Playing the Indian Card

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Denial in the News

 

We are seeing currently what denial looks like. 

Sometimes it is caused by a guilty conscience, as when Adam and Eve hid from God in the bushes of the Garden of Eden. Sometimes it happens when one has been lied to for a long time. One finds it difficult to accept this; it is too disorienting. It is the “sunk costs” fallacy: if I have spent $200,000 on the car, it must be a great car. As someone once said, it is easier to fool someone than to get them to admit they have been fooled.

We are seeing this sort of denial in the general refusal to notice the high excess death rates since the Covid vaccine was rolled out, and the many younger people dying of myocarditis. 

Of course governments have a vested interest in suppressing this. Of course the drug companies do. And both government and the drug companies put a great deal of money into advertising in the media. So the media too will suppress it. 

But I think we are seeing it among ordinary people as well. Tim Poole reports others reacting violently when he raises the possibility that the deaths might be due to the vaccine. Denial normally becomes violent when challenged. Those who have been vaccinated cannot face the possibility that they made the wrong choice, that the vaccine might now be a time bomb moving through their veins. Even people who have already been diagnosed with myocarditis seem often to be in denial. They will ascribe it to a cold, for example. Rum luck. It is too hard to accept that they did it to themselves, by dutifully taking the word of the authorities. No doubt it is hardest for those who were most critical of the “anti-vaxxers.”

At times like these we discover who the honest people are, and who is delusional. The honest seem on present evidence to be an overall minority.

We see this in other things as well: the “mass graves at the residential schools” claim is now untenable. But nobody is covering it, and most people till assert it as if it is true. The “Trump was colluding with the Russians” hoax is untenable, but you still hear people insisting on it. And so forth.

It all makes life easy for con artists.


No More Pink Hair

 



Trump is certainly getting my blood pulsing. If he can actually accomplish this, it sounds like just what we need. And he has a reputation for keeping his campaign promises.

I hope he is reading the political climate correctly here; but I think he is. This platform should appeal strongly to blacks, Asian-Americans, and suburban moms—three groups the Democrats have in recent years depended upon. I have thought for some time that getting CRT out of the schools is the winning issue for the right.

Pierre Poilievre here in Canada is going instead after economic issues. But he has no choice—education is  provincial matter.

This is definitely enough to make me want to see Trump as the Republican nominee; I had been leaning to Ron DeSantis.


Monday, January 30, 2023

Do Muslim and Christians Worship the Same God?

 


I am usually in awe of William Lane Craig as a philosopher. But in his claim that Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God, I think he is off the mark. 

He argues that there is cause to accept the possibility that we worship the same God; but not sufficient warrant. It is possible, he says, that it is not the same God, and then he leaps to the conclusion that Yahweh and Allah are not the same God. 

Surely, at a minimum, he is actually giving no better justification for his own claim than for the claim that they are the same. It is possible; that does not make it necessary.

But it is not even possible. We are actually obliged to accept that it is the same God. 

Craig offers two analogies: first, we see a man treating a woman well, and observe that her husband is kind to her. But as it turns out, that man is not her husband, and her actual husband abuses her. In this case, if we say her husband treats her will, and another insists her husband abuses her, we are not talking about the same person.

His second example is the Immaculate Conception: Protestants commonly assume this Catholic doctrine refers to the birth of Christ. But to Catholics, it refers to the conception of the Virgin Mary. Accordingly, the two are not speaking of the same thing. Mistaken identity.

But these analogies, or any mistaken identity problem, depend on there being more than one existing item or person it is possible to be referring to: more than one man man in the world, and more than one conception. Therefore, confusion is possible.

By definition, there is only one God in the universe; and both Christians and Muslims aver it. Accordingly, it is impossible to accuse either of a care of mistaken identity, that they are thinking of another God.  By definition, Muslims and Christians simply must be worshipping the same God, whether or not they have different conceptions of Him. To disagree, Craig must first declare himself a polytheist.

If Muslims and Christians do differ in their concept of God, it is probably not very useful to argue about it. God is in his essence beyond human conception. Some things may be necessarily true, for example, by definition; but beyond such points it is unreasonable to insist that your own conception is the right one.

To demonstrate that they are different Gods, Craig points out that the Muslim God is hostile to non-Muslims, while the Christian God loves everyone, “unconditionally.”

Problem: Does the Hebrew God of the Old Testament love the Canaanites and Philistines “unconditionally”? That’s far from clear. He does, after all, want them wiped out, men, women, children and cattle.

And does the God of the New Testament, really? The scribes and Pharisees? The “goats” thrown into the eternal flames?

The term “Muslim” properly means “obedient to God.” So God loves Muslims. This seems to me the same as the Christian teaching: God loves those who love him, but those who reject him are damned.   Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, turning from God, is the unforgivable sin.

It is an odd partisan blindness on Dr. Craig’s part.


Sunday, January 29, 2023

The Sexual Devolution

 

I don't agree with Jordan Peterson on everything, but he's making some important points. The sexual revolution was a dumb mistake.

We need to grow up.




The Secret of Trudeau's Succes

 



It is an embarrassment to Canada that Justin Trudeau is prime minister. And not just that—he was reelected twice, albeit with a historically low share of the vote. He is clearly not qualified for the job, his temperament is reckless and self-indulgent, and his government has been plagued by scandal throughout. Aside from our own suffering, it makes us all look like craven idiots on the world stage.

This has given Trudeau a reputation as a great campaigner. What else could explain it? But this great campaigning, such as it is, is nothing more than declaring any opposition, and the Tories, white supremacists, misogynists, homophobes, Islamophobes, and so forth. This is not great campaigning so much as Canadians being craven idiots he can play like a pipe organ.

I think much of the blame belongs to the Conservatives. They have failed in their role as Her (now His) Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.  I think Peter MacKay was right to say that, in 2019, Andrew Scheer failed to score on an open net. Trudeau should have been easy to take out. And, if this is so, it is at least as true that Erin O’Toole turned in a poor performance in 2021.

I think the problem, contrary to what many politicos claim, was that these two leaders tried too hard to run toward the centre. Scheer kept a big smile pasted on his face, which looked insincere. He could not give a straight answer on abortion. The voters, or a large segment of them, had reason to suspect a “hidden agenda.” He had beaten Bernier for the leadership in a backroom deal with the milk lobby; proving himself untrustworthy.

O’Toole also smiled relentlessly and openly criticized the former Conservative government. His slogan was “not your father’s Conservative Party.” It made the Conservative Party’s supposed misdeeds, and not Trudeau’s, the issue. It was like a public admission that the party is nefarious. And, since he had run for the leadership as a “true blue” Conservative, voters again had every reason not to trust him.  He showed himself a liar: was he lying to the party faithful then, or to the voters now? Who knows what he would do if in power.

People did not vote for Trudeau. They were voting against the Tories. They were parking their votes with the devil they knew. They were being asked to buy a pig in a poke, and this scared them.


Saturday, January 28, 2023

Xerxes Calls for Diversity over Christian Unity

 


This is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

Xerxes in his latest column questions the value of Christian unity. He says it all seems to be a matter of mouthing scripts designed not to offend anyone. The real Christian unity, he suggests, would be in things like giving money to a food bank.

What, after all, he asks, does he have in common with “the gun-toting far-right evangelical fringe in the U.S. that’s now being called ‘Christian nationalism.’ Just as they have little in common with the Christian minority in India being squeezed out by the strongly pro-Hindu policies of Narendra Modi. And as they in turn have little in common with the robed guardians of priceless art treasures in the Vatican.”

This took me by surprise. The value had always seemed self-evident to me. It is as though someone had suddenly declared themselves in favour of war, as consistent government policy. Had to stop and think.

It is firstly to present a united front to God. We are all children of one divine father; disunity among us must be as troubling to him, as much against his wishes, as disunity among brothers and sisters to the father in a family. (Assuming the parent is not a psychopath. But that is another story.)

It is, second, for the sake of ourselves and one another. Any sincerely religious person is in a sincere quest for the truth. If we disagree on what we believe, it is urgent and mutually beneficial to discuss this, and see to what extent we can find agreement. If we disagree, why? This is how truth is sought, and how it is found.

It is, third, to present a consistent witness to the unchurched, to the non-religious, who need our guidance. To the extent that Christians cannot agree, it leaves the despondent without this clear guidance. 

“I have very little in common” Xerxes protests, “… with the gun-toting far-right evangelical fringe in the U.S. that’s now being called ‘Christian nationalism.’” 

He does not list the points on which he disagrees; I can only guess that it is on toting guns, voting for the political right, being evangelical, and being “Christian nationalist.” 

As to owning a gun or voting for the policies of the right, these are political or cultural considerations, not religious ones. They are not relevant; unless one can make a case that owning a gun or voting for the Republicans is immoral. Perhaps; but that argument must be made. 

Evangelical? We are all, as Christians, supposed to evangelize. That is the Great Commission—in other words, our chief duty as Christians. Leonard Cohen has referred to Christianity a “the great missionary branch of Judaism,” and I think that is about right.

I had to look up “Christian nationalism,” a new term. I don’t mean new to me; a new usage in absolute terms. It is usually used as a pejorative, not by the people so described for themselves.

I turn to Wikipedia. While imperfect, it is about as unbiased a source as we can expect to find on such a topic. Wikipedia says “Christian nationalists support the presence of Christian symbols and statuary in the public square, as well as state patronage for the display of religion, such as school prayer and the exhibition of nativity scenes during Christmastide or the Christian Cross on Good Friday.”

On that definition, I am a Christian nationalist. I like nativity scenes. If we are going to celebrate Christmas as a public holiday, why draw the line at trying to conceal what it is all about?

Moreover, if Christian symbols are barred from the public square, this is not neutral. Religion is being suppressed. This is discriminatory. 

Most fine art, architecture, and history until recent years is religious in nature. The Sistine Chapel; Da Vinci’s Last Supper; the pyramids; the Elgin marbles; Dante’s Divine Comedy; Milton’s Paradise Lost. Prohibiting it all from the public square, or refusing it public support, would be massively destructive to our culture, our cultural unity, and our quality of life.

Many of the freest and most “progressive” countries in the world have an established church: they are, constitutionally, “Christian nations.” I don’t like established churches, as opposed to support for monotheism in general, but do you really think this is a serious problem in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, Greece, Malta? Are these problematic “far-right” regimes?

Note too that the idea of “separation of church and state” is alien to the Canadian constitution. (Nor does it appear in the American one.) The preamble to the Constitution Act, 1982, identifies Canada as “founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God.” That makes Canada legally at least a monotheistic state, if not a specifically Christian one. A right to expressly religious schools, Catholic or Protestant, is guaranteed by the constitution at least for the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. That includes school prayer.

So Canada is also a Christian nation, by Wikipedia’s definition. Anyone opposed to Christian nationalism is opposed to Canada.

To be fair, I can guess at a second possible intended meaning to the term: a deification of nation and nationality. This, however, would not be Christian, but an idolatry. The term in this case is misapplied.

Xerxes thinks that the  “Christian minority in India … have little in common with the robed guardians of priceless art treasures in the Vatican.”

Actually, thirty-three percent of Indian Christians are in communion with the Vatican. I have rarely attended a Catholic mass anywhere in Canada or the Middle East without at least a few South Asian faces. Apparently there is a unity in Catholic Christianity that does not occur in Xerxes’s old-line Protestantism. I have noticed that in the Middle East: even within one Protestant denomination, they seem to segregate into ethnic congregations. 

I see this as unfortunate. One of the great joys of being Catholic is feeling a part of a family that is truly worldwide. 

As a Catholic, I also feel close to evangelical Protestants. That was historically not always the case, but it shows our progress towards Christian unity. A Catholic charismatic service is hard to distinguish from a Protestant Pentecostal one. And this is far from people mouthing scripts.

Perhaps old-line mainstream Protestants are the one group that feels alienated from the body, the “one holy, catholic and apostolic church” we all acknowledge in the Nicene Creed. And perhaps it is actually due to the lack of spirit—the disunity is effect, not cause, of the spiritlessness.

“The true unity of the Christian Church – if it exists,” says Xerxes, “lies in its actions.” And he lists several acts of charity. 

I see two problems with this position. First, acts of charity are incumbent on all of us, not just Christians. Atheists would be the first to insist that not only Christians are moral or charitable. Second, to Christians, acts are not sufficient. That would be earning salvation by our own merits. So charitable acts are not definitive of Christianity.

Xerxes also scoffs at prayer in general, let alone ecumenical prayers for Christian unity. “I don’t have much faith in what a former boss called ‘Gimme Prayers’: Please God, gimme a red wagon. Cure my cancer. Bring my wife back.”

But this is a serious distortion of what prayer is all about, including, surely, any ecumenical prayers. If you look through the standard prayers of the Catholic Church, “gimmes” are not prominent or that common. “Give us this day our daily bread” and “Lead us not into temptation” in the Our Father. “Pray for us” in the Hail Mary. “Show unto us the most blessed fruit of thy womb” in the “Hail Holy Queen.” “Have mercy on me, a sinner” in the Jesus prayer. No gimmes in the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Confiteor, and so forth. Jewish prayers, I am advised, are similar.

Not that it is wrong to ask God for things, but it should be obvious that God is giving us what is best for us in any case. So the point of prayer is not to get stuff, but to establish a loving relationship with God.

Generally speaking, we can do that in fraternal unity despite any disagreements over points of theological doctrine.


Friday, January 27, 2023

Baal in New York

 



A new bronze statue supposed to represent Ruth Bader Ginsberg—although it looks nothing like Ruth Bader Ginsberg—has been installed on the facade of the New York state courthouse in Manhattan. She joins an array of great lawgivers of history, including Confucius, Manu, Justinian, Zoroaster, and Moses.

It is a non sequitor. Ginsberg, as a US Supreme Court judge, was a law interpreter, not a law giver. It is a different role.

Although perhaps this is a legitimate if not a very self-reflective comment that Ginsberg did not, in fact, follow the law, but made it up as she went along. That has certainly been argued.

The sculptor says this statue is needed now because “women’s reproductive rights [are] under siege.” So the statue might  better be seen, particularly as it does not look like the late Supreme Court Justice, as a representation of “women’s reproductive rights” rather than Ginsberg personally.

It looks like traditional representations of evil: hair curling back like the horns of a ram, like those of some depictions of the Devil; inhuman octopus tentacles sprouting from her side instead of arms; a hint of spider in search of flies to devour.

The Devil: Wade-Giles Tarot card

If inadvertently, it all seems apt. What Freud called the subconscious is better understood as a guilty conscience.

“Women’s reproductive rights” is, of course, a euphemism for abortion. Abortion destroys children.

And it destroys more than that. It is destroying our society and our civilization. It puts us in the same class as the ancient Canaanites, the Carthaginians, or of Nazi Germany: of civilizations that must, for the good of mankind, be destroyed, and the earth salted over.

It is not hyperbole to compare unrestricted and free abortion to the Holocaust: it has killed far more people. And it has killed them younger, robbing them of more life. Unlike the Germans, none of us can claim ignorance of what is going on.

To be sure, the defenders or abortion will insist that it is not murder, because the foetus is not human. It is just a "clump of cells." Right?

Exactly the tack the Nazis took: Jews were not human. They were untermenschen.

The refusal to see the victim's humanity does not absolve one of the crime. It increases it.

Abortion is also a genocide; a genocide against the young, but ultimately against whatever “race” or nation

 allows it. Governments throughout the developed world are stressing the need for mass immigration, because of a low birthrate. And what is at least one of the causes of that low birthrate? It might almost as aptly be called a high death rate.

It is not just the number of babies aborted; but that the culture that defends abortion also goes on to despise and discourage children and childbearing. In implicit defense of the right to abort, in order to allow unrestricted sex, the myth of “overpopulation” and resource scarcity has been popularized for decades, in the media and in the schools. Our underpopulation is the result. Our culture is dying off.

But it does not end there. We all know, in our conscience, in our thoughts alone in the night, that abortion is murder. We all know that we are collectively and perhaps individually guilty of a great wrong. The hysterical desire to conceal and deny this guilt rather than repent and give up sex on instinct has led to the general collapse of civil discourse. It has let to an intolerance of any disagreement or dissenting views: for truth itself becomes the enemy. If, after all, we allow people to speak freely, someone might at any moment mention the elephant in the maternity ward.

It has led to a persecution of all moral lawgivers. They make us feel guilty.

Most obviously the church. It has led to the persecution of priests for supposed pederasty. Yes, there are pederastic priests, but probably no more than in the general population. It is not, in any case, a fault of the church per se. It has led to the myth of the evil residential schools, the imaginary mass graves, and the vandalism of churches. People want to blame the church, and they will come up with something.

It has led to the toppling of the statues of other lawgivers: Sir John A. Macdonald, Thomas Jefferson, Egerton Ryerson, Henry Dundas. Not those guilty of actual misdeeds or injustices: those guilty of combatting misdeeds and injustices. Those who built the society and its structure of laws. Laws are “patriarchy.” Laws are “white supremacy.”

 It has also led to a glorification of homosexuality and transgenderism. Why? First, because homosexuals are an emblem of sex without any thought of reproduction. Homosexuality  separates sex from babies, representing the libertine ideal. But more deeply, “gays” have gained some unconscious moral cachet from the fact that they cannot be suspected of having or having demanded an abortion. They are better than the rest of us.

One can see that it also leads to a hatred for civilization itself.  Partly because civilization is law, and so makes us feel guilty. Partly because it represents us, our self-image, and we hate ourselves for the sin. The guilty conscience does this, on the group or on the individual level. It leads to self-hate and self-destructive behaviour. A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Some years ago, when she was still quite young, my daughter made a Christmas card for her mother. It was beautiful; she has great artistic talent. I posted it proudly on Facebook. 

Unexpectedly, a number of friends, North American women, commented in alarm. What was going on? Was she being abused? 

She had included a line thanking her mother for not aborting her. 

The American and Canadian women immediately saw this as “something wrong.” And they jumped to the conclusion that her mother hated her.

As I pointed out to one of them, anywhere abortion is legal, the mother makes a conscious choice whether to kill or not to kill. It has nothing to do with the child’s merits—she has not yet met the child, and cannot know its character. She could not have decided whether she liked or didn’t like her. So my daughter’s comment was only sensible. She was and is a verry bright child, and saw the implications of legal abortion.

In the meantime, their comments were obviously traumatic to both my daughter, who could not understand what she had said that was so wrong, and to my wife, who had been accused of child abuse. The commentators seemingly took neither into consideration. They were too hysterical to have thought such things through. Their guilty conscience had taken over their reason and their compassion.

So we see everywhere in the larger society. Once one embraces vice, vice takes control, and one becomes vicious. That is what the word “vicious” means. We become weasels fighting in a hole.

It is significant that none of our Arab or Filipina friends, which probably outnumber our North American friends on Facebook, thought there was anything disturbing or untoward about my daughter’s abortion comment. They only admired the lovely card.

Abortion is illegal in the Philippines and in the Middle East. 

It was only the North Americans who were upset about the comment.

In short, it was their guilty conscience speaking to them.

Since I pointed out to that one friend that my daughter’s comments were reasonable so long as abortion is legal, she has not “spoken” to me. She will not respond to any attempts to reach her.

She is not the only old friend who has “unfriended” me over exactly this issue: abortion. Not something I am vocal about; leaving aside what I might post here, I do not evangelize on the issue with friends. I only respond when it comes up; I do not bring it up.

Perhaps that is a mistake we are all making. Perhaps the only way to save civil discourse, our friendships, our families, our civilization itself, is to ban abortion. 

The future belongs to those nations in which it is banned.


Thursday, January 26, 2023

Looks Like Something Is About to Hit the Fan

 




A Description of the Indigenous Schools by a Staff Member

 

True North quotes from Reverend Canon Stan Cuthand, who was chaplain at a couple of the Indian Residential Schools. 

He doesn't praise the schools to the sky, but points out two facts: attendance at residential schools was not compulsory, and they respected Indian culture.


Deligion in the Schools

 

Due to the Canadian government’s current inability to perform such simple tasks as issuing citizenship certificates and passports, I have been forced for years to homeschool my kids by distance.

I have considered this an extreme hardship; and have been horrified at the thought of how much they are missing in their education. 

But perhaps not. 

After all, if government cannot manage simple paperwork, how well are they going to do education?

It recently occurred to me that I ought to be teaching my two geography and science. 

I went online to look for a geography and a science text.

I could find nothing suitable. All available texts seem not to be about geography or science at all. They are about global warming, environmentalism, and the depletion of natural resources. With a lot of pointless make-work projects assigned. They are teaching nothing, and in the most inefficient way imaginable. 

Or rather, worse than nothing. In the first place, students will have a misconception of what science and geography are about. In the second, they will have been indoctrinated into a bizarre cult with no scientific or empirical basis, nor philosophical foundation. They will think these dubious assertions are established truth. In the third, this nature cult seems tailored to replace religion and conventional morality. It is paganism.

I am not claiming that the teaching of science was any good when I went to high school.

But this is much worse. And at least geography used to make sense.


Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Down that Rabbit Hole

 


The point of the “green world” that Northrop Frye repeatedly discovers in Shakespeare’s comedies and romances is that it is the world of imagination, where the stories come from. In it the impossible happens, with magic and fairies and music from some unseen orchestra. 

As this is the place where stories come from, and where every reader goes to, the challenge, faced by every writer, is to propose some way to get there from the workaday world we know. This is the “willing suspension of disbelief” Coleridge identifies. We must believe in the world of the book or story.

It has to be some place people do not commonly go; because it is radically apart from our common world. In it magic happens. It is not sufficient to say it is a dream. Baum, in “The Wizard of Oz,” used a tornado spinning Dorothy over the rainbow. The film version transformed this into a fever dream; which is the one thing one must not as a writer do. Partly because that is too easy, even if true; partly because it harms the willing suspension of disbelief. We are too inclined to dismiss our dreams, rightly or wrongly, as unimportant. They fade and we forget them with the dawn.

Shakespeare frequently makes it a dark forest; hence Frye’s “green world.” Which he mistakenly imagines is some fertility ritual. Forest merely represents some place not commonly visited, away from the madding crowd. The forest is often a portal to fairyland in the fairy tales as well: Sleeping Beauty’s castle is beyond an impenetrable forest. Hansel and Gretel are lost in the woods and find the witch and her gingerbread house.

In “The Tempest,” Shakespeare also uses a voyage that loses its bearings and lands on a remote and uncharted island. This is an especially popular conception in British literature, England being a seafaring nation. Gulliver’s Travels, Lord of the Flies, Robinson Crusoe, More’s Utopia, Irish legends of Tir na n’Og and Hy-Brasil. 

Americans, influenced by their own geography, prefer to locate it on the frontier, past the next mountain barrier, somewhere in the West. 

Perhaps the best portal concept found in literature, to my mind, is the mirror in “Through the Looking Glass.” This is satisfying on several symbolic levels.

Science fiction has it easy: the world of imagination is out in space, on another planet.

Another common location is above the clouds; as in the child’s conception of heaven, or the land of giants in Jack and the Beanstalk.

Another is under the earth, perhaps entered through a cave. We see this as the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland, but it is also familiar in the classical conception of the Underworld. Any cave in the area of Greece has a legend making it the entrance to the underworld.

In C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, the portal to the magical land is through the back of a wardrobe. 

In Norse mythology, or some Irish legend, it is across the rainbow, perhaps using the rainbow as a bridge.

In Greek mythology, it is also at times on top of some inaccessible mountain: Olympus. Or it can be over the impenetrable mountains, in a mountain valley: Shangri-la; the Tibet of popular imagination. 

Or, in Greek mythology, reached by voyaging to the end of the supposedly flat earth, and crossing over into the metaphysical realm. There is a beautiful old print, that I have loved for year, and now feature as the background for my Facebook page, showing a shepherd on a hilltop poking his head through the veil of sky, and seeing the celestial gears beyond the physical.

Of course, all these are metaphors. Nobody should seriously think you can sail beyond the end of the Earth, or find some new world above the clouds. Nevertheless, the power of the concept of there being another world is so strong that many over the centuries have really set sail, or headed west, only, perhaps, in the end, to throw themselves in final despair off the Golden Gate Bridge. 

The next and obvious question: is this world of the imagination real? This is a separate question, after all, from whether you can get there by climbing the Andes, or leaning through a mirror. And a more fundamental one.

“The Matrix,” for one example, proposes the idea that this physical and shared social world is the illusion, and the other world, Wonderland, the green world, is the real one. 

Philosophically, this is just as tenable as the reverse. As Chuang Tzu famously asked, “Am I a man who dreamt last night I was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly now dreaming I am a man?”

That question has remained unanswered for all the centuries.

Plato, in his analogy of the cave, proposes the latter. We are all butterflies dreaming we are men. To him, the portal is philosophy; meditation; prayer, if you like. 

The world’s religions say the same. 

Perhaps more accurately, prayer and meditation or art is the mirror, the looking glass, through which we see the real world. 

But it is as through a glass darkly, or through a crystal ball.

It is death that is the actual portal we pass though, and see it all at last face to face.

One thing is clear: we all have a definite sense that there is this other world; and we all have an inner yearning, stronger in some, weaker in others, for it. This is why we love listening to stories, reading novels, watching movies, playing video games. We are imagining ourselves into this other world. It is seemingly the source of almost everything we call joy or fun. From earliest years, for fun, we pretend to be cowboys, or pirates, or superheroes. We imagine the doll to be alive, and the truck to be full-scale.

One might almost suppose we were programmed for this, for this other place, by our maker.

Not that it is a paradise: it is clearly a place both of extreme good and evil. Dragons live there, and gorgons, and the wicked dead, in their own terrible zone of punishments; as well as the blessed, the saints and angels, the houris, in theirs. 

While the laws of nature no longer apply there, the moral law there is strict, evident, and absolute. In a way it is not in the present world. There is no longer any ambiguity or deceit surrounding good and evil. There is no chaos. There is nothing random about the imagination, although some of us may wish there were.

If Plato and the world’s religions are wrong about this other world, what is this inner sense of it always being just beyond the next bend, and this eternal yearning for it, evident in us all, at least as children? At least before the din of life drowns it out. Where is that coming from?


Evil Is Not the Problem; Good Is

 

Here's a clear example of how, to the zombies or goats, the sin is not the sin, but anyone pointing out the sin and insisting on moral behaviour.

This is where our society is headed, and it is the low road to civilizational decline and general poverty, among other worse things.


Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Dawn of the Dead

 


I feel as though Jacinda Ardern was the canary. Along with Damar Hamlin. I feel as though we are at a Stalingrad and Al Alamein moment. While not entirely visible yet, while the bad guys are actually at their furthest extent, they are overextended and desperate. I feel the tide is turning against the woke.

Reputedly Pope Benedict has a book coming out, held back to be published posthumously, in which he cuts loose. Now he may speak frankly about the corruption in the church. His secretary has just released a similar book. Cardinal Pell has been revealed posthumously as the author of a letter harshly criticizing Pope Francis and the wokening of the church. Their recent death actually gives Benedict and Pell added authority; a though they are martyrs, speaking from heaven. 

Pope Francis is losing the moral high ground. The moral high ground matters; it is the whole battle.

Something similar is happening in US politics; with the admission that Hunter Biden’s laptop was authentic, and now the discovery of classified documents scattered around Biden’s offices and residences. It is more than a bit mysterious; since the documents are being uncovered in slow motion, in the presence of Biden’s lawyers, why is this happening? And how much of the truth are we really being allowed to see?

Most likely, this is a palace coup. Because, as with Ardern, the dark forces who control the Democratic Party see worse scandals coming down the pike, and need Biden as the pre-emptive scapegoat. He’s old, he’s had his time at the trough; time for him to take it for the team.

 Everyone surely now realizes that Biden is, at a minimum, a habitual liar. Also probably deeply corrupt, and possibly working against the nation’s interest.

But it I not hard to guess what the coming scandal is that is requiring the defenestration of Ardern and Biden. It has to do with the Covid pandemic and the vaccine.

The collapse on the field of Damar Hamlin has similarly lifted the veil on the risks of the Covid vaccine. No more just a rumour some of us had heard; people are waking up as if from a dream. Suddenly everyone realized something was wrong. Scott Adams has now publicly admitted he was wrong to scoff at the anti-vaxx movement. 

Worse, the virus itself came from a government lab, involving US government funding.

The ruling elite worldwide are revealed as responsible for the deaths of millions. 

It is hard to see how any government that demanded vaccine mandates can now remain in power in any democratic country. Notably, in Canada, the truckers are vindicated, and Trudeau is revealed as a monster.

And he knew what he was doing. His hysterical reaction to the convoy shows that.

He, and the other leaders, no doubt did not intend the virus to escape, but they did exploit the crisis to try to seize more power and control over their people.

We now know, thanks to Elon Musk, that “big tech” and government were colluding to suppress dissent and control the political process. “Big pharma” was suppressing possible cures.

On the one hand, it is disorienting and frightening to discover that your government, and “the science,” and the media, and your electronic gadgets, and the church, cannot be trusted, and you might drop dead at any moment from a heart attack because your trusted them and got triple-vaccinated or more. The atmosphere feels almost surreal, apocalyptic.

On the other hand, although there is a terrible death toll, and it has not come to an end, this is the sensation brought on by sudden change, or sudden revelatory knowledge. There is an earthquake in our collective worldview. 

I thought as of a couple of years ago that the Covid epidemic was working like a sudden flash of lightning in the dark, revealing where all the zombies are.

Now the aftermath feels almost like a new day dawning.


Monday, January 23, 2023

Zebedee

 


The calling of James and John


One of my favourite comedic bits from the Bible was in today’s mass reading. 

 As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen.

He said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

At once they left their nets and followed him.

He walked along from there and saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father and followed him.

Nobody ever seems to notice old Zebedee.

He’s left stranded there in the boat.

No permission, no explanation, no farewells. No help with unloading the catch, stowing the craft, mending the nets. James and John leave immediately.

I can imagine the old greybeard muttering to himself about ingratitude, or shouting and cursing after them.

People do not notice it, because it defies their expectations and probably their desires.

It’s not nice, is it? It’s not respectful.

Yet it is an illustration of what Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospel:

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” – Luke 14:26

“Another disciple said to him, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’

But Jesus told him, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.’” – Matthew 8: 21-22

The Bible is not about family values. Family is an idolatry, and the Gospel makes this point here rather emphatically.

You have one Father. Accept no substitutes.


Sunday, January 22, 2023

Fire and Ice

 


Current and recent events make it clear that there really are two kinds of people in the world. It’s not just some cliché. And they are living in two different realities. Their views are so incompatible that it seems they must come to blows.

The first group believes in good and evil, and understands the point of life to be, largely, to do good and avoid evil.

The second group believes in no good but to do and get what they want. Evil is interfering with them in the pursuit of their desires, or criticizing them.

Understand this distinction, and much that is happening now in the news becomes clear. We are in a great battle of good and evil, and what one side calls good, the other calls evil.

It immediately strikes me that this dichotomy is expressed well by the Gospel’s division of mankind into sheep and goats. If you have ever had acquaintance with both sheep and goats, you will see it. Sheep automatically follow “the rules”—keep in mind that the shepherd referred to in the analogy is God, not some political or social movement, and not government. What is meant by the allegory is not social conformity. In dramatic contrast to sheep, although they look similar, goats do and eat whatever they want. You cannot tell a goat what to do.

The difference is also so distinct that it is remarkably easy to classify people as one or the other. This justifies the gospel’s firm division: sheep go to heaven, and goats go to hell, with no parole and no appeal.

Consider Erin O’Toole’s recent editorial concerned with the tone of politics. He objected to all the flags reading “F*** Trudeau.” 

He made no reference to any possible acts of Trudeau that might have prompted such strong emotions.

In other words, O’Toole did not care about acts that might have done harm to others; only being called out for them. The only sin is admitting sin exists. The only sin is judgement.

Pope Francis is also a goat. This is revealed by his recent profanity-filled demand to seminarians that they always give absolution. The problem is not the sin; it is acknowledging sin as something real and important. The only sin is judgement.

The recent "defund the police" drive was of a piece. Insane as it must appear to sheep, the premise was that the problem was not crime, but prosecuting it.

Although, ironically, the goats accuse the sheep of intolerance, the reverse is true. Sheep are constitutionally mild creatures. The sheep will go a long way in tolerating or ignoring the actions of others. But the goats cannot tolerate even a word wrong, or even silence. Ask St. Thomas More. They are therefore especially concerned with “hate speech.”

For example, abortion is free and legal. Protesting abortion, within a certain distance of an abortion clinic, is illegal. 

Apparently even praying silently in the vicinity of an abortion clinic is now illegal; if they can infer what you are praying about.

For example, Benedict or John Paul II, sheep, were reasonably content allowing either the Latin or the Novus Ordo mass to be said. Both were apparently softies when it came to dealing with Vatican corruption. Francis, by contrast, a goat, is eager to crack heads—the heads of those who complain about Vatican corruption. And he is adamant, for no visible reason but promoting disrespect for something holy, that the Latin mass must not be said. 

While the sheep are happy enough to say that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation, and to tolerate homosexual sex or sex outside marriage for others, for the sake of social peace and Christian charity, the goats insist that one must publicly agree that homosexual sex or transsexualism is morally good, and wear an advertisement for homosexual pride in public, or be fined, boycotted, or lose your livelihood. 

The sheep are prepared to forgive any sin with repentance. The goats will hunt down old private tweets from years before, or ancient testimony of drunken sophomore parties, to prove supposed “hypocrisy” in anyone who dares profess the unalterable nature of right and wrong.

This is why, in times when the goats gain dominance, it seems that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Sheep are more tolerant and easygoing.

A recent column by regrettably goatish pal Xerxes opines that political positions ought to be judged on what emotions they appeal to: do they appeal to hate or anger? If so, they must be rejected.

So it is okay to do what you want to others, so long as you say the right things. The important thing is that the victims must never be angry about it, or accuse anyone of anything. 

A respondent to Xerxes sharpened the point: political speech must above all not appeal to guilt. 

“[T]hey attempt to make you feel guilty. The sad faces, woeful looks, desperate conditions depicted help us to feel guilty of not caring, not being willing to help, not participating… and can become powerful influencers/manipulators to open our wallets.”

“Making me feel guilty elicits a deletion in my world.”

For the goats, guilt is, in the end, the only evil. That is, their actual enemy is their conscience. And the worse their conscience troubles them, the more extreme their intolerance will become. They will begin smashing icons. They will begin burning churches. And there is nothing the sheep can do, by their own behaviour, to prevent or to moderate this. It is perhaps best for the sheep to realize this. You might as well speak out.

Officially, the Nazi genocide against the Jews was on racial grounds. However, the Nazis were largely influenced by Nietzsche. It seems likely that much of their real, if unstated, motive was that they blamed the Jews for spreading “slave morality” in German and world culture: in other words, the demand to “do unto others” and the Ten Commandments. Morality, in short. How dare they?

To Nazis, the great enemy, according to Himmler, was “pity.” Pity was weakness in the evolutionary struggle. For “pity,” one might as well read the prime Christian virtue of charity, caritas.

In ancient times, this battle of sheep and goats corresponded pretty well with the distinction between polytheists and ethical monotheists. This is why paganism has generally been able to be tolerant of other paganisms, and monotheisms of other monotheisms, but neither has been historically tolerant of the other tendency. They are like fire and ice.

We are in a time of global struggle today, it is a struggle between good and evil, and the battle lines are remarkably clear.


Saturday, January 21, 2023

The Politics of Poetry

 

Pauline Johnson in recital

Scouting publishers to whom to submit a poetry manuscript, I note that almost all, in their submission guidelines, include a phrase similar to the following:

“[we] also encourage poets from the LGBT community, Indigenous and racialized poets, as well as poets with disabilities.”

This almost looks like boilerplate.

Properly, this is against the law. And it is immoral. This is discrimination on prohibited grounds of unalterable characteristics. Unfortunately, as Jordan Peterson has said recently, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has become a bitter joke. Governments and courts in Canada treat it with contempt.

The official justification for this discrimination is that these groups are “historically underrepresented communities,” to quote from one other example of boilerplate.

If these groups are historically underrepresented, they are obviously being overrepresented now. Everyone wants their manuscripts. 

Producing a rather boring sameness for readers. So much for diversity.

Is it even true that they have been “historically” underrepresented? 

As to “racialized” poets, that is, poets with skin colours other than pink, until the expansion of the British Empire in the nineteenth century, and indeed until some years after that, there would have been rather few “racialized” folk who spoke English fluently. Were they really underrepresented in the English literature and publishing of the 19th and 20th centuries in proportion to their actual numbers? That is not obvious. That case must be made. Rabindranath Tagore, writing in English, took the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. The US had the Harlem Renaissance. 

There is an automatic reader interest in the exotic. Contrary to what leftists insist, people do not want to read about their own boring lives, but about lives different from their own. Witness Star Wars, or Gulliver’s Travels. As a result, anything purportedly written by someone from another culture has always had an advantage in getting published. In the 19th century, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam made quite a splash even in translation.

As to indigenous poets, again, there has always been an advantage, that of exoticism. There is reason to believe they have been historically overrepresented, not underrepresented, in proportion to their population. Pauline Johnson made a splash in her day by reciting in supposedly Indian costume, and claiming to be an Indian princess. I have found imitators, less well remembered, on Internet Archive. Archie Belaney called himself “Grey Owl” and pretended to be aboriginal in order to have a literary career.

And were the LGBT community ever underrepresented? We cannot really know, because few would have been out of the closet back when sodomy was a crime; but gays themselves regularly claim that almost every prominent author of the past was actually gay. That’s impressive, given that they were only 1-3% of the population.

Perhaps the issue is that specifically gay concerns were not aired. That may be so; but necessarily, specifically gay concerns are only of much interest to about 1-3% of the population. So there’s that. 

Were those with disabilities underrepresented until recently?

Like, say, Milton, who was blind? Cervantes, who had lost the use of one arm? 

Does depression count? Almost every decent poet suffers from depression, according to surveys done at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. At a minimum, those suffering from mental illness are certainly overrepresented among successful poets; and always have been. After all, Aristotle comments on this over two thousand years ago.

Another group that used to be favoured in the same way in publishers’ calls for submissions, but from whom favour has recently been withdrawn, is white women. It certainly used to be claimed that they were historically underrepresented. 

This too was probably wrong. Female poets were common in the 19th century. Like homosexuals, women had the advantage over men, in the old days, of not having to support a family. As a result, they were more often able to turn their attention to less lucrative pursuits, like poetry.

So what’s behind this fiction that these groups are underrepresented? Indeed, that historically overrepresented groups are underrepresented?

Is it ignorance, or conscious prejudice? Does everyone else hate straight white men just as everyone used to hate the Jews? Indeed, used to hate the Jews as “overrepresented.” 

The one group that actually is historically underrepresented in poetry is Canadians. That is, in the sense that Canada, as a young country, has not had enough of its geography and culture consecrated by poetry. As a result, we all live drabber and uglier lives than we should.

If we publish poets who focus only on LGBT issues, or black issues, or Asian issues, or issues faced by aboriginals, or the disabled, we are, at the same time, withholding poetry from the majority of Canadians.

It is a philistine move.

It also explains why poetry is far less popular than it used to be in Canada. It has deliberately stopped speaking to Canadians.


Friday, January 20, 2023

Pope Francis Uses Gutter Language in Demanding All Sins Be Forgiven in Confessional

 


I think this has to be exaggerated and it is based on witness accounts rather than written sources.

But then, why does the pope so often speak extemporaneously like this? Quite possibly, so he can promote what he truly believes, and retain deniability should the orthodox object. The ambiguity that remains gives license to ignore the orthodox teaching.

In brief, Pope Francis seems to have cursed out any priest who withholds absolution in the confessional. Evil is not evil: only judgement is evil.

According to one seminarian, the Pope is reported to have invited them "not to be clerical, to forgive everything". More precisely, he is alleged to have added that "if we see that there is no intention to repent, we must forgive all. We can never deny absolution, because we become a vehicle for an evil, unjust, and moralistic judgement.”

This conforms to the postmodern doctrine that there really is no right and wrong. The important thing is to avoid feeling guilt. 

Given, however, that there is a right and a wrong, a priest is doing a penitent no favours in assuring them they are forgiven when they do not meet the criteria for forgiveness. This is a license to sin with abandon, in confidence that they can avoid spiritual consequences by regularly going to confession. And this, in turn, is a one-way ticket to that hot place. No refunds.


David Crosby

 



David Crosby has died, reputedly of Covid. I never thought he had much talent. As a songwriter, his lyrics seemed self-indulgent, to listless melodies:

Almost cut my hair

It happened just the other day

It's gettin' kinda long

I coulda said it wasn't in my way

But I didn't and I wonder why

I feel like letting my freak flag fly


This is someone who has nothing important to say.

He was nothing special on guitar, just chording and strumming. When he first became famous, as a member of the Byrds, he did not yet know how to play it. They had to use studio musicians. He first tried the bass, but found it too difficult. 

He fancied himself a producer, but did a famously bad job producing Joni Mitchell’s and Leonard Cohen’s first albums. Cohen had to re-record it all.

He was great at singing harmony. That’s what everyone credits him with. And I love vocal harmony; but even so, his harmonies do not do anything for me. Although he was fine at hitting the notes, and perhaps working out a counterpoint, there was no special quality to his voice. He seemed to me to have only a simple strategy: go high.

So why did he go so much farther than so many starving musicians with more to say?

To be fair, other musicians I respect do praise him. Brian Wilson. Steve Stills. Neil Young was prepared to perform with him. So was Roger McGuinn, for a few years. 

I hear he was always a source of really good dope. That might explain it.

Being a rich kid might have helped there.



Thursday, January 19, 2023

Listing of Churches Arttacked in Canada Since the "Unmarked Mass Graves" Hoax

 

From True North.

Heartbreaking.


The Undead

 

Werewolf: Cronach the Elder

We generally tell ourselves that nobody is beyond redemption until the point of death. It seems uncharitable to suppose otherwise. But is this clearly true?

In 1 John, the evangelist tells us there is no point in praying for someone who has committed a truly grave sin. 

When the scribes and Pharisees appear at the Jordan for repentance, John the Baptist rejects them. 

In the story of the rich man and Lazarus, Abraham says evangelization of the rich man’s relatives is useless: not even a miracle can make them repent. 

And Jesus advises us not to cast our pearls before swine.

That actually sounds pretty cut and dried: some people are apparently beyond redemption.

Further evidence is a folk image found all around the world: of soulless beings in human form. The most familiar modern expression is the zombie—and it seems significant that we find the image so compelling. It speaks to something in our experience; we have all met zombies, NPCs. They are being played by some demon vice. The parasitic demon or idolatry has supplanted altogether their soul.

Vampires are a variation on the theme. Like zombies, they have no soul, and survive by draining others of life energy. That is how some people are. Like zombies, they are “undead.” In other words, they are still animate, but the soul has departed. It is perhaps already in hell.

Similar figures are the werewolf, the rakshasa in India, the wendigo among the Algonquins Indians, the Nephilim in the Bible, the witches and ogres and sirens and lamia and melusines of European fairy and folk legend. It is arbitrary to see them as distinct beings; they are different takes on the same being. They are spiritual portraits of people who have surrendered their souls to vice. Modern psychology calls them narcissists.

Lycaon transformed into a wolf.

Lycaon, a figure in Greek legend, seems to have been the first werewolf. He was transformed into a wolf because he served u his own son as a meal—the wolf form was the outward expression of his true bestial nature. He had a beast’s soul.

“Ever since the time of Lykaon a man has changed into a wolf at the sacrifice to Zeus Lykaios, but that the change is not for life; if, when he is a wolf, he abstains from human flesh, after nine years he becomes a man again, but if he tastes human flesh he remains a beast for ever.”

On the mountain on which Lykaon killed his son, it is said, no man casts a shadow.

The rakshasa likes to kidnap and devour children. She can at will appear as a beautiful woman. She is driven by lust, gluttony, envy and anger, without restraint.

Lilith

She closely resembles Lilith, the female demon of Judaism and the ancient Middle East. She was the first wife of Adam—so she must take human form. Unlike Eve, however, she is still around, devouring children—so undead.0

The wendigo lives in the forest and devours any human he encounters. He generally appears as human, but his spirit is that of a beast. He is a shape-shifter. “The wendigo is said to invoke feelings of insatiable greed/hunger, the desire to cannibalize other humans, and the propensity to commit murder in those that fall under its influence.”(Brightman, Robert A. 1988. "The Windigo in the Material World.)

The Nephilim are supposedly a human tribe. 

“The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.” – Genesis 6:1

“And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.” – Numbers 32

From these passages, the Nephilim are taken to be gigantic in stature. But perhaps this refers not to their physical size, but their self-image and boastful nature—their narcissism.

They were apparently prone to unbridled lust. “They married whomever they chose.” And they are the reason Yahweh sent the Flood to purify the world. He considered them beyond salvation.

Ogres are sometimes also thought of as giants; yet they are also able to make themselves small, and pass as ordinary people. 

"I have been moreover informed," said the Cat, "but I know not how to believe it, that you have also the power to take on you the shape of the smallest animals; for example, to change yourself into a rat or a mouse; but I must own to you, I take this to be impossible."

"Impossible?" cried the Ogre, "you shall see that presently," and at the same time changed into a mouse, and began to run about the floor. (Perrault, Puss in Boots).

 

Despite the affection which he [the prince] bore her, he was afraid of his mother, for she came of a race of ogres, and the king had only married her for her wealth.

It was whispered at the court that she had ogrish instincts, and that when little children were near her she had the greatest difficulty in the world to keep herself from pouncing on them. (Perrault, Sleeping Beauty)

So again, the large size perhaps refers to their self-image. They too eat children, and male ogres rape women.

Sirens, mermaids, or lorelei may or may not be driven by lust; but they lure with lust. They are apparently driven by a desire to devour; as are lamia and melusines. They lure unwary suitors to their death. This resembles the “love bombing” familiar to those who have dealt with narcissistic romantic partners.

There are features common to most or all of these imaginary creatures.

They fear the light, and crave darkness. In other words, they hate the truth. Vampires are killed by sunlight. In the original zombie classic, “Day of the Dead,” the zombie assault actually takes place over one night. And the zombies fear fire—light. Werewolves transform and do their deeds at night, under the moon. Sirens and melusines hide their fishlike nature under the water line, emerge from the unknown depths, and will flee if their nakedness is uncovered—if they are seen in the bath.




Narcissists are enemies of the truth—it requires systematic self-delusion to submit to vice. One is hiding from conscience. This is why they attack anyone spreading pearls. 

Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. (John 3:19-20)

These various revenants are often suave or charming or superficially attractive. The female rakshasa, or the Melusine, lamia, or siren, generally can make themselves appear beautiful. The vampire is courtly, well-mannered. 

Lacking conscience or ethics, narcissists are commonly charming in this way. They can say whatever is to their advantage; so they become skilled at manipulation. In other words, they are shape-shifters. 

Several of them have the power to infect their victims with their vice: vampires and zombies do. Those who do not, directly and literally, often lure their victims by appealing to a vice: the lamia, the siren, the rakshasa. This is indeed true of the narcissist: he or she badly wants to lure others into vice. Moral behaviour in their presence is a threat to their conscience.

Many of these monsters seem to target children and the young. That is apt for narcissists too. It is not just that children are the most vulnerable victims; they are objectionable to the narcissist for their innocence and sincerity; as well as for the nagging thought that they might outlive the narcissist. Those they cannot tempt into vice they will persecute.

And so, while popular focus currently is on narcissistic love partners, the greater danger is the narcissistic parent.

There are zombies among us.

A Kiwi Sprouts Wings

 



Jacinda Ardern is stepping down within a couple of weeks. 

I did not see this coming. I had just done a personal list of autocratic leaders I thought might fall in the current year. She was not on it.

Xi, Putin, Biden, Trudeau, Sunak, Khameini, Pope Francis, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Hafez Assad.

She deserved a spot for autocracy, but I did not think she was in danger.

She broke up during her resignation speech. That suggests, prima facie, she did not want to go. What pushed her? And she’s leaving surpisingly soon.

I understand she was down in the polls, but not by much. And she had almost a year until the next election. 

She said she lacked the energy for another term.

Maybe she lacked the energy to face a firestorm she knows is coming: about the vaccine, about the Covid response, about Chinese influence. Things are starting to come out, and to be noticed, about each of these. 

If this was enough to take her down, it may be enough to take down some others as well. Trudeau, Biden.

It may also be that she lacked energy because she had begun to lack conviction. As the positions of the left have become less and less tenable, it is not surprising if some leaders start to doubt the point of what they have been doing. That leads to a lack of energy.

I think change is in the wind. Give ten points for each leader who resigns or is forced out over the next year, from the above list, and start with ten points for Ardern. I expect at least three more to be gone by year end—40 points.


Tuesday, January 17, 2023

A Few Matters on My Brain

 

Dine in? Entree at the zombie cafe

Our school textbooks generally reinforce a foolish materialism and hedonism. This goes on in the background, in their assumptions, as much as explicitly. One wonders if the indoctrination is intentional, or if the authors just don’t themselves know any better.

A text I’m currently using to tutor high school students includes in passing the example sentence

“Before we continue the discussion that was interrupted yesterday, let me begin by explaining that pain is something that is felt in your brain.”

Pain is something felt in your arm or other body part, or, more accurately, in your mind. One does not have pain receptors in the brain. 

The problem is, of course, the confusion of the brain, a lump of meat, with the mind or spirit.

“On hearing the word vacation, most people react positively.”

Webster’s 1913 dictionary, or the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), offer for “positive” a variety of meanings: definite, legislated, existing in reality, greater than zero, optimistic, and so forth. For this reason, the term should be avoided. It is ambiguous. But even then, no traditional meaning of “positive” applies here. 

Why this now widespread misuse of the term? 

My sense is that it is an effort to obscure or erase the distinction between “desired” and “good.” Either is vaguely glossed with the term “positive.” Confusing moral issues; seeking to deny morality.

We all just do what we want… and that is good.

I’m not positive that is right.


Monday, January 16, 2023

Multicultism

 


In 1897, Leonard Cohen’s grandfather founded the Jewish Times in Montreal, Canada’s first English-language Jewish-interest newspaper. 

“The paper had a clear mandate: to help Canadianize the teeming influx of Yiddish-speaking Jews arriving from Eastern Europe…. Essentially the journal sought to promote the adoption of mainstream non-Jewish social customs that, religious observance aside, would make Jews indistinguishable from their gentile neighbours” (Michael Posner, Leonard Cohen: Untold Stories. The Early Years).

 


 

This is the attitude past waves of Canadian immigrants took: the task was integration, Canadianization.

Now imagine if Leonard Cohen’s family, and the rest of Montreal’s Jewish community, had instead embraced the modern cult of multiculturalism, and decided the imperative was instead to cling to their Jewish and European traditions. Imagine Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton, A.M. Klein, Mordecai Richler publishing only in Yiddish, in small-circulation Yiddish-language journals, writing of Ashkenazi ethnic culture and concerns. Or, if writing in English, writing only of Jewish life. Imagine how much poorer Canadian, and indeed world, culture would be. And imagine how much worse this would have been for them. They would not have had a career.

That gives some sense of the harm done by multiculturalism. It is, not to split hairs, pure evil. It is pandemonium. We need the melting pot. We need e pluribus unum.

I am, by family tradition, part Mohawk (“Haudenosaunee”), if mostly Irish. Some of my in-laws and cousins have their Indian cards; although I would never consent to carry one. I am Canadian, and all Canadians are Metis. 

Growing up largely in an immigrant area of Montreal, I studied world religions and literatures to the doctoral level. I have spent half my adult life in Asia. My wife is East Asian; my kids are tri-racial. Yet I have no place in a “multicultural” Canada, because I am too multicultural. I do not fit into any convenient, mutually hostile, ethnic ghetto. Canadians have no place in modern Canada. We are discriminated against.

Cultures belong to people, not people to cultures. Cultures have no rights; they are not alive. People have rights. Multiculturalism is a violation of human equality; an insult to human dignity. It promotes hatred of your neighbour, because he is different from you. It is racism. It is corrosive of Canadian society and culture.



It is harmful, most of all, to more recent immigrants. Anyone who has lived in a new culture knows the dangers. Culture shock is the common reaction. The unwise retreat into their own world, fearing and hating those around them. Their daily lives become hellish; nothing around them makes sense. Some literally go mad. Others become aggressively antisocial. 

The cure, as old hands always tell the newcomers, is to get out and engage with the culture. Learn how things work here. 

Multiculturalism thus encourages exactly the wrong attitude and the worst behaviour.

Life in a ghetto, which it demands, also limits economic opportunities. Ask Martin Luther King; such segregation is what he fought so hard against. It is why Canadian First Nations are so poor—that is, those who have stayed on the reserves. Why did we decide apartheid and segregation was a good idea?

Multiculturalism also condemns the immigrant to live his life in exile. Home is forever far away, in the land he left; Canada remains forever foreign. Our patriotic task as Canadians, and what we owe our neighbours, is to build a sense of common home here, in this land, among these people.

Culture is a series of tools, strategies and knowledges, if you will allow the plural, for a good life. As with any other technology, it ought to evolve and improve over time. If it does not, it is failing; it is dying. It needs to be abandoned for a better tool. Only a fool sticks with a poor tool simply because it is the one he is familiar with. 

As an immigrant nation, Canada has the perfect opportunity to assimilate the best elements of all the world’s cultures. This should make Canadian culture the strongest and best the world has ever known. That is what the Canadian “mainstream” is, and what it has always done.

To encourage us instead to stick with a horse and buggy, because our ancestors drove one,  is spectacularly stupid. Or intentionally malicious.


Sunday, January 15, 2023

How About a Mass in Pig Latin?

 

Uneasy lies the head ...

There are rumblings of a coup in the Vatican.

That is surprising. There seems to be no legal means for unseating a pope. 

Nevertheless, discontent with Pope Francis has become quite open. Cardinal Pell, widely respected, has been revealed as author of a letter some months ago describing Francis’s pontificate as catastrophic for the church. Rumours are flooding in of a group of cardinals planning to oust him. Word is that Francis is isolated and has no friends in the curia, largely due to his penchant for individual and autocratic rule.

The flash point seems to be an also-rumoured upcoming crackdown by Francis on the Latin mass.

I am no special fan of the Latin mass. To me the mass is the mass, either way. But it also makes no sense to prohibit it. We allow masses in every other conceivable language—except Latin? How is that sensible, or doctrinally important? How is that the hill for Francis to die on? Especially since insistence on the vernacular mass has already caused one split in the church, the Society of St. Pius IX.

As it happens, having gone through various religion departments for my own education, I have some idea. Or my friend Xerxes, nominally a pillar of the United Church; he shows the same tendency. Among the ministerial elite of mainstream denominations, there is a sort of competition to see who can be most theologically transgressive. The great opponent becomes, not unbelief or immorality, but those who take traditional teachings too seriously.

Xerxes writes frequent columns against Biblical literalism; against those who have clear ideas about God; or who advocate conventional morality. He rarely rails against the ways of the world, only calling vaguely and blandly for peace, voting NDP, and giving to the poor.

A professor at Syracuse suggested in passing that an atheist would and should feel comfortable in the religion department. A major religious publisher considering my manuscript wanted to be sure that it was fully welcoming to atheists. The paper that attracted the most interest and admiration at a departmental conference was titled “So Meaning is Your Hangup?” Open rumour was that the author was in an adulterous relationship with her thesis advisor. “Rumour,” in that small department, is perhaps not the correct word.

This is what Pharisaism looks like. The problem with religion is that it imposes obligations on you, in matters of belief and conduct. If you are in the power elite, you don’t like to be constrained by anything. So once you rise to ministry, your chief opponent becomes the actual teaching you are charged with spreading. 

Some, like Cardinal McCarrick or Jimmy Swaggert, will simply continue to preach what they reject for themselves. These are the classic Pharisees. Some, like Xerxes or Pope Francis, perhaps more honestly, will instead devote their energies to undermining the faith. They will set up public services for Pachamama; they will hold “clown masses.” And they will attack on any premise those who continue to follow the faith: those who annoyingly quote the Bible, those who don’t embrace transgenderism or some other current moral fad, those who “judge,” those who want the Latin mass. Largely because they feel judged by them, and found wanting. How dare they act holier than their minister? Than the Pope? Who do they think they are?

Being Pharisees, they never stop to ask themselves who they, themselves, think they are.


Saturday, January 14, 2023

Shut Up! Shut Up! Shut Up!

 


Pierre Poilievre is in trouble with the mainstream media for giving a speech to the Frontier Centre. Because the Frontier Centre, in turn, has done radio spots claiming, presumably with data, that those who went to Indian Residential Schools graduated knowing more about Indian culture and language than those who did not attend. This counts as “residential school denial,” and no one is allowed to speak to you ever again if you are guilty of it.

Another example of the growing influence of “cancel culture.” There is an ever-growing list of things you cannot say, and people you must not talk to. 

You must not talk to truckers if they come to call. You must not say the Covid vaccines are ineffective. You must not mention abortion. You must not mention the Nuremberg protocols. You must not question the series of assertions collectively referred to as “climate change.” You must not call people by their birth name—that’s “deadnaming” them. You must not call them a mn if they assert that they are a woman. The list keeps growing.

The critical thing to realize about such extreme censorship: nobody censors lies. Nobody cares if what you say is untrue. Then they are happy to refute it. Nobody cares if you say the Earth is flat, or that the sun goes around the Earth, or that the Chinese discovered America. Only truth needs to be censored, precisely because it cannot be refuted, and people will believe it if they are exposed to it. The more agitated and extreme the censorship, the more certain you can be that whatever is  being silenced is true. This is the golden rule.

As for the Indian Residential Schools specifically, it should stand to reason that an education is an education: one graduates with more knowledge, not less. Even if a school wanted, as is claimed of the residential schools, to actually suppress what you know of your own culture, it would seem to be a nearly impossible task. Memories are durable. You do not forget your first language by learning another—indeed, Latin and other languages have traditionally been taught on the premise that they help you understand English better. 

Moreover, if your intention was to teach Indian students only the mainstream culture, and integrate them into the mainstream, why would you send students to a segregated Indian school, instead of integrating them into the public system? In fact, the residential schools were designed to preserve Indian culture.

Pretty much everything we are told about the Indian residential schools is a lie; which is why any defense of them must be suppressed. There are too many people with vested interests in the lie.

“Deadnaming,” “misgendering,” and “preferred pronouns” are a comparable example. If, by contrast, you happened to mistake the sex of a real woman, or call her by the wrong name, she would probably simply correct you.

It is all denial.

We see something similar with the rash of statue-toppling and public renamings of buildings. It is always the good guys whose statues go down. Nobody is upset if you honour a villain. Egerton Ryerson, who founded the public school system in Ontario, and did his best to advance the interests of the native people, must have his statue removed and his name effaced from the university which, in a sense, he founded. Meantime, across town, nobody comments on the name of George Brown College—although George Brown has no connection to the institution, and was prejudiced against the French, the Catholics, and opposed any formal recognition of native land rights. Sir John A. Macdonald, who fought him over this in defense of the native people, and wanted their enfranchisement as full citizens, gets his statues torn down, supposedly for his treatment of the native people. Despite his great accomplishment, Canada itself. Meanwhile, nobody calls for the removal of the public statues of Louis Riel, guilty of treason, wanting to split the West from Canada and sell it to the States, not to mention murder. Even though, oddly, all the statues of Confederate figures in the US are being torn down on the premise that they were guilty of treason. Yet they, unlike Riel, were never convicted of it, and could not have been—since they were loyal to their states, and the American states were then considered sovereign.

Henry Dundas’s name is similarly being erased from downtown Toronto, supposedly because he supported slavery--although he was a leading figure in the abolition movement. He should have kept his mouth shut and gone along with it, I suppose.

Meanwhile, nobody calls for pulling down the public statues of the Famous Five, in Calgary and Ottawa, and the many other memorials. Although they promoted eugenics and forcible sterilization, and opposed non-white immigration.

And nobody objects to the several public statues of Norman Bethune. Granted, he did some humanitarian work in Spain and China. But why him in particular? Canadians are apparently entirely unaware that he was just one of many medical missionaries Canada sent to the Far East in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many of them, like Bethune, died there. Many stayed longer, and made greater humanitarian contributions. Many are commemorated in those lands: Scofield, Avison, Hall, et al. Avison even has a memorial in Toronto—donated by Koreans. Yet only Bethune gets honoured here, by Canadians, and by our government.

Bethune was a confirmed Stalinist who worked to put Mao Zedong in power; these are perhaps the two worst mass murderers who ever lived. The others went for Canadian church groups.

That’s the only obvious difference between him and these other missionaries; so apparently that is why he gets honoured, and they don’t.

When did we start shouting people down? When did we turn away from truth?

If I had to pick a date, perhaps the day Henry Morgentaler was given the Order of Canada for breaking Canadian law to abort children, an activity from which he profited personally.

I suspect it all goes back to abortion, and our collective guilt over it. That is when it first became important to shut up.


Friday, January 13, 2023

The Way We Were

 


This cover from 1971 shows us how far the arts and letters have fallen since the 1960s. Look who was writing then. And in the popular press!


Why Politics Still Matters

 


To be remembered, now and in days to come, wherever the maple leaf is flown.

Politics is downstream from culture; and culture is downstream from religion. This political world is in the hands of the Devil. So should we really care too much about politics? Does it even make a difference?

It does. Not usually. Usually, politics is just about reading the polls and running to the front of the parade. But when there is an exception, it is magnificent, and worth attention even as art. For a current example, Ukraine might not have held out against Russia in the early days of the war had Zelensky not been in charge. Another leader might have taken the offer from America of a quick flight to safety.  Zelensky went before the cameras instead, and said “I need ammunition, not a ride.” That alone is worth a statue in every town square. He has been similarly eloquent since in scaring up material support from the West. 

And the results of his speeches are likely to be profound for the future lives of citizens of Ukraine, of Russia, and quite possibly of China, Taiwan, Iran, and the rest of the world. The right man with the right words at the right time.

Churchill is a similar example. His speeches and his resolve during the Second World War held things together when another leader might have sought terms with Germany after Dunkirk. As Chamberlain did, and the French. Then where would we all be?

From these examples, we see that good politics is actually a form of art: rhetoric. Both Churchill and Zelensky are in fact certifiably artists, quite apart from politics. Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Zelensky was a popular television comic.

The military apparently knows this. A friend went through the American Air Force Academy’s officer training. He says the main emphasis was on giving a speech.

One can say that it is art, and not politics, that makes a difference. But then one must note that the best politics is itself art. One can miss a Ralph Klein, or a John Diefenbaker, or a Boris Johnson, just for the fun of watching them perform, quite apart from their policies.

Two things are necessary for good politics, rare as it is, and they are the same two things necessary for art: skill at communication, and principle. Or, put another way, something important to say, and the ability to say it well. This is the difference between art and mere craftsmanship. Or between being an artist and being a madman.

Pierre Poilievre excites me on the Canadian scene currently, because he has exceptional rhetorical skill. You can see it especially in his postings to social media. He may not hold to principle; but so far the prognosis looks good. The contrast with Erin O’Toole is dramatic. O’Toole seemed to have no principles, and then did not speak well. He was bad enough to be offensive, to insult one’s intelligence for having taken the time to listen. Andrew Scheer might have had principles, but who can tell? He was inarticulate when asked to express them.

Donald Trump in the US, and Boris Johnson in the UK, are interesting and tragic studies of just falling short. Both have immense rhetorical skills. This gave them great promise. Trump is given too little credit for his artistic talents. He can speak extempore for two hours, and hold an audience enthralled. His short epithets for opponents are, in their way, poetry.

Yet both fail on lacking clear principles, lacking a vision; making them mere craftsmen. Boris was great until Brexit was accomplished, and then floundered. He was all dressed up, with no idea of where to go. Trump was great at expressing the themes of “America First” and “drain the swamp,” yet he seems to have been ineffective at draining it; while his choice of foreign policy advisors seemed inconsistent. This may have been because of internal opposition; but I don’t buy it. The problem was that his true love was the art of making a deal. As part of this deal-making process, he would talk a hard and principled line, then compromise. The initial principle mattered less than getting the deal. Good business, but not good politics; because uninspiring. It leaves the impression of moral chaos.

A similar tragic failure is John Diefenbaker. He was wonderful to listen to, always entertaining, often compelling, often right, but he quickly came to exude the same sense of chaos as Trump and Johnson do. He was a heavy cannon, but a loose one. He managed the Canadian Bill of Rights, and then was not sure what to do.

Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini were also artists, and this was probably the source of their success. They knew how to communicate. Hitler’s speechifying was famous. But they were also lousy artists; and not just, like Johnson or Diefenbaker, because they lacked principles; although they did. William L. Shirer, who was there, noted that Hitler would say completely different things with equal conviction depending on his audience. For Mussolini, Fascism was mostly whatever the moment seemed to require. They were also bad at art, in the sense of relying on cliché and cheap thrills. As a visual artist, Hitler’s drawings were always cliched scenes, of the sort you might once have bought in a Woolworth’s painted on felt. Not good enough, famously, to get him into the Vienna Art Academy. Mussolini wrote short stories; but they are dime novel stuff, relying heavily on cheap thrills and lurid descriptions of violence. They were the sort of artists who do often achieve mass appeal with emotional junk: the drawers of paintings of kittens with big eyes and the writers of formula romances for Harlequin.

So too with their political rhetoric: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Justin Trudeau is frighteningly cut from the same cloth: an incompetent wannabe actor. And his wife is, interestingly, a wannabe singer of about the same calibre. The class of wannabe artists is crowded with narcissists. The narcissist will naturally want to think of himself and be thought of as an artistic genius. But he will lack the necessary insight or self-knowledge. Indeed, he will be terrified of insight or self-knowledge.

Anothergreat political artist was Ronald Reagan. Reagan, of course, learned his craft as an actor, and a real, successful actor, not a poseur like Trudeau. Granted, he was a better politician than actor. Acting is harder and a higher-level skill than politics. But his skills helped bloodlessly end the Cold War, and ushered in a new golden age for America, after years of apparent decline.

Margaret Thatcher did about the same, at about the same time, for Britain. Again, it was largely due to attention to rhetorical skills as well as to firm principles. She worked hard at rhetoric, learning to lower her voice, for example, to sound more authoritative. She, or her speechwriters, are responsible for a number of lines that are now immortal, like “The lady’s not for turning.”

Acting ability and experience was the secret of John Paul II’s papacy as well. Pope Benedict, the more learned and the better-grounded man, really John Paul’s mentor, lacked this talent, and so sailed into controversy. Which sadly wore him down. Pope Francis, unfortunately, lacks both Benedict’s vision and John Paul’s acting skills.

Thomas D’Arcy McGee in Canada, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the US, are other examples of brilliant politicians. Neither rose to the very top of their profession. Yet this, I think, was because both were more interested in doing good than in personal power. Principled men, they would rather have been right, as they say, than president. This seems to be especially an Irish thing. One thinks also of Grattan O’Leary, Bryce Mackasey, Eugene McCarthy, or of W.B. Yeats’s political career.

Although too little credited, and still too little listened to, D'Arcy McGee invented Canada.

Pierre Trudeau was another brilliant politician, in contrast to his son. He himself once remarked that he saw the job primarily as that of an actor. He was magnificent on the principle of federalism and against separatism, although he lost direction once this matter seemed settled. As it happened, separatism was such a dominant issue during his political career that few in Central Canada noticed how erratic and frivolous he was on other topics. Folks out West did.

The mention of Moynihan, McCarthy and Trudeau, officially on the left, perhaps serves only to throw into relief the fact that most of the politicians I cite as great seem to come from the right side of the political spectrum. Is this bias on my part?

I think not. It is the principle thing. Pretty much by definition, to have enduring principles means to be conservative. To be “on the left” means, broadly, to be calling for change, being subject to whatever winds might blow. Anyone who still held sincerely to the beliefs of the left as they were thirty years ago would now be denounced by the left as an extreme right-winger. Ask Elon Musk, or Joe Rogan, or Jordan Peterson, or Ronald Reagan, or Joseph Ratzinger. So leftists might be rhetorically skillful, but almost by definition lack a consistent vision. “Change” is not a vision. It is a  kaleidoscope.

And if you lack a consistent vision, it is even hard to be rhetorically compelling. It is not just that people are liable to notice you were saying the opposite until recently. If it is really good, fellow leftists will remember it to condemn you for it a few years later.

This is one reason why, to look for any real change, we must look to the right.