La Belle Dame Sans Merci

 

Fr. Calvin Robinson makes a compelling case in a recent blog post that feminism is the most destructive ideology of all time.

He does the math. 

“Add up all the wars throughout human history, and they amount to an estimated 1.5 billion deaths. That is inclusive of combatants, civilian casualties and those who died of the results of war (i.e. famine).”

For comparison, abortion, since widespread legalisation in the 1970s, “has amounted to 2.5-3.5 billion deaths.”

This is just since the 1970s, fifty years, against all of human history. And these are all innocent lives. It is, moreover, far worse to kill a child than to kill an elderly man, say, who has only a few years left to him. 

One can also consider that a good many of the deaths in war are not intended, collateral damage. Indeed, in principle, they are all unintended. Any general, any leader, tries to minimize casualties in achieving his objectives. But all abortions are deliberate, cold blooded, and certain to cause death. 

Again, perhaps fifty percent of combat deaths are legitimate self-defense: in the usual course of things, one side is in the right. No abortion deaths are legitimate self-defense. Not even in the case of rape or incest, which account for only 1.5% of abortions.

Father Robinson cites statistics showing abortions are overwhelmingly used by women simply as a form of birth control. Simply because they feel having a child did not fit into their current plans.  Saving the life of the mother? If it is done to save the mother’s life, it does not even show up in the abortion statistics.

Legally, the woman has the unilateral right to have an abortion. The father of the child has no say. This, therefore, must be placed entirely at the feet of women. Given that it is feminism that justifies this, feminism is the deadliest ideology known to mankind. And women,  given power, are far more violent than men.

Feminism is also responsible for the death of the family. This is by no accident: it was the family, per Betty Friedan, which was to be destroyed. Women were to accept no family responsibilities. That is “patriarchy.”

In North America, over 70% of divorces are initiated by the wife. No doubt following Ann Landers’ advice from as far back as the Seventies that the only standard should be, “Are you better off with him or without him?” No thought for the children. No thought for “For richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health.” No thought for the in-laws. No thought for the wider society. Just what seems best for her at the time.

Under feminism, women have turned against child care. They will farm their children, if they have them, out to strangers, even though we know this is worse for children. By neglecting the next generation, they are destroying the culture, the civilization itself. For family is the basic building block of society as a whole, and culture is whatever we pass on to the next generation.

And, predictably, women turning away from children and childbearing is causing a demographic collapse. The developed West has as a result seen a need to open the doors to unrestricted immigration. This causes its own problems, which are becoming increasingly apparent. Ultimately, social chaos.

It is vain to talk of legal solutions to this problem: the necessary laws cannot be passed until and unless we can change hearts and minds.

I believe that cultures worldwide had it right, before feminism threw everything off kilter. Girls were spoiled growing up, and allowed to expect a life free of responsibilities. In return, they were required to defer to men. Boys were held to a higher standard, and in return, should they pass that bar, given command.  It worked, everywhere, for all of recorded history.

Now girls are still spoiled growing up, and then put in command. Disastrous.

Is Abortion Justified by the Bible?

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Darth Francis

 

At about the same time he is promoting the heresy of indifferentism, Pope Francis has also said that he cannot choose between the evils of Trump’s platform and that of Harris in the current US presidential election.

“Who is the lesser evil? That lady, or that gentleman? I don't know. Both are against life, be it the one that kicks out migrants, or the one that kills children."

This is a clear example of false moral equivalence. Francis is saying that to expel an intruder from your home is morally equivalent to murder.

This is obviously wrong; it amounts to an attempt to justify abortion.

Is it even wrong in the slightest to resist illegal immigration or to deport migrants?

Acts 17: 26 says it is God’s plan that nations and peoples have borders:

“From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.”

One doesn’t have the right to immigrate any more than one has the right to live in another man’s home.

It is not plausible that Francis does not know this. 

It is increasingly obvious that in our times we are fighting a war of good versus evil. The masks are off, and it is no longer a matter of people of good will coming to different conclusions. 

And Pope Francis is on the side of evil.

The Democrats' Box

 

John Fetterman, second from the right. Kamala Harris, third from the left.

The Democrats in the US are in a quandary. They fixed the nomination last time to give it to Joe Biden. This was already a desperate choice; they knew he was old and unsteady. An op ed at the time said “just stay alive until election day, Joe.” But Bernie Sanders was even older, and not even a Democrat: he was, officially, an Independent Socialist. He looked like he was about to take the nomination. Pete Buttigieg, the next possible option, was only the mayor of a small midwestern city. Michael Bloomberg, only recently a Republican, had fizzled with the voters, despite a huge cash outlay. And nobody else was in striking distance in the party’s primaries.

So the idea was to push Biden as at least a safe pair of hands, who would be a one-term president and then pass it off to the anointed. Kamala Harris was the one they really wanted, primarily on racial and gender grounds: a black woman. But she had fizzled in the campaign. Now they would have time to coach her and to build some buzz.

Three years later, things have not worked out for them. Harris has not jelled; she does not seem capable of it. Biden is obviously failing. 

Which puts them in a box. They can’t safely run Harris; and Biden is failing in the polls. Any other candidate amounts to a rejection of Harris, and charges of racism and sexism. Nor is there another plausible candidate of sufficient stature. People speak of Michelle Obama; but she has no real qualifications for the job, reputedly has no interest in it, and her popularity would probably nosedive as soon as she started taking positions on issues and being seen as a politician. 

The essential problem here is a lack of quality candidates on the left, both in 2020 and now. Two words: John Fetterman.

The Canadian Liberals face a similar problem. Justin Trudeau is now an albatross around their collective necks; but there is no plausible replacement waiting in the wings, as there always had been in the past: no Paul Martin, no Jean Chretien, no John Turner, not even a Michael Ignatieff. No figure of independent stature around whom there is some real buzz. Mark Carney, perhaps; but he seems a faceless bureaucrat. Trudeau himself, as leader, was something of a Hail Mary pass, obviously underqualified, and there is no one else behind him. 

Why there are no leaders available on the left?

Because they seem to suppress and force out those of any leadership potential: RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, Jodi Wilson Raybould. In the wider culture, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Warren Kinsella, Stephen LeDrew. Which is to say, they cannot tolerate and force out anyone with principles and independent thoughts. This is what leadership is about, and what it requires.

This is the mark of a cult, which has some guilty secret to conceal. You cannot trust someone with principles who thinks independently; they are bound to see and mention it.

This is death to any human progress. It is death to any democracy.

Why do people still vote for the Democrats, or the Liberals, despite the lack of any real leadership?

Because they are complicit. The shared guilty secret turns them into NPCs, zombies. And they react violently to any independent thought.

The guilty secret: a foetus is a human life.

Midwives for Abortion

 

The BBC series “Call the Midwife” was the perfect premise for a life-affirming, faith-affirming show: about a convent running a midwife service in impoverished East London. And for the first few seasons, based on one midwife’s autobiography, it was.

Then it, improbably, swerved into fictional story lines about how homosexuality was innate and involuntary. Into tales of wifebeating; into the evils of slum landlords; into editorializing in favour of abortion, and against the moralistic sort of religion.

Odd that it should go about to trash its core appeal to its natural core audience.

The obvious reason is that, after the first half-dozen seasons, they began to run out of interesting complications in childbirth. The newer ailments were getting obscure, and sometimes trivial. “It is a very rare condition, and no, it will not harm the baby.”

A long-running show tends to run out of plot ideas. That’s where “jumping the shark” comes in, and that  lack of new ideas has infected Hollywood with their sequel mania. 

CTMW has a bit of an advantage, because they can bring in new characters. But they decided to bring in “ethnically diverse” characters. And ethnically diverse characters must not have any flaws or dark pasts or even interesting eccentricities. So they cannot inspire any good new plots. 

So what can you do? The temptation is to get political to keep interest up: find a news hook.

This is tiresome, and obvious; but wouldn’t be as bad if doing so these days always means a whiplash-inducing veer to the left. Particularly ill-suited to this show premise.

But then, they really haven’t had a choice. There’s the immigration issue. That’s in the news. Imagine if they were to feature an immigrant family that was not settling in, but resented the new country. The son was up for raping some girl, or staging a random knife attack. 

There’s the abortion issue; pretty natural for such a show. Of course, a religious order of midwives should be firmly opposed. Yet imagine if they had a sympathetic character point out with emotion that abortion kills babies?

Or that homosexuals can choose to stop having homosexual sex?

Imagine if they showed a wife abusing her husband, or blackmailing him with false charges?

The leftist cancel culture machine would wheel into action. Advertising would be pulled, they would be picketed, probably cancelled. The writers would be blacklisted, possibly thrown in prison, at a minimum lose their careers.

So the minute they raise a political controversy, they must show only the approved leftist narrative. And it’s a race to the farthest left possible, because what you said ten years ago, when the Overton window was different, can now be held against you. There are currently cries on the left and in the media to ban a local candidate from the next provincial election, because she objected to gay marriage in a book she wrote in 2008. A time when almost all of the developed world were also opposed to gay marriage, including, say, Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. 

We have all been bullied in this way for years; creative types more than anyone. Which is why all we get from the arts and entertainment sector any more is predictable and perverse.

The good news is that the right has recently woken up to the strategy. They have started to do the same, and things are swinging back to sanity. Mass farmer protests in Germany. Bud Light, Disney, Harvard, Target; the boycott head count is growing.

The culture war has passed its Stalingrad moment.

The Horror of Back Alley Abortions

 

A TV series I have enjoyed binge-watching, BBC’s Call the Midwife, has decided to go for relevance and wade deliberately into politically charged issues. It is a perhaps muted model of the general problem with films and TV in recent years.

They had already threaded in intersex, and homosexuality. Even though neither fits plausibly into the likely work encounters of a midwife. They had already introduced black and South Asian characters, who then of course were shown to experience discrimination; and a black midwife has shown up as a new lead. And she is, of course, an entirely admirable character, with no dark edges about her. No crustiness, no struggle with alcohol, no illicit loves.

Then they brought up the issue of abortion.

The series is set in 1960s Britain. Abortion was still illegal. The series shows young women getting “back alley” abortions and suffering dire consequences—due to unsanitary conditions and inexpert practitioners.

Worse, the abortionist is portrayed as a decent sort who thought she was helping women. And repented as soon as she was convinced women were being harmed by her incompetence.

No mention is made of the health of the child. The child does not matter. Good people do not care about killing children. Chillingly, in a show about midwives. No mention is made of the alternatives of simply not having sex outside of marriage, or putting the child up for adoption. These are apparently literally unthinkable.

The clumsily intended moral is that abortions must be legal. Because, apparently, women “must” have abortions, and the only concern is that the abortions be performed in the best possible circumstances.

A sane view would be the opposite: if illegal abortions are dangerous, abortion is dangerous. This alone is reason to ban it, since it is always a voluntary procedure. And this even before we consider the key question, the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.

Christian Nationalism

 

The image of Jesus Pantocrator--Jesus as rightful king of the world. One of the oldest images of Jesus in existence.

 Many on the left are raising the alarm about “Christian nationalism.” It has apparently now supplanted “white supremacy” as the greatest threat to our freedoms. 

What is Christian nationalism?

Literally, it is the belief that the US, or Canada, is and ought to be a Christian nation.

Horrors?

This is, in the first place, a simple statement of historic and demographic fact.  North American culture is deeply Christian. Anyone before, say, 1960, would see the statement as self-evident. To pretend otherwise is politically motivated historical revisionism.

It is, in the second place, a belief necessarily shared by all Christians that the US and Canada ought to be Christian nations. Any Christian believes Christian values should govern the state. Any Christian believes Jesus Christ is Lord, the rightful ruler of mankind. Non-Christians might or might not agree, but any non-Christian who finds this view problematic is intolerant of Christianity.

In the third place, Great Britain, for example, is constitutionally a Christian nation. While the UK no doubt has its flaws, it is hard to see Britain as a cautionary tale of the tragic consequences of Christian nationalism.

What exactly is the terrifying program of contemporary North American Christian nationalism? According to Wikipedia, “Christian nationalism supports the presence of Christian symbols in the public square, and state patronage for the practice and display of religion, such as Christmas as a national holiday, school prayer, the exhibition of nativity scenes during Christmastide, and the Christian cross on Good Friday.”

Whom does such things harm? Isn’t this all part of our shared culture, even if we are not ourselves Christian? Shouldn’t we celebrate our shared culture? Aren’t we even doing most of that now? 

Striking out or refusing to acknowledge any parts of our culture that are explicitly Christian is not religiously neutral: it is discriminating against Christianity in favour of atheism.

Some will raise the issue of the “separation of church and state.” Yet this phrase and this principle is not in the constitutions of either the US or Canada. It might have been; the framers rejected the idea. It comes from a private letter by Thomas Jefferson. We might think it is a good idea, but we have no right to smuggle it into the national mandate without passing a constitutional amendment. 

I actually agree with Jefferson’s concept; but it does not mean keeping religion out of politics. The separation of church and state work in the same way as the separation of powers within the government, and is important for the same reason. Church and state should be organizationally independent so that they can serve as a check and balance on one another. Churchmen must be free to call out immorality in government, like the Old Testament prophets; at the same time, churches must not exercise government power, because an act imposed by law cannot have moral value.

This does not mean that government should ignore the admonitions of the churches, or the teachings of Christianity, any more than that the executive should ignore the rulings of the Supreme Court.

Given how reasonable the Christian nationalist position is, why is the left so alarmed by it? Why do they see it as an existential threat?

The answer is obvious, and begins with the letter “a.”

They will probably instead raise homosexual rights. No doubt if government listened to Christian principles, gay marriage would go back in the box. But this is not the real reason: it affects few people, and it does not affect them deeply. No: gay marriage was always a feint for not questioning the big “a.”

The fear is that abortion be restricted. “Christian nationalism” is the euphemism. The problem is that by now, too many Americans and Canadians are personally implicated in the crime of abortion to acknowledge that it is a crime.

The term “Christian nationalism” as a euphemism for opposition to abortion is also a lie: abortion is not wrong only because it violates Christian teaching. It also violates Muslim teaching, Jewish teaching, Sikh teaching, Hindu teaching, and Buddhist teaching. It violates liberal teaching, it violates the principles in the Declaration of Independence, and it violates the Golden Rule. 

But Christianity is the obvious scapegoat for morality in general, because it has such a good record of standing up for it.

Which is why we need more Christianity in public life.

Abortion Unwound

 

The young adult novel Unwind is being used to teach our children. Resolutely woke, it argues the case for abortion. This hinges, apparently, on when a human being gets a soul. It gives four positions, presumably spanning the field:

• At conception
• At quickening—"when the baby kicks”
• At birth
• When someone loves it.

And then the novel gives its own conclusion: that we really do not know. 

Therefore, no one has a right to impose their own views on the next person.

“If more people could admit they really don’t know, maybe there never would have been a Heartland War.”

Therefore, unrestricted abortion.

It is indeed true that we do not know whether a child at any given age has a soul. We also do not know whether Jews have souls. We do not know whether blacks have souls. Or women. We actually do not know whether anyone other than ourself has a soul, is conscious and self-conscious. We cannot see or hear the soul, or consciousness, or thoughts, other than our own. Everyone else might be imagined, or simulations, or alien lizard people.

Accordingly, this argument for unrestricted abortion is just as serviceable as an argument for unrestricted murder, or genocide. 

“Hey, nobody likes the Jews. That mean they don’t have souls. Let’s kill them and take their stuff.”

Why is it morally necessary to assume all other humans have souls? Because of the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you are not prepared to accept that these lizard people or simulations have the right to kill you on a whim, you must not claim for yourself the same right over them. You cannot honourably take to yourself a right you would not want everyone else to have.

The question, therefore, is when the foetus is alive, and when it becomes human. 

It is identifiably human at conception, and it is identifiably alive.

Any other position ends in holocaust.

Unwind

 

I am currently reading the novel Unwound (Neal Shusterman), because it is assigned in high schools.

As literature, it is on the level of Dan Brown, or a good comic book: great plotting, but no linguistic charm, vivid description, symbolism, deep characterization, or thematic sublety. It looks to be mostly a conversation starter to discuss politics; specifically, the abortion isse.

The opening premise is that, at some future date, the US dissolves into civil war on the issue of abortion. Eventually a compromise is negotiated: abortion is illegal, but you are free to kill or “unwind” your children at age thirteen.

There is an immediate logical problem with this premise: those opposed to abortion are not going to feel better about killing teenagers. Evidently the author does not understand the issue, or is deliberately falsifying it. Either way, this is not education, but misinformation.

Then the novel has the sole religious family being most aggressively in favour of unwinding their children, on the premise that it is in the Bible. 

Eh?

The author means tithing—so they are obliged to “tithe” their tenth child by killing him. And, after all, wasn’t Moses left in the bullrushes to die? So killing every tenth child is a religious duty.

The problem, as anyone who has read a newspaper or news aggregator knows, is that the religious are generally the ones in favour of “family values,” and against abortion. And, as anyone who has read the Bible knows, Moses was not left in the rushes as a tithe or sacrifice to Yahweh, but at the command of a pagan ruler trying to wipe out the Jews. They might also be aware that such child sacrifice was the crime that provoked Yahweh to cast the Canaanites out of their land, and give it to the Jews.

“Then they made their sons and their daughters pass through the fire, and practiced divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him.” 2 Kings 17:17

This book, used in our schools, is teaching young people the opposite of the truth. Partly, is seem to me, to discredit religion. Religion, they are told, is out to kill them.

According to the peace that ended the imaginary second American Civil War, mothers were also permitted “storking.” That is, unwanted babies could be left at someone else’s doorstep without penalty. This being a supposed concession to the women who wanted abortion.

They can do this, however, only if they do not get caught in the act. 

In other words, it is illegal. It is hardly a concession to say that those who do not get caught will not be prosecuted for a crime. 

 Moreover, the current laws are actually more generous. Currently, it is not a crime. Any mother can put her baby up for adoption. In many states, all she has to do is drop the child off at the nearest hospital. 

Again, the book is falsifying the abortion debate, and feeding the impressionable misinformation.

There is a grave problem here. As I think Mark Twain has said, it is far easier to trick someone than to convince them they have been tricked. By filling their heads with falsehoods, the schools are actually preventing kids from learning.

Looking at the Left's Arguments for Abortion

 

The great benefit of subscribing, as I do, to a left-wing columnist like my friend Xerxes is that I stay in touch with thinking on the left. And not just the left-wing commentariat. Xerxes’s readership is also solidly on the left, and he prints their letters.

Recently, I have been able to read all their best arguments in favour of unrestricted abortion.

T.W. does not seem to grasp the difference between abortion and miscarriage. He seems to believe that placing legal limits on abortion will require sending women who miscarry to prison. Apparently he does not recognize women as having free will.

B.E.: “[opposition to abortion] is a matter of religion [not political ideology], be it fundamentalist Protestant, traditional Catholic, Muslim, or any other faith that preaches against abortion.”

To the contrary, respect for the life and welfare of others is incumbent on all of us regardless of religion. Kant demonstrated the philosophical necessity. It is inherent too in the doctrine of human rights. Suggesting the issue is limited to certain religions is an alibi for immorality. Are only Catholics obliged not to murder, then? And if you simply reject Catholicism, you have free rein?

V.G.: “Totally shameful, the hypocrisy involved in fighting abortion -- yet when it comes to putting an end to mass shootings all we hear is deafening silence.”

Abortion is legal in Canada, and in most US States. It is even, in Canada, government-funded. 

Mass shooting is illegal, and receives the harshest penalty available in law. In most parts of the US, the death penalty. Most mass shooters are shot dead in the act. 

Imagine applying the same standard to women seeking abortion. That is, in effect, what V.G. demands, without realizing it.

C.B. refers to the foetus as a “part of [the mother’s] body.” C’s formulation is like saying the driver is part of a car. Or that, if an invited guest enters my home, I have the right to kill them. I own them; they are in my premises.

R.C. writes: “The same people who are anti-abortion, who are all for pre-born infant rights, lose all interest and support for the infant/mother once it is born.”

Good people are eager to care for any child allowed to live. There is a shortage of babies for adoption. Many US states have a law exempting a mother from any legal penalties should she leave her infant at the door of any hospital. He or she will be taken in and cared for, no questions asked. If the mother keeps the child, she is eligible for welfare—creating the problem, some claim, of young women deliberately getting pregnant outside of marriage for the state support.

Unwed mothers demanding more money or else they will kill the child looks like hostage taking and extortion.

R. C. goes on to say, “These same people [who oppose unrestricted abortion] are for the death penalty. And they have no problem with the hypocrisy of their beliefs.”

The largest identifiable group in the world opposed to abortion, the Catholic Church, is also opposed to the death penalty. So of whom does he speak?

But turn R’s accusation around. How many of those who support abortion also oppose the death penalty?

They are actually endorsing executing an innocent person at random while objecting to executing a convicted murderer after due process of law.

R. is a classic hypocrite for not seeing this, and then accusing others or hypocrisy.

And that is apparently the best they’ve got.

What it really all amounts to is that they want sex on demand, but find children inconvenient. So kill them.

Bernier Raises the Scarlet Letter A

 

He said it.

Maxime Bernier has firmly grasped the third rail of Canadian politics, and is running in Portage-Lisgar on the issue of abortion.

This was predictable fallout from the US Supreme Court voiding Roe v. Wade. In fact, I predicted it. Canada always looks south. If the US is debating abortion, Canada has to.

It is also a shrewd move, and puts the Conservatives in a difficult spot. Bernier is proposing a very moderate restriction, one that has public support. It will be hard for the Conservatives to oppose it without losing a possibly significant portion of their base. 

On the other hand, the Liberals have already signalled their desire to run on the issue of abortion instead of corruption, loss of freedom, or the economy. If they give any hint of supporting Bernier’s position, the Tories play into their hands.

Polls suggest the majority of Canadians favour such a restriction on abortion as Bernier proposes. So why is this a winning issue for the left, and a losing one for the right? 

The calculation is that, while most people favour restrictions, they do not feel that strongly about it. The issue is unlikely to determine their vote. On the other hand, those who want abortion, although a minority, make this their most important issue--due to a guilty conscience. So, on balance, it is a lose-lose for the right.

Except for Bernier. He has nothing to lose, sitting at 3-4 percent nationally in the polls, and everything to gain.

One can sympathize with Pierre Poilievre, now caught between a rock and a hard place. If I were he, I would say nothing unless challenged. But he will be challenged. Challenged, I would respond that the Conservative Party and a Conservative government would not introduce any bill restricting abortion. 

But would Conservatives be allowed to support a private members’ bill?

Then he should answer yes. Conservative MPs should have the right to vote with their conscience on any private members’ bills. Now let’s talk about more urgent issues.

This will lose Poilievre some support among the pro-abortion crowd.

But it is also a test of his honour and his leadership. Is he just another political hack, or does he have principles?

The Sexual Devolution

 

I don't agree with Jordan Peterson on everything, but he's making some important points. The sexual revolution was a dumb mistake.

We need to grow up.

Baal in New York

 

A new bronze statue supposed to represent Ruth Bader Ginsberg—although it looks nothing like Ruth Bader Ginsberg—has been installed on the facade of the New York state courthouse in Manhattan. She joins an array of great lawgivers of history, including Confucius, Manu, Justinian, Zoroaster, and Moses.

It is a non sequitor. Ginsberg, as a US Supreme Court judge, was a law interpreter, not a law giver. It is a different role.

Although perhaps this is a legitimate if not a very self-reflective comment that Ginsberg did not, in fact, follow the law, but made it up as she went along. That has certainly been argued.

The sculptor says this statue is needed now because “women’s reproductive rights [are] under siege.” So the statue might  better be seen, particularly as it does not look like the late Supreme Court Justice, as a representation of “women’s reproductive rights” rather than Ginsberg personally.

It looks like traditional representations of evil: hair curling back like the horns of a ram, like those of some depictions of the Devil; inhuman octopus tentacles sprouting from her side instead of arms; a hint of spider in search of flies to devour.

The Devil: Wade-Giles Tarot card

If inadvertently, it all seems apt. What Freud called the subconscious is better understood as a guilty conscience.

“Women’s reproductive rights” is, of course, a euphemism for abortion. Abortion destroys children.

And it destroys more than that. It is destroying our society and our civilization. It puts us in the same class as the ancient Canaanites, the Carthaginians, or of Nazi Germany: of civilizations that must, for the good of mankind, be destroyed, and the earth salted over.

It is not hyperbole to compare unrestricted and free abortion to the Holocaust: it has killed far more people. And it has killed them younger, robbing them of more life. Unlike the Germans, none of us can claim ignorance of what is going on.

To be sure, the defenders or abortion will insist that it is not murder, because the foetus is not human. It is just a "clump of cells." Right?

Exactly the tack the Nazis took: Jews were not human. They were untermenschen.

The refusal to see the victim's humanity does not absolve one of the crime. It increases it.

Abortion is also a genocide; a genocide against the young, but ultimately against whatever “race” or nation

 allows it. Governments throughout the developed world are stressing the need for mass immigration, because of a low birthrate. And what is at least one of the causes of that low birthrate? It might almost as aptly be called a high death rate.

It is not just the number of babies aborted; but that the culture that defends abortion also goes on to despise and discourage children and childbearing. In implicit defense of the right to abort, in order to allow unrestricted sex, the myth of “overpopulation” and resource scarcity has been popularized for decades, in the media and in the schools. Our underpopulation is the result. Our culture is dying off.

But it does not end there. We all know, in our conscience, in our thoughts alone in the night, that abortion is murder. We all know that we are collectively and perhaps individually guilty of a great wrong. The hysterical desire to conceal and deny this guilt rather than repent and give up sex on instinct has led to the general collapse of civil discourse. It has let to an intolerance of any disagreement or dissenting views: for truth itself becomes the enemy. If, after all, we allow people to speak freely, someone might at any moment mention the elephant in the maternity ward.

It has led to a persecution of all moral lawgivers. They make us feel guilty.

Most obviously the church. It has led to the persecution of priests for supposed pederasty. Yes, there are pederastic priests, but probably no more than in the general population. It is not, in any case, a fault of the church per se. It has led to the myth of the evil residential schools, the imaginary mass graves, and the vandalism of churches. People want to blame the church, and they will come up with something.

It has led to the toppling of the statues of other lawgivers: Sir John A. Macdonald, Thomas Jefferson, Egerton Ryerson, Henry Dundas. Not those guilty of actual misdeeds or injustices: those guilty of combatting misdeeds and injustices. Those who built the society and its structure of laws. Laws are “patriarchy.” Laws are “white supremacy.”

 It has also led to a glorification of homosexuality and transgenderism. Why? First, because homosexuals are an emblem of sex without any thought of reproduction. Homosexuality  separates sex from babies, representing the libertine ideal. But more deeply, “gays” have gained some unconscious moral cachet from the fact that they cannot be suspected of having or having demanded an abortion. They are better than the rest of us.

One can see that it also leads to a hatred for civilization itself.  Partly because civilization is law, and so makes us feel guilty. Partly because it represents us, our self-image, and we hate ourselves for the sin. The guilty conscience does this, on the group or on the individual level. It leads to self-hate and self-destructive behaviour. A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Some years ago, when she was still quite young, my daughter made a Christmas card for her mother. It was beautiful; she has great artistic talent. I posted it proudly on Facebook. 

Unexpectedly, a number of friends, North American women, commented in alarm. What was going on? Was she being abused? 

She had included a line thanking her mother for not aborting her. 

The American and Canadian women immediately saw this as “something wrong.” And they jumped to the conclusion that her mother hated her.

As I pointed out to one of them, anywhere abortion is legal, the mother makes a conscious choice whether to kill or not to kill. It has nothing to do with the child’s merits—she has not yet met the child, and cannot know its character. She could not have decided whether she liked or didn’t like her. So my daughter’s comment was only sensible. She was and is a verry bright child, and saw the implications of legal abortion.

In the meantime, their comments were obviously traumatic to both my daughter, who could not understand what she had said that was so wrong, and to my wife, who had been accused of child abuse. The commentators seemingly took neither into consideration. They were too hysterical to have thought such things through. Their guilty conscience had taken over their reason and their compassion.

So we see everywhere in the larger society. Once one embraces vice, vice takes control, and one becomes vicious. That is what the word “vicious” means. We become weasels fighting in a hole.

It is significant that none of our Arab or Filipina friends, which probably outnumber our North American friends on Facebook, thought there was anything disturbing or untoward about my daughter’s abortion comment. They only admired the lovely card.

Abortion is illegal in the Philippines and in the Middle East. 

It was only the North Americans who were upset about the comment.

In short, it was their guilty conscience speaking to them.

Since I pointed out to that one friend that my daughter’s comments were reasonable so long as abortion is legal, she has not “spoken” to me. She will not respond to any attempts to reach her.

She is not the only old friend who has “unfriended” me over exactly this issue: abortion. Not something I am vocal about; leaving aside what I might post here, I do not evangelize on the issue with friends. I only respond when it comes up; I do not bring it up.

Perhaps that is a mistake we are all making. Perhaps the only way to save civil discourse, our friendships, our families, our civilization itself, is to ban abortion. 

The future belongs to those nations in which it is banned.

A Historic Day

What can I say? The US Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. This may be one of those days everyone remembers where they were at the moment they heard.

I believe the legalization of abortion is the alpha point for all the discord in  American society and Western society today. You cannot allow what half the population believes is mass murder and expect social tranquillity. Any more than you can allow slavery and expect it.

I anticipate a time of turmoil, but we have at least begun on the road to peace. Not to mention justice.

,

Here We Go

 

Civil war seems far from out of the question...

Telling It Like It Is

 

A Daughter's Gratitude

 

Some years ago, my daughter drew a card for her Mom on Mother’s Day. It was brilliantly done, and I shared it on Facebook. She has immense artistic talent.

But it drew two disturbed comments from female friends. Posted publicly, apparently with no thought that my daughter would see them. One wrote “Uh-oh. There’s something wrong here.” The other accused my wife of abusing her.

For she had written on the card, “thank you for not aborting me.”

I explained to the friend who saw this as proof of child abuse that, so long as abortion was legal, it was simply a fact that every Canadian woman made a conscious decision whether to abort a child or not. Our daughter, being an intelligent child, surely just realized this.

“But,” my friend countered, “she should have been reassured that she was loved, and would never have been aborted.”

But abortion happens before the mother meets the child, and knows anything of their personality. If her life was spared, it was only by either her mother’s good morals or by her good luck.

In the Philippines, where abortion is illegal, nobody was troubled by the card.

My friend concluded by declaring me “delusional,” unfriending me, and never speaking to me since.

I think the experience shows that Canadian women often have a guilty conscience over abortion. And that the human tendency, when made aware of a wrong or injustice, is most often not to right the wrong, but to object to its being mentioned in polite company.

The Mandate of Heaven

 

Abortion laws by country. Red = fully illegal. Blue = legal. 

To an atheist, the thought that heaven is intervening in world affairs is no doubt fanciful. But once you accept the existence of God, or even, as with the ancient Greeks or Chinese or Hindus, of cosmic justice, the assumption that God is directing history is inevitable. Miscreant societies may do mysteriously well for a time—the Devil has his powers too—but heaven will in due time strike down a Carthage or a Nazi Germany or a USSR in dramatic fashion.

Over time, the good guys usually win. One may protest that this is only because the history is written by the winners. This is not true. Losers usually survive to write their own histories, and history is based on documentary evidence by which one can arrive at the truth of things. In most wars, there is a good side and a bad side, and the good side wins. Is there any obvious counter-example?

That being so, the wholesale acceptance of abortion, by America and by most other developed countries, is the surest possible indication that they have lost the moral high ground, and so are due for decline or sudden collapse. It is the same sin that finished Carthage, or Canaan.

The puzzle is who might rise to replace them? Ibn Khaldun had a useful theory, that a decadent civilization would inevitably and rather suddenly be replaced by “barbarians” from the fringes, just beyond their direct control. They would be a group disciplined by adversity, not some established rival power.

The regime that is set to replace the USA as world leader will not, if Ibn Khaldun is right, be China. China shows at least the same level of moral depravity—as demonstrated by legal abortion—as the US. It will not be Russia. It will not be Japan. It will not be Europe, East or West.

If we use where abortion is and is not legal as a guide to moral health and strength, the best candidates for new leadership seem to be Subsaharan Africa, the Muslim world, Latin America, and the Philippines.

In that group, I would put my money on Latin America and the Philippines. They combine this ethical core with a form of the philosophy of liberal democracy which made Britain, France, and America seeming favourites in God’s eyes over the past few centuries. They seem to fit Ibn Khaldun’s description best as the barbarians just beyond the gates. The Africans and the Muslims seem more peripheral to America; and less united among themselves.

You might scoff that they are poor and disorganized. But the ascension of a new power can happen suddenly. Spain launched her world empire in 1492, the very year she finally drove the Moors out of the homeland. The Dutch began their world empire even as they were fighting a war of independence from Spain. Such current adversity can build solidarity and social cohesion.

Together, the Philippines and Latin America have the demographic weight. The Philippines alone has a larger population than Britain or France.

The transition will need to be sparked by some new ideology, I imagine—something not apparent now. Liberation Theology and Friere’s critical pedagogy look like attempts at this, but duds. Marxism is not a viable platform; it is unethical. And the US might recover, if, as anticipated, the Supreme Court dismantles Roe v. Wade.

Karma Comes to Call

 

Fuseli

I recently speculated on why Hollywood, the media, and big tech seem bound on committing suicide. All are doing things counter to their financial interests or indeed to preserving their credibility. I thought it might be a delusion caused by postmodernism’s claim that we can make our own reality. Or it might be a hysterical reaction to seeing their power and influence slipping away.

Here is another possibility.

It might be the voice of conscience catching up to them. The powers that currently be are terminally morally compromised. One word: abortion. In the cause of sexual pleasure, they have endorsed an ongoing mass murder. 

The Erinyes must be satisfied.

The activity of repressed conscience is often observed in serial killers. They start taking bigger and bigger risks. They return to the scene of the crime. They start sending clues to the police. They want to be caught. One famously left the message at a murder scene, “For God’s sake, stop me before I kill again.” Ted Bundy started his killing spree in the Pacific Northwest, but ended it in Florida—one of the few states at the time that had the death penalty. When finally arrested, his comment was, “What took you so long.”

And, when murderers are caught, their first night in a cell, reputedly, they usually sleep like a baby. 

The current elites are crying out to be replaced. The nobles in pre-revolutionary France did something similar, insisting on deferring to the Third Estate.

In this we also see the hand of God—or, if you are a pagan Greek, the gods, punishing hubris. In the Old Testament, the principle is laid down that a depraved culture, specifically one which murders its own children, must be and will be overthrown, including divine intervention if necessary. This is what happened to the Canaanites, to Sodom, to Gomorrah. The Egyptians were scourged for killing the firstborn of the Hebrews. This is also what happened to the Carthaginians at the hands of the Romans. Such a depraved culture must be defeated, even if this requires salting the earth.

Disturbingly, we are in such a culture, almost world-wide. Being visited by fires, floods, and plagues may be part of the story. As the Chinese would say, the mandate of heaven has passed.

Let’s hope we can turn things around before they get to the salting the earth stage.

Here, Let Me Fix That for You

 

If the shoe fits ...

This bit of conceptual art is in the atrium of the Art Gallery of Ontario. I came upon it after viewing their Andy Warhol exhibit. It is meant, the sign explains, to memorialize the children who died iin the Indian Residential Schools.

It is an embarrassment. However you might feel about the children who died in the Residential Schools—not a surprising number, after all; in those days, child mortality was high—this fails as art. It demonstrates no skill or craftsmanship. It lacks all originality—there are similar displays of shoes conveying the same message all over Canada. It gives us no new perspective on anything. It is not beautiful. It is hackneyed. It is also hate speech.

I have a simple solution. All that is needed in order to make it interesting and transgressive is to change the title. Here’s mine:

“Abortion.”

I urge the gentle reader to carry posters and a staple gun for the next time you see one of these displays.