If for any reason you cannot find the paperback version of Playing the Indian Card at your favourite bookstore or online retailer, please ask them to carry it. Protest and picket the store entrance if necessary.
All the authorities and the media are still insisting that the man who mowed down a Muslim family of five in London Ontario was motivated by “Islamophobia.” We have seen no evidence for it. Nothing on his social media; he belonged to no “hate groups”; his best friend seems to have been a Muslim who saw in him no trace of animosity towards Islam.
At the same time, those who have been ignoring the preferred narrative might have learned, from his parents’ divorce papers, that he shared one unusual trait with most recent mass murderers: he was taking medication for depression.
This will, unfortunately, lead those who did not fall for the “racism” fallacy to fall for the “mental illness” fallacy: that the problem is the mentally ill, and the solution more money for mental health.
This man—I am avoiding using his name, because others will kill for the chance at fame—call him V—did not murder because he was a racist. He also did not murder because he was mentally ill. The mentally ill, statistically, are no more violent than the rest of us. And more money for mental health is not going to help: he was already being treated.
The problem is the pills.
The SSRIs, the standard antidepressants, work by flooding our brains with jolly juice, happiness hormones. This obviously will lessen the symptoms of depression. Whether that is good or bad depends on why we are depressed.
Some people are depressed because they are nursing, through abuse, an overly sensitive conscience. The antidepressant can help them to function normally. They start with too many inhibitions on their actions.
Others are depressed because they are nursing a properly guilty conscience. They start with too few inhibitions on their actions. Give them antidepressants, and all hell may break loose.
It is clear that V was in the latter category.
“As his parents’ marriage faltered, [he] became ‘frighteningly angry’ and was particularly disrespectful to his mother, ‘raising his voice and towering over her in an intimidating way, and pounding on doors,’ the report said.
“His mother said she locked herself in her room to avoid him.”
There is this easy way to tell a narcissist from a melancholic: get them drunk. Are they an angry or a funny drunk?
When they feel bad, really bad, do they want to kill themselves, or everybody else?
The diagnosis is simple enough; and these are opposite problems. But it is invisible to current psychiatry because it seems only reported symptoms, and either the abused melancholic or the narcissist will report feelings of anxiety and sadness; and it is invisible to current psychiatry because current psychiatry refuses to recognize the ethical element of human existence. It tells everyone to ignore their conscience.
Until we fix this, many more people will needlessly die.
Leftists have traditionally thought of themselves as occupying the moral high ground—they were on the side of the little guy against the established power structures. That is more or less what “left-wing” meant when the term was coined, in reference to the French National Assembly.
I know that well enough. Born on Bastille Day, I always in youth thought of myself as a leftist. Never the Marxist left; but in those days there was a liberal left. I was on the side of human equality and everyone getting a fair shake; I was in principle suspicious of any established power. Toryism was in established power then in Ontario—for an unbroken thirty years. Duplessisism had until recently long been in power in Quebec.
If it were still true a few decades ago, or possibly true, that the left was for the poor and powerless against the rich and powerful right, it is obviously not true today. As we have increasingly seen, most of the visible rich capitalists are somewhere on the left: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Jimmy Dorsey. The professions and the bureaucrats who control the levers of power are on the left. The institutions are on the left: the schools, the media, the universities, the “mainline” Protestant churches. The big corporations are on the left.
If all or most of the established power structures are on the left, how is it tenable to claim that leftism is on the side of the little guy against the established power structures? Little guys broke into the US Capitol Building on January 6th, and the powerful left did not take it well. They clearly saw such ordinary folk as the enemy, and an unspeakably dangerous enemy. They roundly condemn “populism.”
Granted that the left favours subsidies and direct payments to the poor; more so than the right. But the very rich can afford such payments. Chump change. They can afford, in effect, to buy themselves a good public image with a little of their excess cash. They are not giving private charity here, but demanding that others carry much of the load. Higher taxes pinch harder on the only moderately well-off, and ensure they gather no excess capital to invest.
And such welfare, as opposed, say, to better education, or fewer regulations on starting a business or hiring people, works to keep the poor permanently poor, teaching dependency and punishing initiative. Preserving and deepening the divide between classes.
Then, passing beyond this issue of who is for the rich or for the poor, the powerful or the powerless, on every other issue the left seems to take a position no moral man could go along with. At some point, this has to outweigh their support for the poor in the mind of any decent person, even if this initial claim were true.
A few decades ago, it was possible to be opposed to abortion and be on the left. But more recently leftist parties have declared pro-life, anti-abortion positions heretical and cause for expulsion from the movement. Their choice. Abortion is as grave a moral and civilizational crisis as the Holocaust, or more so—the death toll is greater.
Abortion advocates will object that it is not the same, that an unborn foetus is not a human being. That is the same claim the Nazis made to justify killing Jews. We do not conclude that this made the murders acceptable; we conclude this made them worse. Is conception an arbitrary point at which to say human life begins? One must designate such a point; and what other point is less arbitrary than this one? Conception is clearly less arbitrary than birth. It is obvious nonsense to say that a baby is not human one minute before the head emerges.
The next biggest fault of the left is the wholesale attempt, for decades, to end freedom of speech. This is a mark of guilt—because they know they are wrong on abortion. And this illustrates one reason why we need freedom of speech: because words are powerful, and can keep the powerful from doing wrong in secret. But as we are increasingly seeing, suppressing speech also makes democratic government and civil peace impossible. If matters cannot be discussed, matters must be imposed, by whomever holds the power to do so.
Next to that, and prior to that, is sexual libertinage and the uncoupling of coupling from baby-making. This has come to be systematically celebrated on the left, and having children condemned. Wrapped up in this is feminism, the idea of which, from which all else flows, is that nobody should waste time raising children. This is decadence and self-indulgence in its classic form. This is a perfect recipe for civilizational suicide. Besides the cruelty to the next generation, and the callous attitude to sex partners, this has led inevitably to the greater horror of abortion.
You want to argue that sexual libertinage is freedom? That it is a case of expanding human rights? It is not, and only recently have the two become confused. Freedom classically means freedom to do what you think is right, freedom of conscience. Someone who habitually indulges a vice is not free in any sense, but enslaved by it—think of an alcoholic. We should not want the state to intervene, but we certainly ought not to celebrate it.
And this naturally segues us to the attack on religion. Although there used to be a viable religious left, and the mainstream Protestant denominations are increasingly leftist, this has been at the cost of draining any moral codes out of them. Although Islam has so far been given a pass, otherwise, the left has grown openly hostile to any religion that implies a moral code. Intelligent Muslims must know they are on borrowed time; indeed, it was only a decade or so ago that the left was painting Islam as the greatest enemy, accusing it of repressing women, refusing them fashion choices, and mutilating their genitals. They can and inevitably will flip back to this stance just as quickly, once their immediate tactical objectives are achieved.
The left hates ethical monotheism because it preaches against sexual libertinage and abortion. So the pressing desire to restrict, scapegoat, and discourage religion. This is profoundly harmful to mankind; people need religion, and despair without it. It is also most of the glue that holds society together.
Were all that not enough, the left is increasingly and openly racist. It sees everything in tribal terms: nobody is an individual, everyone exists and thinks only as a member of some “community” or tribe. These tribes are and must remain utterly apart; although they may form coalitions for temporary advantage, there can ultimately be no communion or common cause or even shared reality among them. They are in an eternal and inevitable struggle for power.
This is the core of fascism and of Nazism. And the left is thundering in a handcart down this old track, once abandoned, even though we know where it leads.
Is there any social evil the left has not yet embraced? If so, they will no doubt find it, and do so.
At this point, if anyone claims they support the left because they want to help the poor, I think we have to assume duplicity.
Some express alarm at Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s declared intent to invoke the “notwithstanding clause“ of the Canadian Constitution in order to override charter rights and allow legislation to limit campaign spending by third parties. I think it is a great idea. Even though I do not feel great about limiting campaign spending by third parties.
A bit of background here: the Canadian Constitution guarantees certain rights and freedoms. The courts can disallow legislation it feels is in violation of these. The legislature can respond by invoking this “notwithstanding clause” and overrule the courts. The legislation goes into effect, but must be renewed every five years.
Critics are objecting that Ford wants to override the Constitution. This is exactly the opposite of the truth: he is invoking the Constitution as written and as intended.
Traditionally, iin the Westminster system, Parliament is the “highest court in the land,” on the premise that the people are sovereign. Giving any court the ability to overrule the people’s representatives risks giving government itself to an oligarchy: those who appoint the Supreme Court justices, the legal profession and its gatekeepers, the professions and the professional classes. Some of the framers of the Canadian Constitution Act, notably Allan Blakeney, insisted on the notwithstanding clause to protect democracy.
It is important to know that a body of skilled lawyers have examined some legislation in detail, and say it is in violation of charter rights. This is helpful information for the public. If the government persists notwithstanding, they can decide to punish the government accordingly at the next election. But we must not surrender the people’s right to make that decision.
And time has proven the framers exactly right. Down in the US, it has come to be expected that Democrat-appointed judges and Republican-appointed judges will vote not according to the Constitution as written, but by party line. And they have become increasingly activist in disallowing legislation.
In Canada, it is worse. The Canadian Supreme Court is appealed to more easily and often. It has not only developed a habit of disallowing legislation but of demanding legislation be passed. And their rulings produce major social changes, without public accountability. They required Alberta to insert a reference to homosexual rights in their proposed provincial charter of rights. They struck down all limitations on abortion. They required the legalization of gay marriage; they redefined aboriginal rights, redefined who is an aboriginal, and on and on. They have developed a dangerous taste for power.
It matters little whether one agrees with this or that ruling, or them all. The power is arbitrary and capricious, and there is no reason to expect it will forever be used in the public interest.
Luckily, unlike the US, Canada has a constitutional remedy in the notwithstanding clause. The only problem has been, until now, a lack of courage among our elected politicians in invoking it. Quebec has used it regularly, but in the rest of Canada, only Saskatchewan, and only once. Doug Ford does us all a favour, and our grandchildren, if he further cements the precedent.
Many people are alarmed about Critical Race Theory in the schools; as in the “1619 Project,” which teaches that America was founded on the institution of slavery. But perhaps you do not realize that Critical Race Theory is just one tentacle of a kraken named Critical Theory that has suckered in far more than the public schools.
I have found a useful overview and summary, written by two declared Critical Theorists, in Critical Inquiry in Language Studies.
The first and perhaps most important point to take from the paper is that the critical theorists themselves are running scared. One recent CT essay abstract ends with dire word of “a new imperative for survival in what are for many volatile and risky political and media community and civic environments.” The present piece’s abstract concludes: “it is necessary to confront neoliberalism as a new kind of domination.”
Neoliberalism means free market economics and human rights. Its heyday is commonly thought to be the Reagan/Thatcher years. There has been a lot of water under the Potomac bridges since then, and it is not clear that water has been rising. The Democrats just took two houses and the presidency; Trudeau’s Liberals are hunkered down in Canada. The Tories have been crushing it in the UK. In terms of visible politics, a mixed bag.
So how to account for this sense of embattlement? Rather than the votes, I suspect that the Critical Theorists feel they are losing the argument. Neoliberalism is not rising so much as that CT is collapsing, in a logical more than a political sense.
For later in the essay, the authors lament that CT has not accomplished anything.
“Has the increased recognition of critical language studies led to any concrete social change?
The answer is probably no.”
The article diagnoses that Critical Theory has been failing to make proper outreach to educate others. Yet this is an odd claim considering that it monopolizes the schools and universities. Most critical theorists spend most of their day educating undergraduates in their views. The explanation has to be, not that the arguments are not being made, but that they are not convincing. Too few students are genuinely buying the joy juice. Semi-aware that their essential premises are not salvageable, they turn to shouting them louder and more often as the only alternative. Along with suppressing any other voices.
Critical theory is doomed: take it from the horse’s mouth.
Every death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. Every murder is murder, and there is no discriminating here. Each of us is equally valuable in the eyes of God, and each of us as citizens has a right to equal protection before and from the law.
So it is disturbing that, when someone who is not a Muslim kills a Muslim, it is treated very differently than when someone who is a Muslim kills a non-Muslim.
When someone ran down a visibly Muslim family in London, killing four, it was immediately identified as a “hate crime.” When a Muslim man opened fire on Toronto’s Danforth iin 2018, police insisted and still insist no motive could be found.
You may argue that the circumstances were different. Perhaps so. In the first case, the perpetrator had at least one close Muslim friend, who insisted he had no anti-Muslim feelings. The perpetrator apparently belonged to no anti-Muslim organizations, there is nothing troubling in his social media, and there is apparently no manifesto. In the second case, ISIS claimed responsibility.
After the Danforth shooting, the authorities and media rushed to insist that, whatever else happened, the most important thing was that Muslims as a group must not be blamed.
In the wake of the London murders, authorities rushed to declare that all the rest of us, all who are not Muslims, are to blame. “This is our Canada.”
This difference in reaction and interpretation could not be more striking, and is obviously discriminatory. Either we are all and only responsible for our individual acts, or all groups must be held equally responsible for the actions of their members.
The authorities and media have called, in the present case, for immediate action against ideologies that promote such hate. They identify some such ideology called “Islamophobia,” which needs to be banned.
“Hate speech,” in the sense of inciting violence against any identifiable group, is already criminal in Canada. Those who resist further action singling out Islam for special protection fear it might involve making mere criticism of Islam as a religion or political ideology illegal.
And there is another problem. The Quran itself, and the hadith, by a reasonable literal reading, call for Muslim supremacy and violence against non-Muslims. Not just the “jihad” concept, but any legitimate government must be run in accord with sharia law, with different rights for Muslims and non-Muslims. One is obliged to kill “kaffirs,” non-believers, as well as anyone who apostasizes from Islam.
One may well insist that such passages do not mean what they might appear to mean by said literal reading; but ambiguity is not allowed as a defense of hate speech elsewhere. The worst interpretation is always assumed.
In other words, if we are going to fairly enforce even the existing laws on hate speech, Islam itself would have to be banned.
I think it is a given that we cannot criminalize a major world religion. Not just for practical reasons, but because after the right to life, freedom of conscience is the most fundamental of all rights.
Accordingly, beyond the argument from freedom of speech, which is honoured in the US, and is supposedly guaranteed in the Canadian constitution, we simply cannot have hate speech laws, cannot ban even eliminationist hate speech. Troubling as it might seem to most, the alternative is worse.
Two Canadian YouTubers, JJ McCullough and Useful Charts, have recently put out competing videos for and against the proposition “Should monarchies still exist in the 21st Century/” I think neither mounts the proper case for monarchy. Although nominally in favour of their continued existence. Useful Charts condemns absolute monarchies as having no place, and rejects monarchy for Canada as unsuitable for a multicultural society. I disagree with both assertions.
The essential value of a monarchy, neither seem to understand, is that it puts a human face on the nation. Without something of that sort, people will not work for the mutual benefit, but will pursue self-interest. And it is not just an individual human face, but a family—it models the nation as a family, which is an ideal model. If we all think of one another as family, given normal human instincts, we will treat one another better.
Some states can feel familial without this, because the population is genetically related; they are in fact, in a sense, a very large family. Precisely because Canada does not have that, and because that alternative approach leads almost necessarily to racism and discrimination against ethnic minorities, a monarchy is especially valuable to Canada.
A monarchy is the almost necessary alternative to the nation state. And the nation state, emerging largely in the late 19th and early 20th century, has not had a great track record for human rights and social tranquility.
Aside from cases in which a monarchy might be needed to replace absent ethnic bonds, monarchies seem to work better than ethnic bonds themselves in maintaining good social order.
Think of nations most notable for general social tranquility, for social peace. What countries come to mind? Scandinavia, Britain, Canada, Japan, perhaps the Netherlands. Mostly monarchies. Now compare the major democratic republics: the US, France, Germany since 1918. Placid and prosperous most times, but undergoing periods of tumult, revolution or near-revolution, violence in the streets.
Turkey overthrew the monarchy after the First World War: a period of civil war and ethnic cleansing followed. Russia threw off its monarchy in 1917: a period of civil war and ethnic cleansing followed. Germany threw off its monarchy in 1918; a period of civil war and ethnic cleansing followed. France threw off its monarchy in 1789: a period of civil war and ethnic cleansing followed. Britain temporarily threw off its monarchy in 1649. Ask Ireland about ethnic cleansing under Cromwell.
Useful Charts objects that Queen Elizabeth represents only one Canadian ethnicity. Which ethnicity does he mean? Her recent ancestors are mostly from Germany; she is not ethnically English. Her husband is officially Greek, but raised in France. In 1914, the King of England, the Czar of Russia, and the German Kaiser were first cousins. To think of any royal as any given ethnicity or another is nonsensical.
A monarch is an ideal unifying figure for a multi-ethnic state.
Useful Charts worries that the monarchy is especially offensive to Canadian First Nations. This is the opposite of the truth on the ground. Canada’s First Nations prefer to deal with the monarchy, because it implies they have sovereignty; their treaties are with her. Canadian courts are obliged to give them the benefit of the doubt, because of a supposed need to uphold “the honour of the crown.” Compare, as a result, the peaceful relations between First Nations and the government in Canada to the frequent Indian Wars in US history.
JJ McCullough argues that the premise behind monarchy is offensive: that they hold their positon by divine right. This has never been an accepted concept. The Glorious Revolution established as a legal principle that the British, and so the Canadian, monarch holds her position at the sufferance of parliament, not God. Other royal families have similar checks, even supposedly absolute ones. The Saudi King is selected by a consensus of the ruling family, and the family must ultimately stay on the good side of the religious authorities.
Useful Charts argues that modern monarchs hold their position due to their popularity, which is not quite the same thing. McCullough seizes on this to argue that, if popularity is the basis, they should run for office to prove this; therefore, any monarchy should be replaced by an elected leader.
But there is an important and valuable difference. A politician must run for office. To reach the top of that greasy pole, or to want to, requires an entirely unnatural lust for power and fame. This means, necessarily, that his or her values are distorted, and in a dangerous direction. By making the titular leader hereditary, this is avoided, at least for this position. While the modern monarch may have few powers, they are at least one sane voice at the top of government, that the politicians will want to and feel some need to please.
Useful Charts, in condemning absolute monarchies absolutely, does not grasp another important factor. For some societies, democracy is not viable; there is not a sufficient cultural tradition of disagreeing with one another politely, keeping to set rules of engagement, retiring peacefully in defeat, and not exacting revenge on your rivals in victory. All of this goes against human instincts. In such a culture, the only possibilities are a self-appointed dictatorship or a monarchy. Then, monarchy is infinitely preferable. One rises to dictatorship in such a country by being more ruthless than the next guy, and having ta stronger lust for power. For a dictator, the temptation is also to loot the country for everything you can, for you might one day lose power to another just like you. Even if you do not, one day you die, and some stranger takes everything you built. Why build?
But for a monarchy, being a ruling family, the natural instinct is to keep the country intact and, ideally, improved, for the children. You know them personally, think of them fondly, and want them to remember you well.
Compare the monarchies with the republics of the Muslim world. Monarchies: Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, Malaysia. Republics: Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Libya. Who is more peaceful? Who has more human rights? Who is more prosperous?
A monarchy also allows for Plato’s ideal leadership. Knowing in childhood he or she is likely to inherit specific responsibilities, a child can be educated for the position. This is not practically possible for elected leaders in a republic, because their success is unpredictable and, individually, highly unlikely. Every one of them is going to be, at best, a talented amateur.
The two things that might be said against a monarchy is that it costs money for a relatively idle position, and it violates the spirit of human equality.
But in Canada’s case, it actually costs us nothing. In other cases, there is no rule or monarch’s union requiring any particular level of pay. And as for human equality, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it: philosophical concerns about modelling human equality aside, monarchies have a good track record. As Useful Charts points out, some of the countries with the highest level of actual income equality, not to mention the highest level of human rights, are monarchies. Historically, a strong monarchy has always meant a weaker upper class, and vice versa: in France, in the UK, in Japan, in China, everywhere. That may necessarily be true.
I have been puzzled about what the Kamloops Residential School is accused of, given preliminary reports of the discovery of 215 bodies in a “mass grave” somewhere near the grounds. So what?
Now I know: I just saw a video clip of National Chief Perry Bellegarde accusing the school of “genocide.” Chief Bobby Cameron of Saskatchewan accused it of “first degree murder.”
Unmarked mass graves have been uncovered on the banks of the Rideau Canal, and in downtown Kingston, Toronto, and Montreal, and nobody has thought to accuse anyone of either murder or genocide. These were Irish immigrants who died of malaria, cholera, or typhus. We know tuberculosis was a severe problem among native children. Why would anyone assume murder? We stop seeing things rationally as soon as “First Nations” are involved.
Another YouTube clip interviewed an expert on ground-penetrating radar of the sort used in Kamloops. She explained that this technique cannot detect any actual bodies: only the disturbance of the dirt from the digging of a grave, or a coffin.
In other words, in order to be able to produce a number “215” the people studying the Kamloops site must have discovered 215 separate burials.
The next question: how, were the initial reports able to claim that those buried included “children as young as three.” No bodies were visible, let alone forensically examined. Surely this can only have been estimated from the size of the coffins. These children seem to have been buried in coffins, not just put in the ground.
It is odd to call this a “mass grave.” Mass graves are what were found along the Rideau. These are, rather, individual unmarked graves.
Possibly they were not always unmarked. They might have been marked by wooden crosses that have decayed away.
We can only guess; but mass murder or genocide is about the least likely explanation available.
I note people accusing the Jews of stealing land from the Arabs in order to form the state of Israel. One correspondent compares the Israeli position to Italians laying claim to England on the grounds that it once belonged to Rome.
But that is not a fair representation of the history. The Jews did not take the land. Israel was mandated to the Jews in 1948 by the United Nations. If there was an injustice done to the Palestinian Arabs, it was done by the international community, not by the Jews. Canada had a vote in the UN General Assembly; the Jews did not. To blame the Jews is scapegoating.
What do those who make this argument now propose? That the Jews, having been legally ceded the land by the UN generations ago, are now to be evicted due to the claims of some prior inhabitants? Aren’t such theorists guilty here of exactly what they are falsely blaming the Jews for?
If dispossessing the Arabs was wrong then, by the same standard, dispossessing the Jews would be wrong now.
I would allow that the original grant was unfair to the Arabs. The world community was giving the Jews someone else’s land. The recent attempt by Hitler to exterminate them no doubt made it seem pressing to the international community that the surviving Jews be given their own homeland, where they might be secure from such mass murder.
Wherever that homeland was established, it was going to require the dispossession of whoever was currently living there.
Perhaps it would have been more just to give the Jews a slice of Germany, rather than taking land from the innocent Arabs. But then, a small Jewish state would never seem secure from bigger neighbours in Central Europe. Ask Poland about that.
Perhaps Canada should have offered some of its own territory, rather than voting to give the Jews some of the Arabs’.
But then, Britain was indeed altruistically giving some of its own territory for the creation of this Jewish homeland. Britain had conquered the territory from the Ottomans in the recent World War.
And Palestine made the most sense, not necessarily because it was the ancient homeland of the Jews, but because it had the largest concentration of Jews anywhere.
This was largely because of its symbolic important to the Jews, and largely because the British had already been legally bound, by League of Nations Mandate in 1922, to create in Palestine a homeland for the Jewish people. Accordingly, they were more or less bound to allow Jewish immigration into the area.
Stalin made a parallel attempt to set up a Jewish homeland in Siberia, but got little uptake.
The only solution I can see is acceptance of the status quo.
Are the universities salvageable? Would it make more sense now to just close them and start again?
Looking at recent faculty openings for any established mainstream university is disheartening.
The University of Toronto is currently calling for a tenure-track instructor in “Indigenous Health and Cultural Safety” for the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, and Women’s College Hospital. Both parts of that discipline title are troubling. Is indigenous health different in principle from the health of humans in general? Should it be studied separately? What can this imply but discrimination? But a fundamental difference in kind among people, that would justify different treatment?
And what is “cultural safety,” and what does it have to do with one’s health?
“Excellent Indigenous knowledges methodology skills are essential.” Is “indigenous knowledge” different in kind from human knowledge? If aboriginal groups “know” differently than the majority, there is presumably no chance for integration. If their reality is different, any conceivable action against them might, in principle, be justified.
Those who have posted the job notice do not seem to understand that “Turtle Island” refers to the entire Earth, indeed the cosmos, not to any one geographical area. Accordingly, anyone native to the cosmos should properly identify as “indigenous.”
But it is just as well, since hiring someone on the basis of their race is a violation of the Canadian Constitution and of human rights.
Perhaps this descent into objective madness was inevitable once the universities lost their religious raisons d’etre. They are now like ancient masted ships without a keel or anchor. They blow any which way, or no way at all.
The lead item in the Canadian national news yesterday was the discovery of 215 child corpses in an unmarked grave somewhere near the old residential school on the T’kemlups reserve in Kamloops, BC.
Should this be big news? Each of those deaths is terribly sad; it is sad that they were not better commemorated. But is there anything truly surprising or scandalous here?
To begin with, this is a preliminary report. No excavation has been done, the site has not been disclosed, and no images have been released. Preliminary reports are usually false. If there is a scandal, it is too soon to say so.
The old T’kemlups residential school is not in some remote location. It is iin plain view of downtown Kamloops. It is the most prominent building on the T’kemlups reserve, which is surrounded, or bordered, by the city on two sides.
If there was something untoward going on here, if children were being killed or even buried secretly in unmarked graves on the T’kemlups reserve, where was the band council? What was their responsibility? What about the municipality of Kamloops? Where were the parents? Did they not notice one of their children was missing?
Given the school’s central location, it even seems less than certain that any burial ground near the school was used exclusively by the school. These preliminary reports claim that the remains of children as young as three were found—below school age.
Perhaps the band council has simply found the local “Potter’s Field.”
Let us suppose, however, that the burials are from the school, and the number given is accurate. It may seem shocking to us today that a school-age child might die, but deaths of children were common only a few generations ago. In Tom Brown’s School Days, the classic account of Rugby School in the 19th century, Tom’s best friend is taken off by scarlet fever. In 19th century Canada, an estimated one third to one half of all children died before the age of five. They fell from the general run of childhood diseases, from scarlet fever, from polio, from Spanish flu, from smallpox, and above all from tuberculosis.
The Kamloops school ran as a residential school for 79 years. Two hundred and fifteen deaths over 79 years is 2.72 deaths per year. The school, I read, hosted 500 students. That means a death rate of 0.54% per year. This does not sound particularly high for the time. Especially since tuberculosis was a special problem in the residential schools—reputedly 4.9 times the national average.
If that sounds like a condemnation of the schools, the tuberculosis rate on reserves in general was eight times the national average. In 1909, two physicians examined 243 Indian children awaiting admission to residential schools in Calgary. They reported that “in no instance was a child awaiting admission to school found free from tuberculosis.” A study of 175 school-age Indian children in Saskatchewan in 1922 reported that 93 percent showed evidence of tuberculous infection.
Some children were bound to die. Sad that they were not given a more dignified burial; but where were the parents to arrange it? If the parents were too poor, or did not care, where was the band council? Where were the municipal authorities? The provincial authorities? The federal authorities? The local churches? Perhaps everyone simply thought it was somebody else’s responsibility.
Friend Xerxes has his own definition of sin: “I define sin as taking something good, beneficial, healthy, and pushing it to an extreme. Too much, or too little.” Life, then, is a matter of balancing opposites.
Carl Jung believed in something similar. He credited the concept to Gnosticism. It is also perhaps reflected in the yin-yang symbol familiar in the Far East.
This is not the Christian idea, and it does not work.
For balance itself, being a value, must be balanced by its opposite. Moderation must not be pushed to an extreme, or one is immoderate. One must be only half-balanced. And “the good” must not be pursued, but must be balanced by evil, or – or evil happens? Too much good is not good?
In other words, the concept produces immediate self-contradictions.
And can we hold that there is such a thing as too little rape and murder? What amount of each would be just enough? By what standard can we judge this, or anything, if there are no absolute values?
Christianity holds, instead, along with ancient Greek thought, that there are absolute values: one cannot have too much good, too much truth, or too much beauty.
The much-despised Tree of Life, in Kabbalistic symbolism: a representation of the attributes of God.
Caitlin Press in Tofino is calling for poems for an anthology about trees: ideally poems that “dispel the myth of hazardous and inconvenient trees.”
This is striking, because there are no such myths. In every known culture, trees are venerated. Which is why there is a market for an anthology of poems about trees. People love trees.
The much-despised Christian Tree of Life
This points to a common phenomenon. There is a persistent tendency to declare things or groups that are especially favoured to be or to have been discriminated against. Conversely, things or groups that have genuinely experienced discrimination get no love. In fact, this almost goes without saying: you are automatically not discriminating against any group you lament as being discriminated against.
For example, we are told endlessly that women have faced discrimination throughout history. Yet demonstrably, current laws discriminate in their favour in myriad ways. This is also true historically: women have always been put on pedestals. In many cultures, women were exempt from prosecution for any crimes; they were protected in times of war, rather than being sent to the front; and on and on. The exalted status of women has always been, in a phrase, a “motherhood issue.” And this is biologically hard-wired. Men are expendable, but women are not: they are needed to ensure the survival of the tribe.
We in Canada are told incessantly, and have always been told, that Indians have been discriminated against. Yet they are demonstrably given more rights than other Canadians: special treaty rights, a wide range of benefits not available to other Canadians. Any history of the Indian in literature reveals an unrealistic reverence for the “noble savage.” Everyone has always wanted to be an Indian, in Canada and in the US. And no, their land was never taken or stolen from them—a subject that might take us, for the moment, too far afield.
What about African Americans? Everybody agrees they have been discriminated against; and surely they have a legitimate grievance? After all, they were enslaved. But compare the Irish; the Irish too were enslaved in the New World, if not perhaps to a comparable extent. Indentured servitude. Moreover, the Irish, unlike the blacks, have been systematically oppressed wherever they lived for about five hundred years, including a mass starvation in the middle of the last century. About the same time slavery was abolished—after it was abolished throughout the British Empire. On balance, then, the Irish have arguably had a tougher time of it for longer. Yet there is little or no sympathy for the Irish. Current laws discriminate in favour of African Americans; and against Irish Americans.
It may be disturbing to accept it, but chattel slavery was thought throughout its existence to be of benefit to the African American slaves. They were understood to be unable to look after themselves properly, whether due to genetic incapacity or lack of civilization, and, like children, were to be taken care of. They were not hated or despised, any more than children are.
The Irish, by contrast, were hated and despised.
Who has authentically been persecuted and discriminated against, in recent times? The Jews. Within living memory, there has been a systematic and international attempt to exterminate the Jews. Compare African American slavery—never meant to harm, and abolished a hundred and fifty years ago. Anti-Semitic attacks are still the most common hate crime in Canada, and are on a rapid upswing across North America and Europe. Yet there is little public attention to it; if anything, it seems to be encouraged by some public figures.
The Poles. As many Poles as Jews were executed by Hitler in his camps; their country was carved up and enslaved in turn by Germany, Austria, Russia, and the Soviets. Yet Poles remain one ethnic group it is still acceptable to lampoon. Polish jokes are more or less okay in polite company.
There was something like an attempt to wipe out the Ukrainians within living memory. Yet Ukrainians remain another ethnic group it is still acceptable to lampoon.
There was a concerted attempt to wipe out the Armenians barely a hundred years ago. It may not be fashionable to mock Armenians, but there is also no sympathy for them.
Who else has known great suffering in recent decades? The Koreans suffered a brutal occupation and something like a genocide under the Japanese, from 1911 to 1945, after which they lived through a devastating war. The Filipinos suffered more under Japanese occupation, reputedly, than any other occupied nation during the Second World War. It was not a matter of discrimination, but the Chinese and the Cambodians suffered holocausts of historic proportions within the lifetimes of many, and the Vietnamese lived through perhaps thirty years of scorched-earth war. Yet these groups are given no consideration in North America; instead, they are systematically discriminated against.
To be fair, African Americans, Indians, and perhaps women have a legitimate grievance, that they have not thriven despite the special help they have been given throughout recent history. Conversely, the Irish, the Jews, the Armenians, the Poles, the Ukrainians, have been successful, even notably successful, despite persecution.
But that is neither here nor there. Being coddled is not necessarily to one’s long-term benefit, because it strips you of self-reliance. It gives you unrealistic expectations, and, when they are not met, leaves you capable of doing little but complaining loudly.
These two unlucky fates, being genuinely discriminated against and being coddled, correspond to two common fates within a dysfunctional family. One child will be spoiled into arrested development, and will grow up to be a narcissist. The next child will be tormented, but, if they survive and survive without being permanently crippled, may even be stronger for the experience. They may grow up to be a hero.
Friend Xerxes notes that he finds individuals almost invariably kind, while society as a whole is systemically at least nearsighted.
I am completely in agreement with his claim that individuals are more trustworthy than people in groups. What he presumably does not see is that this, if true, is a powerful argument for free markets and individual liberty, as opposed to government control and group identity. In other words, for the right and not the left.
Xerxes, on the other hand, is probably trying to argue for original blessedness; for the idea that people are innately, naturally good, and will always do good if they just follow their instincts—a romantic notion, in the proper sense of the word. Therefore, impositions on instinct from “society”—formal ethics—are the source of all evil.
But the basic claim, that individuals are usually more trustworthy than groups, is in accord with what we all can observe: mobs are irresponsible and dangerous.
The problem is with identifying the mechanism to explain this. If you assume that people are all individually good, yet corrupted by society, you have a classic “problem of evil.” Society is a human creation. If people are good, yet society is evil, where did the evil come from?
Xerxes’s theory is that people are good only in moderation. The evil comes somehow from there being too many in one place. He uses, among others, the analogy of a campfire versus a forest fire. Too much fire is bad; too many people are bad.
But the difference between a campfire and a forest fire is not quite that. It is that the campfire is under control, and the forest fire is not. A fire in a waste paper basket is probably smaller than a campfire, but it is still bad. A controlled burnoff of a field is a common agricultural practice, and it might easily be larger than a forest fire. A nuclear reactor is a rather bigger fire in a sense than a forest fire, but can be useful.
So with people. The problem is not more or fewer of them, but whether they are controlling their animal instincts and their selfishness. As individuals, we are obliged to take responsibility for our acts, so our conscience is engaged. If we pass our individual responsibility over to the group, we can more easily shirk our conscience. We can let our sinister tendencies “run riot,” to use the familiar phrase. This is most evident in a mob, but a clear danger in any group. “I was only following orders.”
This is because, like fire, we already have those sinister tendencies. This cannot support a romantic idea of original blessedness. The bad tendency must already exist at the individual level; but be held in check.
Trying to find an analogy that might work better to justify Xerxes’s concept of innate human goodness, I thought of locusts. According to at least some theories, they change from relatively benign to humans to a plague due to overcrowding—due, then, to sheer numbers, more or less. But again, this does not really work in support of his concept of humans, because each individual locust also transforms in nature. In Xerxes’s human model, the individual remains good even as the society in which he or she participates misbehaves.
I have read that lab rats, if overcrowded, begin to bite one another. Perhaps this is more apt, but it still does not work. Each bite is an individual, not a group, action. The individual does not remain moral while the group imposes immorality.
Given the correct observation that people behave better individually than in groups, we are left needing to acknowledge the concept of original sin. The tendency to evil as well as good must be innate at the level of the individual.
There is also something troublesome, surely, in the very concept of “too many” humans. Too many for what? If your measure is what is good for humans, surely existing is the most fundamental of goods. If your standard is not what is good for humans, what is your standard? The obvious suspicion is that it is what is good for yourself…
This year, unusually, the 24th of May falls on the 24th of May.
It is a day hallowed to all Canadians, although few remember why we celebrate. It is Queen Victoria’s Birthday. In one sense Canada’s founder, this woman presided over the greatest empire the world has ever known for an unprecedentedly long time, as though she were as certain a feature of the cosmos as the North Pole. Little Alexandrina Victoria Hanover was born on May 24, 1819, as the first steamship was crossing the Atlantic. She died in 1901, just before the world went to hell.
Traditionally, her birthday was one of Canada’s two “national” days. This is Empire Day, on which we celebrated our birthright as British subjects, paired with Dominion Day on July 1st, on which we celebrated ourselves as Canadian citizens.
It remains important, even though the sun has long set, as the traditional start of the cottaging season, bookended now with Labour Day in September. One had to get outside for a barbeque or a picnic on this Monday, damn the weather. I can remember years with coats and mittens and picnic sandwiches cruelly cold. It is not easy to eat a picnic sandwich in mittens.
The evening ended gloriously with fireworks, from Hands or Brock, bought in some shop on the main street that specialized in them seasonally. The finale always had to be the Burning Schoolhouse, to celebrate the coming end to the school year. You would stuff in all the duds in hopes of getting something spectacular, but most often, and perhaps most satisfyingly, it generally ended in a slow, quiet burn.
No more pencils, no more books… and the glorious summer stretching before us, on which the sun barely set.
Happy birthday, Queen Victoria; reminding us of a time when the world still made sense.
An annoyingly common phrase in the popular culture these days is “my community,” or “the X community.”
Community is a good thing, but in this case, it does not refer to a neighbourhood or small town. It refers to a tribe: “the black community”; “the LGBTQ community.” It implies that you have nothing in common with, and do not want to spend any time with, anyone who does not share some random, usually physical, characteristic.
Since childhood modern suburbs have horrified me. What could be worse than living in one? The deadening sameness; the lack of any sense of community; the labyrinthine streets designed to be hostile to escape. They are the stuff of nightmares. They seem designed to promote conformity. Just as might be most desirable to an oppressive totalitarian government.
It is apparently not just me who thinks so. Locally, there have always been jokes about having to live in "Scarberia." Yet people are forced to do so, everywhere, against their will.
They are also oppressive to the poor. They make it necessary to own a car, and to use it to do anything. They require you to pay for a front yard, of no use to you. They offer no inexpensive row housing or apartments. They prohibit any jobs nearby.
The cities of Europe or Asia are infinitely more interesting and charming; and not because they are older. When I lived in Seoul, it was a revelation that even the remotest suburbs had charm, street life and amenities. And densities to support decent public transit.
The problem is zoning bylaws. It seems to me that zoning bylaws have always been used maliciously. Urban planning has always been malicious. Give somebody such power over others, and you will attract the power-mad. Other than setting aside some land for parks, streets, and public utilities, a mere absence of rules would have produced a better result. The market would have forced development of just what people wanted and most needed. We would have diversity. We would have services and work nearby. We would not have the frightening housing shortages and high housing costs we now face in Canada. Nor would we have the urban sprawl and high carbon dioxide emissions environmentalists so lament.
It could all be fixed, if not quickly, by repealing zoning bylaws. That’s a cause I wish some provincial or municipal political party would take up.
Having been through the entire original run of Corner Gas, I’m now binge-watching Schitt’s Creek. After a couple of decades abroad, it is a good reorientation to Canadian culture.
Both follow the Canadian tradition of focusing on small town life; like Sunshine Sketches, Anne of Green Gables, or Alice Munro. But they are very different in tone. Corner Gas relies on a more distinctly Canadian sort of comedy: nobody is allowed to take themselves too seriously. Nobody is better than anybody else. There is no fourth wall. And it is laugh-out-loud funny.
Schitt’s Creek is more like an American comedy in having both straight men and clowns. You are supposed to laugh at some characters, not others. Some are serious. The overall tone is more serious; people can get hurt. And I have only been moved to laugh out loud once in the first season.
One element, however, besides the occasional place references, makes Schitt’s Creek feel Canadian. Formulaically in comedy, since the ancient Greeks, characters we are supposed to laugh at are from the lower class, and most often rural: “clown” originally meant a hayseed.
Compare Green Acres, an old American sitcom built on a premise similar to Schitt’s Creek. We were expected to see it all from the point of view of the city people; the rurals were exotics. Or Beverley Hillbillies, a reverse of the Schitt’s Creek premise: the rurals were sympathetic characters, but odd and foolish.
Now look at Schitt’s Creek. The rurals are the straight men; we are to laugh at the odd and foolish upper class people from the city. The locals are more sensible, and always outsmart them.
This strikes me as an expression of the Canadian character. Culturally, we are profoundly democratic, and an essentially rural people.
Poor people: not as spiritually uplifting to look at as wildflowers.
Friend Xerxes laments that a local hiking trail he has been accustomed to use to view wildflowers has now been fenced off to allow the construction of a new subdivision. “In our social structure,” he observes, “private property is close to sacred.”
He gets that just about backwards.
The basic premise on which our common law is founded is that nobody can really own land.
Land is God’s creation, and is therefore meant by him for the use of all mankind—just as we assume with air or water.
One does not actually own the land, but the labour one has put into it. If this is inseparable from the land itself, that establishes ownership.
This is why we have “squatter’s rights.” If land is lying unused, anyone who builds on it or tills it or seeds it establishes ownership. This supersedes any paper deed.
This means that any government is acting illegitimately if it prohibits productive use of land; if it leaves land as wilderness. So long as anyone genuinely needs that land in order to grow food, it is immoral to refuse this. So long as someone genuinely needs that land to build shelter, it is immoral to refuse this.
To justify preserving a local hiking trail, you need to argue that this use of that land is most beneficial even to the poorest of citizens. Ultimately, not just the citizens of the local area, but all mankind.
Unfortunately, we have lost sight of this. The poor are suffering everywhere as a result.
In the video clip. A college student asks Frank Turek whether she is going to hell.
Turek of course does not want to say so. He dodges the question. But in fact, she is a good example of someone bound for hell.
She says she is a “good” person. She of course hopes this is sufficient. But her definition of “good” is “according to the standards of our society,” and in the expectation that others will treat her the same.
This is what the Bible condemns in the passage
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
Doing whatever society expects is an abdication of moral responsibility. It is taking society and your own well-being as God. Idolatry is a far graver sin than lying, theft, or murder.
Speaking of which, some of my students troubled me recently. The text was on lying. And the book asked the question, “Is it ever all right to lie?”
“Sure,” they answered. “If nobody finds out.”
At the beginning of the clip, Turek has just asked the student, “If God exists and if Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?”
She answers “there is no proof that I would be able to accept.”
When he offers her a book to read on condition that she promise to read it, she at first will not do so. I wonder if Turek meant this as a test. It demonstrates that she is not looking for the truth.
This is the essential qualification for heaven. This is what true faith means: to seek truth. The Christian God is “the way, the truth, and the light.”
Not wanting truth means rejecting God. And Turek is right in his definition of heaven: heaven is the presence of God, hell is the absence of God. If we reject God in life, we choose for ourselves to go to hell.
I suspect in the end this woman will find her way. I sense a tremor in her voice when she asks about hell. She finally does promise to read the book. Part of her is seeking; otherwise, she would not have come to the talk. She is at least hearing the voice of her good angel.
It is those who will not read the book if offered, who are surely going to hell.
Each of us, before our deaths, perhaps gets that offer.
The Economist has published an alarming analysis of the situation of Taiwan.
Apparently, China has established naval dominance in the Eastern Pacific. The proximity of the Chinese mainland ensures air dominance over Taiwan. This dominance cannot be reduced without bombing the Chinese mainland.
American wargaming now shows the Chinese winning any confrontation with the US over Taiwan.
The Economist, as always, is relatively sanguine about the prospects. Why would China risk upsetting the global applecart so long as the situation for them is improving year over year?
I am less sanguine. If this were their calculus, why march in and take Hong Kong? Why rattle sabres in the South China Sea? Why cross the Zone of Actual Control with India?
It is not clear that things are really improving for China year over year. The calculation in Beijing may be the opposite: that things are likely to collapse unless something is done to reshuffle the deck.
What is really going on in China in economic terms has never been transparent. We must rely on government reporting on their own performance. It seems likely the figures are fake. The prosperity is real, so long as everyone thinks it is real. But it can pop like a soap bubble.
China is progressively less competitive on their prime advantage, cheap labour. Without that, can they compete with the West on innovation and efficiency? I suspect a centrally-planned society intrinsically cannot. The officials in Beijing see the real accounts, and they may look grim.
This, after all, is the obvious explanation for the rapid rise of Xi Jinping’s totalitarian domestic policies. The government feared unrest. Loosening up failed to save the old Soviet regime in Russia; they were determined to do the opposite.
The Soviet Union hit a wall and collapsed: this seems to have been because their economy was all smoke and mirrors. Nazi Germany faced the same dilemma: their impressive economic performance towards the end of the 1930s was based on cooking the books and printing money. Hitler had no choice but to invade neighbouring countries and seize assets to meet the next payroll or debt repayment.
Xi’s China may be in the same situation. They may have taken Hong Kong because they needed the assets. They may have been probing for weakness elsewhere.
They may see a pressing need to take Taiwan.
Taiwan is the world’s largest chipmaker. That is an immense asset. China could rule the market in high-tech.
For this reason, taking Taiwan could also change the balance of power globally. According to someone The Economist quotes, losing Taiwan could be “America’s Suez,” the effective end of US dominance.
In other words, the stakes are gigantic, for both China and the US. The stage is perfectly set for a serious, total war; for neither side can easily accept defeat.
And it would probably be a world war. Australia, India, Japan, are also necessarily deeply concerned should China come to dominate. Britain and France have also recently signaled their concern, sending warships to the area. Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea, Canada, would probably also join an American-led anti-Chinese coalition.
China may bank on the West being too decadent to pull themselves together to resist. And they may be right, Ominously, a poll suggests only 50% of the Taiwanese themselves are prepared to resist if China invades.
But Hitler made the same calculation in 1939, and turned out to get wrong. Imperial Japan made the same calculation in 1941, and turned out to get wrong.
TED Talks is reviving the vital art of the lecture. Lectures used to be popular entertainment--on the Chautaqua circuit, in the Medieval university. For years, teachers have been taught that lectures are boring. They are -- only if you do not know how to lecture.
Each prospective TED speaker is send these ten "TED Commandments." A decent guide for any lecturer. This is how to make a lecture interesting.
Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out thy Usual Shtick
Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wondrous New Thing, Or Share Something Thou Hast Never Shared Before
Thou Shalt Reveal thy Curiosity and Thy Passion
Thou Shalt Tell a Story
Thou Shalt Freely Comment on the Utterances of Other Speakers for the Skae of Blessed Connection and Exquisite Controversy
Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be Thou Vulnerable. Speak of thy Failure as well as thy Success.
Thou Shalt Not Sell from the Stage: Neither thy Company, thy Goods, thy Writings, nor thy Desparate need for Funding; Lest Thou be Cast Aside into Outer Darkness.
Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Laughter is Good.
Thou Shalt Not Read thy Speech.
Thou Shalt Not Steal the Time of Them that Follow Thee
CBC’s The National last evening reported that two “church service organizers” in Calgary were arrested for violating lockdown orders. Global News reports the same.
“Church service organizer”? Why the awkward phrase, instead of the standard term, “pastor”?
Perhaps because the two were not ordained by any recognized large Christian denomination?
This is not required. Merriam-Webster defines “pastor” simply as “a spiritual overseer.” The Oxford English Dictionary has “A person who has the spiritual care of a body of Christians.” “Pastor” is the correct term here.
We are at the point, in Canada, in America, in the UK, perhaps across the Western World, at which telling the truth is a dangerous, subversive, brave, even revolutionary act.
But it is essential to keep telling the truth, whatever the consequences. Truth is of ultimate value. If we stop telling the truth, we have invalidated our very existence. Solzhenitsyn said, of the old Soviet Union, that if one day one man woke up determined to say nothing but the truth, the entire enterprise would have collapsed.
That’s where we are.
The obvious example is the one which brought Jordan Peterson to fame: that men are not women. We are now under tremendous pressure on this particular issue. We are not allowed to be neutral: we must endorse the view that men are women.
The second obvious example, in Canada, is the residential schools. We are not allowed to suggest that they were a good thing. Although we are obliged to agree that education is a good thing in all other cumstances.
But why these issue in particular? Of the infinite number of possible lies that can be told, why is all the electrical charge on these particular things?
If, after all, a real woman were addressed as “sir,” or “bro,” would she take great offense? Would this be considered a slur? That trans people do consider it so is a tacit admission that they are lying, and they know they are.
No—the issue is not “misgendering.” It is that one must explicitly endorse the premise that others have the right to lie, and further endorse the premise that those who lie have a right to silence those who seek truth.
A second clue is that this aggressive insistence on lying is focused on sex, and not, say, race, height, age, or weight. One is required to accept and vocally agree if a man says he is a woman; one is not required to accept and agree, at least not yet, if Rachel Dolezal says she is African, or if Elizabeth Warren says she is Indian, or if some sixteen-year-old insists she is eighteen.
That seems to suggest that the underlying truth people want to deny is sexual.
The second prominent aggressive lie is about Canada’s “First Nations.” It may not be so clear that this, too, is about sex; but it is. To our primitive minds, aboriginal culture is all about the absence of supposedly oppressive sexual mores. Accordingly, nothing bad must ever be spoken about aboriginal culture. To do so would be to criticize unrestricted sex.
We make much of missing and murdered aboriginal women. The cause is no mystery; but nobody is allowed to say it. These young girls were either abandoned, or forced to escape, by their birth families. A lack of sexual mores was the obvious problem. We are being forced to very publicly declare it was not.
If aboriginal culture represents unrestricted sex, the residential schools represent the opposite. Because they were run by the churches, their primary intent, in the popular mind, has to have been to impose sexual morality. Or, using the standard euphemism, “erasing native culture.”
Our culture is going totalitarian and decadent, is actually prepared to destroy itself, in order to preserve sexual libertinage.
You, gentle reader, may be reacting badly to my bringing up sexual morality. Isn’t this “puritanism”? Isn’t it all nonsense and foolish inhibition? After all, who is harmed by a supposed sexual sin? Who’s the victim?
The first and obvious answer is, the children. Sex is obviously designed, by God or by nature, for conceiving children. Engage in it randomly, and children are entirely liable to pop up.
The initial premise behind the “sexual revolution” was that, with the new birth control pill, this connection had been broken, and we were now liberated to engage in recreational sex.
That might have worked were birth control one hundred percent effective; but it is not. So free and unrestricted abortion became a thing: mass murder. And we are feeling deeply guilty, and in denial, about that.
But even aside from that, it is callous to suppose there is no victim. Recreational sex necessarily involves viewing another human being as a mere means for physical pleasure. Like we view a steak or a beer. On the unhappy chance that a given sex partner does not see themselves the same way, as a mere slab of meat, and does not see you the same way, as a slab of meat, you are hurting them emotionally, possibly gravely. Emotional blows are at least as cruel as physical blows, and can leave scars at least as deep.
Xerxes has seen an art exhibit on the theme of the nuclear age. He left angered, he reports, at Canada’s “complicity.” Canada; after all, was a participant in the Manhattan Project, The uranium used in the first bombs was mined in Canada, and refined in Canada.
But was unleashing the genie of nuclear power on balance a bad thing? This is far from self-evident, and an interesting question.
For example, when Canada joined in the Manhattan Project, circa 1942, there was good reason to believe that getting to the bomb first would be the difference between ending Nazism and surrendering the world to it--should they have gotten there first. Should any Canadian feel guilt? I think pride is more appropriate.
Today, many are concerned about global warming—even seeing it as some world-ending threat. Nuclear power is our best option to reduce greenhouse gases. Aside from being more practical, it is less harmful to the environment than any alternative. There is something to be said for cheap, clean, essentially unlimited power.
Of course, there is a risk of nasty accidents; that is an engineering challenge. Fire is risky in a similar way, but we have not refused to use it.
Then there is the horror of nuclear war. But even this, since 1945, has been only a theoretical danger. That’s a pretty good safety record in itself. It may be that the concept of “mutually assured destruction” was right: once both sides have nuclear weapons, there is essentially no chance of any high-intensity conflict. It would be suicidal, including for the leader who initiated it. In the first half of the last century, we had two devastating “world wars.” Right up to the invention of the bomb, it looked as though “total war” was going to become a permanent and escalating feature of our existence; the sides were already drawn up for the next big one. This is what Orwell predicted in 1984. It looks as though the bomb ended all that with an exclamation point.
Someday, someone in authority might make a miscalculation, or just not care anymore, and unspeakable devastation might result. But it seems possible that the bomb has been preventing unspeakable devastation for seventy years or so, and counting. That perhaps should be weighed in the balance.
I am pleased to see that some farmers in the US are filing
suit against the federal government for racial discrimination.
The problem is worse in Canada. The Trudeau government is blatantly
setting tax funds aside for female-run and black-run businesses.
Unfortunately, while racial and sexual discrimination is
ultimately illegal in the US, it is legal in Canada. The Canadian Constitution
has a carve-out:
“Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or
activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged
individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of
race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or
physical disability.”
As well as a separate carve-out for “aboriginal people.”
Any government can therefore discriminate against any group
so long as they declare their intent to be to balance out some supposed
advantage.
Hitler insisted that ethnic Germans were disadvantaged by the Jews in 1930s Germany. Mussolini insisted that Italians
were disadvantaged as a nation in the 1920s. Jim Crow began in the US South
because white Southerners saw themselves as disadvantaged by the North.
Odd that I had forgotten about “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” An eccentric friend just posted a belated review on his website; I’m grateful for the reminder of something that was once very important to me. When I applied to take a film course back at Queen’s, I cited it as one of my three favourite movies; the other two were “Bonnie and Clyde” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
The best thing about it was of course the dialogue. I love me that snappy dialogue. I also find the classical unities compelling, here as in “High Noon,” or “Culloden.” That is, events in the movie take place in real time, centre around the same action, and do not jump (rather than move) to another place. This gives an immediacy, like watching news live as it happens.
I also think the acting was a tour de force, by Burton, Taylor, and Dennis. Especially Dennis.
I have actually met the stage manager for the original run of the play on Broadway. He scoffed at the movie, on the grounds that Taylor was miscast and just did not have the talent to hold up her end as Martha. A cheeky claim, considering that she won a Best Actress Oscar for the role. I think she went all out to prove she was more than just a pretty face, and she succeeded. I suspect my acquaintance just resented the greater fame of the movie version, with which he had no association. “You haven’t really seen it done right if you haven’t seen my version.” Burton is always compelling to watch, and is ideally cast as a history professor.
Although it was Mike Nichols’ directorial debut, I am amazed by his framing. Especially when George goes for the gun; that plays a lot like Hitchcock, the way Nichols uses depth of field to show different things happening in the foreground and background, the swinging light, the gun as it is revealed from under an old carpet, the living room seen from George’s perspective returning, the reaction shots, Martha’s face in closeup. And I think Nichols uses this to make us think we are about to see a Hitchcockian turn, an actual murder. Damn fine.
Watching it all again now, the one thing that doesn’t work for me—is really the most important thing of all. The ending. The problem is, you cannot kill an imaginary character. George and Martha are not facing the cold light of dawn; mourning someone who never really existed is just continuing the fantasy. And logically, since it is a story, and utter improbabilities have already been allowed, and breaking of all conceivable rules, it would be perfectly easy for either George or Martha to declare that the report of Sonny Jim’s death was, after all, mistaken.
Perhaps that was supposed to be the point, that there is no way out for them or for us, that there is no reality, only stories, that Godot does not come.
But if so, if everything is fantasy, why get so worked up in the first place? Why all the drama? Why not Buddhist detachment? One is left feeling cheated. It seems to me there really has to be a hard reality, something worth concealing. But in the movie or the play, we do not get to see what it is. It cannot be the death of an imaginary son, and it cannot be something so pedestrian as not having been able to have children.
I think Martha and Honey are very powerful portraits of two types of narcissism. George and Nick act out two roles family members take to try to cope with narcissism. This is, I think, what really most hooked me on the movie back in the day. I remember having seen it at least three times by second-year Queen’s; no small thing back before VHS or the Internet. Having grown up in a dysfunctional family, I recognized these people, knew them well, and the chaos they brought with them. It felt liberating to see it all portrayed on a big screen for the world to see.
And yet, in the end, we do not see where this all comes from, or how it ends.
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