So Long, Canada. We Hardly Knew You

 

Big Pink

The world is mad. It has always been mad, but something snapped around 2020.

Canadians are in terminal Trump Derangement. They are prepared to burn down the country out of spite.

Trump and the USA of course have every sovereign right to impose tariffs at their border. This is not a hostile act. 

Trump is not threatening to annex Canada. That is paranoid fantasy.

It is insane for Canada to impose retaliatory tariffs. We cannot win a trade war with the USA. The sane course is to negotiate 100% free trade instead. But no Canadian politician dares say this. Instead, we will just stand there and pour gasoline all over ourselves, then light a match.

Unless things change dramatically in three weeks, Canada is about to re-elect the Liberals under Carney; with a majority government. 

Right-wing commentators are as delusional as everyone else, insisting that the polls must be wrong.

With the Liberals’ environmentalist agenda blocking the development and transport of Alberta’s energy resources, Alberta is then planning to hold a referendum on secession. 

It is likely to pass, with the Liberals in power. But Easterners all still insist on voting Liberal.

If Alberta separates, Saskatchewan is likely to follow. BC will probably need to go too.

If this happens, Eastern Canada will be left an impoverished rump. 

Trump gets his best case scenario: he can admit the resource-rich West to statehood, and get full access to their resources. He need not let in all those left-leaning voters in the East.

Congratulations, Canada. Darwin would be proud.

The Real Schoolyard Bullies

 

Childhood's end: Saint John, NB, March, 2025

A couple of days ago, someone set fire to our local playground. It was a beautiful playground, including a water park, in one of the poorer parts of town. Now it will be closed at least for months, if the city can afford to reconstruct, just as the summer is about to begin.

Why would somebody do this?

The answer is only too obvious; but it is one we do not want to accept.

I become increasingly convinced that there is a war against children. Many people hate children. They increasingly feel they have license to act on their desires.

Why do people hate children? Primarily, perhaps, because a child is a reminder of one’s own mortality. One day you will be gone, and they will inherit the earth. An intolerable thought to a true narcissist.

Also perhaps because the evil will resent innocence. It is an unpleasant reminder of what they have themselves lost.

Also perhaps because children, by being conceived, complicate the animal enjoyment of unrestricted sex. Then, for a moment’s pleasure, you have to support them for eighteen or twenty-four years.

Surely, you might object, everyone instinctively loves children?

Maternal instinct often does its work. But demonstrably not in many cases. Apparently one in four women alive in the USA today has had at least one abortion. Infanticide was a common practice throughout the ancient world, among the Romans, the Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Canaanites; until quite recently in the Far East.  Judaism and Christianity stood apart in prohibiting the practice. 

It seems that once unrestricted abortion was again okay, the ancient floodgates opened. Encouraged, no doubt, by the “population bomb” notion that there were already too many people in the world.  

No-fault divorce and almost automatically giving custody to the mother pretends to take the children’s interests into account, but only a little research proves it is disastrous to children. If it is not done from malice, it is certainly at least done because we do not care. 

We knew from the kibbutz experience in Israel well before daycare became standard practice and publicly funded, that raising children in daycare was harmful. At best, we did not care.

While pretending to be “helping” or “reconciling with” First Nations, we are now systematically sacrificing untold numbers of aboriginal children by closing down the residential schools, shutting down the adoption option, shutting down the orphanages. Missing and murdered aboriginal women? Teens on reservations forming suicide pacts? Rampant fetal alcohol syndrome? Gee, I wonder why? Yet we do everything possible to avoid addressing the obvious cause, aboriginal family life. We do everything possible to avoid helping them. If a teenaged aboriginal girl escapes her abusive family and makes it to the city streets, she is arrested by the authorities, assigned the blame, and forced back home. 

Minimum wage laws and child labour laws seem calculated to trap the young in abusive situations, denying them the right to make a living. 

For that matter, the demands for unnecessary academic qualifications for almost any paying occupation are abusive to the young. 

Heck, the modern school and college is abusive to the young. They are ordered around like cattle, their time wasted on things of no value to them, and the teacher holds dictatorial powers. It is always up to the student to learn, not to the teacher to teach.

For a while—it now seems long ago--we pretended to be horrified by pedophilia. But that was only so long as we could pretend it was only happening among Catholic clergy. What this actually was about was cutting away one more escape route for abused kids: the local church and pastor; the local religious-run orphanage or residential school.

Now we increasingly discover child trafficking and pedophilia is widely practiced, in the public schools, in the public libraries, and especially among the rich. And here is no public outcry; instead, the outcry is against anyone objecting, or wanting to hold anyone accountable.

It is getting too obvious.

On Kindness

 

Friend Xerxes the sinister-listing columnist expresses his faith in human nature in a recent column:

“ I am convinced that all of us – allowing for occasional exceptions – would like to be kind to each other. Almost everyone, confronted face to face with another’s suffering, wants to help.”

I must disagree. We were reminded this is not true in recent enough history: the Holocaust. Yes, a few people helped Jews. But don’t kid yourself—a very few. Most did not, including our own Mackenzie King government at the time, which refused Jewish refugees. Virtually everyone refused Jewish refugees, sealing their fate. Can’t just blame the Germans.

Nor was the crowd eager to help Jesus when he stood before Pilate. Even though they knew he was innocent of the charges.

Consider the parable of the Good Samaritan. The anonymous traveller is encountered by four people, or groups of people: first the robbers who beat him and leave him for dead in a ditch. Then the priest and the Levite, who walk by without helping. Then the good Samaritan. 

That’s a pretty good guide: about one in four people is genuinely kind. Most of us are just looking out for ourselves. “They came for the Jews, but I did nothing, for I was not a Jew …” About one in four is an active predator, getting a rush out of making others suffer.

The Bible also tells us of the scapegoat phenomenon. This is what happened to the Jews. People are herd animals. The mass of the herd will welcome the opportunity to deflect their bad feelings onto some designated scapegoat, so long as they think they have permission. They will have no qualms as long as some authority endorses it, or everybody else seems to be doing it.

Kindness comes naturally for small children and small animals—the maternal or paternal instinct kicks in to protect them. And only so long as they are right in front of you—otherwise most people are happy to abort or to eat a chicken or lamb.

Aside from this, it takes religion to convince some to be kind.

On Defunding the Police

 

Yesterday I attended an event called a ”free store” held at a local Anglican Church. Pretty much says what it is: people donate items they no longer need, and other people come and take what they want or need.

Not sure this is a better concept than the self-sustaining Salvation Army Stores, though. The Sally Ann stores are sustainable because they are win-win. The donors get rid of things just taking up space; the buyers get a bargain; the proceeds can pay some salary to the workers, and the profits go to help the poor. The free store takes more volunteer effort. And it’s inevitably pretty hectic and disorganized. Grabbing wins the day; not need.

But I sure can’t complain personally.  It worked out well for me; I think I saved about $100 on items I needed for this big old house.

One thing I picked up was a 22-page pamphlet titled “A World without Police.” I have not read it all. It is calling to defund the police, on the grounds that they exist only to protect the property of the rich from the poor. They sustain the evil capitalist system.

This is so obviously wrong I suspect nobody believes it. Laws exist to protect the weak from the powerful. This is the stated premise of the best-preserved ancient legal system known to man, the Code of Hammurabi: government forms “to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak.”

The powerful do not need the police; they do not need laws or morality. They would rather be free to do as they like. 

Do rich people like Elon Musk or Donald Trump or George Soros need the police to protect their property? No; they can afford private security. Indeed, they could afford private armies. Without the police, they could run roughshod. If imperfect, the police protect us from this.

But then again, it was not the poor handing out the “Defund the Police” pamphlets. It was young “white” Anglican men. Some wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs. Probably university educated. Probably from well-off families. Anglicans are, after all, generally more prosperous than any other Christian denomination. 

It is the rich who crave this. Even a revolution would actually increase their power. They could be in complete and perpetual command as the “vanguard of the proletariat.” 

Meantime, they vote for corporate bankers like Mark Carney or wealthy lawyers like Jagmeet Singh, and scorn someone who has worked his way up from orphanhood and adoption like Pierre Poilievre as 'unqualified."

The great question in my mind is, do they realize they are being duplicitous?

How to Win a War Without Firing a Shot

 

Would you buy a used revolution from this face?

A Chinese student and I were discussing this past IELTS essay topic: “How much should government spend on the arts?” And he quoted what he claimed was a common Chinese saying: “If you want to destroy a country, first destroy its culture.”

This is a common Chinese saying? For they as actually tried to systematically destroy their culture themselves in the Cultural Revolution.

Perhaps this saying emerged from that experience.

Certainly now we ourselves in Canada, America, and Europe seem to be trying to destroy our culture. Pulling down statues, burning down churches, teaching our young that our culture is evil, and “patriarchy” or “white supremacy.” Reversing the meaning of the fairy tales. Rejecting "conventional morality." Abandoning beauty in art. Encouraging and funding any culture but our own: “multiculturalism.” 

It is all suspiciously like the Cultural Revolution in Maoist China.

China descended into this madness without any foreign interference. So I guess we too are fully capable of destroying ourselves without help.

But this is a warning that it is a really bad idea.

And is it possible too, if this is the common Chinese view now, that the Chinese government, as part of their asymmetrical “wolf-warrior diplomacy,” is doing what they can to encourage this? Funding things behind the scenes. Wheeling in Trojan Horses—like Tiktok?

Either way, if this continues, the CCP can look forward to supplanting us as the dominant culture, and toward owning us.

What's Eating Women?

 

How badly does a fish really need a bicycle?

Rachel Wilson’s Substack “Rachel’s Newsletter,” recently collated some statistics on the effects of feminism on the wellbeing of women and children.

It is not good news.

Only 0.7 per 1,000 children living in a home with two married biological parents are sexually abused. The figure is 12.1 per 1,000 for those with a single parent and an unmarried partner.

1.8 children per 1,000 living with both married biological parents is emotionally abused. It is 15 per 1,000 with a single parent and an unmarried partner.

6.5 children per 1,000 living with both married biological parents is neglected. It is 47.4 per 1,000 with a single parent and an unmarried partner. It is 68.2 for “emotional neglect.”

2.8 children per 1,000 living with both married biological parents is actually physically harmed. It is 9.5 per 1,000 on average in any other family situation. And the physical injury is likely to be worse.

All this confirms the wisdom of fairy tales: the problem there usually comes from a step-parent. A “wicked stepmother.” Ten times the risk.

And note too that it is usually the mother, not the father, just as the fairy tales suggest. 68% of all maltreated children were maltreated by a female; 48% were maltreated by a male. This despite the fact that, due to current legal prejudices, almost always giving custody to the mother, the male in the house is vastly more likely to be the step-parent. When children are maltreated by a biological parent, 75% were maltreated by the mother, 48% by the father. This statistic does not seem to be affected by the amount of time either parent spends with the children—women do not abuse more often simply because they have more opportunity. 

Wait, there’s more:

90% of homeless children are escaping or ejected from fatherless homes.

85% of kids diagnosed with behavioural disorders are from fatherless homes.

70% of those in juvenile detention are from fatherless homes.

71% of those in treatment for substance abuse are from fatherless homes.

Dads matter.

Clearly, if we gave a damn for children, easy no-fault divorce, and then assigning custody to the mother, is very bad for children. Statistics further show the woman initiates the divorce 70 to 80% of the time. And no, this is not because of spousal abuse. Women abuse their spouses more often than men. The woman is the aggressor, apparently, in 70% of cases. The reasons usually given are “boredom, financial strain, lack of communication, or feeling held back in career or in life.” 

So what does all this self-fulfillment, free from obligations to either spouse or children, do for women?

Women are not doing well. The UK Mental Health Foundation says women are three times more likely to experience mental health problems than men. 

Was this ever so? No. As recently as 1993, they were only twice as likely. More than one quarter of all US women are now on psychiatric drugs. For men, it is 15%.

In underdeveloped, rural societies, women consistently report greater levels of happiness than men--in the unreformed “patriarchies.” As recently as the 1970s, American women still reported higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction than men. But in recent studies, they are less happy by their own report than men throughout the developed world.

Alcoholism among women doubled between 2002 and 2013—in just ten years. Fetal alcohol syndrome, destroying the next generation, rose 2.5 times between 1996 and 2018.

And all of these statistics are without touching on the issue of abortion, or the emotional toll divorce and alienation from the family is taking on men. Or the growing problem of depopulation in the developed world, following from the collapse of the family, and prompting governments to let in unprecedented waves of immigration.

Just thought you should know. For sources and for further information, follow Rachel’s Newsletter on SubStack.

The Crisis of Canadian Liberal Homelessness

 

The first Canadian Prime Minister I Remember

I am a liberal. What concerns me most is protecting our basic freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, democratic rights, and so on. The issues stated most famously in the American Declaration of Independence and the American Bill of Rights; but also the fundamental premise for all government in the liberal democracies. These are the sine qua non. Without them, we can achieve nothing else. And they are always under threat. “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” 

It occurs to me that this underlying concern explains my vote in every Canadian election, and my preferences before that, since my earliest memories.

Diefenbaker-Pearson: Pearson was okay, but Diefenbaker was the liberal. He introduced the Bill of Rights. He fought apartheid in South Africa. His government was shambolic, but I had to love him.

Trudeau-Stanfield: Trudeau seemed initially the liberal standard bearer: “the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.” Stanfield was a Red Tory, which really means an autocratic conservative. So I was with Trudeau and the Liberals. 

But Trudeau turned tyrant with his hate laws and his War Measures Act. The NDP was the only party that opposed it, and, even better, under David Lewis, fought corporate welfare. So I was an NDPer. 

Then Mulroney pushed for Free Trade with the US. Free Trade, the old Laurier reciprocity platform, was the classic liberal position. It assumes human equality and promotes freedom. And the Liberals and NDP opposed it. It was then I was fully convinced tht the Canadian Liberal party was not liberal in principle. So I had to go to the PCs. Even though Mulroney was a Red Tory otherwise.

But Mulroney gravely violated democratic rights with Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accord. He was going to change the constitution with no public consultation and then freeze it, beyond the reach of the popular will. Worse, all parties supported this--except Reform. So I had to go Reform, although it was mostly a Western rights party. 

During the later Chretien years, it was a problem that Canada had no effective opposition. And I thought Chretien was undemocratically trashing the Westminster system by giving himself, and other party leaders, the power to approve or veto all local candidates. This made Canada in effect an elected dictatorship.

Then Paul Martin tried to undemocratically push through the Kelowna Accords, again without public consultation, enshrining inequality of citizenship. The same sort of autocratic move as Mulroney with Meech Lake. So I had to go hard for Harper. 

The Liberal party has since become the international flagship of illiberalism. They have become systematic in their efforts to limit or end human rights; and the NDP has been in lock step. The frivolous declaration of the Emergencies Act, and freezing of people’s bank accounts, was unforgivable. The growing censorship and media control is unforgivable. 

Yet, frighteningly, the average Canadian does not even seem to care.