The Virtue of Pride

 

A lovely man.

A certain sister of my acquaintance worries if she is guilty of the sin of pride. For usually, when she goes out to eat at some restaurant, she concludes she could have cooked the meal better herself at home. How likely is that?

Fairly likely, in fact. There is a reason so many restaurants offer “home cooked meals,” or call themselves “Mom’s.”

In the real world, it is hard to judge whether your idea that you could do better than some professional is a matter of pride, or simply true. Somebody, in the end, has to be the world’s best chef; and he cannot be accused of pride for thinking so. 

Many people are falsely accused of pride out of envy. Anyone who is especially good at anything will be accused of pride. It is a way for those less competent to cope. I realized this back in the days of Pierre Trudeau as Canadian PM. He was constantly being accused of arrogance. It was obvious to me that he was not arrogant; he was just a lot smarter than the journalists questioning him, and was not prepared to pretend he was stupid for their benefit. Why does he have any such obligation?

And this, pretending to be dumb, is a difficult skill to master. Ronald Reagan pulled it off—but he was a trained actor. Donald Trump pulls it off, despite his Ivy League education, and it is the secret to his political success. In Canada, Jean Chretien had the knack, or Ralph Klein. Michael Ignatieff went down to defeat because he hadf not learned it. People hate those more competent than themselves, and will want to hurt them. Most often by calling them proud or arrogant.

But Adam could easily be accused of pride had he refused to take his wife’s advice and eat the damned apple. How dare he assume he knew better than she?

So people are about equally likely to underestimate or to overestimate their abilities, to be too proud of them or not proud enough of them, because the opinions of those around them are not a reliable measure.

We know in our hearts that this sort of pride, confidence in your own abilities, is not sinful. I remember some friend remarking kindly to my grandmother, “you must be proud of your children.” And I winced at her answer: “Of course not. Pride is a sin!” We know in our hearts that was a nasty bit of Pharisaism. Of course one should be proud of one’s legitimate accomplishments, and those of one’s children, or one’s nation. There is a passage in Yeats:

For Parnell was a proud man,
No prouder trod the ground,
And a proud man's a lovely man,
So pass the bottle round.

We know pride, personal dignity, is a good. It is a form of integrity. The misunderstanding that Christian morality rejects this has been a common enough cause of souls going astray, making it seem a “slave morality,” in Nietzsche’s term.

William Blake taught the essential measure: “humble before God, not before men.” That is the only test. To be humble before the next guy you talk to has an even chance of being an idolatry. But one must always submit to the wisdom and the justice of God. You kneel to God; you do not kneel to tyrants, or your fellow man. You pray for guidance and for perspective.

The Roots of Censorship

 

The root of the current drive for censorship, “deplatforming,” cancel culture, and unfriending, which has destroyed so many lives and so many relationships, is simple and obvious. Too many people are lying; especially people in power. You never want to silence anything you believe is untrue. There is no drive to censor the claim that the earth is flat, or the sun goes around the earth. Conversely, you never want to end debate if you believe you are telling the truth. If you discover the earth goes around the sun, contrary to what others have assumed, your instinct is not to suppress the field of astronomy. It is to publish, present your arguments, and take the win.

Therefore, what we are not permitted to say is a reliable indicator of what is true.

An obvious current example is the drive to criminalize any claim that the Indian Residential schools in Canada were not genocidal, or that there are no mass graves of students.

I suppose I’d better not proceed to other examples. It is, after all, taking a risk. But you can find them for yourself.

Once one becomes committed to any one lie, there is a multiplier effect: truth in general begins to look threatening. You will want to restrict speech as a matter of principle. .Who knows otherwise what might slip out?

And underlying the commitment to a lie is a growing popular philosophy that we are gods and can decide for ourselves what we want to be true.

When Did You Last Think of the Roman Empire?

 

A bunch of the guys hanging out

A thing what went around the internet some time ago: women asking their husbands and boyfriends how often they think of the Roman Empire. And being shocked to hear that men commonly think of it every day.

This is a good illustration of the difference between the male and female minds. We have, thanks to feminism, spent decades pretending that men and women are the same but for a few specific body parts. Otherwise feminism collapses: there may then be a good reason why there are more men in engineering, say, or higher management, and more women in nursing or secretarial positions.

Men think of the Roman Empire often, because it is the foundation of our civilization. Most notably, it is when and where Christianity emerged; but we also owe to the Romans much of our legal system, our languages, our writing system, our calendar, our customs, our political structures.

And men spontaneously take responsibility for keeping things on course, for society as a whole. Forget the Roman Empire, and we forget where we came from and where we are going. The ship drifts aimlessly onto the shoals.

Women do not have such worries. For them, he personal is the only political.

This is also why men can read maps, and women get lost. I used to do a little test in my classes: first, I would ask all the women, and only the women, to point North. They would have no idea. Then I would ask the men. Most would be able to do so.

Men have an internal compass in all matters, not just geography, pointing to absolute terms of reference. Women lack this. Exploring, women navigate by visible landmarks and asking directions. Their perceptions are purely situational and relative. Men will navigate by compass direction and absolute distances.

It is all of course designed this way, by God or nature, so than men and women are compatible; so they can form a permanent, mutually supporting union to nurture children. The man leads, and the women is the perfect “help-meet,” as Genesis prescribes.

Men are better in maths, and gravitate to maths, because math deals in absolutes. Women are better in language, and gravitate to language, because language is all about synchronizing with others.

As a result, it is a fundamental error to put women in leadership positions. With rare exceptions, they will almost immediately lose sight of the mandate and wander down primrose paths to unpredictable destinations. Their job may be to sell beer; instead, they will devote the company’s advertising budget to something like promoting transgenderism; or nicer offices for the staff.

To put women in leadership positions is, therefore, a way for any organization, nation or civilization to self-destruct.

This is of course why Saint Paul said women should keep silence in church. The Buddha similarly resisted allowing women to become mendicants, saying the dharma would deteriorate twice as fast as a result.

As always, there is something to be said for the wisdom of the ages.

A New Hope

 

Here’s a cheerful thought. Our current leaders seem to be the least competent and most corrupt in modern times. The elites seem to have gone mad. And yet—I have never been one to admire politicians. Those I genuinely admired in the past could be counted on the fingers of one hand: Bryce Mackasey, Eugene McCarthy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Men of genuine principle.

Yet there are suddenly a lot of public figures out there I genuinely admire, and would vote for with enthusiasm: Pierre Poilievre, J.D. Vance, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard.

I may be culturally prejudiced here. One thing I notice is that most of these figures are Irish and Catholic. All except Tulsi Gabbard.

Bad times throw up good leaders.

Maybe This Explains It

 

One possible explanation for the strangely destructive behaviour of elites over the last few years is that they have calculated, rightly or wrongly, that with AI emerging, they simply do not need people any longer to do their bidding. The vast mass of humanity becomes excess baggage. Why not kill them off and have a better view from the cottage?

Since When Is Donald Trump the Little Guy?

 

There is an obvious oxymoron in Donald Trump appearing as the “people’s champion,” defender of the little guy against the establishment. He is a famously rich man, the son of a rich man, a TV celebrity. Surely if anyone is part of the establishment, it is Donald Trump?

The anomaly is yet more dramatic in the case of Elon Musk: the world’s richest man has supposedly become our saviour against the forces of government and corporate censorship.

Or RFK Jr. Kennedy is a maverick bucking the establishment? He is, after all, the American equivalent of royalty.

Surely we are being played? Surely this is all a sham, controlled opposition? How can we trust these guys to go against their class interest?

No; there is reason here. These are the only people who can stand against the machine.

Jefferson, the inventor of American democracy, argued that it relied on the bulk of Americans being freeholders, “yeoman farmers.” That meant they were not too dependent on the system; they were relatively able to resist authority without losing their livelihood. They could bar their front gate and still feed and shelter their family.

Especially if armed. It has been cogently argued that democracy emerged first in England because of the invention of the English longbow. It meant every English yeoman had a weapon that could pierce a suit of armour. The local nobleman could not run roughshod over his hearth. He needed to negotiate consent.

It has been observed that nations generally become functioning democracies at about the point when the GDP per capita reaches 10,000 USD. At that level, a bourgeoisie has usually developed with enough independent resources to go to the mattresses against an authoritarian government, and stand a better than even chance of winning.

In present days we have an elite, an essentially fascist coalition of government and big business, trying to hold power and extent their control through the new technologies. They can and will destroy the career and livelihood of anyone who breaks ranks and opposes them. They can and will “deplatform,” revoke licenses, refuse to graduate, prosecute capriciously or selectively, get you fired, attack your marriage, seize your children, take your house, send for “reeducation,” seize or freeze your assets, for dissent. 

As Jefferson foresaw, but with raised stakes, the only people who can stand up against this are those so wealthy, so popular, or, in the case of women, so beautiful, that they can’t be crushed: the Joe Rogans, the Scott Adamses, the J.K. Rowlings, the Tulsi Gabbards, the Kennedys, the Trumps, the Musks.

Even they are taking a great risk. They may miscalculate. The powers were able to take out Conrad Black. They took out John McAfee. They may have taken out Alex Jones. They are trying to assassinate Donald Trump.

This shows how high the stakes are.

And this is a reason we must reject governments and political parties determined to go after “the rich”; just as we must fear governments and political parties that go after religion and the church. Whatever their faults, we actually need the richest among us to protect our freedoms. 

Darth Francis

 

At about the same time he is promoting the heresy of indifferentism, Pope Francis has also said that he cannot choose between the evils of Trump’s platform and that of Harris in the current US presidential election.

“Who is the lesser evil? That lady, or that gentleman? I don't know. Both are against life, be it the one that kicks out migrants, or the one that kills children."

This is a clear example of false moral equivalence. Francis is saying that to expel an intruder from your home is morally equivalent to murder.

This is obviously wrong; it amounts to an attempt to justify abortion.

Is it even wrong in the slightest to resist illegal immigration or to deport migrants?

Acts 17: 26 says it is God’s plan that nations and peoples have borders:

“From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.”

One doesn’t have the right to immigrate any more than one has the right to live in another man’s home.

It is not plausible that Francis does not know this. 

It is increasingly obvious that in our times we are fighting a war of good versus evil. The masks are off, and it is no longer a matter of people of good will coming to different conclusions. 

And Pope Francis is on the side of evil.