Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Fairy Tales

Snow White

W.C. Fields used to say “you can’t cheat an honest man.” I always took this for an alibi: an attempt by the con artist to deflect blame. Indeed, a clear case of blaming the victim.

But I have recently heard the same thing from a more reliable source; I think Jordan Peterson. Con artists count on the mark consenting to the con. The mark wants to believe something; the con man just gives them what they want. Anyone with a commitment to reality would have seen through the con, and the mark probably does too. Drink this, and all your troubles will go away. Take this gamble, and you can win a million dollars. Rub this on your head, and your hair will grow back. They are buying a pleasant fantasy, if for a few hours or a few years.

The words of Dr. Martin Luther King also come to mind: that nobody can oppress you without your consent. That sounds harsh, but maybe it is true. Con black men into the notion that they are incapable of doing things for themselves, and need to be taken care of. That requires consent. George Orwell saw a large number of black men taking orders from a white overseer in colonial Africa, and wondered in print, “How are they being fooled? How long are these people going to accept this?” But it appeals to indolence. Don’t we all more or less wish we could be taken care of, like a child?

This is not to underestimate the great difficulty for any individual to buck an oppressive system. It never pays to be an “uppity nigger.” But the greatest resistance is likely to come from the fellow oppressed. A black man trying to get ahead is liable to be accused of “acting white.” He’s a sellout.

Or their fellows will turn kapo. It was his fellow black slaves who beat Uncle Tom to death in the famous novel, at the slavemaster’s bidding. (Yet, and tellingly, it is “Uncle Tom” who is remembered as a supposed sellout. Precisely because he wasn’t.)

The truth is, the black man we does right and works hard is making his neighbours look bad. They want their oppression. It absolves them from effort and from moral responsibility.

The same dynamic is at work among the aboriginals/”First Nations.”

Now apply this to mental illness. Because it is all most obvious, and most extreme, here. Early on, Freud realized that mental illness was the result of childhood abuse. However, he, and every analyst before or after who has realized this, found that the patients themselves would resist. They might not deny it, they might agree, they might even point it out, but they would stop coming to analysis. Not a paying proposition. Freud invented the “Oedipus complex” as a more marketable con. The patients did not want reality, and they did not want cure. Freud grew, on these grounds, to feel contempt for his patients. A con man must harden his heart.

Mental illness is in most cases the result of abuse by a narcissistic parent. But the critical form of abuse is not sexual, or physical, but moral. It is being conned into a false sense of reality and morality. The narcissist, by nature, sees themselves as their own god. By extension, they will set themselves up as their children’s god. They will con their children into embracing various falsehoods and immoralities, as con artists do. This is what gods are supposed to be able to do. This asserts their godhood. The children become accomplices, and idolaters.

If anyone tries to break out of this, they become the scapegoat of the others. Being accomplices in their own abuse, all in the family fear the cold light of the real. They cling to the fantasy—to the point of violence or self-harm if necessary.

Fairy tales are our best source on “mental illness”; they were created to advise children on life. Consider Snow White. She is the victim of abuse by a malicious parent. She escapes with her life. The dwarfs, her spiritual guides, warn her not to commune with “strangers.” Three times her abusive mother, “in disguise,” is able to abuse her again, by appealing to her vanity and her sense of being special. By conning her. This models the actions of an abusive parent; and the tendency of the abused child to keep returning to be abused again. Like a misguided moth, drawn back in to the initial fantasy, imagining the parent has “changed.”

Cinderella doesn’t immediately seem to be complicit in her abuse. But read carefully. When she goes to the prince’s ball, dressed to the nines, her sisters do not recognize her. Yet she does not reveal herself to them. Later, at home, she pretends she was not at the ball. Why? What is she hiding, and who is she protecting?

She is protecting the family fantasy, and her own abuse. She must remain Cinderwench, and they are the better daughters. She is more comfortable in this delusion, and so complicit in it. Only later does she gather the courage to reveal herself.

In Rapunzel, her state of abuse is symbolized by being locked in a tower. Yet she could actually leave at any time. The witch, and then the handsome prince, come and go by climbing her tresses. Why could she not escape herself, by cutting her hair, tying it to the windowsill, and climbing down? This is indeed just what the witch does later.

She is complicit in her own captivity, because to give it up she would have to give up the sesnse, cultivated by the witch, her narcissistic parent, that she is special.

Here we see both the cause of, and the cure for, “mental illness.” It must be a wholehearted embrace of objective truth and objective morality. This will require, as Alcoholics Anonymous rightly point out, an examination of conscience and a Frank confrontation with our own guilt.

Mental illness is ultimately a moral issue.

Psychiatry cannot help, because psychiatry rejects morality.

Rapunzel

Is China the Emerging Hegemon Already?

 

Although it has often been quoted for scare value, perhaps we have paid too little attention to Justin Trudeau’s open assertion, years ago, that he admires China’s “basic dictatorship.”

This sentiment might manage to explain a series of otherwise seemingly irrational acts not only by Trudeau, but by other leaders around the world. Why limit fertilizer use just as the world faces famine? Why prevent fracking, tax carbon, and force an energy shortage? Why impose vaccine mandates and force mass firings of truckers and medical professionals in the middle of a supply shortage and a pandemic? Why are governments so keen on payments to stay at home, and universal basic income, in the middle of a critical labour shortage? It all makes no sense except in this context: a top-down revolution trying to impose a Chinese-style system. The apparent plan is to make people dependent on the government, and afraid of the government.

Even without being in the pay of China, a lot of politicians seem to want to emulate China’s basic dictatorship.

The thought has been attractive, perhaps, because China has seemed to work so well. Just as, a few decades ago, business execs were all talking about importing “Japanese management techniques,” back when Japan seemed to be developing faster than anyone else, and had the cachet. In more recent years, it has been China. Even if they were not prepared, like Trudeau, to say so openly, “Chinese management techniques” might have looked attractive. China could, as Trudeau further observed, turn on a dime in terms, of, say, meeting its environmental goals.

One indication that China is the model for other governments now is how almost everyone else quickly mimicked the Chinese response to COVID; the lockdowns.

Of course, the key Chinese management practice is dictatorship; along with Fascist collaboration between government and the big corporations. For this, the common people must be cowed into submission, by whatever means necessary. Voluntary associations, civil society, must be attacked and humbled. Occupations allowing too much personal freedom, like trucking or farming, must be suppressed. 

Then matters can be left to the mandarinate, who, of course, think themselves smarter than the average working stiff. A plausible enough argument, one relied on by Confucius, or Plato, before Marx. It is all for the public good.

How to get around the inconvenience of democracy? No doubt there are ways. Control the media. Threaten opposition with seizure of their assets. Make public demonstrations illegal. Introduce new voting procedures open to tampering, like voting machines and mail-in ballots. As Stalin said, it does not matter who votes. What matters is who counts the ballots.

We are seeing these things happen before our eyes.

On the other hand, the growth of information technology is exposing incompetence in the mandarinate. This makes them vulnerable, and some of their overreach may be due to fear. No government can stand if the people will no longer obey. Here too, China might still seem a model to a panicked elite. They have kept their people under their thumb. 

Governments everywhere are undergoing a stress test as they in effect declare war on their own people. There seems a decent chance that the government of China will collapse first, discrediting the whole enterprise. There are runs on the banks and tanks in the streets. Big developers are defaulting. Will the CCP be able to paper it all over and hold things together?

It would be a happier time if we could point to at least one clear counter-example, of a government opening up further to the people. If it then clearly succeeded, a new paradigm might emerge.

Perhaps we see something of this in Ron DeSantis’s Florida. There is hope we might see it in a Canada led by Pierre Poilievre. 

Viva Barnes Interview Dr. Christian Warning about the Vaccine

 

Jordan Peterson and Michael Yon

 

Very scary predictions...

Is Climate Change Real? These Prominent Scientists Say the Science Is Not Settled.

 

"The theory of anthropogenic climate change has no reliable scientific basis."

It's not about science. It's about grabbing more power.

That's why they're targeting the truckers and the farmers: the occupations most able to resist government control.

Apologizing to the Waves

 

As predictably as the spring rains, Pope Francis’s apology for the residential schools, delivered in Edmonton only two days ago, has already been rejected by many native leaders, notably Senator Murray Sinclair. And the media refer to it as, at best, a “first step.” All the previous apologies have been rejected—there have now supposedly been no steps before this. No surprise that this one too is rejected. By obvious implication, there will never be a last step. Every step taken will ever remain a “first step.”

It never mattered what the Pope said, or whether he came or not. Someone is not acting in good faith. The last thing the aboriginal leaders or the left ever want is reconciliation, and they will always refuse to be reconciled. The moment reconciliation is achieved, they lose their funding. And they lose their scapegoat.

Is the pope such a fool that he could not see this? I, for one, think he slandered the Church, and the residential schools, with his apology. Is this helpful? The media quote some attendees triumphant at the supposed fact that the pope has now “admitted” that “native spirituality” was right all along, and the Catholic Church was wrong. This puts native people in peril of their souls.

The media have been aggressively complicit, as usual, in this con game. For example, the CBC asserts that Lac Ste. Anne was an ancient sacred site to the Indians, “God’s Lake,” long before the first missionaries arrived. By implication, Christianity and the Ste. Anne pilgrimage are an imposition on the authentic “native spirituality.”

No, it was not called “God’s Lake.” It was called “Devil’s Lake.” That is how the HBC factors translated the Indian name, and this translation is more accurate. The place was feared and avoided, because there was believed to be a great monster in the lake that devoured people. The lake became sacred when the first Catholic missionaries consecrated the waters to St. Anne and drove away the monster.

The confusion, or deliberate misrepresentation, comes because the native groups had only the one word, “manitou,” for any spiritual being. God is of course a spiritual being; so he would in theory be a “manitou.” As were the pagan gods of Greece and Rome. However, the only spiritual beings the First Nations were aware of in their environment before the coming of Christianity were hostile toward man. “Manitou” to them was something to be feared, not to be worshipped. “Devil” or “demon” is the English equivalent.

I hope, probably in vain, that the Pope’s visit, and the immediate refusal to accept his apology, may end up calling the bluff of the swindle. It may open eyes to the fact that the left is not honest. The optics of immediately refusing to accept the apology of an aged and infirm pope may be damning. The left’s arrogance may at last be its undoing.

-- Written by a day school survivor.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

 

Stephen Harper has just come out and endorsed Pierre Poilievre.

This should end it. Harper never endorsed anyone in the last two leadership contests. 

And this should make it easy for Poiliever to achieve party unity once he officially wins.

We Can't Return; We Can Only Look Behind, from Where We Came

 

A magical thing has happened: Joni Mitchell did a concert at the current Newport Folk Festival.

These are the songs of my own youth. And to my ear, Mitchell's voice is still strong. In fact, I prefer her deeper register. Jazz-style singing, with its low volume and low impact, is one genre that can hold up through old age. Compare Willie Nelson, who also still sounds great.

"Both Sides Now" really sounds more apt at her age than when it was written. Almost brings tears.

Scratch "almost."

I almost wish her partner, who does a great imitation of the early Mitchell, would be silent so we could better hear the richness of Joni's current voice.

This next song was my slender lifeline to get through one awful summer job in a plastics injection factory

The wind is in from Africa

Last night, I couldn't sleep...

I wonder if people who did not live in Toronto during a certain period know what a "big yellow taxi" actually is.

Pandemonium

 

Canute explains global warming to his courtiers.

It is exhausting dealing with other Canadians; because most Canadians are insane. They believe in delusions. We noted the “chemical imbalance” theory of mental illness last post. It is nonsensical at best, yet over 85% of Canadians buy it.

Other examples abound. The average Canadian accepts as true that there has been a huge conspiracy in all cultures throughout history to oppress women. But they scorn "conspiracy theories" out of hand.  They believe that homosexuality is inborn, although this violates the Theory of Evolution, which they also believe. Any gene for homosexuality would be bred out within two generations. They believe that American Indians lived in peace and comfort until the evil Europeans arrived with their agriculture, technology, and law enforcement: the “noble savage” myth. They believe that building schools for the Indians was oppressive, demanding apology and reparations. They believe that a man can decide to be a woman; or be a woman because they believe so. But even though it is all in the mind, and biology doesn’t matter, it is still essential to give hormone blockers and cut off their genitals to suit. They believe, as King Canute never did, that the government of Canada can order the tides not to rise, or the equivalent: "global warming." Canada can apparently fix global warming with a carbon tax, though industry can simply move to China. They believe that by raising the price of carbon, the tax will cause everyone to use less of it. But a minimum wage, by raising the price of labour, will not cause anyone to use less of it. 

They believe, and will say in so many words, that there is no objective reality. 

This is the definition of insanity. It means no rational conversation is possible. How does one respond when talking to a madman? Just nod your head and back away? The main concern is that they may become violent.

Not a pleasant intellectual climate.

I think Jung had it right that the human mind is easily drawn by “archetypes” away from reality.

I may be too optimistic, but I feel not everyone is as crazy as Canadians are. I lived in the Philippines for years, and with a Filipina longer, and I do not think Filipinos are nearly as crazy.

I think the clue is in Chesterton’s observation that “those who stop believing in God will believe in anything.” We need meaning, and if we reject God, we will deify almost anything: science, nature, sex, Adolf Hitler, you name it. Call them archetypes, idols, pagan gods; it is the same thing. The Filipinos avoid this because they still, most of them, believe in God. Those who don’t are still kept relatively sane by those who do.

Most of the rest of us are spinning out of control. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

The Empire Gets Struck Back

 

I attended an exhibition yesterday at the Art Gallery of Ontario: “Faith and Fortune: Art across the Global Spanish Empire.” Faith was a draw for me; and my wife is from the Philippines. I have a thing for Hispanic concepts of beauty. So I had to have a look.

They had paintings by Goya, and El Greco, and Velasquez. Not great paintings by Goya, El Greco, or Velasquez, and none of them are much to my taste. Nevertheless, the artistry was magnificent. The religious statuary was exceptional. This is a Spanish and Portuguese specialty, in my experience. I would have liked to see more examples of cultural mixing, especially from South America. This felt oddly lacking; perhaps because it would be “cultural appropriation.” Perhaps because it would suggest that the Spanish and the various native peoples were not in constant conflict and struggle for power. They had a room full of early daguerrotypes of the Philippines. I was not impressed; daguerrotypes are designed to be looked at in print, not in an exhibit hall, and are more accessible online, without bending and squinting. The audio guide explained that they were taken by Spaniards, and so there was a need for Filipinos to “decolonize” and take possession of them. 

Martha and Mary

In the real world, of course, most Filipinos have some Spanish or European ancestry.

The audio guide was jammed with Critical Theory. The Spanish Empire was unambiguously an evil exploitation and corruption of indigenous cultures. This ignores the basic principle that any government, and an empire more widely than others, keeps the peace. The Roman Empire ushered in a millennium of “Pax Romana,” sorely missed when it fell. The British Empire produced a century or so of “Pax Britannica.” Even if you accept the Edenic myth that the happy natives were not, on the whole, enslaving one another, starving in large numbers, committing genocide, fighting endless wars, and so forth—something the exhibit expressly dismisses as Imperial propaganda--the Spanish imposition of peace and commerce over such a large area was probably to most people’s benefit.

I note also that, rather than similarly condemning the Muslim conquest of Spain, ended only in the year Columbus discovered America, the audio guide simply notes that “Muslims arrived in the peninsula in 711.” This particular empire, the Muslim Caliphate, supposedly brought peace and happiness in which all lived together in peace and harmony. 

Only Christian empires are bad, apparently.

Christianity is referred to as a “Western” doctrine, supposedly imposed on Spain’s new subjects. No awareness, it seems, that Christianity itself comes from Asia, and, from the Spanish perspective, the distant East. 

While there were, inevitably, religious statues and images of all sorts in the exhibition, the signage and the audio never spoke of faith. It was all about power. Saints were identified, towards the bottom of the signage, but in a cursory way. “Saint Michael represents good fighting evil.” “Saint X was martyred during a time when Christianity was illegal.” 

In one display box, four statues were identified as the four possibilities after death: heaven, purgatory, hell, and a skeleton to represent “the death of the body.” This was to my mind the most striking piece, and the one used for the Exhibit’s promotional materials.

The four fates of the soul.

But one of these four is not like the other ones. And Christianity does not ultimately believe in the death of the body, for those who go to heaven, hell, or purgatory. Rather, as the curators of the exhibition were presumably too theologically illiterate to know, the skeleton probably represents those who die unbaptized but without personal sin—the animal death.

The audio guide features a local artist of Filipino extraction and unconventional sexual preferences—all the voices heard were from non-Spanish ethnic minorities, and several of them identified themselves as gay or queer or the like. He (or she, or whatever) was celebrating the fact that Santo Nino, the patron saint of the southern Philippines, is sexually androgynous. This is counter to fact: Santo Nino is the baby Jesus. There is no room for sexual ambiguity in the very name: “Santo Nino” is masculine. The feminine would be “Santa Nina.”

Leaving, I had to thread my way through walls of gay pornography. “Blurred Boundaries: Queer Visions in Canadian Art.” 

Great idea—take your kids to the gallery and develop an appreciation for art?

No longer. Grooming.

Our established institutions have become illiterate and immoral, and we can no longer trust them to tell the truth.

Tom Cruise Vindicated?

 

A new metastudy from the UK finds no evidence that depression is caused by low serotonin levels--the theory on which it has been treated since about 1980. The theory over 80% of us still believe with a religious fervor.

“The main areas of serotonin research provide no consistent evidence of there being an association between serotonin and depression, and no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations.”

Prozac and all the SSRIs work as placebos. The dirty secret nobody wants to point out is that placebos do work.

But the “chemical imbalance” line was always a con. Michael Knowles pointedly wonders how Tom Cruise, an actor, knew all this years ago. 

It should have been obvious to any thinking person all along that it was no explanation at all. If chemical balance causes depression, what caused the chemical imbalance? If depression is associated with low serotonin levels in the brain, which is cause, and which effect?

If he hadn’t figured it out for himself, Cruise knew this because he was a Scientologist. Scientology has been calling out psychiatry on this for decades. 

Scientology has been dismissed everywhere as a dangerous cult; but Leonard Cohen, no less, although he did not himself become a scientologist, is on record as saying that they had the real deal. Dangerous, perhaps—but to whom? They might have been unjustly tarred because they were telling inconvenient truths, the way the powers that be now tar any dissent as “racist,” “white supremacist,” or “alt-right.” When someone or something is too generally and broadly condemned, we have a right to be suspicious. Remember Goldstein and the two-minute hate.

The “chemical imbalance” line worked because it was something people wanted to believe. It was a placebo, like the pills themselves. First, it offered a simple cure—just take a pill. Second, it sounded suitably materialistic and amoral, and so “scientific.” Third, it absolved everyone from blame.

It has always been a popular idea, long predating science. It is the theory of the humours: mental problems are/were caused by some imbalance of fluids in the brain. They were restored to balance by drawing bad blood, giving enemas, or cutting a hole in the skull to let the vapours out. SSRI pills supposedly work the same way.

And pills worked because we are conditioned to believe in pills. They seem properly medical and scientific, and science is our religion. The proper cure for spiritual distress, aka “mental illness,” is always faith healing. That is to say, faith.

This is why people cling to their preferred psychological theory with a fervour only seen elsewhere in religion; and not indeed in religion since perhaps the 18th century. It is as though denying another’s psychological faith, whether it is in “chemical imbalance,” the Freudian subconscious, Jung, or Abraham Maslow, puts one at risk of auto da fe and then eternal hellfire. Perhaps you, like I, have repeatedly seen this.

L. Ron Hubbard, being a science fiction novelist, understood the imagination and the willing suspension of disbelief. He understood faith healing. Cohen, as a poet and songwriter, recognized the insight. Scientology tends to appeal to artists and actors generally. They see that imagination is the key, and Hubbard and Scientology have worked out a satisfying cosmology—far more complete and satisfying than the barren cosmology of conventional science, although Hubbard is shrewd enough to claim a scientific basis. We are conditioned to worship science.

Still, when it comes to truly combatting mental illness, neither pills nor a consciously constructed fantasy world can really compete with actual faith. And Hubbard omits the essential moral dimension.

Cohen ultimately found that Judaism worked better. Like the other universalist faiths, it has a complete and coherent account of human experience, and includes the moral imperative.

And that is what is needed to cure mental illness. Mental illness comes from a loss of meaning.

Hope for Canada?

 

I pity the UK its sad choice of prospective Conservative leaders. It feels like a tragedy that Boris Johnson, with his great political talents, so quickly flamed out. No argument; it was his own fault. He could not stay. But now the right has no one impressive to speak for them.

The US also has a problem. They have impressive figures on the right, notably Ron DeSantis, Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson, but Donald Trump dominates, and probably blocks anyone else from taking the nomination. Trump too is impressive, but also alienates a dangerous proportion of the electorate, and brings chaos in his wake, at a time when most Americans probably want competence and common sense to return.

By contrast, I feel we I Canada are suddenly, after a long drought, surprisingly lucky. We have Pierre Poilievre, Leslyn Lewis, and Maxime Bernier, all of whom seem both impressive and (relatively) honest.

All Things Visible and Invisible

 

It has been brought to my attention recently that a large number of people, possibly a majority, actually believe that the physical world is the real world. Not just that the physical world is real—which is debatable—but that there is nothing beyond the physical world—which is stark insanity.

What brings me most immediately to this thought is some poems appearing in my email box from the League of Canadian Poets, under their “Poetry Pause” programme (you can sign up free here). One was just the poet describing her body:

Most loyal beautiful body

--Who aches only for your love.

 Another was the poet describing her desk.

A surplus teacher’s desk, 

solid oak, three heavy drawers

on each side of a skirted knee-hole.

There is no poem to such poems. Poetry speaks of the transcendent. We do not need it to talk about what is before our eyes.

Another example of materialism, in the textbook from which I taught this morning: it took pains to distinguish between “fact” and “opinion,” but never noticed or noted that there is a more important third category, truth that is not fact. Here’s an obvious example:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Not a trivial point.

In the wider world of truths, facts are trivial; yet only facts are acknowledged by the standard textbooks.

Another example: most people are quick to deride “materialism,” but then they think that materialism simply means wanting or having wealth. A purely materialistic concept of materialism, a cartoon. They are not out of the box. They just resent people who have more material than they do.

I read a poem at a recent meeting of a poetry society, which asserted, in rhyme, that the delusions of the mentally ill had truth in them beyond the ken of psychiatrists. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in our philosophy.”

And if he asks in riddle who you are

You must lie as dead as paper-thin straight line

Assume a name--say, one you took at birth

And pretend you only know of space and time.

Surely a group of poets would get it.

The first reaction from an audience member: it reminded them of Ogden Nash, or Alexander Pope.

What? Either meaningless nonsense, then, or mere clever wordplay. Pope is conspicuous for never speaking of the transcendent. For this Blake mocked him.

I can’t decide whether that respondent was trying to deny the existence of anything beyond the senses, or whether he was really so lobotomized in his view of existence.

Another listener chimed in that she liked the poem, and had often written herself about social justice.

Another common modern tack. Poets now all always either talk about “nature,” meaning the purely material world, or politics, the quest for power over others. Neither is worth an honest poem. 

It seems to me necessarily true that anyone who is not fully aware of the world beyond the visible is lacking a soul. More or less by definition. They are only robots.

Yet realizing that many are at this spiritual level explains the common conflation of just about everything with sex and power.

Mad Dog!

 

An interesting insight into dog psychology from Wikipedia. I quote: “Attempting to teach Siberian Huskies aggressive behavior can lead to mental problems in the dog.”

It is reasonable to suppose that what causes mental problems in dogs is the same as what causes mental problems in humans. Not teaching aggressive behavior specifically, but, in both cases, teaching things that violate their conscience.

This is the result, most often, of bad parenting, by parents who themselves have no morals. These are the parents Jesus says would be better thrown in the ocean with a millstone around their necks, for causing “little ones” to stumble.

Sadly, it is those children who have the strongest conscience who will be most severely affected by such ill counsel--the best among us.

Modern psychiatry or psychology is unable to help the mentally ill, because they begin with the premise that there is no right and wrong. This makes mental illness “incurable.” Getting back in touch with objective morality is the cure.

Original Sin

 

Lots of us have trouble with the concept of original sin; including the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand." Paragraph 404.

After all, it doesn’t seem fair—that one person should suffer for the sins of another.

Indeed, it is not fair; but it is the essence of the Christian message. Jesus died for our sins.

And it is obviously, objectively true. We all benefit and suffer from the actions of others: our ancestors, our countrymen, most obviously, our parents. Some of us were lucky enough to be born in a rich family, some in a poor one. That has given us a better shot. We had nothing to do with that, and it is not fair. Some of us have had abusive parents, and some of us have had parents who coddled or spoiled us. That is not fair. Some of us were born in Canada, and some of us in Ukraine. We had nothing to do with it.

All of us trace our lineage back to Adam and Eve. Having sinned, and departed from original innocence, they passed this on to their children through imperfections in their upbringing. So we have Cain murdering Abel. Cain or Seth passed the seed of bad upbringing on to their children, who passed it on to theirs, on to Noah, who passed it on to Shem, Japheth, and Ham, who passed in on to the children of Lot, who passed it on to those responsible for founding Canada or the Ukraine, who passed it on to our parents, who passed it on to us. 

It is, necessarily, in all cases, essentially sin. It is only relative degrees of sin. All far short of original perfection, and so all fall short of proper parenting. All children suffer from bad parenting, to greater or to lesser degree. This is why Philip Larkin wrote:

“They fuck you up, your mom and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.”

 

Not to excuse parents—all parenting is not equal. Some parents are also intentionally evil. This is why Jesus says, “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

This is a fundamental problem. This is the original problem. Because we are naturally inclined, as children, to see our parents as the measure of all things, as our ground of being, the source of truth and morals, as gods. Accordingly, the errors and the sins they tempt us to are difficult to erase, and probably require divine intervention. It is the first and most dangerous idolatry.

This is why the Bible says, more than once, that “the sins of the father are visited upon the sons, unto the third and fourth generation.” This is why, when one prospective Christian wants first to bury his father, Jesus says “let the dead bury their own dead.” This is why we must be born again. We must fight free of the taint of our upbringing.

The Christian message has often been perverted to be one of “family values.” That is not in the Bible; that is the opposite of the Biblical message

“Honour your father and your mother,” yes. But that means support them in their old age, and ungrudgingly. Idolizing them is the greater danger. It is comparable to idolizing your motherland. We know from Nuremberg where that leads. But idolizing a parent is a greater risk than idolizing your motherland.

It is the original sin.

There May Be a Reason Why No Graves Were Marked

 

Because there weren't any.

Bastille Day

 

Xerxes, famed anonymous left-wing columnist, appears to believe democracy is doomed. He foresees only two possibilities: either sudden collapse, or slow decline. His evidence is the January 6 trespass in the US Capitol, and the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa last February.

I think instead the arc of history favours the growth of democracy. It has to do with the advance of communications technology. Before the invention of movable type, and in general poverty, the scarcity of information demanded government by the few who were educated and therefore in a position to understand the issues and options. There were small democracies long ago, in Greece, Mesopotamia, and the Nordic countries, but these tended to depend on the institution of slavery. Free voting men were an elite minority of the overall population.

With printing, information became more plentiful, and representative democracy become more plausible. The common man was now informed enough at least to be capable of selecting his preferred more learned experts. This took centuries to develop, because it took the printing press centuries to spread and generate a large enough corpus of cheap information. And printing technology improved; benefitting like other tasks from the mechanization of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Industrial Revolution also, in increasing wealth, gave more people the leisure to read. So things really took off then.

With the Internet, in principle, information is now again becoming exponentially more available. This time it will not take centuries; only years.

The inevitable upshot will be something closer to direct democracy. Experts will be largely replaced by expert systems, available to everyone.

We are commonly told that automation will make the lower classes unemployable. But the opposite is more likely to happen, and is happening. It is making the ruling classes redundant.

Brexit, the election of Trump, the Ottawa Freedom convoy, the January 6th trespass in the US Capitol building, and the current Dutch farmer protests, are, I think, early eruptions of this new and probably unstoppable trend to direct popular government. The emperor is being revealed in his nakedness, and the peasants are gathering their pitchforks. 

It is not as peaceful as it should be, because of the resistance of the privileged to losing their power. The natural reaction is to double down. We saw the same after the invention of printing. First, the aristocrats countered with a new ideology of the “divine right of kings,” and grew more, not less, autocratic. Kings tried to strip powers from the nobles, once the nobles were proven useless, rather than passing it to the people. But over time this was unsustainable in competition with those nations that bent early to the winds of democracy.

We are similarly seeing many governments around the world suddenly become more autocratic; sadly including Canada. But this will be similarly unsustainable.

We live in interesting times.

Mr. Biden, Tear Down This Wall

JJ MacCullough is more or less suggesting that Canada be annexed by the USA.

It is not an unreasonable desire—especially given the current rapidly eroding state of freedom in Canada. We ordinary Canadians might soon welcome the sight of American soldiers in our streets.

There never has been a very strong argument for Canada being a separate country. There is little cultural difference between English Canada and the USA. So little that the average Canadian could chat with the average Midwesterner for some time without detecting they are from different countries. If attacked, Canada could not by itself defend its vast land area. We depend on American support for defense. Unification would cement it; remaining independent is freeloading. We may not be able to afford such freeloading much longer, with the rising power of China. And Canadians pay a premium in standard of living and career opportunities for not being fully part of the big US market.

The best argument against annexation is that the Americans don’t want us. Amalgamation with Canada would presumably mean ten more US States, each with two senators, and they would probably all be Democrats. That’s not going to fly with Republicans. For the same reason, Puerto Rico is not admitted to statehood, although they have voted for it. New states have usually joined in pairs, one likely to lean left, one likely to lean right.

And there is more positive reason for Canadian independence. It is a protection for our freedoms. If the government in one place goes bad, the border is near, and assimilation is easy. This was helpful to escaped slaves before the US Civil War; then to Jefferson Davis after it. It was helpful to young Americans during the Vietnam War. It was helpful to William Lyon Mackenzie and the Canadian patriotes after the failure of the rebellions of 1837, and to Riel after the Red River rebellion. We seem to need it now.

Perhaps the best of both worlds would be simply making crossing the border easier. How about mutual automatic right of residence for citizens of either country?

While a porous southern border might be a problem for the US, this open border is not going to cause a flood of either economic migrants or wards of the state. Levels of prosperity and government services are comparable in both countries.

Such a mutual automatic right of residence used to exist between Canada and the UK, and worked well. It currently exists between Australia and New Zealand.

It would be certain to make both countries more prosperous.

Breakfast Tacos

 

Jill Biden is facing criticism for lauding the diversity represented by the “breakfast tacos” of San Antonio.

In a way, the criticism seems unfair. She meant well. But I also understand the outrage. This is multiculturalism: it reduces ethnic minorities to a human zoo, dancing for us in colourful costumes and opening interesting restaurants. Sources of idle entertainment. Consider speaking to a group of black Americans about how much you love fried chicken and watermelon. 

I am similarly annoyed, as one of mostly Irish extraction, by St. Patrick’s Day pictures of dancing leprechauns. Ah, those Irish: stupid, but always happy. I’d rather be associated with James Joyce, Sinead O’Connor, Bishop Berkeley, Edmund Burke, Guy Carleton, W.B. Yeats, the Great Famine, and Easter 1916. And not be reduced to a cartoon.

The matter hits home just now—along with her mispronunciation, in the same speech, of “bodegas”—because it feels as though it reveals something about the Democrats. They don’t understand and don’t care about minorities. They don’t waste the time of giving them a serious thought.

Back when I was younger, it was similarly assumed that the Irish or the Italians would always vote Democrat. It was, after all, the party of Tammany Hall, of Richard Daley, of Al Smith and the Kennedys.  We used to think of the Republicans as alien and Protestant.

Now we have prominent Irishmen on the Republican right: Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity. We have prominent Italians: Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia. More prosperous then we once were, Irish and Italian Catholics no longer follow the instructions of city ward bosses. We cannot be bought as a unit.

The same is inevitably happening now with Hispanics: Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio.

The Democrats have been banking on Hispanics to ensure them a permanent majority in the near future. It is not going to happen.

The Uses of Enchantment

 

William Blake's illustration to "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

Northrop Frye realized that Shakespeare’s comedies and romances always featured a “green world,” in which the hero finds himself, one way or another, in about Act Three. In it the protagonist’s problems all are solved, to produce the play’s happy ending. It should not be necessary here to enumerate all the examples; Frye has cited them for us.

A valuable insight, but Frye was not all that smart. He then identified this “green world” with nature and with fertility rituals.

But the “green world” is never natural. Sometimes it is forested; but it can as well be Belmont, Portia’s castle. It is, rather, supernatural, which is the very opposite of natural. Think of Prospero’s island in The Tempest. The one consistent feature is that magic happens there. It is generally populated by fairies. It is fairyland.

Where is fairyland? Not out in the physical woods or wilds; in the imagination, in the forests of the night. It is the place where dreams and stories come from.

Shakespeare is the world’s greatest psychologist. His ability to see and express the motivations of his various characters is legendary; only Dostoyevsky comes close. And he is saying here that the cure for spiritual problems or for life problems—for “mental” problems—is the land of story, of art, of “play,” of the imagination.

He explains in Hamlet that art “holds the mirror up to nature.” But he does not mean nature in the sense of the physical world where man is absent. He means human nature. Read the full quotation:

“playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.”

Art shows virtue, scorn, and the zeitgeist; not bugs or trees.

Beyond his own plays with their “green world,” Shakespeare is pointing here to the value of fairy tales as a cure for spiritual disorders.

“The play’s the thing/With which to catch the conscience of the king.”

We ought to listen to him. 

What Is a Woman?

 

The Anglican Church has declared they do not know what a woman is.

“There is no official definition, which reflects the fact that until fairly recently definitions of this kind were thought to be self-evident."

Why does a church need an official definition of anything? This is what dictionaries are for. It is a simple matter to look up the term in the Oxford English Dictionary:

"An adult female human being."

You're welcome.

Forgiveness

 

Parable of the Good Samaritan

The gospel reading this week was the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is unusual among parables in that the message is clear, if often ignored: you must love your neighbour; and your neighbour is not someone who lives near you, or someone of the same religion, or race, or ethnicity, or gender, or anything else, but any good person, or any even unknown person in need of help.

The priest at my wife’s parish in the Philippines managed to twist it instead into a sermon on how we must forgive those who wrong us; that the problem it was meant to address was anger. How he derived this from the passage is hard to guess. My wife says he led into it by arguing that the priest who walked by and did not help the poor victim lying in the ditch was doing so because priests in ancient Israel were not allowed to touch blood.

So we are being unjust in criticizing him or the Levite, and praising the Samaritan over them. 

No word on what we should feel about the poor guy lying in the ditch.

Having been the victim of childhood abuse, and therefore caring deeply about right and wrong, and about being assaulted and having no one lend a hand, my wife says it was all she could do not to stand up and argue with him during the sermon. As it was, she became literally sick to her stomach, and had to leave in the middle of the service. It took her some hours to recover.

Such a view serves those who enjoy doing evil. It inflicts an additional cruelty on those who have been wronged, making them feel guilty about it instead of offering support. It was the Devil himself preaching. But it is only too common a sermon to hear these days: “forgive, forgive.” “The problem is not the sin, but the condemnation of the sin. Nobody should criticize anyone, and then we would all live in peace and harmony.” One is supposed to offer “unconditional love.”

For the record, the Bible does call for forgiveness of those who have wronged us; but only if and when they have admitted their sin, asked for forgiveness, and attempted restitution or done penance. This ought to be clear to a priest, since it is what is required for a valid confession.

Anyone who preaches this false doctrine of ignoring sin or wrong automatically condemns themself: for if the fault is not in the sin but in criticizing the sin, then they are still at fault, for criticizing the criticism of the sin as a sin.

Moreover, to ignore sin in another is to condemn them to Hell. This is not a neighbourly act. To endorse it is also to become an accessory, and guilty of the sin yourself.

To deny sin is sin is the very sin against the Holy Spirit which Jesus describes as unforgivable.

And we now must often hear it preached from the pulpit.

Us and Them

 

A leftist friend posts this cartoon on Facebook, with the caption “the public good vs. individual liberty.”

It’s been bugging me. No doubt because it looks superficially true. The right stresses individual liberty. The left stresses group identity. This looks from a distance like selfishness. Individual = self = selfishness.

Nevertheless, conservatives consistently give more to charity, do more volunteer work, and are more likely to belong to voluntary associations—think churches. In other words, they care more about community than the left. The left may speak of “community,” but they generally mean people they do not know who share the same interests. Here “community” is a euphemism for “tribe” or “special interest group.”

Selfishness has nothing to do with individualism. Stressing one’s individualism necessarily sets one apart from the “other.” But, equally, stressing one’s group identity necessarily sets one apart from “them,” the non-members of your group. Either is potentially selfish. But it is easier to be selfish in a group, because the group consensus can drown out the voice of conscience. And group selfishness can do much more harm than an individual. Think the Nazis, the Fascists, Stalinism, Maoism, Pol Pot and the Killing Fields…

The View from Patmos

 

I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures. It said, “A ration of wheat costs a day’s pay,* and three rations of barley cost a day’s pay. But do not damage the olive oil or the wine.”

When he broke open the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature cry out, “Come forward.”

I looked, and there was a pale green* horse. Its rider was named Death, and Hades accompanied him. They were given authority over a quarter of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and plague, and by means of the beasts of the earth.

I try to avoid apocalyptic thinking; old people are too prone to it. But has anyone noticed that we have already seen two of the four horses of the apocalypse canter by?

COVID-19 has decimated us. Just when it looked as if over, it has mutated into something more dangerous than other recent variants, and is surging again in most of the Northern Hemisphere, even though it is summer. If it does not end up killing us all, monkeypox is in the wings. That’s the first horseman, pestilence.

The war in Ukraine continues; it could in principle at any moment become nuclear, or a world war. It is certainly killing a lot of people, displacing more, and disrupting the food supply everywhere. That’s the second horseman, war.

And partly as a result of the first, partly as a result of the second, food shortages are beginning to appear. Many predict worse by the fall, and perhaps famine in some parts of the world. That’s the third horseman, famine.

Is the fourth horseman on the horizon: Death? Perhaps that refers, broadly, to the doctrine of human “overpopulation”; environmentalism, “climate change.” What John Paul II called the “culture of death.” This horse is green, at least in the ASV translation; and he seems to correspond a verse or two later with “the beasts of the earth.” Environmentalism is indeed causing severe problems in the Netherlands. In principle, environmentalism wants to kill most of us. The recently mysteriously destroyed Georgia guidestones advocated a total human population of no more than 500 million.

The signs of the apocalypse are so vague that they can probably be made to fit the events of any era. Indeed, I believe they were not meant to be a prediction of the future, but a description of the eternal present as a war against good and evil. Jesus himself warns against trying to predict the end time. “Nobody knows the day or the hour”; he will come “like a thief in the night.” Were things really more orderly and coherent in the 1930s? The 1960s? 

So no, I reject the thought that this is literally apocalyptic. But the Devil is playing his tricks. There is an intelligence behind this; a Satanic weltanschauung. It has many names: “the great reset”; “the new world order”; “critical theory”; “postmodernism”; “social justice.”

More simply, evil is being allowed its day. 

It is given dominion, according to St. John, over a quarter of the earth. That’s enough to do a lot of damage.

Murder Cows

 

Dutch farmers are protesting, a protest that seems to be spreading across Europe. The Dutch government—and other European governments, in principle—are forcing farmers to cut their herds, due to the possible effect of cows on global warming. This makes many family farms uneconomical; family farming is always on a tight margin. In Europe, this can mean losing a farm that has been in the family not just for generations, but for centuries.

Given that global warming is a clear and present danger—a debatable claim—it still seems odd to press for this just now. Experts are warning we are on the verge of a general food shortage and possible famine, due to existing supply chain problems and the war in Ukraine. Why now?

It also seems unlikely that the main cause of global warming is European family farms. Are there really more cows in Europe now than a hundred, or five hundred, years ago? If so, might the projected decline in the European population solve the problem without such measures?

This is eerily reminiscent of the Canadian government’s insistence, recently, that all truckers had to be vaccinated against COVID. Even though ninety percent already were; even though they came in contact with virtually nobody in their jobs; even though we were facing severe supply chain disruptions.

Why are governments taking such radical actions that seem to be against the public interest?

It is not because of global warming, and it is not because of COVID; because different governments are appealing to different supposed emergencies. There has to be an ulterior motive. One they do not want to admit to.

Thomas Jefferson, inventor of liberal democracy, maintained that a liberal democracy, in order to survive, required independent freeholders—family farmers. If governments became oppressive, only independent freeholders had the resources to resist. Only they were not beholden to the system, surviving paycheck to paycheck. If necessary in order to organize opposition, they could survive for a time off the grid, outside the system, feeding themselves and their families. 

Add to them truckers; if one jurisdiction becomes oppressive, truckers can move with their livelihood elsewhere, even if necessary living in their truck. This continues in a way the tradition of the open west; a tradition of migration that may also historically have ensured American freedom. 

If governments are in open confrontation with these two groups, it means government wants to shut this option down. It means their intent is to terminate our ability to resist or change our government.

The Invisible Empire

 

I understand that Russian popular propaganda is more often targeted against the British than against the Americans.

This might seem odd, since either militarily or economically, the Americans are stronger.

But Russia is run by the secret service, and long has been. I remember talking years ago with a well-educated Russian émigré who had Marxist sympathies, and probably once moved in high circles. He expressed with grudging admiration the opinion that nobody could touch the British civil service for efficient bureaucratic control.

I suspect the Russians think the British MI5 is worth more than all the American factories and armaments. And perhaps they are right.

I also suspect that the Russians believe that, for all the USA’s strength on paper, they can be managed. Largely due to their incompetence at intrigue. The Russians probably figure they can control key people. Notably including Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. The evidence of this is more or less in plain sight, on Hunter Biden’s laptop, and in Hillary Clinton’s storage of all her government files on a private Ukrainian server. The claims from the very same people that Trump was a Russian asset, or that Tulsi Gabbard is, were classic examples of misdirection.

I suspect China is playing the same game. Why wouldn’t they? Biden just began selling off the US strategic oil reserve, at a time of growing international tensions—and sending some of it to China. It is hard to account for some of the things he does with mere incompetence. It looks like deliberate sabotage.

Other Western governments seem to be doing self-destructive things. Notably Canada’s. Might other politicians be owned?

We know the current elite is selfish, and look to their own interests instead of the general welfare. So why wouldn’t they?

Britain may be relatively immune for a variety of reasons. Long experience at espionage, for one. The remarkable ability of the English to conceal their true feelings, making them ideal spies. Global contacts thanks to the old empire. And a surviving tradition of personal honour and duty; the code of the old ruling class.

Brownout

 

I have to admit to a sense of satisfaction about Patrick Brown being tossed out of the CPC leadership race by the party. It feels as though justice has been served.

There is a danger of the leadership race being manipulated by the party brass; this seems to have happened in the last race, which selected Erin O’Toole. On the other hand, candidates cannot be allowed to flout the rules, either; as seemed to happen when Patrick Brown won the Ontario leadership, or when Mulroney beat Clark for the federal job. And in Brown’s campaign, something smelled wrong. Why and how would a mere small-city mayor get so many new party members signed up, when his platform was indistinguishable from that of a much higher-profile candidate, Jean Charest? Not to mention Brown’s prior history of political jiggery-pokery. 

It feels like a much cleaner Conservative party with Brown out of the running.

Charest can hope to get the lion’s share of Brown’s support, if we count only votes that were not bought. This will allow him to mount a stronger challenge on the first ballot. But he was always likely to be a Brown voter’s second choice, and get those votes on a later ballot; or vice versa, had Brown outpolled him on the first. And the bought or fraudulent votes from the Brown campaign will probably just evaporate; improving Poilievre’s chances. If he does not take it on the first ballot, Baber’s and Lewis’s voters are likely to have him listed as a later choice. All Charest can still hope for is some of Aitcheson’s supporters. And there is no way Charest is going to lead on the first ballot.

Barring some upset, that looks like a wrap for Pierre P.

The Church Taken in Heresy

 

A Summerside, PEI, community church is in hot water, at least with the CBC, for hosting a talk on “how to protect children from what is happening during Pride Month.” Major attention from our national broadcaster, for one church in a town of 15,000 people. Good that they have their priorities straight. 

Scott Alan, the “youth programme coordinator” of a local gay group, is quoted lamenting, “I grew up always believing that church was a place for people to experience love and community and acceptance. So to see the complete reverse from a church is a little bit upsetting."

Scott Alan.

"What do you think Jesus would do? Would He cast the first stone? Or would He love and accept our community for who we are in hopes that the Holy Spirit would work through us?”

The church is not casting stones. It is simply protecting children from them. 

The relevant Bible passage is probably Matthew 18:6:

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

Even if it is debatable whether the Bible or Jesus indeed disapprove of gay sex, transgenderism, public displays of sexuality of any sort, and/or the sin of pride, it would still seem prudent to prevent children from being exposed to them. Even if they only might be against their faith.

And the passage from Matthew also explodes Alan’s claim that Jesus and Christianity is all about acceptance of sin. Jesus does not sound very accepting of bad parents in the quotation, does he?

The idea of “gentle Jesus” is from the Devil, not the Bible. In the Bible, Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead. He calls Pharisees a “brood of vipers.” He separates mankind into sheep and goats, and the latter go to eternal punishment.

Alan refers to the story of the woman taken in adultery. But he misrepresents it. Perhaps he has not read it. Jesus refuses to cast the first stone—that is, literally, he refuses to put the woman to death. That does not mean he endorses the sin. He tells her to “go, and sin no more.”

If he said the same to gays or “Gay Pride” marchers and youth workers, would Alan really be satisfied with that? 

For it seems far more accusatory than the Summerside church.

Come the Revolution ...

Some are saying the US is on the brink of civil war.

I wonder if instead they, and all of us, are on the brink of revolution.

People are becoming convinced that government, the big corporations, and media are the common enemy; that there is an immoral “elite” in charge, and they are all colluding for their own interests against the general good.

Jordan Peterson calls it “the fascistic state.” He is right.

Traditionally, the argument between the right and left was because the left thought big corporations were exploiting us, and the government defended us; while the right thought that government was trying to control us, and the free market protected us. Now they are on the same side: the left no longer trusts the government, and the right no longer trusts big corporations.

I think this is largely the result of better communications technology. Veils are being lifted. But I think the ruling elites are also more selfish and less competent than in the past. This comes with the decline of religion and of established moral codes.

I listen to Russel Brand, Jimmy Dore, Joe Rogan, Tim Poole, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles, Tucker Carlson. Some are supposedly on the left, some on the right. But they are now mostly saying the same things.

It looks as though it is not going to be a conflict between two communities or points of view, as in the US or the Spanish civil wars. It is going to be a conflict between the people and the elite, as in the French or the Russian Revolution.

Granted that there is another faction: the client groups, like the crazies who want to say men can decide to be woman, who demand safe spaces and de-platforming and “equity.” But they have been groomed to be dependent. As a result, they are unlikely to be a serious factor in any active conflict.

The bad news is that this sort of revolution, that throws out the established powers wholesale, tends to end badly. The American Revolution ended well—but because the elite of the colonies remained in place. It was really a civil war. 

We may come to hope for a civil war.

Happy Independence Day

 

To all my American cousins.

Prosecuting Justin Trudeau

 

The continuing scandals and abuses by the Trudeau-Singh government present a grave problem. It will not be enough to vote the rascals out of government at the next opportunity—assuming there will still eventually be an opportunity. It also seems necessary to exact some greater punishment, for some protection against similar actions by future governments, and to restore public trust. The people must not be in fear of the government.

Yet any possible action looks just about as risky to democracy. If leaders face prosecution on leaving office, this becomes an incentive to refuse to leave office.

Appointing Tamara Lich and other leaders of the Freedom convoy to Lieutenant-Governorships and the Senate might help. It would at least make a statement. Putting up statues of Tamara Lich and of the aboriginal woman trampled by police horses during the February protests might also have symbolic value.

But here’s another, more substantive, idea.

NATO looks on the verge of admitting Finland and Sweden. At its recent summit, it also invited delegations from Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. If all these countries joined, NATO would come close to being an alliance of all the stable liberal democracies. This could be exceptionally useful, for purposes other than mutual defense; for purposes of protecting and preserving liberal democracy everywhere. There is much the United Nations cannot be trusted to do, in terms of human rights, because the bad actors are themselves full members.

NATO could also be appealed to a neutral outside party, in Cases like Canada’s, to prosecute violations of human rights or democratic principles by government bodies within member countries. Should any internal group try to seize or subvert the democratic government, or the democratic process, the alliance could combine against it just as they would an external threat.

This should be an important incentive for governments to join: so long as they are honest, it protects their regime and e3nsures they are not shot in their beds.

Perhaps it would be too intrusive to allow soldiers from Fort Drum to cross the border now; but a subsequent government could refer prosecution of a previous government to NATO as a neutral body, so that it would not be, and would not appear to be, a political show trial; and so that those leaving office could have some expectation of fair treatment. Indeed, the current government might, in all honour, pass prosecution of Tamara Lich and the other convoy leaders, and the investigation of the invocation of the Emergency Act, to such an outside tribunal as well. We could constitute a jury of peers: elected representatives from twelve sister democracies.

The same mechanism could be available to the USA to justly sort out January 6th and Trump’s possible guilt; and the legality of the 2020 federal election. It would no longer be partisan. 

The US might well resist, always sensitive to losing any sovereignty to untrustworthy foreigners. Even so, a formal condemnation by a NATO panel might still be of great moral force.

The View from India

 

Apparently, Indians are white supremacists...

All Men Are Created Equal

 

This essay from AP seems to deliberately obscure the plain sense of the simple passage from the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.”

“Those words say to me, ‘Do better, America.’ And what I mean by that is we have never been a country where people were truly equal,” Jennings says. “It’s an aspiration to continue to work towards, and we’re not there yet.”

“We say ‘All men are created equal’ but does that mean we need to make everyone entirely equal at all times…?’”

“Robin Marty, author of ‘Handbook for a Post-Roe America,’ calls the phrase a ‘bromide’ for those ‘who ignore how unequal our lives truly are.’”

But if men are created equal, it cannot be the business of government to make them equal. The duty of government is to treat them equally; to value them for their own deeds, as opposed to valuing them for how they were created.

The author then suggests that unless we recognize gay marriage, we are denying gays the right to marry, hence treating them unequally. But we are not—gays always had equal rights to marry; just not to marry men. Is it discriminatory if we still do not allow people to legally marry animals, their grown children, themselves, or multiple partners? No, so long as the same law applies to all for the same act.

Nor is there any question that the term “all men” always referred to black men. There is no way to twist it so that it does not. 

I fear this essay is an example of the postmodern spirit, which insists that we can twist words to mean whatever we want, making them endlessly debatable, and, ultimately, meaningless.

The essay concludes with Ibram Kendi explaining “The anti-racist idea suggests that all racial groups are biologically, inherently equal.”

This is self-evidently false. Racial groups are not biologically equal, because they are not biologically identical. It is the human soul that is equal; in moral worth, because equal in the eyes of the Creator. Not everyone has the mental or physical capacity to be a doctor, or a star athlete, and it is not discrimination if you are not. One gets into these confusions when one gets materialist, and denies the soul of man.

Kendi of course goes further, and insists that all cultures must also be accepted as equal. This is nonsensical. A culture is a set of ideas; this is tantamount to insisting that all ideas are equally true.

Including things like apartheid, genocide, caste, and child sacrifice.

Timber

 

I saw a reasonably balanced account of the Ottawa July 1 protesters on CBC. They ended, fairly enough, by noting that, although the parade of ‘freedom fighters” looked large, they really represented only a small proportion of Canadians.

This seems to be true enough, according to the polls, according to the last federal election, according to the recent Ontario election. Even the spring surge in CPC membership does not prove anything. It makes the Conservatives the largest party in Canadian history, but its membership is still a tiny proportion of the general population, perhaps 2%.

However, I recall a university class back in 1974, which hosted a guest speaker from the PLO. I pointed out after her talk that polls showed the great majority of Palestinian Arabs actually supported Israel. 

“Wait ten years,” she said. She was right.

It takes time for any very new message to percolate through the population. 

The priority now is to get the message out. The leftist elite knows this, because they are doing everything they can to prevent the message from getting out. 

I retain a visceral dislike of Erin O’Toole, because he took the opposite path, declaring the conservative message wrong and promising no change. It was a betrayal; all the more so since he ran for the leadership as a “true blue” conservative. Had the party faithful wanted to run centre-left, they would have done better with Peter MacKay. O’Toole sold them and the Canadian people out for personal ambition.

Pierre Poilievre, by contrast, is a brilliant communicator; and he knows how to use social media. This allows him to bypass the media control and speak directly to the people. He has long reminded me of John Diefenbaker with his inquisitorial fire in question period. His latest video reminds me of Ronald Reagan.

He speaks in clear and simple terms of things we all know in our hearts.

We need is to get the message out, and Canada will quickly tip to the side of freedom. Poilievre looks like our best chance yet to get that message out.

Welcome to Canadian Summer!

 

Pour la Fete du Canada

 

Plattsburgh Drive-In Blues.

For Canada Day

 

One of the saddest of all songs.

For Canada Day

 

For Dominion Day

 

For Canada Day

 

Pour la Fete du Canada

 

Pour la Fete du Canada

 

For Canada Day

 

For Canada Day

 

For Canada Day

 

For Canada Day

 

For Canada Day

 

V'la le Bon Vent

Vive la Canadienne!

 

Tout le monde a la guerre...

The Final Game at Maple Leaf Gardens

 

For Canada Day.

For Canada Day

 

James Topp at the War Memorial