Pictures of the Neighbourhood

Math Is Hard

Here's a problem with the social sciences; one of many. They are called "soft sciences": meaning they can only suggest statistical probabilities, not hard facts or "laws."

But this means they require some fairly sophisticated mathematics: statistics is not simple.

And the folks who go into the social sciences are usually not very math-minded.

This alone, with all the best intentions, can make many of the field's findings dubious.

"Education" has sadly, tragically, defined itself as a social science. In order to qualify, you must these days take social science courses at a supposedly postgraduate level. Yet a solid grounding in statistics is apparently not involved. Indeed, from my own experience, the slightest understanding of statistics--and that is about my own level, the slightest understanding--would tell you that almost none of the research in the field of education is statistically valid.

Although I am far from a math whiz, I know how to bell-curve marks. But I never learned this in any education courses. I learned it from a colleague who studied postgraduate math. And, frankly, I have never yet met a teacher outside of math and the hard sciences who knew how to do this--something that seems like a basic teaching skill. In fact, I have more than once encountered incomprehension, including from supervisors, at the proposition that you could give a test for, say, fifteen marks, and nevertheless use it to assign a mark out of twenty.

Welcome to the social sciences. If you can do math, you go into the hard sciences. If you can write, you go into the humanities. If you can do neither, you become a social scientist.

But the funding is good.

Why Christians Must Be Liberals

To commit a moral act requires three things. First, the act must be itself good in its effects. Second, one must do it entirely of one’s own volition. Third, one must be fully aware of its nature.

And the same three considerations apply to sin.

Has anyone else noticed that this is in itself a powerful moral argument for limited government? Free will requires freedom. The more choices the government takes from us, the more it does in our behalf, the fewer the opportunities to do either good or evil. Given that we were created with free will as moral beings, this is a negation of our worth and our significance as humans.

Freedom means the freedom to act morally.

Therefore, while government is needed to maintain social order, to protect the weak from the strong, to prevent acts obviously and intrinsically evil, it should never intrude where there is not a compelling reason to do so.

To “legislate morality” is a contradiction in terms.

Jackpot!

A game of chance at Cebu's annual Sinulog Festival, Guess which country represents winning the jackpot?

We need more Filipino immigrants in Canada.

Genuflecting to Antifa

The original "Black Bloc" marches on Rome.

Chris Matthews recently said on MSNBC that he cannot accept Trump until and unless the latter “genuflects to the fact that he lied” about Barack Obama not being born in the United States.

Strange use of the word "genuflect." And strange use of the word “lied.” Trump has never said Obama was not born in the United States. Of course Trump has no special knowledge of where Obama was born. He made no claim that he did. He expressed doubt that Obama was born in the US, based on the same evidence available to us all.

So, it seems, to some on the left—many on the left, for Matthews is hardly a fringe figure-- to “lie” means only to cast doubts upon their preferred view of things. They too, after all, cannot really know whether Obama was born in the US. It is an article of faith then--explaining, perhaps, the word "genuflect" here.

This provokes another obvious question: if “lying” is simply suspecting something the left does not want to believe, what is “truth”?

And here, I think, you have the key to much of what is going on in American politics and culture today.

This concept of “lying” is based on the idea that “truth is relative.” As we see and hear in postmodernism, cultural relativism, the human potential movement, Castaneda’s separate reality, all that Sixties stuff, which can in fact be traced back earlier, through the Frankfort School, Nietzsche, and, not incidentally, Fascism. It has been bubbling through the culture for some time now; it owns the academy; it is having its effect.

According to this intellectual tradition, there is no objective truth. That means truth is whatever you want to be true. “Reality is a function of belief.” “Truth is a social construct.” It follows that “reality” is a contest of wills. Whoever has the strongest will gets to impose his or her reality, his or her construct, on everyone else, making it so. The obvious and necessary tactic for one’s life and all one’s acts is to fight any dissent towards one’s preferred “narrative” aggressively. For example, calling the slightest doubt or dissent “lying.” Which is an assertion of the absolute truth of whatever you choose to believe.

This philosophy is exhilarating, liberating. Which is why it has had such success in the past century. Everything is possible! There are no limits! You get, in effect, to be God—or that is the possibility held out to you.

Antifa

It is, to use the Nazi phrase, the triumph of the will.

Of course, it must also inevitably crash and burn in the end. No, you cannot fly because you want to. You cannot force everyone else to submit to your will, and treat them like objects, once they realize what you are trying to do.

Antifa is a manifestation of this strand of contemporary thought, surely. Of course they are “anarchists.” All government is a restraint on one’s will. No restraint on one’s will is tolerable. One must smash it, whatever it is.

However, this is only a first step. Should one be in the position to do so, the same philosophy suggests that one must impose one’s own government on all others, one’s own reality on all others, and it must be totalitarian. Hitler had to overthrow the social order in the streets before he could impose his own. So did Mao, or Pol Pot. Once oneself in power, anyone who disagrees with your preferred reality is “lying.” There can be no “free speech,” because no expression of opposing views can be tolerated. Opposing views are fatal to a purely constructed reality. Anyone who dissents is labelled a “Nazi,” and must be met with violence. Since there is no objective standard by which to measure or evaluate views, there is no possibility of reasoned debate. Reasoned debate is “Fascist,” because it is a restriction on the will.

Of course, there can be no morality, no religion, for these too are a restraint on the will. This relativism is accordingly a doctrine attractive to sexual libertines, porn stars like “Moldylocks,” of recent “Battle of Berkeley” fame. It gives you license to do whatever you want, to anyone, so long as you can get away with it: smash windows, abort babies, hit peaceful people with bicycle locks, kill the Jews and take their stuff. And, obviously, it gives you full license to lie—reality, after all, is anything you want it to be. Lying is simply disagreeing with you, and anything you say is the truth because you say it. Moldylocks apparently lies like a trouper in interviews.

Fighting "Hate Speech" in Berlin.

In order to deal with this tendency, we need to understand it. I think too many good, decent, people don’t. Too many think that rules still apply, that truth matters to the other side, that we can all with good will still get along.

This was the mistake made at Munich.

And, Godwin to the contrary, I think this is exactly what we are dealing with.

Dlink me Queen of Coffee

The Perfect Body

A British lingerie company did a survey to determine what men and women consider the perfect body. Here are the results for the perfect female body.

The takeaway is that men favour a bit more weight on a woman than women do themselves.

It is a lie when feminists complain that men unreasonably demand them to be thin.

It is women who want that. For whatever reason, they do it to themselves.

Numbers

Canadian Deaths from War:


South Africa – Boer War: 300

First World War: 68,000

Second World War: 47,000

Korean War: 516


Canadian Deaths from Abortion:

Reported legal abortions in Canada from 1969, when abortion was decriminalized, to 2010: 3,191,362 (http://abortionincanada.ca/stats/annual-abortion-rates/)


Number killed in Hitler’s Holocaust: an estimated 6,000,00 Jews, 12,000,000 non-Jews.


Number of abortions per year, worldwide: 40,000,000 to 50,000,000 (WHO estimate)

Andrew Klavan, Mark Steyn, and Leonard Cohen

Just a really worthwhile show to watch...

Antifa Anticlimax?

It looks as though the clashes between Antifa and Trump supporters may not be the clear and present danger they appeared.

Note the Antifa flag, seen everywhere at their riots:

According to YouTuber Sargon of Akkad, who seems to know about this stuff, this is the flag of anarcho-communism. And that does not mean, as I first thought, a coalition of anarchists and communists. It means a subgroup of anarchists who also believe in communism.

Now, if this is true, just how large is their pool of potential supporters?

I really don’t think that the number of anarchist communists in America is that large.

At least, then, if it comes to blows, the Antifas should quickly be crushed.

It is also heartening to see that prominent leftist politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have publicly distanced themselves from Antifa. The left is not on board. This is just a lunatic fringe.

Ann Coulter is now planning to speak outdoors in Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza, which, probably not coincidentally, offers maximum potential for a street brawl.

That’s bad, but then it might be over.

Say What?

New Facebook Page

My new book, Playing the Indian Card, has a Facebook page! Come and have a look!

Visit the page at fb.me/playingtheindiancard and send your Page messages at m.me/playingtheindiancard.

I'm mostly putting up photos on the aboriginal theme.

Seen in the Wild

Throw the Book at Them!

Exciting news! My upcoming book on Canada's aboriginals/First Nations is now available for pre-order!

Everything you think you know about Canada's "First Nations" is wrong:


1. First Nations are not aboriginal or indigenous.

2. Most Canadians have Indian ancestry; most Canadian Indians have European ancestry.

3. Life before contact was no peaceable kingdom. We are influenced by the Garden of Eden myth.

4. No Indian land was stolen. No Indians were harmed in the making of this country!

5. We think First Nations have a special concern for the environment. In fact, they did not believe the physical world was real.

6. "Native spirituality" was mostly invented in the 1960s and 70s. Real Indians are generally Christian, and more devout than other Canadians.

7. What we think we do to help, has been killing them.

Go have a look-see at https://publishizer.com/playing-the-indian-card/

And put in an order!

Win your next debate!

A Trip to Bountiful

A happy frontier Mormon family.

There is a court case now underway to decide whether Canada’s law against polygamy is constitutional.

For many years, the government has declined to prosecute polygamists, and I understand it is for this reason: because it is quite likely that the law, if ever tested, would indeed be found unconstitutional and thrown out. The net result being more polygamous marriages, which presumably the authorities do not want.

My friend Xerxes has chimed in with his column. His argument is that polygamy should indeed be prosecuted. His argument is that religious liberty does not take precedence over “the laws of the land,” that “a religion cannot and should not exempt its followers from obeying the laws of the land.”

This is simply a rejection of the concept of religious freedom itself.

In Memoriam, Brigham Young.

The entire point of a human right is that it is a restriction on government action, on what laws can be made or enforced. In the words of the US First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

It is true that the protections in the Canadian Constitution are not as strong as those in the US Constitution. Nevertheless, the onus is on government to prove that a given restriction on religion or conscience “can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

What if, for example, the parliament decided to pass a law simply making Judaism or Catholicism illegal? By Xerxes’s standard, this would be fine. Where’s the freedom?

In the harem.

Of course, there are problems involved. As Xerxes points out:

“If religious convictions are granted precedence over civil and criminal law, anyone could invent their own religion. Which might authorize ignoring speed limits. Driving on the wrong side of the road. Committing ritual murder. Pouring fentanyl into water supplies to poison unbelieving communities.

At that point, courts would have to determine what constitutes a legitimate religion.”

Courts must indeed do that now, for the very reason he gives: so that people cannot invent their own religion to justify their actions. I do not think the courts have always chosen wisely. The current standard in Canada is that the tenet is “sincerely believed,” and held “in good faith.”

I think that is too loose and too subjective. I would want to see scriptural justification from a religion with some history (so it was not written by the present plaintiff or his friends for their benefit), and with some tests that it is a “religion” properly so-called: belief in a spiritual realm, in a supreme being, in a religious basis for morality. Shamanism or magical practices, for example, is not a religion; nor is “ethical humanism” or vegetarianism.

As to the current issue, of polygamy, it seems to me that the defense of freedom of religion does not apply. The religion may permit polygamy, but it does not require it. Even when Mormonism endorsed the practice, only 20 to 30 percent of Mormon marriages were polygamous. Islam still endorses the practice, but most Muslims are monogamous. Therefore, prohibiting it does not infringe on freedom of conscience.

It does, on the other hand, seem impossible to insist on a prohibition on polygamy when homosexual marriage has been declared a human right. It would seem to fall under the very same “right to privacy” that has been read into the US Constitution, and the very same Section 15 in the Canadian Constitution that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. That is the section that was invoked to make homosexual marriage a human right: the argument being that otherwise the law discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation.

The section does not, in fact, prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation: the courts “read that in.” It does, on the other hand, prohibit discrimination on the basis of religion:

“Everyone has the right to equality before the law and to equal protection of the law without discrimination because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age or sex.”

On that basis, I would expect the law against polygamy to be struck down as unconstitutional. The cases seem to be exactly parallel.

Canadian Politicians I Remember

I'm getting on in years, and I remember quite a few.

John Diefenbaker. A real character, and great political entertainment. But a charlatan, and self-absorbed. He specialized in fake outrage. Not a helpful presence on the political stage.

Lester Pearson. He was a career bureaucrat, and he ran the country for the benefit of the career bureaucracy.

Tommy Douglas. A pipsqueak, the typical little guy with a chip on his shoulder.

Real Caouette. Seemed to be sincere in caring about the little guy. Unfortunately, he was crazy.

Robert Stanfield. They say he was a nice guy personally. Who knows? He did not seem to stand for anything. Cannot forgive him for endorsing “deux nations” and presenting himself as a prime minister for English Canada only, with a “Quebec lieutenant.”

Pierre Trudeau. A real leader, with real principles. Most vitally, he was a hero of the cause of federalism. Unfortunately, on other matters, he was authoritarian. He brought in the hate speech laws, he brought in “multiculturalism,” he suspended civil liberties in the October Crisis.

David Lewis. Had to support his “corporate welfare bums” campaign, an issue that made sense whether you are right or left. Genuinely bright, and I believe a man of principle. He spent much of his life fighting on the left against the communists and for democracy.

Joe Clark. Pure mediocrity. A political hack.

John Turner. Looked good on paper; probably suffered unfairly by following the charismatic Trudeau, after whom he came across as hopelessly inarticulate. Just an empty suit. But his leadership marked a watershed in Canadian political history: he turned the Liberals against free trade. He ended liberalism in the Liberal Party.

Ed Broadbent. One of the most viscerally insincere politicians ever. You always knew, when he began a sentence with “let me be frank,” that he was about to tell another whopper.

Brian Mulroney. Too interested in deal-making, without enough regard to the result. It was politics for the sake of politics, without a higher purpose.

Audrey McLaughlin. Achieved the NDP leadership for no reason other than that she was a woman. She might as well have been picked out of the phone book at random.

Jean Chretien. Likeable, but all tactics, no strategy. Dangerously unscrupulous. He broke a lot of china.

Paul Martin. A great finance minister, a lousy prime minister. Turned out to be as unscrupulous as Chretien, but without the likeability.

Preston Manning. Not sure what he accomplished for anyone but himself by splitting the conservative vote for a decade or so. It was not about ideology. He had none. In the end, with the Alliance, he simply wanted to re-form the Progressive Conservatives under his own leadership.

Alexa McDonough. She was somewhat more qualified than Audrey McLaughlin. I think maybe her breasts were larger.

Stockwell Day. Who cares? He gives the term “lightweight” a bad name.

Kim Campbell. She had no chance, given the unpopularity of Mulroney and how late in his term she took over. Her selection was a Hail Mary pass. A gimmick. Was she up for the job? Who knows?

Stephen Harper. Good, solid, reassuring but unspectacular. Sorry to see him go. A steady hand.

Stephane Dion. A good, honest man. Not a politician by nature. Which is to his credit.

Michael Ignatieff. Like Dion, cast off too soon by his party. Either might have matured into a fine leader, but the Liberals had become too prone to infighting. The legacy of Jean Chretien.

Jack Layton. Viscerally did not like him, seemed too slick. Deserves a lot of credit from fellow Canadians, however, for crushing the Bloc.

Tom Mulcair. Also cast off too soon by his party. He was the best they had. They’ll be sorry. In general, a leader should not be cast off after only one campaign.

Justin Trudeau. An embarrassment. Nothing commends him for leadership. We threw over Stephen Harper, Tom Mulcair, and Michael Ignatieff for this?

Storm Warning

In addition to Anne Coulter, Milo Yiannopoulos has now announced an intention to head back to Berkeley. He intends to hold a “Free Speech Week.”

The right is itching for a fight now.

In the meantime, the hackers at 4Chan and elsewhere on the net have been taking up the challenge of identifying some of the masked Antifa brawlers at the last Battle of Berkeley. The guy who was filmed reaching an arm out from behind a woman to hit someone on the head with a bicycle lock turns out to be a college professor. A woman next to him is a public school teacher. It turns out the mayor of Berkeley follows her Trotskyite Facebook group. A woman who was punched in the forehead is a nude model.

These are not members of the proletariat. These are often people who have their hands on the levers of power. They are all upper or upper middle class.

It is staggering arrogance and cluelessness on their part to nevertheless try to take it all to the streets and use mob force. It seems almost deliberately suicidal.

Now, inevitably, discussion on the Reddit anarchist forum is that Antifa needs to get guns and a strong leader.

Some comments:

“A shocking number of our comrades went in there with absolute no combat training. We need to set up seminars or something of the sort.”

“what is our opinion on a ‘leader’ someone to rally our troops, direct the flow and keep everything organized?”

“Having a leader could immensely improve tactical organization and can prevent the amount of disorganization that happened today. Having someone to help with the commandeering of resources could help us greatly.”

You may have heard of this notion before. It is the Fuhrer principle.

“we need more than flags and bats. We need to take notes from the John Brown Gun Club and get firearms and training.”

Great. Armed battles in the streets. It has worked so well for Syria.

At this point, and given that the local authorities are in on the fight, it seems to me that the only chance to avert civil chaos, not to say civil war, is for Trump to send in the National Guard.

Unsafe Conditions at Wilfrid Laurier University

Dangerous act.

It is apparently no longer enough that it is okay to get an abortion on demand, and it is not enough to get it paid by tax dollars. It is even now, at Wilfrid Laurier University, not permitted to commemorate or lament the dead children in any way. It is unacceptable to mourn, or to remember them as human.

This year, Laurier LifeLink was not permitted to put pink and blue flags on the quad, one for every ten abortions annually in Canada, for a day’s commemoration. This, according to the Student’s Union, “created an unsafe environment for all students.”

This is more than a bit Orwellian. What might have created an unsafe environment is pro-abortion protesters assaulting the display or members of LifeLink, as they did the previous year. But if someone is assaulted, you do not usually charge the victim, but the one committing the assault.

Firstly, this is an open admission of guilt by the pro-abortion students and administration. If they really believed the babies were not human, the commemoration would not bother them. At worst, it would strike them as funny. Instead, it makes them almost hysterical. And, if they thought their actions could be morally justified by argument, they would welcome debate.

Writing in "HerCampus," a student complained that the flag display "failed to account for the wellness of those affected by abortions." This is indeed ironic. That is just what the demonstration was there to do.

"Regardless of your beliefs, it is immoral to shame someone for the decisions they have made, and this exhibit was just that – a stunt to shame the approximately 10,000 women who have faced the pain of having an abortion."

Well, no, it was not. That is her guilty conscience speaking. They were just flags. Case rested.

Nor would it have been immoral to shame those who have had abortions, if the exhibit had chosen to do that. We regularly shame people when we believe they have done something wrong. Do you not think thieves or murderers are shamed by being sentenced? After all, it is a decision they have made. We ought to respect it, then.

In the meantime, this sort of censorship is not compatible with peace and good order. Government exists to protect our rights. If the authorities will not defend our rights, or enforce them, but instead themselves repeatedly violate them, they have lost all legitimacy. There is, in effect, no functioning government

Another Battle of Berkeley is soon to take place. The Campus Republicans of Berkeley invited Anne Coulter to speak on April 27. After imposing all sorts of arbitrary conditions, which she accepted, the Berkeley administration nevertheless decided to cancel the event. Yes, it would be another riot. But not by Anne Coulter or her audience: as with WLU, the university is siding with those who are behaving badly instead of the victims. On the best possible interpretation, this is colossal moral cowardice and irresponsibility. It disqualifies them from leadership.

Forcing the victims to take matters into their own hands. Forcing them to organize on their own behalf.

Under pressure of public backlash, Berkeley tried to reinvite Coulter for a different place and date. But she is having none of it, for several reasons. In all probability, she wants the confrontation to take place. As I said, the right now smells blood, and they are starting to enjoy the fight. She says she is going to come anyway, at the original time, and we’ll see what happens.

I have a guess.

It’s going to be a lot more “unsafe” than putting up pink flags in the quad.

Canadian Conservative Leadership :Picks

My main problem with the current Canadian Conservative leadership race is that there are too many candidates whom I would like to see as leader. It is a shame that all but one must lose.

For what it is worth, which is very little, here are my picks, ranked as on the prescribed ballot:

Maxime Bernier – I especially like the courage of his position on supply-side management, coming as he does from rural Quebec. Trump’s recent complains about it in relation to NAFTA make Bernier’s position look even better. Bernier seems to be a likeable guy; and his bilingualism is important. His libertarianism should play well in Alberta and the West. His cabinet experience is heavyweight, preparing him for the job.

Andrew Scheer -- I am impressed by his recent demand that federal funding for universities be tied to their commitment to free speech on campus. We need something like this urgently. Scheer too seems likeable, and a witty speaker. He could be fun in the Commons. He is popular among colleagues, and would probably be a good choice for the sake of party unity. He is young; he would represent a new generation.

Erin O’Toole – Also likeable—I think likeability is the most valuable trait in a politician. Admirable military record. I like his support of the CANZUK concept.

Lisa Raitt—Hard not to love her for her intervention to rescue Elizabeth May from embarrassment. It is evidence that she is a decent person. She has the cabinet experience to qualify her for the job.

You may note that neither Kelly Leitch nor Kevin O'Leary are on my list. Both would be bad for party unity.