Put on the Full Armour of God

 

The Jerusalem Cross

As a Christian, I am offended by the controversy over Pete Hegseth’s tattoos: the Jerusalem Cross, and the Latin slogan “Deus Vult” (“God wills it.”)

The objection is based on the fact that “Deus Vult” was the slogan used to promote the First Crusade; and the Jerusalem Cross is so called because it was the official emblem of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.

So the objection to Hegseth’s tattoos is an objection to the Crusades.

I believe the Crusades were honourable and worthy of celebration in the history of Christendom. The objection to them is simply prejudice against Christianity and Christians. If “Islamophobia” is a problem, and “antisemitism” is a problem, then “Christianophobia” must also be condemned. It is at least as prevalent, and as dangerous.

The Crusades were a defensive war. To fight in defense of one’s country or religion is deeply honourable. It is courageous and selfless. The Crusades were a time when the Christian world put aside its divisions and united to keep the general peace. 

You might object that the Crusades were an invasion of foreign, Muslim, lands. You would be wrong. They were summoned to defend the Byzantine Empire, which was under attack by the Muslims. The great majority of the occupants of Palestine at the time would have been Christian or Jewish, not Muslim. And the Muslim caliphate had cut off the right of Christians to make pilgrimages to the Holy Land.

And even if you see the Crusades as an attempted conquest of “Muslim” lands, if this is illegitimate, you must first condemn the systematic and more successful Muslim attempt to conquer Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian lands, from the seventh through the fifteenth centuries, and to the gates of Vienna. Over the previous three centuries, the Muslims had overrun perhaps half of the Christian world, taking by conquest, not conversion. With the Crusades, the Christian world was then only belatedly and less systematically adopting the Muslim tactic of spreading their faith by the sword.

It is true that the Crusades involved war crimes—on both sides. The modern rules of war were not established, and the rules of war understood by Christians were different from the rules of war understood by Muslims, so that either side might think anything was permitted in dealing with “infidels.” In some ways, the Crusades were more humane than modern warfare. For example, prisoners could be ransomed. If besieged cities were put to the sword, this was at least no worse than Hiroshima or Nagasaki: the argument was the same, that it saved far more lives than it cost. Sieges were devastating. 

We need to recover the spirit of the Crusades. This world is a battle between good and evil, and we are all called on to be soldiers.

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”

Playing 4D Chess

 

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

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

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

Now how about Canada? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uh-oh.

World Historic Figures

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rape is Not a Part of Islam

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sea and Sky

 

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

Why? What is the point of this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It illustrates how decadent our culture has become.

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

Liberal Leadership Stakes

 

The Liberal leadership race is underway. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leaving Chrystia Freeland. 

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

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

Let’s see if I’m right.

One Canada or No Canada

 

John Diefenbaker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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