If for any reason you cannot find the paperback version of Playing the Indian Card at your favourite bookstore or online retailer, please ask them to carry it. Protest and picket the store entrance if necessary.
It is surprisingly obvious, given the general outcry, that the official “narrative” on the Indian Residential Schools in Canada is false. There was no attempt to either wipe out the Indians, deprive them of their culture, or abuse or neglect Indian children. It is all a wild conspiracy theory. The actual report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the press releases of the Indian bands in Kamloops and Marieval, although trying to mislead, judiciously avoid telling any actual lies, on which they could, after all, be called out.
Nevertheless, the media and the politicians seem to want to give a megaphone to the lie that something nefarious was going on in the schools as schools, as opposed to the inevitable presence of some individual bad personnel. They get excitable should anyone openly doubt this.
What is going on? Are they mad?
My thesis until now has been the consciousness of guilt over abortion produced a felt need to scapegoat. Ideally some scapegoat who supposedly mistreated children. Ideally the very same moral authority, the Catholic Church, that has been calling them out over abortion. “I know you are, but what am I?”
But the recent Leger poll, reported here yesterday, suggests there is something else going on. The average Canadian apparently does not feel such shame, perhaps does not feel responsible for abortion, and is not going along with the masquerade.
Another possible explanation is that the secular power elite hates religion as an alternative power centre. This was the reasoning behind Mao’s Cultural Revolution. He wanted to smash Confucianism and the Buddhist temples. The band chiefs may hate the Church as the sole check on the reserves against their absolute power. And the power elite in the rest of Canada may also hate those meddlesome priests; the existence of an accepted moral code is the only thing that ever keeps a ruling class in check. THis would be why they hate as well as the statues of moral exemplars of the past, the Dundas’s, the Gandhi’s, the John Paul II’s. They want to discredit anyone with a high moral reputation. These offer the general public models against which their own acts can be measured and found wanting.
There are many calls in the media to cancel Canada Day this year, because of the unmarked graves of Indian children found in Kamloops and Marieval recently.
I am pleased to see a new Leger Poll finds no support for the idea. Scott Adams regularly observes that, no matter what cockamamie question you ask the shuffling public, a steady 20-25% will vote for anything. But not even this lunatic fringe is on the bandwagon for the cancel-Canada-Day parade. Asked the question. “do you feel with all the questions about Canada and its historical record, it would be best to cancel Canada Day this year?” only 14% answered yes. Even though salesmen say when forced to choose, people always prefer to say “yes” than “no.”
The ruling elite has gone stark bonkers. Canadians in general remain resolutely sane. In fact, this smells like a popular tsunami lurking just below the surface.
As Kingston pulls down its statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, a severe self-inflicted blow to a tourist town that can claim being Macdonald's home town as a major attraction, Toronto is poised to rename Dundas Street, currently the city's centre (as Yonge and Dundas, and Dundas Square) on the grounds that Henry Dundas,
after whom the street was named, was a proponent of slavery.
Initial estimates are that the name change will cost Toronto taxpayers 5-6 million dollars; not to mention the cost to private businesses.
One is surprised to learn, on checking Wikipedia, that Henry
Dundas was actually a lifelong public opponent of slavery, and advocate of abolition.
But then again, Macdonald was a proponent of Indian rights, and wanted to give
them the franchise.
The notion that Dundas supported slavery is based
on the fact that he inserted an amendment to Wilberforce’s bill abolishing the
slave trade, calling for this to be “gradual.” Dundas himself claimed this was a
tactical necessity, as a sudden total ban without proper preparation would
simply create a black market trade. And as an immediate end could not get the votes to pass the Commons and Lords. Historians are divided on whether this was
true, or whether his intent was to prolong the trade.
Dundas had up to that point been a
leading abolitionist, responsible as a barrister for the legal prohibition of
slavery in Scotland. And, of course, calling him a supporter of slavery requires us to call him a liar.
The interesting question is why the at least relative good guys, like Dundas
or Macdonald or Langevin, are targeted, and not dubious or openly racist figures like George Brown or the Famous Five or Tommy Douglas, who continue to be commemorated without controversy.
The simplest explanation is that the racists are now in charge. It is simply not politically expedient to call racism racism, so, in an obvious ruse, it is called by its proponents "anti-racism." But the deeper explanation, I suspect, is guilt: when people feel guilty over something, anyone who has acted morally in some significant way is to be pulled down and disparaged.
NDP MP Mumilaaq Qaqqaq (Nunavut) recently stood up in the Canadian House of Commons and said she would not run again. She lamented that no change was possible as an elected representative, because “The systems are built to work for certain people. It’s middle-aged white men.”
This is not helpful. This is appallingly defeatist. For it necessarily means that nobody they elect can ever make things better for the Inuit. They are left helpless. Any improvement must be done for them by others. It seems to me it is an abdication of her responsibilities as a leader. Like a general sending his troops into war with the warning that they are all going to get killed and there is no point.
As an elected representative, it is her job not just to point out problems; anyone can do that; but to propose solutions.
Qaqqaq’s signal accomplishment as an MP was apparently to introduce a bill to put Inuktitut on the ballots in Nunavut. A purely symbolic matter; there are probably no Inuit of voting age who cannot read the Roman alphabet.
So far as I can make out, her “solution” to the various problems of Nunavut, the alarmingly high suicide rate, the lack of affordable housing, the lack of jobs, is just to spend more money: “These powerful individuals don’t think change is worth the money.”
That is either a cynical or a cowardly position. No matter how much money is being spent on any given problem, anyone can score points by claiming more money should be spent. We need concrete proposals, and it is precisely her job to come up with such proposals.
Everyone wants the best for Canada’s Inuit. Everyone wants the best for Canada’s women, and perhaps particularly, to be frank, its attractive young women. Nobody wants anyone committing suicide. The question is, what can we do about it?
Perhaps that is the clue to Qaqqaq’s, and Nunvut’s, problem. Qaqqaq is an attractive young woman. Because everyone loves an attractive young woman, attractive young women get the habit of expecting things to be done for them. They do not learn initiative.
Similarly, the problem for the Inuit, and for Canada’s indigenous people as a whole, may well be that the majority population is too fond of them, the romantic “noble savage.” Governments and the culture as a whole has tended to fawn on them, and look after them, and protect them from the outside world like children, and has thus stripped them of all initiative. This might look attractive, and is fatally hard to break away from, but it is not the path to either accomplishment or happiness.
Do you realize what “cancel culture” is really all about? It is the clearest possible evidence that the left has lost the culture wars. I have seen it happen again and again at the individual level. If someone decisively loses an argument, so much so that they feel they look foolish, they unfriend you. They want to end the conversation by whatever means necessary. Nobody ever concedes or admits they were wrong. Instead, to avoid this, they will predictably attack you on any available premise, and shut down the discussion. They will aggressively assert obvious falsehoods to be true. If they do not have the power to silence you, then they will leave. When it happens, you should know that you have won. They are desperately protecting their crushed ego.
That is exactly what we are seeing now: the “woke” left is declaring everyone a racist and a Nazi, and trying to silence them.
The collapse is bound to happen at any moment, and it may be swift. First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, then you have won.
Incidentally, the3 black commentator in the clip above is indeed wrong on what is in the Iowa bill, as common sense should have told him. The things he is reading out as prohibited are actually subjects the bill singles out as still to be taught.
Scott Adams remarked on YouTube today that, since he got vaccinated, his allergies have gone away.
Hearing that, I realize I have the same experience. I think I have not had an attack of my nasty dust allergy since I got my first shot. I had noticed this, but had not thought to connect it with the vaccine until Adams mentioned it.
I am increasingly scandalized by the general reaction, at least in the media, to the announced discovery of 215 unmarked graves near the Kamloops Indian Residential School; and today of maybe 751 more more near Marieval Residential School in Saskatchewan. People are talking about cancelling Canada Day in response.
What exactly do they think has been demonstrated by the discovery of unmarked graves?
Are they imagining the children were murdered? If they had been, would the police, the parents, the Department of Indian Affairs, the church bodies, or the Indian bands not have noticed at the time? Mustn’t they have all then been complicit in some vast conspiracy?
Are they imagining the children died of neglect? Estimates are that one third to one half of all children in the 19th century died before the age of five. High child mortality was a fact of life. Indian reserves, in particular, were notoriously riddled with tuberculosis: Eight times the national average. Two studies on the Prairies in the early 20th century found that 80 to 100 % of all Indian children entering schools already had tuberculosis. “An official 1907 report into Manitoba Indian Residential Schools … included charts cataloguing pupils as either “good,” “sick” or “dead.”” (National Post, June 2, 2021).
Some proportion of these children inevitably died; others died of the dozen common childhood diseases we have since eradicated. The Department of Indian Affairs would not pay to ship bodies home; the parents were not prepared to, or could not afford to; so they were buried locally.
Then the schools were shut down. The government might have tended the gravesites; the local band might have tended the gravesites. Neither did. Like many other cemeteries in many other places, they were left to the elements. Leave a graveyard untended, and grave markers tend to disappear. Wood burns. Stones fall over and are buried; or are ”borrowed” for construction projects.
Kingston, Ontario’s old city cemetery was closed in 1864. By the late 1880s, many of not most of the original grave markers had disappeared—less than 25 years later. Marieval Indian Residential School closed in 1997; 25 years ago. The Kamloops Residential School has been closed since 1978—33 years ago. There is no reason even to suppose the graves were originally unmarked; they might have been.
Official written records are spotty; apparently this is because the government recycled the paper at some point.
Does Canada really stand indicted for this? For not maintaining better archives? Not always easy to guess, surely, what people will decide your priorities should have been a hundred years later.
The current media and public reaction to the unmarked graves looks like hysteria.
There was a dustup a day or so ago at a school board meeting in Loudon Country, Virginia—a large number of parents came out to protest critical race theory, and were shut down by the board. It seems that the general public was unaware of just what was going on in the schools—perhaps until the pandemic let them listen in on their children’s classes—and now that they know, there is a backlash. With luck, it will carry the day.
But critical race theory is just one tentacle of an academic octopus called critical theory. It has really been around for a long time, and has spread far beyond the public schools, in one form or another. It was around already when I was in grad school back in the 1970s, although it did not have the name “critical theory” yet. I think it has been around, in essence, at least since Nietzsche.
A recent journal article gives an overview of the state of the field. It is no doubt not unimpeachable, but it is at least from the Trojan horse’s mouth: a declared critical theorist.
Our author, a professor at the University of British Columbia, identifies three intellectual strands making up “critical teory”: postmodernism, Marxism, and postcolonialism. He does not include feminism. Feminism and critical theory used to be conjoined, but there has been a recent falling out. The goals of feminism clash with the goals of transgenderism, and transgenderism has won the intersectionality sweeps. Feminism requires the assumption that there are such things as women. Postmodernism will not allow the premise.
Postmodernism holds that nothing is real. We just make things up as convenient. In the words of the present author, “meanings are neither fixed nor singular, but rather multiple and ever-shifting.”
Marxism insists that everything is at the group or social level, and everything is about power. In the words of our author, Marxism “thinks in binary terms between the oppressor and the oppressed,” and everyone must be one or the other.
Traditionally, Marxism sees this in economic terms, with the bourgeoisie as the oppressors, and the proletariat as the oppressed. Postcolonialism switches this to race instead of class. If anything is less than desirable in the world, as determined by whomever wields the arbitrary power to determine it (for nothing, according to postmodernism, can ever be good or bad in itself) it is the fault of “Whites” or “Europeans.” For they are uniquely “colonizers.”
Put together and examined in this way, it is the very same ideology as Nazism, with “Whites” replacing “Jews” as racial scapegoats.
It is, of course, aside from being malicious, malicious nonsense.
Postmodernism is immediately self-contradictory. The present author, for example, ponders the question, “What does criticality really mean?”--without realizing the question is now nonsensical. There are no meanings, and is no “really,“ according to criticality.
Marxism, rather than being immediately self-contradictory, is merely disproven. Marx’s plan was to put the study and management of society on a “scientific” basis: Marxism was “scientific socialism.”
The proof of any scientific contention is in its ability to predict: this is what experiment is about. But every prediction made by Marx about the subsequent course of human history has been false. He expected a growing proletariat, and a shrinking bourgeoisie. The opposite has happened. He postulated growing wealth inequality. The opposite has happened. He anticipated a worldwide revolution led by the proletariat, happening first in the most developed countries. Nowhere has this happened, including in Russia or China. By scientific standards, he was simply wrong.
Postcolonialism maintains that colonization and empire are a uniquely European creation. This is easily disproven by a study of history. Most parts of the world have been empires and colonies throughout recorded time. The peculiarly European innovation was the nation state—in a word, postcolonialism is what Europe brought to the world. Leaving “postcolonialism” arguing against itself.
Where has such obvious nonsense come from?
I suggest it is from the secularization of our education system. Until perhaps a hundred years ago, or roughly until Darwinism became popular, the universities and the schools were founded on religious principles. This sense of cosmic direction is necessary for education to work: if you do not know where you are going, you cannot know how to get there. Theology was Queen of the sciences, and the most advanced academic degree was “doctor of philosophy.”
But somewhere about the turn of the 20th century, that place was taken by physical science. Physical science is inadequate to the task. It is simply a tool, and offers no goal or meaning or reasons.
Since then, we have seen the emergence of a series of “scientific” pseudo-religions to fill the vacuum: Freudian psychology, fascism-Nazism, Marxism, and so forth. Each has, after a few decades, failed in turn. Critical theory is basically the current synthesis. Marxism, disproven by science, has been put on life support by asserting, through postmodernism, that science itself is of no value. Postmodernism is nonsense, but postmodernism refuses to acknowledge sense. Postcolonialism allows all standards failed by either postmodern theory or Marxist theory to be dismissed as a racist white cultural imposition.
It actually smells very much like desperation. I would be surprised not to see it all collapse within the next few years.
Friend Xerxes grudgingly allows that fathers are wrongly devalued in our current culture. Nevertheless, he is concerned about the greater danger of going back to “A cold, distant, Victorian father-knows-best who dispenses periodic packages of moral instruction.”
I wonder if that model of fathering ever existed, or whether it is purely an invention of modern feminism.
My suspicion is initially raised by the “Victorian” reference. Nobody now living is likely to have any experience of a Victorian father. I am in my late sixties; even my grandparents came of age in the Roaring 20’s, in open revolt against anything “Victorian.”
“Victorian” becomes just long enough ago to offer a conveniently blank slate, onto which we can project our prejudices.
But notice the name of that era. One woman, and her social opinions, set the tone then for the English-speaking world, and to a large extent for the world as a whole, for over 60 years. Victorian sentimentality, Victorian romanticism, Victorian aestheticism, could be argued to be distinctly feminine values. Strict rules of etiquette were promoted; again, most often a feminine concern. No room for a “patriarchy” there. The British Empire was literally a matriarchy.
Perhaps there was a patriarchy before 1837? Perhaps; or perhaps male and female roles were balanced for overall equality over the course of the millennia, and the long possession of the throne by a woman upset that balance.
Xerxes’s second example of oppressive patriarchy seems to be a TV show from the 1950s, which he mentions several times iin his original piece: “Father Knows Best.” The title might superficially suggest that, but it was somewhat ironic. The father in that show, played by Robert Young, was, in the words of Wikipedia, a “Caspar Milquetoast” character. Although sensible, even wise, he was generally not listened to by his children; certainly no disciplinarian. The wife and mother, again in the words of Wikipedia, was the “voice of reason.”
So did this stern, powerful, “cold distant Victorian father-knows-best” ever exist as a social norm? Can you think of an example from literature—that is, in which such a character is cited with approval? I cannot. You might argue for the Biblical patriarchs, but that is not just very far back in time. While they exert great power over their family, it is questionable whether the Bible considers this power a good thing, or condemns it. Every Biblical patriarch, in their treatment of their own family, is portrayed as deeply flawed.
I wonder too where Xerxes gets the idea that the father’s essential role in the family as spiritual guide and mentor, one which was indeed filled by the father in “Father Knows Best,” implies being “cold” or “distant.”
The obvious model of a spiritual guide and mentor for any Christian is Jesus Christ. Can one describe him in the Gospels as cold or distant? That seems the opposite of the entire point of the incarnation. Would you, for that matter, describe John the Baptist in such terms? St. Paul? St. Peter? Catholic saints in general? Not the descriptors I would use.
What about other religions. Krishna? Rumi? Shams-e Tabrizi? Socrates? The Baal Shem Tov?
What about literary figures? Obi-Wan Kenobi? Yoda? Gandalf? Cold and distant?
Where is that “cold, distant” image coming from—other than, perhaps, feminist anti-male prejudice?
Another lyrical clue that all was not well between Leonard Cohen and his father, from the song "Everybody Knows":
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking Everybody knows that the captain lied Everybody got this broken feeling Like their father or their dog just died
That always struck me as an inapt parallel--surely a father dying is a more significant event than a dog dying. But maybe that is the point; maybe Cohen is calling his father a dog, and no more. After all, given his own life experience, this cannot be a casual mistake. He knows exactly what it feels like to lose a father, for his father died when he was nine.
His father may also be meant by "the captain."
More lyrics from the same song seem to criticize the fashion industry, Cohen pere's business:
A Kiwi friend has asked me what the essential canon of Canadian literature is, for the sake of teaching a Chinese high schooler.
These are the pillars of Canadian literature, which are the foundation for everything else.
1. Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables. The character of Anne reappears constantly in Canadian literature. And this book established children’s literature as the most Canadian genre.
2. Stephen Leacock, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. This established humour as the essential Canadian tone. And, with Anne, the small town as the essential Canadian setting.
3. Robert W. Service, Songs of a Sourdough. Especially the two poems “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” The essential Canadian experience of the north, and the theme of survival in the face of an overwhelming climate and geography. And a focus on ordinary working people and their problems. Canadian culture is a folk culture, not “high art.”
4. John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields.” The First World War was Canada’s coming of age.
5. Roch Carrier, “The Hockey Sweater,” aka “The Sweater.” Although more recent than other selections, a universally beloved, lighthearted analysis of Canada’s culturally binary nature.
Not that much to read, and not hard reading, but this is what anyone needs to understand Canadian literature.
Other important books worth considering, if and when you get through these:
Al Purdy, “The Country North of Belleville.” That one contains a lot of the Canadian experience.
Mordecai Richler, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Richler’s short story “The Street” would be a good shorter alternative. The essential Canadian immigrant experience.
Gabrielle Roy, The Tin Flute.
W.O. Mitchell, Who Has Seen the Wind?
Brian Moore, The Luck of Ginger Coffey.
Alice Munro is a good choice too. First Canadian to win the Nobel for Literature, and her “small town gothic” is a deep expression of the Canadian soul.
These are the final words of Leonard Cohen’s song/poem “First We Take Manhattan.” In it, he is clearly equating the fashion industry with Nazism. His father was in the fashion business.
I don’t like your fashion business, mister
I don’t like those drugs that keep you thin
I don’t like what happened to my sister
First, we take Manhattan
Then we take Berlin.
These are the first words of Leonard Cohen’s song/poem “The Story of Isaac,” in which he speaks as Isaac, about to be ritually slaughtered by his father Abraham.
The door, it opened slowly
My father, he came in
I was nine years old.
His father died when Cohen was nine.
Something was going on between Cohen and his father, that he is not speaking openly about.
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must
I will help you if I can
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must
I will kill you if I can
Perhaps something was also going on between Bob Dylan and his father. Dylan alludes to the same Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac in “Highway 61 Revisited.” The song is important enough in his mind that it also gives its name to the album.
Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
It might be significant that Dylan’s father’s name was Abraham. Highway 61 passed by his childhood home.
For Father’s Day, tomorrow, friend Xerxes remembers his mother praising his own father for being “consistent.” He considers this a case of being damned with faint praise. He thinks “devoted” would have been better.
I think he is quite wrong. To be consistent is exactly the father’s job. “Level-headed” and “even-tempered” are almost as good. The mother is free to fuss over and pamper a child. The father must not. The father’s job is to teach morals and good judgement. Including not thinking too much of yourself.
Put another way, the mother looks after the child’s physical and animal needs. The father looks after the child’s spiritual needs. This is why we conceive of God as Father, not as mother, and of nature as Mother, not as father.
The gospels trace Jesus’s ancestry through Joseph as well as Mary, even though Joseph is not Jesus’s biological father. Because the father represents a spiritual and moral inheritance, at least as important as the genetic or biological, and which is passed on just as surely. For good or ill.
In dysfunctional families, it is for ill. The essential and most damaging characteristic of what we call the narcissistic father will be their inconsistency. Just as the most damaging characteristic of a bad mother is emotional coldness.
Our current tendency to devalue the father’s role, and towards fatherless families, is a recipe for moral chaos and collapse. Fatherless backgrounds can be directly correlated with higher rates of mental illness, higher rates of imprisonment, poorer results in education, more pregnancy out of wedlock, difficulty in finding marriage partners, and so on.
It is also functionally impossible, unfortunately, for one parent to perform both roles.
It seems clear from Justin Trudeau’s press conference today that the Liberal government is going to force or call an election for early this fall.
Everything is aligned perfectly for them. The vaccines are flooding in, and soon the pandemic should be over. People are likely to be feeling elated over that. A late summer-early fall election is generally considered favourable for the ruling party, as people feel happy at that time of year, after the summer. The Green Party is in disarray, and one of their members has defected to the Liberals. The latter may have realistic hopes of pulling in some votes from that quarter. The Conservatives under Erin O’Toole seem to be making no waves in the polls.
And, of course, as a minority government, the Liberals are bound to jump if they see a chance for a majority.
But I do see a chance for an upset.
To begin with, if the Conservatives start looking weak, there is less incentive on the left to rally around the Liberals to prevent a Tory win. The NDP might siphon off votes. Quebec is always volatile, and might swing Conservative during the campaign. The provincial government is small-c conservative, and this suggests the electorate is tired of decades of “progressive” government. Inflation could become an issue, thanks to government spending.
Canada is now expecting enough vaccines by the end of July to vaccinate every Canadian twice.
What a pity that the CNE has been cancelled for this summer. Coming in the third week of August, it would be timed perfectly to celebrate full vaccination and an end to the pandemic. At a minimum, adults could be asked for proof of vaccination in order to enter, and it might have served as that last push to get stragglers vaccinated. Indeed, why not a government-funded free day pass to the CNE for those vaccinated? It would be the perfect way to celebrate the end of the pandemic, just before everyone had to get back to school and batten down hatches for another winter. And a way to help the CNE recover from the financial damage of having to stay closed last summer.
I have a strong feeling that none of the current party leaders in Canada, with the exception of Maxime Bernier, have gravitas. None are actually leaders. Justin Trudeau looks like an amateur actor poorly playing a role. Jagmeet Singh looks and sounds like a candidate for student council president. Erin O’Toole is a suit and a smile. Annamie Paul cannot seem to inspire allegiance in a three-person caucus.
I wondered if this might be an old man problem—that at my age, everyone is starting to look wet behind the ears. But I do think I can come up with a respectable list of living Canadian politicians who really do seem to me to have the royal air:
Maxime Bernier
Michael Chong
Tom Mulcair
John Tory
Dominic LeBlanc
Jean Charest
The strange thing is that most of them have been rejected for leadership by their own party.
The same thing seems to happen in the States. Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard were the two natural leaders in the latest Democratic primaries. Both frozen out by the party.
I suspect that leaders only get elected when they are badly needed, during times of trouble. Most times, people prefer a nice safe Neville Chamberlain over a Winston Churchill, who might trouble them to do something unpleasant.
Besides, real leaders are so unpredictable. They won't do what you tell them.
An analysis of a longer passage by my friend Xerxes, elaborating on his claim that “No one does something knowing that it’s wrong.” It is important, because it sums up postmodern morality, and postmodern morality seems to be taking over even mainstream Christianity.
First, his position:
“You assume that the perp will recognize that something is wrong, because the rest of us think it's wrong. Conscience has nothing to do with it. The Mafia will murder because that's the way they settle things. For them, it's right. The Ponzi scheme organizer doesn't believe he's doing wrong -- his job is to make money, and the effect on others is immaterial. You yourself refer to the narcissist killing because other people are happy; if it makes him feel better, he will think it's right. You shouldn't assume that because YOU know it's wrong, someone else will also hold that belief.”
It is a little unclear to me whether he is advocating the full-on postmodernist view that there is no right and wrong, but truth is negotiated into being, “constructed,” by groups and society; or that groups can indeed be morally right or wrong, there is such a thing as objective morality, but individuals can never know what it is—their thinking is entirely conditioned by their social group.
The problem with the latter position is, of course, that he must be equally unable to know right from wrong.
But let’s look at each of his sentences in turn, and try to puzzle it out.
“Conscience has nothing to do with it.” “It” seems to mean “our actions.” So he does seem to be denying there is such a thing as conscience, no innate knowledge of right and wrong. Notions of right and wrong seem to come from doing what those around you do—the Mafia example. But then, not necessarily. The lone individual also has the right to declare whatever “makes him feel better” an absolute moral good.
As to morality being “constructed” by the group, I refer to the Bible:
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
Non-Christians are free to reject the Bible, but if you accept its authority, so long as we are just doing what we see others do, we are on the road to destruction. We must make moral judgements for ourselves, not just follow the crowd, or we are objectively immoral. And I think in the end the truth of this is evident to pure reason. If you just do what others do, you are actually avoiding any moral choices.
“The Mafia will murder because that’s the way they settle things. For them, it’s right.”
Mafia types have no awareness that it is wrong to murder? That kills the premise of Godfather 3, in which Michael Corleone seeks redemption for his evil life. It also makes the Nuremberg trials illegitimate. The Nazis were just doing what they thought was right, and what was approved by their society. Indeed, as soon as you accept the phrase “for them, it’s right,” different rights for different people, there is no basis for judging any act more moral than any other. Morality is just whatever is imposed by those in power. There is no option but to bully or be bullied.
You could pull back and say: “No, morality is objective. Nevertheless, the Mafia sincerely if erroneously believed that murder, extortion, and theft were moral. So they cannot be blamed.” But if you accept even this weaker claim, now how can you know that it is them who are wrong, and you who are right? Perhaps you have it backwards.
“The Ponzi scheme organizer doesn’t believe he’s doing wrong—his job is to make money, and the effect on others is immaterial”
Surely this argues it is moral to pursue your own self-interest, and not care about others. Yet this is immoral by definition. The Golden Rule is found almost word for word in every moral tradition: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or frame it as Augustine did: “Love, and do what you will.” Kant demonstrated that the basis of morality is self-evidently true, a categorical imperative: we must treat others as an end, not a means; we must act only in ways we could wish all others to act. If you are looking out for your own self-interest and not caring what this does to others, you cannot pretend to be acting morally.
“You yourself refer to the narcissist killing because other people are happy; if it makes him feel better, he will think it's right.”
This seems to say that whatever makes you feel good is right. If you enjoy murdering strangers or raping women, what right has anyone else to judge?
To the contrary, one is only acting morally when acting against your own self-interest or what makes you feel good. Otherwise, as Jesus says, “you already have your reward.” There would never be a conflict, and there would be no possibility of sin in the world.
Eve looked at the apple, saw that it was good to eat, and desirable for bestowing wisdom. How could anyone suggest she did wrong?
Abel had provoked Cain by being happy. How could anyone blame Cain?
St. Paul understands life differently:
“For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” – Romans 7: 18-9.
Morality is a struggle between animal desires and raw selfishness, on the one hand, and the duty to love others.
“You shouldn't assume that because YOU know it's wrong, someone else will also hold that belief.”
This seems to assume that anything anyone believes to be true must be true. “True for them,” in the hackneyed postmodernist phrase.
If, then, someone does not believe in gravity, gravity does not apply to them. I would not try that at home.
For a thing to be sinful, the perpetrator must know it is wrong. Not to realize this is a legitimate possibility: a small child, for example, is not responsible for their actions.
But if, as noted, the core of morality is so simple as “do unto others,” there is very little scope for sincerely and with good intentions not grasping the concept. Even severely mentally retarded folks can grasp this.
We are also morally obliged to educate ourselves and reason over our acts to avoid sin; for the same reason that “criminal negligence” is a crime, and “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” To not continually make the effort is immoral in itself.
Friend Xerxes has recently come up with the striking statement that “No one does something knowing that it’s wrong.”
Compare the Bible here:
“For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” – Romans 7: 18-9.
No doubt anyone is free to reject the authority of the Bible, as so much random chatter. Yet I think the same truth is apparent to unaided reason: if no one does anything knowing that it’s wrong, there is be no such thing as doing wrong.
Those we associate with or are thrust among can tempt and be a bad influence or a bad example: family, circle of friends, or society at large. But we are all ultimately responsible for our own actions. This is why “I was only following orders” did not cut any mustard at Nuremberg.
All the authorities and the media are still insisting that the man who mowed down a Muslim family of five in London Ontario was motivated by “Islamophobia.” We have seen no evidence for it. Nothing on his social media; he belonged to no “hate groups”; his best friend seems to have been a Muslim who saw in him no trace of animosity towards Islam.
At the same time, those who have been ignoring the preferred narrative might have learned, from his parents’ divorce papers, that he shared one unusual trait with most recent mass murderers: he was taking medication for depression.
This will, unfortunately, lead those who did not fall for the “racism” fallacy to fall for the “mental illness” fallacy: that the problem is the mentally ill, and the solution more money for mental health.
This man—I am avoiding using his name, because others will kill for the chance at fame—call him V—did not murder because he was a racist. He also did not murder because he was mentally ill. The mentally ill, statistically, are no more violent than the rest of us. And more money for mental health is not going to help: he was already being treated.
The problem is the pills.
The SSRIs, the standard antidepressants, work by flooding our brains with jolly juice, happiness hormones. This obviously will lessen the symptoms of depression. Whether that is good or bad depends on why we are depressed.
Some people are depressed because they are nursing, through abuse, an overly sensitive conscience. The antidepressant can help them to function normally. They start with too many inhibitions on their actions.
Others are depressed because they are nursing a properly guilty conscience. They start with too few inhibitions on their actions. Give them antidepressants, and all hell may break loose.
It is clear that V was in the latter category.
“As his parents’ marriage faltered, [he] became ‘frighteningly angry’ and was particularly disrespectful to his mother, ‘raising his voice and towering over her in an intimidating way, and pounding on doors,’ the report said.
“His mother said she locked herself in her room to avoid him.”
There is this easy way to tell a narcissist from a melancholic: get them drunk. Are they an angry or a funny drunk?
When they feel bad, really bad, do they want to kill themselves, or everybody else?
The diagnosis is simple enough; and these are opposite problems. But it is invisible to current psychiatry because it seems only reported symptoms, and either the abused melancholic or the narcissist will report feelings of anxiety and sadness; and it is invisible to current psychiatry because current psychiatry refuses to recognize the ethical element of human existence. It tells everyone to ignore their conscience.
Until we fix this, many more people will needlessly die.
Leftists have traditionally thought of themselves as occupying the moral high ground—they were on the side of the little guy against the established power structures. That is more or less what “left-wing” meant when the term was coined, in reference to the French National Assembly.
I know that well enough. Born on Bastille Day, I always in youth thought of myself as a leftist. Never the Marxist left; but in those days there was a liberal left. I was on the side of human equality and everyone getting a fair shake; I was in principle suspicious of any established power. Toryism was in established power then in Ontario—for an unbroken thirty years. Duplessisism had until recently long been in power in Quebec.
If it were still true a few decades ago, or possibly true, that the left was for the poor and powerless against the rich and powerful right, it is obviously not true today. As we have increasingly seen, most of the visible rich capitalists are somewhere on the left: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Jimmy Dorsey. The professions and the bureaucrats who control the levers of power are on the left. The institutions are on the left: the schools, the media, the universities, the “mainline” Protestant churches. The big corporations are on the left.
If all or most of the established power structures are on the left, how is it tenable to claim that leftism is on the side of the little guy against the established power structures? Little guys broke into the US Capitol Building on January 6th, and the powerful left did not take it well. They clearly saw such ordinary folk as the enemy, and an unspeakably dangerous enemy. They roundly condemn “populism.”
Granted that the left favours subsidies and direct payments to the poor; more so than the right. But the very rich can afford such payments. Chump change. They can afford, in effect, to buy themselves a good public image with a little of their excess cash. They are not giving private charity here, but demanding that others carry much of the load. Higher taxes pinch harder on the only moderately well-off, and ensure they gather no excess capital to invest.
And such welfare, as opposed, say, to better education, or fewer regulations on starting a business or hiring people, works to keep the poor permanently poor, teaching dependency and punishing initiative. Preserving and deepening the divide between classes.
Then, passing beyond this issue of who is for the rich or for the poor, the powerful or the powerless, on every other issue the left seems to take a position no moral man could go along with. At some point, this has to outweigh their support for the poor in the mind of any decent person, even if this initial claim were true.
A few decades ago, it was possible to be opposed to abortion and be on the left. But more recently leftist parties have declared pro-life, anti-abortion positions heretical and cause for expulsion from the movement. Their choice. Abortion is as grave a moral and civilizational crisis as the Holocaust, or more so—the death toll is greater.
Abortion advocates will object that it is not the same, that an unborn foetus is not a human being. That is the same claim the Nazis made to justify killing Jews. We do not conclude that this made the murders acceptable; we conclude this made them worse. Is conception an arbitrary point at which to say human life begins? One must designate such a point; and what other point is less arbitrary than this one? Conception is clearly less arbitrary than birth. It is obvious nonsense to say that a baby is not human one minute before the head emerges.
The next biggest fault of the left is the wholesale attempt, for decades, to end freedom of speech. This is a mark of guilt—because they know they are wrong on abortion. And this illustrates one reason why we need freedom of speech: because words are powerful, and can keep the powerful from doing wrong in secret. But as we are increasingly seeing, suppressing speech also makes democratic government and civil peace impossible. If matters cannot be discussed, matters must be imposed, by whomever holds the power to do so.
Next to that, and prior to that, is sexual libertinage and the uncoupling of coupling from baby-making. This has come to be systematically celebrated on the left, and having children condemned. Wrapped up in this is feminism, the idea of which, from which all else flows, is that nobody should waste time raising children. This is decadence and self-indulgence in its classic form. This is a perfect recipe for civilizational suicide. Besides the cruelty to the next generation, and the callous attitude to sex partners, this has led inevitably to the greater horror of abortion.
You want to argue that sexual libertinage is freedom? That it is a case of expanding human rights? It is not, and only recently have the two become confused. Freedom classically means freedom to do what you think is right, freedom of conscience. Someone who habitually indulges a vice is not free in any sense, but enslaved by it—think of an alcoholic. We should not want the state to intervene, but we certainly ought not to celebrate it.
And this naturally segues us to the attack on religion. Although there used to be a viable religious left, and the mainstream Protestant denominations are increasingly leftist, this has been at the cost of draining any moral codes out of them. Although Islam has so far been given a pass, otherwise, the left has grown openly hostile to any religion that implies a moral code. Intelligent Muslims must know they are on borrowed time; indeed, it was only a decade or so ago that the left was painting Islam as the greatest enemy, accusing it of repressing women, refusing them fashion choices, and mutilating their genitals. They can and inevitably will flip back to this stance just as quickly, once their immediate tactical objectives are achieved.
The left hates ethical monotheism because it preaches against sexual libertinage and abortion. So the pressing desire to restrict, scapegoat, and discourage religion. This is profoundly harmful to mankind; people need religion, and despair without it. It is also most of the glue that holds society together.
Were all that not enough, the left is increasingly and openly racist. It sees everything in tribal terms: nobody is an individual, everyone exists and thinks only as a member of some “community” or tribe. These tribes are and must remain utterly apart; although they may form coalitions for temporary advantage, there can ultimately be no communion or common cause or even shared reality among them. They are in an eternal and inevitable struggle for power.
This is the core of fascism and of Nazism. And the left is thundering in a handcart down this old track, once abandoned, even though we know where it leads.
Is there any social evil the left has not yet embraced? If so, they will no doubt find it, and do so.
At this point, if anyone claims they support the left because they want to help the poor, I think we have to assume duplicity.
Some express alarm at Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s declared intent to invoke the “notwithstanding clause“ of the Canadian Constitution in order to override charter rights and allow legislation to limit campaign spending by third parties. I think it is a great idea. Even though I do not feel great about limiting campaign spending by third parties.
A bit of background here: the Canadian Constitution guarantees certain rights and freedoms. The courts can disallow legislation it feels is in violation of these. The legislature can respond by invoking this “notwithstanding clause” and overrule the courts. The legislation goes into effect, but must be renewed every five years.
Critics are objecting that Ford wants to override the Constitution. This is exactly the opposite of the truth: he is invoking the Constitution as written and as intended.
Traditionally, iin the Westminster system, Parliament is the “highest court in the land,” on the premise that the people are sovereign. Giving any court the ability to overrule the people’s representatives risks giving government itself to an oligarchy: those who appoint the Supreme Court justices, the legal profession and its gatekeepers, the professions and the professional classes. Some of the framers of the Canadian Constitution Act, notably Allan Blakeney, insisted on the notwithstanding clause to protect democracy.
It is important to know that a body of skilled lawyers have examined some legislation in detail, and say it is in violation of charter rights. This is helpful information for the public. If the government persists notwithstanding, they can decide to punish the government accordingly at the next election. But we must not surrender the people’s right to make that decision.
And time has proven the framers exactly right. Down in the US, it has come to be expected that Democrat-appointed judges and Republican-appointed judges will vote not according to the Constitution as written, but by party line. And they have become increasingly activist in disallowing legislation.
In Canada, it is worse. The Canadian Supreme Court is appealed to more easily and often. It has not only developed a habit of disallowing legislation but of demanding legislation be passed. And their rulings produce major social changes, without public accountability. They required Alberta to insert a reference to homosexual rights in their proposed provincial charter of rights. They struck down all limitations on abortion. They required the legalization of gay marriage; they redefined aboriginal rights, redefined who is an aboriginal, and on and on. They have developed a dangerous taste for power.
It matters little whether one agrees with this or that ruling, or them all. The power is arbitrary and capricious, and there is no reason to expect it will forever be used in the public interest.
Luckily, unlike the US, Canada has a constitutional remedy in the notwithstanding clause. The only problem has been, until now, a lack of courage among our elected politicians in invoking it. Quebec has used it regularly, but in the rest of Canada, only Saskatchewan, and only once. Doug Ford does us all a favour, and our grandchildren, if he further cements the precedent.
Many people are alarmed about Critical Race Theory in the schools; as in the “1619 Project,” which teaches that America was founded on the institution of slavery. But perhaps you do not realize that Critical Race Theory is just one tentacle of a kraken named Critical Theory that has suckered in far more than the public schools.
I have found a useful overview and summary, written by two declared Critical Theorists, in Critical Inquiry in Language Studies.
The first and perhaps most important point to take from the paper is that the critical theorists themselves are running scared. One recent CT essay abstract ends with dire word of “a new imperative for survival in what are for many volatile and risky political and media community and civic environments.” The present piece’s abstract concludes: “it is necessary to confront neoliberalism as a new kind of domination.”
Neoliberalism means free market economics and human rights. Its heyday is commonly thought to be the Reagan/Thatcher years. There has been a lot of water under the Potomac bridges since then, and it is not clear that water has been rising. The Democrats just took two houses and the presidency; Trudeau’s Liberals are hunkered down in Canada. The Tories have been crushing it in the UK. In terms of visible politics, a mixed bag.
So how to account for this sense of embattlement? Rather than the votes, I suspect that the Critical Theorists feel they are losing the argument. Neoliberalism is not rising so much as that CT is collapsing, in a logical more than a political sense.
For later in the essay, the authors lament that CT has not accomplished anything.
“Has the increased recognition of critical language studies led to any concrete social change?
The answer is probably no.”
The article diagnoses that Critical Theory has been failing to make proper outreach to educate others. Yet this is an odd claim considering that it monopolizes the schools and universities. Most critical theorists spend most of their day educating undergraduates in their views. The explanation has to be, not that the arguments are not being made, but that they are not convincing. Too few students are genuinely buying the joy juice. Semi-aware that their essential premises are not salvageable, they turn to shouting them louder and more often as the only alternative. Along with suppressing any other voices.
Critical theory is doomed: take it from the horse’s mouth.
Every death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. Every murder is murder, and there is no discriminating here. Each of us is equally valuable in the eyes of God, and each of us as citizens has a right to equal protection before and from the law.
So it is disturbing that, when someone who is not a Muslim kills a Muslim, it is treated very differently than when someone who is a Muslim kills a non-Muslim.
When someone ran down a visibly Muslim family in London, killing four, it was immediately identified as a “hate crime.” When a Muslim man opened fire on Toronto’s Danforth iin 2018, police insisted and still insist no motive could be found.
You may argue that the circumstances were different. Perhaps so. In the first case, the perpetrator had at least one close Muslim friend, who insisted he had no anti-Muslim feelings. The perpetrator apparently belonged to no anti-Muslim organizations, there is nothing troubling in his social media, and there is apparently no manifesto. In the second case, ISIS claimed responsibility.
After the Danforth shooting, the authorities and media rushed to insist that, whatever else happened, the most important thing was that Muslims as a group must not be blamed.
In the wake of the London murders, authorities rushed to declare that all the rest of us, all who are not Muslims, are to blame. “This is our Canada.”
This difference in reaction and interpretation could not be more striking, and is obviously discriminatory. Either we are all and only responsible for our individual acts, or all groups must be held equally responsible for the actions of their members.
The authorities and media have called, in the present case, for immediate action against ideologies that promote such hate. They identify some such ideology called “Islamophobia,” which needs to be banned.
“Hate speech,” in the sense of inciting violence against any identifiable group, is already criminal in Canada. Those who resist further action singling out Islam for special protection fear it might involve making mere criticism of Islam as a religion or political ideology illegal.
And there is another problem. The Quran itself, and the hadith, by a reasonable literal reading, call for Muslim supremacy and violence against non-Muslims. Not just the “jihad” concept, but any legitimate government must be run in accord with sharia law, with different rights for Muslims and non-Muslims. One is obliged to kill “kaffirs,” non-believers, as well as anyone who apostasizes from Islam.
One may well insist that such passages do not mean what they might appear to mean by said literal reading; but ambiguity is not allowed as a defense of hate speech elsewhere. The worst interpretation is always assumed.
In other words, if we are going to fairly enforce even the existing laws on hate speech, Islam itself would have to be banned.
I think it is a given that we cannot criminalize a major world religion. Not just for practical reasons, but because after the right to life, freedom of conscience is the most fundamental of all rights.
Accordingly, beyond the argument from freedom of speech, which is honoured in the US, and is supposedly guaranteed in the Canadian constitution, we simply cannot have hate speech laws, cannot ban even eliminationist hate speech. Troubling as it might seem to most, the alternative is worse.
Two Canadian YouTubers, JJ McCullough and Useful Charts, have recently put out competing videos for and against the proposition “Should monarchies still exist in the 21st Century/” I think neither mounts the proper case for monarchy. Although nominally in favour of their continued existence. Useful Charts condemns absolute monarchies as having no place, and rejects monarchy for Canada as unsuitable for a multicultural society. I disagree with both assertions.
The essential value of a monarchy, neither seem to understand, is that it puts a human face on the nation. Without something of that sort, people will not work for the mutual benefit, but will pursue self-interest. And it is not just an individual human face, but a family—it models the nation as a family, which is an ideal model. If we all think of one another as family, given normal human instincts, we will treat one another better.
Some states can feel familial without this, because the population is genetically related; they are in fact, in a sense, a very large family. Precisely because Canada does not have that, and because that alternative approach leads almost necessarily to racism and discrimination against ethnic minorities, a monarchy is especially valuable to Canada.
A monarchy is the almost necessary alternative to the nation state. And the nation state, emerging largely in the late 19th and early 20th century, has not had a great track record for human rights and social tranquility.
Aside from cases in which a monarchy might be needed to replace absent ethnic bonds, monarchies seem to work better than ethnic bonds themselves in maintaining good social order.
Think of nations most notable for general social tranquility, for social peace. What countries come to mind? Scandinavia, Britain, Canada, Japan, perhaps the Netherlands. Mostly monarchies. Now compare the major democratic republics: the US, France, Germany since 1918. Placid and prosperous most times, but undergoing periods of tumult, revolution or near-revolution, violence in the streets.
Turkey overthrew the monarchy after the First World War: a period of civil war and ethnic cleansing followed. Russia threw off its monarchy in 1917: a period of civil war and ethnic cleansing followed. Germany threw off its monarchy in 1918; a period of civil war and ethnic cleansing followed. France threw off its monarchy in 1789: a period of civil war and ethnic cleansing followed. Britain temporarily threw off its monarchy in 1649. Ask Ireland about ethnic cleansing under Cromwell.
Useful Charts objects that Queen Elizabeth represents only one Canadian ethnicity. Which ethnicity does he mean? Her recent ancestors are mostly from Germany; she is not ethnically English. Her husband is officially Greek, but raised in France. In 1914, the King of England, the Czar of Russia, and the German Kaiser were first cousins. To think of any royal as any given ethnicity or another is nonsensical.
A monarch is an ideal unifying figure for a multi-ethnic state.
Useful Charts worries that the monarchy is especially offensive to Canadian First Nations. This is the opposite of the truth on the ground. Canada’s First Nations prefer to deal with the monarchy, because it implies they have sovereignty; their treaties are with her. Canadian courts are obliged to give them the benefit of the doubt, because of a supposed need to uphold “the honour of the crown.” Compare, as a result, the peaceful relations between First Nations and the government in Canada to the frequent Indian Wars in US history.
JJ McCullough argues that the premise behind monarchy is offensive: that they hold their positon by divine right. This has never been an accepted concept. The Glorious Revolution established as a legal principle that the British, and so the Canadian, monarch holds her position at the sufferance of parliament, not God. Other royal families have similar checks, even supposedly absolute ones. The Saudi King is selected by a consensus of the ruling family, and the family must ultimately stay on the good side of the religious authorities.
Useful Charts argues that modern monarchs hold their position due to their popularity, which is not quite the same thing. McCullough seizes on this to argue that, if popularity is the basis, they should run for office to prove this; therefore, any monarchy should be replaced by an elected leader.
But there is an important and valuable difference. A politician must run for office. To reach the top of that greasy pole, or to want to, requires an entirely unnatural lust for power and fame. This means, necessarily, that his or her values are distorted, and in a dangerous direction. By making the titular leader hereditary, this is avoided, at least for this position. While the modern monarch may have few powers, they are at least one sane voice at the top of government, that the politicians will want to and feel some need to please.
Useful Charts, in condemning absolute monarchies absolutely, does not grasp another important factor. For some societies, democracy is not viable; there is not a sufficient cultural tradition of disagreeing with one another politely, keeping to set rules of engagement, retiring peacefully in defeat, and not exacting revenge on your rivals in victory. All of this goes against human instincts. In such a culture, the only possibilities are a self-appointed dictatorship or a monarchy. Then, monarchy is infinitely preferable. One rises to dictatorship in such a country by being more ruthless than the next guy, and having ta stronger lust for power. For a dictator, the temptation is also to loot the country for everything you can, for you might one day lose power to another just like you. Even if you do not, one day you die, and some stranger takes everything you built. Why build?
But for a monarchy, being a ruling family, the natural instinct is to keep the country intact and, ideally, improved, for the children. You know them personally, think of them fondly, and want them to remember you well.
Compare the monarchies with the republics of the Muslim world. Monarchies: Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, Malaysia. Republics: Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Libya. Who is more peaceful? Who has more human rights? Who is more prosperous?
A monarchy also allows for Plato’s ideal leadership. Knowing in childhood he or she is likely to inherit specific responsibilities, a child can be educated for the position. This is not practically possible for elected leaders in a republic, because their success is unpredictable and, individually, highly unlikely. Every one of them is going to be, at best, a talented amateur.
The two things that might be said against a monarchy is that it costs money for a relatively idle position, and it violates the spirit of human equality.
But in Canada’s case, it actually costs us nothing. In other cases, there is no rule or monarch’s union requiring any particular level of pay. And as for human equality, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it: philosophical concerns about modelling human equality aside, monarchies have a good track record. As Useful Charts points out, some of the countries with the highest level of actual income equality, not to mention the highest level of human rights, are monarchies. Historically, a strong monarchy has always meant a weaker upper class, and vice versa: in France, in the UK, in Japan, in China, everywhere. That may necessarily be true.
I have been puzzled about what the Kamloops Residential School is accused of, given preliminary reports of the discovery of 215 bodies in a “mass grave” somewhere near the grounds. So what?
Now I know: I just saw a video clip of National Chief Perry Bellegarde accusing the school of “genocide.” Chief Bobby Cameron of Saskatchewan accused it of “first degree murder.”
Unmarked mass graves have been uncovered on the banks of the Rideau Canal, and in downtown Kingston, Toronto, and Montreal, and nobody has thought to accuse anyone of either murder or genocide. These were Irish immigrants who died of malaria, cholera, or typhus. We know tuberculosis was a severe problem among native children. Why would anyone assume murder? We stop seeing things rationally as soon as “First Nations” are involved.
Another YouTube clip interviewed an expert on ground-penetrating radar of the sort used in Kamloops. She explained that this technique cannot detect any actual bodies: only the disturbance of the dirt from the digging of a grave, or a coffin.
In other words, in order to be able to produce a number “215” the people studying the Kamloops site must have discovered 215 separate burials.
The next question: how, were the initial reports able to claim that those buried included “children as young as three.” No bodies were visible, let alone forensically examined. Surely this can only have been estimated from the size of the coffins. These children seem to have been buried in coffins, not just put in the ground.
It is odd to call this a “mass grave.” Mass graves are what were found along the Rideau. These are, rather, individual unmarked graves.
Possibly they were not always unmarked. They might have been marked by wooden crosses that have decayed away.
We can only guess; but mass murder or genocide is about the least likely explanation available.
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