Culture Matters

A Haitian street scene

A while ago, I mentioned to a leftist friend that a big reason I chose to settle in New Brunswick was for the presence of French culture, which I loved growing up in Montreal, and sorely missed.

And his response was, “yes, cultural diversity is good.”

Wait—that’s not what I said. He was tacitly insisting that one culture, even subjectively, even in terms of personal preference, cannot be better than another. 

This is about as sensible as saying that all forms of transportation are equally good, or all governments or forms of government are equally good. A culture is a set of tools for a good life. One tool can always be better than another.

Surely no one has the right to deny the magnificent accomplishments of Greek culture, for example—a nation of only 10 million today. Any honest man must see the magnificent accomplishments of Jewish culture—only about 15 million today. 

RFK Jr. recently noted, in a speech, that the Muslim world has contributed almost nothing to world culture for the past several centuries, despite amounting to about 2 billion people. No Nobel prizes, no new inventions, no great literature, and no stable government. Something is wrong; this is a failing culture.

In a recent news report, El Salvador is sending troops into Haiti, to recover four of their soldiers kidnapped by a local gang. Haiti is always in chaos. This is a failed culture.

I have lived in a number of places around the world, and travelled to others. I certainly did not find life in all of these places equally comfortable, safe, or pleasant. I miss Korean culture mightily. I do not miss the culture of Qatar or Saudi Arabia. Other than money and consumer goods, there was so little there. When Geoguessr drops me somewhere in Europe, I am charmed. When Geoguessr drops me somewhere in Africa, or Indonesia, I am struck by the ugliness and disorder of the place.

Some cultures are actually harmful to mankind, and ought to be eradicated. One might cite Nazi Germany. Or, in Biblical times, Sodom, Gomorrah, or Canaan. Some proposed tools prove too dangerous. We no longer use asbestos as insulation, either. Or fly airships filled with hydrogen.

Of course, different cultures have specialties too—better in one sphere, worse in another. The French are unmatched for their visual sense, except perhaps by the Russians. The English are best at managerial systems and record-keeping. The Italians are best at cuisine. This is the great benefit derived by immigrant cultures like the USA, Canada, Australia, or Singapore. We can pick the best features from each, to form a new culture superior to all. 

Unfortunately, this advantage is being destroyed by the leftist doctrine of DEA, multiculturalism, and cultural equality. Germans or Scots may have a strong tradition in engineering; but we must not hire Germans or Scots, they are overrepresented. Instead, we must hire some sub-Saharan African. This is a fine way to destroy a culture.

The counter-argument given at this point by the left is that these failed or less successful cultures are in the state of poverty and chaos they endure because of colonialism; because they were exploited and possibly infantilized by the Europeans.

That will not wash. In any place you might name, the Europeans left generations ago. Somalia became independent in 1960. Haiti became independent in 1804. They have been in chaos ever since. Compare Spain: Columbus discovered the Americas the very year Spain managed to fully decolonize from the Moors. Within a generation, they were the world’s greatest power. The Dutch Republic achieved independence from Spain in 1648; they had already started to develop an East Indian empire in 1604. The Irish keep winning Nobel Prizes for literature—despite centuries of suppression of Irish culture and economic exploitation under Britain. They only achieved independence in 1921. Germany has risen from ashes since 1945, and twice since 1918. Korean culture was systematically suppressed by Japan until 1945—look where they are now. And the Jews—they emerged from genocide only in 1945 to re-establish their present prominence. 

The original premise of world colonization by Europe was actually that they were there to introduce peace, order, human rights, and a better way to less accomplished lands. To build railroads and canals and civil government. 

The results in many lands once they pulled out seem to validate this assumption. One can see the decline of Zimbabwe since majority rule; one can see the fall of South Africa. One can see the political chaos and repression in the Muslim world.

And perhaps the most obviously failed cultures of all are those currently glorified as “indigenous” or “aboriginal.” Cultures that never emerged from the stone age, never invented the wheel or writing, and were at near-constant war. Not smart or kind to want to preserve them.

Alberta Should Separate

 

No consent!

Were I an Albertan, I would definitely vote for separation. If they do vote for it I will move to Alberta in hopes of getting citizenship.

The rest of Canada has this contemptible attitude: they think of Alberta as a colony, and a colony of inferiors. Meanwhile, Alberta’s oil wealth is subsidizing the rest of the country through federally mandated “transfer payments.” And at the same time, the feds are even doing what they can to hobble the Alberta energy sector, the very hand that feeds them. It is as if the prime objective is to show contempt towards Alberta. Uppity peasants.

But woe unto the rest of Canada if Alberta does pull out. We will be much worse off without its oil and the money and leverage with the US it brings. I would expect Saskatchewan and Quebec to follow—Saskatchewan because it faces the same issues, and Quebec because it stays in largely for access to Alberta money. With these three gone, it is hard to see an isolated BC or isolated Atlantic provinces staying around. BC needs its hinterland. Atlantic Canada needs its markets and someone to provide financial support. With Alberta gone, that would probably mean the US.

I keep hearing that polls only show 20-30% support for independence in Alberta, though. So probably not going to happen.

If it happens, I’m hoping that the USA will flex its muscle and intervene if the Canadian federal government threatens violence.

The quoted disgruntled Albertan is wrong on one point. He insists that there is no such thing as race, and the only issue is culture. We want to believe this is true, and we are obliged to say it is true or be called racist, but it is not  true. IQ testing shows there is a significant difference in IQ between Africans and Europeans, much less between Asians and Europeans. IQ testing is pretty reliable. 

It makes no sense to imagine skin colour is the only difference. Of course it isn’t. Africans, Europeans, and Asians have mostly developed in isolation from one another, under different environmental and social conditions. It just makes biological sense that, like Darwin’s finches, like  the different dog breeds, like the famous moths of Northern England industrial towns, they would have evolved different abilities and temperaments in order to succeed and breed. Race is not a social construct.

We deny this because of a fatal atheist misunderstanding of the doctrine that “All men are created equal.” This does not mean equal in their abilities or their appearance or their character. This means equal in their moral worth in the eyes of God.

The quoted Albertan is also wrong to complain that heretofore, integration has been considered “completely optional” by the Canadian government.  It has been actively discouraged, with government-funded “multiculturalism” actively suppressing any shared culture. Integration is “white supremacy,” after all. It is colonialism. And for whites mutual assimilation is “cultural appropriation.” “Multiculturalism” is actually enshrined in the Canadian constitution: “This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.” And the Canadian constitution is harder to amend than the US constitution—probably for all practical purposes impossible to amend.

Given this, the breakup of Canada, or revolution, or a US takeover, actually seem like the only viable ways to prevent a downward spiral into Third World status. As has happened, after all, often enough to other nations in the past.

The Somali Experiment

 

The revolution is proceeding apace, at least south of the border. I was shocked recently to hear Matt Walsh call for the mass deportation of Somalis. Their culture, he says, is incompatible with American values.

I cannot imagine hearing this even two years ago. This goes sharply against the leftist dogma that all cultures are equal, and cannot be criticized, since good and evil are themselves culturally relative. And it goes against the leftist dogma that culture is racially determined, so that any criticism of another culture is racist.

If Walsh’s position becomes the American mainstream, everything changes. At least, if the logic is applied consistently—which rarely actually happens. Leftist “woke” thought has always been wildly inconsistent.

To begin with, of course, this makes mass immigration look far more dubious as a policy. And this seems to be becoming the consensus across the developed world. Ther have been mass demonstrations in England and Ireland, not just the US, and the governments have at least begun giving lip service to the idea that mass immigration is a bad thing. And for reasons of cultural incompatibility.

But more than this: if culture is not genetic, and cultures are not intrinsically equal, this kills multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is just holding people back and restricting them to ghettos. Obviously, everyone should gravitate to the best elements, the best solutions, the best culture; instead of living as an exhibit in a human zoo. Which is of course the idea the U.S.A. was based on: e pluribus unum, the melting pot.  And, of course, this is what Martin Luther King and the drive for desegregation was all about. We had lost our way.

This also kills accusations that teaching “First Nations” practical skills in the residential schools was “cultural genocide.” The reality is that “First Nations” cultures were, as we actually used to call them, “primitive.” The French explorers used to say, “sans loi, sans roi, sans foi”: without laws, without government, without religion or philosophy. They were less developed, and produced a less satisfactory life. A daily struggle for survival left no time to develop things like permanent structures, wheeled vehicles, writing, settled agriculture, and the like. Without writing, with the old usually dying of exposure or abandonment at a relatively young age, with epidemics wiping out most of the population about every two generations, any innovations discovered by solitary geniuses over the millennia were unlikely to be remembered and passed on.

This also makes the European enterprise of colonialism look less sinister. The argument at the time was that the European powers were tutoring less developed societies, introducing peace and prosperity, orderly systems of government, commerce, and accounting, building schools and railroads and hospitals, and keeping the peace. Was this altogether wrong? Was it really all about pushing other people around and stealing their resources? If so, how account for the fact that European colonies usually cost the present country money, rather than making them money? How account for the fact that most former colonies took a financial hit post-independence, and many sank into conflict?

Somalia being a case in point. Independence has not worked well for the former Italian Somalia and British Somaliland.

Canadian Content

 

The people of Europe are now rising up against mass immigration, primarily because they see it overwhelming their own cultures. 

There is as yet no similar resistance in Canada, even though our immigration levels are higher. 

This is because the average Canadian is under the tragic misapprehension that he has no culture to protect.

And this is a spectacular failure of our governments and our education system. It is their job to promote distinct Canadian culture, as a matter of both national unity and of quality of life. For centuries, they have been doing the opposite, and flooding out our culture with “multiculturalism” is just the final stage. 

Justin Trudeau has publicly announced, “there is no Canadian mainstream.” Once a colony, always a colony. Canadians are conditioned to imagine that culture is always something that must be imported. We are here to hew wood and draw water.

When I was going through school, I chafed that almost everything we read in literature was written in the UK; an English major did not include a single course in Canadian literature. It felt almost subversive to be keeping tabs on Canadian literature in my free time. Now, seamlessly, the Britlit has been replaced with aboriginal literature, alienated immigrant literature, post-colonial literature from the Third World, anything but Canadian literature, on the transparently false premise that these, and not the Canadian voice, are the voices previously unheard in Canada and suppressed.

Canada actually has an impressive and productive artistic culture, and everyone knows it except Canadians. When Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for literature, the reaction from the average Canadian was probably, “Who is Alice Munro?”

This is criminal malpractice by our governments and our educational systems. It is as though they have deliberately set out to destroy Canada.

Canada has no mainstream? 

We have Anne of Green Gables, which is as fine a piece of writing as has ever been done anywhere. It is the founding document for a proud Canadian tradition of children’s literature and children’s culture. This needs to be celebrated, as Denmark celebrates Hans Christian Andersen. 

We have Robert W. Service, who is the most successful poet in the English language. We are especially powerful in poetry, with Leonard Cohen, Margaret Atwood, Irving Layton, Al Purdy. Related to this, we have a special strength in lyrical songwriting, which made Canadians especially prominent in the 60s folk revival: Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Ian Tyson, Stan Rogers, Stompin’ Tom Connors, Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Robbie Robertson. We were and are the best.

We have a rich and beautiful tradition of humour, and of the sympathetic portrayal of small town life. We have Stephen Leacock, especially Sunshine Sketches. We have Thomas Chandler Haliburton. And that tradition stretches on through W.O. Mitchell, Wayne and Schuster, to Norm MacDonald, Corner Gas, and Schitt’s Creek. 

We have great visual art. Everybody knows about Krieghoff, the Group of Seven and Emily Carr; maybe Paul Kane. But they are not the best. They seem more like tokens, cliches: “look, they painted Canadian landscapes.” Big deal. Tom Thompson was the man. And we should be celebrating William Kurelek, Douglas Coupland, and Alex Colville; painters who painted Canadians and Canadian life, not just postcards of the place. And when we speak of Canadian art, we must cite Yousef Karsh, the greatest portrait photographer ever. And we have great architects: Safdie, Gehry, Erickson, I guess I must also mention Cardinal, although I find his work appalling.

We are great at design; the Canadian flag is the best in the world, and that reflects a wider tradition of Canadian heraldry. In Sofia, Bulgaria, I was shown with immense pride a block of buildings they believed was the pinnacle of architectural style. These were buildings that would not have stood out in Montreal or Quebec City.

And, yeah, there’s hockey, a Canadian sport that has become a world sport. There are not many countries that have that level of cultural prestige, that their pastimes become international. As well as hockey, we have given the world the canoe, the kayak, the snow shoe. 

And we have great culinary traditions: poutine, of course; it really is available now all over the world. Our tradition of cheddar cheese used to be the world’s best, not to mention Oka and other regional cheeses, until it was destroyed by the government’s cartel system, which shut it out from world markets. We developed the McIntosh apple. We developed the Montreal bagel and Montreal smoked meat. We decided to put pineapple on pizza, but anyone is entitled to at least one mistake. Canadian rye whisky is world-renowned. We gave the world maple syrup!

And all this despite our government and our schools working against us. Despite the mobs tearing down our statues and our monuments and denigrating our founders. It is worth preserving. It is worth rising up for.

This is not to say we should be against immigrants. Many of the greatest aspects of Canadian culture have been produced by first or second-generation immigrants. The best culture comes from the mix of cultures. But it must be a melting pot; the idea must be that we are making something new and distinctly Canadian here, and we are all in this together.

Multiculturalism is colonialism. Multiculturalism is the enemy.

Diversity Is Our Strength

 

“Diversity is our strength” has been a popular slogan in Canada for many years.

Is it true?

Afghanistan stands as the ultimate model of ethnic diversity. “Afghanistan's 2004 Constitution cited Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkman, Baluch, Pashaie, Nuristani, Aymaq, Arab, Qirghiz, Qizilbash, Gujur, and Brahwui ethnicities; Afghanistan has dozens of other small ethnic groups.” (CIA World Fact Book)

Another diverse nation was the old Yugoslavia, with roughly comparable populations of Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Slovenes, Albanians, Hungarians, Montenegrins and Macedonians.

Another was the old Austro-Hungarian Empire; one might also cite the Balkans generally.

Iraq is diverse: Sunni and Shia Arabs, Kurds, Yazidis, Turkmen, Assyrians, Mandaeans.

In all these examples, diversity does not seem to have been their strength. Instead, it hindered development, made these places relatively ungovernable, and led to bloodshed. Diversity was and is their weakness.

Diversity is a strength only in the context of more fundamental unity. America has been successful, because it had a powerful mainstream, and the motto was e pluribus unum. Immigrants intentionally shed their home culture by coming. Other, successfully diverse countries, like Singapore, India, or the UK, feature one overwhelmingly dominant ethnic group and culture. And even they have had their problems: Singapore was thrown out of Malaysia for being too Chinese, India underwent the holocaust of partition, and there is ongoing trouble Kalistani Sikhs and Tamil Tigers; and the UK underwent the Irish wars of separation and, as recently as the nineties, the Ulster troubles.

Unity is strength; diversity is good for choice of restaurants.

Multiculturalism, as an official policy, is suicidal.

How Electoral Democracy Really Works

 

Three-term London mayor Sadiq Khan

Conventional wisdom is that in a democracy, being a minority means being oppressed. What could be more obvious? Democracy means majority rule. And so we institute all manner of preferences and handouts for minorities. In the name of “equity.”

But this is not how an electoral democracy actually works. In order to achieve public office at any level, you need an army of committed volunteers; you have to belong to a committed, close-knit, well-organized group with a shared agenda. For generations, every mayor of Toronto was a member of the Orange Order. A Greek alderman explained how it worked to a political newbie: you need to belong to some minority to get volunteers.

Of course, this describes a political party. But it also describes a minority ethnicity. And within the political parties, the way to get the local nomination is with your army of ethnic volunteers and people who will bus in to vote for one of their own. Even if there is no nomination contest, the political party will want a candidate with some strong local ethnic ties, because they want these volunteers in the election proper.

Accordingly, members of minority ethnicities have a built-in advantage. They automatically have an army of volunteers who will support and work for them on the basis of their religion, skin colour, or cultural affiliations. The average majority Canadian does not have that. They must build it from scratch, if they can. And this is still without considering the benefits of an ethnic block vote—as Quebec, for example, has used effectively in Canadian federal politics.

In power, these special interest groups are then able to vote themselves special privileges. So we have the edifice of multiculturalism, affirmative action, special handouts based on race, and the like.

To be fair, there is as well a second factor: if some group of people has extra time on their hands, they have the time to organize and agitate for their special interests. This is why retirees have always had an outsize voice in our political life. They have the time to engage in politics.

This is also the key advantage of farmers and teachers, who also always get priority for their interests in our political life. They will insist that they work hard, and they do, but their work is seasonal. They have an off-season for organizing and agitating. 

The free time available to suburban women has always been behind feminism’s success. They will insist that women have been traditionally oppressed and overworked; the opposite is the truth. Publishers of books and magazines, TV networks and film distributors, have known for generations that the vast majority of their audience is female—only women have enough leisure time. Freidan’s essential complaint, that launched the feminist revolution, was boredom. Women have time to organize to get what they want.

And it is why homosexuals have an outsize influence. Because they do not have kids and families, gays have fewer responsibilities; and so more time to devote to political action. 

We may not be able to fix this problem of minority rule. It may not even, overall, be a bad thing; at best, it can counterbalance possible discrimination against a minority. Multiculturalism, on the other hand, certainly makes it worse.

But at the very least, we should be aware of what is going on.  The special interest groups are not being given preferential treatment because they are or were oppressed, but because they hold power. They can take what they want, and so they do.

The Peaceable Dominion

 

There are riots on Parliament Hill applauding terrorism.

One of Canada’s great advantages has always been that it is a high-trust society. It is a place where, as Michael Moore once remarked, people did not lock their doors while at home. That used to be true, and that was unheard of just across the border in the US. The old joke was that, in the streets of Toronto at 2 AM, deserted, cars still always stopped at the lights.

This was a land where the police force was a beloved national symbol. It was the land of “peace, order, and good government.” The streets of Toronto were notoriously clean: “New York run by the Swiss.”

This was much to our economic benefit; we saved money on policing, security systems, fraud protections, wastage; the wheels of commerce turned easily, well-greased, without strain. Perhaps more important, it improved our quality of life. Canada was safe and boring and secure. We could spend less time being anxious and looking behind us. We could be polite and friendly to all.

Canada was unusual; almost unique. 

Mass immigration is inevitably destroying this unique Canadian characteristic, almost the essence of Canadian culture. People coming from other countries do not share this same ethic. Almost all other countries are lower trust. In most countries, you do whatever you think you can get away with. To acculturate a new immigrant to the Canadian way takes time, and total immersion in the Canadian milieu. Bringing in too many immigrants at once makes this less likely. Official multiculturalism makes the problem worse. 

Sadly, Canadians are innocent marks in all this; not accustomed to being assaulted or conned, they have grown to be too trusting.

“Canadians are so naïve,” remarked a Korean friend of mine.

Making the nation a candy shop to anyone of ill intent.

And it is not just that other cultures are less socially responsible, less concerned with honour and neighbourliness and social solidarity. It is also that any recent immigrant, especially when the move is to a very different culture, goes a little crazy, or a lot crazy, with culture shock. They will imagine that there are no rules here. Obviously, if the women here wear short skirts, it is because they want to be raped. Or, if not so disposed, they will decide that all the people here are evil. Either way, they will conclude that they can do whatever they want, rather than adjusting to the way things are done here. Multiculturalism again making this much worse. And, in the back of their mind, they can remember, if it doesn’t work out, they can slip away home. So why not live out their fantasies?

Our leaders seem ignorant of these issues; or else they do not care. Perhaps they are deliberately destroying the country.

We need to end multiculturalism. We need to develop systematic assimilation programs. We need to suspend immigration to allow newcomers time to assimilate. And we need to lock our doors.

Rivers of Blood

 

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

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

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

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

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

This seems racist. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which we seem to be witnessing now.

From the River to the Earth's Bounds

 

The tide is turning against high immigration levels, in Canada and in the rest of the developed world. Back in 2019, I recall a PPC candidate suggesting at a local public meeting that the housing shortage could be addressed at least in part by lowering immigration levels. She faced immediate catcalls, demanding she get off the stage if she had such opinions.

Now that opinion is shared by a majority. According to Nanos Research, a year ago, 61 percent of Canadians were in favour of the current high immigration levels. But by last December, 61 percent felt they should be reduced. Such a rapid turnaround in public opinion is almost unprecedented.

Part of the general snapback against the left agenda; which is now visible, and proceeding apace.

I suspect it is more than the housing shortage. We already had a housing crisis in 2019. Instead, people are waking up to the fact that people from different cultures are not just about colourful dances and new ethnic restaurants, but that they can actually have fundamentally different basic values, which can be antithetical to Canadian values, and cause civil conflict.

I suspect the many “From the River to the Sea” protests, in Canada and elsewhere, since October 7, have played a large part in this turnaround. It has now also become permissible to point out other problems, like immigrant students improperly exploiting food banks.

It is unfortunate if the focus remains on immigration per se. Immigration itself is not the problem. The problem is multiculturalism. It is madness to bring in large groups of people from radically different cultures without an aggressive program of assimilation and equal treatment.

The Limits of Multiculturalism

 

Statue of Hanuman under construction in Mississauga

A 55-foot high statue of Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god, is going up currently in Mississauga. Candice Malcolm, of True North, is disturbed by this, but apparently cannot articulate why. She says it is wrong thar this statue is being built at the same time that statues of Sir John A. Macdonald or Queen Victoria are being pulled down or covered up. But that is a non sequitur: putting up one statue does not imply pulling down others. She knows in her gut it is wrong, but not why.

It is one of several recent incidents that actually illustrate a fatal flaw in multiculturalism. Another is a current protest in France by Muslim parents, that threatens to become violent, over showing nude Renaissance paintings in art history classes.

The problem is that Hanuman is manifestly an idol. A statue of the Buddha, or Confucius, would not be a problem; that would only be, like Sir John A., a memorial to a great man. A statue of Krishna would not be; Krishna is conceptually an avatar of the one true God. But Hanuman—a humanoid form with a monkey’s head and tail, holding a mace—he is a separate, inhuman divine being. He looks like a golden calf.

Prohibition of idolatry, shirk, is the core and central tenet of the Abrahamic religions.

“You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them.”

But, you might say, liberal principles demand freedom of worship. The Christian, Muslim or Jew must allow the Hindu to follow his own beliefs, and worship what he pleases, even in this very public manner.

Yet in Jewish, Muslim, or Christian law, this is beyond the limits of tolerance. The punishment for idolatry is death. 

“If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’ (gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone them to death…”

Polytheistic idol-worshippers, are most plainly the kafirs against whom good Muslims are to wage eternal jihad.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church writes “the duty to offer God authentic worship concerns man both as an individual and as a social being.”

If, in the Old Testament, Israel allows the worship of idols in its midst, a jealous God will visit destruction on the nation. This caused the fall of Israel to the Babylonians.

So there is a fundamental contradiction here: if one is to allow Jews, Christians, and Muslims freedom of religion and of conscience, one cannot allow Hindus full freedom of religion alongside them. 

It is all tolerable so long as they are in separate jurisdictions; but not in the same jurisdiction. Not both in the same city.

The French case of nudes in art is similar. Muslim parents are right, in Muslim terms, that showing naked women to their children is haram; it is not in Christianity. The Sistine Chapel, where popes are chosen, is adorned with naked images. Accordingly, if Christians and Muslims attend the same school, either the faith of the Muslim children must be contradicted, or the Christian children must be denied their cultural heritage.

The painting that caused the protests in France

Peace, freedom, and mutual respect may therefore require an end to mass immigration, and a renewed emphasis on assimilation to the existing culture whenever one does immigrate. If you choose to migrate to Canada, or France, you have chosen freely to live by established Judo-Christian as well as liberal-democratic principles.

Advanced Alien Cilvilizations

 

I have no insight on the recent claims of alien craft in the possession of governments. I have always thought that, because of the extreme distances, travel from another solar system was improbable. To make it possible, almost necessarily, an alien civilization would have to know how to travel not just through space, but through time. This would also explain the “impossible” maneuvers the craft are reported to make.

But if the critical factor is time travel, there is no need to assume space travel as well. These uncanny visitors could be from our own future; Occam’s Razor.

But whether or not they are alien visitors, commentators on UFOs are shockingly ready to assume the possibility of civilizations “more advanced” than ours on other planets. Shockingly, because in any other context, claiming that one civilization is more advanced than another is rank heresy. It is racism, and will come, quite possibly, in Canada, with criminal penalties. We cannot, for instance, suggest that the European culture that appeared on American shores in 1492 was more advanced than that of the natives, or that contact was likely to be a boon to them on balance. No; such an idea is “cultural genocide.”

Worse, the government scientists are reputedly trying to "reverse-engineer" the acquired crafts, to learn from them. This is blasphemy. Necessarily, as all civilizations are equally advanced, we can have nothing to learn from any aliens. This is all blatant alien supremacy.

Yet it is obvious that one civilization, or culture, can be more advanced than another. Advanced not just in this way or that, but even overall. It may, as is theorized about the UFOs, have had more time to work out the various kinks of mortal existence; less time preoccupied with mere material survival in a state of nature.

A culture or a civilization is a tool for achieving the best life. Not all tools are equal. 

Some tools are even harmful. One thinks of the need to wipe out Nazism in Germany, or the cult of the divine emperor in Japan. The ancient Israelites, Greeks, and Romans similarly saw a need to wipe out the Canaanite and Punic practice of child sacrifice. The British felt justified in wiping out the Thug cult or human sacrifice in India, and the practice of widow-burning, suttee.

An immigrant society like Canada, the US, or Singapore, can take advantage of this fact of cultures living cheek by jowl by choosing the best from each. A wise workman chooses the best tool for the job, not the one manufactured closest to his home. It is no accident that immigrant and outward-looking trading societies have been the main sources of culture and technological improvements over the centuries. 

Tragically, more recently, we have instead deliberately tried to halt the progress of civilization, with concepts like “multiculturalism,” “cultural appropriation,” “affirmative action” and “equity.” In the natural course of things it is likely that different ethnic groups will dominate in different spheres, in which their culture gives them expertise, and which their ethnic culture most values: Irish in policing, say; Dutch in luxury trades; blacks in preaching; aboriginals in the military; English in accounting; Italians in the food industry. It is cruel and artificial to try to prevent this, barring people from their dreams, and we all lose as a result.

We’ll never achieve time travel with this approach. 

So it may indeed be aliens.

Multicultism

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Al Purdy's Racism

 

In a piece he titled “Norma, Eunice, and Judy,” Al Purdy lamented, as I do, the general disrespect in Canada for Canadian culture. He regrets, in his own day, Canadian children growing up thinking they live in “a nation without culture, art, or literature.” It is, he says, “a country where the native literature is added to English Literature or American Literature like an afterthought. Where it is said to be not worth teaching.”

It is the colonial mentality. And, if anything, it is getting worse, with our own prime minister (eternal shame be upon him) claiming there is no Canadian culture, with government cultural funding going as a priority to “multiculturalism.” In other words, any culture but Canadian culture.

Purdy then tells the tale of Jim Foley, an unusually well-educated Ontario high school teacher who “realized that Canada must be the only country in the world where high school kids aren’t taught their own literature.” He began his own database of Canadian literature, confident that in a few years “Margaret Laurence, Atwood, Layton, Garner, and all the others who talk about the place we live in, their voices will be heard and taught in our schools.”

These words were spoken in 1974. It is now the butt end of 2022, and it still has not happened. Instead, the reverse. Kids now read American pop novels in school, watch Hollywood movies, and read and discuss anything written by anyone claiming to be aboriginal. Or failing that, they will be assigned a book by an immigrant with views hostile to the country and the culture. 

Precisely the attitude of a colonizer.

And Purdy and Foley would now be declared “racist” for wanting to promote Canadian literature.

The Backlash in Europe

 

A backlash against high levels of immigration is underway in Europe. Denmark now wants to send refugees from Syria back. If they cannot, they will round them up and put them in camps. Sweden wants to stop accepting refugees. Britain voted for Brexit to cut the flow of immigration, and is now sending refugees to Rwanda. Hungary has built a wall. Politicians have found it necessary to take these positions, which only a little while ago they would have condemned as “far right” and beyond the pale, due to public outcry. 

Politicians in Canada would be wise to take note. This convoy is almost surely headed our way. Those who tie themselves too tightly to the mast of multiculturalism may soon find they have no support.

The problem is not immigration as such; at least that is what the politicians say; and I believe them. We need immigration. It is the failure to integrate. This means social division and high crime rates. It turns out that diversity is not our strength. Strength is from movement towards unity, “e pluribus unum.”

And the problem is not racism or discrimination against immigrants. The problem is that some immigrants discriminate.

Compare Chinese with Japanese Canadians. There has been at least as much discrimination against Japanese immigrants as Chinese—most North Americans can’t tell the difference visually, and if they can, history gives more reason to resent the Japanese. The Chinese were never interred. However, much as I love the Chinese, Chinese do not integrate, and the Japanese do. The Chinese stick together in “Chinatowns.” Japanese intermarry and engage with the culture. There are no, or few, “Japantowns.”

When Europeans move into some other country and then stay aloof, sticking to their own neighbourhoods and not learning the language or culture, we condemn this. We see them as colonizers. 

It works the same way regardless of skin colour. Immigrants who do not integrate are colonizers. They want to change the country they come to to suit them; and this quite properly causes resentment among those already there. They have their own culture, have a right to it, and want to preserve it. Unlike the immigrants, they did not make a choice to change.

An intelligent government can predict and should distinguish among immigrant groups who will strengthen the country, and who will lead to problems. Much is predictable based on cultural characteristics. Chinese, for example, do not integrate well because Confucianism does not recognize any responsibility towards anyone with whom you do not have some formal relationship. Strangers are ghosts. Therefore foreigners are ghosts.

You can also see it from experience. Filipinos are good at integrating. Greeks make good immigrants. Koreans make good immigrants. Sikhs make good immigrants. Jews make good immigrants. Lebanese Christians make good immigrants. They are quickly contributing to the mainstream culture.

Muslims make poor immigrants, for predictable reasons. Islam is not compatible with liberal democracy, Canadian social norms, and religious pluralism. In principle, in Islam, no government is legitimate that is not Muslim, and enforcing Islam as state religion. No law is legitimate that does not conform to shariah law. 

Accordingly, any Muslim immigrant is in principle hostile to the government and alienated from the non-Muslim majority.

You may well argue that this assumption is not fair to “moderate Muslims.” But if someone is prepared to reject the moral code with which they were raised, and which they claim to follow, are they a good bet to be a moral person? Are they not also likely to be a problem, perhaps a worse problem?

I say this with great respect to Islam and to my own Muslim friends. Islam is an admirable ethical system; but it is not compatible with immigration to and assimilation to a non-Muslim nation. Muslims themselves will insist this is so: whenever numbers warrant, they will demand a separate state.

Breakfast Tacos

 

Jill Biden is facing criticism for lauding the diversity represented by the “breakfast tacos” of San Antonio.

In a way, the criticism seems unfair. She meant well. But I also understand the outrage. This is multiculturalism: it reduces ethnic minorities to a human zoo, dancing for us in colourful costumes and opening interesting restaurants. Sources of idle entertainment. Consider speaking to a group of black Americans about how much you love fried chicken and watermelon. 

I am similarly annoyed, as one of mostly Irish extraction, by St. Patrick’s Day pictures of dancing leprechauns. Ah, those Irish: stupid, but always happy. I’d rather be associated with James Joyce, Sinead O’Connor, Bishop Berkeley, Edmund Burke, Guy Carleton, W.B. Yeats, the Great Famine, and Easter 1916. And not be reduced to a cartoon.

The matter hits home just now—along with her mispronunciation, in the same speech, of “bodegas”—because it feels as though it reveals something about the Democrats. They don’t understand and don’t care about minorities. They don’t waste the time of giving them a serious thought.

Back when I was younger, it was similarly assumed that the Irish or the Italians would always vote Democrat. It was, after all, the party of Tammany Hall, of Richard Daley, of Al Smith and the Kennedys.  We used to think of the Republicans as alien and Protestant.

Now we have prominent Irishmen on the Republican right: Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity. We have prominent Italians: Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia. More prosperous then we once were, Irish and Italian Catholics no longer follow the instructions of city ward bosses. We cannot be bought as a unit.

The same is inevitably happening now with Hispanics: Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio.

The Democrats have been banking on Hispanics to ensure them a permanent majority in the near future. It is not going to happen.

On Cultural Appropriation

 

Friend Cyrus laments that Toronto lacks cultural traditions and seasonal rituals, unlike cities he knows in Europe, or like NYC “where there's so much that ‘everyone knows’ about the city, down to the level of individual city blocks, and so many experiences everyone rushes to repeat every year in its proper season.”

I know what he means about the city having so little lore. This has always bothered me about Canada in general. It is one reason I ran off to Asia. It is a big reason why I write poetry—to try to consecrate the ground and our shared life on it. It is why Canada is so notoriously dull.

Of course, Europe and Asia have had more history, and more time to accumulate cultural touchstones. But we do not do well, as he notes, in comparison to the US of A either, which is full of references by comparison. Back in Syracuse, I was in the middle of the burnt-over district. Not to mention homes of Mark Twain, Rod Serling, and L. Frank Baum.

I think it comes from having been colonized, in the true sense. We as Canadians have been conditioned to believe that anything of significance happens elsewhere. Previously in Europe, more recently in the USA, increasingly in Asia. The US, by comparison, threw off that sense of inferiority emphatically over two hundred years ago. They dumped it into Boston harbor. 

Multiculturalism is both a symptom and a cause of the disease: it assumes culture is, by its nature, foreign.

 I know what Cyrus means too about old neighbourhoods losing their character as new groups move in. He writes “Toronto lost many of its one-time customs and old neighbourhood identities through the years of immigration, population churn and transformation that followed the Second World War.” That is multiculturalism. There is almost no hint left of old Jewish Spadina and Kensington Market. There is no trace left of old Irish Cabbagetown and Corktown. I used to live at the end of King Street, almost at the point where the Battle of York was fought. There was no trace of a memorial. I had to do heavy research to figure out the spot. It is occupied by a monument to the Katyn Massacre.

In the US, it seems instead that each new wave of immigrants enriches the culture with the best of what they bring. This is the melting pot. Hot dogs and hamburgers from Germany; rock and roll from Africa; movies about Italian-American gangsters; and so on and on. But multiculturalism ghettoizes us in Canada instead, so that we ignore and do not learn from one another. Each new wave just paves over the last. Making Canada less like a home and more like a hotel.

The spring cherry blossoms in High Park are one example of a cultural tradition that has jumped the fence of prejudice and become pan-Canadian. It deserves celebration.

Cultural appropriation is the foundation of all civilization, and all culture.

Diversity R Us

 

If the political term “diversity” actually meant “diversity,” I would be the ultimate diversity hire. Like many whose ancestors have been in Canada for some time, I am diverse ethnically in my own being. Some of my genes, are Irish, some Scottish, some English, some French, some Flemish, some Mohawk. My cousins and in-laws have Indian cards.  I have no known African blood, but because of my Irish blood, most African-Americans are probably distant cousins. There is a reason so many American blacks have Irish surnames.

I am culturally as well as genetically diverse. To begin with, Canadian culture is a melting pot of elements from all over the world. I grew up in NDG, an immigrant neighbourhood in a bilingual city. I went to school with kids whose parents were from Italy, who spoke Italian at home, or from Poland, or Latin America. The kids on my block were one generation removed from Poland, Greece, Lithuania, the Ukraine. One of my best friends in high school was from India, one from Greece. My first girlfriend’s parents were from Latvia. My first wife was born and raised in Pakistan, and my second in the Philippines.

I do not think this is so unusual for a Canadian. 

As an adult, I have also lived in Asia for almost thirty years, in China, Korea, the Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates. I have studied non-Western cultures and the classics of Asia at the doctoral level. I have published on Hinduism in India, and on Buddhism in Korea. I have lectured the Hadassah Society on Judaism.

Yet, according to modern political usage, I do not count as “diverse.” Apparently, that has only to do with the colour of my skin, which is rather pale. Instead, government and businesses hire people with little knowledge of the world, with little experience of cultures other than their own, often little or no interest in cultures other than the one they grew up in. And little aptitude for living with people from other cultures. And they hire them in the name of “diversity.”

More evidence that the world is mad.

Life under the Family Compact

 

y friend the literary immigrant laments that the Canadian literary scene is cliquish. This is a longstanding problem. It is a continuing Canadian problem; it is a burden of our colonial history. one can trace it back to the days of the Family Compact and the Chateau Clique. My literary friend is not equipped to understand, because she comes from Iran. Unlike Iran, at least in recent centuries, Canada has a history and a self-identity as a colony. This causes Canadians to undervalue anything domestic, and overvalue anything foreign: power and significance always comes from away. Ideally not from the United States, because we also define ourselves in contrast to the United States. One result is that anything “diverse,” that is, from abroad, is celebrated and admired. Including foreign governments, as bad as they might be. 

Another consequence is that the popular, the people, are undervalued. They are, after all, stupid colonials, far from the sources of metropolitan wisdom. Cliques form on the implicit premise that to be of any cultural value, to be worthy of power, one must be apart from the general herd. In Canada, this has usually been based on having been born abroad, or educated abroad, or making it abroad.

This is the foundation of “multiculturalism.” Recent immigrants like my friend blunder into this, and benefit from it, without generally finding any sense in it. They know things suck where they came from. They know things are oddly cliquish in Canada. But why bring that up, when, as a "minority," you are being treated like royalty?

This is a world in which it is hard to be honest.

Maintiens le Droit

 

A literary friend, an immigrant to Canada, laments that

“The biggest damage done by racism is that it has shut down critical enquiry and self-critique among minorities. In an attempt to salvage our identity, we paint a blameless picture of our identity, race, ethnicity, religion, culture, and community. ... Racism makes us afraid of self-critique for fear that it may be used against us.”

This take is wrong. Groups that are discriminated against do not close ranks and refuse to criticize one another. Just the reverse: individuals try to “pass,” often by condemning their own group. You get “Uncle Toms”; anti-Semitic Jews; or, as George Bernard Shaw once said, “the Irish are the most honest of all races; they never have anything good to say about each other.”

The fact that we see the exact opposite in Canada’s communities of recent immigrants informs us that the problem is not discrimination against “minorities.” As should be obvious: in contemporary Canada, minority status is celebrated by government. “Multiculturalism” and “diversity” is official government policy. The better comparison is with “professional courtesy”: a doctor is never supposed to criticize another doctor, a lawyer another lawyer, because it might threaten their shared prestige.

Indeed, given Canada’s “hate laws,” anyone criticizing multiculturalism, diversity, or any particular immigrant or foreign culture faces a possible prison term. It is therefore safer for any of us to say nothing against, for example, the rather less than admirable government of Iran, or China, for all that they may oppress their own people, or be opposed to individual rights and human equality. Someone might take offense, and our lives be ruined. It is perfectly fine, safe, and socially acceptable, on the other hand, as my friend notices, to criticize the government or the culture of Canada. Or other nations, like the US or the UK or France, that are friendly to Canada and share its values.

Sadly, my immigrant friend has not yet strayed off the plantation. She naïvely supposes that the left supports free speech. She is puzzled, therefore, that she cannot get literary magazines to publish anything she writes that is critical of the government of her home country.

But it is “the left” that has passed and aggressively supports restrictions on free speech such as those “hate laws.” It is the left that has advanced “deplatforming” opposing views, that has shown up to riot when the wrong speakers are invited to campus, that has engaged in widespread blacklisting, “political correctness,” legally required speech--forcing people to use designated gender pronouns--and so forth. Liberalism, the political philosophy that believes in human rights like freedom of speech, has been gradually forced to the right in North America. Perhaps it started with the rejection by the left of the right to life.

“The left” as such has no particular problem with dictatorships, and broadly supports intrusive government. 

Liberalism is also the philosophy that believes in human equality. It is not helpful to divide people up into “minorities,” as the left always does. Properly speaking, all Canadians are members of ethnic minorities within Canada, and all humans are members of ethnic minorities in global terms. And how we are divided into special interest groups is perfectly arbitrary: why, say, skin colour, and not height? Is a second-generation Chinese immigrant really more culturally like the Chinese of Beijing than like the kid on the next block?

Instead of accentuating our divisions, we ought to be working together to create one unified Canadian culture, and one world culture, open to all of us. That is the special opportunity that Canada, as a post-ethnic nation, offers us.

E Pluribus Multis

 

Here is an interesting and important op-ed by a Mount Royal University professor, that appeared in the Vancouver Sun, but reportedly was soon pulled down. True North further claims that ,because he wrote it, the author was refused entry into the Canadian Armed Forces.

Perhaps the most important passage:

social trust corresponds more closely than any other factor to predicting economic prosperity. Harvard economists Alberto Alesina and co-authors from a paper titled, Fractionalization, argued that greater diversity leads to stunted economic growth. In other words, diversity is a weakness as far as the economy is concerned.

In 1981 The World Values Survey began an investigation into cross-cultural beliefs, values and motivations, and has since shown that societies with high social trust are not only more economically productive but also happier. The most successful are homogeneous countries, not the diverse ones.

The bigger problem is not immigration, but multiculturalism. The goal must be to form a unified Canadian culture.