All Somalis?

The public conversation is clearly shifting. Recently I heard Trump condemn Somalis in America without bothering to add the formerly obligatory “not all Somalis.” I hear increasingly of “black fatigue,” meaning people getting tired of the constant demands and hostile attitude of blacks. A reporter and author laments that nobody trusts the word of Canadian “First Nations” any longer. That is striking, since until recently the governing principle of public discourse, absurd as it was, was that no Indian could ever tell a lie.

Not long ago, you used to have to say you supported feminism. Now I hear men complaining about Karens, modern women in general, and feminism all over the Internet.

Of course, you still hear also from the Karens, oblivious to all this. You still hear claims of white genocide against First Nations, and demands for reparations for slavery and colonialism and for simply being male or white. 

But what has happened, I think, is that the inevitable openness of the Internet, in which everyone has a printing press and a broadcast studio, has finally burst the bonds of censorship. This of course after an obvious and desperate rear-guard effort to shut down all unauthorized opinions. But it has now failed.

People are suddenly allowed to speak their minds again. Now we are suddenly hearing both sides.

This of course necessarily means hearing some opinions with which we will strongly disagree; ideas that may upset us. But this is necessary in order to hold an honest, open dialogue. This is necessary to know where truth lies, and where public opinion lies. Much argument is the antidote to much violence.

It’s about to get wild, and creative things are going to happen. Much like they did when the old media censorship regimes were lifted in the Sixties. It is hard to create great art when you cannot express yourself freely.

Musk on Universities

McGill Campus

Elon Musk has recently spoken against the model of the university. He himself holds two bachelor’s degrees, but he points out the Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Larry Ellison are all dropouts.

Universities, Musk says, are geared to the average brain. Ever since the postwar years, it has been the stated ideal that everyone ought to have the opportunity to attend university. Governments promoted this idea: they were afraid of an unemployment crisis with all the soldiers returning from the war, and civil unrest as a result; for this had happened in the years after the First World War. So they passed the GI Bill—university for the masses. And the cachet of the college man was pushed relentlessly by popular culture through the 1950s.

This meant that ordinary folks without a great passion for scholarship started attending universities.

The universities could not fail more than a limited percentage of students. After all, they had paid their tuition. If most of your students fail, you go out of business. So the schools had to adjust the curriculum and the standards so that the average intellect could get through, without too much effort.

Among other things, this created teenagers starting in the 1950s. That is, a distinct culture of young people alienated from the mainstream culture. This was an inevitable result of holding them back from joining the adult world, starting a family, and assuming social responsibilities. They were all dressed up, with nowhere to go. By contrast, George Washington had a profession and was earning his living as a surveyor at age 16.

For the most intelligent, high school would already have been mind-numbingly boring: forced to do time-consuming yet meaningless dog work all day instead of reading great novels, designing software, or building a business. Now university had gone the same way, was just a continuation of high school, and they were kept in that same intellectual straightjacket for an additional four years or more.

Now that everyone was going to college, entry requirements for almost any job went up. After all, every job wanted to look like a “profession,” and therefore command higher wages.  Now you needed a four-year degree, with all the time and money that cost, to get a job as, say, a newspaper reporter or a graphic designer. Or two degrees to be a public school teacher or librarian.

This drove the very intelligent out of fields that might in the past have been their escape hatch. As a result of that, the objective quality of journalism, graphic design, teaching, and librarianship, went down.

Meantime, university tuition fees have been going up at exponential rates, especially in the US, as they spend more money on administration and less on teaching. This looks suicidal, as if they know in their hearts they are doomed, and want to soak up as much cash as they can before the gravy train ends.

The Internet and now AI should happily lance that bubble. As a practical matter, nobody needs to go to university anymore. All the information you need is on your smartphone, available when you need it. Were it not for international students, the North American colleges would already be dead. They remain relevant as a cultural experience for Asian students; now more or less a branch of the tourism industry.

I for one deeply mourn the passing of Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, McGill, Queen’s, Yonsei, the Sorbonne, and the like. They were once places of dreams—of my own dreams. But that dream really died a long time ago.

On Going Mad

 A useful how-to, available free on our SubStack feed.

Why We Shouldn't Defund the CBC

The CBC and APTN have been revealed to be trying to entrap and embarrass conservative voices for a supposed parody show. What alarms me is not the blatant partisanship in a public broadcaster so much as the revealed systematic attempt to destroy Canada. The program sought to discredit Sir John A. Macdonald, our founder. It falsely accused Canada of genocide. Perhaps worst of all, it mocked and derided the RCMP, a longstanding national symbol.

This shows actual hatred of Canada: it was hate speech targeting Canada and Canadians. Paid for by Canadian taxpayers without their consent. Nothing could be more precisely calculated to harm Canada and its foundational mission of “peace, order and good government” than to attack the RCMP. Nothing could be more calculated to make the life of the average Canadian less peaceful, less orderly, and less pleasant. Attack the founder? That is to attack his vision, his agenda, and that is Canada.

And falsely claiming a genocide against the indigenous people is fomenting extreme ethnic hatred and division, in a highly ethnically diverse nation.

It is not enough to defund the CBC. Given this malicious indoctrination for the last couple of generations, given a sparse, geographically dispersed population not naturally in close contact, given our rapidly increasing ethnic diversity and large number of unassimilated immigrants, we actually desperately need a national broadcaster: a national broadcaster that will foster and promote national identity and unity. Something the very reverse of the CBC.

How do we get there? 

Trump does seem to be turning the culture around in the USA. A lot has to do with sending a very clear message from the top. Fire those at the top, and most lower ranks will fall in line. They will go along to get along. Most likely, that is what they are doing now: it defies belief that the average CBC employee actually believes in and endorses the toxic narrative they are obliged to present. It is probably peer pressure below a certain level.

A new cabinet, a clear direction, and a few dramatic first moves should set the tone. Some things can be done almost at once, as Trump did in the US, to clearly send a message:

1. Order of Canada for Don Cherry.

2. Order of Canada for Ezra Levant.

3. Order of Canada for Chris Barber and Tamara Lich. 

4. Put these four on a board to oversee and vet content at the CBC.

5. Open a public inquiry into Chinese interference in Canadian elections, with full transparency and broad powers.

6. Pass a blanket “notwithstanding clause” applying to all future and previous federal legislation, to signal objection to judicial overreach—as Quebec did in 1982.

7. Place a moratorium on all immigration beyond net zero for the foreseeable future, to allow time for new arrivals to assimilate into Canadian culture.

8. Amend the Emergencies Act to insert penalties for any government that employs it illegitimately. 

9. Rescind approval for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.

10. Repeal all “hate laws.” Reassert the Canadian right to freedom of expression, as in the US.

11. Declare DEI discrimination in hiring illegal, as it indeed is constitutionally.

12. End all government funding to special interest and political action groups.

That should help correct the course.

Do Most of Us Go to Hell?

 Find out by checking out our SubStack feed. Free to subscribe!

On the Future of Art

 

See the future now! Visit our Substack for the article! And subscribe! It's free! Explanation marks not included!

Why Isn't Canada in Revolt?

RB Bennett

Someone asks recently online why, in the face of populist electoral rebellions in the US under Trump, in the UK under Farage and now Lowe, in Italy under Meloni, in the Netherlands under Wilders, in Germany, in France, in Scandinavia, Canada seems quiescent and content with the woke status quo.

I suspect this is mostly accidental. In 2021, Canada was leading the developed world in protest with the Freedom Convoy. The brutal and illegal crushing of that protest did much to cow opposition since; but that must mean it is simmering under the surface. Two years ago, it looked as though the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre were about to sweep into power, humiliating the woke Liberals. Poilievre had impressive rhetorical skills, like Farage or Trump, and talked a relatively hard line. It looked as though Canada was, in Canadian fashion, going to manage a relatively orderly transition to the populist right.

But then the Liberals benefitted from being able to run against the USA and Trump instead of Poilievre—forcing the electorate to rally round the flag. Carney looked like an apolitical technocrat who might be able to manage the crisis. And the Liberal government perhaps benefitted even more from the collapse of the NDP, the party theoretically to their left. A double stroke of luck for them, unlikely to be repeated. And this made the election actually in large part a rejection of the left. It is just that the electorate blamed the NDP, and saw Carney as something new.

In the prior two elections, under Justin Trudeau, 2019 and 2021, the Conservatives actually outpolled the Liberals; the appearance of support for wokeness was an anomaly of the Canadian electoral map.

Now there is a push in Alberta for separation—that is hardly quiescence.

It is true, and disturbing, that current federal polling shows the Liberals well ahead of the Conservatives. I can only account for this as a continuation of the “rally around the flag” impulse in continuing crisis. But unless the Liberals can come through soon with some solid solutions, that support is likely to evaporate. Just as it has evaporated for Keir Starmer in the UK after a landslide election win; just as it evaporated for Boris Johnson and the Tories before him. And just as it evaporated for RB Bennet after he won the 1930 election in the first throes of the Great Depression. Elected as a steady business mind to deal with the crisis, and failing to make a dent, he was crushed in 1935. And has been blamed for the suffering ever since.

I expect Carney to ultimately be such a figure. The bad news is, we in Canada are likely to go through some suffering first. Possibly Canada’s impoverishment, possibly its collap

How to Fix Democracy

The franchise is too broad.

Someone once said that democracy works only so long as people don’t realize they can just vote themselves money.

And that, sadly, seems to be where we are headed.

There is a simple solution, and it is what our ancestors did: nobody paid by government gets to vote. This would include people on welfare, pensioners, the disabled, students on government scholarships. It seems a small sacrifice in exchange for a living, and would prevent this conflict of interest. 

And it would include civil servants, public school teachers, the police, the military. Employees should not vote on their own employment terms or rate of pay—otherwise, we have a ruling class.

In the same vein, corporations or individuals receiving government subsidies or government contracts should be prohibited from making any political donations for a set term—say ten years.

If this rule were imposed, it would probably cause the Liberal and New Democratic parties to collapse; the Democrats to collapse in the US. 

Which seems to me to show they are corrupt.

The World, the Flesh, and the Devil

 

What these temptations really mean. Read it in our SubStack feed.

Lord North's Mistake

 

He lost America

Surely one of the worst policy failures in modern history was Lord North’s loss of the 13 colonies in the American War of Independence. And the solution seems so simple. They objected to taxation without representation; so give them representation, as Edmund Burke urged at the time. What’s the problem? Give them seats proportional to population at Westminster.

Had this been done, Canada and the Caribbean would presumably also still be a part of a British Federation. United, it would probably have been a force powerful enough to have prevented the two World Wars and all the suffering they produced. European or “Western” civilization would not be in the funk it is in now.

It is not too late to fix this historic error. There is still no reason for Britain, America, Canada, and Australia to be independent countries, despite their common language, common interests, and common culture. Forget worries about Trump annexing Canada; why resist? It is an outcome devoutly to be wished. 

For one thing, in case it has slipped the reader’s notice, the US economy has been thundering past those of Canada or Britain, or anyone else. This is because the US is the centre of the high-tech boom, or rather, the intensifying series of high-tech booms. We should all want to be a part of this prosperity. We non-Americans are losing out.

And these booms happen in the US largely because of its large free market, which allows for niche testing and rapid expansion of new products. It is no accident that the US’s most successful competitor is China, who has even more of this advantage: triple the population, an even bigger market in terms of raw consumers, if with less purchasing power.

And so, if we do not want to see China and its authoritarian government gain world ascendancy and become able to dictate to the rest of us, we need to expand the US market and US power. We need to expand to include Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Caribbean. 

Let’s fix Lord North’s blunder. 

The Atheists of X

 

And why Christians are largely to blame.

On the Spirit of Han

 

Why do Koreans and Irish love to be sad?

Read it and weep.

I'd Rather Have a Paper Doll to Call My Own...

 

Elon Musk says that curiosity must be built into AI to ensure that it does not turn against humans. If curious, it will value humans because they are interesting.

Curiosity also seems to be motivating for humans. We prefer cats or dogs as pets to goldfish or turtles, because they are more intelligent and therefore more interesting.

Elon Musk also says that very soon, AI will be more intelligent than humans. Much more.

If all these premises are true, doesn’t this mean that soon, men will find any lifelike AI robot girlfriend much more interesting and desirable than a human woman? Or at least, the most intelligent men will, those able to appreciate the difference. And I suppose the same for very intelligent women?

This might become an issue... so much for human reproduction.

How to Prevent AI from Destroying the World

 Read it all on our SubStack feed--and subscribe!

Isaac Azimov

Turtles All the Way Down

 

Do we live in SimCity? Visit our free Substack feed to find out.

The Shape of Things to Come

A couple of days ago I went to a candidate forum for the local mayoralty election. One male candidate, one woman. The man was quite upbeat about Saint John’s future. He pointed out that container traffic last year was 240,000 units. This year, they are expecting 1 million. Many of the new container ships cannot make it up the St. Lawrence Seaway. So Saint John is becoming the port of choice—the closest port by rail to the markets in the interior. Three years ago, there were two cranes in the harbour for unloading containers. Now there are six. He also noted that the Canadian government is pushing for more trade with Europe and the world, less overland with the US—and this is bound to increase shipping.

At the same time, there are plans to put in a huge new data centre on the west side of town, promising 1,200 jobs in the new economy.

As the meeting ended, a woman stood up and demanded the microphone. She was adamant in arguing—against the rules of the meeting-- that the data centre must not be allowed. It was going to use too much electricity. It would make our electricity rates go up. She was not mollified by the response that the data centre has promised to install its own power plant. 

Another woman I know is also alarmed about this data centre, and is convinced it will not generate the jobs it claims

Today on the bus, I told another woman of my acquaintance what I had heard about the growth of the harbour. She immediately insisted it was not true, that any new port business would go to Halifax. “It always does. It’s about the money.” Yet Saint John already handles three times the tonnage of Halifax.

I seem to see a pattern: women are negative about the future, even when the facts are suggesting optimism.

Indeed, every women I encounter these days is convinced we are in the End Times. The world is collapsing around us, the antichrist is in command, the tribulations have begun, and our only hope is the rapture and the Second Coming. Or some pagan New Age equivalent of this.

Yet I listen to a podcast featuring Elon Musk. Musk has a pretty good track record of predicting the future. They talk about human lifespan doubling within the next ten years, and this getting us to “escape velocity.” That is, within these extra years, means will likely be found to extend the lifespan further, then further, so that most of us alive today are liable to become almost immortal. There are apparently multiple teams working on reversing aging. And human trials on a lifespan-extending drug start this year.

A former classmate of mine at Queen’s is in this game. He too has been telling me this is coming.

Musk predicts that within three years robot surgeons will be as good as the best human surgeons; within four years they will be available in abundance; within five years they will be much better than any human surgeons. Meanwhile, AI will be developing new drugs and cures at an exponential rate: doing in hours what took decades.

What about a flood of immortal retirees? What about the pension system?

There will be no reason to save for retirement, Musk says, within the next ten years. By that time, there will be universal abundance, radical deflation, and everyone’s needs can be taken care of. “Universal High Income.” We will have the Marxist utopia: everyone will just work on what they find interesting. All work will be a hobby.

And forget about spending huge amounts of money on education. “In 4 or 5 years you can learn anything about anything you want for free.”

So why this extreme disconnect between what is actually happening and what most women think is happening?

I think it is indicative of the female psyche. We are in a time of dramatic change, of change more rapid than the world has ever seen.

For many men, this is exhilarating. Men are adventurers. 

But women are wired to crave security. They will fear and resist any change.

This being so, it is perhaps unwise to put women in positions of leadership. Doing so may slow the general progress.

The Withered Fig Tree

 

Time to bear fruit! See the article on SubStack

Man Hate Online

Remember, it's propaganda. It was always propaganda.

My current X stream is full of women complaining about how men are not holding up their end in relationships. Their end apparently means to provide.

And what is the woman’s side of the bargain? It seems for many it is providing sex. Letting the man have sex with them is their end of the bargain. And not even that—they have no obligation to have sex with their husband even within marriage. It still depends on whether they feel like it.

This is a lousy bargain for men. As far as we can tell, women enjoy sex about as much as men do. So why should he pay, and not she, for a mutual pleasure?

Some women will say that women deserve support because they give the man children. But it seems to the untrained eye that children are usually enjoyed more by the mother than the father. She gets more time with them. He has to be off working. You could as easily argue that children are a gift the husband gives to the wife.

You may say children are a chore. I say bollocks. No work is so meaningful or rewarding. And women are born with a strong maternal instinct that makes them desire children and their company. Men’s paternal instinct is less strong.

Some women online say that men should give them money because of the cost of cosmetics—it costs money to make themselves so beautiful for their husband or date. So they have a right to be reimbursed. 

However, making yourself up is not for any one man—it attracts the eyes of men in general. And it shows off to other women. That is more for yourself, then, not for the man across the table. A man is likely to prefer his woman wear less makeup. It suggests she is on the market. In fact, surveys show this—men would prefer women to make up less.

The one thing women never offer as their side of the marital bargain is to do the cooking, cleaning, or housework. No--that would be unreasonable. That should be split half and half, and there is much complaining about men not doing their share.

This actually puts an extra burden on men in any relationship. The problem is, men are usually content with a relaxed, rather messy environment. Women tend to be fussier about their surroundings. So the house is inevitably kept to the woman’s liking, once a woman is present, and the man is expected to do her bidding. An unequal relationship.

The other thing these cyberfeminists never suggest is splitting the bills fifty-fifty. No, men are still supposed to provide. It’s just that women have no responsibilities, only rights.

Given this common sense of privilege among women, relationships with women are no longer a viable option for men. And they hate men on top of it. 

But Who Is Your Neghbour

 Does Jesus demand we love all men equally?

That One Time Xerxes Did Not Die

 ... and why.