Playing 4D Chess

 

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

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

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

Now how about Canada? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uh-oh.

World Historic Figures

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rape is Not a Part of Islam

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sea and Sky

 

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

Why? What is the point of this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It illustrates how decadent our culture has become.

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

Liberal Leadership Stakes

 

The Liberal leadership race is underway. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leaving Chrystia Freeland. 

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

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

Let’s see if I’m right.

One Canada or No Canada

 

John Diefenbaker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Nothing Rhymes Anymore

 

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

 Bought for $1.76 million in 1990.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Trump Could Actually Do It

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

O'Leary's Gambit

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Canadian Dependance Movement

 

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

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

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

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

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

I think something important is happening here.

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

I Was Wrong

 

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

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

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

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

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

Trudeau may not be gone yet.

Journey of the Magi

 

The Journey Of The Magi

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

-- TS Eliot

Happy Epiphany

 

What Trudeau Is About to Do

 

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

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

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

Trudeau obviously does not want to resign.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Altruism and Selfishness

 

Hello, Dalai!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Cliche

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You no doubt have your own list of pet hates.

Is Abortion Justified by the Bible?

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further Thoughts on the 51st State Thing

 

I have been looking through a picture book inherited from my uncle, on the Irish influence on the American culture.

Reading it, it becomes obvious to me that the American Irish culture is also my culture. I remember reading the “Bringing Up Father” Sunday strip at my grandparents’ house. Only now do I realize that I unconsciously identified Jiggs and Maggie with my grandfather and grandmother. And yes, corned beef and cabbage was a favourite meal growing up. Grandma would sing us to sleep to “Sidewalks of New York.” 

We never did think of ourselves as different. At least not we Irish. We were just Irish who happened to have settled north instead of south of the border. Was it because of some deep loyalty to Britain or the crown? Hardly. It was originally, surely, just from hardscrabble necessity. We all did what we could and made what we could of the chances we had in the places we landed. From our perspective, the border between us was arbitrary. We were one people. Cousin Fergus was doing very well in the States.

Given that Canada and the US have generally accepted immigrants from the same places, is this not probably true of all other ethnic groups? Do Canadian Jews consider themselves a different culture than American Jews? Canadian Italians than American Italians? 

I have a warm attachment to American culture. It is my culture, as it is the culture in which I grew up. Watching Roy Rogers and dreaming of being a cowboy. Reading the adventures of Tom Swift. Watching anything from Disney. Playing baseball into the dusk—did you know that the first baseball game was played in Ontario? We loved anything from England too, but it always came to us as something admired, but exotic. Admired, perhaps, largely for being exotic. We were Americans, and perhaps lower class because of it.

I cannot see a problem with Canada joining the US. Canadian independence has always felt a little forced, like adolescent rebellion. It might be like growing up.

Happy New Year

 

Enough with the Red Pill; Try a Chill Pill

 

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/But to be young was very heaven.” – William Wordsworth on the French Revolution.

We are in the middle of a revolutionary period now. So far, fortunately, it has been peaceful. Although that has been a close run thing—the ancien regime has resorted to some brutal and disturbing tactics. But it does seem they are now preparing to accept defeat. God willing.

Revolutions are exciting; all things suddenly seem possible. I remember the 60s.

But it is easy to slip into irrational expectations. “We want the world, and we want it now.” 

Then when those in power inevitably cannot meet them, the revolution begins to devour its children. Moderation becomes a dirty word, and upsetting applecarts becomes an addictive drug. Just to get that rush of infinite possibilities again.

A recent tweet on X: “Who needs to worry about Democrats when we have a president elect that won't support the base that supported him. Johnson needs to go, H1B needs to go. Illegals need to go. You want compromise but you aren't offering us anything.”

Demands to deport all illegals have morphed into demands to deport all immigrants. Complaints about Muslim immigrants not assimilating and committing terrorism have moved on to complaints about Indian immigrants not assimilating and littering and being rude.

Talk of an emerging “woke right” seems appropriate. Racism against whites must not be simply replaced with racism against immigrants. The scapegoating must stop. The pendulum must stop swinging.

All men are equal in God's sight. Immigration should be meritocratic. Culture is not race. Assimilation must be the goal.

Shane McGowan's Funeral

 

Happy Christmas.

The Feminist Delusion

 

Pandora

It is a good general principle that anything stated emphatically is unlikely to be true. No one, after all, feels the need to carry placards in the street and shout loudly through a bullhorn “grass is green.”

I knew OJ was a murderer when he answered the question “Did you kill your wife” with “I absolutely did not kill her.” An innocent man would not have said “absolutely.”

This is one reason why the common consensus is almost always wrong. It is formed by those who shout the loudest, and those who simply want to keep the peace will go along.

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much” is thus a good principle.

An example that comes to mind: “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” The women’s movement, from the beginning, insisted that men are of no use to women, and are the disposable sex. A woman could do anything for herself that a man could do.

I submit that women need men more than men need women. The women’s movement began because men no longer needed wives. With mod cons in the home, housework was at best a part-time job. A bachelor could manage it for himself. Hugh Hefner realized this, and launched the “Playboy philosophy.” Women were needed only for sex. Betty Friedan’s essential complaint in “The Feminine Mystique” was that she was bored to death in the suburbs having nothing to do.

As luck would have it, men now hardly need women for sex either, thanks to the ready availability of internet porn. And are beginning to realize it. And women are at last beginning to panic. That they did not decades ago is a testament to how fully women are programmed to follow rather than think things out for themselves: they were perfect victims for feminism’s “consciousness raising” which taught them to scorn men. Leaving, as JD Vance controversially put it, several sad and bitter generations of crazy cat ladies. I know many women like this. If you are honest, and my age, you probably do too.

Women need men not just for protection against other, possibly predatory, men. Nor do they need them just for protection against the forces of nature. Nor to support children financially. Government and the bureaucracy happily stepped in to take over those roles. They were delighted to do so, because they wanted power, and this was a major extension to their power. Now “the personal is political.” In this, feminism has always been essentially totalitarian.

Women also, and more vitally, need men spiritually. Women are programmed by God or evolution to seek and need guidance, and not to think for themselves. This is exactly what you are not allowed to think or say--because it is obviously true. This female mental flexibility is essential in order to form the family bond—the alternative would be constant arguments and breakups, to the great emotional detriment of both parties, and the great hazard of children’s welfare. Which is of course pretty much what feminism has brought us. 

That women need men as a mental and emotional anchor is why traditionally women were married off at an early age, while men commonly married later. Men could stand years alone while they built up a nest. A woman really could not do for any time without a husband or a father. Women without a strong lead tend to lose direction, and flounder. There is a reason girls, more than boys, report a difficult adolescence, with risks of suicide, self-harm, anorexia, and depression. In that gap between guidance by father and guidance by husband, they are cast adrift. It is also the reason ghosts and table-knocking, “spiritualist” phenomena, have since Victorian times been understood to centre somehow around some adolescent girl in the home. It is the reason irrational emotional outbursts and even dramatic delusions and hallucinations used to be generically called “hysteria,” from the Greek word for uterus. Young and single, or abandoned, women, were prone to them. It is the reason witchcraft was considered a primarily female preoccupation in Europe, usually involving old and unmarried women living alone; as shamanism is a female occupation in Korea today. This is again why Saint Paul did not want women speaking in Church, and told them to “obey your husband.” Why traditional Jewish or Muslim jurisprudence required two female witnesses but just one male. It is why women are not ordained as priests. It is why many cultures make some mythic woman straying beyond male oversight the source of all trouble entering the world: Eve in the Bible, Pandora in Greek myth, Sophia in gnostic cosmology. There are similar legends among the North American Indians (“First Nations”). 

Lacking the guidance of a designated man, women are liable to listen to serpents, or demons, or whatever ideology knocks on the front door. They are naturally programmed to be a “help-meet.”

We are acting with great recklessness in ignoring this truth in modern times. There should be no surprise that we are seeing a radical decline in women’s happiness and mental health.

And, worse, we are seeing civilization itself being knocked out of its orbit.

The Cherry Tree Carol

 

A special favourite of mine. I once made it the basis of a Christmas play. Sung here by three Jews.

On the Work of Christmas

 

An interesting take, by Howard Thurman, on the proper “Work of Christmas.”

“To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.”

It is not quite what Jesus says in the Bible, however.

His actual commission to the apostles was to cast out demons, heal the sick, preach the gospel, and baptize. Don’t see that here.

“Find the lost” and “Heal the broken” might cover this, but they are at best open to misinterpretation. If “find the lost” equates to casting out demons, it seems an odd way to put it. In the Bible, God finds the lost sheep; it seems presumptuous to suggest the individual Christian should or could.

Feed the hungry? It is incumbent on us to feed the hungry, true. Not just for Christians, but as a universal moral obligation. But Jesus also said “The poor you shall have always with you”; and that worship must be given priority over giving money to the poor. This is not the essence of the Christian mission as such.

“Release the prisoner”? He never says that. He says we are to visit those in prison, which is quite different. This would presuppose that laws and legal systems are illegitimate. Not in the Bible.

It is true that in Luke 4, Jesus says of himself, that he has come “to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.” But he is by this identifying himself as “the anointed one,” the Messiah, an exceptional circumstance--not giving a commission for Christians during normal times. He is describing a general amnesty, as in Jubilee year.

“Rebuild the nations?” Jesus stresses the separation of salvation and politics: “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” He confounded the Jewish expectation that the Messiah would be a political figure. He did not commission his followers to re-found the nation of Judea, nor to somehow reform the Roman Empire.

“Bring peace among brothers”? This is almost a flat contradiction of what Jesus does say: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”

You might point to him saying, in the Beatitudes, “blessed are the peacemakers.” But the word translated as “peacemakers” is in the ancient documents most commonly applied to Roman Emperors. It seems therefore to refer to those who keep the peace in the sense of a police force or a “justice of the peace”: by mediating disputes fairly, without fear or favour, and by catching and punishing wrongdoers.

So—bring peace among brothers in that sense: by throwing one of them in prison. So much for “Releasing the prisoners.”

“To make music in the heart.” I think Jesus did command us to create art, when he told us to be salty and to shed light; as does the Book of Genesis, giving us a commission as gardeners and potters; as does the Book of Revelations, envisioning the New Jerusalem as a city made of precious gems. But why only “in the heart”? That seems to be there to negate the point. Music in the heart is not audible to others; art that is invisible is not art. Jesus commanded us instead to “let your light shine,” to let everyone see your works, to give light to everyone in the house; to be like a city on a hill.

So it is subtle. Am I nitpicking?

I think not. Friend Xerxes quotes Thurman's poem as justification for a program of left-wing "social justice" as he proper expression of Christianity.

It seems like an attempt to subvert the gospel to worldly ends.

On the Fourth Day of Christmas

 

The Annexation Tango

 

I am now seeing a growing chorus of Canadians on X pointing out the advantages of annexation to the States. 

Really. It only took a few days for Trump to create a groundswell of support for the idea. He has an uncanny knack for “reading the room”; in this case without even being in the room. What this really is, I think, is the essential talent of prophecy. As Blake said, the prophet does not really predict the future, but sees the present more clearly than others. Trump is uncommonly unburdened by the delusions that blind most of us.

The best argument to my mind is the rights guaranteed by the US Constitution. It is not enough to get rid of Trudeau. Trudeau has demonstrated that the protections supposedly written into our Canadian Constitution are not worth the sheepskin they are printed on.

It’s all about what deal could be negotiated. Kevin O’Leary is proposing a union like the EU, with a shared currency and shared passport. Trump has suggested Canada come in as one state.

My problem with O’Leary’s suggestion is that, for such a union to be palatable to the much larger US, it would really mean the US made the rules, and Canadians would have no vote, so long as we stayed independent.

My problem with Trump’s suggestion is that it would offer no venue for Quebec to preserve its linguistic and cultural distinctiveness. And Canada would be underrepresented in Congress in relation to its population, with only two senators.

Ten new states, each of the provinces joining as states, would cause the least disruption and be easiest constitutionally. However, this would give Canada more representation than its current population would warrant; the US might well object. A compromise: five new states, and three new territories: British Columbia, Canada West (Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba), Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada (New Brunswick, PEI, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador). This would give Canada Senate representation matching its population, recognize regional differences, and preserve the name “Canada” in at least two new states. 

The main objection, Stateside, will no doubt be that Canadian voters tilt left, so they will skew American politics. But perhaps not; having experienced a hard left government in Trudeau, Canadians may be reliably right wing from now on. Just as Cuban refugees or Vietnamese are in the States, or the Poles and Hungarians are in the EU.

The Christmas Hangover

 '

The great day tis past us, and it's time for a bit of less celebratory music.

Christmas is a painful time for many.

A toast to all lost souls.

The H1-B Controversy

 

A controversy has blown up on the right over the H1-B visa program. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy want to expand it, to recruit the best talent from overseas, particularly in the tech sector. Other MAGAnauts object that this suppresses wages and takes jobs away from Americans.

I am with Musk and Ramaswamy, if the tech sector is targeted narrowly. The US and Canada need immigrants. We need them because women are not having enough babies. The only question is how to select them. This is about the best way to select them. Being really good at IT, and to a lesser extent engineering, is a good test of raw IQ. This is why, in their hiring, the big tech firms don’t look at formal qualifications, but give prospective employees what is in effect an IQ test.

Aside from needing immigrants generally, the US and Canada need to maintain and expand their advantages in the high tech sector. Both their prosperity and their security depend on being ahead in this race. It makes good sense to use their attractiveness to immigrants to recruit the best talent.

Immigrants with high IQ are most desirable for many other reasons. Besides inventing things, they are likely to contribute greatly to the culture: to the arts. They will make more money than average and generate more revenue to fund government programs. They will start businesses and employ people. People with high IQ are far less likely to commit crimes and especially violent crimes. And hey, they will marry and improve the gene pool.

Those opposed to the idea in the US point to Canada, and say that Canada has tried a similar program, with our point system for prospective immigrants, and it has done nothing for the local high tech sector.

Canada’s system is indeed a cautionary tale. Unfortunately, it does not select for IQ, but for formal academic credentials. When this is applied to the Third World, where most are too poor to get to college or university, let alone a college of university in Canada, and qualifications can essentially be bought, it does not select for high IQ, but for membership in the current ruling class of that country. 

The reason countries in the Third World are poor is that they have a corrupt and selfish ruling class.

Such a system imports this corrupt and selfish culture directly into the Canadian upper classes, thereby importing all the problems of the Third World.

We need to consult the tech industry, and use the tests they have developed for job applicants, to pick immigrants.

Happy St. Stephen's Day!

 

Treasonous Talk?

 

Not shown: Greenland, Panama Canal Zone, Hawaii

Donald Trump appears to actually be serious about annexing Canada. He tweeted about it again several times on Christmas Day. So much for those who dismissed as a joke. Ha ha. He’s pushing the Overton window. Some Canadians on X are predictably getting vitriolic in response.

For my part, I think it is a good thing for all of us in Canada if Trump and the US administration shows interest in annexing Canada.

Justin Trudeau began clearly acting dictatorially in about 2021. I said then that the ultimate guarantee of Canadians’ freedom was the US: they would, one hoped, not tolerate it going too far. They would invade to save us. But I was worried then that they might not, that they might not care enough what happened to Canada, and would not want a large body of left-leaning voters. After all, they let Cuba go Communist.

So it is great news that the US really is interested. 

This holds Canadian governments’ jackboots to the fire; we now have a competitive marketplace for Canadians’ allegiances. Future Canadian governments will have to think twice about riding roughshod over the citizenry as they have been doing increasingly—even if they can rig the elections. The central government will also need to be more careful about bullying any one province, like Alberta. An individual province too could opt to leave for the US. In most cases, splitting Canada in two.

It is useful as a threat. And if it actually happened, it would be nothing catastrophic. We are culturally almost the same. I was just watching a video of the ball drop in Times Square. In earlier years, and I imagine still mostly now, everyone in Canada was glued to the set to watch this same scene every New Years: acknowledging that our shared culture was centred there. And at the moment the new year flashed, the unmistakable strains of “Auld Lang Syne” played by Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians at the Roosevelt ballroom. “The sweetest sound this side of heaven.” We were and are one culture, awkwardly divided by a hardening border. Should we be, any more than East and West Germany, or North and South Vietnam, or North and South Korea? The conflict that kept us apart, an argument between empire and republic, has been a dead letter for many generations.

 Lower taxes, batter protection for our rights, greater mobility rights and career opportunities, and better security against any real foreign threats. And some families no longer separated.

Trump is doing Canadians a big favour.

It Being on Christmas Morning

 

A Few Predictions

 

We have had a dark four years, since 2020. But there is every reason to believe the worst is over, and the dawn is breaking again. You can see it everywhere. 

Trump takes office January 20th, but his election has already obviously changed the mood. The sane among us now are filled with energy, and the forces of darkness and confusion are on the defensive. 

Poilievre is likely to assume power by about March, following closely on Trump. Some worry he is secretly too moderate, different from the WEF crew only in rhetoric. But even if this is true, events will pull him along. Trump has yanked the Overton window right into the next room. Milei in Argentina is setting the pace, showing what can be done. Trump will want to do whatever Milei has succeeded in doing, and one-up him. Poilievre will need to maintain his street cred by matching them. There will be a general rush now to get further right before the crowd does, just as for years there has been a rush to the left.

This can certainly go too far, as the movement left did, but we have a lot of ground to make up before that happens.

Meantime, the culture is also healing. Disney and other woke corporations and advertisers are tanking. Prominent people are converting to Christianity, and Catholicism, at an accelerating rate. Awkward that at the same time the pope is an apostate, but it may be that the US leading world culture. Francis may fall in line, being firstly a politician. Or he may be moved to resign. The next conclave may find it urgent to choose someone unimpeachably orthodox. This seems to me likely.

I predict an end to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. I predict that the Trump tariffs on Canadian goods really will be imposed. They will be lifted after negotiations with a new Canadian government. I predict that Trump will not occupy the Panama Canal Zone, but will negotiate a much-reduced passage fee for US vessels, and protections against Chinese influence; perhaps the US will return as a joint operator. I predict that, at least by the end of his administration, he will have managed to buy Greenland from Denmark. I predict that mass deportations will become the norm across the developed world; and doors will be shut pretty tight on further immigration. I predict that “climate change” will lose its constituency; those lads have cried wolf too many times.

O Holy Night

 

Mariah Carey does the ultimate rendition of the ultimate carol.

Without Firing a Shot

 

Back at the close of the 19th century, Wilfred Laurier said “Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality.”

It follows that, if Canada loses its freedom, there is no more reason for Canada. 

This is perhaps the most compelling argument for Canada to join the US. It is clear that the Canadian Constitution has not protected our freedoms. Justin Trudeau’s government has been able to trample them, and nothing seemed to be there to stop him. It is exceptionally difficult to legally amend the Canadian Constitution; we are stuck with it. The simplest thing, then, might be to join the USA. Many Canadians now crave the protections the US Constitution seems able to protect.

Here is a simple non-violent way for Trump to annex Canada: offer any native-born Canadian citizens automatic citizenship on moving to the States, on the revocation of their Canadian citizenship. Many would take him up on the offer; especially the youngest, most ambitious, and most qualified. Canada would be left impoverished, and the US enriched. More so if he also applied the threatened 25% tariffs. The remnants would probably soon enough beg to be admitted.

The Magdeberg Christmas Market Attack

 

There is a perverse confusion among commentators about the motives of the serial killer who recently drove a car into the Magdeberg Christmas Market. Of course this was a Muslim terrorist attack, right?

But then int runs out that, although born in Saudi Arabia, he was a militant atheist, and anti-Islam.

So, confused, the piundits ask, what possible motive could he have? He must be lying. He must really be Muslim, and was deep under cover for these many years. Or he is Shia, and only anti-Sunni, not anti-Muslim. And so on. 

After all, why on earth would an atheist be anti-Christian?

Stop and think for a moment.

In the real world, an atheist is far more an enemy of Christianity than a Muslim fellow monotheist. Consider the treatment of Christians in North Korea, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China. Compare the Christians living relatively peaceably in the Ottoman Empire and the Muslim Levant for millennia.

Modern jihadists are always at best lukewarm about Islam. Calling them “extremists” is an anti-religious alibi. They are westernized secular middle easterners suffering from culture shock. 

Tonight's the Night

 

The greatest of Christmas carols. A real test of a great voice.

A Canadian Advent Song

 

Gordon Lightfoot is a great lyricist.

The Two Kinds of People

 

There are, in this world, two kinds of people: those who accept the existence of God, and those who try to deny it. Never the twain shall meet; these are perfectly incompatible views, like humans and zombies. The instant you accept the existence of the absolute, it is necessarily of absolute importance. Those who do not see it are, at charitable best, insane. They are not in the conversation.

Deniers, similarly, cannot tolerate believers. Ultimately, the existence of God is certain and accessible to reason. To deny God is therefore to turn from God, to dodge the truth. 

People turn from God because they are conscious of doing wrong, or want to do wrong. They don’t want to accept the existence of divine justice. They want to get away with it; like Adam and Eve hiding in the bushes. Religion is a “religious dictatorship.” Anyone who asserts the existence of God, genuinely claims to believe it, is a threat to them, and must be shut down. Churches burned, Christmas markets attacked.

The most obvious tactic is to infiltrate any convenient religious body themselves, and seek to subvert it. This is the Pharisee gambit; they are common in every religion. I became all too familiar with them studying religion in grad school. Within the department, you gained approval by saying the most outrageously skeptical and irreligious thing.  The sincerely religious were mocked as ignorant.

I thank God I escaped that. But it was not easy. Most higher education is cult-like.

Advent Music from Jerusalem

 

Advent Music

 

Trump's Egomania Revealed

 

There is as lot of grumbling about Elon Musk being so active in the incoming Trump administration. The common sneer is that he must soon fall from grace, because “Trump doesn’t like being upstaged.” 

This is not really a new idea. I heard this comment before, when there was discussion of possible VP picks. 

Where is it coming from? Does anyone have any actual evidence of Trump turning on someone for upstaging him?

Maybe from Mike Pence being his original VP. Pence was always low key to a fault.

But the story I hear is that Pence was not Trump’s choice. He was forced on him by the party brass, who feared Trump’s flamboyance and wanted a steady hand and steadier image. Trump wanted Newt Gingrich—another firebrand.

The thesis remains unproven. Nobody has ever upstaged Trump. It is just a way to avoid giving Trump credit for his own great showmanship. He has never needed to suppress anyone else for being a better showman, so there is no way to know whether he would.

But look at his cabinet picks. They are what evidence we have. He has not selected faceless bureaucrats or shrinking violets or yes-men. Each choice is someone outspoken, charismatic, and with their own constituency. RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Matt Gaetz, Tom Homan, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Kristi Noem... They were the very ones you would pick if you were trying to find someone to upstage Trump.

Compare the cabinet of Justin Trudeau in Canada. None have established an independent constituency or identity with the public—unless by resigning. Those who already had a public profile, having served prior to Trudeau, Stephane Dion or Marc Garneau, were pushed out early. In the recent cabinet shuffle, with perhaps one third of his caucus in open revolt, Trudeau appointed David McGuinty and Nathaniel Erskine-Smith as new ministers. You would think at this point he was scraping the bottom of the barrel. Instead, he was finally forced at last to appoint members who, based on their skills, accomplishments, and constituencies, should have been in the cabinet all along. But they might have taken some of the spotlight from Trudeau.

As is usually the case, the common wisdom among the punditry is the opposite of the truth.