The Round-the-World Railway

There is nothing new under the sun.

China has recently been talking about funding a railway running across the Bering Strait, connecting Beijing to New York. Sounds like crazy science fiction.

I discovered this map in a 1905 issue of the American Review of Reviews. At that time, a Frenchman had the same plan. Or not quite the same plan. Then, it was to connect with the Trans-Siberian, Russia being the rising power then that China is now, for a run from New York to Moscow.

Who knows? It might have been running long before now, if World War I had not knocked everything into a steel helmet.

Sometimes I wonder if that war, and its sequel, did not set us all back a hundred years or more.

Such a railway seems to have obvious benefits to Canada, opening up commerce along a line running from the Yukon through Alberta. Maybe the Canadian government should talk to this French guy.

A job for Elon Musk?

"Islamophobia" and the Left

Hope and Change?

It’s all starting to make me dizzy. Back before 9/11, I was often getting emails from feminists demanding that the US invade Afghanistan, in defense of women’s rights. I lived for some years in Saudi Arabia, and kept reading articles objecting to the Kingdom’s lack of appreciation for women’s rights. The hijab was oppression by the patriarchy. Yet now, quite suddenly, feminists and the left generally are all in support of Islam. A poster shown prominently during the recent women’s march on Washington showed a woman in a hijab painted as the American flag. The leader of that march, I hear, was Muslim, and the assembled throngs listened to a Muslim call to prayer. Bill Maher has now been banned from speaking at Berkeley because he has publicly criticised Islam. Poor fellow, still bitterly clinging to a few tawdry principles, if misguided, has gotten him caught in the whiplash.

It is all very Orwellian—Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been allied with Eurasia.

The hostility to Islam was always misguided. But one wonders: does the left actually have any principles? What are they? It is just really hard to see any coherent philosophy behind all this. And it is harder to see how anyone with any actual principles could remain allied long with the left.

The left is of course supposed to be all in favour of women’s rights. Yet this is not the first time they seem to have gone directly against this. They loved and love Bill Clinton, whose actions towards women would seem to be criminal had anyone else but Clinton done them. Yet voting Trump instead of Clinton’s wife last election was “misogyny.” Granted, it was Mr. Clinton and not Mrs. who behaved so badly, but she always backed him and defended him against the charges of the claimed victims. The left is adamant about the need to allow men into women’s public toilets at will, a measure that seems very much against the best interests of women and girls. The left is vitriolic in its attacks on any woman identified with the right: Ivanka Trump, Melania Trump, Sarah Palin, Betsy DeVos.

The left is of course supposed to be all in favour of black people (“African-Americans” in the US). Yet it was more passionate about opposing Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education than any other Trump cabinet appointment, because she backed charter schools and vouchers. She actually now needs a police escort wherever she goes. The primary beneficiaries of charter schools and vouchers are poor black families.

The left is supposed to be all in favour of the working class. Yet their fierce opposition to enforcing the laws on immigration directly harms the American working class. It drives down and keeps down the price of low-skilled labour.

Trump is supposed to be intolerably anti-gay. Yet he has long supported gay marriage. When he became president, Barack Obama publicly opposed it, as did Hillary Clinton at the time. Yet they are supposed to be heroes to the gay community.

And what about Jews? The left is currently making a big cause celébre about one attendee at Ezra Levant’s recent Toronto rally supposedly making a Nazi salute. Yet Levant himself is Jewish. They insist that Trump and Steve Bannon are “anti-semitic.” Yet Trump’s daughter is a Jewish convert, and Bannon’s Breitbart is consistently pro-Israel. Was Obama? Meanwhile, a McGill student who called on all to physically assault “Zionists” is getting widespread support on the left.

One might almost begin to suspect the left has no principles.

Can the same charge be laid against the right? I don’t think so. True, Trump’s policies do not correspond to some longstanding right-wing views: he is anti-free-trade, and the right has for some time been pro-free-trade. He is sympathetic to Russia, and most on the right have seen Russia as America’s main geopolitical rival.

But this seems to me quite different: it is a case of Trump going against the right-wing mainstream, not the right-wing mainstream changing its views.

So what is left, as a general principle, behind the left wing? I think it has to be laid down to sheer class interest. That class being the professional class. Whatever is best for the professions, is the left-wing position: whatever is good for teachers, college professors, lawyers, doctors, social workers, bureaucrats. Everything else, it seems, is a con job, for those interest groups who can be suckered. Or, put more kindly, these are client groups that the left promises to take care of, in return for keeping them in power.

But the left has no special allegiance to any of these client groups. Whoever will sign on, gets a nose to the trough.

The Fashion News

Blue? Please. NOBODY wears blue to an inauguration.

Here’s a truly demented piece from the National Post. It is all about what various women were wearing when their husbands were addressing the press in the wake of some scandal.

A striking milestone in the history of trivial thought, surely setting feminism back a few centuries. Who cares about politics? It’s much more interesting to see what colour of dress his wife was wearing…

Its closing is a recommendation that women throw more “hissy fits.”

You go, girl.

Female Privilege

This post recently came to me on Facebook.

“A feminist is a woman, man, or person who furthers the cause of other women. If you only care about yourself, if you expect other women to support you, but do not support other women in action, you are a narcissist, an opportunist, and selfish. No woman represents all women. If you dismiss the struggles and achievements of other women who paved the way for you to own and raise your voice, you have no sense of solidarity or history.”

Note that this expressly calls on everyone to privilege women. Women both have privilege, and demand privilege. But men are condemned for it.

The Post in Which I Apparently Deny the Holocaust

One complaint going around against Trump is that he did not mention the Jews in his official message on Holocaust Memorial Day. This has even been called “Holocaust denial.”

But this is why Trump was elected: no special interest politics. No preference for one group over another. No racism, in short.

If he had mentioned the Jews, to be fair, unless the point was to give them some special privilege over others, he should have also mentioned the Roma (gypsies), and the Freemasons, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Poles, and the Serbs, and the disabled, … It might, indeed, have been a useful reminder to have done so. I fear much of the current controversy is based on an ignorant belief that the Holocaust targeted only Jews.

But it is hard to do this kind of a list without inadvertently leaving someone out. And without distracting from the main point. Should one mention the various specific political persuasions murdered? The gays? But then there is controversy: some top Nazis were gay. Being gay was illegal before the Nazis showed up. Some say the gay law was applied only to political opponents. So was it gays who were targeted, or political opponents? It all becomes a tangle.

The only intelligent and fair thing is to lament and commemorate the deaths of all who were persecuted by the Nazis, without any special consideration for any one group of victims. All lives matter. Even if Jews were the single largest group.

Calling this “Holocaust Denial” makes it hard for any decent and moral person not to deny the Holocaust.

Is that the plan?

The Quebec Mosque Shooting

There’s been a lot of controversy and doubt about the mosque shooting in Quebec. Because the early reporting was botched. Or not really botched—it is par for the course that first reports are often wrong. But the atmosphere is overheated right now.

The right suspects, or wants to believe, Islamism and immigration was involved, and that the authorities are whitewashing it out. What about the early eyewitness reports that there were several gunmen, shouting “Allahu Akhbar”? Why have we not seen the closed circuit coverage?

The left, on the other hand, are pushing hard the idea that it was the work of a “far-right” “white supremacist” “Christian” killer. They are accusing Fox News, in turn, of false news for reporting one of the suspects was a Moroccan immigrant named Mohammed.

Here’s what I think really happened. I’m guessing, sure, but fog of war is a better explanation to me than conspiracy. There was just one shooter. The idea there was two may have been because he left and returned with a new gun. He might have yelled “Allahu Akhbar.” Everyone knows the phrase: he could have meant it sarcastically.

But Bissonnette was not a white supremacist or far right or a militant Christian. It was not about Donald Trump.

It was a Quebec thing. Bissonnette may have “liked” Trump on Facebook, lots of people do. He also “liked” John McCain, Jack Layton, the NDP, and the PQ. That just about covers the spectrum, politically. Quebec society is xenophobic, and has been xenophobic for centuries. That’s how they have survived as a Francophone society: by shutting all the windows. The Francophone majority see themselves as an oppressed group with historical grievances--”les negres blancs”--and so entitled to resent outsiders.

Nothing right wing about this. This nationalism has been, more often, associated with left-wing politics there. They are hostile to immigrants. Immigrants are not “pure laine.” They refuse to vote for separatism, want to teach their kids English. Big flare up only a couple of years ago with the PQ’s “Quebec Charter of Values.”

It all shows where such sentiments might lead. It might be a cautionary tale against “whites” or “Christians” as a group taking the same attitude. But it is not an example of it.

In the end, it still seems as though “whites” or “Christians” are still the one group not acting out in this way. To their great credit.

Belated, But in Honour of Mary Tyler Moore's Recent Death

Funny

Who are the greatest English-language humourists of all time?

A matter of taste. But here’s mine.

Jonathan Swift: the greatest satirist. Not just “A Modest Proposal,” maybe the greatest essay in English, but also Gulliver’s Travels. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but in the grand tradition of satire: you do not know he’s cut off your head until the next time you go to bow.

Stephen Leacock. Humour often does not wear well—mostly because it depends on the element of surprise. But Leacock wears as well as he ever did. I loved him as a kid, and read everything then. I reread some a few years ago, and it was still as good. “He flung himself on his horse and rode madly off in all directions.” He made people funny yet never stooped to making anyone a pure object of fun. As comedy traditionally does, with its grotesques. Nothing cruel, no painting anyone as only a buffoon. His characters were never two-dimensional humours; you always sympathized with them.

Buster Keaton. Overshadowed in his day by Chaplin, and even Harold Lloyd. But he has better stood the test of time. Chaplin was sometimes guilty of special pleading, of jerking tears. Keaton was Gibraltar in his integrity. If the joke did not work on its own, it did not get any help. There was a purity to it, an almost mathematical quality.

Jack Benny. I have only in lengthening years fully appreciated the greatness of his art. He could take a line that would not be funny if anyone else said it, a line that had no visible punch line, and make you laugh, just about for as long as he wanted. He could say “Well,” and it was screamingly funny. And without any obvious mugging or broad gestures. He was the master of timing. He was the master of minimalism.

It is harder to judge more recent humourists; we cannot yet tell how they will wear. Among the ultimate greats may be Bob Newhart, Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, Michael Myers, John Belushi. More recent than that, it gets even trickier.

Overrated: Groucho Marx. Too easy to imitate, and he got his shtick in the first place from George S. Kaufman. Often not funny so much as obnoxious. Anyone can be obnoxious.

Mark Twain. Tiresomely predictable in his cynicism.

Mel Brooks. Too desperate for a laugh.

Lucille Ball. I could never watch her as a kid. I did not find it funny to constantly see someone messing up. It required an utter lack of sympathy with the character.

A True Canadian Icon

... for fellow ex-Montrealers.

Personal Identity and Peace

That little dickens Pope Francis is at it again, twittering and tweeting.

It occurs to me that Francis, unlike Trump, probably does not write his own tweets. Certainly not in English. Still, I wish someone would confiscate the smartphone.

Here’s the latest:

So what does it mean? How do you “violate” someone in their “personal identity”? By forgetting their name?
Given the pronouns “his” and “her,” I hope he means not calling women women, or men, men. Would that be too much to hope?

But there are a lot of other possibilities, and just about all of them are problems for Catholic theology.

More fundamentally, it is bad practice to stress the notion of “personal identity.” It ought not to be all about me. Nor about the silly roles society assigns us. There is, after all, no man or woman, no Jew nor Greek, nor Samaritan, in Christ.

We are children of God, brothers and sisters, and it is our unity which ought to be emphasized.

Whatever he meant, it is unhelpful to sow woodland herrings in this way.

Les Neiges d'Autrefois

The Real Problem

Just got unfriended again on Facebook. Not that it bothers me. It ought to be considered a badge of honour. The shameful thing is unfriending, not being unfriended. And, again, by a left-leaning woman. This happens a lot. Is it just me?

No, it isn’t. Apparently, thirty percent of self-identified Democratic women in the US have unfriended someone on Facebook over their political views. For comparison, it’s only eight percent of Republican women, and ten percent of Republican men.

This is an excellent measure of who has the better arguments.

What does the typical person do when they lose an argument badly? Of course, they feel shame. Of course, it is not a good feeling. Properly, they should be good sports about it, and concede. But almost nobody does, do they? Because it feels bad, they begin to shun the other person. Or, two, if they are less principled or self-aware, they lash out. They get insulting, or even throw a punch.

That is just what we are seeing right now, isn’t it, on the US national stage? Have you been watching the reactions on the left to the election of Trump?

Note, too, that it is especially left-leaning women. Only fourteen percent of Democratic men unfriended over politics, in our survey; the figures for Republican men and women, while lower, were about the same.

This suggests clearly the specific issue on which the left has no good arguments. I leave it to you to fill in the blank.

The current hysteria over Trump’s presidency is a pretty open if unintended admission that, on the issues Trump ran on, the left knows it has lost the argument.

And note that the first wave of assault was a “women’s march.” And it wasn’t really a “womens march.” That march banned—unfriended--pro-life women. It was left-wing women, and their hysteria was really over one specific issue.

Trump, of course, did not just run against abortion. He ran against political correctness. But again, that’s what political correctness was all along. It was about trying to avoid the argument: by creating large swathes of things you were not allowed to say. Restricting debate to avoid the dangerous argument.

He ran against the media. But again, that is what the “media bias” was all about. It was the left seeking to avoid the argument they knew they could not win. So they refused to hear or report any opposing points of view. They were walking away from the argument.

Now they can’t do it any longer, cannot just shun, because Trump is in the White House and has access to Twitter. So do all the dissenting views. Hence the hysterical ad hominems. Trump’s a racist, a misogynist, his face is too orange, it’s a toupee, his son is a school shooter, his wife is being held captive, and on and on. His voters are despicable.

Not edifying, but human nature.

The good news is, all it should take is to end this one issue, and the current culture wars should be over. Short, I hope, of a Civil War, as was ultimately needed for slavery.

Overturn Roe v. Wade.

White Male Privilege

Let’s talk about white male privilege. We all know its an awful thing, but there is a question that obviously needs to be asked. Where does it come from? Who, exactly, is privileging white males?

It's not blacks, is it? It’s not people of colour. That seems unlikely. In fact, didn’t blacks vote for Obama, himself black, in unprecedented numbers—93% in 2012, 95% in 2008? Don’t they tend to call other blacks “brothers”? Doesn’t this imply that they are favouring other blacks?

Suppose they really are privileging whites. Then they need to be alerted. There is no need to tell white males to “check your privilege.” Wrong audience.

Is it women who are privileging white males? Like blacks, feminist women who endorse the idea of male privilege, tend to address one another as “sister,” and speak of solidarity. They call women who did not vote for Hillary Clinton “traitors.”

So, is the concept of white male privilege merely a complaint that white males prefer and favour other white males—in the same way blacks are urged to favour other blacks, and women other women?

Granted that this is a bad thing, how can it be only bad if white males do it, but righteous if anyone else does it?

Is it because white males are powerful, and these other groups are not? But that seems tautological: how then did white males become “powerful”? If it was, in turn, because they were “privileged” by someone, who privileged them? And if this prior group had the power to “privilege” someone, where did that come from? Infinite regression? 

But if they once were not powerful, and became so by the systematic privileging of one another, isn't that just what blacks and women are calling on each other to do? 

So why shouldn't the white males do the same?

You might say it is because white men are a majority. Others mentioned are “visible minorities.”

Except they are not. Women are an absolute majority. White males make up about 30% of the US population. If this is the determining factor, the problem to address is female privilege, not white male privilege.

I think it is true that white males have, historically, done well. Science, liberal democracy, material progress, literature, the arts, that sort of thing. But is that “privilege”?

Or envy?

Isn’t the problem the same the issue of Jewish “privilege” in Germany? Why is it that Jews seem to run all the big stores, dominate the banks, the professions and universities, seem so often rich?

They have obviously been privileged. Perhaps by the Nazi government?

Compassion and Conservatism

Burke

One of the most annoying traits of the left is to consider themselves compassionate; while the right is supposedly stern and cruel. This is a level of hypocrisy that would make a Biblical Pharisee choke on his dinner.

And many on the right are stupid enough to buy into it. As when George Bush the younger called for “Compassionate conservatism,” or when Romney described his record as “severely conservative.”

One leftish Facebook friend recently asked me, “How can you, a Christian, support Trump?” I did not, mind, support Trump; she was assuming this, perhaps from the fact that I was a professed Christian. She, of course, was not.

If I thought this were true, that left-wing policies were compassionate, and right-wing policies were a matter of sticking it to the poor and vulnerable, I’d be a left-winger. But the whole notion is based on a Marxist fantasy, an inverted idea that free markets promote greed, while a government intervention is a corrective to this.

This is the opposite of the truth. The whole point of a free market is that it prevents greed and selfishness. Try to ask for more than your product is really worth, and you go bankrupt. Try to take out more profit than you’ve earned, and you go bankrupt. Granted, there are distortions. But the solution to such distortions is to end them, not to add them.

And with a free market, if there is misconduct, if there is oppression, the remedy is immediate: you stop buying the product. You stop working for the company. You pull out your investment. You cannot do this with government. At best, you get input about every four years, it is just up or down for everything, and you have to hope a majority of your countrymen agree with you.

On the most important issues, it seems to me consistently the left that acts selfishly and is prepared to screw the less fortunate.

Abortion is the most obvious. Who is more vulnerable and in more need of society’s help? Abortion is now the worst holocaust, the greatest mass murder, the world has ever seen, and it is happening now. How can anyone on the left think that anyone on the right could, in conscience, vote for the left, now that they demand abortion paid for by government, on demand, and without apology? And ban from their ranks anyone who disagrees? Is it okay because the left does not see the unborn as human? Was killing the Jews okay because the Nazis did not see them as human?

School choice is also an obvious marker. This would, of course, be most valuable to the poor; the rich can already send their kids to the schools they want. I note with knowing horror that of all Trump’s cabinet choices, the left is most opposed to Betsy DeVos, the advocate of charter schools. When it comes down to what is most important to them themselves, screwing the poor is top of the agenda. Failing schools are the surest way to keep down rising generations. Note that these wealthy liberals almost always send their own kids to private schools. Guaranteeing their class privilege.

This probably explains their opposition to the free market. It allows a poor person or poor family to work their way into the upper class. Mired, of course, with all the filth of trade. The poor are supposed to stay poor. Welfare does that. The rich are not supposed to have to compete with the hoi polloi.

Trade protectionism. Trump is a protectionist, but the right in general is not; the left have been the protectionists over the last few decades, certainly in Canada. While protectionism might be good for some local workers, it is necessarily always at the expense of poorer workers abroad. And even at home, what is gained by some workers is at the expense of poorer people on fixed incomes or without work, whose cost of living must go up.

Minimum wage laws: these benefit those who keep jobs against those, necessarily poorer, who now cannot get jobs. The haves are given at the expense of the have-nots. Most hurt are the young, looking for their first job. Simple truth: if I want to work for X money, and you want my work for that amount, we both have an absolute human right to make that deal. Prohibit it, and I starve while you do without.

Burke parodied for wanting rights for Catholics. "Driven back to his native potatoes."

All of this is aside from a social safety net. There may be crazies on the right who oppose a social safety net, but this is certainly not the conservative tradition. The fundamental concept of Burkean conservatism is that society has responsibilities to its weakest members. More recently, classic liberalism has also been labelled “conservative,” but when did classic liberalism, either, involve or advocate failing to provide for the poor? (I consider myself a liberal, not a conservative.) The debate here between left and right is on how to do this most fairly, efficiently, and respectfully. All else is straw.

And the difference is, first, the left wants the bulk of the money to go to well-off bureaucrats, instead of to the poor. Second, the left sees poverty as a permanent state that should be permanent, while the right wants the poor to become, if possible, better off.

The Inaugural Crowd

View from the podium

I don’t get it. I seem to be the only person who thinks Sean Spicer’s berating of the White House Press Corps on Saturday was reasonable. Even Andrew Coyne and Charles Krauthammer are accusing him of straight lying on the numbers in attendance at the Trump Inauguration. CNN and seemingly everyone else are grabbing at Kellyanne Conway’s reference to “alternate facts” as a denial of the facts.

Seems like bollocks to me.

Spicer, contrary to what just about everyone is saying, did not make any specific claims about how many people were there. His stated point was that nobody knew. Accordingly, it was dishonest of the press to all be reporting that the turnout was small. They could not know. He was perfectly right, surely.

He was also obviously right to say that more people viewed the Trump Inauguration than any other in history. Has everyone forgotten the Internet? I, for example, was watching live on Facebook from the Philippines. That would not have been possible even four years ago. What Spicer said was true, and everyone else is being willfully stupid.

He went on to claim that the National Mall was packed right back to the Washington Monument at the moment of swearing in. Everybody and his dog have now published photos showing instead that crowds were sparse. Okay, but when? That, from the pictures, we cannot tell.

On the other hand, here is a picture we can time precisely: Trump’s hand is up, apparently taking the oath of office. This is the moment Spicer referred to. And, from the viewpoint of the podium, it sure does indeed look like the crowds are solid all the way back to the Washington Monument. We report, you decide.

Just possibly our lying eyes are deceiving us, and we ought instead to trust the press’s word. But if so, we have every reason to assume that Trump’s and Spicer’s eyes showed the same bizarre optical illusion that the camera catches. So, at a minimum, if wrong, they were objecting in good faith. And, even if wrong, Spicer’s main point was perfectly valid: why did the press feature photos making the crowd look sparse, instead of this obvious and more natural perspective that made it look large?

The press everywhere goes on to blame Trump for some weird obsession about crowd size. This is painfully disingenuous. It is the press who raised the issue, in the first place, and it is the press that will not now let it go, weirdly obsessing about crowd size, ignoring everything else Spicer said in the press briefing. Including an important other example of press bias, and one easily proven, regarding the presence of a bust of Martin Luther King in the Oval Office. It’s almost as if they are trying to distract attention from that.

And they are accusing Conway of rejecting facts when this was expressly the opposite of what she actually said. She said Spicer offered “alternative facts.” In what alternative universe does that mean that she is denying facts matter?

I never supported Trump during the primaries. I have always thought of him as a bull in a China shop. But, seeing the utter dishonesty, violence, prejudice, meanness, and hysteria of the folks everywhere ranged against him, it really forces me to believe something is very wrong here, and an angry bull was needed.

As Confucius observed, more or less, the best measure of a man is to have a look at his enemies.

Albums of My Teenhood

Someone on Facebook has a chain letter-chain posting going in which folks are supposed to list the albums that were important to them as a teenager.

Okay, for what it’s worth, here are mine.

Lightfoot! His first, and still his best, album. With great bass by Bill Lee. I was a bassist.

Songs of Leonard Cohen Hit me where I lived. I lived a couple of blocks away from Cohen’s boyhood home, and took the same route home from school. He was a local boy. Introduced to Cohen by Nick Economides, who was older and whom I looked up to for his sophistication.

Songs from a Room. Neither this nor his first are his best albums. But these are the ones from my teenage years. "Nancy," "Tonight Will Be Fine." I remember listening to "A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes" on the porch with Violet Birch.

Birds, Fifth Dimension. One of the first three albums I bought, in a batch. It wore better than the others. Bought all the Byrds albums following it too. Tempted to put some others on the list. They were probably better albums, but as my first exposure, 5D is the one that influenced me the most.

Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited. First got to know it because a neighbourhood kid, Bob White, held dances where he used to play it. The strategy, all the guys knew, was to ask your favourite girl for “Desolation Row” for a long slow dance where you got to hold her close. Then I started listening to the lyrics. Trying to dance to Dylan was ridiculous. "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry," was my favourite for a long time.

Bringing it All Back Home. I bought it after Highway 61. Almost as good.

Blonde on Blonde. It was a disappointment at first. But it grew and grew on me.

Peter Paul and Mary, See What Tomorrow Brings. A lot of great songs. Among other things, the album I listened to after my first real girlfriend broke up with me. My sister and I learned to sing harmony on Betty and Dupree.

Joni Mitchell, Blue, Not my album. My brother was the bigger Joni Mitchell fan. But this one was relly great. Humming “Carey” was the only thing that got me through one summer working in a plastics factory. But “River” and “All I Want” were even better.

Planxty. Bought when I was living in Ottawa. Perhaps the greatest album ever recorded by anyone.

Steeleye Span Please to See the King, Picked up second hand in a bargain bin. Yow!

The Band Music from Big Pink. Another album that seemed to change everything.

Moby Grape. Tipped off on this one by Hit Parader magazine—a great publication. Crazy good.

Rolling Stones, High Tide and Green Grass. Not my album. Was playing in a kid rock and roll band, and a couple of my bandmates were crazy about the Stones. I think Louis Lapierre owned the album. Did not especially like the music then—it was just the most fun to play on stage. But it has grown on me ever since. The Stones get better and better with time.

Ian and Sylvia Four Strong Winds. I love all their stuff, but this I think was where I came in. I cannot ever get “V’la le Bon Vent” out of my mind. Nor would I ever want to. Let alone the title track. Or “Royal Canal,” which oddly always reminds me of Kingston, with the canal and the penitentiary.

Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed and Beggar's Banquet.  These were like the soundtrack to Inscape, the Catholic teenagers' drop-in in Gananoque, the brainchild of Father Ed Shea. "Gimme Shelter."

Cheap Public Transit

China is becoming the frontier of capitalism. Here's a great idea for really cheap public transit in the downtowns of cities, and it is all done by private business. Why not?

Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus to Close Down

Time perhaps to rerun an old column. Because it deal with what largely is responsible for the death of this institution.

A Shrine to Childhood under Attack

Change.org is circulating a petition on the Internet asking the Kingston Memorial Centre to refuse the Shrine Circus use of their facilities. The Shriners' offense is including trained animals in their show. “The circus is a cruel and heartbreaking place for the innocent animals who are forced to perform multiple times a day and are dragged from city to city, year after year.”

Sounds awful. What a hellish existence. Travel. Everyone looking at you perform and applauding. I'm sure no kid every dreamt of the nightmarish life of running off with the circus.

Besides the horses ridden by the Kambarov Cossacks, the only animals performing in the Shrine Circus, so far as I can tell from the playbill, are the Zerbini elephants. No lion tamer. No cute tiny dog acts. No ponies trotting in a ring, with a woman standing on their backs. It looks as though the Shriners have already taken a hit on this matter, and many of the traditional circus acts are no longer attempted. More modern circuses, like the Cirque de Soleil, no longer include them at all. I recall attending one circus with my son in Kamloops when he was tiny. All the animal acts were pulled, because a local ordinance made them illegal. It was a sad affair.

This is a grinch-worthy assault on childhood. It is all very well to be a social justice warrior. It is less well when it costs you nothing, when you are putting all the burden on other people, and yourself sacrificing nothing. But it is another thing entirely when you are robbing children. Kids love animals. The circus is one of the great halls of the empire of childhood. As e.e. cummings once said, “Damn everything but the circus.”

The real problem here is, as the puritans used to worry, that someone, somewhere, might be having fun. To begin with, are animals in captivity worse off than in the wild? It seems unlikely. In captivity, they are protected from predators; they are fed regularly. They die of old age. Someone has estimated that a feral cat, for exampkle, has an average life expectancy of two weeks. More than likely, if these animals did not have a job waiting in some circus, they would not even have been born.

Do animals dislike performing? Does it make them suffer? At most, the Kingston Vegetarian Network, initiators of the petition, cannot know this is so. Anyone who has actually owned an intelligent animal—a collie, say—will probably at least suspect that at least some of them love performing. Elephants are certainly such animals, uncannily smart and accustomed to domestication.

When the film “Free Willy” was finished, there was much concern over the eventual fate of its animal str, Keiko the killer whale. Millions of dollars were spent trying to reintegrate him into the wild. He was given supervises swimming sessions. He was airlifted to a killer whale habitat. It did not work. He never joined a whale pod. Years later, he was spotted in Skalvik Fjord in Norway, offering rides to local children.

Millions that might have been spent on, say, starving children, and all it bought was a life of loneliness.

Keiko. Bit then, if you've seen one killer whale, you've seen them all.

As Carl Jung once said, “sentimentality is the superstructure erected upon brutality.” Hitler too loved dogs. Those who feign to care about Keiko or the elephants of the Shrine Circus are not really concerned about the welfare of the animal. They are merely seeking a justification for their own haterd of their fellow man.

After all, if making animals work is unspeakably cruel, why not the same concern for humans? Are animals capable of more suffering than men? Surely, if it is immoral for animals, it is at least as immoral to expect human beings to work for their vegetarian bacon.

Then we can all go to the circus instead. To watch the performing robots.

Jesus's Teaching on Non-Violence

Pope Francis has been tweeting again. He writes:



First problem is that word “today.” It suggests that the requirements for being a follower of Jesus have changed, and even recently. That sounds like the heresy of modernism.

And what teaching is he referring to about “nonviolence”? “Nonviolence” is actually the English translation of the Sanskrit “ahimsa.” It is an ancient Indian philosophy, originating with Jainism. It is not, that is to say, a Christian doctrine. Yet Francis suggests that Christians must accept it in order to be “true” followers of Jesus.

How’s that for muddying the waters concerning Catholic teaching. And he even seems conscious of the fact that he is adding something not originally there: note the word “also.”

They pile heavy burdens on people’s shoulders and won’t lift a finger to help.-- Matthew 23:4

The Jain advocacy of “nonviolence,” originally involving not just pacifism, but vegetarianism, nudism, and not swatting at insects, was taken up by Mahatma Gandhi and used as a practical tool in the Indian independence movement. It was then adopted by Martin Luther King for the civil rights struggle in the US. This has given it a certain modern prestige. It works, in large part by claiming the moral high ground for whatever it advocates. It seems like a good thing.

But that does not make it a part of Christian teaching.

To be fair, Gandhi himself did claim he got his inspiration not solely from Jainism. He pointed to the Sermon on the Mount as seeming to him to preach something similar. But then, this was also wise strategically, in appealing to the Christian English. He also claimed to find the principle in Judaism and Islam.

Presumably he, Gandhi, refers specifically to the famous “turn the other cheek” passage:

“38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

It surely sounds like a related concept. But to call it “nonviolence” is misleading. Note the entire passage:

“40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.”

Not hitting back at one who slaps you involves renouncing violence. But not refusing your cloak, or a loan, does not. Violence or non-violence, in other words, is not the issue here. It is rather a call to return love for hate.

Compare Rosa Park’s famous action in refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus in 1955. This is the most famous single act of “non-violence,” the classic example. But does it follow Jesus’s teaching? Clearly not.

Jesus had no problem with violence as such. He refused to condemn soldiers, he advised his apostles to buy a knife, he cleared the moneychangers from the temple, he said “I come not with peace but the sword.” Violence has its place.

It is really not helpful for a pope to be promoting such confusion. I understand that Francis is not interested in theology or doctrine, that his emphasis is pastoral.

Even so: surely it is the first responsibility of a shepherd that he not lead his flock astray?

Anti-Psychiatry at OISE

Szasz

Barbara Kay and the National Post are concerned about a new scholarship at OISE for research into “anti-psychiatry.”

“Critics,” says the Post. “worry the university is endorsing an anti-scientific, anti-intellectual exercise”

“’This is a case where academic freedom should be quashed,’ Edward Shorter, a U of T professor and expert in the history of psychiatry, states bluntly.”

A neurosis, I say, on both their houses. Here again is a case where neither side seems close to the truth.

It is entirely proper to question psychiatry. If it were a real science, questioning its premises would be what it is all about. Science is not a body of unassailable dogmas: it is a method for testing any dogmas. It proves nothing; it only disproves. The essence of science—ask Francis Bacon—is taking nothing on authority, testing everything with the direct evidence of experience. Kay and the Post, like just about everyone these days, stand this basic scientific principle on its head. They claim one is “anti-science” if one is not ready to simply take the word of those identified as “scientists.” The obvious current example is “climate science.”

This is not science, but “scientism.” It is a modern religion based loosely on science, including a sacred priesthood held to be above all suspicion. It is not in touch with the real world. It is a great way for a small educated elite to get away with murder.

“To be fair to Barstow,” Kay concedes, “her distrust of psychiatry is not unfounded. For decades, psychoanalysis —often confused with psychiatry, but not a scientific discipline or necessarily premised on a prior medical degree—was wrongly regarded with near-religious awe as a panacea to humanity’s ills. Many analysts did no harm, but others exploited their prestige to promote bizarre theories and, eventually, make psychoanalysis a sidebar in the treatment of mental illness.

Psychiatry, which does require a medical degree, is another story...”

Oh well then. That makes all the difference. If someone has a medical degree, what they say must be true.

Bacon must be ralphing in his grave.

Bacon

“True disciplines spring,” Kay explains reverently, “from pure intellectual curiosity, not the pursuit of social justice. They build on collaboration with similarly engaged scholars. Fact is piled on fact, theories are debated, evidence is adduced, lively debate ensues, and eventually a body of credible knowledge is established. Real scholarship is ‘for’ truth.”

That is a pious recitation of the scientistic faith. So touchingly naive it pulls tears. It assumes anyone well-educated must be beyond base motives of any sort.

Has she never been to grad school? I only wish it were true.

But then, two wrongs do not make a right. That ought to be her argument: two wrongs do not make a right. The present scholarship implies a point of view no better than the one it challenges.

“For Burstow to claim there is ‘no proven biological basis for mental illness,’” writes Kay, “is demonstrably untrue. Countless studies have proved beyond any doubt that there is a genetic basis for all major psychiatric disorders, such as bipolar disorder and depression.”

No, Barstow is exactly right on this point. Kay is far behind the curve. Back in the early nineties or so, psychiatry was insisting that mental illness is all a matter of genetics and of “chemical imbalance,” and announcing that they were on the verge of isolating the mechanism and the gene. It was fashionable then. For one thing, it justified cheap and relatively effective chemical treatments, coming available. It suited govenments, because it promised a cheaper treatment option. Dare I mention, it suited the drug companies, who were putting a lot of money around as a result? It suited the physicians, because it offered a purely physical cause for mental illness. And none of the claims have been substantiated by further research; even as our knowledge of the human genome grows exponentially.

It is high time to plainly admit that it has all been a chase after uncivilized geese.

Psychiatry as a whole begins as a philosophical error. It is a typical academic field in this regard. The pursuit of truth? Academics has only a tangential relation to truth. Careers and entire new disciplines are usually—usually--premised on some intellectual error, even a fairly obvious one. Sooner or later, when this is revealed somehow to be so, it is in too many vested interests to deny the new information. Even the most obvious error must wait for en entire generation of professors to die off to be accepted. Obvious case in point: Marxism was pretty completely discredited by the 1950s, let alone the collapse of the East Bloc in the 1980s. Yet it continues to thrive—guess where?

Unfortunately, human lives can be in the balance. This is clearly the case with psychiatry.

Psychiatry is at base an attempt to reduce the soul (psyche) to some kind of materialistic basis. This was Freud’s agenda; it was the behaviourist agenda; it is still more the modern “chemical imbalance” agenda. This is intrinsic to the field—otherwise it is no province of “physicians.” Yet this is almost automatically slef-contradictory: it is a field that does not even recognize the real existence of its object of study. How likely is that to work? It is like a branch of zoology dedicated to the scientific study and classification of mythological creatures.

The very concept of “mental illness,” therefore, is a metaphor taken literally.

Suppose, instead, that the soul exists?

As it inarguably does. As Berkeley, among others East and West, points out, we are immediately aware of and certain of the soul’s existence. It is the existence of the physical world, of the body, that is debatable.

There is a second, disastrous fundamental error in the field. If you are going to talk about “mental health”--a metaphor, remember, not a reality, and one that may or may not be useful--what constitutes “health”?

Easy to determine in a physical system like the body, imagined as a machine. Does it work, or does it not?

But the metaphor does not work with the soul. What constitutes “working properly”? What exactly is the right functioning of the soul? How is one soul qualified to judge this of another?

Unfortunately, psychiatry has fixed on t he idea of “normalcy.” The soul is functioning correctly that functions like every other soul. The soul is fit to judge that is properly average.

This is obviously highly debatable. In fact, it disagrees sharply with all the world’s major religions. This ought to be an immediate problem in terms of any public funding.

Any of the world’s great religions would say that the average soul is spiritually lacking. So would any of the great philosophers.

Moreover, anyone of any unusual intelligence, creativity, morality, or talent is necessarily abnormal. Anyone with a new idea is abnormal. Accordingly, the basic premise of psychiatry is destructive of science itself, of human progress, of ethics, and of human freedom. Not to mention the health of the soul. All very well so long as one stays out of the gears of the psychiatric system, but deadly to anyone who is unlucky enough to get “diagnosed.”

So Barstow starts with a very good case. Inside or outside of the academy, we need an “anti-psychiatry” movement. Nor is this new. I studied at Syracuse University, home turf of the late, great Thomas Szasz. At Queen’s, I heard a visiting lecture from R.D. Laing. Has Kay not heard of them? Since when has this academic possibility to doubt psychiatry as a whole been shut down?

Unfortunately, Barstow screws it up completely, and probably boosts Kay and the psychiatrists, by saying wild things like:

“The long history of psychiatry is the long history of pathologizing women … It is also an institution that pathologizes blacks, lesbians and gays. This intersectionality analysis is readily available through an antipsychiatry lens.”

So psychiatry is okay so long as only white men are oppressed? It’s all politics? This allows Kay to point out that, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, it is clearly the male tendency that is oppressed. So no problem, then. 

McMurphy

Making it all about politics is almost as materialist as making it all about chemicals: that is just replacing Freud’s materialist pseudo-science with Marx’s “dialectical materialism.” It is just as intolerant. And it has no chance of overtaking the chemical solution, if you will pardon the pun, because it is obviously much less practical to implement.

Barstow’s stated goal is to “spur alternate ways of arranging society so that we aren’t inventing diseases.”

Rearranging society is a big project. By itself, it is ominous, it implies a loss of freedom. Instead of submitting only our most eccentric to the absolute power of some arbitrary elite, we would be submitting everyone. And, if ever possible, that is surely the long way around--a longer way around than drugging up the individual sufferer.

Yes, the world is hopelessly screwed up. But that is not news, that is not a temporary condition. Any religion will tell you: it is the inevitable human condition. So long as people are not perfect, some people will be bad to other people. And you cannot perfect human beings. In fact, you do not even have the right to try.

We must accept that fact, and find our peace within it.

The proper solution has, of course, been known for millennia: religion exists, specifically, as the real psychology. Psychiatry harms, more than anything, by blocking this necessary treatment. Marxist politics harms in the same way.