Proof There Is No Racism in America

I see that Koreans are rapidly turning white. In this, they follow the Japanese, who were declared white by the old apartheid government of South Africa. In this they follow a path once trod by the Italians, the Irish, and the Jews.  All used to be “non-white” or the equivalent in the popular mind. There were Irish slaves, and signs saying “No Irish Need Apply.” Today, the Irish are considered generically white, as white as anyone, and the Jews perhaps “ultra-white.”

From this it is obvious that “non-white” is not a racial designation at all. It is a euphemism for something else, something more like a class distinction. If an ethnic group becomes prosperous, this makes them “white.” So “non-white” essentially poor. 

But this is not a class distinction in the Old World sense, either. In class societies, there is little or no mobility. You remain in the class you were born into, regardless of prosperity or personal effort. This has obviously not been so for many Irish, Italians, Japanese, or Jews. 

And it also does not quite mean “poor”; for there is indeed a class of “poor whites.” 

To be non-white, it seems you must be poor, and belong to a group that seems to have a strong independent identity and stands apart from the cultural mainstream.

So there is no racism in North America; and perhaps in the West generally. Blacks have not been discriminated against; nor have Canada’s First Nations. If they have remained “non-white,” while other groups have moved into the mainstream, the reason must be found elsewhere.

The problem is first, that these groups are chronically poor, generation after generation. Secondly, they have persisted in seeing themselves as distinct and apart, with their own culture, rather than integrating with the cultural mainstream. Segregation is the problem, but it is self-imposed.

And as their poverty is not due to discrimination, the fact that they are chronically poor suggests some flaw in their chosen culture. Not hard to see this if you listen to “gangsta rap.” Or if getting an education is considered “acting white” or cultural genocide.

Canada and the USA: A Quick Comparison

 

An American friend sends a clip suggesting that Canadian government corruption is verging on Third World levels.

Sadly, this is not news. It occurs to me that this is a recurring theme in Canadian politics. Canadian governments almost always fall due to corruption. Whoever is the opposition vows to come in and clean things up. Ten years on or so, they too are thrown out for corruption. 

This goes back not just to our first government, under Sir John A. Macdonald, which fell over the Canadian Pacific scandal. It really goes back further, to the days of the Family Compact and the Chateau Clique. These operated as a kind of oligarchy, monopolizing government positions and government largesse: cronyism. Despite “responsible government,” this seems cemented in by long tradition as the Canadian way. People speak these das of the “Laurentian elite.” You see the same attitude percolate through Canadian voluntary associations, which seem invariably cliquish. In government, it is seen in the many subsidies given out to industry under the guise of “regional economic expansion”; the bribes to First Nations, Quebec, feminists, multicultural groups. The untendered contracts. More recently the subsidization of preferred news media.

American politics does not seem to be like this. There have been scandals, certainly, but not such generalized corruption, and never taken for granted as standard operating procedure the way it seems to be in Canada.

This may be partly because in the US there is a better system of checks and balances. A rogue executive can be called out by the legislative, and either by the judiciary, and vice versa.

In Canada, the legislature is controlled by the executive; and the executive gets to nominate the judges. 

But American media also traditionally delight in muckraking; and individual Americans rarely have a good word to say about Washington.

 Under this, and causing this, is a different attitude to government. Canadians are spontaneously deferential to authority, and trust their leaders. Americans are spontaneously suspicious of leaders. And this traces back to our different histories: America formed by rebelling against established authority. Canade was formed by those who insisted on deference to it.

Both attitudes have their advantages. Canada is more orderly; there is more peace in the streets. The greasy wheels turn more smoothly. America is more prosperous and innovative; and there is more freedom. I have lived in both countries. In America, there is freedom in the very air. 

Canada is innately conservative. The US is innately liberal. In the proper meanings of those words.

Emotional Intelligence

Abel lacked emotional intelligence

It is the common view that highly intelligent people are socially awkward. They lack “emotional intelligence.” Often they are “on the spectrum.” 

This is obviously wrong. There is no reason why having high intelligence would make you less sensitive to the emotional tone of what you say, or its effects on others. The reverse is surely true: if you are intelligent, you will be intelligent in this way as well. You will be more sensitive than average to emotional tones. Studies consistently show that intelligence is general, and applies in all situations.

Nevertheless, highly intelligent people invariably do not work well in groups. They often prefer to be alone. Highly intelligent people are almost inevitably “introverted.” And lonely.

The reason is simple. It is not that they are awkward around others, or do not like other people. It is that other people are awkward around them, and do not like them. 

Think about it. Everyone resents someone more intelligent than they are. Everyone wants to be the smartest person in the room. The person who actually is smartest will have a target on his back.

Imagine being much smarter than everyone else in a group. Everyone else gets to express themselves freely. Most of what they say is wrong. But you, uniquely, cannot say anything. Because people hate being corrected. You must constantly bite your tongue, constantly repress yourself. 

If you say anything, however diplomatically you phrase it, it will be immediately attacked by other members of the group. Others are not attacked for what they say; but you are. Because someone else will want to prove they are smarter than you are. By merely speaking, you will always just get into an argument; and if you defend yourself and win it, this will make them hate you more. It is Catch-22.

As a result, anyone highly intelligent cannot get anything done in a group. To be in a group is more or less always torture. To think and act freely, the very intelligent must act alone, and suffer eternal loneliness. But bad as this is, it is better than the incessant stabs in the front and in the back.

And of course, your inability to work in a group will then be held against you. It proves you lack “emotional intelligence,” and are a failure as a human being. Because anything that can be used against you will be. Others are aways wanting to convince themselves and everyone in earshot that they are a better person than you are.

To see the syndrome writ large, look at the history of the Jews. Look at the ongoing tendency to topple statues and rename streets. The mob resents greatness in others.

Most people are emotionally twisted in this way. Most people are Cain when they encounter Abel.

Furry Children

Returning from abroad, it is striking how much Canadians seem to care about their pets. There seems to be an animal hospital, grooming salon, or pet store on every commercial block. A good portion of each WalMart flyer features products for pets. And people pamper their pets to what seems an absurd degree; walking them about in winter in little boots and coats.

You would almost think they were filling some unmet need...

Why such care for pets, at the same time there are so few children—and so many aborted?

It seems morally wrong to spend so much money and attention on an animal, when there are tents of homeless I the street—not to mention the conditions in poorer countries. It seems a perfect example of the principle of privatum bonum: evil consists in valuing the lesser over the greater good.

Consider walking your cosseted dog by a homeless encampment. You are making a statement: in your opinion, those people are worth less than a dog.

Excessive love for animals is not an indication of good character. Adolph Hitler was a vegetarian who apparently loved his dogs. Caligula made his horse a consul.

Narcissists love pets, and hate children. A pet can be fully owned; a child cannot. Perhaps for a time, but if they survive, they will grow up and leave your control. And come to criticize your deeds. Worse still, they are liable to outlive you. Better a pet: a pet is entirely dependent on you, and entirely in your power.

This is the dream of the narcissist: complete dominance over another being.

And if a narcissist does have children, they will treat their children the same way, or some of them. They will take the weakest, least impressive child as their pet, spoil them, and elevate them over other children largely in order to demean the strong ones. The strongest one, they will scapegoat. Either expresses their godlike power.

I say all this as myself a vegetarian and a pet lover. I do not mean to imply that all pet owners are narcissists. Often a pet fills a legitimate need for a lonely person, or one who missed the chance to have a child. Not to mention service catching mice, or guarding the home.

But when an individual starts to treat an animal like a human, and when a whole society starts to do so—alarm bells should ring.

Canada Is Not on Stolen Land

 National Post article. May be behind paywall.

The Road to Emmaus

Break it to me gently....

The story of the Road to Emmaus is a delicious mystery: why did Jesus appear incognito?

I think it illustrates how Jesus used poetry. And why we should.

Let me try to explain.

The encounter on the road to Emmaus is the central act of a three-act play. The first act is the empty tomb, in Jerusalem, at dawn, and an angel telling the women he has risen.

The second act is the encounter on the road to Emmaus, at about midday. Now he appears incognito. His identity slowly dawns on the disciples, inferred from his words.

Back in Jerusalem at nightfall, the third act: he appears to the eleven in immediately recognizable form. He asks them to touch him; he asks for a fish, and eats it.

Notice that at this point, all the apostles are terrified. “They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost.” 

Man fears God. Man fears truth, and fears being judged. Luke 5:8: “When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!’”

I prayed for years that God not send me any obvious miracle, for I feared if he did, I would go mad, or think I had gone mad. Eventually Mary sent me a gentle miracle anyway. Even then, I prayed for her to stop, and she did. I was not ready. 

We are right to fear. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

But this means we cannot speak the truth directly to those we hope to evangelize; we must break it slowly, or our listeners may panic. Among other things, they may be moved to crucify us.

This is why we need poetry, or parable, as the essential religious language. As Emily Dickenson wrote, “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant. Success in circuit lies.”

This reminds me of a joke: the cat is on the roof.

So Jesus breaks the ultimate revelation slowly. First the body is missing from the tomb, and angels say he is risen, and this is revealed to women, who are notoriously untrustworthy witnesses. So there is still room to doubt, but the notion, the possibility, must be entertained. The cat is on the roof.

Probably this is what causes the disciples to flee to Emmaus. They did not flee out of fear after the crucifixion; they were still in Jerusalem three days later. Yet they left immediately after they heard this story that his body was missing and angels were about. This is what frightened them—that he might appear, and prove himself to be God. 

This is why Jesus appears slant, incognito. Not in Jerusalem, where they feared he might appear, and not in recognizable form. He is breaking it to them gently, giving them time to think it over. The cat has fallen off the roof. He seems to be badly injured.

Then, once they have had more time to think and talk about it among themselves, to contemplate the possibility, to find a way to cope with it, that evening he appears in unmistakable form. And they are still terrified. The cat has died.

Imagine if he had not managed the revelation so carefully. He is still even at this point soothing their fears by asking them to touch him and by eating a fish. He is reassuring them he is not a ghost, and they have not gone mad. Calming them.

This is what a poem does and how it works. It does not reveal its full meaning at first. But it plants seeds in memory, which is its proper medium. Over time, the full meaning can unfold, when the listener is ready to receive it. When he has ears to hear.

That’s poetry, or parable. Poetry is more efficient, because more memorable. Parable is better if you must speak to a multilingual audience, as does the Bible. 

 Jesus himself is the ultimate poem. He is the Word.

Never Again Boots on the Ground

 

$54 at Amazon

The war in Ukraine is changing history in ways we may not immediately see.

At the end of the 19th century, the invention of the machine gun revolutionized war by giving massive advantage to the defense. The result was the stasis of the trenches in WWI. The carnage was too great; war became unthinkable.

Except... the British invented the tank. Tanks trumped machine guns; the advantage shifted over again to offense.

Now drones have made tanks obsolete. They have made any large war machines obsolete. Drones can cover the battlefield and target precisely anything that moves. 

It is not that the war in Ukraine has devolved to trench warfare. Instead, I hear that the front lines are nearly deserted. A trench cannot protect from drones.

I cannot think of the technological innovation that could, in principle, trump drones. Radio jamming? But just like self-driving cars, AI can increasingly allow drones to find targets on their own.

This gives an overwhelming advantage to the defense, and equalizes opposing sides. Drones are cheap; far cheaper than tanks or aircraft carriers. And if nobody, man or machine, can raise their heads above ground, ground cannot be taken.

And the issue should become the same at sea: underwater drones.

The lesson Russia is learning should for the foreseeable future, deter any major acts of military aggression. If Taiwan is wise, they are developing a drone force now, aerial and submarine. It would be fairly easy and inexpensive to make an invasion from the mainland virtually impossible.

Giving the defense the advantage should preserve the status quo, so benefitting those on top in the status quo—good news for America. On the other hand, the US should with all deliberate speed shift their defense spending from building heavy armaments like aircraft carriers and tanks to drone fleets. The era of American “boots on the ground” is over. It was never a good tactic for a sea power like the US.

Trump’s diplomatic strategy seems just right for this new era: non-intervention, using economic power, and if necessary, unannounced strikes from the air.

Thucydides Was Wrong

 

Not original size

Russia has reputedly blown up a rail line in Poland. The governments of Germany and Poland are reputedly expecting war with Russia by at least 2029. Now they are saying maybe next year. All the EU NATO members are rapidly boosting their defense budgets.

I have thought it improbable that Russia would do anything to provoke NATO to war. After all, if they can’t take Ukraine, how do they think they would fare against 32 more enemies at once?

But perhaps I was wrong. History tells us nations do not always act in their best interests. Even if we can explain Hitler’s invasion of the USSR, why did he declare war on the USA in 1941? Why did smaller Japan bomb Pearl Harbor? Both look like suicidal acts. 

It is currently popular to talk of Thucydides’s Trap as the likely cause of the next war. Russia attacking NATO does not fit into this mold. The idea is that wars start because an emerging power wants to knock an established power off their throne. Russia is no emerging power. It might have been in 1914. It is in decline. Historically, however, Thucydides’s Trap, if it is real, is far from the only cause of war. Wars start instead when some established power is dying. It is then prone to make some desperate lunge, like the thrashing about of a dying animal. Might as well use its power while it still has some!

Consider the First World War. It was begun, suicidally, by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. An empire once mighty, but on the verge of collapse. As was the Ottoman Empire, their ally. These were hardly emerging powers; nor currently dominant powers.

What about World War Two? Germany was now similarly on the downward slope. After a brilliant run in the later 19th and early 20th century, it had been knocked back hard in the First World War. Hitler’s supposed economic miracle in Germany was a Ponzi scheme. His only hope to avoid collapse was to invade nearby countries and seize their assets. The whole thing was a desperate lunge as a result of the first war.

Japan, similarly, attacked Pearl Harbor as they were effectively losing their war of attrition in China. It was a last mad throw of the dice.

One could see the Napoleonic Wars as a similar desperate rear-guard action. France had been the dominant power in Europe and arguably around the globe until they lost the relatively low-intensity Seven Years’ War to Britain. That one might be down to Thucydides. But the American Revolution, bankruptcy, the French Revolution, and Napoleon all followed—France trying to re-establish its grandeur. Much bigger conflicts.

In other words, nations are most dangerous as they start to topple, and become desperate.

There are many signs Russia and the Putin regime are in danger of falling apart. Russia has certainly been in decline since losing the Cold War. At some point, what does Putin have to lose? It looks better, as perhaps Hitler reckoned in declaring war on the US, or Japan at Peal Harbor, to lose to what is obviously a greater force, that to lose, humiliatingly, to a smaller adversary like Ukraine. 

Worse, there are similar rumours of China and Xi being on the brink of collapse. They too might lash out. There are rumours of Iran and the mullahs being on the brink of collapse.

The conditions might actually be ripe for a Third World War.

Songs for a Broken Heart

 I just learned that Bob Dylan considers “Wichita Lineman” the best popular song ever written.

I am humbled. It had never stood out to me. But Dylan is qualified to judge, if anyone is.

I read the lyrics, and I see why he says so. In my defense, I had never listened to them. Glen Campbell’s voice has always irritated me; it seems whiney. And his version of the song was overproduced, hokey with mock morse code in the background. I never gave it a proper listen.

It really does hit hard when you read the lyrics. A beautifully understated love song. It reminds me of several other songs I adore: understated love songs.

Ian Tyson’s “Irving Berlin is a Hundred Years Old Today.”

Dylan’s own “Girl from the North Country.”

Gordon Lightfoot’s “Did She Mention My Name.”

Charles Badger Clarke’s “Spanish is the Loving Tongue.”

The Irish folk song "The Coast of Malabar"

Tom Waits, "Jersey Girl"

Crying yet? You're not s man if you're not crying yet.

Who's Your Daddy?

 

Arp!

The State of Ohio is considering a law requiring hospitals to offer DNA paternity testing for any child born out of wedlock. A similar law in Tennessee died in committee.

In the name of men’s rights, this should be the law everywhere. But the current proposal does not go far enough. Every child should be paternity-tested at birth.

There is an obvious inequality of the sexes. The woman always knows the child is hers, and probably also who the father is. The man never does. This allows a dishonest woman to entrap a man into raising and paying for a child that is not his.

This has been a crucial problem throughout history, and the reason for many of the traditions restricting the two sexes. This is where, for example, the traditional term “cuckold” or “cuck” comes from. It is a much greater concern in the current climate, of relatively unrestricted sex and unstable marital relationships.

For millennia, there was not much a man could do other than hope and pray. Now, thanks to medicine, we have the simple solution: test all children. Now both man and woman can be on equal terms.

All states currently take a DNA sample from every newborn to check for congenital diseases. It should be no bigger deal to also test for paternity. As a matter of course. So long as it is done as a matter of course, the testing need not lead to any conflict in the relationship. Any woman who is honest ought to welcome this; knowing with certainty the child is his will cement her husband’s commitment to her and the family.

Yet, interestingly, feminist organizations are up in arms, demanding such bills not pass. This amounts to an admission of common guilt. Women know they can get away with this, and it is to their reproductive advantage: marry or just tag the guy with the big income, and continue to have sex with any guy who is better-looking.

And it certainly happens. Various studies suggest that, 28-32% of the time, when the test is done, the man tagged turns out not to be the father.

One might object that this figure is skewed by the fact that, given the current legal situation, there must have been some initial doubt for a paternity test to have been done. But one could as easily argue the other way—it is taking a risk with your relationship, and it is costly, to demand a paternity test. And a woman who is guilty will be most adamant in refusing one. Accordingly, it isas likely the real percentage is higher.

What about the rights of the child? I have heard that argument. You must not test, because it is not in the child’s interest.

Bollocks.

It is every child’s right to know their father.

The Golden Age of the American Entrepreneur

 

The entrepreneur has always been a culture hero to America. They are an American specialty. In Europe, traditionally, you were born into your role. In America, a bright kid from nowhere, and without education, could always rise to the top as an entrepreneur. 

It was entrepreneurs who brought us the computer revolution; nerdy kids from nowhere working in their garages. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Bill Hewlett, David Packard, and the lot. Continuing an entrepreneurial tradition that goes back to Edison, the Wright Brothers, Henry Ford. 

This is what has put America on top of the world. But we now seem to have come to a kind of golden age: with Trump, we have an entrepreneur in the White House, I believe for the first time. And he seems to be working miracles. In the economic space, we have Elon Musk, again seeming to be working miracles. This may be when America drops the training wheels and sets an entirely new pace.  Just when some might think the American Empire is over.

Entrepreneurs are often hated, as Trump is hated, because they get rich. But they deserve our undying admiration and gratitude. They did not inherit that money or take it from the government—they earned it by improving life for everyone. And entrepreneurs rarely live large: they keep reinvesting the money in some new project, again improving the human condition. As the late KC Irving said, “I like to see wheels turning.” And nobody else has to pay for it, if they do not want the product—which, if they want it, will be cheaper than before, if it was previously even available. 

An entrepreneur sees a problem, and comes up with a solution. They see a need, and they come up with a way to meet it. We see Trump and Musk doing this systematically. They are creative artists. Andy Warhol, for one, understood this. “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”

It is no surprise that both Trump and Musk are highly proficient in other art forms as well: they are both brilliant rhetoricians. As I imagine any good entrepreneur needs to be..

If only we could get such men into political power in Canada. 

The Nightingale

 

I have been teaching Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Nightingale,” and as usual, the interpretations of the fable in the common texts, are preposterous. They want to claim the story is meant to show that natural beauty is superior to artificial beauty.

Right. Compare the natural with the artificial nightingale as objects. The nightingale is axiomatically drab, unremarkable in appearance, indeed invisible in the night. Andersen stresses this. “’I never imagined it would be a little, plain, simple thing like that.’” By contrast, the mechanical bird is beautiful: ”’This is very beautiful,’ exclaimed all who saw it.” “It was so much prettier to look at.” 

If Andersen meant to contrast artificial beauty with natural beauty, and find the artificial wanting, he has done a very poor job of it. One would think the opposite.

Nor is the song of the natural bird more beautiful than that of the artifice. Anderson stresses this more than once: less varied, but not less beautiful. It “was as successful as the real bird.” The music master, the resident expert, declared it more beautiful.

In the story, the only problem is that the mechanical bird over time stopped singing.

But that is not a valid contrast with a natural bird. A natural bird would actually die well before the mechanical bird wore out.

Read the story again, understanding that the “natural” nightingale is the Holy Spirit. Everything falls into place. The contrast is not between man and nature, but man and God.

Of course, the school commentaries cannot say this; they must suppress all reference to Christian belief. They must ignore his sins gathering around the Emperor’s bed, or the figure of Death leaving for a churchyard, or the bird’s talk of holiness.

It is the key to all Western literature, to all Western culture, and to life itself, and it is being suppressed in our schools.

Speak of the Devil

 

Guess who's coming to dinner?

Last evening, I attended a Christian discussion group. Nominally, it was a group for those thinking about becoming Christian; but in reality, all but one were practicing Catholics.

The topic for the day, based on a video we had all just watched, was “how to resist evil.”

Striking to me, nobody seemed to have much concept of evil. They seemingly had not thought about it, and did not want to think about it. How is this healthy Christianity?

Challenged at one point with the question “what is evil?” there was general silence. Eventually one participant looked up the dictionary definition on her smart phone. 

When someone brought up demonic possession, the facilitator visibly balked. I pressed in with Biblical references; otherwise I think he was about to scoff at the idea. As if demons were anything more than an antiquated superstition!

This is the “happy happy joy joy” motivational speaker Christianity. It is lame, and goes in circles, because it lacks one leg. You cannot believe in God, and not the Devil. Otherwise you are lying to yourself.

Refusing to see evil does not make it go away. It ensures that evil thrives. 

“All that is needed for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.”

“The Devil’s greatest trick is convincing people that he does not exist.” The Devil loves the darkness.

Deny his existence, and you not only stop resisting evil around you, and in you. You begin to believe in all kinds of scapegoating and mad conspiracy theories involving the “other.”

Why the Jews?

He said it.

It seems clear that the right has won the bitterly fought war for the culture, at least in the US, which probably means everywhere in time. There are and still will be struggles, assaults, riots, government overreaches, and assassinations, but the outcome is no longer in doubt. 

But now the right in turn seem to be increasingly delusional. I think of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, as examples.

This may be an overreaction to the atmosphere of thought policing, of cancel culture and deplatforming, being lifted. We saw something like this in the Sixties, when the McCarthy era ended, and the various media morality codes were lifted. In fitful exuberance, almost any idea was vented, and considered. Anything seemed acceptable. Why don’t we do it in the road? Why not put a hole in your head, to open your third eye? Why not drop out and live on a commune in Goa?

Ben Shapiro is currently being pilloried for saying something perfectly reasonable: that, if young Americans are lacking opportunities where they live, they should move. Others on the right are outraged. As Americans, we have the right to whatever we want, wherever we are. What sinister force seeks to steal this from us?

Shapiro is obviously right. Moving for better opportunity is the essence of the American story. It is a nation built by immigrants, and by settlers forever moving west. America is, as Margaret Atwood pointed out, with reference to its literature, the frontier. 

But like the Hippie Sixties, the resurgent right will suddenly not accept the bounds of reason or common sense: “we want the world, and we want it now.”

And part of why there is such blowback to Shapiro is that he is Jewish. For the question hangs suspended: if, the left defeated, we still do not have everything we want, what sinister force seeks to withhold this from us? 

This, sadly, naturally segues into antisemitism. If I deserve whatever I want, and some Jew seems to have more than I do, then they must be the guys. They must be keeping it from me.

The more so since the Jews always represent the Law: the idea of living with restrictions on one’s behaviour. 

To resurrect a famous phrase from the Sixties, we have met the enemy, and they is us.

 

A Sensible Immigration Policy

Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island

Many problems are solved if we accept one basic truth: culture is not race; race is not cultu. Culture is not genetic. To suppose cultural behaviour is hard-wired is the essence of racism. Yet that seems to be the common notionu on the left.

Second premise: cultures can be judged, and determined to be better or worse. “Cultural relativism,” popular on the left, the idea that cultures are free to determine truth itself, is the core idea of fascism, if not Nazism,

A culture is a set of tools for living. Like any set of tools, one culture can be better than another—or better at one thing, and worse at another.

A better life, in material and in spiritual terms, shows a better culture. And of course, we should all want a better culture, for a better life.

The cultures we currently call “indigenous” or “aboriginal” are essentially failed cultures. They provide at best a meagre material existence. They have produced little in terms of artifacts or technology or social cohesion or art. While they might retain elements out of sentimentality, given the choice, no moderns purportedly of these cultures actually prefer to live in their traditional way.

An immigrant nation, like Canada, the US, Australia, or Singapore, has the golden opportunity to select immigrants for the quality of their culture, in order to add it to their own. 

This is the secret of the relative success of these immigrant nations: cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation is how cultures advance.

However, such nations should select immigrants on the basis of the potential added value of their original culture. What skills can they bring, and what can they teach us?

Most obviously, we want all the Jews we can get. Twenty-five percent of all Nobel Prize holders are Jewish, despite their being only 0.2% of the world’s population. Even a small proportion of Jews vastly enriched any culture. Better yet, they are often persecuted, and so might want to emigrate. Any sane nation ought to open their doors wide, and actively oppose antisemitism.

Any European culture is, in world terms, a good bargain. Europe brought us science, human rights, democracy, and most of the best of the arts. Barely a century ago, Europe ruled the world. The downside is that we already have the best of Europe, and Europe is doing so well that fewer might want to emigrate. Luckily for us, the Jews in Europe are now feeling increasingly insecure. And we have a golden opportunity to take in more Ukrainians.

We should also look to the European diaspora. Many South Africans of European ancestry might currently want to emigrate. 

Along with a rich cultural heritage, Japan in the last century or two has shown itself to be highly capable. And we do not have many Japanese Canadians or Americans, comparatively speaking. They should be welcomed in.

We do not want to import the Communist ideology, but immigration from the Chinese diaspora sounds promising: from Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macau. Chinese or Confucian culture led the world several centuries ago, and seems recently to have regained its footing.

Muslim lands, leaving aside the occasional accident of oil, have been lacking in cultural accomplishments over the past few centuries. This is especially striking since they are the inheritors of some of the most productive cultures of the ancient world: Egypt, Lebanon, Persia, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor. This suggests there is something in Islam that actively inhibits cultural development, and we should not want to import it.

And the problem is not hard to identify: Islam is a holistic ideology, setting down rules with divine sanction for all aspects of society and life. This stifles innovation. Yes, it had a golden era. The Muslim world did well for several centuries after the great Muslim conquests. But this can be explained by their first conquests being these rich ancient cultures. They fuelled continuing creativity for a time, until Islam gradually converted the populace and shut innovation down. To get a sense of what Islamic culture is in the absence of this influence, visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or the U.A.E. There is much there that is shiny and new, from oil money. But look past that, look for older traditions. A Muslim life is limited and tribal.

However, this still presents an opportunity. We should welcome members of non-Muslim minorities from Muslim lands: the Maronites, the Yazidis, the Zoroastrians, the Copts, the Indonesian Christians. These groups are likely to have much to contribute in a new milieu, just as they were able to fuel the Muslim Golden Age. And this would be, for us in Canada, largely a new contribution to our culture.

India has also, despite an ancient and rich culture, been in a stall for centuries. I suspect the caste system has curbed development, and is not something we should want to import. Granted that caste has been legally abolished in modern India; nevertheless, it is embedded in the culture, and has religious sanction. There are, again religious minorities that have proven themselves productive within this milieu: the Parsees, Jains, and the Christians of South India all outperform the Indian national averages in education and in income, rather like the Jews.

The worst possible sources for immigrants would be areas that are still highly tribal in nature, and at war among themselves: places like Somalia, Yemen, and most of sub-saharan Africa. This is asking for trouble, probably importing trouble.

It is all simple once we ditch the false lens of race.

Sea Power, Land Power and the Fall of Empires

 

The British First and Second Empires combined.

I heard recently an interesting analysis of why the sun did set on the British Empire. It all came down to the First World War. Britain’s great strength was always been being an island. This meant it need not fear a land war. It did not need to support a standing army, or to rebuild from the devastation of wars. It could pour its resources into having a strong navy, focus on industry, and choose its fights.

It then made the fatal mistake in the First World War of deciding to fight a huge land war—throwing away its natural advantage. While it won, it broke the bank. It lost leadership at that point to the USA.

What might have happened had Britain restricted its land participation in the First World War? At worst, it would merely have lost its leadership to Germany instead of to the USA. 

But quite possibly, its naval blockade could still have been decisive against Germany. 

I think it likely Germany’s Schlieffen Plan would still not have worked. During those first few weeks, the British presence in France was nominal in any case. From that point on, with trench warfare favouring the defense, it was hard for either side to advance. It was stalemate on the ground while the British blockade slowly strangled of German production. The eventual entry of the US was caused by events at sea, and so should have happened anyway, giving France that final punch against an exhausted Germany.

Meanwhile, Britain might have had more resources available to intervene in the Russian Revolution and keep Russia in the war—or at least, following the war, ensure that the Whites won. That could have made quite a difference in subsequent history.

During World War II, the UK was compelled by circumstances to follow a more logical policy—France fell swiftly.  But they might have been in much better shape had they not sent a large land force to France, which then had to be evacuated without its equipment at Dunkirk. The Channel remained Britain’s protection, and they were able to rebuild. Had Russia not been attacked, Britain would have slowly starved Hitler out anyway—that’s why he had to attack. The British Navy cut him off from oil.

Again Britain won—but at such a cost that they could not sustain any longer the cost of their great navy, and so their empire.

Imperial Japan made the same mistake. They had the same advantage as the UK, of being an island. Their natural course was to be a sea power. Instead, they got themselves bogged down in a vast land campaign in China. 

Germany, rising quickly towards the turn of the 20th century, made the same mistake in the opposite direction. A land power, needing always to defend their borders, they diverted resources into trying to become a sea power; turning the UK from a natural ally to a deadly enemy. They became too ambitious and overextended.

The USA, like the UK, is a natural sea power. Protected by oceans, it does not need a large standing army defending its borders. It can build up and support a large land army if necessary for short periods. But it must avoid becoming involved in land wars. Trump’s idea of withdrawing from Europe and letting the Europeans pay for their own defense is wise. In Asia, the best idea is to maintain an island perimeter. Vietnam was a mistake for this reason: America must avoid land wars in densely-populated Asia.

In other words, if it keeps its powder dry, China has no reason to fear the USA. Its invincible defense is its huge population, as Russia’s invincible defense is its vast land area. Time and again, this defeats possible invaders, and allows it, or Russia, to develop into a great regional power.

But not global powers—a land power almost by definition cannot extend its reach overseas, as a sea power can.

China now wants, like Germany towards the close of the 19th century, to become as well a great sea power. It wants to seize the island of Taiwan, control the trade route through the South China Sea, and project its power globally.

There is a reason why China has never been a sea power. Geography. This is a fatal mistake.

China must always maintain its large standing army. Russia, to the north, is also a great land power. India, to the south, is also a great land power. Like Germany having to worry about Russia, Austria, and France, there is always the danger of a two-front war.

So it must maintain parity on land with Russia and India combined, while also, if it wants to challenge at sea, developing and sustaining parity as well with the USA and Japan combined, two natural great sea powers.

Not to mention significant peripheral players like Vietnam and Korea.

The lessons of history suggest this is too tall an order for any nation. China does not have the natural advantages to make this possible. It may, like Germany or Japan, make a lunge, but unless the other power make a series of catastrophic errors, China is going down. Even when the UK made fatal errors, Germany still lost two wars.

There's Something about Mary

 

Many traditionalists are angered by the recent document from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Mater Populi Fidelis.” They call it insulting to Mary, because it discourages use of the titles “Co-Redemptrix” and “Mediatrix of all Graces.”

On this issue, I am entirely in agreement with the Dicastery and the Vatican. It feels good to say that.

I have always been disturbed by those very titles. “Co-Redemptrix” sounds blasphemous to me. Jesus is uniquely our redeemer. It sounds like a feminist attempt to subvert this truth. “Mediatrix of all Graces”? So the saints must petition her, and have no direct line to God? Did she mediate the graces she herself received? We are to go to her of necessity instead of Christ?

No; this is paganism.

Mary is the paradigm of the perfect disciple soul. Elevating her to some more active role violates her immaculate nature. Subservience is her essence, and it is this she models for us. “Let it be done unto me according to thy word.”

Thank you for the clarification, Pope Leo.

The White Poppy

Tuesday is Remembrance Day. Inevitably, I have received an invitation from a leftist friend to buy and wear a white poppy instead of the traditional red poppy. The idea is that the red poppy glorifies war; a white poppy protests war, calling instead for peace.

Today I attended the annual prayer service at the cathedral for Remembrance Day. I missed any reference to war being a good thing. The closest they came was a passage from Ecclesiates: “a time for war, and a time for peace.” Which of course is true. The atmosphere was solemn, not celebratory; like a funeral. The theme, as the name of the day implies, was remembering the dead. “At the going down of the sun and in the morning/We will remember them.” The climax of the ceremony was a lone bugler playing the Last Post, as is traditional at a military funeral.

Remembrance Day endorses war in about the same way attending a funeral endorses death. If the deceased died of cancer, does honouring him mean you are endorsing cancer, and wishing more people die of it soon?

It is true that Remembrance Day does not claim their deaths, or their lives, were meaningless. It points out that these young men, some only teenagers, died in a good cause, and honours their courage and self-sacrifice.

Suppose this is wrong? Suppose those who volunteered were just fools, or psychopaths, and those who were conscripted were just cannon fodder. It would still be disrespectful to say this at their funeral. Right or wrong, they gave their lives.

Wearing the white poppy is equivalent to this. In my mind, it is like the Westboro Baptist Church picketing the funerals of soldiers who died in Iraq, or the victims of Sandy Hook. It is offensive to make a funeral political.

I wear the red poppy, and I stand and applaud the surviving veterans who attended the ceremony. I feel contempt for those who wear the white poppy.

What Rough Beast?

I think it is probable that we are witnessing the collapse of Islam. 

Islam as an ideology is particularly vulnerable to the increased communication produced by the Internet. The apparent recent radicalizing of Islam, more women wearing hijabs and more Islamist political movements, compared to only a generation or two ago, looks like a defensive move, a circling of the wagons. Another example of the ostrich’s philosophy of sticking his head in the sand; or the child’s of sticking his fingers in his ears. The upsurge  of “Islamic terrorism” is a further symptom. You resort to violence when you irretrievably lose the argument. It is fair to say that Islam always sanctioned violence in a way other religions do not. Nevertheless, there has clearly been a recent upsurge. Islam abided in relative peace with the rest of the world for several centuries before this.

One major problem is that the Quran makes self-contradictory claims. It states, and the average Muslim believes, that the Christian trinity is Allah, Jesus, and Mary. Easily disproved with contact. 

If the Quran is wrong about this, it cannot be the direct word of God, can it? What else might it be wrong about?

The Quran states that Jesus did not die on the cross; that Allah only made it appear so. Yet this means that Allah is a deceiver, prepared to deceive mankind, and must have known this particular deceit would lead to the development of the world’s largest religion. Christianity would be based on a fundamental error. This would be Allah’s fault. If Allah was prepared to deceive, how can we trust anything in the Quran, as the word of God? He might be deceiving again.

This is without even bringing up the celebrated issue of the “Satanic verses,” Muhammed’s own statement that some verses that he dictated as from God were actually, he later realized, from Satan. So what other Quranic passages might be?

The Quran claims that its truth is confirmed by comparing the prior scriptures, the Torah and the Gospel, which it affirms, and seeing they are all in conformity: it cites them as its evidence. Yet the Quran differs from the Torah and the Gospels in many of its historical claims; although the Torah and the Gospels agree with one another. It says Abraham sacrificed Ishmael instead of Isaac, for example. It says Mary’s father is Amram, not Zechariah, and Aaron is her brother--seeming to confuse Mary the mother of Jesus with Mary the sister of Moses.

So by its own standard, the Quran is disproven.

Militant Islam now looks as though it is spent. There have been fewer attacks in most recent years. The theocratic regime in Iran seems to have done much to discredit the idea of political Islam. Some surveys suggest widespread apostasy in Iran, and in other Muslims lands like Saudi Arabia. It is not visible, because apostasy is punishable by death. But that façade may soon be unsustainable.

The rise of militant Islam, as of 9/11, 2001, has had profound effects, however. It first gave birth to the “New Atheism.” Influenced by political correctness, these New Atheists could not see Islam specifically as the problem—that would be “Islamophobia.” So they put the blame on religion per se, and attacked Christianity instead. 

This both provoked and legitimized Islamic militancy, rather than countering it.

Leaving it to Christianity to emerge as the response and alternative to militant Islam, and as the defender of truth and good against what is, objectively, an evil and destructive mass hysteria—a group of people in a state of panic, of “cognitive dissonance.” The doctor is in.

The net result is likely to be a Muslim collapse and a Christian revival.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Power and the Single Girl

Lady MacBeth, by John Singer Sargent

Helen Andrews has suggested that allowing women to dominate in any field or industry is catastrophic, for they will turn any institution “woke.” My interpretation is that they will lose sight of the mission. Hence journalism no longer reliably reports the news, the schools no longer teach, advertisements no longer sell the product, Hollywood no longer entertains, and HR departments no longer hire for merit.

Arguing against this are some obvious historical examples women who have risen to political leadership. Their terms have often been considered by general opinion successful. Moreover, they are conspicuous not for losing their sense of direction, but for standing firm on their principles, sometimes when men around them wilted. One could cite Margaret Thatcher, Giorgia Meloni, Golda Meir, Queen Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great of Russia, Joan of Arc, Indira Gandhi. Maybe Angela Merkel.

However, note that those who stand out as successful have emerged in male-dominated movements and male-dominated times. Margaret Thatcher emerged in the Conservative Party, not Labour. Giorgia Meloni leads the right-wing “Brothers of Italy”—note the name. Golda Meir emerged in a country at war. 

Compare women who have risen mostly for being women. They have been less impressive: Kamala Harris, Kim Campbell, Alexa MacDonough, Julie Payette, others we have forgotten.

Those who rose in “patriarchal” contexts are marked by this as exceptional, not average, women. Exceptional men who emerge from non-traditional backgrounds are also often unusually successful, probably for the same reason: they have demonstrated initiative and a special drive. A Rene Levesque, Benjamin Disraeli, or Winston Churchill emerging from journalism, a Ralph Klein from radio, a Mike Harris from golf, a Ronald Reagan from acting, a Vladimir Zelenskyy from comedy; Donald Trump from real estate and TV. They have demonstrated character.

Moreover: a Chinese student argues that, even if women can be successful in leadership. the professions, or in business, it is still gravely wrong. In doing so, they are acting like men. Just as there is something discreditable about a man acting “gay,” acting in an extravagantly feminine way, there is something discreditable about a woman acting “butch.” It is reasonable, if regrettable, for a man to order his army off to war. It is deeply improper, a betrayal of her nature and rightful role if a woman does the same. Or fires someone, for that matter, or orders someone around.

I think of Shakespeare’s Lady MacBeth:

“... Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.
Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’ effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts
And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief.”

If she does so, she scars her soul, deeply. Lady MacBeth goes mad, after all, and kills herself.

Pandora Opens the Box

 

Helen Andrews has written an article for Compact Magazine arguing that “cancel culture is simply what women do whenever there are enough of them in a given organization or field.”

“Everything you think of as ‘wokeness’ is simply an epiphenomenon of demographic feminization.” 

“Wokeness is not a new ideology, an outgrowth of Marxism, or a result of post-Obama disillusionment. It is simply feminine patterns of behavior applied to institutions where women were few in number until recently.” 

“Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition.”

I would add an essential problem: women are mentally inclined to always see the trees, not the forest. As a result, they easily and soon stray from the mission. This explains why so many businesses recently seem to be straying from their core mission for the sake of wokeness: whether that mission is to sell beer, or movie tickets, or restaurant ambiance, or hold sporting events.

Once pointed out, this correlation seems obvious. Over the past few generations, women have come to dominate a number of fields and professions, and this has corresponded closely to these fields becoming “woke” and ceasing to perform their intended functions. 

Where do women dominate? HR departments. Public schools. Journalism and the media. Advertising. Now academia, especially the humanities and social sciences. And this corresponds perfectly with the centres of cancel culture and errant wokery.

Women have most recently begun to dominate the legal and medical professions. As these too lose their functionality and trustworthiness, civilization seems liable to collapse. “The rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female.”

Our ancestors warned us of this; no doubt it was tried before, in places and at times in the distant past. A warning was surely embedded in the legends of Pandora, of Eve, of Psyche, of Lemnos and the gnostic Sophia. The Buddha warned that allowing Buddhist nuns would halve the lifespan of the dharma.

Is there anything we can do, at this late stage, to pull back from this? Not to mention feminism’s role in our collapsing demographics?

Andrews proposes banning affirmative action, and allowing employers to hire once again on merit. 

I fear she is too optimistic. When women are already in control of the HR departments, can they be counted on to hire on merit? When any profession is dominated by women, the hiring process is no remedy.

We urgently need affirmative action—requiring the hiring and promotion of men.

The Need for Halloween

 

A recent YouTube panel had three women debating whether Christians should celebrate Hallowe’en.

The Protestant panelist of course saw it all as the work of the devil. The puritans used to think the same of Christmas. 

But even the Catholic and Orthodox panelists thought that paganism had taken over the holiday; that children should stop going around dressed as demons, and should instead dress as saints. We needed as Christians, they said, to “reclaim the holiday.”

This sounds perfectly delusional to me. It illustrates how easy it is for people to go mad in groups. It is as Scott Adams, or Goebbels, says: if enough people say the same thing often enough, it becomes generally accepted as truth.

The idea that the feast and its traditions is pagan has become so ingrained that people stop seeing the evidence of their eyes.

Do children currently go around dressed as demons? I did a mental inventory of the demons who showed up at my door last Friday. There was Captain America. The Three Little Pigs. A dog. A cat. A clown with a scythe. Venom, a villain from Marvel. A skeleton. A girl wearing a pink suit and tie. Stitch from Lilo and Stitch.

Where were the demons? I saw no demons.

Actually, what would a demon even look like? I guess a red suit, horns and a tail.

I checked an online store selling Halloween costumes. “halloweencostumes.ca” Halloween Costumes for Adults and Kids | HalloweenCostumes.ca

First row of images: Alice in Wonderland. Superheroes. Transformers.

Second row: Star Wars. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 1940s-era suits and ties. A skeleton for “décor.”

If this is supposed to be about demons, a lot of people are missing the plot.

But it is supposed to be about demons. That is the Christian message. But there is nothing pagan about that, and it has nothing to do with demon worship. Any more than you go to a horror movie to root for the ghoul.

Halloween is supposed to remind you of death and the dangers of hell. Because, I suppose, actual thoughts of hell and death are too scary, that has morphed it into “something scary”; movie monsters and fairy tale witches were substituted. And when even that seemed too scary, it has morphed into just dressing up in a costume.

Dressing up as saints would be the final betrayal of the true meaning of Halloween. 

This euphemistic objection that Halloween is “pagan” is another case of the ostrich philosophy; of “happy happy joy joy” Christianity. It is based on a desire to deny that death, hell, and demons exist. If I deny sin, then God will not punish me. If I do not think of death, I will never die.

This is in a sense the original sin. Eating the fruit was inevitable. We were meant to have free will, and to know good and evil. The Fall became irreversible when Adam and Eve hid in the bushes.

Let us be clear here: you cannot be a Christian, and you cannot be saved, if you only believe that God exists, and not the Devil.

Hallowe'en and Samhain

I spent last Sunday afternoon in a cemetery. I was not alone.

We band of Catholics said a rosary for our departed relatives. The bishop presided.

And this concluded the Hallowe’en Tridium.

There is a popular misconception that Hallowe’en is a pagan festival: specifically, the Celtic harvest festival, Samhain. This is often stated as simple fact. It shows a profound ignorance of religion, mixed in with some surviving puritan anti-Catholic propaganda.

Does it not occur to these people that the non-Celtic Mexicans celebrate their mysteriously similar “Dia de los Muertos” on the same date?

In the Philippines, families spend that same evening in the cemetery. They commonly bring the favourite foods of departed ancestors to hold a picnic at their graves.

Hallowe’en is the eve of All Saints’ Day—“All Hallows Evening.” This three-day memorial for the dead is part of the culture of any Catholic country. It is a time to pray for the souls of those in purgatory, and to remember the truth that death will come for us as well: a “memento mori.” 

Ghosts are the souls of those in Purgatory. 

Demonic figures coming around to “trick or treat” remind us of the dangers of Hell.

All can be explained perfectly in proper Catholic terms.

Samhain is more related to the North American feast of Thanksgiving.

The Greatest Novels

 

What are the greatest novels? This is not my area of expertise; I am a poetry guy. It is entirely likely that I have not read some of the greatest novels. But from my own experience, these are the novels that did not merely entertain, but took up residence in my mind, and changed how I looked at the world. 

At least, they changed me.

Crime and Punishment 
Don Quixote
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
1984
Lord of the Flies
Heart of Darkness
Metamorphosis

Should Women Vote?

 

The pendulum is swinging with remarkable speed. Now I see some talk of repealing the 19th amendment in the US—that is, the constitutional amendment requiring that states give women the right to vote.

Of course, there are reasons for doing this. The basic principle, so often forgotten, is that our ancestors were not idiots. They had reasons for what they did, and so must have had reasons for restricting the right to vote to men for a hundred years or so. Do we understand their reasons? If not, Chesterton’s rule should have applied: never pull down a fence because you do not know why it is there. You must know why it is there before you pull it down.

Begin with the recent Internet discovery, by informal census, that men on average think of the Romen Empire every day; and this astonishes women, who never do. This shows plainly a basic difference between the male and female mind. Men think in more abstract terms, being concerned for people and things not immediately present—about society as a whole, mankind as  whole, about the distant past and distant future, not just what is immediate to their own lives. For women, in contrast, to cite the proud feminist slogan, “the personal is political.” They are by and large concerned with their own lives and their circle of family and acquaintances. Why would they ever think of the Roman Empire?

In other words, men are more concerned with the health of the community and the greatest good for the greatest number. Women are more likely to distort public priorities to serve special interests. On balance, this is bad for everyone.

It is also in everyone’s interest to accentuate different sex roles. This encourages pairing off, and so is a way to approach the current crisis of depopulation. 

Voting has often been tied to serving in war: by sacrificing their youth and risking their lives for the country, many a group have established their right to participate in government. Most recently, during the Vietnam War, this was the argument for lowering the voting age to 18: if old enough to serve, old enough to vote.

But on this basis, women have not established a right to vote. Nor would we want to ask this of them—women are too valuable to a society as childbearers. It is suicidal to throw them into the front lines. Men fight for the women back home.

All this might not have mattered when women tended to vote the same way as men. However, in recent years, voting tendencies between the sexes have increasingly diverged, raising concern.

Of course, it is probably practically impossible now to pull back the franchise from women—they would have to consent to allow it to happen. We can only hope we have not made a civilization-ending mistake.

2BR02B

 

Recently looked at the Vonnegut short story “2BR02B” with a student. First published in 1962, it is a record of our great concern with “overpopulation” back then, in the middle of the Baby Boom. The premise is that the population of the USA had been fixed at 40 million. Since medicine had progressed to virtually allowing immortality, it was necessary, in order to preserve the population at this level, to abort every new baby--unless someone chose suicide in the government “gas chambers.” That would allow a designated new child to be born.

Vonnegut obviously saw this as an undesirable future. He notes in passing that the women who ran the gas chambers mysteriously always grew moustaches. Like Hitler.

I remember well the overpopulation hysteria. It was not that long ago. In my last year of high school, circa 1970, our biology teacher made us all buy and read The Population Bomb, warning that there would be mass starvation and shortages of clean drinking water by the 1980s. My friend in first-year university was planning his future so that he could move to New Zealand. He calculated that, when the world descended into total war over food and water, that would be the safest place. In the 1980s, I became a vegetarian largely on the argument in the book Diet for a Small Planet, that not eating meat saved scarce resources for others.

Weirdly, although Vonnegut saw this all as draconian, measures we might resort to due to an emergency of overpopulation, he seems to be fairly accurately describing the Canada we live in today. We have not found a cure for aging, but we have unrestricted abortion, and “Medical Assistance in Dying” anyway. As well as feminism demanding that women give up having and raising children.

This leaves me with the thought that current government policies, and our current crisis of declining population, are caused by a mass hysteria. It was always wrong, and now surely everybody knows it was wrong, but we are still suffering from the consequences. We are still pursuing the worst possible policies for our current situation.

This should be a valuable moral lesson. “Climate change” is a more recent mass hysteria; some say it is in decline, and even Bill Gates has admitted it was largely a mirage. But governments have been pushing truly draconian measures in its name.

“Transgenderism” is another mass hysteria. So is “ecology” or “environmentalism.” So is the current mania for “indigenous people,” this being a nonsense concept. So is feminism.

I suspect the threat of depopulation and the supposed need to bring in masses of new immigrants is also mass hysteria. Some are predicting, almost in the same breath, that many jobs will soon be relaced by robotics, and a large population will be a liability.

As Nietzsche said, “Madness in individuals is rare. In groups, it is common.”

Let Me Say It Clearly While It Is Still Legal

 There was no "genocide" in Canadian Indian Residential Schools.

If this NDP member has her way, that sentence would make be liable for two years in prison.

The price of truth.

Canadian Fertility Collapse

 

From the Epoch Times.

2.1 is replacement level.

Cruel and Unusual

Apparently, the Canadian Supreme Court has just ruled it unconstitutional for Parliament to impose an automatic one year minimum sentence on those possessing "child sexual abuse material," which I resume means child pornography.

Whether a year is too much seems to be a judgement call, and just the sort of thing parliament is supposed to decide, not the courts.

Cruel and unusual? The average sentence in the US for possession of child pornography is 6.5 years for a first offense. UK statutory penalty is 5-10 years. 

For the sake of Canadian democracy, the Supreme Court must be reined in. I fear this is virtually impossible under the current constitution. The only escape may be provinces separating individually.

Mental Illness Is a Nonsense Concept

 

An Asian demon.

My Chinese student immediately sees the absurdity of the term “mental illness.” Like a physical illness?

“Mental illness” is a euphemism. We have sadly come to take it literally, and have even come to treating the thing with pills. Given this approach, the problem is incurable.

Older terms are more accurate. The various experiences we call mental illness are experienced subjectively as oppression, obsession, or possession by some will which either inhibits, distracts, or completely suppresses our own. Often, people actually “hear voices” in their head. You could say “out of your mind” or “beside yourself” or “driven to distraction.” But that is only half the equation. If you are out of your mind, who is in it? Who or what is distracting you? The best, most lucid description of the experienced reality we euphemistically call “mental illness” is demonic possession, or demonic affliction.

We refuse to use the terms only because we arbitrarily refuse to accept the existence of demons. Despite the overwhelming evidence—the evidence of “mental illness” itself. People are experiencing demonic wills interfering with their own, and fairly commonly.

Understand this simple truth, understand the problem in these terms, and the cure becomes obvious. You need spiritual assistance. The shamanic approach is to negotiate peace terms with the demon, the “voice in your head.” It does nothing to simply ignore it and pretend it does not exist. The Judeo-Christian approach, more effective, is to cast the demon out, supplanting it with the imminent presence of the one true God.

“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first.”

Therefore, it is necessary to occupy the spirit with a “strong man.” 

“if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can someone enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house.”

In other words, with a faith in the one true God.

And this approach, unlike that of modern psychiatry, actually works. It is scientifically proven to work.

On Pride

 

Thomas Merton wrote, “Pride makes us artificial. Humility makes us genuine.” 

A sort of robotic artificiality indeed seems characteristic of narcissists. Their smile is mechanical, as if pasted on; or it is a smirk, a sort of half-smile. Scott Adams says there is something about the eyes not smiling with the mouth that gives away insincerity.

They cannot be spontaneous, because they do not dare lose control. For this reason, they cannot have a sense of humour. Humour requires letting go. They do not understand it, and so will laugh inappropriately. They are just mimicking what they see and hear others do, without feeling it. The one thing they might find funny is watching other people in pain, mental or physical. Someone slipping on a banana peel.

Can narcissism be cured? Psychiatry says no. I have always been loath to believe this: can anyone be beyond redemption? I compared it with alcoholism: breaking an addiction is hard, but not impossible. People do. Surely one can also break an addiction to pride?

But there is indeed a point at which one is, in Christian teaching, beyond redemption: Hell is forever. If you die in mortal sin, and descend, there is no possibility of redemption beyond that point. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Like it or not, that is the clear Biblical teaching.

Doesn’t this match our experiences with narcissism? At a certain point, to wit, the point of confirmed narcissism, it would not matter if one had an infinite stretch of time, one is never going to pull out of this. Like Lucifer’s choice of self over God: Satan is not one day going to be redeemed.

An addiction to self is after all far more encompassing than an addiction to some single pleasure or vice. To invest your very identity in your vice means breaking the addiction looks impossible. There is no one there, outside of the vice itself, to break it. You have no other identity. Your soul has been devoured.

That is why the narcissist seems zombie-like, an NPC.

It may be going too far, however, to say ambulatory narcissism is yet incurable. Why would God allow the narcissist to stay alive, and doing harm to others, past this point? It makes more sense to assume that the point at which the narcissism is absolutely incurable is the moment God will step in and send to Hell. So long as there is the slightest chance for the narc to turn, God will give them that chance. 

But well before this point, the change might require a miracle. It may be beyond human agency, and so of course the psychiatrists cannot do it. Neither can any well-meaning relative.

Pride and Humility

 

Lucifer in Hell; as conceived by Dante and Dore.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

This parable, the gospel reading at last Sunday’s mass, identifies pride as the one unforgivable sin. 

And it is. It is the source of all sin. Pride is the sin of Lucifer, and of Eve (“you shall be as gods”). It is the sin the Greeks called hubris; what modern psychology calls “narcissism.” 

As the parable says, all sins are forgiven so long as you are humble. And so long as you are proud, no virtues count. Pride or humility is the entire ball game. What could be clearer?

This is surely the sense in which Jesus says we must be like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. Little children are not moral; they do not always behave well. But they think of themselves as little, incapable, needing guidance and help. This is the attitude we need to have towards God.

People speak of “Catholic guilt,” as if guilt were a bad thing. But that is the whole point of Christian morality. “I want you to be perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect.” None of us can achieve that. All of us will sin.

That is the point. The point is to stay humble.

This is one more reason why I deeply dislike “happy happy joy joy” Christianity. The minute we decide we are in the clear, we are lost. Blessed are those who mourn. 

A caveat: anti-Christian bullies will use this against Christians, demanding they humble themselves and submit to the bully—and to the general consensus. William Blake said, “humble before God; not before men.” Humbling yourself to the mighty in this world is not moral. It is just cowardice and cunning. John the Baptist did not humble himself before Herod. The Old Testament prophets did not humble themselves before the kings and queens of Judea and Israel. Jesus did not act humbly at the temple, nor speak humbly of himself at the synagogue. Saint Dymphna did not submit humbly to her father the King; nor Saint Francis to his father the rich merchant.

We must serve the Truth, and not either ourselves or he powers and principalities of this dark world. We must “work out our salvation in fear and trembling.”