Les Neiges d'Autrefois

The Real Problem

Just got unfriended again on Facebook. Not that it bothers me. It ought to be considered a badge of honour. The shameful thing is unfriending, not being unfriended. And, again, by a left-leaning woman. This happens a lot. Is it just me?

No, it isn’t. Apparently, thirty percent of self-identified Democratic women in the US have unfriended someone on Facebook over their political views. For comparison, it’s only eight percent of Republican women, and ten percent of Republican men.

This is an excellent measure of who has the better arguments.

What does the typical person do when they lose an argument badly? Of course, they feel shame. Of course, it is not a good feeling. Properly, they should be good sports about it, and concede. But almost nobody does, do they? Because it feels bad, they begin to shun the other person. Or, two, if they are less principled or self-aware, they lash out. They get insulting, or even throw a punch.

That is just what we are seeing right now, isn’t it, on the US national stage? Have you been watching the reactions on the left to the election of Trump?

Note, too, that it is especially left-leaning women. Only fourteen percent of Democratic men unfriended over politics, in our survey; the figures for Republican men and women, while lower, were about the same.

This suggests clearly the specific issue on which the left has no good arguments. I leave it to you to fill in the blank.

The current hysteria over Trump’s presidency is a pretty open if unintended admission that, on the issues Trump ran on, the left knows it has lost the argument.

And note that the first wave of assault was a “women’s march.” And it wasn’t really a “womens march.” That march banned—unfriended--pro-life women. It was left-wing women, and their hysteria was really over one specific issue.

Trump, of course, did not just run against abortion. He ran against political correctness. But again, that’s what political correctness was all along. It was about trying to avoid the argument: by creating large swathes of things you were not allowed to say. Restricting debate to avoid the dangerous argument.

He ran against the media. But again, that is what the “media bias” was all about. It was the left seeking to avoid the argument they knew they could not win. So they refused to hear or report any opposing points of view. They were walking away from the argument.

Now they can’t do it any longer, cannot just shun, because Trump is in the White House and has access to Twitter. So do all the dissenting views. Hence the hysterical ad hominems. Trump’s a racist, a misogynist, his face is too orange, it’s a toupee, his son is a school shooter, his wife is being held captive, and on and on. His voters are despicable.

Not edifying, but human nature.

The good news is, all it should take is to end this one issue, and the current culture wars should be over. Short, I hope, of a Civil War, as was ultimately needed for slavery.

Overturn Roe v. Wade.

White Male Privilege

Let’s talk about white male privilege. We all know its an awful thing, but there is a question that obviously needs to be asked. Where does it come from? Who, exactly, is privileging white males?

It's not blacks, is it? It’s not people of colour. That seems unlikely. In fact, didn’t blacks vote for Obama, himself black, in unprecedented numbers—93% in 2012, 95% in 2008? Don’t they tend to call other blacks “brothers”? Doesn’t this imply that they are favouring other blacks?

Suppose they really are privileging whites. Then they need to be alerted. There is no need to tell white males to “check your privilege.” Wrong audience.

Is it women who are privileging white males? Like blacks, feminist women who endorse the idea of male privilege, tend to address one another as “sister,” and speak of solidarity. They call women who did not vote for Hillary Clinton “traitors.”

So, is the concept of white male privilege merely a complaint that white males prefer and favour other white males—in the same way blacks are urged to favour other blacks, and women other women?

Granted that this is a bad thing, how can it be only bad if white males do it, but righteous if anyone else does it?

Is it because white males are powerful, and these other groups are not? But that seems tautological: how then did white males become “powerful”? If it was, in turn, because they were “privileged” by someone, who privileged them? And if this prior group had the power to “privilege” someone, where did that come from? Infinite regression? 

But if they once were not powerful, and became so by the systematic privileging of one another, isn't that just what blacks and women are calling on each other to do? 

So why shouldn't the white males do the same?

You might say it is because white men are a majority. Others mentioned are “visible minorities.”

Except they are not. Women are an absolute majority. White males make up about 30% of the US population. If this is the determining factor, the problem to address is female privilege, not white male privilege.

I think it is true that white males have, historically, done well. Science, liberal democracy, material progress, literature, the arts, that sort of thing. But is that “privilege”?

Or envy?

Isn’t the problem the same the issue of Jewish “privilege” in Germany? Why is it that Jews seem to run all the big stores, dominate the banks, the professions and universities, seem so often rich?

They have obviously been privileged. Perhaps by the Nazi government?

Compassion and Conservatism

Burke

One of the most annoying traits of the left is to consider themselves compassionate; while the right is supposedly stern and cruel. This is a level of hypocrisy that would make a Biblical Pharisee choke on his dinner.

And many on the right are stupid enough to buy into it. As when George Bush the younger called for “Compassionate conservatism,” or when Romney described his record as “severely conservative.”

One leftish Facebook friend recently asked me, “How can you, a Christian, support Trump?” I did not, mind, support Trump; she was assuming this, perhaps from the fact that I was a professed Christian. She, of course, was not.

If I thought this were true, that left-wing policies were compassionate, and right-wing policies were a matter of sticking it to the poor and vulnerable, I’d be a left-winger. But the whole notion is based on a Marxist fantasy, an inverted idea that free markets promote greed, while a government intervention is a corrective to this.

This is the opposite of the truth. The whole point of a free market is that it prevents greed and selfishness. Try to ask for more than your product is really worth, and you go bankrupt. Try to take out more profit than you’ve earned, and you go bankrupt. Granted, there are distortions. But the solution to such distortions is to end them, not to add them.

And with a free market, if there is misconduct, if there is oppression, the remedy is immediate: you stop buying the product. You stop working for the company. You pull out your investment. You cannot do this with government. At best, you get input about every four years, it is just up or down for everything, and you have to hope a majority of your countrymen agree with you.

On the most important issues, it seems to me consistently the left that acts selfishly and is prepared to screw the less fortunate.

Abortion is the most obvious. Who is more vulnerable and in more need of society’s help? Abortion is now the worst holocaust, the greatest mass murder, the world has ever seen, and it is happening now. How can anyone on the left think that anyone on the right could, in conscience, vote for the left, now that they demand abortion paid for by government, on demand, and without apology? And ban from their ranks anyone who disagrees? Is it okay because the left does not see the unborn as human? Was killing the Jews okay because the Nazis did not see them as human?

School choice is also an obvious marker. This would, of course, be most valuable to the poor; the rich can already send their kids to the schools they want. I note with knowing horror that of all Trump’s cabinet choices, the left is most opposed to Betsy DeVos, the advocate of charter schools. When it comes down to what is most important to them themselves, screwing the poor is top of the agenda. Failing schools are the surest way to keep down rising generations. Note that these wealthy liberals almost always send their own kids to private schools. Guaranteeing their class privilege.

This probably explains their opposition to the free market. It allows a poor person or poor family to work their way into the upper class. Mired, of course, with all the filth of trade. The poor are supposed to stay poor. Welfare does that. The rich are not supposed to have to compete with the hoi polloi.

Trade protectionism. Trump is a protectionist, but the right in general is not; the left have been the protectionists over the last few decades, certainly in Canada. While protectionism might be good for some local workers, it is necessarily always at the expense of poorer workers abroad. And even at home, what is gained by some workers is at the expense of poorer people on fixed incomes or without work, whose cost of living must go up.

Minimum wage laws: these benefit those who keep jobs against those, necessarily poorer, who now cannot get jobs. The haves are given at the expense of the have-nots. Most hurt are the young, looking for their first job. Simple truth: if I want to work for X money, and you want my work for that amount, we both have an absolute human right to make that deal. Prohibit it, and I starve while you do without.

Burke parodied for wanting rights for Catholics. "Driven back to his native potatoes."

All of this is aside from a social safety net. There may be crazies on the right who oppose a social safety net, but this is certainly not the conservative tradition. The fundamental concept of Burkean conservatism is that society has responsibilities to its weakest members. More recently, classic liberalism has also been labelled “conservative,” but when did classic liberalism, either, involve or advocate failing to provide for the poor? (I consider myself a liberal, not a conservative.) The debate here between left and right is on how to do this most fairly, efficiently, and respectfully. All else is straw.

And the difference is, first, the left wants the bulk of the money to go to well-off bureaucrats, instead of to the poor. Second, the left sees poverty as a permanent state that should be permanent, while the right wants the poor to become, if possible, better off.

The Inaugural Crowd

View from the podium

I don’t get it. I seem to be the only person who thinks Sean Spicer’s berating of the White House Press Corps on Saturday was reasonable. Even Andrew Coyne and Charles Krauthammer are accusing him of straight lying on the numbers in attendance at the Trump Inauguration. CNN and seemingly everyone else are grabbing at Kellyanne Conway’s reference to “alternate facts” as a denial of the facts.

Seems like bollocks to me.

Spicer, contrary to what just about everyone is saying, did not make any specific claims about how many people were there. His stated point was that nobody knew. Accordingly, it was dishonest of the press to all be reporting that the turnout was small. They could not know. He was perfectly right, surely.

He was also obviously right to say that more people viewed the Trump Inauguration than any other in history. Has everyone forgotten the Internet? I, for example, was watching live on Facebook from the Philippines. That would not have been possible even four years ago. What Spicer said was true, and everyone else is being willfully stupid.

He went on to claim that the National Mall was packed right back to the Washington Monument at the moment of swearing in. Everybody and his dog have now published photos showing instead that crowds were sparse. Okay, but when? That, from the pictures, we cannot tell.

On the other hand, here is a picture we can time precisely: Trump’s hand is up, apparently taking the oath of office. This is the moment Spicer referred to. And, from the viewpoint of the podium, it sure does indeed look like the crowds are solid all the way back to the Washington Monument. We report, you decide.

Just possibly our lying eyes are deceiving us, and we ought instead to trust the press’s word. But if so, we have every reason to assume that Trump’s and Spicer’s eyes showed the same bizarre optical illusion that the camera catches. So, at a minimum, if wrong, they were objecting in good faith. And, even if wrong, Spicer’s main point was perfectly valid: why did the press feature photos making the crowd look sparse, instead of this obvious and more natural perspective that made it look large?

The press everywhere goes on to blame Trump for some weird obsession about crowd size. This is painfully disingenuous. It is the press who raised the issue, in the first place, and it is the press that will not now let it go, weirdly obsessing about crowd size, ignoring everything else Spicer said in the press briefing. Including an important other example of press bias, and one easily proven, regarding the presence of a bust of Martin Luther King in the Oval Office. It’s almost as if they are trying to distract attention from that.

And they are accusing Conway of rejecting facts when this was expressly the opposite of what she actually said. She said Spicer offered “alternative facts.” In what alternative universe does that mean that she is denying facts matter?

I never supported Trump during the primaries. I have always thought of him as a bull in a China shop. But, seeing the utter dishonesty, violence, prejudice, meanness, and hysteria of the folks everywhere ranged against him, it really forces me to believe something is very wrong here, and an angry bull was needed.

As Confucius observed, more or less, the best measure of a man is to have a look at his enemies.

Albums of My Teenhood

Someone on Facebook has a chain letter-chain posting going in which folks are supposed to list the albums that were important to them as a teenager.

Okay, for what it’s worth, here are mine.

Lightfoot! His first, and still his best, album. With great bass by Bill Lee. I was a bassist.

Songs of Leonard Cohen Hit me where I lived. I lived a couple of blocks away from Cohen’s boyhood home, and took the same route home from school. He was a local boy. Introduced to Cohen by Nick Economides, who was older and whom I looked up to for his sophistication.

Songs from a Room. Neither this nor his first are his best albums. But these are the ones from my teenage years. "Nancy," "Tonight Will Be Fine." I remember listening to "A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes" on the porch with Violet Birch.

Birds, Fifth Dimension. One of the first three albums I bought, in a batch. It wore better than the others. Bought all the Byrds albums following it too. Tempted to put some others on the list. They were probably better albums, but as my first exposure, 5D is the one that influenced me the most.

Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited. First got to know it because a neighbourhood kid, Bob White, held dances where he used to play it. The strategy, all the guys knew, was to ask your favourite girl for “Desolation Row” for a long slow dance where you got to hold her close. Then I started listening to the lyrics. Trying to dance to Dylan was ridiculous. "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry," was my favourite for a long time.

Bringing it All Back Home. I bought it after Highway 61. Almost as good.

Blonde on Blonde. It was a disappointment at first. But it grew and grew on me.

Peter Paul and Mary, See What Tomorrow Brings. A lot of great songs. Among other things, the album I listened to after my first real girlfriend broke up with me. My sister and I learned to sing harmony on Betty and Dupree.

Joni Mitchell, Blue, Not my album. My brother was the bigger Joni Mitchell fan. But this one was relly great. Humming “Carey” was the only thing that got me through one summer working in a plastics factory. But “River” and “All I Want” were even better.

Planxty. Bought when I was living in Ottawa. Perhaps the greatest album ever recorded by anyone.

Steeleye Span Please to See the King, Picked up second hand in a bargain bin. Yow!

The Band Music from Big Pink. Another album that seemed to change everything.

Moby Grape. Tipped off on this one by Hit Parader magazine—a great publication. Crazy good.

Rolling Stones, High Tide and Green Grass. Not my album. Was playing in a kid rock and roll band, and a couple of my bandmates were crazy about the Stones. I think Louis Lapierre owned the album. Did not especially like the music then—it was just the most fun to play on stage. But it has grown on me ever since. The Stones get better and better with time.

Ian and Sylvia Four Strong Winds. I love all their stuff, but this I think was where I came in. I cannot ever get “V’la le Bon Vent” out of my mind. Nor would I ever want to. Let alone the title track. Or “Royal Canal,” which oddly always reminds me of Kingston, with the canal and the penitentiary.

Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed and Beggar's Banquet.  These were like the soundtrack to Inscape, the Catholic teenagers' drop-in in Gananoque, the brainchild of Father Ed Shea. "Gimme Shelter."

Cheap Public Transit

China is becoming the frontier of capitalism. Here's a great idea for really cheap public transit in the downtowns of cities, and it is all done by private business. Why not?

Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus to Close Down

Time perhaps to rerun an old column. Because it deal with what largely is responsible for the death of this institution.

A Shrine to Childhood under Attack

Change.org is circulating a petition on the Internet asking the Kingston Memorial Centre to refuse the Shrine Circus use of their facilities. The Shriners' offense is including trained animals in their show. “The circus is a cruel and heartbreaking place for the innocent animals who are forced to perform multiple times a day and are dragged from city to city, year after year.”

Sounds awful. What a hellish existence. Travel. Everyone looking at you perform and applauding. I'm sure no kid every dreamt of the nightmarish life of running off with the circus.

Besides the horses ridden by the Kambarov Cossacks, the only animals performing in the Shrine Circus, so far as I can tell from the playbill, are the Zerbini elephants. No lion tamer. No cute tiny dog acts. No ponies trotting in a ring, with a woman standing on their backs. It looks as though the Shriners have already taken a hit on this matter, and many of the traditional circus acts are no longer attempted. More modern circuses, like the Cirque de Soleil, no longer include them at all. I recall attending one circus with my son in Kamloops when he was tiny. All the animal acts were pulled, because a local ordinance made them illegal. It was a sad affair.

This is a grinch-worthy assault on childhood. It is all very well to be a social justice warrior. It is less well when it costs you nothing, when you are putting all the burden on other people, and yourself sacrificing nothing. But it is another thing entirely when you are robbing children. Kids love animals. The circus is one of the great halls of the empire of childhood. As e.e. cummings once said, “Damn everything but the circus.”

The real problem here is, as the puritans used to worry, that someone, somewhere, might be having fun. To begin with, are animals in captivity worse off than in the wild? It seems unlikely. In captivity, they are protected from predators; they are fed regularly. They die of old age. Someone has estimated that a feral cat, for exampkle, has an average life expectancy of two weeks. More than likely, if these animals did not have a job waiting in some circus, they would not even have been born.

Do animals dislike performing? Does it make them suffer? At most, the Kingston Vegetarian Network, initiators of the petition, cannot know this is so. Anyone who has actually owned an intelligent animal—a collie, say—will probably at least suspect that at least some of them love performing. Elephants are certainly such animals, uncannily smart and accustomed to domestication.

When the film “Free Willy” was finished, there was much concern over the eventual fate of its animal str, Keiko the killer whale. Millions of dollars were spent trying to reintegrate him into the wild. He was given supervises swimming sessions. He was airlifted to a killer whale habitat. It did not work. He never joined a whale pod. Years later, he was spotted in Skalvik Fjord in Norway, offering rides to local children.

Millions that might have been spent on, say, starving children, and all it bought was a life of loneliness.

Keiko. Bit then, if you've seen one killer whale, you've seen them all.

As Carl Jung once said, “sentimentality is the superstructure erected upon brutality.” Hitler too loved dogs. Those who feign to care about Keiko or the elephants of the Shrine Circus are not really concerned about the welfare of the animal. They are merely seeking a justification for their own haterd of their fellow man.

After all, if making animals work is unspeakably cruel, why not the same concern for humans? Are animals capable of more suffering than men? Surely, if it is immoral for animals, it is at least as immoral to expect human beings to work for their vegetarian bacon.

Then we can all go to the circus instead. To watch the performing robots.

Jesus's Teaching on Non-Violence

Pope Francis has been tweeting again. He writes:



First problem is that word “today.” It suggests that the requirements for being a follower of Jesus have changed, and even recently. That sounds like the heresy of modernism.

And what teaching is he referring to about “nonviolence”? “Nonviolence” is actually the English translation of the Sanskrit “ahimsa.” It is an ancient Indian philosophy, originating with Jainism. It is not, that is to say, a Christian doctrine. Yet Francis suggests that Christians must accept it in order to be “true” followers of Jesus.

How’s that for muddying the waters concerning Catholic teaching. And he even seems conscious of the fact that he is adding something not originally there: note the word “also.”

They pile heavy burdens on people’s shoulders and won’t lift a finger to help.-- Matthew 23:4

The Jain advocacy of “nonviolence,” originally involving not just pacifism, but vegetarianism, nudism, and not swatting at insects, was taken up by Mahatma Gandhi and used as a practical tool in the Indian independence movement. It was then adopted by Martin Luther King for the civil rights struggle in the US. This has given it a certain modern prestige. It works, in large part by claiming the moral high ground for whatever it advocates. It seems like a good thing.

But that does not make it a part of Christian teaching.

To be fair, Gandhi himself did claim he got his inspiration not solely from Jainism. He pointed to the Sermon on the Mount as seeming to him to preach something similar. But then, this was also wise strategically, in appealing to the Christian English. He also claimed to find the principle in Judaism and Islam.

Presumably he, Gandhi, refers specifically to the famous “turn the other cheek” passage:

“38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

It surely sounds like a related concept. But to call it “nonviolence” is misleading. Note the entire passage:

“40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.”

Not hitting back at one who slaps you involves renouncing violence. But not refusing your cloak, or a loan, does not. Violence or non-violence, in other words, is not the issue here. It is rather a call to return love for hate.

Compare Rosa Park’s famous action in refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus in 1955. This is the most famous single act of “non-violence,” the classic example. But does it follow Jesus’s teaching? Clearly not.

Jesus had no problem with violence as such. He refused to condemn soldiers, he advised his apostles to buy a knife, he cleared the moneychangers from the temple, he said “I come not with peace but the sword.” Violence has its place.

It is really not helpful for a pope to be promoting such confusion. I understand that Francis is not interested in theology or doctrine, that his emphasis is pastoral.

Even so: surely it is the first responsibility of a shepherd that he not lead his flock astray?

Anti-Psychiatry at OISE

Szasz

Barbara Kay and the National Post are concerned about a new scholarship at OISE for research into “anti-psychiatry.”

“Critics,” says the Post. “worry the university is endorsing an anti-scientific, anti-intellectual exercise”

“’This is a case where academic freedom should be quashed,’ Edward Shorter, a U of T professor and expert in the history of psychiatry, states bluntly.”

A neurosis, I say, on both their houses. Here again is a case where neither side seems close to the truth.

It is entirely proper to question psychiatry. If it were a real science, questioning its premises would be what it is all about. Science is not a body of unassailable dogmas: it is a method for testing any dogmas. It proves nothing; it only disproves. The essence of science—ask Francis Bacon—is taking nothing on authority, testing everything with the direct evidence of experience. Kay and the Post, like just about everyone these days, stand this basic scientific principle on its head. They claim one is “anti-science” if one is not ready to simply take the word of those identified as “scientists.” The obvious current example is “climate science.”

This is not science, but “scientism.” It is a modern religion based loosely on science, including a sacred priesthood held to be above all suspicion. It is not in touch with the real world. It is a great way for a small educated elite to get away with murder.

“To be fair to Barstow,” Kay concedes, “her distrust of psychiatry is not unfounded. For decades, psychoanalysis —often confused with psychiatry, but not a scientific discipline or necessarily premised on a prior medical degree—was wrongly regarded with near-religious awe as a panacea to humanity’s ills. Many analysts did no harm, but others exploited their prestige to promote bizarre theories and, eventually, make psychoanalysis a sidebar in the treatment of mental illness.

Psychiatry, which does require a medical degree, is another story...”

Oh well then. That makes all the difference. If someone has a medical degree, what they say must be true.

Bacon must be ralphing in his grave.

Bacon

“True disciplines spring,” Kay explains reverently, “from pure intellectual curiosity, not the pursuit of social justice. They build on collaboration with similarly engaged scholars. Fact is piled on fact, theories are debated, evidence is adduced, lively debate ensues, and eventually a body of credible knowledge is established. Real scholarship is ‘for’ truth.”

That is a pious recitation of the scientistic faith. So touchingly naive it pulls tears. It assumes anyone well-educated must be beyond base motives of any sort.

Has she never been to grad school? I only wish it were true.

But then, two wrongs do not make a right. That ought to be her argument: two wrongs do not make a right. The present scholarship implies a point of view no better than the one it challenges.

“For Burstow to claim there is ‘no proven biological basis for mental illness,’” writes Kay, “is demonstrably untrue. Countless studies have proved beyond any doubt that there is a genetic basis for all major psychiatric disorders, such as bipolar disorder and depression.”

No, Barstow is exactly right on this point. Kay is far behind the curve. Back in the early nineties or so, psychiatry was insisting that mental illness is all a matter of genetics and of “chemical imbalance,” and announcing that they were on the verge of isolating the mechanism and the gene. It was fashionable then. For one thing, it justified cheap and relatively effective chemical treatments, coming available. It suited govenments, because it promised a cheaper treatment option. Dare I mention, it suited the drug companies, who were putting a lot of money around as a result? It suited the physicians, because it offered a purely physical cause for mental illness. And none of the claims have been substantiated by further research; even as our knowledge of the human genome grows exponentially.

It is high time to plainly admit that it has all been a chase after uncivilized geese.

Psychiatry as a whole begins as a philosophical error. It is a typical academic field in this regard. The pursuit of truth? Academics has only a tangential relation to truth. Careers and entire new disciplines are usually—usually--premised on some intellectual error, even a fairly obvious one. Sooner or later, when this is revealed somehow to be so, it is in too many vested interests to deny the new information. Even the most obvious error must wait for en entire generation of professors to die off to be accepted. Obvious case in point: Marxism was pretty completely discredited by the 1950s, let alone the collapse of the East Bloc in the 1980s. Yet it continues to thrive—guess where?

Unfortunately, human lives can be in the balance. This is clearly the case with psychiatry.

Psychiatry is at base an attempt to reduce the soul (psyche) to some kind of materialistic basis. This was Freud’s agenda; it was the behaviourist agenda; it is still more the modern “chemical imbalance” agenda. This is intrinsic to the field—otherwise it is no province of “physicians.” Yet this is almost automatically slef-contradictory: it is a field that does not even recognize the real existence of its object of study. How likely is that to work? It is like a branch of zoology dedicated to the scientific study and classification of mythological creatures.

The very concept of “mental illness,” therefore, is a metaphor taken literally.

Suppose, instead, that the soul exists?

As it inarguably does. As Berkeley, among others East and West, points out, we are immediately aware of and certain of the soul’s existence. It is the existence of the physical world, of the body, that is debatable.

There is a second, disastrous fundamental error in the field. If you are going to talk about “mental health”--a metaphor, remember, not a reality, and one that may or may not be useful--what constitutes “health”?

Easy to determine in a physical system like the body, imagined as a machine. Does it work, or does it not?

But the metaphor does not work with the soul. What constitutes “working properly”? What exactly is the right functioning of the soul? How is one soul qualified to judge this of another?

Unfortunately, psychiatry has fixed on t he idea of “normalcy.” The soul is functioning correctly that functions like every other soul. The soul is fit to judge that is properly average.

This is obviously highly debatable. In fact, it disagrees sharply with all the world’s major religions. This ought to be an immediate problem in terms of any public funding.

Any of the world’s great religions would say that the average soul is spiritually lacking. So would any of the great philosophers.

Moreover, anyone of any unusual intelligence, creativity, morality, or talent is necessarily abnormal. Anyone with a new idea is abnormal. Accordingly, the basic premise of psychiatry is destructive of science itself, of human progress, of ethics, and of human freedom. Not to mention the health of the soul. All very well so long as one stays out of the gears of the psychiatric system, but deadly to anyone who is unlucky enough to get “diagnosed.”

So Barstow starts with a very good case. Inside or outside of the academy, we need an “anti-psychiatry” movement. Nor is this new. I studied at Syracuse University, home turf of the late, great Thomas Szasz. At Queen’s, I heard a visiting lecture from R.D. Laing. Has Kay not heard of them? Since when has this academic possibility to doubt psychiatry as a whole been shut down?

Unfortunately, Barstow screws it up completely, and probably boosts Kay and the psychiatrists, by saying wild things like:

“The long history of psychiatry is the long history of pathologizing women … It is also an institution that pathologizes blacks, lesbians and gays. This intersectionality analysis is readily available through an antipsychiatry lens.”

So psychiatry is okay so long as only white men are oppressed? It’s all politics? This allows Kay to point out that, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, it is clearly the male tendency that is oppressed. So no problem, then. 

McMurphy

Making it all about politics is almost as materialist as making it all about chemicals: that is just replacing Freud’s materialist pseudo-science with Marx’s “dialectical materialism.” It is just as intolerant. And it has no chance of overtaking the chemical solution, if you will pardon the pun, because it is obviously much less practical to implement.

Barstow’s stated goal is to “spur alternate ways of arranging society so that we aren’t inventing diseases.”

Rearranging society is a big project. By itself, it is ominous, it implies a loss of freedom. Instead of submitting only our most eccentric to the absolute power of some arbitrary elite, we would be submitting everyone. And, if ever possible, that is surely the long way around--a longer way around than drugging up the individual sufferer.

Yes, the world is hopelessly screwed up. But that is not news, that is not a temporary condition. Any religion will tell you: it is the inevitable human condition. So long as people are not perfect, some people will be bad to other people. And you cannot perfect human beings. In fact, you do not even have the right to try.

We must accept that fact, and find our peace within it.

The proper solution has, of course, been known for millennia: religion exists, specifically, as the real psychology. Psychiatry harms, more than anything, by blocking this necessary treatment. Marxist politics harms in the same way.

There is No Western Civilization

Ngarjuna

Botheration. The students at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies have proposed that “the majority of philosophers on our courses” should be from Africa and Asia. This has caused a backlash in the press.

Powerline comments

“This is so pathetically stupid that it doesn’t really deserve a response. I take it that these people claim to be studying philosophy, right? So that means they need to study philosophers. What we call philosophy is a Western invention. I remember when Paul and I were taking a Greek philosophy class from Professor Duggan at Dartmouth. At one point in a lecture, he referred to ‘Western philosophy,’ then paused and said: ‘as if there were any other kind.’”

Bodhidharma

Here is an interesting case where I think both sides are wrong. It is an old problem, one that I have cared deeply about since undergrad days, and it seems we are never going to resolve it. The truth seems to have no voice. I majored in Comparative Religions, and went on to do grad work in the field, very largely because it was the only place in the academy where one might study the vast domain of non-European thought. Perhaps two thirds of the world’s knowledge, and all untouched elsewhere.

In principle, it seems to me that the students are absolutely right. What was the name of the school again? If you study philosophy at the School of Oriental and African Studies, you have every reason to expect that the philosophers you study will be primarily Oriental and African. Otherwise, your degree is a fraud.

As to the claim that the only philosophy worth studying is Western philosophy, that is simply extreme chauvinism. It is pig ignorant. I tell you with some conviction, anyone who has not studied Buddhist philosophy, Ngarjuna, Hui Neng, the Tao Te-Ching, Confucius, Mencius, Chuang Tzu, Shankara, Ramakrishna, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Arabi, Ibn Sina, Al-Ghazali, has missed important parts of the human argument and experience. He or she is only half-educated.

And they are understudied. If you are not going to find them in the School of Oriental and African Studies, then where?

Ibn Sina

One can argue, technically, that philosophy is a purely Western invention. But only technically. In the sense that the word is Greek. Yes, Eastern thinkers often dwell on different issues than the classic ones that have preoccupied the West. But that only reveals an artificial limitation on our viewpoint—a good reason in itself to study Eastern philosophy. One could similarly argue, and I have heard it argued, that comedy and tragedy are a Western invention, and there is no comedy outside Europe. This is true in the same sense: our definitions of the two genres come from Aristotle and the Greek ritual tradition. Nevertheless, it is absurd to suggest that we cannot find funny plays or sad plays in other cultures, and more absurd to suggest that non-Western drama is not worth studying because it does not fit into our categories. What in the end, is wrong with learning something? Why would we want to exclude it from a university?

This sort of chauvinism implies cultural relativism. Truth does not have a skin colour or an ethnicity. There is no “Western civilization.” There is only civilization. It is the human duty to seek truth and to seek the best. Wherever we find it, regardless of the “culture” that spawned it. Is something that is true in Toronto not true in Mumbai?

Shankara

That is, incipiently, what American culture and English-speaking culture is: taking the best wherever we find it. That is its genius. And, moreover, that is what Christian culture is. Might I point out that Jesus was Asian? St. Augustine, though, was African. We are building the world culture, those of us who are with the program. Take the best music, whether from Ireland or Africa; the best food, whether from Italy or China; and so forth. That is our project.

Unfortunately, while those who object to the student union proposal seem hopelessly misguided on this, this is in fact not what the students want either.

Here is the relevant portion of their “Educational Priorities”:

Decolonising SOAS: Confronting the White Institution: 

Decolonising SOAS is a campaign that aims to address the structural and epistemological legacy of colonialism within our university. We believe that SOAS should take a lead on such questions given its unique history within British colonialism. In light of the centenary and SOAS’ aims of curating a vision for itself for the next 100 years, this conversation is pivotal for its future direction.
Our aims are a continuation of the campaign last year:

To hold events that will engage in a wider discussion about expressions of racial and economic inequality at the university, focussing on SOAS.

To address histories of erasure prevalent in the curriculum with a particular focus on SOAS’ colonial origins and present alternative ways of knowing.

To interrogate SOAS’ self-image as progressive and diverse.

To use the centenary year as a point of intervention to discuss how the university must move forward and demand that we, as students of colour, are involved in the curriculum review process.

To review 10 first year courses, working with academics to discuss points of revamp, reform and in some cases overhaul.

To make sure that the majority of the philosophers on our courses are from the Global South or it’s diaspora. SOAS’s focus is on Asia and Africa and therefore the foundations of its theories should be presented by Asian or African philosophers (or the diaspora).

If white philosophers are required, then to teach their work from a critical standpoint. For example, acknowledging the colonial context in which so called “Enlightenment” philosophers wrote within.

Lao Tzu heading west 

In other words, their problem is that SOAS is not racist enough.

“ a wider discussion about expressions of racial and economic inequality”? It is hard to shoehorn either European or Asian philosophers into a discussion of economics or race. Not an issue most of them have been interested in. It is a good excuse to avoid having to deal with any of them. And not even really about politics, either. It is an excuse for saying “you owe me a degree without working for it.” Because oppression.

“present alternative ways of knowing.” Thank you, Carlos Castenada. As any proper philosopher, East or West, North or South, could inform them, there are no “alternative ways of knowing.” Epistemology 101. By definition—or it is not knowledge. If such cultural relativism is true, we are indeed wasting our time studying Oriental or African thought. This is just a way to reject any criticism of your own thinking. “It’s just my way of knowing.” How dare you mark me! Oppression!

“ we, as students of colour” This is presented by the Student’s Union. Are all students at SOAS really “students of colour”? If so, the school should be defunded. It is just an academic ghetto. Or is it that only students of colour are worth mentioning? Then we have extreme discrimination against whites. Either way, it further assumes that Oriental and African thought is of interest only to students of Oriental and African background. If so, again, studying it is a waste of time. And why should any Europeans be asked to fund it?

“SOAS’s focus is on Asia and Africa and therefore the foundations of its theories should be presented by Asian or African philosophers (or the diaspora).” I almost bought it, it almost was true, until that first parenthesis. “Or the diaspora”? That is, people of African or Asian ancestry living in Europe or North America? Outside of African Americans, there would be few of those more than a couple of generations back; among Africans in the US, only a few centuries. A small pool in which to find some of the world’s greatest thinkers. No; this is a fairly obvious claim by the “students of colour” that they themselves are, due to their ancestry, already authorities on Oriental and African thought. It I impertinent of their professors to suppose they know better. So stop annoying them with questions and give them their degrees. Racists.

Averroes

“ acknowledging the colonial context in which so called ‘Enlightenment’ philosophers wrote within.” Pardon the bad grammar; its probably correct in African or Oriental Diaspora thought. Again, there is a point here. The Age of Discovery was deeply influential in European thought. You could do a lot with that premise. But has it been generally unacknowledged? If so, congratulations! You just found a thesis topic!

One gets the feeling the authors never thought of that. That in itself is a chilling reflection on the state of the academic project. This is something the professors are supposed to do for them?

“Culture studies,” which is something we vitally need, has been co-opted everywhere. Instead of studying culture, they simply award unearned degrees on grounds of race or sex or sexual orientation.

I propose a rule: harsh, but perhaps necessary. If you are going to have a department of “women’s studies,” only men should be permitted to enroll. If you have a department of “queer studies,” only straight people should be allowed to enroll. If you have a department of African or Oriental Studies, they can accept nobody of African or Oriental parentage.

If such studies are of any value, they must be of value to those who are not themselves from the culture. On the other hand, follow the implied logic of the SOAS proposal. Students of the African or Asian Diaspora already know all this stuff. They are wasting their time pretending to study it.

The End is Near

The tunnel at the end of the light.

I have a leftish friend, a distinguished editor and journalist, who, in retirement, still writes a regular column. It is a window on what the left is thinking, at least in Canada.

His latest column clarifies something. It is titled, “DENYING THE EPIDEMIC OF DEMENTIA.”

That is the main premise: that there is a current epidemic, dementia, and we are foolishly doing nothing about it.

“It’s hard to call dementia an epidemic. Epidemics typically involve infectious diseases. But when one in every 11 Canadians over the age of 65 has some form of dementia, some 700,000 Canadians, it’s hard to call dementia anything but an epidemic. Every year, about 25,000 new cases are diagnosed.

Apply those figures to any other illness -- measles, cancer, AIDS -- and you’d have not just an epidemic, but panic.”

In pointing out our folly, he lists other matters about which we seem to be willfully blind:

“ So we deny climate change. Even though the figures are clear. Global temperatures are rising. So are sea levels. Polar ice is melting. Storms, floods, and fires escalate in violence. But we’d rather debate it than fight it.”

“ We deny the massive extinction of species. As with climate change, we’d rather argue about possible causes than acknowledge the problem.”

“ We haven’t even begun to consider the effects of living in a bath of wireless transmissions, relying on safety standards drafted before cell phones and Bluetooth even existed.”

“ And the topic of over-population is utterly taboo. We humans are already the most invasive species on earth. No other species has had such a devastating effect on other species, or on the environment. But we can’t talk about it, because we consider all solutions unthinkable.”

In a superficially unrelated remark, a reader responds to the immediate past column with the comment:

“Look into the future, . What do you see for us? The Tyee, which is a decidedly left wing newspaper, took a poll of its readers regarding their prognosis for the coming year. Over 80% said they view the future as hopeless.”

And that, it seems to me, is an apt summary of the movement that currently calls itself “progressive.” far from believing in the possibility of progress in any sense, it seems convinced that the sky is falling. One way or another, these are the last days. The world is about to end.

This view is not realistic. Start with dementia. A smaller proportion of people than ever before, at every age group, are getting dementia. That is not characteristic of an epidemic. What is also happening, of course, is that with the improvement in life expectancy, more people than before are living long enough to risk dementia.

But this then seems an effort to put the most depressing spin possible on good news. It is as though either the left wants to believe the world is going to Hell in a handcart, or they are somehow traumatized and cannot get past negative thoughts.

Quickly, on the pressing danger of climate change: to avoid being called a “climate change denier,” it is not enough to believe just that the earth is getting steadily and significantly warmer. Although there is already room enough to doubt that. You must also believe that man is the principal cause, that this will be a bad thing, that it is realistically possible to stop it by government action, that the actions proposed will cost less than the eventual damage from climate change, and that there are no more pressing problems on which the money might be better spent. 

Bertrand Russell, public atheist, leads "ban the bomb" march, 1961.

Buying all that takes quite a leap of faith. It is a complicated dogma, and improbable on its face. Most improbable is the idea that climate change, if real, means impending universal doom. At its core seems a conviction that man is evil, and must somehow repent, to avoid the imminent wrath of an angry God.

So too with the idea of an impending imminent mass extinction. There is no hard evidence of it, only predictions based on computer models. Again, a leap of faith that violates the scientific sine qua non of skepticism and demanding evidence rather than relying on authority. It does not come from science; from whence does this conviction come?

The ultimate concern mentioned, revealingly, is overpopulation. That perhaps gets to the nub. The problem is too many people; with the self-contradictory assumption that too many people by their existence will kill all people. In other words, the problem is with the sinful nature of people. People are bad per se; people are evil in their essence.

Far from ignoring or refusing to discuss the problem, it has been done to death. When I was in high school, back in 1970, our biology teacher required us all to buy and read The Population Bomb. This nagging negative thought has been pervasive ever since, for at least 50 years now. It is, granted, at last apparently fading. Because all the predictions of “overpopulation” turned out not to be true. Scientific evidence did not support the theory. Instead of running out of water, food, and everything else, poverty has declined worldwide. Famines have become much more rare. And the world population is, on present trends, soon to level off on its own.

As men are evil, anything made by man is also evil. That is, civilization is bad. Hence the concern with “pollution.” And new inventions like cell phones or Bluetooth must necessarily be somehow poisonous. The idea that they might be has in fact been studied again and again; and no significant harmful effects have yet been found. The concern seems based on irrational fear, not science.

To be fair, a lot of the present pessimism on the left is connected with the fact that their girl lost the recent US election. Still, they do seem generally to be taking an apocalyptic view of that too. It’s Hitler? Trump is going to send them all to concentration camps! And that has been their attitude for fifty or sixty years, hasn’t it? Since the “ban the bomb” movement in the fifties. The world will end soon from global cooling, or global warming, or overpopulation, or peak oil, or nuclear holocaust, or pollution, or if not that, surely something. There is always a nagging sense of threatening epidemic.

The four horsemen of the apocalypse: overpopulation, dementia, global warming, and Donald Trump

Granted, the right can be apocalyptic too, on a smaller scale. They worry about the decline and fall of civilization, or at least “Western” civilization. But in this is an original optimism and hope In progress: that civilization is worthwhile and that mankind has indeed built something over the years.

What we seem to see on the left is an obvious pervasive sense of free-floating guilt. The human conscience is acting up, and disturbing our sleep.

What happened? What is driving the left, literally, crazy?

This comes from turning away from God.

The Razor's Edge

Women's razor

Under public pressure, Tesco in the UK has just reduced the price of its women’s twin-blade razors to match those of their men’s two-blade razors. The previous “discriminatory pricing” was supposedly a form of prejudice against women.

I don’t get that logic.

If an essentially identical product is sold at two prices, why is it you are obliged to buy one instead of the other simply because you are a woman? Why not buy the “men’s” razors? Would that be so hard? Is that really too difficult a mental challenge for the average woman to handle?

If, of course, women did that, the market for women’s razors would evaporate. Or the price would come down. Obviously, if they are selling for that price, women are buying them.

No; the real significance of the former different prices is this: men are more price-sensitive than women. A woman feels it is worth it to pay one third more simply to get a colour she prefers—pink, for example.

Supply and demand.

What this reveals, in turn, is that women generally have significantly more money to spend than men do. Women have money for such luxuries; men do not.

Forget all the propaganda you have been fed about men making more than women. They do not. But men need to make life choices based on how much money the job brings in, while women, being intrinsically wealthier, have the luxury to seek out jobs that are fun.

The truth is, regardless of who in a family makes the money, it is the woman who spends it. Eighty percent of all purchasing decisions are made by women. This is true regardless of whether one partner works, or both. Women have eighty percent of the folding money.

There is a reason why there are so many women’s magazines, so fat with ads. Men’s mags are only there to cater to single men, who still have some disposable income.

But apparently it is not enough. What’s the point of having social privilege if you do not use it relentlessly to push for more?

Exile

If we should live long enough,
we all end our lives as exiles
Somebody changes everything as we sleep,
and we awake one morning in a foreign land.

-- Stephen K. Roney

Wishes for the New Year

Since I seem to be so bad at predicting things, let me instead concentrate on things I would most fondly wish to happen. Take it as a prayer; and perhaps it will be heard.

First and foremost, the critical issue of this era is abortion. May we see the start of laws against it, in Canada, the US, and elsewhere.

Second, an end to Quebec’s discriminatory language laws, so that Montreal can regain its rightful place as Canada’s metropolis. Now is the moment, with Ontario’s government making life impossible for business in old rival Toronto.

I would like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK to seize the moment and have a new customs union deal ready to go the day after Brexit becomes official. For Canada, good insurance in case Trump wants to weaken NAFTA.

I want a union of the Catholic with the Orthodox churches. There is no reason but prejudice for the split to endure. There are no substaantian theological differences. And all such conflicts within the Christian church are cause for scandal.

I want an end to no-fault divorce. Nothing is more harmful than the weakening of the family. I want legal penalties for adultery. Without them, marriage is an unenforceable contract. I support gay marriage—it discourages promiscuity, after all—but on the same basis. And I want it clearly spelled out that homosexual sex is not a human right. Pretending it is one is destructive to real human rights like freedom of conscience.

Other ideas to strengthen marriage: an absolute cap on the amount a non-earning party could take out of the marriage. Being married to c doctor is not, in principle, harder or more valuable work than being married to a steelworker. End predatory divorces! Similarly: the person paying child support should also, automatically, have legal custody. He or she may, of course, choose to allow the other party to raise the children, But he who pays the piper ought to be able to call the tune; otherwise, you have a decent functional definition of slavery.

I want a prohibition on affirmative action of all sorts, on grounds of human rights. Not just an end to the legal requirement, but make all hiring on the basis of race or sex illegal, as it should be.

I want an end to all “hate laws” and speech codes, on the same grounds. Prosecute the deed, not the motive. It is impossible to prevent “hate laws” from being used to discriminate—against any currently unpopular group. They violate equality before the law.

I want—here I am libertarian—an end to all legal penalties for possession of drugs of any sort. Again, this seems to me an obvious case of human rights. We have a right to do as we want to our own bodies. Pursuit of happiness and all that. Besides, as a practical matter, prohibition only feeds crime and lawlessness.

Speaking of libertarians, I want Maxime Bernier for the conservative leadership. Not Kevin O’Leary, not Kellie Leitch: both are disqualified as a practical matter by not speaking any French. Both are embarrassing “me too’s” for Donald Trump. We ought to be grown up enough not to ape older brother. Both would be divisive within the party. Nor do we want a Red Tory; that too would alienate a large part of the party. It would be electoral death in this era of populist insurgency. Bernier’s libertarianism seems a platform everyone could rally around.

I want unrestricted immigration for Christians and Yazidis from the Middle East. We are watching a genocide unfold, and doing nothing. After abortion, this seems to me the greatest scandal of our time. And no nonsense about having to let in Middle Eastern Muslims in proportionate numbers. No; we did not need to let in Aryan Germans or Austrians during the Nazi era to justify letting in Jews. Could we tell the difference? Of course we could, at least for Christians. There are baptismal records.

For some of the same reasons, I’d like an unrestricted “right of return” to Canada for Jews. Why not? It is pure self-interest to want to attract as many Jews as we can. They always produce a disproportionate benefit to the economy and culture wherever they go: they are a leaven to the nations. Where, for example, would Canadian culture be without Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, Mordecai Richler, Wayne and Schuster, or Ed and David Mirvish? Let alone the Canadian economy, or Canadian academics. Not a lot of street gang action in Jewish nighbourhoods, either. Second, it seems to me it would be a safety valve for the continuing troubles in the Middle East. It gives Jews a ready second option in case things go South there. The Arabs too, would probably thank us.

That would probably be enough immigration. If not, might I put in a word for the desirability of Filipino immigrants? Christian, generally fluent in English, utterly non-racist as a culture, familiar with Anglo legal principles, and generally admiring of the culture. You do not find Filipino ghettos anywhere. They integrate within two generations.

Predictions

Past experience has shown me that I have a truly appalling record at making predictions for the upcoming year. Fortunately, last year, I was too ill to make any. Because they would have been wrong.

A lot of people have very bad premonitions for the coming year. A lot of people have high hopes. I think odds are that there will continue, as last year, to be many surprises. This is happening because of technology. The world is changing. We are at a moment at least as important as the invention of printing. More probably, as the invention of writing. It is bound and sure to have wide-ranging political, social, cultural, and economic ramifications, and we have only begun to see them.

Self-driving cars are almost here. Farewell to much of the expense and difficulty of travelling. Farewell to most of the human toll of traffic accidents. Farewell to the need for any form of government public transit. Farewell for the need for parking space. And farewell to the single most common job in North America.

I come from the future. Or rather, the past of the future. Or the future of the past. In any case, I am a present, right?

The rest of the working class will be hit as hard. Robotics will kill most manual jobs. Checkout cashiers are already no longer needed. Drones can already replace deliverymen. As robots become cheaper than even Chinese workers, manufacturing may begin to re-relocate.

Nor are only working class jobs in danger. The Trump revolution was a part of a general revolution against the professional “elite.” This was the biggest part of the printing revolution, and it is bound to be much bigger now. Doctors are actually now obsolete; they hang on because of their social power, but it will not last. Lawyers are obsolete. Teachers are obsolete. Journalists are obsolete. Accountants are obsolete. No doubt engineers are obsolete. Why are the rest of us going to keep giving them money and power when they serve no useful function?

This I can foresee. But how much of it is going to happen in the next year? That I cannot foresee.

Part of Trump’s victory was a revolt against political correctness. I think political correctness, feminism, and the LGBT lobby are truly dead now. From now on, they will be a laughing stock, and it will not take long before everyone will be embarrassed to identify with them. This is the sort of thing that dies fast.

Part of Trump’s victory also was a revolt against free trade. I have always believed in free trade. I still do; I think that it will continue, that Trump is just bargaining for a better deal. If not, I expect economic trouble worldwide. Even if free trade hurts some producers, it helps others; and it helps all consumers. Not everyone is a producer; everyone is a consumer. This is before we even begin to look at the issue of comparative advantage. Or the obvious moral point that all men are brothers, and there is a basic immorality in taking jobs away from the relatively poor in Indonesia to give them to the relatively rich in Michigan.

As for immigration, I have in the past been generally in favour—on the grounds that if we do not bring the workers to Canada, the jobs will just go to cheap labour elsewhere. That may no longer hold, with the growing capabilities of robotics. Robots in Canada may soon be cheaper than people in China. The need to keep our population of active workers growing may also soon no longer apply. What happens if improvements in life expectancy, entirely probable with the unlocking of the human genome, begin to kick in? Labour may become irrelevant, and only capital matter. Good joke on Marx.

One thing catches my eye this January. Trump has tweeted “North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won't happen!”

Is he serious? How is he going to prevent it?

Commentators I have seen all say this will require tougher sanctions, or sitting down at the table with Kim Jong Un, or maybe infecting them with some computer virus. A preemptive strike, of course, is out of the question.

But is it?

Surely the US, if it has the will and is prepared to accept the possible repercussions, has the capability to take out whatever North Korea has in a preemptive strike. The land area of North Korea is much less than that of, say, Iran, and every inch of it has been under close US surveillance since 1950. The Americans have bases just across the border. What Israel could do in Iraq, surely the US can do in North Korea.

Yes, this could mean war. Yes, North Korea has artillery that could hit Seoul.

On the other hand, it seems certain that, in any all-out war, the North would lose--so long as they still do not have nuclear weapons. Their only hope would be blitzkrieg, as they tried in the Korean War. It almost worked then because the South had no air power and no anti-tank weaponry. That is not going to be repeated. And the reason they had no anti-tank weaponry then still holds—the Korean Peninsula is lousy blitzkrieg terrain. Think Switzerland.

The Jucheists have been playing the game of provocation just short of war for over sixty years. Because it pays off for them. They shake down for some handout to stop, and then they can repeat the cycle in a few years. Perhaps it would be healthy to call their bluff. Their own actions suggest it is a bluff. Do the leaders in Pyongyang really want to die?

Luckily, Gananoque remains out of range.

Moreover, isn’t it, on balance, more dangerous to do nothing, and allow the DPRK’s hostile and unpredictable government to develop the ability to deliver a nuclear warhead on Los Angeles or San Francisco? Then they could really go for the Danegeld.

Would China react? I doubt it. They only engaged last time when the UN forces got close to their own border. China is on the rise; the longer they can postpone any confrontation, the better their chances. So long as their basic interests are not threatened, they are better off keeping the peace and keeping their economy growing. They have distanced themselves enough from the Pyongyang regime that their prestige is not on the line here, if they stay out. A harshly-worded protest is about the most I would expect.

At the same time, such a strike might be a useful shot across the bow to Iran and Russia, who have been acting pushy in the last few years. It would reassure American allies everywhere.

Trump is no doubt setting the table at this point to scare North Korea into pulling back on their nuclear program. And, more importantly, to give China fair warning. But the Kim regime is used to getting away with this stuff, and is entirely capable of miscalculating. If they do not pull back, hitting them hard would be the best way to set the table for the next negotiation with the next adversary.

It’s the art of the deal.

So here’s one prediction: Trump bombs North Korea.

Christmas Music

Trump Has No Sense of Humour?

“Donald Trump never laughs,” Al Franken said. 

This was the senator’s first observation to me on a recent afternoon.

These are the opening lines of a recent NYT piece, an interview with Senator Franken about Donald Trump.

“I don’t know what it is,” Franken continues. Of course he does, and so do I. But this is supposed, surely, to be arch and revealing. It is supposed to suggest a man without humour.

Absolutely no sense of humour.

Soon after I saw this, by chance, I saw a video of Trump laughing.

But leave that aside. Surely anyone can see that one of Trump’s winning traits is his sense of humour.

“Only Rosie O’Donnell.”

Like most good comedians, his style is deadpan.

How often have you seen Buster Keaton laugh? Jack Benny? Groucho Marx? George Burns? Walter Matthau? Bob Newhart?

For the most part, nothing kills a joke more surely than laughing as you tell it.

Franken, as a professional comedian, knows this.

He is being disingenuous. He is being a typical politician.

Are you laughing at me? What's so funny?

Could it also be the left that has no sense of humour? Fraqnken surely sees the joke, but perhaps he can reliably count on his constituency, like the New York Times, not getting it. It fits: they insist always on taking anything that Trump says strictly literally.

"Knock, knock? What do you mean? I don't see any door. You're lying!"

Christmas Music

George Michael in Hell

A bit of anti-Christian propaganda came down the Facebook feed of late. Twice, from two different sources. So I guess it’s getting good distribution.

Maybe there really have been comments somewhere that Michael is damned because he was gay. None are cited. But they certainly would not be in accord with Christian doctrine.

To be fair, I can only speak definitively for Catholicism here. Protestantism, with thousands of denominations, has no clear voice on anything. It is probably possible to find a self-declared “Protestant” who believes almost anything you choose, and accepts no higher authority to gainsay it.

But then, you need to be specific, and not call “Christian” a doctrine most Christians would consider heretical. Otherwise, all possible human views become “Christian.”

First off, for Catholics, nobody is certainly damned. Repentance is always possible. Accordingly, nobody is damned for, at any point, “being gay.” Damnation requires not just sin, but a final and definitive turning away from God. That’s what purgatory is about.

Second, “being gay” is not a sin. Homosexual sex is--as is any sex outside marriage, and any sex not open to having children. This includes extramarital sex, using artificial birth control within marriage, or masturbation. Or, for that matter, coveting your neighbour’s wife. Or looking at a woman with lust in your heart. Homosexuals are not singled out as sinners here. One might just as well say that being heterosexual is a sin.

Which is exactly why everyone feigns to care so much about supposed discrimination against homosexuals here. What it is really all about is heterosexuals wanting free license for lust without feeling guilty about it. If they can convince themselves that the church’s teaching on sex is just prudishness, they can salve their conscience.

You want sin? There is one unforgivable sin. That is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

That is, misrepresenting religion in an attempt to mislead.