An Honest Land Acknowlegement

Spanish and Portuguese possessions according to the Treaty of Tordesillas

In May of this year, Catherine Kronas, an elected member of the school council at Ancaster Secondary School in the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB), was suspended from her position by the school board because she lodged a formal objection, following proper parliamentary procedure, to the board’s requirement to make a “land acknowledgement” at every council meeting. Her concern was that this was a political statement, and compelled speech.

This was equivalent to a coup by the bureaucracy overthrowing the elected government. The school board is supposed to be subject to the elected parents’ councils, not the other way around. It is also an extreme violation of human rights: of freedom of speech, of the right to petition the government, of parental rights over their children’s education.

Why would the school board act in such a dictatorial fashion over this particular issue?

In part, this is a sign of desperation. The various bureaucracies are aware they are losing control. The natural reaction is to lash out in narcissistic rage; just as Islamic terrorism is a symptom of the collapse of Muslim confidence. We have seen blatant attempts by the “deep state” to subvert democracy in the US, in France, in the UK, in Germany, recently. Canada is probably no worse.

The reason the school board is enforcing this “land acknowledgement” in the first place is, of course, that it is a lie. Forcing people to repeat a lie is an exercise in control for its own sake.

Nobody feels the need to enforce a truth. Truth can look after itself.

The various “land acknowledgements” are also violations of the principle of human equality; they imply that some citizens have, by birth, some claim to the land above that of other citizens. 

One might counter that they are meant merely as a matter of historical interest. However, if so, they are still discriminatory in mentioning only approved “First Nations” groups who fought over this land, and not also historic claims to the land by the French, the British, and, by Treaty of Tordesillas, the  Spanish.

Especially obnoxious is the common claims that some part of Canada is “the unceded territory” of this or that tribe. This is a plain lie. Sovereignty was expressly ceded by treaty across the Prairies and the north, throughout Ontario, and in the Peace and Friendship treaties in the Atlantic Provinces. Note, for example, this text from the “Articles of Submission,” 1725: “We, the … delegates from the … tribes inhabiting within His Majesty's said territories of Nova Scotia or Acadia and New England, do, in the name and behalf of the said tribes we represent, acknowledge His said Majesty King George's jurisdiction and dominion over the territories of the said Province of Nova Scotia or Acadia, and make our submission to His said Majesty in as ample a manner as we have formerly done to the Most Christian King.” 

This is a clear surrender of sovereignty. Their land was ceded, in the same sense the French Acadian lands were ceded to Britain in 1713, or the North-West Territories were ceded to Canada by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1870. This does not, of course, directly address the matter of individual ownership of given plots of land. That would be subject to the laws of England: “We Submitting ourselves to be ruled and governed by His Majesty's Laws and desiring to have the benefit of the same.”

Interestingly, by contrast, Spain actually never has formally ceded sovereignty over North America. So that “land acknowledgement” is the only one that might be vaguely legitimate. For what it might be worth.

Conclave

My feeling after watching “Conclave” is that it is not truly anti-Catholic. After all, it shows the cardinals genuinely, in the end, electing the candidate they believe to be the holiest among them. Despite the temptations to simony and lust and ambition, they are on the whole sincere—a realistic, even an optimistic, appraisal. And there is an interesting question in the end. Spoiler alert. Stop reading now if you have not seen the film. 

Given that Cardinal Benitez’s medical condition is just barely possible, what are the moral issues it involves? What should Benitez or Lawrence, in good conscience, do or have do?

For what it is worth, I think the conclusion the movie offers is correct. At this point, it is an irrelevant technicality. 

My sense is more that the screenwriters have been lazy. They show a shocking lack of knowledge of the Catholic faith, and have not taken the trouble to get it right. Having spent so much, and such care, on the cinematography, it is shameful that they did not put in the effort to get the theology right. Even had the intent been to criticize the Catholic church, they have been mostly punching at straw men. I feel as though my intelligence, as audience, has been insulted.

It is not a legitimate criticism of Catholic, or any, traditionalism, for example, to associate it with racism, as they do by having Cardinal Tedesco worry about one of “those people” (sub-Saharan Africans) becoming pope. Even outside the Church, there is no reason to associate traditionalism with racism. But certainly not inside the church, where the most traditionalist cardinals are usually found in Africa and Asia. If the screenwriters want to object to traditionalism, they have to offer some genuine reason it is bad.

Part of the problem is that, in typical Hollywood fashion, they have to portray one character as an absolute villain. They even use the tired and obvious trope of introducing Tedesco by immediately showing him being rude to an underling. Sophomoric.

Far better to give each character depth and motive. But they did not bother.

More cringeworthy is Cardinal Lawrence’s extempore soliloquy: 

“St Paul said that God’s gift to the Church is its variety. It is this variety, this diversity of people and views that gives our Church its strength. In the course of a long life in the service of our Mother the Church, let me tell you that there is one sin I have come to fear above all others. Certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end

‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ He cried out in His agony at the ninth hour on the cross. Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts. Let Him grant us a Pope who sins and asks for forgiveness. And carries on.”

There’s just about everything wrong with that.

To begin with, St. Paul never said God’s gift to the church was variety or diversity. That’s some weird projection. My guess is that the intended justification for this claim is that St. Paul said there was neither Jew nor Greek in Christ. This is not a celebration of diversity, but a call to unity. In the Bible, the diversity of mankind is the result of sin—see the Tower of Babel. 

And necessarily no Church is about a diversity of views. People come together as a church because of shared views. If you are a Christian, you profess the Nicene Creed, and must commit to it at each mass. If you are a Catholic, you accept the Catechism of the Catholic Church, all 2865 paragraphs of it.

You are free to have diverse views on other topics; but that is not what religion is about.

Lawrence actually says certainty is a sin. Not just a sin, but the worst sin. 

If certainty is a sin, then the apostles and the prophets and all the martyrs were particularly sinful men. As are monks and nuns. They surrendered everything, even their lives, for their certainty. 

Moreover, certainty is not the enemy of tolerance—uncertainty is. This is not just an innocent error, but highly dangerous. If you are certain of the truth, you are untroubled by someone else denying it. Nobody gets agitated at hearing someone else say that the sun orbits the earth, or that the moon is made of cheese. We laugh; we condescend. 

Only if we are uncertain of truth, if we are plagued by our own doubts, do we need to plug our ears, or shout down or eliminate other views. 

You see this, for example, in the current plague of Muslim terrorism. Someone I read recently pointed out that, until rather recently, Muslims were relatively sanguine about the West and accepting Western political norms. The Middle East was mostly quiet, and cooperative, even with imperial powers like Britain and France trudging through and setting up their colonial administrations. After the formation of Israel, the PLO rose in opposition: but as a Marxist, not a Muslim, organization. There was no Muslim opposition to Israel then. The Middle East in general was secularizing, under nationalist leaders with no religious agenda: Nasser in Egypt; Assad; Saddam; all secular nationalists. In Iran, the monarchy was similarly secular.

Something happened. Something changed.

The Muslim terrorists who have risen to prominence since are almost always Western-educated.

What has changed is the internet. The Muslim world had been largely hived off. Remarkably few Western writings were ever translated into Arabic. With greater exposure to Western thought, Muslims are now commonly doubting their religion. And so they are less tolerant. They cannot any longer trust Allah to manage his own affairs.

“Let [God] grant us a pope who sins and asks for forgiveness” is also incoherent. It suggests sin itself is a good. Theologically it is incoherent, since we all sin. And incoherent since we all, as Catholics, ask for forgiveness.

And the movie, and Cardinal Lawrence, then contradict these words, when Lawrence insists that Cardinal Adeyemi can never be pope because of a sin he committed, and repents, years ago. This is heresy. Moses was a murderer. David was a murderer. The Good Thief went straight to heaven. St. Paul persecuted Christians. Redemption is what the Church is for. 

Cardinal Bellini, the “progressive,” objects to Adeyemi as pope because he “would send homosexuals to hell.” No Catholic cardinal would say that; nobody has the power to send someone to hell. Not even God himself does this. We choose hell. And this suggests that cardinals get to individually decide on faith or morals. Not even the pope can do that; not even an ecumenical council can. Should the Church be wrong in believing homosexual sex to be sinful, this error could not send any homosexual to hell; any more than not believing in gravity means you can fly.

After the bombing, which is more than a bit over the top, a cheap thrill, the screenplay has Cardinal Tedesco orate, “We need a leader who fights these animals.” No Catholic prelate is going to refer in public, among fellow cardinals, to another human being as an “animal.” That would mean rejecting basic Church teaching, not to mention Aristotle. 

And it would be so easy for the screenwriter to simply omit this word. Had Tedesco said “terrorist” instead, we would have had an interesting moral and philosophical issue to consider. Should we fight if attacked, or turn the other cheek? When is it right to fight back?

Perhaps the screenwriter inserted this word precisely to avoid an interesting moral question he did not want. But that is malpractice as a writer.

And Cardinal Benitez responds with his own howler, supposed by the screenplay to be deeply persuasive, the last word: “The church is not tradition. It is what we do next.”

Tradition is exactly what the church is: the “deposit of faith.” “Holy, catholic, and apostolic. That third term means it must not deviate from tradition. On matters of faith and morals, anything it says must be demonstrated to be in full accord with what the apostles said two thousand years ago. Unmoor from this, and the Catholic Church has no reason to exist. It is just a social club. 

It is not, in the end, an evil movie. It is a bad movie.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

 

Fr. Calvin Robinson makes a compelling case in a recent blog post that feminism is the most destructive ideology of all time.

He does the math. 

“Add up all the wars throughout human history, and they amount to an estimated 1.5 billion deaths. That is inclusive of combatants, civilian casualties and those who died of the results of war (i.e. famine).”

For comparison, abortion, since widespread legalisation in the 1970s, “has amounted to 2.5-3.5 billion deaths.”

This is just since the 1970s, fifty years, against all of human history. And these are all innocent lives. It is, moreover, far worse to kill a child than to kill an elderly man, say, who has only a few years left to him. 

One can also consider that a good many of the deaths in war are not intended, collateral damage. Indeed, in principle, they are all unintended. Any general, any leader, tries to minimize casualties in achieving his objectives. But all abortions are deliberate, cold blooded, and certain to cause death. 

Again, perhaps fifty percent of combat deaths are legitimate self-defense: in the usual course of things, one side is in the right. No abortion deaths are legitimate self-defense. Not even in the case of rape or incest, which account for only 1.5% of abortions.

Father Robinson cites statistics showing abortions are overwhelmingly used by women simply as a form of birth control. Simply because they feel having a child did not fit into their current plans.  Saving the life of the mother? If it is done to save the mother’s life, it does not even show up in the abortion statistics.

Legally, the woman has the unilateral right to have an abortion. The father of the child has no say. This, therefore, must be placed entirely at the feet of women. Given that it is feminism that justifies this, feminism is the deadliest ideology known to mankind. And women,  given power, are far more violent than men.

Feminism is also responsible for the death of the family. This is by no accident: it was the family, per Betty Friedan, which was to be destroyed. Women were to accept no family responsibilities. That is “patriarchy.”

In North America, over 70% of divorces are initiated by the wife. No doubt following Ann Landers’ advice from as far back as the Seventies that the only standard should be, “Are you better off with him or without him?” No thought for the children. No thought for “For richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health.” No thought for the in-laws. No thought for the wider society. Just what seems best for her at the time.

Under feminism, women have turned against child care. They will farm their children, if they have them, out to strangers, even though we know this is worse for children. By neglecting the next generation, they are destroying the culture, the civilization itself. For family is the basic building block of society as a whole, and culture is whatever we pass on to the next generation.

And, predictably, women turning away from children and childbearing is causing a demographic collapse. The developed West has as a result seen a need to open the doors to unrestricted immigration. This causes its own problems, which are becoming increasingly apparent. Ultimately, social chaos.

It is vain to talk of legal solutions to this problem: the necessary laws cannot be passed until and unless we can change hearts and minds.

I believe that cultures worldwide had it right, before feminism threw everything off kilter. Girls were spoiled growing up, and allowed to expect a life free of responsibilities. In return, they were required to defer to men. Boys were held to a higher standard, and in return, should they pass that bar, given command.  It worked, everywhere, for all of recorded history.

Now girls are still spoiled growing up, and then put in command. Disastrous.

Trump Is Making Canada Great Again

 

As a Canadian, I support Donald Trump in the current trade negotiations with Canada. His chief complaints are, first, border security, second, the flood of drugs across the border, third, the Canadian egg, poultry, and dairy quotas, and fourth, the digital services tax. 

In each case, what Trump wants is in Canadians’ best interests. What the Canadian government wants harms Canada.

Border security: We should be just as worried about terrorist attacks as the US; why is this controversial? It is apparently fact that more terrorists are entering the US from the north than from the south. The Canadian government has been alarmingly lax about Chinese influence, Kalistani terrorism, and floods of supposed refugees from the Middle East. Canada has no land border with any nation but the US, and is separated from the rest of the world by oceans. We don’t need to build any wall, or turn back small craft at sea. It would be far easier to stop the flow of undocumented or undesirable aliens here than it is for the US, Britain, or any of the countries of Europe. Yet the Canadian government is making no effort, even opening the doors ever wider—as if they want chaos.

Drugs: Fentanyl is a major crisis in Canada as well as the US; we should want to stop the traffic just as they do. Granted that the “war on drugs” was a failure, and prohibition did not work. But the current Canadian governmental approach of legalization, turning a blind eye, and handing out free drugs to addicts, is clearly making matters worse. We ought to work with the Americans to try something else. The obvious thing is to try to cut off supply.

Cheese: the Canadian government seems far more concerned with the smuggling of cheese than the smuggling of fentanyl. The Canadian “supply management” system is an obvious violation of the free market. It is a perfect example of a cartel in restraint of trade, which should be illegal. It is the government’s job to prevent cartels from forming, not to impose them. The result of this cartel is that the very poorest among us are made poorer for the benefit of a handful of large producers. The cheapest sources of protein are made artificially expensive. It is pure evil, quite apart from its unfairness to American farmers, our neighbours. It is even bad for the Canadian dairy industry, which used to be able to compete internationally. 

Happily, the digital services tax is already suspended.  It would have made the cheapest forms of entertainment more expensive; and would have made Canadian high-tech start-ups less competitive.

I hope Trump will also go after Canadian content regulations, which cut us off from dialogue with the world.

Why Mainstream Protestantism Lists Left

Some notorious sinner who ignored the ethical concerns of his community.

 

Friend Xerxes is arguing that our sense of morality comes from the community.

This is the claim of “cultural relativism.” It is obviously false. If a given community decided murder was perfectly okay, would it be okay? Killing Jews was perfectly acceptable in Nazi Germany; do we have no right to object to the practice? Or to slavery, since it was socially condoned in most parts of the world until rather recently? To child sacrifice? 

Challenged on the point, Xerxes seemed confused. So where then did I suppose morality comes from? Where else could it come from

From the natural law. We are all born with a conscience, an innate sense of right and wrong. Kant showed that the moral law is the one thing we cannot possibly dispute, a “categorical imperative.” It can be summed up in the simple phrase, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Nobody truly believes that murder is right, or lying is right.

Since this is self-evident, why do people like Xerxes fail to see it?

Often, I’m sure, due to guilt. Many find it easier to deny the reality of right and wrong than to admit doing wrong.

But this may also be a mainstream Protestant problem, at least in Xerxes’s case. Denominations like the United Church of Canada, or the Anglican Church, really have no fixed doctrines; you pretty much believe what you want, and worship what you want. Anglicans have their rituals, but since they do not believe in transubstantiation, they amount to little more than aesthetics. So why do you go to church?

Perhaps all that is left is latitudinarianism: you go to learn how to behave better.

Hence they must cling to the doctrine that morality comes from the community you keep. It becomes their raison d’etre.

And we can perhaps go a step further. Since the basics of morality are self-evident, they have to come up with something new. They cannot simply preach “Do not lie.” 

This may explain why these churches seem to veer into weird wokery and left-wing politics. What we sometimes call “virtue-signalling” or “political correctness.” They must have some mock morality that is not self-evident. 

It cannot be anything that requires self-sacrifice, or great effort: not fasting, say or climbing mountains on your knees. Mainstream Protestant congregations are democracies, and even strive for consensus. Such strenuous requirements are sure to cause some backlash.

So it becomes a matter of using the correct language, voting the correct way, condemning the right things in others.

Who I Think Is on the Epstein List

 

BFF?

I have no business speculating on the Jeffrey Epstein list, but here’s my speculation.

I believe the most plausible reason the Epstein client list or its equivalent has not been released is that he was an intelligence agent. Exposing more would destroy some intelligence operation.

This would explain how he became rich despite no relevant background.

He was not, I speculate, Mossad, as some are suggesting. Seems to me the point of his Lolita Island was that it took him off the US coast; the CIA is not allowed to operate within the US. If he were with Mossad, there would not be this need. Mossad may come up only because of antisemitism. It fits with the eternal trope of an International Jewish Conspiracy.

And the Trump administration would not have great incentive to avoid blowing up an Israeli intelligence operation.

The names we hear of, supposedly among the Epstein clients, tend to be famous Americans. This suggests a deep state coup.

And the failure of the Trump administration to release the information suggests that the CIA has some means of controlling them as well.

The obvious explanation is that Trump too is on that client list. Allan Dershowitz says he has seen the list, and it includes some people pointing fingers at others for being Epstein clients. That could include Trump.

Countering this, it is said that Trump actually blew the whistle on Epstein originally, and cooperated with investigators when others would not. And the fierce opposition to Trump by the deep state and the media seems best explained by the thesis that they had nothing on him, that they felt they could not control him.

So we’re back to an intelligence operation.

It may be that the speculation centres around famous Americans only because of the natural local bias of the media. It is an old saw in journalism: you always want a local angle. Three locals dying in a car accident is more newsworthy than 300 people dying in a bus crash in Bangladesh. It may be that the bulk of Epstein’s actual clients were foreigners—like Prince Andrew, the one person actually identified so far.

Epstein visited Israel and was introduced by Dershowitz to government figures there? Don’t assume from that he was working for the Israelis. The simpler assumption, per Occam’s razor, is that he was working for the CIA to set honey traps for Israeli politicians.

I think the reason the Trump administration will not release the list is that it will include the names of prominent foreign allies. A Trudeau, a Macron, a Netanyahu, a Boris Johnson, or the like. 

How to Feel Good

 

A friend who is himself a therapist sent me a link to a brief summary by David D. Burns, promoting his book Feeling Good. Reading it, Burns himself acknowledges that no known form of psychotherapy actually can be shown to be effective. Including his own.

“For example, in one large, well-controlled outcome study, CBT [Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, essentially his own approach] was found to be comparable to the popular antidepressant medication paroxetine (Paxil) in the short-term, and slightly more effective in the long run, when patients were contacted a year or more after treatment (DeRubeis et al., 2005; Hollon et al., 2005). Most researchers and clinicians have concluded that if CBT is at least as good as treatment with antidepressants, then it must be effective.”

Wait. The problem is, the SSRI inhibitors have not been shown to be effective. So if CBT is no better, it does not work. I had thought it was at least one therapy that did have scientific backing.

Burns confirms this further on:

“if you examine the data closely, and understand the rating scales the investigators used, it becomes clear that neither CBT nor antidepressants (nor any form of psychotherapy) appears to be much better than treatment with placebos. In fact, many recent research studies indicate that the so-called ‘anti-depressant’ medications may have few or no significant anti-depressant effect above and beyond their placebo effects.” One study I saw found them no more effective against depression than sleeping pills. “In order for any treatment to be truly deemed ‘effective’ it must provide an effect significantly superior to placebo. Sadly, this is not the case for any of the currently prescribed antidepressant medications or any currently practiced forms of psychotherapy.”

There you go—little to no scientific backing for any form of psychotherapy. You might as well just put on a mask and do a rain dance.

Burns cites no stats for his own “TEAM” approach, only anecdotes. But he does make the following claim for using his book:

“Results indicate that bibliotherapy [meaning his book specifically] can be almost as good, if not better, than the results obtained with antidepressant medications or psychotherapy in controlled outcome studies (Ackerson, Scogin, Lyman, & Smith, 1998;…)”

In other words, his book too does just about as well as a sugar pill.

Now you might rightly ask, what are you supposed to do if you are a therapist, and someone comes to you with a problem? You want to help; you do not want to send them away; you must give them something. Isn’t it better to give them a placebo than to give them nothing?

Yes, so long as you are not charging more than the cost of a sugar pill for it.

And only if there are no alternative treatments available that do work. To say that no forms of psychotherapy work is not to say that nothing works for depression or mental illness or the problems of life. There is an obvious alternative treatment for the problems of life, or for those who struggle with meaning or the nature of reality; it is almost too obvious. That is what religion is about.

Psychotherapy and psychology began as an attempt to replace religion. This is plain in Freud. Jung admits this. It is a failed replacement. Religion works, and materialist psychotherapies do not.

You can see the rates of depression, mental illness, drug addiction and suicide rise as church attendance falls. Correlation does not prove causation, but it is a clear correlation. Looking further back, the reason Christianity spread so quickly across the Roman Empire, then Northern Europe, then the Americas, then Africa, according to the chroniclers of that day, was its ability to cast out demons—in modern terms, to cure severe mental illness. That’s a lot of empirical evidence that it works. 

In the Seventies, the World Health Organization did an international study, and found the recovery rate for mental illness was dramatically higher in the “Third World” than in the developed West. The obvious variable is that the developed West relies on scientific psychology, and the poor South relies more commonly on religion.

You might argue that there is in turn no proper scientific proof for the effectiveness of religion. I believe there is, but this is not that relevant. Science is a tool to study nature, not mankind; it does not work on subjects, only objects. Mankind is studied through history, philosophy, and the arts—the humanities. We deduce from first principles, from the lessons of history, and the advice of great minds.

Those Crazy Indians

 

Friend Xerxes writes that his father’s doctoral dissertation was almost rejected. His father was using the standard Rorschach test on Indian (as in India) subjects. The problem was, his study showed that most of India’s population was schizophrenic.

There are several possibilities here. One is that Xerxes senior was not properly applying the test. The thesis examiners, however, could not find and flaw here, and so had to approve his thesis.

The second, and the conclusion Xerxes draws, is that the Rorschach test is culturally biased. 

But this implies a further conclusion: that our understanding of schizophrenia is culturally biased. It is primarily a cultural prejudice, not an illness. This has grave implications. It means people might actually be drugged up or put in mental hospitals because of their cultural background. And it has been suggested that this has happened, often, to Native Americans/First Nations shamans.

And there is actually a third possibility, currently not permitted to be mentioned: maybe schizophrenia is a real mental disorder, and the majority of Indians are indeed schizophrenic. Maybe an entire culture can be mad, out of touch with objective reality.

We cannot entertain this last possibility, because we currently falsely identify culture with race; and then with the concept of human equality. So we cannot admit that one culture can be better than another.

This is obviously false. A culture is a tool for living, a technology, and one tool can always be better than another.

I will go further. Our present Western culture, which asserts that a man can become a woman, and vice versa, is objectively mad. It is leading to rising rates of depression and suicide. 

It is always possible that the schizophrenics, and the Indians, are sane, and psychology and the psychologists and modern secular scientistic “Western” culture, are mad.

If this sounds shocking, this is actually the foundational assumption of Christianity, or Buddhism, or Hinduism: that an entire culture, indeed “the world,” can have it wrong. 

The Emerging Effects of the New Media

 

I keep hearing and seeing online that Catholicism is now suddenly growing in Britain, France, the US. It is growing across Africa, in China, Southeast Asia, Korea, Japan, even in places like Iran. Generation Z, and Generation Z men in particular, are reputedly showing up in Catholic Churches. Famous celebrities are publicly converting. 

Why now?

I think we are beginning to see the fruits of the new media. Governments and establishments have tried to control what people hear and think. They control through restricting what appears in the media, and wat is taught in the schools. Now that filter is off, despite their desperate rear-guard actions, because everyone now in effect owns a printing press and a television network.

Just as John Stuart Mill explained, the only way to arrive at truth is to ensure that all voices are heard.

In particular, we are seeing debates online. This actually used to be how universities worked: teachers established their reputation through public debates and lectures. Buddhism advanced in the subcontinent, and Christianity in Eastern Europe, through public debates. 

Let those public debates happen, and, over time, it becomes apparent that Christianity, and Catholicism, have all the best answers. We cannot overestimate the influence of online personalities like Wiliam Lane Craig, Bishop Barron, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, Charlie Kirk, all laying out the case.

New Atheism had its part to play, in provoking this response, but the major factor is simply the New Media. While it can spread misinformation and lies as easily as truth, a good argument, and especially a good debate performance, cannot really be faked. The reasoning stands up, or it does not.

Proof that the New Media is the main cause of this awakening is that Gen Z is most affected. Gen Z is most inclined to get their information from new media, and not from the establishment channels.

Catholicism is simply the most coherent and plausible explanation for life and the universe. Which is shy the urgency to spread the gospel. Secular scientism, the political religion of Marxism, and, dare I say it, to an extent also Islam and Protestantism, have maintained their influence largely by restricting information and spreading falsehoods about Catholicism, its history and beliefs.

In the midst of present turmoil, this suggests that good times are coming. Better times than we have yet seen.

RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary

 

Friend Xerxes objects to RFK Jr. as US Secretary of Health and Human Services, on the grounds that he is unqualified for the position. And, of course, that he is an “anti-vaxxer,” and promoting dangerous unscientific falsehoods about vaccines.

I note that his Wikipedia entry introduces Kennedy as, among other things, a “conspiracy theorist.” “Since 2005, Kennedy has promoted vaccine misinformation.”

However, as a result of his criticism of Kennedy, Xerxes had two readers unsubscribe from his newsletter.

I think it is a symptom of how dysfunctional our society has become that two people unsubscribed simply because Xerxes said something they disagree with. 

What is the point of reading opinions you agree with? They will tell you nothing you do not already know. To refuse to hear opposing arguments means you are not looking for truth; you can have no idea whether your own ideas are true or not, if you have not heard the opposing arguments. This amounts to deliberately choosing delusion. Too many people currently seem to be doing exactly that, systematically. They want to belong to a cult.

As it happens, I disagree with Xerxes on RFK Jr. I disagree with him on most things.

Regarding RFK Jr. being unqualified for his position, there is a Catch-22 here. Milton Friedman pointed it out. Who are the qualified experts? When a government wants to set regulations, they must indeed turn to experts for advice. That almost inevitably means people prominent in that industry or field set their own rules. For example, to regulate the automotive industry, government will turn to the executives of the big car companies. To set vaccine policy, the executives of the big drug firms. To set science, policy, prominent scientists. Of course. But such experts automatically have a conflict of interest, and an overwhelming temptation to set up a cartel. They are likely to regulate in their industry’s interests, or their profession’s interests, and to restrain competition; not in the public interest.

How can you get around this?

RFK Jr. arguably has the ideal qualifications for his position, precisely because he is not a medical doctor nor a food or pharmaceutical executive. Nevertheless, as a lawyer who has specialized in lawsuits against members of these groups, he has had to research the issues thoroughly and develop expertise to present his cases. You might argue he has a bias against the industry, but he is not beholden to them, nor nearly as financially interested. And a bias in the other direction might be a useful corrective.

For the same reason, it was rather a good idea to vote in an entrepreneur with no prior political experience as president. Trump knows how to get things done, but he is not compromised by nor beholden to what he calls the “Washington swamp.” Both appointments seem to be a useful experiment.

This is not to say I think JFK’s views are right; I have no position on that. I don’t have the knowledge nor expertise to know that. We do know something is wrong somewhere in the modern American lifestyle: perhaps in our food, perhaps environmental pollutants, perhaps the vaccines, perhaps in common drugs and medicines. We see an epidemic of obesity, of autism, of diabetes, of mass shootings, of suicides, of drug abuse, of unexplained sudden deaths of young and seemingly fit people. Something is up. Surely more research is a good thing, and independent research not directly funded by the drug companies or food companies. Maybe Kennedy can get to the bottom of it, with the resources now at his disposal.

One thing seems clear to me about Kennedy: he is sincere. He is doing this out of conviction. He is not paid off. I want leaders like that.

Why, other than voluntary delusion, would we not want to do the research to find out?

The Hound of Heaven

 

Trying to understand the general hostility to religion: it is hated because it makes us feel bad about ourselves. Therefore it is countered with “self-esteem.” And that will make everything better; once we cast off this nagging voice saying we are not good enough.

The problem is, self and getting what we want is a hollow idol. It takes all meaning out of life. Because if we are wonderful as we are, we never improve ourselves. We have no purpose; we just sit there with nowhere to go. And that nagging voice of guilt does not go away. It gets louder.

As they feel worse and worse, this causes the irreligious to get more and more hostile to religion. To their imagination, its residual influence is causing them more and more suffering. As if it is chasing them. It is everywhere. Clearly just walking away from it was not enough. The solution must be to wipe it out entirely, for everyone, every vestige. It must be poisoning the entire culture. Religious people are looking at you, and you know they are condemning you in their hearts. Maybe the entire culture must be destroyed.

Such people can do a lot of damage before they realize religion was not the problem, but their own guilt. Religion is the means to escape it. The problem is, first you have to face it.

A White Elephant?

 

It’s time to address an elephant in the room. Something nobody dares to say.

I have pointed out recently in this space (“Narcissism Is Not Depression”) that people with low self-esteem will compensate by “working hard at whatever they are asked to do, to prove themselves. They will be scrupulously moral, and always want the structure of rules. Rules will reassure them they are doing all right.”

This means that someone with low self-esteem is primed for accomplishment in life. Someone with high self-esteem will avoid what is difficult. They may enjoy life more, but will never accomplish much.

It follows that a culture that fosters low self-esteem, especially in its children, will, over time, develop faster and become more advanced than a culture that fosters high self-esteem. It will also be more orderly and have less crime and violence; and this in turn allows for faster development.

And this can easily explain, in turn, why some cultures “dominate” others. Why Jews are always so successful. Why “whites” do better than “blacks.” Why the British managed to manage one quarter of the world. Why indigenous cultures never invented the wheel, while Europe and Asia had printing and firearms and ocean-going vessels.

In fact, there is no other adequate explanation. The common one, that whites or Jews or Asians are simply racist and violent, while Africans and aboriginals were always peaceful and loving, is not just nonsense on the evidence, but nonsense on the internal logic. Simply being mean does not give you power over others.

Different cultures are simply better than others. And the key is in child-rearing. Child-rearing is really what a culture is all about: culture is what we pass on to our children. Some cultures instill low self-esteem. Their children suffer, but succeed, and the culture succeeds. Other cultures instill high self-esteem. Their children have a great childhood, but accomplish little in life, and the culture does not progress. They will also suffer more in later life; because the culture around them will be less orderly, less developed, and more violent.

The British upper class has long understood this. It was all about “breeding.” For countless generations, they sent their young away to spartan, rigorous boarding schools, where they were commonly bullied, and expected to fend for themselves. This was the key to the continued dominance of that class. 

Do the same with Canadian aboriginal children, and they call it “genocide.”

I tutor many Chinese and Korean students. They barely have a childhood. For them, it is a grind from morning to night. What is their favourite free-time activity? The usual response is “sleep.”

And you wonder why they do so well at academics? It is not discrimination in their favour. They are systematically discriminated against.

“Jewish guilt” is similarly notorious. You are never good enough.

African-Americans, by contrast, freely boast about themselves. They spike the ball in the end zone. They trash talk. A current ad for Hamilton Ontario tourism features a local football player paid to talk up the city. But he also inserts that he is the best football player ever seen—just in case you didn’t know. One cannot picture a ‘white” athlete saying such a thing. One cannot imagine a Chinese athlete saying such a thing. It is perhaps the most obvious cultural difference between the two groups.

A further irony is that those with low self-esteem are unlikely to complain. They will feel they do not deserve more than they have; and if they are genuinely discriminated against, they will fear drawing attention to themselves. It is likely to cause them trouble.

Those with high self-esteem, and those accustomed to getting what they want, on the other hand, will complain loudly if they do not get it. 

So if some group is complaining loudly of discrimination and injustice, they are almost certainly already privileged. 

This includes women. Boys are traditionally treated roughly and held to account as children. Little girls are traditionally treated as “princesses.” Young women are fawned over. And so they grow bitter when privilege is not acknowledged.

This includes African-Americans. If not privileged by the wider society until recently, they almost always grow up privileged. African-American mothers are famously indulgent. African-American fathers are often absent. And they currently have systematic privilege, and complain the louder for it.

This includes Canadian “First Nations.” Contrary to the myth, they have always been given every consideration by the government and the wider culture, as advised by the best experts of the day. As a result, they remain mired in poverty and a sense of grievance. Again, fathers are often absent; and mothers are indulgent. 

The current popular push for “self-esteem” is increasingly making a disastrous mistake. Our growing lack of interest in child-rearing is making a disastrous mistake.  A civilization-ending mistake, unless we correct it at this late date.

Report from the Trenches

 

Over just the past two weeks in my small city, someone has thrown a rock through one of the stained glass windows of the Catholic cathedral. Someone showed up at the choir recital, pulled out a knife, and started anointing the floor with alcohol. I wonder if his intent was to start a fire; the police were able to restrain him. A local café, run as a Christian charity, hosted a private meeting of Right to Life. Word got out; there was a protest and a call for boycott. They have now banned Right to Life from the premises. I now learn that all expressions of religion have been banned from the local Culturefest festival.

It has become alarming. Yet on the other hand, many seem to be turning to the Catholic church. There have been many recent high-profile conversions. There are record adult baptisms, I hear, in England and France. Some US dioceses are reporting a 50% growth in converts year over year. Generation Z, particularly young men, are said to be flocking to mass. Our own cathedral congregation seems to be growing each week.

On YouTube, I keep hearing about many conversions in places like Iran, China, Japan, and throughout Africa.

We seem to be at a moment of clarity. People are choosing sides. 

Narcissism Is Not Depression

 

Psychiatry generally—and a friend of mine—tend to classify narcissistic traits as “compensation” for low self-esteem, and so classify them as “depressed.” And the preferred therapy is to flatter them and boost their ego.

Einstein is supposed to have said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting to get different results. This is the same delusion: expecting the same thing to get opposite results.

Someone with low self-esteem is ashamed of their self. They think they are not up to par. The last thing they will want to do is to draw attention; people will see their inadequacy. These are the wallflowers; the ones who will not readily talk about themselves. They will indeed compensate for their low self-esteem, but they will compensate by working hard at whatever they are asked to do, to prove themselves. They will be scrupulously moral, and always want the structure of rules. Rules will reassure them they are doing all right.

Conversely, someone who wants to draw attention to themself is suffering from too much self-esteem, not too little self-esteem. They are proud of themselves. They are suffering from low “other-esteem,” in two senses. That is, in their perception, others are not giving them the admiration they deserve. And they never thought much of others in comparison to themselves. So they are annoyed with the world around them, which had better learn to shape up. The world is not measuring up to their standards.

They will dislike moral standards and rules. They might, after all, be used against them.

You will hear much complaining from those with high self-esteem. You will hear much less from those with low self-esteem. They will not want to show their head above the parapets, for fear of being shot at.

Someone with low self esteem, feeling disappointed, will blame themselves and want to harm or kill themselves. Someone with high self-esteem, feeling disappointed, will want to harm or kill everyone else.

Most narcissists will not go that far, but watch out. They naturally want to destroy anything around them that is good or true or beautiful, that they cannot claim as their own.

And this is where the school shooters and assassins come from.

Indian Land Claims Are Illegitimate

 

Lord Biggar writes in the National Post, seeking to justify the European conquest of Australia and the Americas, displacing the aboriginal people. He argues that the First Nations did not own the land: “Rules or laws, supported by social authority and the threat of punishment, create rights to own things —rights to property.” So the native people had no rights. Too bad.

This is wrong. Rights are not created by government. They are self-evident and inalienable, given by God. Our essential human dignity gives us rights. We are not animals; we are not things. We are in the image of God. Governments are merely formed to protect these rights.

The three principal human rights, according to Locke, are “life, liberty, and property.” 

“Property” has always been a little controversial; Jefferson regrettably changed it to “pursuit of happiness.” 

After all, how can anyone have an inherent and inalienable right to ownership of property? Property is so obviously separate from the person.

Simple, according to Locke: you own what you make. You own the products of your own labour, intellectual or physical.

However, because they had no functioning government, the aboriginal people in Canada or Australia could not protect their rights, although they had them as a moral imperative. They were regularly killing, enslaving, and stealing from each other. 

This is why they were so culturally backward—let’s be honest—they had not even invented the wheel. They were still in the Stone Age. 

There is no point in putting out any effort to make or invent anything if someone else can just take it. Nor is there time for such things if you must always be watching for  sudden attack.

So the best thing that could have happened to aboriginals was the coming of the Europeans. It is simply racism to say it mattered that Europeans brought law and order to the Americas instead of Indians themselves. 

Now, in doing this, did the Europeans steal the Indians’ land? No.

Firstly, Biggar is wrong to suggest that contact between Canadian First Nations and Europeans was mostly “friction, conflict, defeat and conquest.” You might say that about parts of the USA, but not Canada. In most places, local tribes welcomed the Europeans. Trading made the Indians rich and powerful against their enemies, and the Europeans generally protected them from their enemies as well—defended their rights. 

Before the Europeans came, the stone-age Khoi people of South Africa (the Bushmen) would go to the nearest Bantu tribe to resolve their disputes—because they had no legal system of their own. The alternative was endless vendetta. The Europeans did that for the warring tribes of Canada. When the Canadian government proposed permanent treaties, native groups flocked to petition in hopes of getting one. It was a matter of signing on to the social contract and getting the protection of the law. It was not about land. Treaties were signed with tribes newly arrived from the US, who had no conceivable land claims.

That said, throughout most of Canada, the treaties did have the Indians surrendering any theoretical property rights, including mineral rights. In this sense, too, the land was not stolen or conquered: it was sold, in exchange for something the Indians found more valuable: life, liberty, and the secure possession of property.

And even then, the Indians had not actually given up a square inch of land. They retained the same right as any European settler to take up land under the new system and farm it. As Canadians, they still owned it.

Now recall the basic principle: the right to property is a right to what you have made. The Indians had not made the land; they only hunted over it. They had a right to the game they killed, or the berries they picked, but not to the land itself. God made that. Any more than anyone can own the air or the sea: it is there for all mankind to use. 

One establishes land ownership when one’s labour is somehow invested in it and cannot be easily separated from it: if, for example, you have built a structure on it, or cleared, ploughed, fertilized, and planted a field, or dug a mine. This is the basis for squatters’ rights in common law. If the supposed owner is not using the land, and you start using it, it properly becomes yours.

So as hunter-gatherers, the First Nations by and large owned no land until the Europeans came.

Didn’t the coming of the European settlers at least force the Indians to change their way of life? Isn’t there an injustice in that, at least?

No; not in Canada. Even today, 89% of Canada is Crown Land. The Indians are still free to hunt and scavenge through it as they always have. It’s just that they now have better opportunities.

But I end with the same conclusion as Lord Biggar: to give this or that band eternal payments, and then royalties because resources are being extracted in the general vicinity of their reservation, is unjustifiable. It violates the principle of human equality, of equal rights.

Why I Love War (Sic)

 

Apparently I’m a neo-con. I’m a war pig. I’m a tool of the military-industrial complex. For I fully support Donald Trump’s bombing of Iran’s embedded nuclear facilities. 

This, I am told, threatens the MAGA coalition. Prominent voices on the right like Tucker Carlson and Candice Owens are in open revolt.

To me the principle is simple. In the words of Edmund Burke, “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Or, in the worlds of the Bible, we are our brother’s keepers. Consider the Kitty Genovese thought experiment. If I see a woman being raped in an alley, or hear her screaming rape in the stairwell, I have the moral duty to intervene. I can’t just walk by or keep the door shut and say “Not my business.”

So too among nations. Pacifism is grossly immoral, and leads to more war. If aggressors expect to meet  swift and harsh consequences, they will not attempt anything.

This is why we have police departments, and why we call them “peace officers.”

By bombing Iran now, Trump makes a truly apocalyptic future war less likely. He is preventing Iran from making nuclear weapons. And he is making others too think twice about disturbing the peace. With no loss of American lives, at this point, and for all we know, no loss of Iranian lives either. 

I can understand why Americans are weary of what they call “forever wars.” To be fair, I also supported Bush going into Iraq and Afghanistan. Now widely considered mistakes.

I still don’t think they were. In fact, the taking of Baghdad and Kabul were quick and almost bloodless.  The mistake was not going in; it was staying. It was the delusional, neo-colonial thought that America could “nation build,” impose democracy on any random country. This is a contradiction in terms: you cannot force someone to be free, or dictate democracy. 

America should have done as I advised at the time: go in, take out Saddam or the Taliban, hand the palace keys to someone else, and leave. 

They should do the same in Iran. I hope Trump is smart enough not to repeat the mistake. Destabilize the Iranian regime to the point where the Iranian people can, if they have sufficient will, take matters into their own hands. Then leave it to them.

Why Canada Must Break Up

 

Nobody speaks of where this current eruption of Western separatism in Canada is coming from. Yes, Alberta has long been dissatisfied, but not to this degree. And now you are hearing Saskatchewan and Manitoba and the BC interior joining in; Saskatchewan as loudly. What has changed? Nobody seems to get it, or say it.

I say this was entirely predictable—because I predicted it. I warned my local Ontario MP of this in 2022. 

It springs inevitably from the attitude towards the Freedom Convoy by the federal government, the Ontario government, and the Ottawa municipal government in February 2022.

The West was willing to hold their tongues so long as it looked as though the Conservatives were going to come into power. Then their voices might be listened to.

 But the East remained indifferent to their concerns. In fact, they seem to show deliberate contempt. “Who do these peons think they are?”

Nor has the East’s attitude softened in the slightest since, in the face of rising calls in the West for independence

The main parallel I drew for my MP was the hanging of Louis Riel by the Macdonald government in 1885. They could and should have extended clemency, as they had for Mackenzie or Papineau in the East. Before that time, Quebec was the main base of support for the Conservative Party. After that, Quebec flipped, and Laurier soon came to power. Ever since, the Conservatives have struggled to garner support in Quebec, and the Liberals have become the “natural governing party.” Western alienation may have also gotten a boost.

I was hoping to appeal to his sense of political self-preservation, as a Liberal. It was a warning he at first seemed to take seriously, but then backed away from in his public statements. Too risky to go against the party policy.

Another parallel I drew was to the British treatment of the Easter Uprising in Ireland, 1916. During the actual uprising, the Irish people were solidly against it. But when the British shot all the leaders as traitors, Irish independence became inevitable. For they had treated the Irish with contempt.

So too with the government’s treatment of the Freedom Convoy. The convoy began in the West; first reports came from BC. Although other truckers from the East joined later, most of the prominent organizers were Westerners: Chris Barber from Saskatchewan, Tamara Lich and James Bauder from Alberta.

And when they arrived in Ottawa, all the Eastern authorities insisted on the term “occupation.” That alone said everything.  “Occupation”: Merriam-Webster: “the holding and control of an area by a foreign military force.” Oxford Learner’s Dictionary: “the act of moving into a country, town, etc. and taking control of it using military force; the period of time during which a country, town, etc. is controlled in this way.” 

They did not consider Westerners fellow citizens. They were foreigners, under foreign control. They were automatically a hostile force who had no right to be in the capital of Canada.

How would you expect the West to react? In effect, it was the East who declared their independence. By refusing to meet with the protesters, refusing to accept their petition, and responding with extreme force, the Eastern establishment made it clear that they looked on the West as a foreign colony they had reason to fear. And which had no rights.

For the West not to declare independence, under the circumstances, would be shameful.

I say all this as an Easterner. I have lived in the West for perhaps three years, but I was born in Ontario, raised in Ontario and Quebec, and live in New Brunswick. I do not want Canada to break up, but the East must change, and they/we seem too arrogant to do so. I tremble for my country when I consider God is just.

The Intolerance of Relativism

 

Last year, our local multiculturalism festival ran into some trouble: some Arabs were giving some grief to the Jewish booth over the Israel-Gaza strife. 

I do not know the details. All I know is that the organizers this year, to solve the problem, have banned any expressions of religion.

An example of the general prejudice that religion causes discord. As if the Gaza situation was about religion. 

The PLO was formed as a Marxist organization; it had nothing to do with religion. To its left, the PFLP, was run by George Habash, nominally a Christian. Only in more recent years, religion has been tagged on as a further premise for the hostilities; they would have continued regardless. It is about ethnicities, not religions. It is worth noting that the most devout Jews in Israel refuse to fight; and the more Muslim states, the Gulf states, have remained aloof from the Gazans.

Except for Iran. Hamas is funded by Iran. But Iran is Shia Muslim, while Gazan Muslims are Sunni. Not the same guys; like Catholics and Protestants. Iran is not supporting them on religious grounds.

So why did the organizers jump to the weird step of banning crosses and crucifixes; instead of banning Israeli or Palestinian flags?

Because of the wider prejudice, or deliberate lie, that relativism is tolerant, while any claim of absolute truth—any religious claim—is oppressive to others. 

And this used everywhere to justify the suppression of religion.

Yet the opposite is demonstrable from history. The most prominent relativist regimes in Western history were the Nazis and Fascists. They were, definitively, cultural relativists: nothing was above the folk and the state, and conventional morality was expressly rejected. Mussolini declared in so many words, “Fascism is relativism.” 

We see where that led. It was not tolerance.

Marxism is also relativist, and rejects moral codes. In a sense, it is culturally relativist, although it would use the term “ideology” instead of “culture.” What is supposedly truth is entirely conditioned by the current system of material production.

And again, the result was grave intolerance: the Holodomor in the Soviet Union, Mao’s Great Leap Forward, North Korea’s hermit state, the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge.

For a fair comparison, What states can we cite as absolutist: as officially claiming to know and commit to some absolute truth? That is, nations which declare a state religion. The most obvious example is the United Kingdom; we could also cite Norway and Denmark. Not famous for their intolerance, surely. Also on the list would be modern Greece, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar. Not bad places to live unmolested for your beliefs. 

Granted, not all absolutist regimes are so nice. Iran is also officially absolutist; Saudi Arabia; Pakistan; Sudan; Myanmar. I can personally vouch that Saudi Arabia is really rather a pleasant place to live; and chaos may be the real problem in Pakistan. But still …

And not all relativist states are guilty of mass murder: we could cite the present Chinese government, or that of Vietnam, as not being all bad. 

But at least, we can say that officially absolutist states are among the most tolerant, while officially relativist states are among the most intolerant.

Let’ consider some history.

Under an absolutist mandate, expressly claiming that their official mandate was to lead the Muslim world, the Ottoman Empire was a relatively pleasant place for its many religious minorities to live. This changed when the Young Turks came to power, making the ruling principle Turkish language, culture, and identity instead—cultural relativism. The Armenian genocide soon followed, then the Greek genocide and mass expulsion. And this changed when, in the rest of the Middle East, Islam as a unifying principle was replaced by Arab nationalism—culture instead of religion. 

Then we started to get wars in the Middle East and terrorist attacks. If the official justification was sometimes religious, those who committed the attacks were curiously not known to their intimates to be religious at all. They were generally Westernized and secularist. They were fighting for their culture, of which religion happened to be one component. They were “cultural Muslims” as we talk about “cultural Christians” or “cultural Jews.”

Calling them “Muslim extremists” has always been an egregious lie.

And so it goes: relativism leads to intolerance, and religious commitment leads to growing tolerance.

The reason is fairly obvious if you think about it. If you believe in unalterable ultimate reality, what could cause conflict? Nobody can harm it simply by not believing it; that is their misfortune. If someone does not believe in gravity, I’m not going to fight him over it. Good luck!

If, on the other hand, you believe there is no fixed reality, you have every incentive to impose on others a “narrative” that is favourable to you. The stakes could not be higher: all or nothing.  The only thing left is, in Hitler’s phrase, the triumph of the will. You will or theirs. Conflict is certain, down to the last man or woman or non-binary whatever standing.

And that is where we have been rushing headlong.

Lies My Teachers Told Me

The falsification of the past, Orwell’s memory hole, is everywhere in history classes. Palestinian children ae apparently taught that  Palestine was until recently always Muslim. Palestinian Christian children, whose ancestors were there long before Islam, are taught they come from Europe. And Canadian children are taught they burned down the White House. 

But not just in history classes. He who controls the past controls the future. And he who controls the present controls the past… And those in power seem never able to resist the temptation to control. They are in power largely because they crave power.

Philosophy classes neglect everything between the ancient Greeks and the Renaissance, not to mention the world beyond Europe. I had to full in thousand-year gaps on my own.

And I went all the way through grad school assuming that poets always burned out in youth. What actually happens is that poets, as they mature, like most of us of healthy interests, turn from sex and politics to religion. Eliot, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Auden, Donne, Blake … their best work is often suppressed in the modern academy, as if an embarrassment.

Also suppressed is the fact that most prominent scientists over the long run of history were religious. Copernicus who discovered heliocentrism, LeMaitre who discovered the Big Bang, Mendel who discovered genetics, Isaac Newton, Wallace, co-discoverer of evolution … actually pretty much all of them, up to perhaps the middle of the 19th century. The fact that be basic premise of science, that the material world is intelligible and follows laws, is religious, is also suppressed.

In history, the schools slander and misrepresent the Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch-burnings, the “Dark” and Middle Ages, the “patriarchy.” They invent out of nothing an age of innocence and sexual equality before the coming of the book. By emphasizing the exceptions, they give the false impression that religion over history has fostered rather than prevented conflict.

In Canadian history, they systematically misrepresent the relations between the “settler” population and the indigenous people as one of conflict. They misrepresent the intent of the early Christian missionaries; and, strikingly, the nature and intent of the residential schools.

The broad general conclusion that can be taken from all these examples is that the powers that be in our system are systematically trying to suppress and discredit Catholicism in particular; Christianity more broadly; and religion in general.

This is what comes from the secularization of the education system. Secularization is not neutral. It is necessarily anti-religious.

The solution is a return to denominational schools and denominational universities, as used to be the standard world-wide. Each may have its biases; but at least, in the wider society, they should cancel each other out.

Nobody Is Saying It, But ...

The current Israeli attack on Irian is showing spectacular penetration by agents of Mossad. They have been able to precisely target important military figures for assassination, for example. They are firing drones from places inside Iran.

Nobody is saying it, but it should be obvious that these “Mossad agents” are not Israeli Jews.

They have to be Iranians—and they are not doing this out of love for Israel. Israel has made a deal with the Iranian opposition. Their intent and end game is not going to be simply to get Iran to stop building nuclear weapons. The deal will involve an attempt to overthrow the Iranian regime. And no doubt the Iranian opposition has, with the help of Mossad, prepared the necessary next steps.

This is always the great weakness of an authoritarian regime. That Ayatollah fella is going down.

The name of the Israeli operation, "Rising Lion" actually already said so. The lion is the symbol of the Iranian monarchy. 

Carney the Dime Store Pychiatrist

 

Canadian PM Mark Carney has decided, it seems, that the way to handle Donald Trump is to praise him lavishly in public.

This is presumably based on the sophomoric assumption that Trump is a narcissist. Narcissists are notoriously susceptible to flattery.

Trump is not. Both Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott tried this in the VP stakes. Not only did they not get picked— but a few brief weeks for Ramaswamy, neither even made it into the administration.

Trump is just as immune from flattery as he is from insult. Showing, if it were not already obvious, that he is not a narcissist.

The last thing a narcissist would do is surround himself with subordinates who might steal the limelight. Instead, Trump picked a strong cabinet including charismatic people with their own followings: RFK Jr., Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rudio, Christie Noem, Tom Homan, Kash Patel. He is happy to give VP Vance prominence and camera time, for example in the public negotiations with Zelensky.

Narcissists are never creative thinkers; they fear the spontaneity that creativity requires. It means a loss of control. Trump is creative in government, full of new policy ideas, and able to speak for hours entertainingly without notes.

Narcissists also lack stamina. As soon as something seems hard, and they get a whiff of failure, they will quit. Trump is just the reverse of that, seemingly not even slowed down by political attacks, personal insults, legal attacks, deplatforming, attempted assassination, and electoral defeat.

Trump is the anti-narcissist. He seems to have absolutely no ego.

And Carney is showing himself to be painfully stupid.

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

Things that seem epochal seem to be happening all at once, as I type, as though we are witnessing the hand of Providence. I may be speaking too soon, but rumours are growing of an economic collapse and a change in power in China. And to a more “pro-Western” regime.

What seems especially uncanny, and implausible, are reports of a sudden demographic collapse, of empty villages in the countryside, and of strangely empty streets in major cities. How can millions of people just disappear suddenly?

Possibly much work and purchasing has gone online, as it has, after all, in North America. Possibly an economic collapse means people do not have money to go out and spend, or work to get to. Possibly the government is harassing those who venture out, fearing any concentration of people might become an anti-government demonstration or a riot.

But counter to this last hypothesis, reports are that the extensive Chinese network of security cameras has been cut off. Surely not what they want to do if they fear unrest. A power shortage?

Whatever the case, it seems that something big is happening in China. And any thing big happening in China is big for the whole world.

Meantime, there is the apocalypse in Iran. Israel is suddenly, in lightning strikes,  wiping out much of Iran’s military capabilities and creating chaos in the regime. Rumours are that many top leaders have flown out to Russia or Pakistan. 

If true, this is what happens when a regime is about to collapse. The Iranian regime has for many years not had any popular support. The military was vital to hold the people down through fear. Now the military is in disarray, and shown to be weak. Iranians  may seize the opportunity to rise up. Iranian friends in Canada are cheering on the Israeli attacks. There is an organized opposition abroad; as there was when the Shah fell. Then, they successfully flew in to take charge and restore order. It may happen again now. Losing a war or some reckless military adventure is a common trigger for autocratic governments to fall. 

That’s two of the three strongest anti-Western regimes.

And then there is the third leg of the triple alliance, Russia.

Russia and Putin have also just gotten a big shock, with the Ukrainian drone attacks deep into Russia. It was actually eerily similar to the Israeli attack on Iran, happening almost simultaneously, as though the same mastermind was behind both. If not God, perhaps the USA? 

It took out a significant part of Russia’s strategic abilities; and it brought the war to the common people back in Moscow. Not good for popular support, I imagine. 

Online commentators also say Russia, having now lost a million casualties, is finding it hard to replace lost manpower. They may be losing this war of attrition.

At first glance, this looks improbable. Surely Ukraine has a greater manpower problem, with a much smaller population. They’ve been fighting just as long. And a greater materiel problem: their economy is smaller, and their factories have been under attack far longer.

But the argument goes that, in order to gain ground, the Russians have been using human wave attacks, in a war which heavily favours the defense. The Ukrainians, by staying mostly on the defensive, have been able to take advantage of this. Perhaps the optics were bad, but it was the smart move. Let the other side run straight into the machine guns. 

As for materiel, Ukraine still has all of the EU, and beyond, to draw on.

Rumours online are that all this recent attack puts Putin on shaky ground; a palace coup seems possible. As with Iran, a failed military adventure is the most common trigger for the fall of an autocratic regime. 

Of course, this has all been said before, the imminent fall of Putin has been widely predicted, ever since the initial Russian invasion, supposed to take three days, was repulsed. He has shown great resilience. But even a cat has only nine lives. This recent mass drone attack, and the detonation under the Crimean bridge, does look like a possible tipping point. Like the Tet offensive was for the US in Vietnam—the frustration and sense of failure is that much greater once having started to feel victory was at last within view. It must be psychologically devastating.

With Israel’s attack on Iran, Putin has probably lost his main source of drones with which to respond to Ukraine. There are suddenly leaks that Russia and China no longer see one another as allies—consistent with the rumours that China is about to turn pro-Western. It makes sense; China has unresolved historical grievances and border disputes with Russia, and not with the USA or the West. 

So Putin too might soon and suddenly fall.

If any one of these three regimes goes, the other two are more vulnerable. We’re talking dominoes. And China, the biggest and most important of the three, seems to be a pretty sure thing.

What will the world look like if all three dominoes are down?

Hugely enhanced prestige for the US and the West. 

Surely lesser regimes like Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea, who have been anti-Western, will also fall or convert. Partly for lost financial backing; partly for lost prestige; partly from spreading revolutionary fervour. 

More importantly, the anti-Western elites within the West will be relatively discredited: the multicult groups running Canada, France, the UK, Germany, Australia, and the EU broadly. Already in process, their fall may be turbocharged. The superiority of the Western way will have been emphatically illustrated.

Hugely enhanced prestige for Donald Trump. FWIW. Cue AI to carve a niche on Mount Rushmore. Maybe with an assist from Musk’s Boring Company.

This may be bad for peace in the Middle East. Hostility towards and fear of Iran has tended to drive Gulf States into cooperation with Israel and the US; this incentive will now be gone. 

However, a number of terrorist groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, will have lost their funding. The current forever wars will cease. Certainly, this should end the conflict in Gaza. Without this hot conflict between Israel and fellow Arabs, the other Arab states may feel better able to sign on to the Abraham Accords.

I see a day peace will come to the Middle East. It once seemed impossible for peace to come to Ireland, too. Then it did. 

With Putin gone, Russian matters are unpredictable. But on balance, it would seem that, with the relative loss of strategic capabilities, a more bellicose leadership would have nowhere to go from here—just carrying on just the same. So if you see a problem, why reinforce failure? The obvious possible change is to try for peace. Even to end Russia’s dreams of standing apart from and against the West. That gives you a chance to declare a kind of victory. After all, culturally, Russia is Europe. Division is artificial. Pure self-interest suggests integration. It is only a childish national pride that makes Russia want to fight and seek empire.

One happy consequence of the end of the regimes in Iran and China could be a revival of Christianity. The CCP has discredited atheism in China; the Ayatollahs have discredited Islamism in Iran. Rumours are of a large number of Christian conversions as it is; although such conversions are more or less illegal in both states. With the lid off, this may grow; this may blow. And the vitality of Christianity in these influential nations, in turn, may also hasten revival in the older Christian lands; a revival that already seems to be starting. When the Iron Curtain fell, Pope John Paul II and Polish Christianity brought a new enthusiasm to Catholicism.

And Christianity is the backbone and foundation of Western culture. Is a Renaissance about to begin?

Amazing Grace

 

A sentence catches my eye from Margaret Visser’s book The Geometry of Love. She is speaking of the unicursal labyrinths that grace Medieval churches; the kind that have no wrong turns, and only require patience to walk through. “The road symbolizes a human life with all its difficulties and failures, and the common feeling of being lost; the message is that mental agility is not the most important gift for the spiritual life.”

I believe being lost is indeed a common feeling. It is the true essence of what psychiatrists call “depression.” Not sorrow, not anxiety, but a sense of not knowing which way to turn, how to proceed. This is the worst of all feelings.

And I think this is an important message: “mental agility is not the most important gift for the spiritual life.” That is, for life itself. 

I long ago noticed, in my studies of legends and fairy tales, that this message is conveyed not only by unicursal labyrinths. Whenever a tale does involve a maze or labyrinth of the kind with wrong turns and dead ends, the hero does not escape by their own cleverness. Theseus escapes the Minoan labyrinth not through his own quick wit, as Oedipus escapes the Sphinx, but rather anticlimactically because Ariadne gives him a cheat sheet: the thread, and advice to always take the left (or was it right?) turn. In the Grimm tale, Hansel cleverly lays a path of white stones when his parents seem to abandon him and his sister in the forest. But his parents discover the trick, and try again, after preventing him from collecting stones a second time. So, still ingenious, he resorts to dropping breadcrumbs. And this does not work—the birds eat the breadcrumbs, and he and Gretel are truly lost. Having worked it all out brilliantly, it is still of no use. In the end, it is Gretel, not Hansel, who saves the day. 

And so forth, for every example I can find.

There is a consistent message being whispered in our ear. Ultimately, for our direction and our salvation, we must not rely on our own cleverness. We cannot pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. It must be faith, and love.

It must be so: some people are much smarter than others. Yet God made us all, and made us as we are. A good God would not give advantage to the most intelligent, and condemn others simply for stupidity.

As Aquinas said, all his subtle philosophy was, in the end, a sideshow. If we rely on our own intelligence, we are doomed.

The answers are written in our heart.