Why We're All Going Crazy

 

Murderous Family Values

 

Politicians from both sides are scrambling since the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that in-vitro fertilized embryos are human beings, and cannot be casually destroyed. This presumably makes common fertility treatments illegal. In-vitro fertilization almost always involves killing unwanted embryos.

Democrats hate this, because it implies abortion is illegal.

Republicans hate this, because it will prevent some from having a family. “Family values,” after all…

It is a useful reminder that “family values,” like nationalism, can easily come in conflict with morality. “Family values” are an idolatry.

The court decision is undoubtedly correct. The desire of an adult to have children does not trump the child’s right to life. Children are not pets, or toys, but are given to us as a sacred trust.

Transformers

 

Our parish bulletin is dutifully pushing the “synod on synodality.” It publishes an appeal, not written by any local pastor: “Our Church is currently working to grow as a dynamic, synodal church. … Around the world, we are asked to reflect on this question: ‘HOW can we be a synodal Church in Mission?’ In this transformation, are we open to the new and ready to let go of what has been?”

The obvious answer is, “no.” The entire point of religion is to put us in touch with eternal truth. Eternal truth cannot change. Any change is necessarily a decent into error—unless the entire enterprise has been a sham from the beginning.

All ecumenical councils can do is to discern and to clarify what is understood to have always been church teaching, if and when some issue arises. Change or letting go is never on the docket.

Vatican II may look like a departure; and it was, and remains, deeply unsettling to many. But it is conventionally understood as concerning itself only with the liturgy, not with faith or morals, and to be properly interpreted according to “the hermeneutic of continuity.”

So what can a synod on synodality legitimately consider? The liturgy? Perhaps, for example, exploiting improvements in technology to feature sermons presented on large screens during the mass, from the very best preachers and expositors, instead of by the local pastor. Perhaps a return to the Latin mass. Perhaps administrative issues like how to keep the Vatican solvent, or what should be required for an institution to call itself “Catholic.” But this does not seem to call for an elaborate consultative process. It seems more like a matter for experts in a given field.

And none of this seems to warrant the term “transformation.” The last thing a faithful Catholic wants is for the Church to “transform.” 

And what sort of transformation would cause the Church to grow in membership? After all, there are already many non-Catholic alternatives out there. Does the world really need another non-Catholic alternative? Is it crying for it?

God-Given Rights

 

An MSNBC guest recently expressed concern over “Christian nationalists” who believe that rights come from God, rather than from Congress or the Supreme Court.

Which of course they do, as explained in the US Declaration of Independence. “Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Leftists here actually make the case for Christian nationalism. They are conceding that America was founded on Christian principles. They are conceding that if you throw out Judeo-Christian ethical monotheism, you are consenting to have governments arbitrarily take away of your rights. 

They simply want this to happen.

Lent According to Francis

 

Pope Francis has apparently issued his own suggestions for the Lenten fast. 

I had not heard these. I hear them now from my leftist friend Xerxes. 

Francis seems to be more popular among non-Catholics than Catholics. Within the church, he is far less liked than his two immediate predecessors, Benedict XV and John Paul II. He has stirred up much confusion and opposition.

Here are his recommendations:

• Fast from hurting words and say kind words.
• Fast from sadness and be filled with gratitude.
• Fast from anger and be filled with patience.
• Fast from pessimism and be filled with hope.
• Fast from complaints and contemplate simplicity.
• Fast from pressures and be prayerful.
• Fast from bitterness and fill your heart with joy.
• Fast from selfishness and be compassionate to others.
• Fast from grudges and be reconciled.
• Fast from words and be silent so you can listen.

I do not like these suggestions. They do not involve giving up anything for Lent. 

You are always supposed to avoid hurting words. “Anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”

You are always supposed to avoid anger and grudges; it is one of the seven deadly sins.

You are always supposed to hope; it is one of the theological virtues. Despair, as acedia, is one of the seven vices.

You are always supposed to pray; not just during Lent.

You are always supposed to be compassionate—that is the chief of virtues, charity.

On the other hand, there is no virtue, as Francis seems to claim, in being happy, nor vice in being sad. How cruel a thought is that? The Christian truth is the opposite. Jesus actually said, “Blessed are those who mourn.” The Pieta is one of the great expressions of Christian art. What is striking about the earliest Greek icons, in contrast to the pagan Greek art that came before, is the expression of grief on all the faces. And Jesus wept. No compassionate person can be happy as a rule.

There is no virtue in avoiding pressures. Did and do the Christian martyrs duck the fight? St. Paul said we are to “Work out [our] salvation in fear and trembling.” If you are avoiding pressures, you are taking the broad and easy high road to hell.

There is especially no virtue in being silent. This is a denial of the Holy Spirit and all the prophets. The duty is to evangelize. Jesus said, “Let your light shine before men.” He said “Go forth and make disciples of all nations.” He declared John the Baptist, the “voice crying in the wilderness,” the greatest of saints, of all those born of woman.

Francis is all over the map, and one cannot tell where his thinking is coming from. It does not seem to be Catholic or even religious. It is perhaps from the Rotary Club. 

There is good reason for the traditional Lenten fast being from meat (and alcohol). Meat is a very tangible thing, and one is obviously either doing it or not doing it. Francis’s suggestions are just alibis for doing nothing for Lent, and actually seem to give permission to hold grudges, be selfish, and never pray the rest of the year.

Whether People Like It or Not

 

The leftist commentariat is delusional. 

Note this recent panel on CityTV’s Breakfast TV. The host asks whether “the numbers are so skewed now that we’re going to get a new prime minister whether people like it or not.”

Who exactly are the “people” here? And who are “the numbers”?

He then argues that Poilievre is taking a risk in coming out against hormone therapy for minors and allowing males to compete in female sports. He must move to the centre sooner or later or he is unelectable, “no matter what the polls say.”

Is he admitting that Canadian elections are fixed? Or is reality obliged to conform to his will?

Polling shows Canadians are against men in women’s sports by a four-to-one margin—and all four other major parties, Liberals, NDP, Bloc, and Greens, are on record as supporting hormone therapy for minors and men in women’s sports. 

Who exactly is not moving to the centre? 

How does this math work, that the vast majority of Canadians are “far right” and the centre is on the extreme left? 

And why does the commentariat never argue a need for the Liberals or the NDP to move to the “centre”? Why is it only incumbent on the right to do so?

The commentariat said a year go that Poilievre would be a disaster as Tory leader, it was a mistake for the party to choose him, because he was too far right. How was he ever going to “move to the centre,” as O’Toole obediently did? Now look at Poilievre’s polling numbers. Compare them to O’Toole’s. 

Either the leftist commentariat are delusional, or they intend to deceive.

They similarly persist in framing the issue as a matter of defending transgender “rights.”

The right to make life-altering decisions as a child, even without parental consent, is not extended to most children—only, as they propose, to supposed “transgenders.”

The right to choose which bathroom to use, or which sex to compete against in sport, or which prison to be sent to if convicted of a crime, is not extended to most of us—only, as they propose, to supposed “transgenders.”

The right to choose which pronouns others may use when speaking of you in your absence has never been extended to most of us—only, now by law in Canada, to supposed “transgenders.” They get to dictate.

These are not rights, but privileges. 

Either the leftist commentariat is delusional in calling them rights, or they intend to deceive.

But the same issue arises with the whole concept of “transgenderism.” A man believing he is a woman, or a woman believing she is a man, is delusional. They are disconnected from and in denial of physical reality—that is what a delusion is.

Or else, of course, they are intending to deceive.

 I give them the benefit of the doubt: they are insane. Hubris drives people insane. It is the classic trajectory of Greek tragedy, and the downfall is near.

The Phantom Tsunami of Book Bannings in Canada

 

I am apparently a “free speech absolutist.” Which is what they call anyone these days who believes in free speech. 

So when I saw the CBC headline “Calls to ban books are on the rise in Canada,” I thought I’d be outraged by these calls for book banning.

Yeah; no.

What the article calls book banning is actually just restricting access to books in school libraries. 

And which books? “Books that deal with sexuality, 2SLGBTQ+ themes or gender diversity.”

In other words, pornography. Books that deal with sexual activities.

Just to begin with, a book is not banned if it is not featured in a library. All libraries are curated. 

And a school library is supposed to be curated in the spirit of guardianship, in loco parentis, for the same reason children are required to attend classes and study what the teacher and the curriculum says. Children do not have the right to vote, or to have sex, or to work, or, broadly, to make their own decisions; they are children, and wards. They naturally do not have the right to read whatever they want.

Even for adults, there is a free speech case for censoring pornography. The point of free speech, as John Stuart Mill explains, is to ensure a free and open discussion of ideas, so that truth may be known. Pornography is not exactly heavy with ideas, other than the idea that one should have sex, perhaps unconventional sex. It does not seek truth, is not about seeking truth; it is purely a form of entertainment, like bear-baiting. Which, at best, is lacking in social importance, in the words of an old US Supreme Court ruling. There is no problem with censoring or banning such things.

Surely the only possible point in calling the restriction of pornography in school libraries “book banning” is to trivialize all objections to censorship, and make real book banning seem reasonable. And, when someone objects to any actual book banning, allowing the left to claim hypocrisy, and to say "you want book banning too! You want to ban any books you disagree with too!"

On Standing Up to Bullies

 

I am what is referred to these days by many as a “war pig.” That is, I endorse military aid to Ukraine. I endorse Israel’s pacification of Gaza.

I believe those who object, saying it is “none of our business,” and we should not be sending money overseas when there are serious problems at home, are being cowardly and selfish. 

Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan: we find Ukraine or Israel set upon by robbers and left lying in a ditch. It is our responsibility to help.

Remember Edmund Burke’s caution: “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Moreover, collective security requires that acts of aggression against anyone not be allowed to succeed. Ensuring that aggression does not succeed is the surest way to ensure peace internationally, just as having a police force is the surest way to ensure peace domestically. We cannot honourably duck our responsibility and hope someone else does it.

I think it likely that the current turmoil in Ukraine has much to do with the disorderly American pullout from Afghanistan, which seemed to signal a lack of resolve.

Suggesting we should not send money abroad when there are needs at home is the fallacy of the false alternative. The one does not necessarily preclude the other.

If those who endorse unilateral pacifism really thought they had an argument, they would not resort to namecalling and would not try to dismiss pro-intervention positions out of hand.

We don’t want war; that’s why we must fight.

My Senior Year of High School

 

A questionnaire that came over the transom in Facebook:

Your SENIOR year of high school! The longer ago it was, the more fun the answers will be!

1. The year? 1971

3. What kind of car did you have? Stutz Bearcat

4. It's Friday Night Football were you there? Friday had not been invented yet.

5. What kind of job? Hunter-gatherer

6. Were you a party animal? You mean like those pink elephants? I remember the pink elephants.

7. Were you considered a jock? Not Scottish

8. Were you in the Band? Nope. But Robbie Robertson was.

9. Were you a nerd? Not sure. Nobody noticed me,  so they did not say.

10. Do you still live in same school district? Never did. 

11. Can you sing the school fight song? Fighting was prohibited.

12. What was your school mascot? Me

13. If you could go back and do it again, would you? Only if armed.

14. Are you still in contact with people from high school? Not sure they were people.

15. Do you know where your high school sweetheart is? With him.

16. What was your favorite subject? At the time, sex.

17. Do you still have your High School ring? No. I gave it to her at the root beer stand.

18. Do you still have your yearbook? Yes but I'm not in it.

Hope this helps.

The Synodal Way and the Narrow Way

 

A prayer intention that I had not heard before was added to the mass this Sunday: “Lord, keep us in communion with the Holy Father, Pope Francis in Rome.” 

This is perhaps an indication of the turmoil in the church: schism seems a possibility, perhaps immanent. And if it happens, Francis is responsible. It is he who is stirring things up. The latest word is of a proposed reconciliation with the Freemasons. Whom prior popes stretching back centuries supposedly simply misunderstood. 

Good Catholics do not know which way to turn. If good Catholics are now to believe that the popes and councils prior to Francis got it wrong, how can we have confidence that Francis has it right? On what authority?

“The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul”

I have no sense that the local bishop, or the local priest, are particularly traditionalist. Some parishioners clearly are. The weekly bulletin dutifully reports on the synod on synodality in the same terms used by the Vatican. It calls for a “listening church,” seeking to know what the Holy Spirit wants. And reports that two representatives from the parish will be sent to a new regional synodal confab in March.

Given that there is a continuing need to know what the Holy Spirit wants, that the Holy Spirit has perhaps changed His mind on something, how does one discern what the Holy Spirit wants? How does one listen to the Holy Spirit?

The path is well known and marked. It does not have to do with meeting in groups. In such groups, one is not listening to the Holy Spirit. The voice of the Spirit is there drowned out by human voices. One goes out into the desert, alone. Or to the monastic cell.

Abraham did not hear the voice of God by listening to the polytheists around him, but by breaking away from them, packing his bags and leaving Ur. Noah likewise; his neighbours no doubt thought him mad. Lot likewise; he was not even to look back on the cities of the plain. Moses likewise; he met God in the desert, as a fugitive. Elijah or Isaiah likewise; John the Baptist likewise. 

The synodal way of breaking into small groups to discuss topics for three minutes each, is not listening to the Spirit, but to the world.

They Can't All Be Right

 

Bahai Temple, meant to express architecturally the concept that "all religions are one."

One line of attack beloved by atheists is to point to the multiplicity of religions, and argue that since at a minimum all but one must be false, the obvious and only rational conclusion is that they are all false.

Most people are Christian, they will go on to say, simply because their parents were Christian. They have no better reason. Were they born in India, they would be just as certain that Hinduism was true; born in Japan, they would be Buddhist; in Egypt, Muslim.

Perhaps fair—for those who are only nominally religious. For those who are actually religious, the question is never whether you are Christian or Hindu, but whether you are devout.

But why limit this argument to religion? There are a multiplicity of governmental systems. Aside from liberal democracy, there is absolute monarchy, Communism, Fascism, oligarchy, aristocracy, military junta, anarchy, dictatorship, syndicalism, and so forth. All but one of them must be wrong. So the obvious conclusion is that they are all wrong. Most people in Canada or the US believe in liberal democracy only because they happen to live in a liberal democracy, and do not know any better.

Somehow, when applied to anything other than religion, this argument does not sound convincing. We do, most of us, feel confident that we have all the information necessary to make an objective judgement on any other matter: for example, that liberal democracy is the best of these systems. Others, of course, may opt for one of the others.

The argument works only if you start from the presupposition that religion is false.

And perhaps from the false presupposition that “no religion” is an option. Just as “no government” is not a realistic option, we cannot really live without some rules imposed on our behaviour. That is what “religion” means: a “binding.” We need, in the end, to have a purpose. “Atheists” simply find their purpose in some god they do not call God: “Nature,” or “Science,” or “Psychology,” or Marxism  and dialectical materialism, or Freudianism, or Ecology, or Climate Change, or Evolution. Or self.

The question is whether their formulation is better than any of the traditional ones.

There is, after all, far greater consistency among conceptions of God as Yahweh, Allah, Brahman, Gitche Manitou or Ahura Mazda, mostly only the words for “personal supreme being” in different languages, than there is among the various faiths and gods worshipped by atheists.

They can’t all be right.

The Ghettoes of Avonlea

 

Parks Canada has a new ten-year plan to revamp Green Gables to present “cultures not currently presented at the site, e.g., Acadian, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of colour) … and new narratives, perspectives and voices.”

This is an example of real cultural appropriation. Anne of Green Gables, a cornerstone of Canadian culture, is being hijacked to present instead random ethnic subcultures not relevant to the story, that do not appear in the books.

This is as offensive as if, say, the recreated Huron village at Ste.-Marie-Among-the-Hurons were staffed by interpreters dressed as Anne, and the longhouses featured tableaux from Avonlea. It is disrespectful of this aspect of our shared Canadian culture, and seems to want to detract from it. It seems to want to make it something foreign to our own experience.

Anne seems still to be shunned because of her red hair. Gingers are still discriminated against; probably more than ever.

Death and Renaissance

 

My daughter’s history text suggests the primary cause of the Renaissance was the Black Death. The logic goes that this catastrophe shook people’s faith in Divine Providence, prompting a turning away from religion to a new, more humanist perspective.

There are two problems with this argument. First, in troubled times, people run towards religion, not away from it. “There are no atheists in foxholes.” People rarely renounce belief in God on their deathbed. Second, the Black Death swept through Asia as well as Europe. Why did the Renaissance happen in Europe, not in India or China or the Middle East?

Britannica suggest the Black Death actually retarded the Renaissance: people preoccupied with dying and caring for the dying had less time, logically, for study, trade, the arts, or philosophical speculation.

So what does account for the Renaissance? 

The trade along the Silk Road may have something to do with it: new ideas as well as spices travelled from China to Europe by this route. However, this does not work: the Silk Road was in operation already in pre-Roman times. Moreover, if the mixing of cultures was the key, why didn’t the Renaissance happen in Central Asia? Being equidistant from each terminus, it got the most mixing of cultures and ideas. And Europe would have gotten no more than China.

Some suggest that contact with the Levant due to the Crusades did it; some suggest it was the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, which forced Eastern scholars to flee west.

But that contact of two cultures had been going on since the seventh century, in Spain as well as in the Levant, and all around the Mediterranean basin. Contact with Islam was nothing new to the 14th century. And it leaves no reason for the Renaissance to happen in the Christian rather than the Muslim lands: the Crusades surely prompted a similar flight of Muslim scholars east, and Muslims would have garnered roughly as much from Christian culture by taking Constantinople, Egypt, Spain, and Asia Minor as the Christians did of Muslim culture by taking Jerusalem and the Levant.

Which leaves the invention of the printing press and movable type. This must have made the crucial difference.

Movable type had already been invented, independently, in China and Korea. However, there it was not used for wider circulation of ideas, but to ensure accurate reproduction of the sutras, the core religious texts. In the West, Gutenberg did not stop at the Bible. It was used to more widely disseminate writings in general. Hence, new ideas.

Which leads to the next speculation: if movable type, making books more widely available, led to the Renaissance, what can we expect from the Internet and the World Wide Web? 

They are a vastly greater revolution in the dissemination of ideas and information; on a par, perhaps, with the invention of writing itself.

The Emperor's New Clothes

 

In teaching “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” as a way to introduce Western thought to an Asian student, pulled some materials from the web. They identify two themes: “pride can make you do foolish things,” and “children always tell the truth.”

An example of how putting truths in parable form means only “those who have ears to hear, hear.”

Whoever extracted these lessons from the story obviously saw it from the point of view of the emperor. I suspect this identifies them as a narcissist. And this first moral is indeed the lesson they needed to learn: pride is their chief fault.

But as for the second supposed moral, “children always tell the truth,” this suggest someone incapable of seeing children as human beings.

This would indeed be consistent with narcissism. Narcissists see their children as pets, as toys, and will either decide they are perfect, little lapdogs to be pampered, or make them scapegoats, vermin, bad no matter what they do.

In Andersen’s story, only the emperor is clearly driven by pride. Those in the crowd are more plausibly  driven by humility—of course they cannot see the fine clothes, they are not worthy, but they are not going to contradict their betters who can.

That this commentator cannot imagine from their point of view again suggests narcissism.

The moral of the story is to think for yourself, and not be easily influenced by those around you. To avoid what Francis Bacon called “the idols of the tribe.” 

Narrow is the gate that leads to salvation.

Rivers of Blood

 

The current season of the British series “Call the Midwife” brings us up to 1968, and Enoch Powell’s famous “Rivers of Blood” speech. Of course, all the sympathetic characters we have come to know and love on the series are immediately opposed to this supposedly racist and anti-immigrant sentiment.

I have a problem with this. A Gallup poll at the time showed 74% of Britons agreed with Powell—that is an overwhelming consensus in polling terms. Even 47% of immigrants agreed there needed to be more restrictions on immigration, against 30% who disagreed. 

Apparently it was the press and the politicians who decided the speech was a problem. Do we believe them without looking for ourselves?

Powell himself predicted this reaction in his speech: “people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: ‘If only,’ they love to think, ‘if only people wouldn't talk about it, it probably wouldn't happen.’"

Are we to believe that all good people would see the speech as reprehensible? And so that that almost all Britons living at the time were not good people? 

This seems racist. 

It is necessary to hear their side; to hear what Powell said.

Powell was not saying there was anything wrong with immigrants, or even that British culture was superior. A racist would have said at least this much. His objection was to mass immigration from a distinctly different culture; because this meant the immigrants would not assimilate. “Their numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally bear upon any small minority did not operate.”

This can be misrepresented by quotation out of context; and he does use language that was not then, but is now, considered offensive, like “piccaninnies.” But these are pickled red herrings.

“Now,” Powell concludes, “we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination.”

We have indeed seen exactly that since, with the growth of the doctrine of “multiculturalism.” Cynical politicians are manipulating ethnic communities to elicit block votes. 

This, Powell warns, was only likely to lead to strife among distinct ethnic ghettoes living in close proximity, seeing themselves as having competing interests. Hence his image of “rivers of blood” in the streets.

Which we seem to be witnessing now.

Milking the Poor

 

Skibbereen, 1847

Back in 1815, the government of Great Britain decided to impose a stiff tariff on any grain being imported from abroad, and even to refuse entry if the grain was sold too cheaply to Britons. This was to keep grain prices high for British landowners.

This was a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich—the landowning class, the aristocracy.

In Ireland, the poor were forced to survive on their own meagre crops of potatoes. They could not afford bread.

And in 1845, the potato crop failed. This did not move the UK government to end the Corn Laws. One third of the Irish starved to death, and one third emigrated in “coffin ships,” largely to Canada, many dying on the way, many dying on the docks. Survivors had to start a new life with nothing. They largely built the Canada we have today.

And today, the Canadian government is doing pretty much the same thing all over again: their “price supports” for eggs, milk, dairy products, and poultry, actually a government-enforced cartel in restraint of trade. These are not luxury items, but the cheapest protein available. The government forces prices up by restricting supply and preventing importation.

It is, again, a massive transfer of wealth from the poorest Canadians to the rich—to large corporate farming operations with the capital to buy “quota.”

It is especially indefensible in a time like now, with the poor seeing their cost of living spiral upward, many living in tents on the street. As with Ireland in 1847, their troubles could be vastly improved immediately by a stroke of the pen. And a callous government is refusing to do it.

The argument for price supports is that they are necessary to allow Canadian farmers to compete, since both America and the EU directly subsidize their agricultural sector.

Doing the same would be better. At least that would be subsidizing both rich and poor instead of asking the poor to subsidize the rich.

But if the American taxpayer or the French taxpayer really want to subsidize food costs for Canadians, why exactly should we want to prevent it?

In every other sector, we believe in the principle of comparative advantage: if someone else can make shoes at a lower cost than we can, we buy their shoes, and sell them something we can make more efficiently, like car parts. For the benefit of all, Canadian farms should concentrate on crops they can sell abroad, rather than demanding a protected market at home. Canadian cheese used to dominate the British market; price supports have cost us that opportunity. And where would we be if, in retaliation, other countries raised tariff barriers to our canola or durum wheat or lumber?

At worst, if, improbably, no crops are profitable in Canada, that farmland is not going anywhere. It is there when we need it.

Are we worried about losing the expertise for poultry or dairy farming in case of future need, in, say, wartime? We could preserve that in government experimental farms and agricultural stations. And, at worst, it is hard to imagine a scenario in which we could not be supplied from the USA.

It’s time to end the exploitation of the poor.

Dirty Feet

 

There has been a lot of ink already on the “He gets us” Superbowl ad showing people washing one another’s feet. I think the objections to it, from both left and right, are overreactions. It is at least well-intentioned.

“Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet.”

That seems to want to speak of God’s offer of forgiveness. Washing does imply the feet are dirty.

However, it seems to promote the troublesome recent redefinition of the word “hate” to mean “disapproval.” Just as “love” has been redefined to mean “coitus.” It shows a woman washing the feet of another woman outside an abortion clinic: seeming to imply that killing someone is not hateful, but objecting to killing someone is. A troublesome miscommunication, if not intended. Similarly, presumably, scolding your child for playing in traffic would mean you hate your child. And an umpire calling a ball player out at second base does so out of hatred.

Such messages do not make the world a better place. The road to Hell is paved with such good intentions.

An Unanswered Letter

 

Santa Claus

North Pole

Canada

Dear Santa:

I don’t want anything for Christmas this year.

I know you are good and you love me. You brought me such nice toys in the past, when I was little. I love the cinnamon bear, I keep him on my pillow every night. And the My Little Pet Shop. I want to have a pet shop when I grow up. I know you wanted to bring me a pony two years ago, but it wouldn’t fit down the chimney. I understand. I don’t need a pony.

 You didn’t bring me anything last year, but I know you were sad, since Dad died that summer. Mom told me. I was sad too, and I didn’t want anything. I miss Dad. I wish he wasn’t dead.

Now you don’t need to bring me anything ever again. Just do one thing. Mom has cancer. She is so thin. We don’t have money for the hospital. I want you to make her better. 

I believe in you, Santa.

Love

XOXOXO

Trixi Ann

Cebu, Philippines

I wrote this for a writing group today.

They thought it was a good story.

They do not understand. 

I do not write fiction.

Why Governments Are Doing Strange Things

 

Neil Oliver makes the point that the powers that be would never be going after Donald Trump so aggressively in court if they thought they could win the next election with the usual ballot stuffing and fraud. It is dangerous for them to be so blatant. It discredits them. They are burning through their credibility and their social capital.

And that, it seems to me, is the key to much that is going on in the world right now. Ruling elites around the world are rapidly becoming more oppressive, or trying to be, because the jig is up. They are resorting to desperate measures because things are getting beyond their control. The dam is about to burst on them; it is bursting.

The Devil always says the opposite of the truth. The elites are spreading the idea that the unskilled and less educated will soon have no social utility due to computerization and robots, and will have to be supported on Universal Basic Income to eat crickets. This is our clearest signal that the elites are about to become redundant due to computerization, and they know it. Each one of us will have all expertise and all available information at our fingertips, without the need for these expensive and often bullying gatekeepers.

You are also seeing the elite now starting to turn on their own. The US media is turning on Biden; the Canadian media grows critical of Justin Trudeau. Our local Liberal member boasted proudly to Facebook that he voted against his own government on a recent NDP motion. It was all for show; the motion hd no chance of passing. But The Vicar of Bray knows how to preserve his own position: there is panc among the deck chairs.

The Christmas Devil

 

No doubt we all make mistakes as parents. 

The thing I feel worst about is telling my kids that Santa Claus filled their stockings at Christmas.

I probably lost many of you there. You think I’m a grinch.

Deal with it. There is no grinch.

We at least never seriously pretended there was an Easter Bunny or a tooth fairy; that was only pro forma, a joke we all shared. We never restricted what they could read or where they could go online. I remembered too well how psychologically valuable superhero comics were to me as a child, and how some other kids were not allowed comics. I did explain to my son that Santa Claus was really Saint Nicholas. But because he was a saint in heaven, I told him, he could still influence events on earth. That left him with the false impression that St. Nicholas brought the gifts. 

I hope he has forgiven me. I need forgiveness.

To be clear, telling children that Santa brings the gifts is a lie. Telling a lie is always wrong. Telling children this lie deliberately teaches them that lying is not wrong, but clever. It is laughing at them behind their back. It is humiliating them, and trying to establish your own superiority. It is manipulating their emotions. It is despicable.

Moreover, the figure of Santa Claus also looks like a deliberate distraction from the real point of the day; and it shifts the focus from the sacred to the mere acquisition of stuff. Our modern Santa Claus clearly derives in part from the old Lord of Misrule, his red nose from partaking of the wassail bowl, his rotundity from overindulgence.

Wrong lesson altogether; it looks like subversion and acedia.

The Devil says the opposite of the truth: it is precisely these things we claim to be doing “for the children” that most reveal our culture’s hatred for the young.

At the breakfast table this morning, I had a good conversation about death and sex with my sixteen-year-old daughter. She agreed with me that people talk too little of death, because we are afraid of it. She agreed that it is dangerous not to teach children about sex. She agreed that the general bowdlerization of kidlit and fairy tales “to avoid traumatizing children” was harmful. The duty of parents is to raise children to adulthood, not to treat them as pets. They need to learn that wolves eat little girls, you ought not to trespass on a bear’s home, and you should not accept apples from strangers. 

Far worse the newer woke versions, in which ogres are simply misunderstood, wolves are actually vegetarians, fairy godmothers are busybodies, and so forth.

We are positively grooming children for predators of all kinds.

Helicopter parenting, drag queen story hour and genital mutilations are just the latest stages in this progression of hatred towards our children, which has been developing since Victorian times.

... And It Brought Us Justin Trudeau

 

Sunny Hostin, a “black” host on The View, recently learned on-air that her ancestors included slaveowners. Which puts her in an ambiguous situation, since she has been calling for reparations for American blacks over slavery. Kamala Harris is also descended from slaveholders, in Jamaica.

Problem: under slavery, slavers owned their slaves. They could do what they wanted with them. Can anyone doubt they used black slaves for sex?

Probably no Americans tracing descent from the institution of slavery are purely African by genetics. They are probably also descendants of the slaveowners. Even on the African side, they are probably as much descendants of slavers as of slaves; the practice of slavery has been endemic in Africa from ancient times.

So, if any Americans are owed reparations for slavery, they are owed it by themselves. Not by the innocent descendants of European immigrants arriving in America after slavery was abolished, from a continent where the practice was almost unknown, but for the danger of being carried off by Arab slavers from Africa. Not from those whose ancestors laboured alongside the blacks as indentured servants. Only one percent of Americans ever owned slaves.

But of course the whole concept of reparations for those who never experienced slavery is nonsense to begin with. It makes sense only for living survivors of an injustice. We are individuals, responsible for our acts, not for the acts of others. None of us can justly be rewarded or punished for the deeds of our ancestors. The more so since the child of a bad person is most likely already their worst victim. 

The idea of inherited guilt or credit is the essence of human inequality. It is what the American Revolution was meant to end forever. It is the notion of inherited privilege; and it is blood libel.

All the same arguments hold for the idea of special “aboriginal rights” in Canada. There are few if any “pure blood” Indians in Canada. We are all Americans, we are all Canadians, we are all brothers and sisters.

Peace in Our Time

 

Satan likes uniforms

I think the ancien regime is collapsing before our eyes. 

I teach Asian students studying in the US and Canada, at high school through grad school level. I can report that they are fed up with the wokery they are forced to deal with in their classes. They complain endlessly about it.

Polls suggest it is not just Asian students.

The left has gotten far by being the loudest voice, the squeaking wheel. And everyone else goes along to get along. Peace at any price.

A bad and cowardly policy—the mistake once known as appeasement, and before that, Danegeld. This encourages the aggressor to continually make more and greater demands, trained to believe the same rewards will keep coming.

There necessarily comes a point at which their demands are unsustainable, and all hell must break loose.

We are there. 

The Perils of Modern Dating

 

It was like in that painting, “Nighthawks.” Al all-night diner near the docks, an oasis of light on a darkened, empty street.

This meant she didn’t want to be seen with me. A woman like that—she was probably cheating on someone. No way she was still single. 

I had my choice of tables—almost no one in the place. I chose a seat with a view of the door. I couldn’t wait: that long black hair, those pale blue eyes. They had haunted my dreams for weeks.

Okay, she was late. Of course. A woman like that has a right to be late.

I checked my phone. No messages. She did not answer at her number.

But finally the door jerked open—first a jerk, then slowly.

Why was he so bundled up? She definitely did not want to be seen with me. I wouldn’t even hve known it was her, had she not walked straight up to my table and said my name.

“Frank?”

“Maryanne?”

“There’s something I haven’t told you, Frank. I guess I need to tell you now.”

“Sit down, Maryanne. I’m a good listener.”

“You don’t have to be.”

She began to take off her wrap. I saw the long black whiskers. I saw the thick lips. I saw the eyes.

They were not blue. They were small and black, like beads embedded in her grey skin.

Her mouth opened and closed convulsively, gasping for breath an she covered the back of my hand with a moist fin.

“Frank, do you understand what this means?”

“Yes, Maryanne. Someone explained it to me at my writers’ group.”

Individualism

 

The height of selfishness

My students, asked to explain “individualism”—it comes up in our readings—invariably come up with “selfishness.” Xerxes seems to think the same. 

I suspect that this is the baleful influence of our Marxist/fascist education system. Which would sneer at "rugged individualism" and "cowboys." No doubt that is "White supremacist and "partiarchal."

If you think “individualism” means “selfishness,” then you must think Oskar Schindler was selfish; or Socrates, Qu Yuan, Thomas More, the Buddha, or Jesus Christ. Not to mention Einstein, Newton, Tolstoy, Picasso, Casey Jones, Father Damien, or Pasteur.

Individualism means you believe it is the duty and right of the individual to make decisions for himself or herself. To exercise free will and make ethical choices. No more going along with the crowd.

Without individualism, there is no morality, and no human progress. Only evil and decline.

“Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.”

Fairy Tale Princesses are a Fairy Tale

 

When the average person thinks of fairy tales, they think of “Disney princesses.” And until the recent woke remakes, the basic plot was always to find true love, to link up with Prince Charming. Isn’t this what “fairy tale” is supposed to mean?

However, real fairy tales, as collected by the Grimms or Charles Perrault, rarely feature either princes or princesses.

They do usually have a king’s daughter as their protagonist, and probably feature a king’s son. But that is invariably how they are referred to, “king’s daughter” and “king’s son.” Never “princess.”

The point being made is that royal identity is a metaphor. It refers to narcissism: people who think of themselves as better than others, as kings.

In “Little Thumbkin,” all the tiny ogres sleep in crowns.

The clearest example is Hans Cristian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea.” The entire point of the tale is to define “real princess.” Those who were literal royalty were commonly not. Instead, an obviously poor homeless girl appears at the palace gate during a thunderstorm, water pouring out of her heels. “Down at heel.”

What made her a princess is her ability to be irritated and complain about a night spent on twenty soft mattresses.

A king’s daughter is the child of a narcissist. Suffering a narcissistic parent, who cares only for themselves, the children are anything but princesses. They struggle just to survive, like Cinderella, Snow White, Belle, or Rapunzel. The wealth or status of the parent is no help to them.

The original point of fairy tales is to give children an education in morals and life. This is what they had in preliterate times and places, when children did not read nor go to school; this, and the Sunday sermon. They are told by fairy godmothers—a godmother being a person deputed at baptism to raise a child in morals and truth, in the faith, and to protect them should the parents fail to do so.

Accordingly, many are about bad parenting, and seek to rescue the heroine from it. Usually bowdlerized delicately by making the villains step-parents.

According to Ursula Le Guin, who is wise in the ways of story, fairy tales must always be in the past tense—as they are—because present tense in narrative evokes discontinuity: nobody can know what happens next. Fairy tales are meant to restore a sense of security and the ultimate rightness of things in a child torn by the everyday madness of a dysfunctional family. They are written in “third person omniscient”: from God’s point of view.

Not the Disney versions, woke or pre-woke, which miss the point entirely. The Grimm or Perrault versions, as collected from the wild.

They are healing at any age.

Being Mean to Our Elected Representatives

 

Let them eat merde.

Our local MP has complained on Facebook about being told by a local business owner, “we will attack you because you signed up for it.” He decries the lack of civility this represents. “I’m human and hurt too.” “Nobody signs up to be abused.”

I’d feel more sympathy if his own party leader, Justin Trudeau, had not called ordinary Canadians who resisted the Covid vaccinations—and for no other reason-- “fascists,” “Nazi sympathizers,” Russian agents, “homophobes,” “Islamophobes,” “misogynists,” “white supremacists,” “racists,” “transphobes,” holding “unacceptable views,” and pondered publicly on whether they should be allowed to “take up space.” Not to mention forcing them out of their jobs and livelihoods, freezing their bank accounts, and imprisoning many for mere protest. While two wrongs do not make a right, it seems only natural, and natural justice, for a member of the public to be angry, and want to respond in the only way they are still allowed.

If our local rep now finds this sort of hurtful language unacceptable, why did he not condemn it in Trudeau? Aren’t people people too? Did the rest of us sign up for it?

It also leaves a bad taste in the mouth that he is concerned about being attacked verbally when so many Canadians are suffering terrible times, and government seems to be responsible for much of it: the housing and homelessness crisis, people freezing in the streets, while the government keeps letting in a record number of immigrants and imposing onerous environmental regulations on any construction. Inflation and the spiralling cost of food, while the government keeps raising the carbon tax, spending lavishly, had recklessly printed money, and seemingly stuck any sticks they had available in the spokes of farmers and truckers, forcing food costs ever higher. Not to mention supply management and enforced shortages of the most basic foodstuffs. The health care crisis, caused largely or mainly by the government cutting their contributions to health care, but also by firing health care professionals who resisted vaccination, and preventing trained nurses and doctors from pursuing their profession. This looks like a government at war with its people. 

And the problem is that the people are complaining?

The kindest explanation is that the ruling cadre is out of touch. 

How can they not see the tents? Do they never walk to the supermarket? 

But then again, how did all the writers, performers, and crew on Saturday Night Live recently mock Trump for inventing the word “de-bank.” It is not just that they must never have never heard it, when it is a current issue—and keeping track of current issues is an essential part of their job. How could they have been so arrogantly sure of themselves as to not even look it up? This is supposed to be standard practice in any writing shop.

Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with hubris. We are at that point when the madness is obvious to everyone but themselves. They think they are gods.

On the Role of Government

 

Xerxes, my friend to my far left, has opined that he does not know clearly what the proper role of government is. He says he wants it to be “scientist, always searching for a fuller understanding. Teacher, conveying wisdom. Priest, upholding a vision of what we can be. Mother, nurturing and caring for those less able to look after themselves.” In other words, all things to all people. One thinks of Mussolini’s formulation: “Everything within the state, nothing against the state, nothing outside the state.” 

That is where current leftist thought is; current “mainstream” leftist thought.

He begins with a tale of a group of friends, who regularly meet to debate about Donald Trump.

Isn’t it odd, unnatural, that the main topic of discussion among a group of Canadian friends would be a guy who is not in our country, not some important writer or philosopher, and not in power anywhere? This speaks of obsession.

And it is clear who is obsessed, isn’t it?

“Three of us think Trump is a poo-pile of all the worst traits of humanity.”

That is literally to say that Trump is at least as bad as Hitler, as Mao or Stalin, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson, or the Marquis de Sade—"the worst traits of all humanity” must be at least this bad.

This is not a rational position. This is Trump Derangement Syndrome.

I am confident, on the other hand, that Xerxes’s characterization of the one Trump supporter in the group is a straw man: “Trump is the Messiah, come back to straighten out a broken and misguided world.” 

Nobody, even his strongest supporters, thinks of Trump in that way. This is necessarily so, because people on the right do not look to government to solve their or the world’s problems. They see its role as clearly defined. There is no room in contemporary “right-wing” politics for a messianic figure or a man on a white horse.

The right has a clear understanding of the role of government. It is limited, and so their expectations of their leaders are limited. 

It is the left that follows politics as a religion or as a substitute for religion, able to create heaven on earth. Recall the ink spent on Barack Obama being a “light worker.” “Hope and Change.” Remember Kennedy “charisma.” I recall posters of Jimmy Carter in 1976 adorned with a halo and the slogan “JC will Save America.” 

Justin Trudeau arrived in Liberal Ottawa as such a man on a white horse.

Ask any actual Trump supporter, and they will inevitably say something like, “I was sceptical, or didn’t like Trump at first; but I like that he did X or says Y. That won me over. But I also wish he wouldn’t/hadn’t/wasn’t Z.” Fill in the blanks, and it works as well for Pierre Poilievre, or Maxime Bernier, or Nigel Farage, or any leader on the right of the spectrum. There are always reservations on the right.

The proper role of government is summarized in the US Declaration of Independence: 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

This is the charter of liberal democracy per se. It is actually as old as Athens and the Greek city states. One might disagree with it, but one is at least obliged to address it, and say why. In the older formulation that appears in the BNA Act, as old at least as the Roman Empire, governments exist to keep the peace. We can ask governments to do more, with the general consent of the governed. Such as a “social safety net.”

No room for a Messiah here. Expecting a political Messiah or government to save you is also of course anti-Christian, and by definition following the antichrist.

Not to mention, it is fascism. It is the Fuhrer principle.

Government should NOT be better informed than the people it governs, not be scientist, or expert, because it must be with the consent of the governed. They must have all available information in order to consent. This is why we must have freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of information. Government must not know anything the people do not know.

Government must be ethical, but is not there to enforce ethics on others. 

Xerxes thinks the problem is that nobody can agree on what is right and wrong. That is false. Ethics are not complicated: they are the same everywhere, utterly unmysterious, and can be summed up in a sentence, or a choice of sentences: do unto others as you would have them do to you. Or, as Kant expressed it, all others must be treated as ends, not means. Or, act as you could wish all others to act. Each formulation amounts to the same thing, and the principle is in most cases easy to apply. 

That said, governments do not exist to enforce morality. That would be a limit on human freedom. Freedom is required for morality itself. If one acts only under compulsion, by government or by another person, one loses all ability to act morally, because one has lost freedom of choice. That is why Adam and Eve were left free to eat the apple.

Governments are there only to protect your rights from infringement by your neighbour—or from those invading from further afield. “Your right to swing your fist ends where your neighbour’s nose begins.” 

A moral government honours, and stays within, this mandate.

“I do not believe anyone has a divine right to rule over others,” Xerxes adds, waving his flag on the dungheap of liberty. 

Here he is surely pulverizing the sun-bleached skeleton of a very deceased horse. Yes, some European monarchs briefly tried to push the idea, around the time of the Reformation, but always in opposition to the religious authorities, at least in the Catholic Church; I cannot vouch for Martin Luther. It is a pagan doctrine, that of the God-King, as in Japan or ancient Egypt.

The Devil always tries to complicate; the devil loves words like “nuance.” Make the ways straight.

Here's Johnny

 

On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, 60 but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.”

…

62 Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child. He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, “His name is John.” 64 Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue set free, and he began to speak, praising God. -- Luke 1

This passage is commonly passed over without comment. I believe it is the only place in the Bible where the custom to name a child after the parent is mentioned. In the long genealogy of Joseph given later in the gospel, there are no twinned names. And the issue seems to be raised here to make God’s position on the matter clear: don’t do it. It goes against the divine will. Here God strikes the father dumb to prevent it. 

Although we readily accept it today, although it is almost a commonplace, it is obviously wrong. It denies the child their individuality. You are declaring them a part of yourself. It shows a terrifying narcissism.

As practical advice, if you know someone of this sort, you are wise to steer clear.

And, if we were truly a society that cared about children, this would not be acceptable in polite company.

We do not. It is precisely in said "polite company" that it is most common.

The Hidden Original Sin

 

The actual mandate of John the Baptist, in Luke 1:

“He will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

This suggests that the key sin necessitating Christ’s coming was a lack of parental love for children. This was the crucial of not indeed the original sin.

This is also why God made the Jews his chosen people: to end child sacrifice among the surrounding nations, most notably the Canaanites. Christianity then in turn ended the legal right of parents to murder their children among the Greeks and Romans.

Since this is the core issue in all morality, isn’t it odd that it is even today overlooked? Isn’t it odd that people commonly only speak of an obligation for children to honour parents?

That this is so shows the sin continues, unabated. We see it obviously, of course, in abortion. We see it in the callous sacrifice of the interests and lives of aboriginal children since the closing of the residential schools. We see it in the growing practice of genital mutilation of children. We see it in the unnecessary bullying of the education system.

We pretend, of course, to care about children above all. The Devil always says the opposite of the truth, to conceal his crimes.