If for any reason you cannot find the paperback version of Playing the Indian Card at your favourite bookstore or online retailer, please ask them to carry it. Protest and picket the store entrance if necessary.
Sinead O’Connor has died, almost certainly by her own hand. She suffered throughout her life from the psychic consequences of childhood abuse, which we call “mental illness.” Psychology seems now to have come to a consensus that most or all mental illness is the result of such abuse in childhood, of chronic PTSD.
But what is PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder—and what causes it? What is the trauma?
The common assumption is that it is fear of being physically harmed. That is what “trauma” means in medicine—a physical injury. Soldiers in WWI who suffered from “shell shock” were accused of cowardice.
But that’s not right.
A perceptive student of mine, asked to write on the subject of PTSD, noted that nobody experiences PTSD when they watch someone die in their bed. Yet they do when they see someone murdered, or killed in war. Why?
Fear of being killed themselves? But surely either represents physical harm; when you’re dead, you’re dead. If it is death we are afraid of, why aren’t we equally traumatized by either?
The difference is the perception, in the latter case, of injustice, of evil.
It is coming in contact with evil, the awareness that something evil is taking place, that causes spiritual trauma.
The real trauma in war is therefore not fear of being killed, but fear of killing. To anyone with a healthy conscience, war is a moral dilemma. That is the spiritual trauma.
And part of the trauma is not knowing what morality requires of you; the sense of having no moral option available. In war, is it more moral to shoot at strangers, or to desert your comrades in the field? Having witnessed a murder, was there something you could and should have done?
Most ordinary people protect themselves from this trauma by denying that evil exists. Hitler, say, was just a madman. Murderers and the like are prisoners of their upbringing. Any conficts are based on some “misunderstanding.”
Those raised by a parent who openly practices or advocates immorality are inevitably going to be wounded spiritually by this. They will either embrace the parent’s immorality as righteous, and as their own creed, and perpetuate this evil on the next generation; or else be deeply morally conflicted, anxious, depressed.
This being so, experiencing “mental illness,” PTSD, is a warrant that you are a good person, and sincere. You are not in denial.
You could always see the sincerity in Sinead O’Connor’s eyes, and hear it in her voice.
The essence of CRT/CT, postmodernism, “wokeness,” can be expressed in one simple statement: “Reality is a function of belief.” I think that is Kierkegaard’s formulation. Or here is William Blake’s: “A firm persuasion that a thing is so, makes it so.”
There, I defined it; and the left claims nobody can.
So, say the woke, there is no truth; there is only “your truth.” There are no rules, no right and wrong; only a need to impose your own preferred reality on others. As in, demanding they use your pronouns.
Men declaring themselves women is the currently fashionable test case. If it looks relatively harmless, just wait for what comes next.
I have been hearing versions of this dogma—dogma is the word—since undergraduate days back in the 1970s. It took decades for me to fully shake this off, if I even have. One must not, in any circumstances, be “judgemental.” One must not get “hung up” on “meaning,” as one prize postgrad essay in religion asserted. Marcuse was hot back then: “Beware: even the ears have walls,” as one graffito said during the Paris uprisings. This idea has been drilled into our young people now for perhaps 3.5 generations.
The idea is attractive to the young. Sensitive or intelligent young people must realize that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy”—that philosophy being the dominant materialism. Postmodernism seems to offer the response, segueing nicely from LSD: we are not limited to the material, but can live entirely in our imaginations.
Heck, it even seems to be endorsed by the Christian tradition: Blake and Kierkegaard were, or considered themselves, Christians. Jesus said “if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20). Martin Luther emphasized faith as both necessary and sufficient for salvation: the whole ball game.
But there is something critical missing in the postmodern formulation: God. The faith spoken of by Jesus, or Blake, or Kierkegaard, is not faith in self or in the will. That’s Hitler. It is faith in God.
Consider the traditional solipsist conundrum: “If a tree falls I the forest, and no one is there to hear, did it make a sound?”
And the necessary answer is, it makes a sound because God knows. God is the touchstone of all existence, the ground of being. Without faith in God, as Descartes, for one, explained. one has no warrant that anything else is real. It is then possible, as Chesterton pointed out, to randomly believe in anything. Madness is inevitable, the only alternative to such faith.
Accordingly, if God says a mountain will move, it must move. If he says it will move at your command, it will move at your command. Because God. Nothing else is or is anything here or there except because God. But this magic works if and only if you are following God’s will, not your own.
And, of course, it is generally God’s will that a mountain be where he put it.
In denying God, we are collectively pulling the plug on everything. It is mass madness, and it is the madness of the proverbial lemmings.
Justin Trudeau is increasingly facing hostile crowds wherever he goes, crowds shouting things like “traitor” and “criminal.” Trudeau seems to lean into this, lingering, smiling and waving—almost as if he is taunting them.
Brian Lilley warns this is because the crowds make him look good, and make his opposition look immoderate and scary. They play into his hands. They are winning him sympathy and support.
I think Lilley is wrong. He has fallen for the moderate fallacy, which all professional politicos seem to believe, even though it is a formal logical fallacy, and has been disproven repeatedly in political practice. If it were true, after all, that the moderate ticket wins, that most of the votes are in the centre, the Liberal Democrats would be in perpetual power in Britain.
Has the left, effectively in power in Canada and in the US, almost in perpetual power, been conspicuously moderate in recent years? Has Black Lives Matter? Has Extinction Rebellion and the environmentalist movement? Have the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and the trans movement? Has Antifa? Has Idle No More and the aboriginal movement, with their church burnings?
This is how it really works: the average person mostly wants peace and quiet and to get along with their lives. They don’t care about right or wrong. If a small group kicks up a fuss, they will want them suppressed. January 6 was suppressed precisely because it looked insignificant, not a real threat to anyone. Or the Freedom Convoy. Unlike, say, Antifa or Black Lives Matter. If this does not work, if the group seems persistent, those in charge, and the general public, will give them whatever they demand to settle them down. This is what the left has been exploiting for many years: the appeasement instinct.
It would work just as well for the right. Indeed, the right must do it, or lose ground indefinitely. It is necessary to make it more trouble for those in power, or for the big corporations, to appease the left than it is to appease the right. Only then will the right make progress.
We are seeing this now. Disney, for example is trapped between irate leftists demanding no dwarfs appear in Snow White, and rightists no longer watching, no longer going to Disneyland, declaring this a travesty. Bud Light or the LA Dodgers are caught between irate trans people demanding public tribute, and irate Christians and “frat boys” protesting and no longer buying. All these corporations probably wanted was to keep everyone happy and keep peacefully making profits.
Because until now the right was determined to stay polite and reasonable, the left kept always getting what they want. The squeaking wheel gets the grease.
Now the right is employing the same tactics. It may be distasteful; public protests are anti-democratic by their nature. But there is no alternative, so long as the other side is employing the tactic. And it is working. Contrary to Lilley’s prediction, Poilievre and the Conservatives are rising, not falling, in the polls.
Moving to a new home has brought me to the growing revelation, after just a few days, of how sordid and constrained my previous situation had been. How did I stand it?
Leading to the broader insight: people can get used to anything. Like the proverbial frog put in water and the heat gradually turned up.
For this reason, you simply will not hear complaints from the currently oppressed. If you hear complaints, it means one of two things: either you are hearing from the previously oppressed, but not oppressed now, about what used to be their situation; or else you are hearing from the habitually relatively privileged, not getting what they have come to expect.
The former seems to be the case of blacks in America; they are far more vocally irate and discontented now than they were, say, in the 1940s, or the 1960s, when they had good reason to be irate and discontented. Now they are systemically favoured, with “affirmative action.”
The latter is the case of feminists. Girls are generally raised as princesses, spoiled and indulged. Boys are treated more severely. Any attractive woman continues to be indulged in adulthood; ugly women are more likely to become feminists. And then, in the 1960s, something changed. Technological improvements in the home made it possible, for the first time, for men to live comfortably as bachelors. Suddenly women could not count so automatically on the deference to which they were accustomed, and which they expected from observing their mothers and fathers. Therefore the big trouble began.
Onde will note, however, that when women, now relatively obsolete in their traditional role, move into the male workforce, they always still demand special deference. They must be accommodated.
Indians, Canada’s “First Nations,” contrary to the constant claim, have always objectively been treated with deference and special consideration by the rest of society. This has not been good for their long term interests—just as it is not in their interest to spoil a child. Worse, Indian children are often raised without a father in the home, which usually means, without discipline. Therefore, like a pet that is taught to beg, they are always at the table looking woeful. They deserve whatever is on your plate, and are not yet getting it.
In the meantime, by appeasing these inappropriate and unreasonable demands, we are all able to comfortably continue to ignore the oppressed, indeed to comfortably oppress and scapegoat them: children, the young, the “mentally ill.” Working class white men: “rednecks,” “hillbillies.”
My apologies for not posting. I was moving, from Toronto to New Brunswick, and on top of the attention this required, had no Internet. I hope to return to a normal schedule soon. Fortunately, it is summer, proverbially a slow news period when many of you may be off on the golf course or at the cottage.
A friend who originally emigrated from Pakistan laments that, over the past few years, his eyes have been opened: at the higher levels, Canada is no better than Pakistan. Our leadership is corrupt. His Canadian dream was only an illusion.
His companion, Canadian-born, says the sudden appearance of “gay-pride/transgender” flags on public buildings everywhere looks to him like the swastikas appearing in Germany with the rise of the Nazis. They announce the power of an authoritarian political ideology. You will obey.
Did I mention that these two guys are gay?
They think we are doomed; that there is no way back. The best we can do is try to survive.
Who would have thought, a few years ago, that the following conspiracy theories would look plausible:
That the 2020 US election was rigged.
That the past two Canadian elections were rigged.
That the Canadian prime minister and the US president are in the pay of China.
That the Canadian government would try to control the media.
That “Canadian health care” would become a euphemism for murder.
That “Eyes Wide Shut” was a documentary? That there are pedophile rings involving the participation of the rich and famous? When a film came out about the fight against pedophile rings, there would be an effort to suppress it?
That “drag queen story hours” for children would not just be permitted, but made mandatory?
That the CIA shot JFK. Maybe RFK? Maybe MLK? How about John Lennon? One former CIA operative has confessed to killing Bob Marley. Has the US effectively been run by a dark cabal since the 1960s?
That we were all forced to inject ourselves with an experimental vaccine that had not been properly tested.
That the pharmaceutical companies are prepared to suppress effective medicines for the sake of profit.
That some conspiracy can have enemies suicided at will, even within a high-level prison, and then can prevent an investigation.
That UFOs have been real all along; but the government has been suppressing this fact.
That the FBI is engaged in such activities as suppressing news for partisan political purposes.
That there is a conspiracy between government, the media, and big tech to impose censorship and control the news.
And on it goes.
Given that last one, that news is being suppressed, all conspiracy theories now become plausible. We know there are conspiracies. We know we are not being told the truth. Which conspiracies are real is anyone’s guess. There can no longer be any public trust in our institutions.
My own thoughts are still optimistic. I think we are seeing the thrashing about of a beast in its death throes. Social media makes conspiracies harder now to conceal, and we are beginning to see behind the curtain. At the same time, a depraved ideology that traces roots back to the 19th century, variously known as postmodernism, relativism, critical theory, existentialism, fascism, or the New Left, is reaching the point of reductio ad absurdum, slipperly slopes being real and really slippery, and the common people are beginning to see how mad it is.
And the convoys are coming.
I still believe there is a way back, and the future will be better than the past.
G. K. Chesterton is supposed to have said “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing. They then become capable of believing in anything.”
Jesus says something similar in the New Testament:
“When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, seeking rest but finding none. Then it says, ‘I will return to the person I came from.’ So it returns and finds its former home empty, swept, and in order. Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there.”
It is not enough to exorcise a demon, a “mental illness.” It will come back. The only way to expel a demon permanently is religious faith.
And then there’s Bob Dylan: “It may be the Devil, or it may be the Lord, but you gonna havta serve somebody.”
We are created with a God-shaped hole in our soul. Without this absolute, our thoughts and our emotions cannot cohere. If God and Good and Truth is not allowed to fill that hole, something will. Fenatyl, alcohol, Marxism, sex, power, status. Something.
For the narcissist, it is the ephemeral concept of self that fills that hole; or the self’s arbitrary desires.
Good, God, and Truth then becomes the ultimate enemy. The narcissist will deliberately deny Truth and morality. Truth is whatever they will it to be, and do what you will is the full extent of the law.
If a person is committed to God or Truth or Good, they will perceive this person as evil. This recognition is terrifying: it means to stare in the face of the Devil. Hence, PTSD.
But if a person is not committed to God or Truth or Good, such a person will fill their God-shaped hole. They are liable to idolize them. They act, after all, as though they are God. They seem sure of themselves.
This is what produces the familiar phenomenon of “flying monkeys,” people who do the bidding of the narcissist in tormenting their victims.
The experts currently trace all depression back to PTSD, and PTSD usually developed from abuse in childhood. Not just depression, either, but also chronic anxiety, obesity, high blood pressure, allergies, and so forth.
The concept of PTSD comes from war—it used to be called “Shell shock.” And because of this, it has been falsely associated with fear of getting hurt. Soldiers suffering PTSD used to be suspected of cowardice.
But PTSD is not caused by fear, or physical abuse, or for that matter sexual abuse.
When Tim Ballard, whose story is told in the new film “The Sound of Freedom,” began the work of rescuing trafficked children, he suffered PTSD. When three helicopter crewmen tried to save some of the civilians being massacred at My Lai, they suffered severe PTSD. None of these people were in significant danger of being harmed themselves. Nor is PTSD a reaction to guilt over anything they had done; none of the soldiers who actually massacred civilians at My Lai are reported to have developed PTSD.
PTSD is a healthy moral reaction to an encounter with evil.
Evil is so disturbing that most of us deny it even exists; we whistle past the graveyard. If we encounter someone genuinely evil, we tend to idolize rather than condemn them—the Stockholm syndrome. Their perspective must be right, and we must somehow have it wrong. They must then be beings with superior knowledge. I remember in China seeing an older woman bowing and praying to a picture of Chairman Mao in a Buddhist temple. She must have lived through the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution herself. And in fiction, there is the clownish Russian neighbour who extolls to Marlow the exceptional wisdom of his neighbour Kurtz; he knows Kurtz is massacring the native people.
This is a reason psychopaths and narcissists often rise to the top in society. Knowing no moral restraint looks like leadership.
War is of course intrinsically evil. It is intrinsically evil to try to kill other humans, who as far as you can know have done no wrong; yet that is what war requires. A decent, moral human is liable to be deeply traumatized. (This is not to say that it is evil to go to war, or to be a soldier; fighting a war is often the best way to prevent war. But war is at best a necessary evil.)
So too of one’s experience in a family, as a child. If a parent is immoral, a morally sensitive child will be deeply traumatized, apart from any physical or sexual abuse. This moral abuse is more permanently damaging than either of those other two forms of abuse. Although, in the natural course of things, the parent who abuses morally will probably also abuse physically and sexually; if they are not smart. If they are not smart: someone who abuses their child physically or sexually is likely to be found out; an intelligent narcissist will not commonly risk it.
They can enjoy destroying their morally sensitive child mentally instead.
Friend Xerxes the gauche columnist writes of homelessness, a growing problem in Canada. He puts it down to two causes: poverty, and mental illness. Which latter he regrettably conflates with addiction, as many seem to nowadays.
As I see it, there are five causes of homelessness.
First, mental illness. Due to mental illness, some people are incapable of organizing their lives well enough to manage such necessities. These people are urgently in need of our help. We have foolishly or deliberately shut down the mental institutions, turning the chronically mentally ill out on the street to die. And mental illness is growing by leaps and lunges.
Second, addictions. Addicts, if they get any money, spend it on alcohol or their drug, rather than on necessities. This is not the same group as the mentally ill, and the issue is different. There is not much we can do for them; they have to do it for themselves.
Third, abusive families. Young people trying to escape abuse are often too young and inexperienced to look after themselves; child labour laws and minimum wage laws prevent them from making an honest living. For example, this is the simple and obvious explanation for the “missing and murdered indigenous women.” Or the suicide pacts among native youth. Yet we do nothing for this group; we seem to try to make things worse for them. If they happen to come to the attention of the authorities, the first thing the authorities will do is send them back to their families.
These kids are also vulnerable to child trafficking.
Fourth, economic instability. People can be temporarily caught short by sudden unemployment, illness, bankruptcy, a recent move, and the like. One problem is that you cannot get welfare without a fixed address; but it is likely that you cannot get a fixed address without welfare. This almost seems a deliberate catch-22.
Fifth, voluntarily homeless, an often admirable desire to escape the system and get off the grid. Like the Franciscans, or the sannyasins of India.
The best solution, in all cases, is this: build more monasteries.
Monasteries used to be the haven for the homeless. They served this purpose in Europe, in East Asia, or in the Middle East. And they gave not just a temporary bed and a meal, but a reason for living, and the chance for quiet contemplation required to put your life back together. This is the prime cause of mental illness and addictions and voluntary homelessness, that urge to escape, in the first place: a sense of the meaninglessness of modern life. A collapse in faith. Faith is the cure.
Children from abusive families, in particular, could once escape to a monastery, and receive not just physical sustenance, but a community, a voluntary family, an education, a trade.
The monasteries were also financially self-sustaining; they generally took no tax dollars. Indeed, they were so successful that they were destroyed across Europe and China by an envious civil authority, to crush a competing centre of power and to confiscate their assets.
There was an attempt to revive something like the Medieval monasteries in the “cults” of the seventies: the Moonies, the Hare Krishnas, the Children of God, Scientology and the like. But again, civil authority and social authority came down hard on them. Remember Waco?
It is no doubt true that some such cults were harmful. This is why it is better to have monasteries, that can be overseen by some larger and established authority, rather than individual charismatic leaders. But the cults were fulling a hole left unfilled by the established religions, afraid of crossing the civil authority, and they were better than nothing.
This crushing of the monasteries, then the cults, was a terrible mistake. It was probably also a mistake to close the Indian Residential Schools, which served part of the same purpose, for at least a segment of the population.
Something that might be done, for at least some temporary help, is to buy up the many motels across the country that are now in relative disuse, as vacationing by car has fallen out of fashion. They could be refitted as basic homes: just a bed, a bathroom, a hot plate and a refrigerator. No cost, no questions, but subject to regular drug testing.
And hoe about similarly converting the old abandoned residential schools?
“The Trudeau government has deliberately proclaimed and incited the world to believe that this country has been guilty of attempted genocide. That is a monstrous blood libel on English and French Canadians and as I have written and said many times, it is a betrayal of Canada that should morally disqualify the government from re-election.”
“[I]t is a heinous falsehood to impute to any official policy of any jurisdiction of this country a desire to conduct any kind of genocide against anyone.”
To call feeding, housing, and educating poor Indian children “genocide” is slander, and racism of the worst kind.
A recent piece at True North agrees that sexual and physical abuse were “often rampant,” but primarily at the hands of older students. This is in line with the experience in upper-class British boarding schools, and is actually part of their educational design. The idea was to teach leadership by having the students self-police. One does not learn leadership by being told what to do. And so the school authorities imposed only a light hand.
Inevitably, as in Tom Brown’s Schooldays, this led to some bullying, and some sexual exploitation. “Fagging” developed certain connotations.
However, here the intention was that the lowerclassmen would band together to defend one another, and learn from this how to organize for the common good.
This is what was supposed to happen. Thomas Hughes, who wrote Tom Brown’s Schooldays, lauded the result in his own case. No doubt it did not always happen; others, like George Orwell, report terrible experiences at boarding school. But it is what the upper classes have long believed was best for their own children.
There was also some abuse by staff, the True North article admits. But, per the True North article, “hardly any was at the hands of clergy.” Many staff members were themselves indigenous. The best protection against abuse, imperfect as it is, is to have such schools run by clergy. And at worst, the average Indian child attending a residential school was safer from abuse, starvation, and disease at school than at home on reserve. Statistics prove this.
He’s been stepping away from it recently, but Pierre Poilievre is right to say that Canada is broken. We have a housing and a homelessness crisis—in a rich country full of all the materials needed to build, with more land per capita than almost any other. This has to be a scandal, and has to be down to government. We have a doctor and nurse shortage, and a health care crisis. This can perhaps be explained by an aging population and the inevitabilities of single-payer: when something is given away free, shortages are inevitable. Still, this is the sort of thing we expect a government to protect us from. overnment services seem at a standstill; nobody can get a passport. This too has to be down to government and bad management: many people wanting passports after covid lockdowns ended was perfectly predictable. We have bad inflation and a cost of living crisis. Much of that, according to economists, is also due to the government; Kaynesian aconomics says to pull back on government spending to reduce inflation, and they are doing the opposite. And they are imposing new carbon taxes, and regulations on truckers, and on farmers, and wanting cattle killed off, just as inflation is already making food unaffordable. We have a crisis of confidence in our elections and the security of our democracy. Which the current government is doing everything in its power not to resolve—an implicit but obvious admission of guilt. Canada’s standing internationally has also been diminished. We used to be universally liked, and thought of as competent. Now Trudeau is the butt of jokes and fierce criticism everywhere. We have unnecessarily alienated Italy, India, the USA under Trump, Saudi Arabia, and so forth, for no reason except that Trudeau apparently felt like acting important.
Governments can destroy countries. Consider Argentina, once part of the First World. Consider Cuba, once wealthy; or Venezuela, rich with oil. Compare North Korea to South Korea; the old West Germany to the old East Germany; or Mexico just south of the US border to the US north of that border. For that matter, consider how well the USA was doing under Trump, or Canada under Harper, to how things are in the US or Canada today.
Do not be complacent: a peaceful and prosperous democracy is a kind of miracle, in world terms. Justin Trudeau can throw Canada into the Third World.
A column I linked to recently argues that the chief problem is affirmative action: people being given jobs because of random immutable characteristics, instead of giving them to the hardest working and most competent applicants. South Africa, Idi Amin’s Uganda, or Zimbabwe show us where that takes us; they are ahead of us on that curve. It is not just that people then tend not to know how to do their jobs; they see no reason to do their jobs in the first place. As the joke used to go in the Soviet Union, “we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”
Another argument I hear is that much of Canada’s problem is large-scale immigration: the population is growing faster than the infrastructure can handle. Perhaps. I have my doubts; each new person should, in the normal course of things, produce more than they consume.
So what might a government do? There is no value, after all, in just pointing out a problem unless you can offer a solution.
To begin with, of course, get Trudeau out of power and away from all those shiny levers he likes to play with. Competence at the top is a basic issue.
On housing and homelessness: cut regulations and red tape for new construction, subdividing, and renting. Poilievre has a good idea: make any federal transfers to cities dependent on meeting specific housing targets. In the meantime, the government should buy up derelict motels and convert them to emergency housing for the homeless.
On the health care crisis: cut requirements for those trained abroad to enter the health professions in Canada. Allow pharmacists to write some prescriptions. Use AI for diagnosis. Charge a small fee for each doctor visit. Allow private medical care if one is prepared to pay for it—as done almost everywhere in Europe.
On the problem with government services: this has to do with the Liberal Party being the party of the bureaucracy. They are not going to hold anyone’s feet to the fire within the civil service; this is their constituency.
The system used to take this into account: those in government service once had no vote. They should also not be allowed to contribute to political campaigns, or volunteer with them, to preserve strict political neutrality. And they should have no right to strike, since any strike by a public servant is against the public.
As for inflation, we must remove all carbon taxes, and all the other sticks in the spokes of the economy inserted in the name of climate change. If our concern is really climate change, these are all counter-productive. Manufacturing will simply relocate to lands with less regulation, and the net effect will be more global warming. In the meantime, we cause inflation, destroy our economy, and reduce our security. The solution must come from innovation, and draining money out of the energy sector, or the agricultural sector, or the transportation sector, prevents them from coming up with such innovations. They have a natural incentive to do so; it’s called profit.
We must also, as noted, choke back government spending and government borrowing and government printing of money.
We must deregulate where possible; each new regulation raises costs of any service or manufacture. I’d like to see the Senate reformed to this purpose: given the right not to propose new legislation, but to rescind any old legislation it sees fit. We must also quickly end the milk, eggs, and cheese “supply management” cartel: they impose hardships on the poorest among us, those needing the cheapest basic foods.
As for the crisis of confidence in our elections and concerns over foreign interference, we must to begin with have a public enquiry. Just what has been going on? We must require all foreign agents to register, as is done in other countries. We must ban electronic voting machines. We must restore an independent press and media to investigate possible foreign interference. This means an end to all subsidies to media, including to the CBC. It should also mean a cap on government advertising, overseen by an independent panel.
The good news is, this sounds a lot like the current Conservative platform. I have hopes for better days ahead.
Interesting as it might be to speculate about UFOs and alien craft, there is a far more mind-blowing issue that gets less attention: NDEs.
That is, “Near Death Experiences.” If they are real, they confirm the immortality of the soul, and make life here on earth seem relatively insignificant. We live only in the antechamber of eternity.
An eternity that, based on our choices here, could be eternal delight or eternal suffering.
According to the researcher interviewed by Andrew Klavan, 23% of those who report near death experiences experience something hellish. But the real proportion who see an awful afterlife is probably higher than this. For this is self-reported, and reporting that one is bound for hell is not great for one’s reputation.
The researcher also reports that those who, in these circumstances, cry out to Jesus for help, find they are rescued. This, for what it is worth, is also claimed in Buddhism: one cries out to Chijiang Posal, or Amita Bitsu.
Yet clearly many do not. Klavan tells of an acquaintance who, after a near-death experience, still insists she is an atheist
Salvation, then, just as the Catholic Church teaches, is available to all right up to the moment of death. Anyone who goes to hell does so by their own choice.
Why do they make this choice? Because they will acknowledge only themselves as God. In modern psychiatric terms, they are narcissists. In traditional religious language, it is the sin of pride. “Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven,” as Milton has the Devil himself explain.
Not that those who submit to God at the last moment get home free. As Klavan’s interviewee reports, everyone goes through a life review, in which they experience everything they have caused anyone else to experience. This corresponds to purgatory: if you have done another harm in life, caused them physical or emotional pain, you will experience the full measure of that harm yourself. All secrets are revealed.
Hospice nurses report that most patients die happy. Usually, perhaps a week or two before the end, they start seeing visions of deceased relatives or friends welcoming them. And they die peacefully, in repose.
It stands to reason that, while everyone may fear the pain of death, and the uncertainty, good people will, on the whole, welcome it; bad people will fear it.
This is probably the truth of the common observation that “the good die young.” They will, on average, because they have reason to welcome death rather than fight it. And we do seem to have some control. People tend to hang on for after Christmas and New Years, or for their birthday.
This is not to say that longevity is automatically evidence of a bad person. Or early death proof of goodness. It may be that a good person lingers because they feel some obligation to do something before they go. A bad person may get shot robbing a bank.
Depressed people become suicidal not actually out of despair. It is more often out of hope. They often kill themselves, or try to kill themselves, because they have a strong intuition that they are going to something better. Some have said so to me. And I have felt the same. The truly depressed are almost inevitably good people, and people with special spiritual insight.
It all makes me want to ponder my own relatives and how they died.
I have litttl real information on my father’s father. He died young, at 61. I was too young to be told much. The simple fact that he died young makes me think he was a good man. Also the fact that he was apparently depressed in this life. One of his favourite sayings was “the majority of men live lives of quiet desperation.”
I remember him as a very gentle man.
Next to go was my mother’s father. I heard that he went to bed one night saying he did not feel well, and did not wake up. That struck me as a good way to go. I assume he was a good man. I remember him, too, as a gentle man.
Next, my mother’s mother. They said at the time, she had just decided it was time to go, that she had no reason to linger; and so she said her goodbyes, to me as to others, and she went. That suggests true blessedness to me. I felt she radiated calm when I went to see her. She pointed out a squirrel outside the window, nuzzling the snow. It was winter, but life went on, and new life would appear.
I remember her as a a gentle woman, and she is mentioned as generous in at least one book. She lived near the train station, and on Christmases, she would bring a special meal to the clerks who were obliged to work on that day. She was known up and down the rails for her Christmas meals.
I also remember that she loved to laugh.
Next, my father’s mother. From what I knew of her in life, she was a conspicuously good person. She volunteered much for charity, and was extravagantly generous to others. As someone used to say of her, “she was always taking in some bird with a broken wing.” She was an observant Catholic, and made a Catholic of me by her example.
However, when in her seventies her heart was giving out, she was preoccupied with various diet and health regimens, and proposed to the doctors a heart transplant. “After all,” she said, “what have I got to lose?”
She was not looking forward to death. She was fighting it. This is not a good sign.
A few weeks before she died, she commented to me that, working on her cousin’s tax returns, she kept getting visions of an invasion by Communists. It seemed so real.
This does not sound like the expected welcoming by departed relatives. Rather, by red demons?
Soon before her own death, only weeks before, her brother died. When informed of it, she was surprised. “I thought I’d get there before he did.”
Others on the point of death apparently get visits from relatives they did not know had died. She didn’t. This perhaps bodes ill for either her or him.
While my grandmother was a kind and generous person, she was selectively and wilfully so. She had favourites. In being overindulgent to her favourites, she was in effect downgrading the worth and needs of others, those outside her magic circle, and taking to herself godlike powers. She was like the mother of a murderer who insists “her boy” could do no wrong, and cares not a bit for the strangers he kills. In the cosmic balance, inordinate and unqualified love is just as wrong as open malice; and ultimately just as malicious. And just as selfish. Think of the relative who keeps pouring the alcoholic spouse or parent another drink.
It grieves me to suppose so, but I fear for her fate.
Next to die was my mother. I have been told little of her last days. But I do recall hearing the doctors were surprised at how far the cancer had spread. Usually, they said, the pain would have driven someone to go to the doctor long before.
This could mean two things. Either she in effect committed suicide, looking forward to death as an escape; or she feared death so much that she was in denial, and was avoiding hearing the fatal diagnosis.
Was my mother a good woman? Most who knew her would insist she was. She was quiet and unassertive. She publicly deferred to my father in everything. But I suspect this was only to avoid taking responsibility. I have hints that, behind the scenes, she was often strong-willed; and if she was, she did not seem to influence her spouse much for the better. She certainly showed no interest in religion, God, or morality. Or, really, in her children, or in anyone other than her husband. This sort of unqualified support is, again, immoral.
Dying out of pure denial was certainly the case with my first wife, who was an atheist and a narcissist. I could feel the lump in her breast for months, and nagged her to see a doctor. Didn’t she care about the fate of her young children? She admitted it was because she was too afraid of the diagnosis. I finally threatened to leave her, and this at last got her to go. Had she gone earlier, she might have survived. Because she stalled, the cancer killed her. At the last, when it had spread to her bone, she insisted she could not believe or accept this was happening to her.
My brother Gerry went next.
He died on his 65th birthday. He seemed to know for months before that he was dying; knew before the doctors did; he told me so. He also said to others, I am told, that he wanted to die. He felt he had won through, and done what he needed to do. He had suffered for many years from depression. His death seems to have been his birthday present to himself.
He was not a conspicuously good person. He was nasty to me when we were both young. He stole things. In his early years, he got in trouble with the law.
In his last years, however, although he remained an adamant atheist, there was a gentleness about him, a humility. He consented to wear a green scapular I sent him. “After all, it can’t do any harm.” So at least, he was not afraid of God, and would not renounce him. I have strong hopes he was saved. I hope he will welcome me when I die.
Most recent to depart was my father. He lived a long life; I think he was 92. He almost died in the leadup to Christmas the prior year—I hear the doctors said all his systems were shutting down, and they expected him to go at any time. Yet he rallied and went home.
He was back in hospital some months later. Pneumonia, I think. Then they said again he was rallying. And then, as I recall hearing it, in the middle of the night watch, he suddenly sat up in bed, as though alarmed, and died.
That does not sound good. It sounds as though he was fighting to the last moment to live. Who dies sitting up? It sounds as if he was trying to force himself awake, awake from the sinister dream he was about to dissolve into.
It reminds me of reports of the death of Elizabeth I: “It is said that Elizabeth resisted lying down out of fear that she would never rise again. Elizabeth lay speechless on the floor for four days before her servants finally managed to settle her into bed.” She is supposed to have uttered the final words “All my possessions for one moment of time.”
To put it simply, he was not a good man. And, to all appearances, he died unrepentant.
Maxime Bernier did surprisingly poorly in the recent byelection in Portage-Lisgar. I, for one, thought he had a good issue with abortion. He should, in theory, have been able to shear off much of the Conservative base in a strongly conservative riding. But he actually did less well than the relatively anonymous PPC candidate who ran last time.
On reflection, I think this Illustrates that the real issue in the minds of voters is not this or that current controversy, but the question of sincerity. It may have been too apparent to the voters that Bernier’s new opposition to abortion was a political ploy, not an expression of his convictions. He had previously supported abortion. He was obviously running in Portage-Lisgar out of opportunism, not some love of the neighbourhood. And it must be said, in general, Bernier does not radiate sincerity. He does not come across as dishonest, but as unspontaneous.
Poilievre, by contrast, generally sounds like he believes what he says. This distinguishes him from his predecessors, O’Toole and Scheer. O’Toole was obviously dishonest. His positions were obviously chosen for political effect, not out of any conviction, betraying those who supported him as a “True Blue Tory.” And Scheer gave the same impression by colluding in the backrooms with the milk lobby to take down Bernier, and by trying to fudge his position on abortion when challenged.
This explains why Poilievre is not threatened on the right by Bernier the way O’Toole was, yet is also doing better on the left than O’Toole or Scheer, despite their attempts to pander in that direction. Because the people who will vote against Trudeau want, above all, sincerity, not this or that political promise.
In the US, this was Trump’s strength. He is not particularly right-wing, but the right wing would die for him. People love him because he seems to say just what he thinks.
RFK Jr. has the same aura about him.
Some people, it is still and always true, prefer being lied to. They are terrified by anyone who seems to speak truth. This is the cause of Trump Derangement Syndrome. These people will want a Biden, because he is predictable and capable of lying soothingly with a straight face. These people will like Trudeau because, with his dramatic training, he will smile and speak of “sunny ways” and make anything sound superficially plausible.
Which group is larger? The good people who want truth, or the bad people who want the comforting lies? The last US election suggests it is about 50/50. I suspect it is 1/3 for either side, and 1/3 in the middle trying to avoid taking a stand.
A brace of recent polls show Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives opening up a seven point lead over the Liberals. It seem insane that it takes so long for Canadians to turn emphatically against this corrupt, incompetent, and totalitarian government. But it is at least at last perhaps happening.
At the same time, Michelle Rempel Garnier reports a rumour that the Liberals may want to call a snap election.
The rumour is likely to be false. But if it is true—why would Trudeau call an election when he is trailing in the polls?
Suppose insiders have a clear expectation of recession hitting soon. If Trudeau waits, he will be blamed for it, and the Liberal Party will lose much worse by 2025.
If he pulls the trigger now, he may make up the ground in a campaign, and get himself cemented into power for another few years—possibly long enough to weather the storm. If, on the other hand, he loses to a Conservative minority—they are liable to get blamed by the general public for the recession when it hits, and the Liberals should have a good shot at getting back into power soon enough.
If Trudeau does indeed call a snap election this summer or fall, it will be a sign of bad economic times to come.
Democracy is fragile; it relies on a series of gentlemen’s agreements. This is why, for example, John Adams said that the US Constitution requires a moral people. Unfortunately, these gentlemen’s agreements, these moral principles, are being violated one after another by the left.
People in established democracies seem dangerously unaware of this fact. Such ignorance is why, for example, the US thought it would be a simple matter to go in to Iraq or Libya or Vietnam, overthrow the dictator, set up a thriving democracy, and withdraw in good order. Due to such ignorance, we are losing our own democracies.
1.Thou shalt not seek to silence or deplatform one’s opponent. Otherwise political discourse cannot occur, and the people cannot make informed decisions. This is why, in the Westminster system, the usual laws of libel do not apply within the chamber. This is why, intending to introduce democracy, Qatar first sank a good deal of money into promoting debating societies.
This principle is now being violated by the left, who openly call for “deplatforming” and shouting down opposing viewpoints.
2.Thou shalt not mess with the language, redefining words. This is what George Orwell warned about in 1984 and in “Politics and the English Language.” Language must remain politically neutral for honest discussion to take place.
This principle is now being violated systematically by the left, who openly require others to use their preferred pronouns, while inventing or redefining terms like “Islamophobia,” “gynophobia,” “homophobia,” “equity,” “social justice,” “white supremacy,” “racism,” “sexism,” “gender-affirming care,” “reproductive health,” “genocide,” and so on.
3.When the opposing side leaves office, thou shalt not throw them into prison, and must not pursue them through the legal system, unless their offense is obvious and egregious. This is necessary because it is a grave moral hazard: to eliminate opposition using the powers of the state. Moreover, if a politician knows that, once he leaves office, he risks prison time, this is an obvious reason to refuse to leave office: to instead declare oneself dictator. For this reason, no doubt, Donald Trump did not go after Hillary Clinton for her highly suspicious and certainly illegal treatment of emails as Secretary of State.
This principle is being violated by Biden, Attorney-General Garland, and other, local, prosecutors, in going after Trump on anything they can think of.
4.Thou shalt not seize one’s opponents’ assets or interfere with their livelihood. Jefferson held that democracy was only possible given a large body of freeholders, because their livelihoods could not be easily taken away by governments. Only then can opposition organize. This is why democracy almost never breaks out until the GDP per capita is around $10,000 in 2000 US dollars; and almost always does once this threshold is reached. At this point a significant middle class has probably formed, not dependent on some authority for their daily survival. They can afford to look up from the grindstone to organize in opposition to government power. We are no longer a society of freeholders; this foundation has become more fragile. It now requires the political neutrality of the banking system.
This principle is being violated now in the case of Nigel Farage. And he is not the first or only one. The UK banks have been doing this for some time, against Tommy Robinson, against other dissidents. It was violated wholesale by the Trudeau government in illegally shutting down the Freedom Convoy and its supporters. It is being regularly violated by Google YouTube, Patreon, and other high-tech platforms.
5.Thou shalt not subvert the voting process. The process of voting and counting the votes must be fully transparent. As Stalin said, “It does not matter who gets to vote. It only matters who gets to count the vote.” Without a secure and trustworthy voting system, democracy cannot exist.
Again, the left is systematically subverting this, most systematically by moving to voting machines which are, to either other authorities or the general public, black boxes known to be open to abuse in a variety of ways. This lack of transparency and ballot security is fatal even if they are not actually falsifying the returns; although we must assume they are.
6.Thou shalt not, as a government, control the press. To do so is to prevent the public from getting the information they need to choose their governments. This is why freedom of the press is included in the First Amendment, in the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
In Canada, in violation of this, the government is heavily subsidizing much of the press, while suppressing the rest, through legislation like C-11 and C-18. In the US and other Western countries, there seems to be an informal collusion between press and government, and informal suppression of alternative sources of news. “Journalists” move in and out of government positions, getting their rewards for compliance. This is in violation of the old and honourable gentleman’s agreement that newspapermen would be in eternal dissent from the government in power.
7.The police and courts must remain politically neutral. The average citizen must feel he has the recourse of going to law, and will find there an honest referee. He must feel that, if assaulted, he can go to the cop on the corner, and be treated fairly. If not, all civil society collapses, and we are either in a police state or beyond Thunderdome.
Trudeau subverted this in Canada by using the police to suppress the truckers’ Freedom protest. The Canadian courts have subverted this with the Gladue Rule, which ended equal treatment under the law. In Britain, the police are in the business now of arresting people for posting anything online that they decide might offend some preferred group. In the US, the left is putting pressure on police forces to become ideologically subservient, with threats to defund them and spurious charges of racism. Police are terrified of being accused of racism or homophobia, and do not apply laws equally as a result. Currently, as one example, the police will turn a blind eye to nudity during a Pride parade that would be prosecuted as public indecency in another venue.
8.Thou shalt not stand in actual opposition to the country itself and the culture and civilization it represents and exists to preserve. This is implicit in the Westminster term, “His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.” Opposition must be assumed to be loyal, and opposition must be, in the fundamental sense, loyal. All must ascribe to whatever shared values the country is founded upon: the Constitution, the doctrine of human rights, the welfare of the British nation, and so forth. Nobody must be actually trying to tear the system down; that is treason.
This too is violated by the modern left. They do indeed openly want to tear the system down: as “patriarchy,” or “white supremacy” or “colonialism.” They claim the US as we know it was created in 1619 to advance slavery. They claim Canada is built on “unceded” native land.
Is there a path back to liberal democracy, now that all the prerequisites are gone?
There has to be; for there was a way to form these gentlemen’s agreements and get to democracy in the first place.
But with so few gentlemen in the audience, it is hard to see how the path back does not involve some great suffering and some violence. Or else divine intervention.
Fireworks from the Detroit-Windsor Freedom Festival
It is perhaps time, on this Dominion Day and Independence Day weekend, freedom’s birthday, to express some gratitude: God is still in his heaven, and the world is not just getting worse. Most notably, we have had several great US Supreme Court rulings as birthday presents, ending systemic racial discrimination in college admissions, restoring freedom of conscience, and killing Biden’s plan to rob from the poor and give to the rich on student loans.
I see much angst online among leftist friends. One points out, incorrectly, that all the judges who opposed the overturning of affirmative action were members of minorities, and those who voted to overturn were from the racial majority. (Kagan is not more obviously a member of a minority than Amy Coney Barret; or Ketanji Brown Jackson than Clarence Thomas). As if, even if true, this showed the ruling was racist. But on the other hand, one would equally expect people who got their positions through racial preferences to support racial preferences. It is racist to suppose that only “white” people can be racist.
But even on the left, something may be happening. RFK Jr. is a beam of sanity appearing unexpectedly on the left horizon. And he is pulling good poll numbers.
In crazy leftist Canada, the deep North, Pierre Poilievre is drawing huge crowds, reminiscent of Trudeaumania generations ago. New Brunswick’s premier is following Alberta’s, it seems, in swerving right.
Things are grim in France—the French police, now a force 45,000 strong, are calling it civil war. Terrible for the moment; but this may kill the delusion of multiculturalism in Europe and across the developed West. It may end the thoughtless “diversity is our strength” mantra.
Diversity is only half of the formula; unity is the other. E pluribus unum. A shared culture is the goal.
Speaking of which, Muslims in North America are protesting against sexual and critical theory indoctrination in the schools, joining with Christian parents. The leftist divide and control multiculturalism idea looks about to fall apart.
The Bud Light boycott has awakened the silent majority that they can do something. And it has awakened the large corporations to the risk of pushing leftist politics. We can see corporations backing away: the NHL, Starbucks.
The Trudeau government’s plan to force web services to pay for linking to Canadian news sites seems to be backfiring on them nicely. They are refusing, as a result, to link to any of the government’s subsidized news sites.
The tide of totalitarianism may still be high, but I think that it has turned.
This article makes an interesting case that affirmative action is why systems no longer seem to work as well as they used to; why you can't get a passport, a doctor, a decent book or movie, or an affordable house, any longer.
Jesus said to his apostles: "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
"Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and whoever receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward. And whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink because the little one is a disciple—
amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward."
I was curious to see how the priest would handle today’s mass reading. Going as it does against the common idolatry of “family values.”
His response was predictable.
“Of course this does not mean we are not supposed to love our parents. Indeed, the greater our love for God, the greater our love for others.”
Which is true, but does not explain the reading. If it is not meant to say what it says, why is it in the Bible? Did God or the Church make some mistake by including it?
It is a warning against loving your parents, or children, or indeed yourself, too much. One is supposed, instead, to love God, and after that, righteous men.
One loves one’s parents, or one’s children, if they are righteous men. Not because they are your parents, or children, but because they are righteous men.
Anything else is immoral, in just the same way racism is immoral.
The black girl in the red dress was singing for coins in front of the Dollarama. Beside her was a hand-drawn whiteboard giving her name, Keira, and an explanation. “I am suffering from depression and anxiety. All I have left is my voice.”
And I knew it was true. I could hear it in her voice. She sang so sweet, so high and yet so deep.
You need to suffer for a voice like that.
She deserved those coins more than any banker or store manager or dentist in the mall.
“I was still a child.”
That is the original tragedy of life: we are raised by humans. Every parent fails us, some maliciously, some with good intentions. As children, we cannot understand this. We believe, and we trust. We accept as right and normal whatever upbringing we are given.
If we are told we are vermin, we believe it forever. If we are told we have no right to live, we believe it. If we are told we live only to give pleasure to the parent, we believe it. If we are not loved, we conclude we are unlovable.
The tragedy of black America is not the aftereffects of slavery 160 years ago. That’s absurd. Neither is it the aftereffects of Jim Crow three generations ago. It is the failure of the black family. It is kids raised with no father, heedless parents, or some predatory male boyfriend in place of a father; or kids given no moral guidance.
The tragedy of Canadian Indians is not residential schools two generations ago. It is not the loss of some imaginary culture in which you could talk to animals and trees. It is the failure, aided and abetted by welfare dependency, of the indigenous family. It is teenage girls desperate to escape their home situation, who too often die in the attempt; it is bands of kids on isolated reserves planning to commit suicide because they see no escape from “adult bullying.”
These subcultures have failed in parenting.
But not they alone; it also happens in the best of families.
I used to know a couple of schizophrenics who mostly lived on the street and were in and out of psychiatric hospitals. I cannot tell you their last names, because almost anyone in Canada would recognize them.
I knew a family up the hill in Westmount, then the poshest address in Canada, one of whose adolescent sons locked himself in a closet and set himself on fire.
Another kid I knew, from one of the best families in town, broke into a doctor’s office, and swallowed every pill he could find.
The “great families” are often as abusive to children as the poorest ones. The problem is not caused by poverty, but by parental sin. Great families regularly devour at least one child a generation, as if a ritual sacrifice. Think of Rosemary Kennedy. Think of the Emperor Claudius and the family of Caesar Augustus.
Worse are the children raised not to be abused, to become scapegoats, but raised to abuse. Every dysfunctional family, unless there is only one child, seems to have both. It is these latter who pass on the original sin unto the next generation; the little Cains. They are groomed to believe that they are special, and deserve to get whatever they want. They will go on to abuse the next generation. And so the tragedy is repeated, generation to generation.
“Whoever humbles himself like this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5And whoever welcomes a little child like this in My name welcomes Me.
6But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
7Woe to the world for the causes of sin. These stumbling blocks must come, but woe to the man through whom they come!”
There has been a black girl singing in front of Dollarama for all of human history. No doubt there will be, until the Second Coming.
And let’s call it Dominion Day, a name that echoes with history, instead of the bland and meaningless “Canada Day”; which seems to imply that Canada is simply generic, and stands for nothing.
“Canada Day” is of a piece with tearing own statues and renaming streets to remove all traces of our shared heritage. A country like Canada has too little shared heritage, not too much.
The great benefit of subscribing, as I do, to a left-wing columnist like my friend Xerxes is that I stay in touch with thinking on the left. And not just the left-wing commentariat. Xerxes’s readership is also solidly on the left, and he prints their letters.
Recently, I have been able to read all their best arguments in favour of unrestricted abortion.
T.W. does not seem to grasp the difference between abortion and miscarriage. He seems to believe that placing legal limits on abortion will require sending women who miscarry to prison. Apparently he does not recognize women as having free will.
B.E.: “[opposition to abortion] is a matter of religion [not political ideology], be it fundamentalist Protestant, traditional Catholic, Muslim, or any other faith that preaches against abortion.”
To the contrary, respect for the life and welfare of others is incumbent on all of us regardless of religion. Kant demonstrated the philosophical necessity. It is inherent too in the doctrine of human rights. Suggesting the issue is limited to certain religions is an alibi for immorality. Are only Catholics obliged not to murder, then? And if you simply reject Catholicism, you have free rein?
V.G.: “Totally shameful, the hypocrisy involved in fighting abortion -- yet when it comes to putting an end to mass shootings all we hear is deafening silence.”
Abortion is legal in Canada, and in most US States. It is even, in Canada, government-funded.
Mass shooting is illegal, and receives the harshest penalty available in law. In most parts of the US, the death penalty. Most mass shooters are shot dead in the act.
Imagine applying the same standard to women seeking abortion. That is, in effect, what V.G. demands, without realizing it.
C.B. refers to the foetus as a “part of [the mother’s] body.” C’s formulation is like saying the driver is part of a car. Or that, if an invited guest enters my home, I have the right to kill them. I own them; they are in my premises.
R.C. writes: “The same people who are anti-abortion, who are all for pre-born infant rights, lose all interest and support for the infant/mother once it is born.”
Good people are eager to care for any child allowed to live. There is a shortage of babies for adoption. Many US states have a law exempting a mother from any legal penalties should she leave her infant at the door of any hospital. He or she will be taken in and cared for, no questions asked. If the mother keeps the child, she is eligible for welfare—creating the problem, some claim, of young women deliberately getting pregnant outside of marriage for the state support.
Unwed mothers demanding more money or else they will kill the child looks like hostage taking and extortion.
R. C. goes on to say, “These same people [who oppose unrestricted abortion] are for the death penalty. And they have no problem with the hypocrisy of their beliefs.”
The largest identifiable group in the world opposed to abortion, the Catholic Church, is also opposed to the death penalty. So of whom does he speak?
But turn R’s accusation around. How many of those who support abortion also oppose the death penalty?
They are actually endorsing executing an innocent person at random while objecting to executing a convicted murderer after due process of law.
R. is a classic hypocrite for not seeing this, and then accusing others or hypocrisy.
And that is apparently the best they’ve got.
What it really all amounts to is that they want sex on demand, but find children inconvenient. So kill them.
When Jordan Peterson explains that even lobsters have hierarchies, this proves he is a fascist.
Friend Xerxes claims that the early Christian church had no leaders. He quotes as evidence Saint Paul saying “There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” All was rainbows and unicorns until the “’Fathers of the Early Church’ did their best to re-establish a hierarchy with bishops and priests, all male, running the church.”
This is not a tenable reading of the Bible. Jesus had thousands of disciples; yet he designated only twelve, all male, as apostles. When one, Judas, defected and committed suicide, the rest saw the need to select a replacement. This was plainly an established hierarchy, and established by Jesus himself. He shared some things only with them, speaking to others in parables.
"To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak in parables, so that 'looking they may not perceive, and listening they may not understand.'" – Luke 8:9-10.
He gave them specific commissions. Notably, what they bound or loosed on earth would be bound or loosed in heaven. That is a remarkable level of authority.
I recall giving a Bible course in Korea, and the students at first balking at my observation that there was a hierarchy in Heaven. Wouldn’t everyone being equal be an aspect of heaven? They resisted the idea, but then realized that it must be so, and that the Bible says it is so. There are ranks of angels e numerated in the Bible; there are elders sitting closer to the throne; Saint John is greatest of all on earth, but less than the least in heaven—so there is a “least” in heaven. And so on.
Life can’t be a pass-fail course. There must be some reward for heroic virtue.
Are you upset at the thought of a heaven where others would be greater than yourself? Then you are guilty of envy, and probably will not make it to heaven in the first place. This is the sin of Cain.
As to there being no Jew nor Greek in Christ, no male or female, this is the doctrine that all men are created equal, which is not the same as democracy, and democracy is not the same as having no hierarchy or leaders. It means we all have an equal chance at salvation, based on our own merits—“in Christ,” not necessarily in the secular world. No fellow Christian is to be judged by the colour of their skin, or their role in reproduction, or their parentage, but by their character and their own merit. It does not follow that each of us has an equal right to declare ourselves a doctor and practice medicine, say. There is indeed a difference in moral worth between, say, Charles Manson and Mahatma Gandhi. And it is right to make that distinction.
And there do indeed need to be leaders, just as there need to be doctors. Having no leaders is anarchy, not democracy. Democracy means we elect our leaders. Democracies have hierarchies: municipal, provincial, federal. Local member, cabinet minister, premier.
There is nothing immoral or inherently wrong about a hierarchy.
Posts
