, seems to have been an intelligent lad, and certainly ambitious to learn. Plato's Republic, Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto, Meno, Animal Farm, Brave New World; perhaps not ideal reading for a troubled young mind, but not light reading, in any case.

In Loughner's own mind, it seems, his beef was with the education system. Note his concern with illiteracy; a YouTube video he created also argues that the colleges are guilty of fraud and are unconstitutional. He was thrown out of college for disrupting classees.

I fear he may have been on the right track. It is disturbing on the face of it that such an apparently intelligent and eager student was not able to succeed in school. The schools and colleges no longer offer what he was apparently seeking: answers about life, about life in society, and about what is true. They either lack all awareness of such matters, or ban open discussion of them, and quite possibly look like exercises in mind control. At least some courses and some schools certainly are, self-consciously, exercises in mind control.

Would any of this bloodletting have happened had Jared Loughner received a proper liberal education, including a thorough grounding in some religious tradition and more broadly in the Humanities?

I doubt it, personally. First, I suspect that, being a bright lad, he would most probably have by now found the basic answers he sought. And he would have found them in the reassuring company of others also honestly seeking, and of benevolent authority. If so, I suspect he never would have experienced the horrifying visions and fantasies of schizophrenia in the first place. Had he, he at least would have been equipped with a decent road map and a moral compass to test each spirit and make sense of what he was experiencing.

Not to give this to our children is to throw them into the dark forest without the slightest basic training in survival. And the devil is real, and far more cunning than the Big Bad Wolf.

Oh, The Humanities!

2011-01-07T21:37:00.000-08:00

Every week there seems to be a new article published in some learned or intellectual journal reporting or lamenting the death of the humanities. Nobody sees much point in humanity any more. This does not strike me as a good sign.

Amazingly, a hundred and fifty years ago, formal education consisted of very little else. I have just been reading the biography of Thomas Arnold, the acknowledged founder of the English public (in both senses) school system, in Strachey's Eminent Victorians. What Arnold did at Rugby became the model not only for other English public schools, but also for the government schools then being instituted for the general public.

In Thomas's Rugby, no science was taught. Adding mathematics to the curriculum was Arnold's innovation.

So what was taught, and why? “That the classics should form the basis of all teaching was an axiom with Dr. Arnold,” writes Strachey. “Rather than have physical science the principal thing in my son's mind,” Arnold wrote in a letter, “I would gladly have him think that the sun went around the earth, and that the stars were so many spangles set in the bright blue firmament.” For all such stuff was trivia. “Surely the one thing needful for a Christian and an Englishman to study is Christian, moral, and political philosophy.” All philosophy, all the time.

Arnold's opinion was plainly shared by the general public of the day—the obvious proof of this is that they fell over each other trying to get their children into Rugby, and all other English public schools imitated this formula. In Tom Brown's Schooldays, Tom's father observes, “What is a child sent to school for? ... I don't care a straw for Greek participles, or the digamma... If he'll only turn out a brave, helpful, truth-telling Englishman, and a Christian, that's all I want.”

This approach was not new with Arnold. Arnold was a “reformer,” but the essence of his reform was to return the schools to a high moral tone after a period of decline in this regard.

On assuming the post of headmaster of Rugby, Arnold also took Holy Orders to become an Anglican priest; the position was automatically a clerical one. Teachers were, first and foremost, “moralists,” as Hughes refers to them causally in Tom Brown's Schooldays, and Arnold's own chief contribution to the education of his charges was his Sunday sermon. Language was taught, not for the sake of being able to speak it—Arnold believed this could never be achieved in a school setting—but for the purpose of “forming the human mind in youth.” Understanding how a language worked was a useful proxy, the closest we had, for understanding how thought works. The classical and biblical stories studied, in turn, furnished the mind with important life lessons to be referred to from then on at any time of need.

The idea was to develop the whole person, to develop good judgement and good character, on the premise that this would allow him or her to rise to whatever particular demands might come.

The Confucian tradition in China started with exactly the same basic premise. The Analects preserve this basic principle: “A gentleman is not a tool.” A gentleman can always pick up and discard the specific tools needed for the specific task.

We now believe just about the opposite, that education should be practical training for a livelihood, and so all about practical skills in science, math, reading, and so forth. This is the essence of the current objection to the humanities: that they lead to no particular job at the other end.

They used to, of course: they used to lead to two particular jobs: teaching, and the clergy. They should still. But leave that aside; in the old days, the humanities were not for a job, but for a career; or rather, for a life.

Were our Victorian ancestors so completely wrong? They did reasonably well for themselves, after all, on an objective historical assessment. They managed, for example, to pull together the largest empire the world has ever known; collectively, the nations of Europe took over almost the entire globe in their day. Some, true, may call that a moral failure as much as a practical success; perhaps so, but we must not overlook the practical accomplishment. And so far as morals go, the Victorians also ended slavery and first developed stable representative democracy on a large scale. In their free time, despite their lack of basic training in engineering or science, they put together the Industrial Revolution and most of the groundwork of modern science. They vastly increased human material prosperity, particularly in Europe, but in truth worldwide.

Have we, in the Twentieth and Twenty-first centuries, done better? We should have—we have had the benefit of standing on their shoulders. We are richer than they were, materially; our technology is more advanced. But we have also lived, as they did not, through history's greatest mass murders and worst totalitarian governments, and the spiritual crisis of the postwar era which has seen unprecedented levels of mental illness. All the arts seem in decline, and the developed West as a whole is in absolute decline demographically. I think it is even fair to say that the end of our civilization almost seems in sight. We no longer believe, as the Victorians did, in the inevitable progress of mankind.

Perhaps, in the end, they were simply naive, and we know better. Otherwise, it rather looks as if they were right, and we are wrong.

The Victorians themselves were in no doubt that their success sprang directly from their educational system. “The Battle of Waterloo,” Wellington famously observed, “was won on the playing fields of Eton.” Tom Brown's Schooldays refers to the products of the English school system being “scattered over the whole empire on which the sun never sets, and whose general diffusion I take to be the chief cause of that empire's stability.” “For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, homespun way, they have been subduing the earth in most English counties, and leaving their mark in American forests and Australian uplands.”

Hughes, the author of Tom Brown's Schooldays, goes on to describe what he sees as the recognizable characteristics of a product of the Victorian English public school. They could argue fiercely, yet retain love and respect for their adversary; “no failures knock them up, or make them hold their hands”; they “go on believing and fighting to a green old age”; “failures slide off them like July rain off a duck's back feathers.”

Was the author wrong in making these claims? Surely all of us have noticed, as I have, that having gone to a certain school often makes a difference in a personality. And surely the attributes the author describes fit perfectly a particularly admirable type of English character, a Winston Churchill or a Margaret Thatcher—neither of whom were yet born when this description was written.

That's what the humanities can do; albeit the particular ideals and virtues developed may vary depending on the education's emphasis.

And it seems almost systematically what our current culture now lacks, and needs: that sense of optimism despite current setbacks; that sense of a purpose and a mission in life; that sense of a responsibility to the future; and, perhaps first and foremost, that sense of fair play and common courtesy towards an adversary.

Even from a purely practical standpoint, the case for this educational approach seems stronger today than it ever was in Victoria's day. As has often been rightly noted, technology and the social circumstances it produces are changing so fast that the practical skills and specific information we learn in grade school now—or even as a university undergrad--are likely to be of little or no use to us by the time we are in the workforce, let alone by the time we retire. All that drill at multiplication and long division is rather less useful now that we can all do quick calculations on our cell phones. All that memorization of dates and events matters less when we can Google a fact instantly in the same way. All that sweat at declining French irregular verbs is soon going to be rather less useful as our cell phones also instantly translate.

Devoting long years to purely practical education is, in essence, wasting our children's time.

What we need is people who have a proper sense of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of what the point of it all is, and of sense and nonsense. We need gentlemen, not tools. The tool is the computer.

How did we get it backwards? The educational model apparently flipped over in about the nineteen teens or twenties. The highly influential writer Charles Bobbit, in 1912, sought quite explicitly to apply the newly efficient procedures of industry to the schools. Ford's assembly line could be usefully transferred to education. Students were little manufactured products, and the process of their manufacture could be both standardized and accelerated, deliberately to meet the needs of industry or the state.

Woodrow Wilson, for one, was admirably blunt: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."

One wonders how much this change of focus has in turn produced the modern world. Abraham Lincoln once observed that “the philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next.” Count one generation from 1912, and we have Fascism, Stalinism, Skinnerian behaviourism, and the idea that the individual exists for the benefit of industry or the state. Count two, and we have the tumult of the Sixties, perhaps a direct revolt, if perhaps hopelessly misdirected, against these views.

Is it still possible to reverse this decline? Perhaps not; another generation may well be too late, given that we have largely stopped reproducing, and the worst of it is that we do not yet seem even to be looking in the right direction. The humanities are still declining, indeed apparently now in free-fall. Current ideas of educational reform cluster around standardized testing; yet any thing that can be clearly measured on a standardized test is a thing ripe for computerization.

We desperately need to rediscover the human. If we do not, the culture that first does will bury us.

The Truly Religious Stand Together against Violence

2011-01-07T08:46:00.000-08:00

Egypt's Muslims attend Coptic Christmas mass, serving as "human shields" - Ahram Online

What Did Jesus Look Like?

2011-01-03T02:19:00.000-08:00

Hey! Who woke me up after 2,000 years?

What do we know about what Jesus looked like, and how do we know it?

The question is more important theologically than might first appear. Jesus is God as God chose to reveal Himself to us. Given that it is valuable to have a personal relationship with God, it is valuable to have a clear image of him for prayer and meditation. The best and clearest image is surely the one God himself chose.

Unfortunately, recently, a spanner has been thrown into the works.

You might have seen the picture above. It is now all over the Internet; it is the first thing you are liable to see if you Google “what Jesus looked like.” It has been embraced and promoted by the BBC, Popular Mechanics, CNN, National Geographic, and any number of other media outlets. It is a claimed “scientific” reconstruction of what Jesus really looked like, using computer modelling. Being “scientific,” it is of course embraced as truer than the traditional view—after all, ”science” trumps “religion” as our true faith any day of the week.

And it is nonsense.

Consider the basic premise: It is based in the first place on a reconstruction of the sort forensic labs do on murder victims, built up from a computer model of a first-century Palestinian skull.

Let's assume that modern forensic science is good enough to reconstruct what someone looks like accurately from a skull. It does not matter—because this is not Jesus's skull. Think for a moment how likely it would be for someone to come up with an accurate image of you by choosing a random photograph of another person who lived in the same country in the same century? Odds of winning the lottery would be better.

But the nonsense only begins there. There is lots more to come. You will note that the image has short hair—unlike the traditional, long-haired image. Hair length, of course, cannot be determined from a skull. No; it turns out the “scientific” reason for this touch is that St. Paul in one epistle passage advised Christian men to wear their hair short. But St. Paul was writing in Greek to Greeks living in Greek lands; I thought the original premise was that Jesus was going to look like a Palestinian Jew? Jesus preached in synagogues and was called “rabbi”--and Judaism required men to wear their hair and beards uncut. If Jesus's own appearance was so much at variance from the norm of the place and time, and from the religious requirement, we would surely have mention of it.

The “scientists,” in other words, are contradicting their own first premise, and for one purpose alone: to come up with an image as different as possible from the traditional view. We should be aware of this motive, and we should judge their claims accordingly. You're never going to get any press these days by saying the traditional religious view is right.

You will note again that the scientists's image is considerably darker-skinned than that of the traditional image. The press coverage makes a point of this: “dark olive skin.” This is no doubt politically correct these days, when other authors commonly try to claim that the Egyptian Pharaohs were black. But it seems highly unlikely to be historically accurate. Modern Jews are far from being dark-olive in colour. Granted, they have no doubt intermarried over the years; but modern Palestinian Arabs are also not olive-skinned. While there is a natural range, one commonly finds today Palestinian Arabs with quite pale skin, sometimes even blue eyes and blond hair. I know; I have taught some of them.

It is hard to imagine why the pigmentation of the Jews two thousand years ago would have been darker. The Arabs, after all, are supposed to have come from further south, and some of the inhabitants of the Southern Arabian Peninsula can be quite dark. In Jesus's time, by contrast, and in Galilee in particular, thanks to Alexander's conquests, there had been a rather recent influx of Greek blood from the north.

This new “scientific” image also shows a broader, shorter nose than we are used to seeing—Jesus is usually shown with a rather long and thin nose. Odd, again, that the scientists would do that—I believe nose length cannot be determined from the skull since it is build from cartilage, not bone. After all, modern Palestinian Arabs tend to have long, thin noses, like the traditional depiction, not bulbous ones like this modern illustration.

Jesus as he appears in ancient mosaic at Hagia Sophia. Note the long, "Arabian" nose.

It is amazing what nonsense you can get away with simply by misappropriating the word “science.” Ask Marx, or Freud.

So this image is not just arbitrary in origin, but probably systematically wrong. And, of course, damaging to numberless spiritual lives.

But to be fair, where do we get our own current idea of what Jesus looked like? Is it, in turn, and as these “scientists” and the press they have attracted assert, arbitrary?

That is what the “scientists” claim: the original Popular Mechanics story notes “nowhere in the New Testament is Jesus described, nor have any drawings of him ever been uncovered.” But this is not, strictly, true; not true, at least, unless you reject certain images that are indeed claimed to be portraits of Jesus indeed taken from life. At least three have been uncovered, and they have indeed been influential downthrough the ages in forming our common image of Jesus: the Mandylion of Edessa, Veronica's Veil, and the Shroud of Turin.

The Shroud of Turin, I assume, needs no introduction.

A modern reconstruction of Jesus's face from the Shroud of Turin.

Veronica's veil is supposed to be a headscarf with which St. Veronica wiped the face of Jesus as he carried his cross. “Veronica” is unlikely to have been the real name of the woman involved, since it simply means “true image.” However, the story appears quite early, in the “Acts of Pilate,” and references to the veil itself as a relic can be traced back to the fourth century.

Veronica's Veil.

The Mandylion of Edessa is a portrait held to have been painted by a court painter from Edessa during Jesus's lifetime, at the request of the king of Edessa. It was carefully preserved as the “first icon,” but the original may have disappeared during the French Revolution. Nevertheless, it served as a touchstone throughout earlier centuries, and two reputed copies survive.

Copy of Mandylion preserved in Genoa; or possibly the original.

Copy of Mandylion preserved in Vatican.

Of course, all three relics may be forgeries. But it is worth noting that they all agree on Jesus's appearance.

It would be natural, surely, for followers to preserve Jesus's shroud; though an image burned onto it would of course be supernatural. So too for Veronica's Veil. That the images require a supernatural explanation is of course far from a disproof, given that we are dealing with a man claimed to be God himself. Rather, their apparent supernatural origin and state of preservation are themselves arguments for their validity.

It seems at least plausible, in turn, that a neighbouring king might have sought a portrait of Jesus. The gospel tells us that the Nazarene prophet stirred up considerable interest not just in Judea, but in neighbouring kingdoms—we are about to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany. “All of Judea” came out to see John the Baptist, “and the whole region of the Jordan.” Edessa was reasonably close culturally and geographically, in a time of great regional commerce, and is known to have embraced Christianity very early.

There are other claimed ancient relics, with less plausible pedigrees. We also have surviving written descriptions of Jesus that are at least claimed to be very old; and they, again, conform to the traditional image. An intriguing example is the supposed letter of Publius Lentullus, claimed to have been at one time procurator for Judea:

"his hair of (the colour of) the chestnut, full ripe, plain to His ears, whence downwards it is more orient and curling and wavering about His shoulders. In the midst of His head is a seam or partition in His hair, after the manner of the Nazarenes. His forehead plain and very delicate; His face without spot or wrinkle, beautified with a lovely red; His nose and mouth so formed as nothing can be reprehended; His beard thickish, in colour like His hair, not very long, but forked; His look innocent and mature; His eyes grey, clear, and quick"

But all of this is almost beside the point. We have one other authority for the traditional appearance of Jesus, and it is unassailable: inspiration. From his own time to ours, Jesus has repeatedly appeared in visions to the saints; we have their witness, and he, being God, is entirely capable of ensuring its reliability. Indeed, we also have the witness of the great artists themselves. No artist becomes great without inspiration, and God, being God, can and would preserve the image within accurate bounds for our benefit, particularly in art especially commissioned for a religious and meditative purpose. You can presumably only deny this likelihood if you assume in the first instance that he is not God.

Egypt arrests 7 over deadly Coptic church attack in Alexandria | World news | The Guardian

2011-01-02T19:21:00.000-08:00

Egypt arrests 7 over deadly Coptic church attack in Alexandria | World news | The Guardian

Patron Saint Generator

2010-12-30T21:03:00.000-08:00

A fun tradition for this New Year's Eve: let this patron saint generator pick a patron saint for you for the upcoming year. Your job, should you accept it, is to read about and pray to this saint throughout the year, taking him or her as a spiritual guide.

This is a modern adaptation of an ancient tradition. The core idea is not to choose a patron saint, but to let the saint choose you--for they know better than we who might be best for us.

http://jenniferfulwiler.com/saints/

Patron saint for this blog for 2011, based on the generator: Saint Katharine Drexel.

St. Kate of Philadelphia

Biggest Biblical Blind spots of "Fundamentalist" Bible Christians

2010-12-30T20:39:00.000-08:00

Biggest biblical blind spots of ‘Bible Christians’ « Divine Life – A Blog by Eric Sammons