The Salmon-Falls, The Mackerel-Crowded Seas

 

the saloFriend Xerxes recently summarized the common contemporary nature ethic: the Gospel of Pachamama. “Let’s be consistent. If God created life, then every form of life is sacred. Holy. Valued for its own sake.”

By that premise, not just salmon runs and butterflies, but mosquitos, fleas, lice, rats and cockroaches must be also celebrated. And God created COVID-19, and cancer. It too must have a right to exist and flourish. It must be valued for its own sake, not murdered with vaccines or radiation.

Xerxes misses an essential, a transcendent thing. We value some elements of nature, only some elements, for their beauty. The value of a salmon run, for example, aside from preserving a food source, is aesthetic. A river running red with salmon is a beautiful thing, as is a sunset, a mature male lion, or a waterfall. Beauty, along with Truth and the Good, is of intrinsic value.

But if and only if there are human beings around to see it.

Xerxes predictably trots out Genesis 1:26, in order to condemn Christianity. 

“God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 

It is Christianity’s fault, therefore, that so many wonderful animals are getting killed. The Judeo-Christian God gave us permission, “dominion.” Without that sanction, of course, nobody would think of killing an animal. After all, animals don’t kill each other, do they? After all, anyone can see that there is far less pollution in non-Christian countries like China, or the old Soviet Union, or India. Right?

Right?

Bueller? Anybody?

Right?

What does “dominion” mean? Here’s a hint: Canada is a dominion, and this has not often involved the government killing its citizens wholesale. Like everything in the Bible, one must read Genesis 1:26 in context of other nearby verses. In this case, Genesis 2:15 clarifies what “dominion” means. “Yahweh God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.” We are to cultivate and keep nature: not destroy it, and not leave it alone. Make it beautiful. To turn the wilderness into a garden.

Broadly, this is what we do when we create art.

Without man, nature is barren.

A Bit of Christmas Music

 

A Blood Libel and a Public Lynching

 

The freshly-minted leader of the Canadian Conservative Party, Erin O’Toole, is suddenly in serious trouble. People are calling for his resignation. Unfortunately, he came dangerously close to semi-publicly telling the truth about Indian residential schools.

Of course, once found out, he quickly walked it back and denied everything. But in such cases, repentance is not enough. There can be no forgiveness or reconciliation. Ever. 

The now-exposed racist actually said that the schools were intended to educate the Indians.

Imagine that—schools intended to educate. Who could have imagined such a lie?

No, in Canada, on pain of losing your job or even imprisonment, one must believe an elaborate conspiracy theory: that the Indian schools were actually always and solely, if secretly, intended for genocide—the term used repeatedly and insistently by one panelist in reaction to O’Toole’s blasphemy.

An odd sort of genocide, of course, considering that there are far more Indians in Canada now than there have ever been. They are the fastest-growing segment of the Canadian population.

And the founding document O’Toole was referring to, written by Egerton Ryerson, explicitly states that the students in the proposed residential schools were to be taught reading, arithmetic, geometry, history, chemistry, writing, drawing, music, bookkeeping, religion, and morals. That does sound rather like an education.

The “genocide” is supposedly “cultural genocide.” Nobody dies in this sort of genocide; a seeming contradiction in terms. That is, the schools were supposedly an effort to destroy Indian culture. To support this claim, the old quote was wheeled out by a panelist, that they were intended by “some politician” to “kill the Indian in the man.” 

No Canadian politician ever said anything close to this. It is a misquotation instead of US General Richard Henry Pratt, the founder of Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. What he actually said was “kill the Indian; save the man.” And in the speech where he said this, he pointed out that residential schools would not do this.

If the intent were ever to destroy Indian culture, fairly obviously, it would not have been the Indian bands themselves who demanded and partly funded them. The obvious way to do that, as Pratt pointed out, would not have been to set up separate schools for Indians; it would have been to integrate the Indians and have them attend the public schools. Rather, the residential schools were an attempt to retain a distinct Indian culture. It was taken for granted from the start that, having graduated, the students would remain on the reserves and live apart. That may have been a mistake; but it was the opposite to the common claim.

Modern radical leftists may be upset that the schools taught religion and morals. They may assert that this at least was an attempt to subvert Indian culture. Apparently they think Indian culture had no morals, and morals are a bad thing. This is both depraved and historically ignorant. Ryerson, in the founding document, specified that pupils attend the church of their own denomination, not that of the official denomination of each residential school. He could take it for granted, rightly, that Indians were Christian. Indeed, when the British took possession of Canada after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, their first act in order to ensure peace with the Indians was to formally guarantee them the right to keep their Catholic priests. The first Protestant church in Ontario, in turn, was probably that built in Brantford by Mohawks emigrating from New York State. Without benefit, at the time, of clergy.

The current delusional attitude towards our history is profoundly prejudicial to Indians, and, at the same time, an extreme example of hate speech against Canadians of European extraction.

And the CBC, taxpayer-funded to provide information and sustain public discourse, is instead openly censoring and suppressing public discourse.

The Dominion of Nice

 Kathy Shaidle calls it the Tyranny of Nice.

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/391685.php

Time for Some Christmas Music

 

Apocalypse Maybe Later

 

My Jehovah’s Witness friend Hadassah is of course convinced the world is about to end. She cites, for example, 2 Timothy:

“But know this: that in the last days, grievous times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, not lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of godliness, but having denied its power. Turn away from these, also. For some of these are people who creep into houses and take captive gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. … Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.”

It does sound like the current situation.

 But people who try to predict the end of days are going against the Bible itself. Jesus says “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” He will come, when he comes again “like a thief in the night.” Of such times of universal tumult as are cited in 2 Timothy, he says “See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.” (Matthew 24). In other words, general chaos and the breakdown of order and morality are NOT signs of the end.

Jesus also said that those listening to him would not die before the End Times came: “Most certainly I tell you, there are some standing here who will in no way taste of death, until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.” And Paul wrote 2 Timothy not for a distant future, but to someone alive in his day.

I recall a bishop once saying that all millennial movements are manifestations of the Antichrist. I think this is true. Marxism is such a millennial movement. So is "climate change" environmentalism.

I think it is natural for the righteous among us, as we grow older, to develop the impression that the world is falling apart around us. This is largely because the world is always falling apart around us. Any serious study of history must realize this is so. 

In our younger years, we refuse to see this. We must, after all, live in this world for a human lifetime or so, and so we are in denial. As we age, it becomes easier to accept that things are not getting a lot better. Although they are probably not really getting worse, the growing realization of how bad they are gives us this subjective impression. And so old men and women are inclined to see the world as going to hell. It is perhaps a part of the process of letting go.

The End Times are always with us. Although there will necessarily be an end of the world, just as there was a beginning, this is not of great significance to any one of us. The End of Days and the Second Coming that Jesus and Paul refer to in the Bible is our own physical deaths.

Children are Getting Shot in China

 

I teach some Chinese students online. This gives me a bit of a window on China. 

Last week, one of my students did not appear for class. When I asked him about it this morning, he explained that he was sick from being vaccinated.

For Covid?

Yes.

Sick for how long?

A week.

He is eight years old.

Unless he is confused, this suggests that vaccination has become remarkably widespread in China--they are at the point of vaccinating eight-year-olds. Also, if an eight-year-old is sick for a week as a result, that's a pretty rough vaccination--considering eight-year-olds usually get little or no symptoms from the virus itself.

Why would they be vaccinating kids, if this is so? No doubt, to achieve herd immunity. Children could be carriers. Or little Adam may have the honour of being part of a test group to determine how children tolerate the vaccine.

It seems possible he has it wrong, and the vaccination was for something else. But this is a surprisingly strong reaction to a familiar and common vaccine.

"An Easy COVID cure"

 

The Shape of Things to Come

 

My Austrian Jehovah’s Witness friend Hadassah is convinced we are in the End Times. And I must admit, things are looking rather apocalyptic recently. Last night, learning of William Barr’s resignation as US attorney-general, I sensed this might be a first shoe dropping. It seems otherwise odd for Barr to leave so soon before the (presumed) end of Trump’s administration. Why not stick around for one more month?

Unless something is about to happen in the next month.

Especially since Barr is not leaving in anger, to make a point, and Trump is not asking him to resign in anger, to make a point. It seems, therefore, as though the point comes later.

Might Barr be resigning because Trump wants his AG in the near future to do something that Barr does not want to do? 

The situation in the US is now so disordered that almost nothing seems off the table.

By now, the results of the recent election are surely not credible; at least to roughly half of the US population. Also yesterday, the results of a local Michigan audit of the Dominion voting machines, now made public, claimed that they seemed deliberately designed to allow for fraud. They are used in 28 to 44 states (I see different figures). We have video from Atlanta of ballot stuffing, or something that defies any other explanation. We have expert claims that the election results are statistically improbable to the point of practical impossibility.

That profoundly undermines the social contract, profoundly undermines what holds the USA together. If free speech is no longer permitted, and one cannot any longer vote a government in or out, only one resort is left for the disaffected: group violence.

At the same time, evidence is suddenly—and mysteriously—flooding in that Chinese influence in the US is pervasive. The names of two million Chinese spies have suddenly been discovered. McCarthy himself could not have dreamt of such a figure: I recall his high number as around 200. A video surfaces of a Chinese academic, speaking in China, boasting that they can easily influence US government policy and Wall Street through their connections. A spy is outed who has been sleeping with mayors and congressmen. We suddenly learn that a vital piece of software, Solar Wind, has been hacked and open to unknown parties for the past six months. Solar Wind is used by the US military--and by Dominion Voting Systems. We suddenly learn that Hunter Biden, and James Biden, have been under investigation for possible criminal charges for the past two years, and their relations with China are at the centre of it. Everything seems to be converging.

This all looks strangely coordinated. As if some hidden power first fixed the election for Joe Biden, and then some hidden power moved to discredit him and raise the alarm. 

People who scoff at conspiracy theories, and insist they must not be true, have never lived in China. In China, conspiracies are a national sport. Something is always going on.

The pattern suggests that two powers are at war here: presumably the CCP does not want Chinese spies exposed, and whoever exposed the Chinese spying did not want Biden elected. Unless the point was just to foment chaos; but that seems too clever by half. I wonder if we are seeing a covert war not so much between the US and China, as between the CCP and Falun Gong, over the relatively ignorant and blundering USA. It is the Falun Gong, for example, which would have the resources to expose that video of a Chinese academic speaking inside China. The Falun Gong seems strikingly well organized and active above ground currently, with The Epoch Times, the NTD network, regular public protests, and other initiatives. They may amount to a Chinese government in exile.

The mood in the US is now, I suspect, pre-revolutionary. Until now, the Antifa thugs and Black Lives Matter have been able to rule the streets. I think it is a given that they are being backed behind the scene by Chinese interests, among others. But if Biden takes office, it is hard to believe the Proud Boys and others on the right will continue to “stand back and stand down.” Instead, we are going to have competing organized groups squaring off. The violence will probably quickly escalate. Weimar Germany again.

There is currently a visible, audible, palpable push towards radicalism and action on the right. Fox News and Drudge Report are rapidly losing audience to more strident voices: One American News, Newsmax, Citizen Free Press. Barr is too moderate now; the Supreme Court is too moderate now; following the rules and staying polite is too moderate now; there are chants to boycott the Republican Party, and form a new one. The thirst, the demand, is for decisive action.

I suspect Trump is getting ready to invoke his 2018 Executive Order on Foreign Interference. This might also justify, in turn, declaring martial law. Which might be necessary now to maintain order. This might be what prompts Barr’s resignation, as this would require authorization by the Attorney-General. In a sense, I suspect Trump is forced into this; aside from the danger of civil society collapsing into street violence, if he does not, at this point, he is likely to himself be abandoned by his former supporters as just one more squish who has let them down. Some new leader may then may emerge from the streets, the shadows, or the beer halls. Some little corporal.

The left, of course, already has such figures.

It is no doubt not the end of the world. But revolutions are not good times for all non-psychopaths.

Happy Gaudete Sunday!

 

Gaudete, gaudete Christos est natus
Ex Maria virginae, gaudete.
Gaudete, gaudete Christos est natus
Ex Maria virginae, gaudete.
Tempus ad est gratiae hoc quod optabamus,
Carmina laetitiae devote redamus.
Gaudete, gaudete Christos est natus
Ex Maria virginae, gaudete.
Gaudete, gaudete Christos est natus
Ex Maria virginae, gaudete.
Deus homo factus est naturam erante,
Mundus renovatus est a Christo regnante.
Gaudete, gaudete Christos est natus
Ex Maria virginae, gaudete.
Gaudete, gaudete Christos est natus
Ex Maria virginae, gaudete.
Ezecheelis porta clausa per transitor
Unde lux est orta sallus invenitor.
Gaudete, gaudete Christos est natus

The Magnificat

 

My celebrated interlocutor Xerxes has written a column praising Mary for the Magnificat as a declaration of female empowerment:

“This is no gentle maid, meek and mild. She speaks of ‘scattering the proud… bringing down the powerful… lifting up the lowly, and filling the hungry, sending the rich away empty…’

            This is one tough woman. ‘I am woman,’ she would sing, like Helen Reddy. ‘Hear me roar!’”

I have some trouble hearing the Virgin Mary roar. Here is the Magnificat, in English translation. As it happens, it is the responsorial for today's mass:

My soul magnifies the Lord 

And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior;

Because He has regarded the lowliness of His handmaid;

For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed;

Because He who is mighty has done great things for me,

and holy is His name;

And His mercy is from generation to generation

on those who fear Him.

He has shown might with His arm,

He has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.

He has put down the mighty from their thrones,

and has exalted the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich He has sent away empty.

He has given help to Israel, his servant, mindful of His mercy

Even as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity forever.

Note that Xerxes has it pretty much backwards. Mary is not saying she will scatter the proud or bring down the powerful. She says God has already done this.

One presumes from this that she is not talking political power, not talking politics at all. 

And the tone is the polar opposite of Helen Reddy’s in “I Am Woman.” Reddy is aggressively boastful, saying, in essence, “I am God”:

“If I have to, I can do anything

I am strong

I am invincible.”

 Mary by contrast says her soul magnifies the Lord, rather than herself; she then refers to herself in the third person, to “the lowliness of His handmaid.

Mary’s attitude is the religious attitude. Helen Reddy’s attitude is the antithesis of the religious attitude.

The Voice of one Small Business Owner

 

On Being Born Again

A Jewish friend explains that, according to her brand of Judaism, the sufferings and injustices we encounter in life are “chosen just for us, to help our souls grow.” She asks if this is compatible with Christianity.

It is not.

It is a possible explanation for her because her form of Judaism believes in reincarnation. Without reincarnation, the formula does not always work: innocent children often suffer, while obviously vicious people often do not. Stalin died in his bed of natural causes. With reincarnation, when bad things happen to good people, we can suppose it is for something they did in a past life. This is the familiar doctrine of karma.

One obvious criticism is that it leads to passivity and acceptance in the face of evil; there is now no sense of need to try to make things better in the world. Indeed, to do so might seem impertinent, or impossible. This is not merely a Christian criticism; it is a common secularist one.

Worse, the doctrine of karma leads to blaming the unfortunate for their own misfortune. If he’s a blind beggar, it must be somehow his own damned fault. He is to be despised, not helped.

Reincarnation would be convenient for Christian theology; besides accounting for the suffering of the innocent, it could resolve the problem of “limbo.” That is, what happens to children who die before baptism, or before the age of reason? They have not merited either heaven or hell; they have not been morally tested. It is obviously unfair if they are now denied forever the possibility of heaven. Where else can they go, then, if not to another life for a second chance?

Reincarnation could also neatly reconcile Christian with Buddhist or Hindu cosmology. It might be that any soul keeps being reincarnated until born into a Christian cultural context, so that they get an equal opportunity to hear the full Christian message and either accept or reject it. Buddhist or Hindu lifetimes, then, are indeed necessarily reincarnations; Christian lifetimes are for keeps.

But this comes up against Paul’s pronouncement in Hebrews 9: “It is given to man once to die, and then the judgement.” Reincarnation was a familiar belief in the Hellenic world of the time; Plato and Socrates believed in it. The fact that Jesus and the Gospel writers do not refer to the possibility is also illustrative. It was an option they ignored, or did not consider.

Accordingly, suffering, for Christians, is not a matter of making up for some personal deficit. Suffering builds soul: suffering brings you closer to God. But you do not suffer because you deserve it.

“Now there were some present at the same time who told him about the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 2 Jesus answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered such things? 3 I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all perish in the same way. 4 Or those eighteen, on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them; do you think that they were worse offenders than all the men who dwell in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no, but, unless you repent, you will all perish in the same way.” (Luke 13)

Besides bringing us closer to God, suffering can be redemptive for others: the great model being the suffering and death of Jesus himself. He died for our sins. In the same way, in Catholic understanding, we can consecrate our own sufferings to help others, such as the souls in purgatory.

Those who suffer now are also to be compensated for this in the next life.

“Now there was a certain rich man, and he was clothed in purple and fine linen, living in luxury every day. 20 A certain beggar, named Lazarus, was taken to his gate, full of sores, 21 and desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. Yes, even the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 The beggar died, and he was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died, and was buried. 23 In Hades, he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far off, and Lazarus at his bosom. 24 He cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue! For I am in anguish in this flame.’

25 “But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that you, in your lifetime, received your good things, and Lazarus, in the same way, bad things. But here he is now comforted, and you are in anguish.’” (Luke 16).

Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says “blessed are the poor in spirit”; “blessed are those who mourn”; and blessed are the persecuted. In the Gospel of Luke, he immediately follows these Beatitudes with a parallel set of curses, or warnings:

“But woe to you who are rich!
For you have received your consolation.
25 Woe to you, you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
26 Woe, when men speak well of you,
for their fathers did the same thing to the false prophets.”

Suffering in a bad world is warrant that one is a good person. Being happy in a bad world is alarming.

Hacker's Paradise

 

Civil War? Nothing Civil about It

Signatories to the Texas suit.

 Things are getting crazier in the US. YouTube has announced that, as of today, they will take down any comment that the recently-completed US presidential election was illegitimate. Even though there are court cases pending making that argument. This is censorship at the totalitarian level.

One such court case has Texas and seventeen other states—at latest count—suing Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan to prevent them from certifying electors. A war between the states.

At this point, Giuliani, Powell, and others seem to have demonstrated convincingly at least to the public who have been watching that there was indeed widespread fraud. As of the latest poll, almost half of the US population now believe the election was fraudulent. And that poll was taken before some of the strongest evidence was produced: the “smoking gun” video of the Atlanta counting station, and statistical analyses suggesting the odds of Biden pulling out a win given the count at 10 PM on election night was about as likely as a rhesus monkey spontaneously writing the Bible. In Aramaic.

Meantime, revelations that China has subverted politicians in the US, and has been able to count on this network to advance their interests; and that they lost this influence when Trump was elected. And that Hunter Biden is being investigated for serious financial crimes—a story that seems to have been suppressed by the news media until after the election.

If the Supreme Court does not accept the Texas suit, and overturn the election, Rush Limbaugh is suggesting secession and civil war. Other right-wing commentators, who previously scoffed at such talk, are now speaking of the need for violent resistance: Dave Rubin, Scott Adams, Andrew Klavan. Rising against the inauguration of Biden has to begin to look to a significant portion of the American public like a civic duty.

Lie down, shut up, and take it, at this point, feels and looks like craven surrender.

E Pluribus Multis

 

Here is an interesting and important op-ed by a Mount Royal University professor, that appeared in the Vancouver Sun, but reportedly was soon pulled down. True North further claims that ,because he wrote it, the author was refused entry into the Canadian Armed Forces.

Perhaps the most important passage:

social trust corresponds more closely than any other factor to predicting economic prosperity. Harvard economists Alberto Alesina and co-authors from a paper titled, Fractionalization, argued that greater diversity leads to stunted economic growth. In other words, diversity is a weakness as far as the economy is concerned.

In 1981 The World Values Survey began an investigation into cross-cultural beliefs, values and motivations, and has since shown that societies with high social trust are not only more economically productive but also happier. The most successful are homogeneous countries, not the diverse ones.

The bigger problem is not immigration, but multiculturalism. The goal must be to form a unified Canadian culture.

Upsetting

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1335855946405437440

Of Fig Trees and the Banality of Evil

 

Now in the morning, as he returned to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he came to it and found nothing on it but leaves. He said to it, “Let there be no fruit from you forever!”

Immediately the fig tree withered away.

- Matthew 21, WEB

Many find this passage odd; yet versions appears in three of four Gospels. What does Jesus have against an innocent fig tree?

Perhaps it is meant to repeat and reinforce a message found often elsewhere in the gospels, in different ways: by their fruits you will know them.

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do you gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree produces good fruit, but the corrupt tree produces evil fruit. A good tree can’t produce evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree produce good fruit. Every tree that doesn’t grow good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.

--Matthew 7, WEB.

The traditional understanding of “fruits” here, especially for Catholics, is of course “good deeds.” Moral behavior. 

This does not work well, however; because Jesus elsewhere says we should perform our good deeds in secret. And any clever con artist knows enough to perform good deeds in order to deceive--what else does “wolf in sheep’s clothing” mean?

So what then are our fruits?

Fruits may instead mean works of art or craft. This may then be what Jesus means when he tells us to “let our light shine,” “be like a city on a hill.” A city is, after all, a massive work of art or craft.

But then the image is not perfect; since fruit suggests nature rather than handicraft or manufacture.

The most obvious, literal meaning is simply that we can judge a person by looking at their children.

I think that is right.

If some young person is in turmoil, engaging in self-destructive behavior, seems spiritless, or acts immorally, the parent is probably at least in part to blame. If a child’s life seems significantly less successful than their parents, then the parent is liable to be at least in part to blame.

And this is in turn the surest way to spot a bad person. For it is difficult otherwise. Bad people who are at least halfway intelligent are going to wear sheep’s clothing; their malice will be carefully hidden from view. But their children are defenseless, their power over them, when young, absolute. Everything is literally behind closed doors. Their own children are the perfect victims.

Which brings us to Hunter Biden, and his spectacularly self-destructive behavior.

You might object that the son or daughter of any very prominent person might suffer as a result of living in their shadow, and so be tempted to such errant behavior.

Yet this is demonstrably not so. Compare Donald Trump’s children. They all seem to be doing well. Notably, Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, is himself a successful businessman with a prominent role in her father’s administration. This is striking, because any narcissistic father will resent the spouses of their children, especially their daughter. George H.W. Bush’s sons also obviously did quite well.

Hunter is acting out the classic role of black sheep, familiar in almost any dysfunctional family. His father is a monster. Joe Biden is the banal, congenial, classical mask of evil.

Mollie Hemingway Fact-Checks the Fact Checkers

 

And, unsurprisingly, finds them utterly unreliable on the Georgia vote video.

Canada Frog-Marches on to Progressive Hell

Call me Ishmael.

My gauche columnist pal Xerxes is currently celebrating Canadian Bill C-6, “An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (conversion therapy).” He endorses it as a breakthrough in recognizing human rights, and titles his column “Conversion therapy is criminal coercion.”

In charity, I can only say that he has been misinformed. Bill C-6 is not about therapy done, in Xerxes’s words, “against a person’s will.” That would already be a serious crime: kidnapping. No need for any new law.

Rather, the law bans conversion therapy as such: defined as “a practice that seeks to change an individual's sexual orientation to heterosexual, to repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviours, or to change an individual's gender identity to match the sex they were assigned at birth.” It prohibits advertising or profiting from such a service.

This is discriminatory: it bars homosexuals from a treatment they might desire. And not only for religious or ethical reasons. Think about it from their perspective. Imagine the situation if perhaps 98% of those to whom you are physically attracted are uninterested in a relationship at best. And you usually do not know which ones. Only once you get past those overwhelming odds do you begin to encounter the level of failure in love that makes all the rest of us suffer so much; that caused the suicide of sorrowful young Werther. The constant rejection, the constant unrequited eros, must be crippling to one’s self-image and emotional well-being.

But now any escape from this situation, if possible, is prohibited.

It also opens any religious group to prosecution and suppression. For all major established religions preach that homosexual sex is sinful, and that one should resist such temptations. Doesn’t this make religion per se a “service that seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation”?

Far from advancing human rights, this directly violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 18: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

This is without getting in to the issue of seeking to realign one’s “gender identity” with one’s biology, one’s actual sex. If we accept this logic, we would have to make all psychiatry illegal as discriminatory: its entire purpose is to align our thoughts with external, physical reality.

Perhaps there is an argument to be made, that psychiatry in all cases violates our freedom of thought. Perhaps we want to argue, too, that psychiatry must never be permitted, as it is now, to impose treatments against a patient’s will. But that is another discussion.

Merriam-Webster defines “delusion” in its psychological sense as: “a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary.”

To prohibit care to anyone with this particular delusion, that although they are biologically male, they are “really” a woman, or vice versa, is discriminatory; we would not refuse treatment for any other psychosis. And the suicide rate for those with this condition is extremely high.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30009750/

Not to mention that this delusion, or belief, regularly leads to self-mutilation and other behaviours dangerous to health: hormone treatments and cutting off portions of one’s anatomy.

Your response, gentle reader, might be that such therapies do not work, and so, like fortune-telling, they can be prohibited as a form of fraud. However, Canada’s criminal code needs to be consistent: the laws against witchcraft and fortune-telling have been removed. Nor do we ban chiropractic, or herbalism, or any number of medical and psychiatric practices that have no scientific proof of efficacy.

Does conversion therapy work? While any given approach might or might not, the proposition that one’s ideas cannot be changed with regard to either one’s perceived gender or one’s sexual orientation is obviously untrue. We are not robots; we can change our minds, and it is dehumanizing to suggest we cannot. Many people do attest to having changed their minds about either their sexuality or their gender. We hear frequently enough of people who have been living as a heterosexual declaring themselves homosexual, or as a man declaring themselves a woman. It is inconsistent to assume that all such transitions can only be in one direction, away from biological reality. And probably you, like I, know some personally whose convictions have indeed moved in the opposite direction. Although such contrary movements are never reported in the media.

Human rights are now subverted wholesale.