Sadly Gay

A large new study has failed to find such a thing as a “gay gene.”

Given the rapid growth of our knowledge of the human genome over the past few years, a negative finding by now is pretty definitive. It turns out that homosexuals are not “born that way.”

This should not be surprising to anyone with common sense. Homosexuals do not reproduce. Were there a “gay gene,” it would eliminate itself from the gene pool over two generations.

But the current concept of homosexuality as a human right, against which one must not discriminate, is based on this false premise.

Yet we also cannot see homosexuality as something anyone is likely to choose as a lifestyle. Less than 3% of the population is homosexual. That means that, if you are, at least 97% of those to whom you are sexually attracted will be repelled by any approach. Not great odds for a happy sex life or a healthy self-image. Worse, you cannot easily tell by looking at them who is in the 3%.

So, if it is not genetic, and nobody would consciously choose it, how does anyone become homosexual?

The obvious alternative is that they are groomed into it. Given that homosexuals face almost certain rejection in most other circumstances, their obvious strategy is to approach adolescents not yet very aware of sex, or their own sexuality, and seduce them before they know what is going on. Or exploit some power relationship.

We are hard-wired to form an emotional attachment to whomever we first have sex with. This is easily explained in Darwinian terms. It is the basis for the oldest of pickup lines, “you remind me of someone.” If our first sexual experience is with a blonde, we will favour blondes from then on; if with a short woman, we will favour short women; and so on. See if it is not true for yourself.

A reason, not incidentally, why premarital sex is a bad idea. If you can marry your first sexual partner, the emotional bond will be far stronger.

But this also means that, if you are seduced by an older gay man when an adolescent, you may well become homosexual yourself.

Homosexuality, in other words, is contagious.

This is currently and often forcefully denied. Relevant authorities will insist that homosexuals are no more likely to be pedophiles than homosexuals.

But the numbers in the sex scandal in the North American Catholic Church say otherwise. Eighty percent of victims have been adolescent males. And common sense says otherwise: given the odds of rejection otherwise, homosexuals must face a stronger temptation here. Moreover, the idea of an older man “mentoring” a younger one is the understood norm of homosexuality in places, like Ancient Greece or English public schools, in which it has been acceptable.

This might then explain in large part why most societies and cultures oppose homosexuality. It is cruel and predatory to turn a young man gay. That forces him onto the same obstacles to sexual satisfaction that drew the partner to this strategy. Not to mention opening him to a much higher risk of sexually-transmitted diseases, the inability to have children, the less comfortable match between two male psyches, and so on.

Putting it all together, it really looks like a remarkably bad idea to celebrate homosexuality, hold “pride” parades, and assign the practice inalienable rights. This has nothing to do with compassion towards homosexuals.

The real reason we have gone so far down this treacherous cul-de-sac, I suspect, is that seeing homosexuality as a human right allowed and allows us to pillory conventional morality as discriminatory. Satan forbid there should be any restrictions on our own sexual license.

There is already hell to pay.

Wars and Rumours of War

Aunty Fascist.

I think it is indisputable that we, in Europe, America, and Oceania, “the West,” or “Western civilization,” are now in a state of cold civil war. Normal discourse is being shut down, and this must lead to violence. To an extent, violence has already started, with gangs like Antifa in the streets.

I also think there is no question who is the aggressor in this war: the “left.” It is the left that has been trying to shut down civil discourse; this is demonstrable. They are shouting down, censoring, passing “hate speech” laws, banning, boycotting, and unfriending.

Not all wars are contests of good against evil. But in the normal course of things, contrary to popular belief, most are. If both parties are of good heart, things can almost certainly be worked out without violence. A war that is simply a “misunderstanding” is improbable.

When this is the case, when it is good against evil, it is generally the party of evil who begins the war. It is not that starting a war is evil in itself, as is often claimed, but that it is the side with a losing argument who will want to shut down debate and resort to force. As a desperation measure, because otherwise they will lose the debate.

And it is usually the party of evil, or the party that begins the war, who loses it. That is, given that the parties are reasonably equally matched--this rule cannot apply if, for example, the British Empire invades Easter Island with a dozen ships of the line.

It sounds crazy, but it makes sense. First, there is the logic of the ordeal or duel: the assumption behind these practices was that the human conscience would strengthen the arm and aim of one who knew they were in the right. Second, the side that lacks justification is going to war as a desperation measure; because they know they will lose the argument. As they go to war in desperation, they may well go to war against the odds.

The obvious historical example is the Second World War. Granted that Stalin was as bad, overall, as Hitler, I think there is no room to dispute that right was on the side of the Western Allies against the Nazis. And I think the argument is compelling that Hitler, and Japan, went to war with little chance of winning from the outset. It is as though in a fit of suicidal rage they just wanted to take down as many people with them as possible.

I think, contrary to much opinion, that the same was true of the First World War. Germany was morally in the wrong, advancing an ideology of social Darwinism, Germany and Austria were the aggressors, first declaring war, and Germany and Austria lost.

American Civil War: begun by the South by firing on Fort Sumter. They were obviously morally in the wrong, to the extent that they were fighting to preserve slavery, they started a war that, in terms of relative economic and military strength, they had little chance to win, and they lost the war they had begun.

Franco-Prussian War: France declared war on Prussia for no good reason but grandeur and to check German power. France lost.

Punic Wars: who started them is unclear; but the Carthaginians practiced child sacrifice, and so were clearly in the moral wrong as a civilization. And they lost.

The left, I think on this basis, is doomed to lose this current civil war. And I believe, as I have said before, that the real underlying issue is abortion, and the supposed right to unrestricted sex. It is only a matter of how much blood they can spill in the effort.

Once they lose, I think we can expect the world to return to a healthy course and reconstruct.

Forget Greenland

I’m intrigued by Trump’s idea of buying Greenland. Buying land and inhabitants from another country sounds odd, but the US has done it before. They bought Alaska from Russia, the vast Louisiana Territory from France, the Gadsden Purchase of southern Arizona and New Mexico from Mexico. 

Gadsden Purchase

Reports are that Greenland and Denmark are not interested.

I have a better idea.

Let’s sell Trump Canada instead.

Gets him just about as close to the North Pole and the North Atlantic. Nice bundle of resources, too.

We could sell it all to the US at, say, $100,000 per Canadian; or, really, just about any sum. Then we pocket the money, nominally become Americans, and go on pretty much as we had. But with full access to American markets and opportunities. As American citizens, we continue to own what we sold anyway.

I can’t see a downside.

But here’s the deeper moral: this is more or less the deal Canada’s First Nations made when they signed their various treaties. Contrary to common claims and complaints, it was actually a sweetheart deal for them.

The Fire This Time

St. Dymphna

Luke’s gospel is uncompromising. This Sunday’s reading:

Jesus said to his disciples:
“I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already blazing!
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized,
and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.
From now on a household of five will be divided,
three against two and two against three;
a father will be divided against his son
and a son against his father,
a mother against her daughter
and a daughter against her mother,
a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

So much for “gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” As Andrew Klavan has observed, he is nowhere in the gospels.

I have heard this passage described repeatedly as “challenging.” Followed by a sermon that did not challenge, but avoided mentioning what the passage actually says: Jesus is against peace and family values.

We should not be surprised. Either is an idolatry, the more dangerous for being so apparently desirable, and so seductive. This is what evil always is: God created all things good. Evil consists of valuing a lesser good over a greater.

Sex is good; and so the temptation is to elevate sex beyond its procreative station. Material comfort is good. And so the love of money becomes the root of evil. In the same way, family and peace are desirable, and so especially likely to lead to sin. 

Peace in our time.

Neville Chamberlain serenely betrayed Czechoslovakia to Hitler in the name of peace. Lincoln could have had peace and avoided the carnage of the Civil War by guaranteeing the right to slavery. The neighbours of Kitty Genovese opted for peace. As Edmund Burke put it, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

And “family” is at least as often as not in rivalry with spiritual values. Family values are pagan values: valuing family relationships beyond the point required by gratitude implies devaluing all those to whom you are not related. It is at base no more admirable than racism.

St. Dymphna’s father demanded that she marry him. That would be the ultimate expression of family values.

Salve Regina

Hail, holy queen, mother of mercy; our life, our sweetness, and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

We said the prayer daily. Father Joe always objected to it. This is not, he insisted, a valley of tears. To say so is rank ingratitude. He was of the hallelujah chorus:

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

I believe the Salve Regina is right, and the Hallelujah chorus has it wrong.

We are not, after all, in the Garden of Eden, and this present world we inhabit is not the Kingdom of Heaven.

Why not? Why couldn’t God, being all-powerful and all-good, do a better job of it?

Because, surely, a heaven that had bad people in it could not be a heaven. Their activities would subvert it. There was and is a need for a place of trial. Here the tares must be allowed to thrive with the wheat, here there must be sufferings and temptations to sin--so that a heaven is possible. And everyone cannot go there.

For those who experience this present world as a satisfactory world, there must be something wrong. It is not a good sign to have reconciled with an unjust world in which, whatever your own circumstances, others are manifestly suffering. Luke lays it out in the Sermon on the Plain: “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” But “woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.”

Bernier Comes Out Against Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism: Canada as a human zoo.

Max Bernier’s People’s Party has declared its intention to abolish the Multiculturalism Act. 

Barring unforeseen circumstances, that clinches it for me. If I can get on the rolls, I vote PPC. Multiculturalism is poisonous. I want Canadian culture. If I want Maltese culture, there is always Malta. Why should Canada be the only nation not allowed a culture? Add this to Bernier’s brave stand against the milk and egg cartels; he is owed my support. And, I think, yours too.

Sure, I worry about splitting the anti-Trudeau vote. But Scheer is not a leader. If he were elected, present policies would apparently barely change. They would only be managed more competently. I'm not even sure that's to our advantage, given the policies.

I am astounded that Bernier has not taken off in the polls. But that may be because most people do not pay much attention to such things between elections. He might catch fire in the campaign.

Tulsi Gabbard is a similar case to the south of us. Surely the only reason she has not taken off, after two historically good debate performances, is that nobody is paying much attention yet.

Or else a lot of people still take their lead from whatever they hear or read in the mainstream media.

Epstein's Eyes Shut

Jeffrey Epstein

I really don’t want to write this post. But I think it would be cowardice not to. I hate to speak of formal conspiracies, because they are intrinsically improbable, and the stuff of paranoia.

But the death of Jeffrey Epstein seems to require it. The level of incompetence required in prison officials in order to allow him to commit suicide in his cell is wildly improbable. At this point, that he was murdered by some group powerful enough to subvert prison management becomes the likeliest explanation.

It all makes me think of Stanley Kubrick’s final movie, Eyes Wide Shut, which involves the premise that there is a secret sex cult of the rich and famous—like the one Epstein is claimed to have run. The movie leaves it ambiguous whether this cult will go so far as to kill to preserve its secrecy; but this is a possibility clearly raised. 

The original story on which the movie was based was set in Vienna. Kubrick moved it to New York—the same place from which Epstein was operating.

Did Kubrick know something? Was he issuing a warning? Rather as he called out the madness of the elites in Dr. Strangelove? Veiled, perhaps, because he feared repercussions if he were too explicit?

This may also be why Eyes Wide Shut was his last movie. His wife has said he long wanted to make this film, but was not ready yet. He may have known he was ill when he decided to make it—he died just after filming, but before release—and figured now he could risk it, having less to lose. Or, worse, his sudden death just after finishing the movie might not have been natural, as Epstein’s seems not to have been. And just as the death of one of the characters in the film looks like murder masked as a drug overdose.

Makes a really good conspiracy theory, doesn’t it?

And here’s another faggot for the fire. I just saw a piece pointing out that Andrew Breitbart’s sudden death at 43 of a heart attack followed soon after a tweet that suggested he had some salacious information about such a sex ring:

“How prog-guru John Podesta isn’t household name as world class underage sex slave op cover-upperer defending unspeakable dregs escapes me.”

Less than a month later, he was dead.

There are other such suspicious deaths, if one looks; some keep a tally of what they call the “Clinton body count.”

It does seem plausible, given our lax sexual morals in the last several generations, that such a high-level sex ring is a real thing. Consider the recent #metoo revelations; consider the recent scandal in the US Catholic hierarchy over a homosexual sex ring.

Consider now that we are speaking of people with immense power and a great deal to lose if this all came out in public.

We kidded ourselves in the fifties and sixties that sexual morality had nothing to do with morality in general. But when we dropped our sexual ethics, especially when the upper class and elites did, we implicitly dropped morality in general. This is now perhaps at last dawning in the public consciousness.

The strongest argument against such a conspiracy is that it is improbable that so many people could keep an important secret for a long time.

But then, maybe it was not being kept a secret. Maybe Kubrick was telling us.

Eyes Wide Shut indeed.

The Culture of Death

Just a quick, common example of how environmentalism has become an anti-human creed implicitly  justifying mass shootings. Friend Xerxes writes, in his latest column:

"At the planetary level, I wonder if we’re becoming a cancer. I don’t like the idea of encouraging deaths. But maybe we should re-think our incessant urge to prolong life indefinitely."

The Growing Toll of Environmentalism

Save our people?

It occurs to me that the entire structure of Pharisaism—in modern times, the education system, the press, the legal system, and the government bureaucracy—is there to inculcate and sustain the shared delusions of the matrix.

A current and critical example is the rash of mass shooters in the US. To read the press and watch the mainstream media, you would think they are all white supremacists and Trump supporters. The manifesto of the Christchurch killer was even aggressively suppressed in order, it seems, to further this idea.

And this is a particularly pernicious example. It is sacrificing innocents to Moloch in order to preserve the power of the powerful. Unless we examine the true causes of these killings, they will no doubt continue and get worse.

None of these killers have been Trump supporters, and none of them have been white supremacists.

Looking at the most recent shootings, in Dayton, El Paso, and Gilroy, and also at Christchurch, what is the real common thread?

It is environmentalism.

All of these killers were animated primarily, it seems, by the idea that human beings are destroying the sacred earth. This gives implicit warrant to kill people.

And, of course, if overpopulation is strangling the planet, it is transparent madness to let all kinds of people into the country. We will then ultimately need to fight them over the last water hole. It is simple urgent survival to keep their numbers down by any means necessary. While it is still possible…

The second consistent thread of thought among these killers seems to be multiculturalism/cultural relativism. This links culture with race, as the Nazis did. If new immigrants flood in, there is no question under multiculturalism and the banning of “cultural appropriation” of their assimilating and becoming like the rest of us. Instead, any large migration is an invasion by a permanently alien entity. Allow enough of them in, then, and necessarily, by this logic, it will end the existing American culture. If you suppose America is even a little better than the average among nations, or have some sentimental attachment to things like Mom, democracy, equality before the law, and apple pie, this would seem to demand action in defense of the country. Sheer self-reservation again demands action before it is too late.

But this idea comes entirely from the left, not the right; at least in North America. The traditional doctrine on the North American right has always been that neither Canada nor America is an ethnic nation, but are founded on certain shared ideas or values—on common culture. This multiculturalism and cultural relativism rejects.

Next to this, a common thread for many of these cases—I do not know if this is true in these present cases—seems to be the effective absence of a father in the home of the killer.

And again, it is the left that is promoting the idea that fathers are unnecessary.

Contra Relativism

My politically southpawed pal Xerxes has declared of late that he knows nothing for certain. “I am absolutely sure that I can’t be absolutely sure of anything anymore. Life evolves. Knowledge changes. Sooner or later, everything I’m sure of will require reconsideration.”

To the contrary, as Aquinas would say, I maintain there are a series of truths that are self-evident and undeniable:

The truths of mathematics. Two and two will always equal four. The Pythagorean theorem will hold in all relevant cases.

Logical truths. Both A and not-A cannot simultaneously be true. If B follows from A, and C from B, then C follows from A. And so on.

Ethical truths. Kant’s categorical imperative, the golden rule. Although there can be argument over specific cases, we all know in our conscience that all are created equal, and that murder or lying, for example, are morally wrong.

The intrinsic value of truth, good, and beauty. The transcendentals.

Aside from the many other formal proofs of the existence of God, I think it is close to self-evident to the light of reason that there is a complex pattern and organization to the natural world, which forces the conclusion that there is an intelligence that designed it. Therefore, the existence of God seems like certain knowledge, even though some claim to dispute it.

Even were this not so as a logical proposition, the existence of God can be directly experienced, in such a way that it is known with certainty, whether or not one can convey this experience and this certainty to anyone else. Being able to convey this truth is a separate matter from the knowledge itself: I can be certain that I love my wife, without necessarily being able to convince her of this.

From this set of propositions—perhaps there are more self-evident truths that I overlook here, but from these alone—a great deal more can be reliable deduced to be true.

Counter to this, Xerxes cites Heisenberg’s “uncertainly principle” as proving that nothing is certain.

Heisenberg’s principle refers to a specific problem in observing subatomic structures. To apply it outside this context is not legitimate. That is like saying, for a random analogy, that because jaywalking is illegal, all possible human actions are illegal. At most, it tends to throw into doubt the scientistic notion that science is capable of discovering all truth: an unscientific and philosophically false idea in any case.

The same is so for the observer paradox, which Xerxes goes on to cite. This is a problem for science, in its claim of objectivity, not for ontology or for epistemology.

It can indeed be argued that science has little necessary relation to truth in the first place. As Popper, for example, has argued recently, or as did Copernicus at its origin.

Xerxes goes on to endorse what he calls “both/and” reasoning over “either/or.” He seems to here be directly rejecting Aristotle’s Law of Non-Contradiction: that both A and not A cannot simultaneously be true. This is a non-starter. Some choices, of course, are not binary; but even such more complex choices, as we can see from computer architecture, are built on prior binary choices. Consider for analogy a Xerxian computer in which each bit was not either 1 or 0, but both 1 and 0 at the same time. It is intrinsically nonsensical, of course, when so graphically illustrated. And of course, no such computer would function. So too with human judgement.

Which I suspect is the underlying point, here and so often with leftward thought: the motive is a desire to escape all moral judgements. Xerxes goes on, not for the first time, to speak against conventional morality, conventional ideas of good and evil, on the premise that things like water, science, or fossil fuels, are in themselves neither good or bad. Rather, what matters is that they be in the right proportion. Too little water kills; so does too much. And so forth.

This idea of “everything in moderation,” however, cannot work. Because it is immediately self-contradictory: too much moderation is itself immoderate. Moreover, why is moderation preferable? Because it produces good? But then aren’t you being immoderate if you always choose the good?

Xerxes is misrepresenting conventional morality in the first place in implying that it holds anything to be intrinsically evil. God created all things; it follows that all things are intrinsically good. However, you must integrate this with the idea of hierarchy; not all things are equally good. Otherwise there is no way of settling on the "right" proportion of anything. What is right depends on what the goal is—and the goal must itself therefore be seen as having an intrinsic value greater than other possible goals.

Moral judgements are therefore not properly applied to things as things, but to human thoughts or actions. Here it is essential to make moral judgements. Murder is evil; even a little bit of it is evil. Hate is evil; even a little bit of it is evil. Conversely, there is no such thing as too much love of God. Self-evidently, too much good (or virtue) does not become evil. One can argue otherwise, but only by falsifying the proper meaning of “virtue” or “good.” More broadly, evil consists in preferring a lesser to a greater good.

One more typical left-wing thought from Xerxes: he writes that “Individuals are in some way the sum of their relationships.”

That is dangerously misleading without an explicit reference to one’s relationship with God. It is ultimately only this relationship that counts, as any mystic will tell you, and other relationships are of value only to the extent that they conform to this one. Otherwise Xerxes’s ethic here is to “go along to get along,” which is the broad and level road to Hell. It is the ethic that sustained Nazi Germany, or that sustains the Mafia.

Why God Seems Hard of Hearing

“Mindfulness,” originally a Buddhist concept, has of late become popular. But I think just about everybody has it wrong. Buddhist authorities it has to do primarily with engaging the memory. Yet everybody in the West thinks it has to do with emptying your mind of thoughts and concentrating on your breathing. So it is described in a text I am currently teaching.

Some Buddhist source or sources no doubt said as much. But this is probably a joke, of the sort Buddhism loves: a koan. It is intrinsically impossible to empty the mind of thoughts. If one could, the result would self-evidently not be “mindfulness.” And it is hard to see great spiritual progress in concentrating on a process that, left to itself, is spontaneous.

Yet real mindfulness is important, in Christianity as much as Buddhism. Real mindfulness is learning to notice little tears in the matrix of shared delusions in which we usually live; little discrepancies that suggest something more is going on. The prime example of a truly mindful individual would be Sherlock Holmes.

Last Sunday’s gospel offers an example. The disciples ask Jesus how to pray. He responds with the Lord's Prayer. But also with something strange that nobody seems to notice. See if you spot it.

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished,
one of his disciples said to him,
"Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples."
He said to them, "When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread
and forgive us our sins
for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us,
and do not subject us to the final test."
And he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend
to whom he goes at midnight and says,
'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread,
for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey
and I have nothing to offer him,'
and he says in reply from within,
'Do not bother me; the door has already been locked
and my children and I are already in bed.
I cannot get up to give you anything.'
I tell you,
if he does not get up to give the visitor the loaves
because of their friendship,
he will get up to give him whatever he needs
because of his persistence.
"And I tell you, ask and you will receive;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives;
and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
What father among you would hand his son a snake
when he asks for a fish?
Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?
If you then, who are wicked,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the Father in heaven
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?"

Did you get that?

Jesus compares God to a lukewarm friend who is too busy and too tired to answer an urgent appeal. And he suggests irritating Him to get what you want.

It is funny as Hell, and nobody seems to notice. Simply because it does not fit preconceptions.

True mindfulness notices such things.

It is not a flattering portrait of God. It does not suggest a God who is Love. God, omnipotent, cannot be too busy or too tired to answer the door. And because he is busy with his children? Who are his children? Isn’t that us?

But perhaps this is to trigger the realization: isn’t it absurd to ask God for stuff in the first place? As Jesus points out elsewhere, God, all-knowing and all-loving, necessarily knows our needs, and will always give us whatever is best for us.

So despite the apparent literal sense of the Our Father, prayer is not about petitioning God. That would be absurd, like seeing God in the grumpy and tired acquaintance we have disturbed in his bed.

The point of prayer is to develop a personal relationship with God. As William Blake observed, man cannot really comprehend anything greater than a perfect human person. This, therefore, is how we must understand God. God is not a coin machine: insert your prayer, and out pops what you want. That would not be a Supreme Being, but a being less than ourselves.

This is a poignant response to those—and there are many—who maintain that they cannot believe in God, because at one time or another, feeling in desperate need, they prayed for something, and they did not get it. The heavens were silent.

In addressing God as “Father,” and using the familiar, childlike term, “Abba,” Jesus more broadly compares our relationship with God to that of a child to a parent. Yes, if a child asks their father for a fish, they will not be given a snake. On the other hand, they may not be given a fish. Perhaps instead they will be told to eat their vegetables.

We are children, and God is our true parent, He knows better than we what is good for us. He may give us a special treat at times to show his love, but we must not expect or demand this. A good parent does not spoil his child.

Jesus promises that, if we persist in prayer, we “will receive.” But notice that Jesus does not say we will get what we pray for; we will get “the Holy Spirit.”

And that is the point of prayer. If we persist in it daily, as the words of the Lord’s Prayer imply, we become no longer an occasional friend who knocks loudly on the door in time of need, but one of the true children in the inner rooms.

"Why I Am a Progressive" [Sic]

Edmund Burke

That prolific scribbler Arthur Unknown recently posted a piece on Facebook on “Why I am a Progressive.” It is an interesting insight into how the distaff side thinks. Here with my reactions:

“I'm a progressive, but that doesn't mean what a lot of you apparently think it does.

“Let's break it down, shall we? Because quite frankly, I'm getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. Spoiler alert: Not every progressive is the same, not every progressive is a Democrat, not every progressive is a liberal! The majority of progressives I know think along roughly these same lines:”

Note this initial inconsistency: he asserts that not all progressives think alike—but this is what they all think. Diversity is for appearances only.

“1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. Period.”

This is the traditional conservative position, not something that puts him on the left. The duty of society to care for its weakest members is the core of Edmund Burke’s philosophy, considered definitive of what we now call “conservatism.” The first “welfare state” was introduced in Germany by Bismarck—an arch-conservative monarchist. The left was slower to come to this position, although it is there now.

“2. I believe healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Somehow that's interpreted as ‘I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all.’ This is not the case. I'm fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it's impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes ‘let people die because they can't afford healthcare’ a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. And no, I'm not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen.”

It is nonsensical to declare health care a right; because it is certain that in some cases, it will be unaffordable. Consider, for example, if someone discovers a cure for the common cold; but an effective dose costs a million dollars a pill to manufacture. So everyone has an inherent right to it when they have a cold? Where does the money come from?

That bit of political cant out of the way, believing in a government health-care system does not put you on the left either. The first president to push for one in the US was Richard Nixon, a centrist Republican. But he could not get it through a Democratic Congress. In Canada or in Britain, you will not hear conservative parties calling for it to be dismantled. The US Republicans are currently promising to come up with their own plan, but cannot get together on details. The only debate is how to do it most cheaply and efficiently. The right tends to want to preserve elements of choice and the free market for this reason.

“3. I believe education should be affordable and accessible to everyone. It doesn't necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries so I'm mystified as to why it can't work in the US), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.”

The author is agreeing with Milton Friedman, generally considered to be the patron saint of the modern American right. At least, he believed this for degrees in the Humanities, for which there was less prospect of the student being able to repay from future income. Equality of opportunity, core value of the right, more or less assumes equal access to education ought to be the case. The question is only how best to do it. Because, again, money does not fall from the sky. The right, again, wants to preserve elements of choice and the free market, as with vouchers, again to ensure efficiency. Otherwise there would be no check on rising college costs, and, one way or another, the average guy has to pay for it. There is no such thing as “free” college.

“4. I don't believe your money should be taken from you and given to people who don't want to work. I have literally never encountered anyone who believes this. Ever. I just have a massive moral problem with a society where a handful of people can possess the majority of the wealth while there are people literally starving to death, freezing to death, or dying because they can't afford to go to the doctor. Fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, affordable education, and the wealthy actually paying their share would go a long way toward alleviating this. Somehow, extreme right wing conservatives believe that makes me a communist.”

This is again the classical Burkean conservative position: society has a duty to care for the less fortunate.

But so long as everyone has their needs met, inequality of wealth is not itself a problem. Inequality of wealth is a sign of a healthy and progressive economy. When new things are invented, for example, first adopters will have a temporary economic advantage, and so will accumulate wealth. Inequality of wealth MAY be due to some gaming of the system, but if so, it is the gaming that is the problem, not the inequality itself.

I doubt there is anyone starving to death due to lack of money in Canada or the US. People do freeze to death on the streets, but this seems to be due not to lack of money, but because of either addiction, mental illness, or abuse/persecution by others.

Raising welfare payments is not going to help this.

“The wealthy paying their share” is empty sloganeering. Everybody wants everyone to pay their share; there is not a big constituency for being “unfair.” The disagreement is over what their fair share is.

And, of course, no matter their income level, everyone assumes that “the wealthy” means those who make more than they do.

“5. I don't throw around ‘I'm willing to pay higher taxes’ lightly. If I'm suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it's because I'm fine with paying my share as long as it's actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare.”

There is an unexamined third possibility here: that their tax dollars might go to lining the pockets of bureaucrats, wealthy government-hired professionals, and government employees.

“6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn't have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.”

Such circumstances are certainly undesirable. But you cannot fix this by legislating that employers must pay a minimum wage. Because, yet again, money does not drop from the skies. If you raise the cost of labour, you are killing jobs, reducing services, reducing competition and consumer choice, and raising prices to consumers. The poorest will be most harmed.

“7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is - and should be - illegal). All I ask is that Christians recognize *my* right to live according to *my* beliefs. I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law. I'm not ‘offended by Christianity’ -- I'm offended that you're trying to force me to live by your religion's rules. You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia law on you? That's how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on me. Be a Christian. Do your thing. Just don't force it on me or mine.”

It would help if the author could cite an example of any legislator trying to “legislate Scripture into law,” or “trying to impose biblical law.” I’ve never heard of such a thing in my lifetime. Morality is objective and binding on all; Christians do not believe it comes from the Bible. Nobody believes that it was okay to murder before Moses went up Sinai and got the discouraging word from Yahweh.

One might, to be fair, try to legislate ritual law, as opposed to objective morality. This has been done in places and at times: making it mandatory, for example, to attend church on Sunday. But who is proposing such things in America or in Canada today?

While it is possible that the present author is indeed not prejudiced against Christianity, it seems to me that the modern left generally is. One example from today’s news: a Catholic adoption agency is being forced to close because it will not place children in gay foster homes. Here the interests of orphans are being sacrificed purely for the chance to deny religious freedom.

“8. I don't believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you.”

This might not be Burkean conservatism, but it is bedrock liberalism, and liberalism is commonly classed these days as on the right, not the left. Sargon of Akkad, Carl Benjamin, for example, is consistently referred to in the mainstream press as “far right” for being a classic liberal.

All men are created equal, and have the right to equal treatment before the law. That is the liberal position.

The common objection on the right currently is that LGBT people are not treated equally, but are given special rights and privileges: such as a right not to be criticized for promiscuity, a right to parade nude in public, a right to cohabit without being declared married by common law, a right to demand you address them in a certain fashion, a right to your services at their wedding whether this violates your conscience or not, and so forth.

In fact, although no one is calling for it, true equality before the law would be served even if there were still laws against sodomy, as there were in Canada until 1967 or 1968. Such laws apply equally to all. Not all of us have an urge to have sex with another man, true. But not all of us have an urge to have sex with children, either, or to rape, or to murder. This does not amount to a reason to rescind all laws against pederasty or rape or murder as discriminatory. The issue is whether homosexuality is socially harmful or not. If it is not, while it may be sinful, it is not the business of the state.

Taking the matter any further than that is nothing but a cudgel against religious liberty.

“9. I don't believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN'T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they're supposed to be abusing, and if they're ‘stealing’ your job it's because your employer is hiring illegally). I'm not opposed to deporting people who are here illegally, but I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).”

This is more empty sloganeering unless and until the author has some specific policy suggestions for what would be a more humane, but still effective, approach. We all want the most humane policies; if he is implying otherwise, this is only raw bigotry on his part.

He also seems to be making the common philosophical error of confusing an “is” with an “ought.” It is perfectly true that people should not hire illegals, and illegal aliens should not be eligible for free education, welfare, or the vote. But this does not mean it does not happen. It commonly does, often with official collusion. Were this not so, we would soon have no illegals in the USA. They would not come, and if they came, they then could not survive.

“10. I don't believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cutting corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It's not that I want the government's hands in everything -- I just don't trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they're harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.”

This, if not duplicitous, is profoundly naïve. What magic ensures that, while greed is supposedly endemic in the private sector, it is absent from the government sector that makes such regulations?

Even if it were, if government is going to regulate a given industry, who then must they turn to to decide on the proper regulations? They must turn to those with expertise in that industry. In other words, to those already powerful in that industry. Any government regulation is therefore carte blanche for an established elite to protect their interests against the general public.

Allowing matters instead to be determined by the free market protects the public interest. Without government interference, if some company puts out a product that is shoddy or overpriced, or that pollutes the environment, consumers can stop buying, and that company goes out of business. Start to regulate, and consumers no longer have recourse if they are harmed--short perhaps of expensive and risky class action suits, not available to the poor.

“11. I believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I've spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.”

This statement is flatly insane, in the proper sense of the term; it is in defiance of logic and evidence. This is Trump Derangement Syndrome, as the bizarre affliction has come to be called.

There is nothing remotely fascist about the Trump administration in comparison to past American administrations. The author is probably aware of this, since he cites no examples to back his assertion.

On the other hand, the “progressive” “resistance,” at least some of those who are opposed to Trump, are often distinctly fascist. Postmodernism plus multiculturalism and the hostility to “cultural appropriation” which characterize large swathes of the modern left are simply Nazi race theory, no more and no less; I explain this elsewhere. Antifa is proudly using the same violent tactics as Mussolini’s black shirts and Hitler’s brown shirts: street brawling, shouting down opponents, intimidation for political ends. An NDP candidate in the last Ontario election openly endorsed Hitler’s tactics, and was not censured by her party.

“12. I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many people think, and desperately needs to be addressed. Which means those with privilege -- white, straight, male, economic, etc. -- need to start listening, even if you don't like what you're hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that's causing people to be marginalized.”

I agree that racism in America, and in Canada, is rapidly getting worse. But all this racism is on the left. Ideas of “white privilege” and legal measures to combat it are an example. This is an open violation of the principle of human equality, an open program of racial discrimination. Laws must not discriminate based on skin colour.

The claim, moreover, that the system is secretly rigged for the benefit of “whites,” is cousin to Nazi claims about the Jews. This is Protocols of the Elders of Zion territory. As is talk of a supposed “patriarchy.”

Not incidentally, the modern left also seems to be growing increasingly anti-semitic and anti-Asian. Anyone might be next. First they came for the “whites,” …

“13. I am not interested in coming after your guns, nor is anyone serving in government. What I am interested in is sensible policies, including background checks, that just MIGHT save one person’s, perhaps a toddler’s, life by the hand of someone who should not have a gun. (Got another opinion? Put it on your page, not mine).”

Again, sloganeering. Can our present author point to someone who speaks against “sensible” gun policies? Who does not want the rules that will save lives? The debate is about what is sensible. And this is a debate our author does not want to have. He expressly refuses here to read or consider the opinions of others. Might makes right? Whoever has the gun, makes the rules?

“14. I believe in so-called political correctness. I prefer to think it’s social politeness. If I call you Chuck and you say you prefer to be called Charles I’ll call you Charles. It’s the polite thing to do. Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better. When someone tells you that a term or phrase is more accurate/less hurtful than the one you're using, you now know better. So why not do better? How does it hurt you to NOT hurt another person?”

If political correctness were simply politeness, nobody would object. But I challenge the present author to find any of the demands of contemporary political correctness in any established authority on good manners: in Emily Post, say, or Amy Vanderbilt. He will not find them.

His one stated principle, that it is politeness to address everyone as they would like to be addressed, is false. What the addressee prefers to be called is no more intrinsically likely to be polite or appropriate than what the addressor prefers. A chief of protocol does not ask the guest how he would like to be introduced: he consults the manual for the correct form. Being addressed bestows no moral superiority or special wisdom. It might as well be that he illegitimately wants to be addressed as “Milord,” or “King Charles the Third,” or “M.D.,” or “Aryan superman.” Or, for that matter, “she” when he is a man, or “African” when she is white.

“15. I believe in funding sustainable energy, including offering education to people currently working in coal or oil so they can change jobs. There are too many sustainable options available for us to continue with coal and oil. Sorry, billionaires. Maybe try investing in something else.”

This is again objectively mad, if by “sustainable energy” he is referring to such things as wind power and solar power. The one sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, given present technology, is a move to nuclear. Is that what he means? Because in my experience, the left in general is opposed to building nuclear power plants. They also reject the next best option, putting up more hydro dams.

Billionaires, of course, have no commitment to oil or coal. As this author admits, they can just as easily shift their investments to solar or nuclear. It is not because of their supposed nefarious influence that we stick with fossil fuels. Supposing otherwise is just comic-book level Marxism.

“16. I believe that women should not be treated as a separate class of human. They should be paid the same as men who do the same work, should have the same rights as men and should be free from abuse. Why on earth shouldn’t they be?”

True equality before the law would mean no alimony, no favouring the mother in child custody cases, no “affirmative action,” women being drafted in war for front-line combat. And no laws against sexual harassment or rape—even if sex is not specified, these obviously have disparate impact. Something would also have to be done not just about men dominating the top of the corporate ladder, but equally about men dominating the prison population. If the one proves discrimination, so does the other.

There are two fair options here: either a return to men and women having different social roles, but roughly equivalent and balanced rights and privileges; or equality before the law. What we have now is systemic favouritism towards women and discrimination against men.

And so you have it. The right generally gives the left credit for simply being naïve, rather than deceitful, in believing such things as Arthur says he does here.

Canada Sinks in the World

In a recent interview, Kevin O’Leary made a point I too have made in correspondence, a point that is oddly overlooked, or rather, perhaps, suppressed by the mainstream press: leaving aside any arguments over ideology, the Trudeau government has been spectacularly inept. Most obviously in foreign affairs.

From World War Two roughly until Chrystia Freeland took the portfolio, Canada has been almost universally liked. Despite never being a neutral country, everyone seemed to trust it/us as basically honest and disinterested, polite and not arrogant. So folks abroad tended to prefer Canadian products and Canadian expertise. There seem, for example, to be many more Canadian than American ESL instructors abroad, despite the difference in populations. Canadians came without the political baggage of Americans or Brits.

Yet after a couple of years on Freeland’s watch, Canada has unprecedentedly awful relations with Russia, China, India, Saudi Arabia, and even our biggest trading partner, the USA. Hardly insignificant enemies. It almost seems as though Canada no longer has any friends.

This seems to come from Liberal incompetence, virtue-signalling, and arrogance. Canada has been speaking loudly and carrying a tiny stick.

On the Huawei uproar, O’Leary suggests that Freeland was neatly suckered by Donald Trump. The US was fighting a trade war with China. The natural thing for China to do was to turn to Canada for many of the products they had been getting from the US. Big trade boon for Canada. Instead, Trudeau and Freeland promptly offended China so seriously that this was out of the question. It would have been an unacceptable loss of face to a pipsqueak country.

And then the unprecedented clown show since, of the Canadian government publicly feuding with their own ambassador.

O’Leary suggested how this could have been handled: advise the Chinese through diplomatic channels not to have Meng Wan Zhou’s plane land in Canada, but proceed directly on to Mexico. If necessary, some bogus excuse about bad weather or ospreys nesting on the tarmac could have been used.

Despite holding the bag for America on this one, Canada got nothing out of it. Freeland and Trudeau had also managed to trash our relationship with the US. They publicly insulted Trump in the middle of negotiations on a new NAFTA. Politically, he then had no option but to retaliate. As with China, the USA and Trump could not be seen to be pushed around by some penny-ante power.

The criticism of Saudi Arabia over human rights was meddling in the internal affairs of another country. To do that is deeply insulting to anyone; by the doctrine of human rights, it implies that the current government is illegitimate. Diplomacy consists in not saying such things, unless there is some strategic issue involved.

Or unless you want to pick a fight. The Saudi government again had little alternative but to massively retaliate, for the sake of their internal stability. A Saudi government that appeared to meekly accept scoldings from some Western infidel, grossly sinful “progressive” nation would not hold power long.

So too with India or Russia. Whether or not one agrees with the Trudeau government’s ethical case, what are Russia or India going to do but retaliate? If you want to swagger, you have to be ready to follow it up, at times, as needed, with dangerous and costly measures like sanctions and troop deployments. If you do not, you are doing nobody any good, and exposing innocent Canadians and Canadian business to harm. Aside from making the nation a laughingstock.

Now consider this: Freeland is supposed to be the cabinet's star. Everyone else is presumably worse.

Why I Do Not Miss the Latin Mass

Many of my generation and the generation before felt betrayed by the loss of the Latin Mass. I have never felt this way.

Today, for the first time in many years, I attended a Latin mass; and realized for the first time why.

It was beautiful; there is no doubt. Although well attended, it seemed mad the place was not packed to the rafters if only for the musical performance. Some claim the attendance at mass dropped off a statistical cliff right when the liturgy switched to the vernacular.

And it satisfied to discover that after so many years I still remembered some of the Latin.

But I will not be back.

When as a kid attending a Catholic school, I went to mass with my class, I would often start to feel faint and nauseous. I would have to sit bent over in the back. I felt embarrassed and did not know why.

Some of that feeling came back to me this Sunday.

It did as well the last time I attended a Latin mass, years ago now, but as an adult.

The vernacular mass, banal as it may be by contrast, feels much more comfortable.

I grew up attending the Latin mass. I also grew up in what the self-help groups somewhat euphemistically call a "dysfunctional family." Aside from the constant stress and strife, my parents, inevitably, presented themselves as Christian examplars, and their own opinions as theologically authoritative. God was on their side, and against me.

I was aware enough to realize that what they did and said was not compatible with the gospel or the catechism  I learned in school. Yet there was the chilling possibility that the official catechism was really just a cover story to fool outsiders, and they really did represent the heart of the church. Why not? In every other horror movie, Satanists perform black masses that are superficially strikingly like a Latin mass, with smoke and intonations, ritual movements, organ music and oddly discordant chant. Perhaps this was the reality. The Catholic Church was, then, a secret cult along the lines of that portrayed in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.

Because of this, the lack of clarity with Latin was disturbing. What were they really saying? Why could they not say it outright so that all could understand? Surely the Latin suggested an urge to conceal; they had something to hide. The thought never fully formed, until last Sunday, but I believe this was the incoherent suspicion behind my nausea.

The vernacular mass, to me, if only symbolically, brought needed clarity.

I really wonder, had the switch to the vernacular not come about around when it did, whether I would have been able to remain a Catholic. Friends of mine from similar Catholic backgrounds have ended up Muslim, or Buddhist; others, raised in other traditions, have escaped their tainted upbringing by becoming Catholic. Others, and probably far more, less happily, have become secularized or atheist, losing all the comfort and support of religion, most desperately needed by those who never had a real family.

It is no doubt of such family backgrounds Jesus spoke when he said, "but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea."

Becoming Anglican is a Form of Spiritual Abuse

At its current synod, the Anglican Church of Canada has issues an apology for the “spiritual harm” it has done to the Canadian indigenous community.

“I confess our sin in demonizing Indigenous spiritualities,” primate Fred Hiltz writes. “I confess the sin of our arrogance in dismissing Indigenous spiritualities and disciplines as incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus, and insisting that there is no place for them in Christian Worship.” “I confess our sin in declaring the teachings of the medicine wheel to be pagan and primitive.”

Possibly Archbishop Hiltz and his church have some theological justification for this. If so, it is strange that they do not give any. Because there are obvious theological problems here.

To begin, from a Christian theological perspective, Christian missionaries would not have been “demonizing” Indigenous spiritualities. The polytheistic spirits the Indians grudgingly payed homage to before conversion to Christianity were in fact demons. How do you demonize a demon?

Think about it: if these beings were not demons, what else would they have been? Angels? Aliens? Psychotic delusions?

Given that they were demons, any rites in their honour would indeed be incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus. Not to mention the first commandment. It is right there in the New Testament, as well as the Old, that you must not make sacrifices to or call upon demons or idols.

Any pre-Christian Indigenous spiritual practices were “pagan” by definition. Oxford English Dictionary: “religious beliefs and practices that are not part of any of the world's main religions, especially from a time before Christianity.” Webster’s: “a follower of a polytheistic religion.” To call them “primitive” is, further, simply the same as calling them “indigenous” or “aboriginal.” To say “indigenous spiritual practices were primitive” is only saying the same thing twice.

Nor is there any question of “spiritual abuse” or “robbing Indians of their spirituality” in converting them to Christianity. Any such conversions were voluntary: are Indians incapable of thinking for themselves? Non-sentient forest creatures? Come now.

I dare not say it is impossible somehow to theologically justify all this. But it is prima facie heretical, and demands an explanation. And we are given none.

The simplest explanation for the Anglican Church making such theologically absurd claims without attempting any theological justification is that they have ceased to be either a Christian or a religious body. Their existence and their interests are purely political.

The Good Samaritan

The Gospel reading for this Sunday is the parable of the Good Samaritan. A parable that, like all parables, most people get wrong. The parables are designed to do this. I can say this too from immediate experience: we discussed it in a prayer group last night.

The parable is in response to a question. With reference to the commandment to love your neighbor. Jesus has been asked, “Who is my neighbour?”

Most in my group, having just heard the parable, concluded simply that your neighbor is someone who lives near you. This, however, the parable seems to be plainly arguing against. Nobody any longer grasps the significance of “Samaritan.” In popular parlance, it has come to mean no more than “charitable person.”

But a Samaritan to Jesus’s audience was a foreigner, not a neighbor in the literal sense. And a religious heretic, from the Jewish point of view. So one’s neighbor is emphatically not, or not just, according to the parable, someone who lives near you or whom you regularly encounter in your daily life. He is not anyone with whom you have any formal bounds of nationality, family, culture, or religion.

The participants who accepted this immediately and naturally then concluded, everyone is your neighbor.

That would work if the question was whether the robbed man lying in the ditch was the neighbor of the Samaritan. The Samaritan was acting with charity towards a stranger. But the question is not whether the Jew by the road is the neighbor of the Samaritan, but whether the Samaritan is the neighbor of the Jew by the road: “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell in the hands of robbers?”

Presumably, too, Jesus’s original audience would not self-identify as the Samaritan, the foreigner, but as the assaulted Jew.

Jesus gives three choices, the Samaritan, who helped, and the priest and the Levite, who did not stop and help. And he agrees that the correct answer is “the Samaritan.” Which, means, at the same time, that the other two are not his neighbours.

So according to our parable, our neighbor is not everyone, but, specifically, good people, wherever they live. Bad people, conversely, are not our neighbours.

This fits too with Jesus’s advice elsewhere that if someone has done you wrong, and refuses to admit it, you are to shun them. They are no longer your neighbour.

When I made this point, the prayer group was in rebellion against it. It defies the common image of “gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” who loves everyone no matter what. Andrew Klavan, who after actually reading the New Testament converted from Judaism, defies anyone to find such a “gentle Jesus” in the gospel. “Gentle Jesus” is a corporate lie or delusion we sustain out of fear of being condemned for our sins. “We are not to judge.” “Who am I to judge?” “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” Yet judgement is actually Jesus’s cosmic end mission: “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” And we are in all things to imitate Christ. We just do not want to think about it, so we pretend it is not there.

Is it only Jesus, as God incarnate, who has this right to judge? No; John the Baptist too judges emphatically in the gospel. He condemns Herod and Herodias; he condemns the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus does not object, but declares him the greatest of all those born of women.

If, after all, everyone is our neighbor, who exactly were those “wolves” Jesus was warning the disciples about in last Sunday’s gospel, when he said he was sending them out “like lambs among wolves”?

Okay, so what about Jesus’s commandment to “love thine enemy”? Fair question.

To begin with, the fact that one is to love one’s neighbor and also to love one’s enemy does not equate one’s enemy to one’s neighbor. More importantly, one hardly expresses love or charity to a sinner by ignoring their sin. That is just like walking by and abandoning them in the ditch, as the priest and Levite did in the parable. They have been set upon by robbers, which is to say, sins and vices, devils, and have been thrown off the path, left to spiritually die. The easy and safe thing, of course, is to ignore him as much as possible and to go about our business. Just like the priest or Levite do—that these are both religious offices hints that the import here is indeed spiritual.

The charitable thing is to call them out, get them to a church, and try to save him.

The Oppression Olympics

My cargo-shifted-to-port pal Cyrus, not to be confused with Xerxes, sought the other evening to explain why the left seemed to spin on a dime from being irreconcilably opposed to Islam for oppressing women to making the extirpation of “Islamophobia” one of its main policies. He acknowledges the inconsistency, but suggests that, once the left identifies a group as oppressed, they immediately tend to overlook any faults, perhaps as overcompensation.

That seems admission enough—but also leads to the next question. How are Muslims in general an oppressed group?

His response seemed to me tentative: “colonialism.”

Problem: if the issue is having been colonized, and recently, Muslims are simply in the same situation as just about everyone else in the world. So why this special concern for Muslims, and not for Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Bahais, or Christians? Granted that some European countries—England, one or two others—have not been colonized in recent times. Neither has Muslim Turkey.

Moreover, Muslims have been up to quite recent times among the world’s most eager colonizers themselves. In principle, for Islam, empire is the proper form of government. The Ottoman Empire, which in the 19th century still held large swaths of Christian Europe, ended only in 1922. Muslim Indonesia allowed independence to Christian Timor-Leste only in 2002. Muslim Sudan allowed independence to Christian South Sudan only in 2011. Muslim Mauritania became the last country in the world to legally abolish slavery in 1981, following soon after Saudi Arabia and Oman. Reports are that slavery continues de facto in Muslim Libya.

Strictly speaking, on balance, Muslims are probably the single least-historically-oppressed demographic in the universe; with perhaps the exception of the English, Germans, French, or Russians.

Which brings up the wider question, how many other of the left’s supposedly “oppressed” client groups are in fact not oppressed? If the left is wrong here, are they wrong in other cases?

I think they are systematically wrong. While, granted, some of their client groups have been historically oppressed or discriminated against, this would have been in the past, not in the present. It was other people at another time. Almost by definition, once there is a consensus that a given group has been oppressed, that oppression must be over. Because nobody at all is prepared to admit they are oppressing anyone. The left is, at best, always in the business of urgently pouring water on fires that have been out for generations. While other fires blaze untended.

Who currently is genuinely oppressed? Falun Gong. Christians in the Middle East. Christians in China and North Korea. Yazidis. Jews in Europe and the Middle East. Kurds. Muslims in China. White South Africans. Is the left interested in doing anything to help?

Not a bit.

Is Canada Built on Aboriginal Land?

Not.

For the most part, Toronto still seems on the surface to be the same peaceable kingdom I left 25 years ago: a model high-trust society, of peace, order, and good government. We probably have no idea how good we’ve got it. But there are shadows that were not there before.

One is the common presence of small posters, the size of as standard A4 page, with racist slogans like “Canada: celebrating 153 years of genocide”; and “Crown land is Native land: time to give it back.”

As noted in an earlier post, these are blood libels, calculated to promote hatred towards a specific group: those non-Indians whose ancestors came to Canada more than a few generations ago. Since this is a minority of the population, and often a visible minority, we are talking about a vulnerable minority. One that is, in fact, already actively discriminated against.

We dealt with the “genocide” charge in an earlier post. Now let’s consider the “stolen land” charge.

Brace yourself for an intellectual jolt. The truth is, in either legal or philosophical/moral terms, the “First Nations” or Indians never owned any land, or very little.

Property, as a legal concept, is a thing that you enjoy the use of to the exclusion of others. Essentially no Indian group held any real estate in this sense: all just wandered through the landscape. If one group encountered another, they would try to kill each other. But it would be impossible to draw any borders or property lines.

Consider then this obvious analogy: why is nobody allowed to own the waters, or the air? Why is land different? Because everyone moves freely through the waters, and freely uses the air—just as Indians used land.

Thomas More and John Locke, among others, set out the philosophical framework here. Land, air, and water are all created by God for the good of all. Nobody, in principle, has the right to claim ownership over it to the exclusion of any other human who requires it. Can you imagine withholding water? Can you imagine withholding oxygen?

It is only their own labour and ingenuity, not the land itself, to which a human can lay claim. He or she can therefore own real estate if and only if they have somehow invested their labour into it, and their labour is inseparable from the land itself: if they have cultivated it, or built something on it.

On this principle the idea of “squatter’s rights” is based. If land has been lying fallow, and somebody comes along and begins to cultivate it, or build on it, they then own the land they have cultivated or built on. The previous owner, by not using the land for some set period, five or ten or twenty years, has waived their moral right to it.

By this logic, yet again, Indians, to the extent, almost total, that they were hunter-gatherers, and built no permanent structures, owned no land. The land was the shared inheritance of mankind. Starving people coming from Europe, from Ireland, or Poland, or the Ukraine, had a right to use it. Nor, Locke would argue, was this a matter of taking anything away from Indians or anyone else. A hundred people can, with agriculture, survive on the same plot of land that only one person can survive on by hunting and gathering. Accordingly, any person who cultivates one acre of land has in effect given 99 acres to the general coffers.

Despite this recognized principle, throughout Ontario and the Prairie Provinces, the British and then Canadian governments formally negotiated treaties with any Indian groups then present, paying them to relinquish all claims to the land. The point was to ensure peace and harmony between the two groups, and have the Indians recognize the sovereignty of the government; the notion of aboriginal land rights was a useful legal vehicle to allow this. This aboriginal land right was actually a gift from the Crown, bestowed by George III in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. In negotiating the numbered treaties, Indian groups who had no plausible “aboriginal” claim to any land, having moved into Canada only decades before, were granted the same deal as others.

But, all that said, it makes no sense to ignore these treaties and claim that the Indians somehow still own land they sold by these treaties generations ago. If you buy a house, does the previous owner still own it? And if so, which previous owner?

Aside from dismissing the crazy notion of lingering and eternal aboriginal land title, the philosophy behind land ownership ought to remind us of something else: that Canada’s immigration policy ought, by moral right, to favour not already well-off professionals, as it largely now does, but the able poor and oppressed. Whose ability could be demonstrated after perhaps ten years of residency by what they have done to develop and improve the natural resources God has left on this portion of the globe

Canada's Looking-Glass Genocide

Then... and Now

Now magazine, Toronto's free entertainment newspaper, has apparently gone full SJW.

Last week’s cover story: "Canada's Genocide"

The feature article inside, titled "Genocide Coverup," begins:

"It is no longer up for debate. Canada is guilty of genocide. The National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls has found that Canada has and continues to engage in ‘race-based genocide.’"

This claim that the debate is over is demonstrably false. The next piece in the newspaper, “The Media’s Odious Defense,” laments that the Globe and Star have both in official editorials rejected the “genocide” claim. Both publications are editorially on the left, and probably Canada's two largest-circulation English papers. So obviously it is still up for debate.

Insisting it isn’t is a transparent tactic when one knows one will lose any debate that might ensue.

The article goes on:

“Canada’s governments used premeditated acts like the mass distribution of smallpox-infected blankets and placing bounties on scalps to kill off indigenous peoples. They engaged in policies aimed at starving indigenous people to death to clear the prairies for settlement. Canadian governments have also engaged in covering up the disproportionate number of deaths of indigenous people in police custody and the over-incarceration of Indigenous people to keep them locked up and out of sight.”

None of these claims are true. They constitute a blood libel designed to promote racial hatred against non-indigenous Canadians. If the “hate laws” were applied justly, they would be actionable.

There is no evidence at all that any Canadian government ever distributed smallpox-infected blankets to Indians. Nor is this a likely way to spread smallpox. There is no evidence that any Canadian government ever put bounties on the scalps of indigenous people—and it would be very hard to do so without leaving any documentary evidence. Indigenous people, on the other hand, regularly scalped their enemies, indigenous or European. There is no evidence that any Canadian government attempted to starve indigenous people to death—rather, they sent food aid to the Indians of the Prairies at times of starvation. Before this, periodic famines and death by starvation were a typical aspect of the Indian experience. To charge “over-incarceration” of indigenous people is to assume that Indigenous people are imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, or are given harsher sentences than non-Indians for the same offenses. In fact, the opposite is true, by law. The so-called “Gladue rule” more or less requires judges to give Indigenous offenders lighter sentences. If you want to argue that the mere fact that a higher proportion of Indigenous than non-Indigenous people are imprisoned automatically proves intended genocide, then, to be consistent, you must also hold that the state is committing genocide against men. Far more men than women are in prison.

“The Indian Act was also created to make a legal definition of Indian that would result in the legislative extinction of Indians over time, by targeting Indian women and children for expulsion from their First Nations.”

Rather obviously, Canadian legislators of that day considered being a Canadian citizen a good thing, and thought allowing Indian women who married non-Indian men automatic full citizenship was a benefit, not a punishment. Just as they would not have thought it genocide against Jews to allow Jews to immigrate. Would Hitler have been equally guilty of genocide had he accepted Jews as fully German, with the same rights as other Germans? His inclination was rather the opposite.

The Indigenous author of a second piece, "The Media's Odious Defense," laments his personal dilemma. Because he was aboriginal, the CBC, his employer, gave him full control over the story when the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People report came out. Even though he was only a summer intern, and did not even intend to go into journalism.

Does this really show discrimination AGAINST aboriginal people? He was given a plum internship even though he was not interested in journalism. Then he was given full control over a story ahead of senior reporters—presumably all because he was indigenous. Poor fellow.

So what is his complaint?

His problem is that, when news reports are not sufficiently pro-aboriginal, Indigenous journalists like himself “are questioned by their communities about why these views would be published, why higher-ups at their outlet would think this way, and why they continue to work there.”

Transparently, what is the real problem? Is it the Canadian media lacking good intentions towards Indigenous people—or is it these unspecified “indigenous communities” lacking good intentions towards indigenous people? Who is trying to advance the careers and life situations of indigenous people, and who is trying to get them to sacrifice their careers and their best interests?

This author seems to be a victim of Stockholm syndrome. It is the reserve system that is holding indigenous people back.