Stephen Roney's Blog, page 107
December 15, 2022
A Disturbing Piece on Election Fraud
If we cannot trust elections, everything is out the window.
I used to think Canadian elections, at least, were secure. But then Canada started moving from paper ballots to voting machines--the very thing that began to call US elections into question.
Voting machines should be banned. And, obviously, voting must be in person with ID.
December 14, 2022
Community
Avonlea Village, Cavendish,, P.E.I.Dave Rubin, who is gay, recently and properly said on air, “There is no such thing as the LGBTQ community.”
Your community is the people you run into on a typical day, the people you spend time with. Most naturally, the folks on your block.
Other than sex, gays do not have anything in common. No number of one-night stands adds up to a community. Nor does a solitary couple. And gays have nothing in particular in common with lesbians, or transsexuals; no more than the average straight male.
Similarly, except for those who go to the same mosque, Muslims in Canada are not a community. Except for those who live on the same reserve, indigenous people are not a community. Unless they attend the same women’s club, feminists are not a community. Mariposa is a community. Avonlea is a community. Cabbagetown is a community.
These false so-called “communities,” moreover, are used to cut us off from our communities: from seeing and celebrating all we have in common with our neighbours. They promote hostility towards anyone who is different from us. They alienate.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
A Canadian Christmas Song
One Explanation for Cancel Culture
Just saw Jordan Peterson give his explanation for the mysterious growth of narcissistic and psychopathic behaviour online—not just things like the Canadian blue whale euthanasia ad, or the Balenciaga child bondage and child sacrifice ad. Also the whole edifice of “cancel culture.”
Peterson’s premise is that “virtuality enables narcissism.” Put simply, and without the psychological terms, some people are evil, selfish, and delight in doing others harm. Peterson puts the figure at 5%. In ordinary society, they are restrained purely by the fear of punishment—“external constraints.” Online, they can often operate in the shadows, anonymously. They can dip in to a chat group, then dip out, and nobody knows who they were. Or they can back-door manipulate at a hosting site like Twitter. Power! Torment the weak!
It makes sense. A narcissist or a psychopath will not fare well in a small town. Everyone quickly gets their number. They will become a pariah—or rather, they will soon move out, to the big city. The likelihood of getting robbed or shot or raped or seduced into an abusive relationship goes up significantly once you move to a big city—where people can remain anonymous, and keep encountering strangers.
The Internet is a city the size of the world itself. There are few or no constraints on narcissists and psychopaths. And the harm they can do can be amplified—rather than only devastating the lives of a few close relatives, say, they can possibly devastate the lives of millions. Which they will tend to do for enjoyment.
If there is a solution, Peterson cannot think of it. And neither, for now, can I.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
December 13, 2022
Christmas is Coming
Kipling's Recessional
Recessional
God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!
Rudyard Kipling could hardly be less fashionable in these anti-colonial days. He was a promoter of empire. Worse, like Trump, he was a populist. He wrote for the common man.
He has also never been to my taste. His prose seems unnecessarily foggy at most times; he rarely seems to make an interesting point. I won Puck of Pook’s Hill as a prize back in grade school, and could never get my head into it. In both poetry and prose, his upper lip is far too stiff for my Irish Catholic temperament. All that English stuff about doing your dooty and dying at the drop of a hat for king and law. Sounds blasphemous to this Mick.
Yet I cannot deny his immense skill as a poet. In the craft of casting memorable lines, he puts anyone writing today in the shade. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the youngest person ever at that time, and the first Englishman.
He is the ultimate “people’s poet.” His poem “If…” for all its weird Englishness remains the most popular poem in England.
I was recently looking again at “The Recessional,” with my students. I think it is his best poem.
Perhaps we ought to see what he has to say. In this poem, at least, I think he does go deep.
The first point I think he makes worth making is that the British Empire is under God’s dominion, and derives its legitimacy by doing God’s work. God is “Lord of our far-flung battle line.” He is “Lord God of Hosts”—of armies.
Kipling is right. To the extent that any government can claim legitimacy, it is because and to the extent that it is doing God’s will. This is more or less the same point made in America’s Declaration of Independence.
Does God then command the armies? Does he play favourites among combatants?
Of course he does. Pacifism is not a Judeo-Christian principle. God plainly favours the Israelites in battle in the Old Testament; the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Babylonians, the Seleucids, the Egyptians, are unambiguously villains.
What is unique about the Judeo-Christian tradition is the idea that God expresses his will and his divine plan through human history. That means in any given war, one side is probably doing his will, and the other side is with the devil.
More broadly, the creation is an eternal war between good and evil. We are to take up our sword and defend the right. Pacifism is simply moral cowardice.
This ought to be clear enough to natural reason. Whenever a fight breaks out, between two individuals, two groups, or two nations, it is almost inevitably an aggression by one party against the other. Why else? Misunderstandings can be talked through. One party merely calculates it is stronger, and can take what it wants.
The current war in Ukraine is an example. No, there are not perfectly balanced rights and wrongs on either side. Russia wanted to control Ukraine, and thought they were strong enough to do it.
And here we even also see the hand of God. Who could have predicted that Ukraine would hold out and begin to advance? A close analysis of history actually does suggest that, given anything approaching equality of forces, the side in the right always wins. This is true because we all have a conscience, and it weakens us when we go against it.
So the question is whether the British Empire was rapacious, or was doing the will of God. This is exactly the question Kipling asks, and struggles over.
Being an Empire by itself does not figure: it is neither good nor bad. There is no moral value in being governed by people with the same skin colour or ethnicity as yourself. The question is whether the British brought better and more moral government than the governments they replaced.
Kipling would no doubt see them as doing God’s work in ending slavery, ending the caste system in India, suppressing human sacrifice, toppling oppressive rulers in Africa who practiced cannibalism, ending interminable tribal wars, and so forth. All of which they certainly did. Along with instituting governing structures and infrastructure that successor regimes have almost never seen fit to discard.
It was no doubt in Kipling’s eyes the world’s police force, introducing and protecting human rights. At a minimum, the case must be made that it was not, that it was oppressive and self-interested. It cannot be assumed.
The usual claim, I suppose, is that Britain exploited the colonies financially, leaving them poorer than they had been. It can certainly be argued that mercantilist policies might do this; but trade generally benefits both parties. And my impression is that the actual numbers do not bear that out.
But this is background. This is not the key message of the poem. It is, rather, that the British might lose their grip on this moral foundation, like “lesser breeds without the law.”
Who are these lesser breeds?
“Gentiles.” “Heathens.” The distinction made is not racial, but religious.
And Kipling is more specific:
Heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard
Kipling is not talking about African tribalists or Amerindian natives. Iron shards are products of the Industrial Revolution, not stone age cultures. Reeking tubes are most obviously found in chemistry labs.
Kipling is warning against “scientism,” the worship of science and technology as our new God. Which is indeed the disease that is currently killing Western civilization.
The prime danger of scientism is that it has no morality. It is “without the law.”
Kipling was writing ten years after Nietzsche had published Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals, arguing that man had now replaced God and could create his own morality to suit his purposes.
Such boasting as the gentiles use.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
December 12, 2022
Not Looking Forward to Another Christmas Alone
What to Do about Trudeau?
What can we do about Justin Trudeau?
Voting him out of office, if we ever again get that opportunity, is not enough.
Uniquely among all prime ministers, he has damaged our democracy, our civil society, and our civil peace. He has militarized the police. He has subverted the media. He has censored opposition. We must get rid of the subsidy paid to media, we must get rid of his censorship of the internet, we must get rid of his ban on hunting rifles, we must get rid of legalized euthanasia, we must get rid of back-door subsidies to big corporations, we must make sure the Emergencies Act can never be used frivolously again, we must get rid of ArriveCan. But that too is not enough.
Speaking of ArriveCan, there may be a reason more sinister than simple graft that an app that, according to specs, should have cost a few hundred thousand dollars, cost $54 million. And the government will not reveal who got the money, and for what.
It may be that ArriveCan was designed to do more than acknowledged. The extra cost may have been to install the hidden necessities for a social credit system like China’s. We have every reason to suspect this.
At the same time that he has done all this , Trudeau has destroyed Canada’s reputation around the world. This was for generations Canada’s great advantage in the world, our supposed “soft power.” This was the work of generations. Now we are largely held in contempt: by Americans, India, China, Russia, the Arabs, much of the rest of the English-speaking world. While two Western province are passing “sovereignty laws” threatening to split the country.
Given how far Trudeau has gone, voting him out of office is not enough. A friend of mine insists on assassination, which would be the worst thing—but that is how angry people have become, and something must be done now to restore civil harmony. After all, most federal governments get voted out anyway by about their third or fourth election. So it looks like no punishment at all. The next government, or the government after that, might well still be tempted to try the same tactics.
Yet it is unwise to prosecute. The problem with prosecuting those who have left office for being unscrupulous is that, given they are inclined to break the rules in the first place, this gives them every reason to refuse to leave office, or at least try to seize power and hold on.
So what can we do?
One possibility is to pass a resolution in the next parliament censuring Trudeau, and requiring that no official portrait be commissioned. By tradition, each former prime minister gets a portrait, displayed in the House of Commons. Trudeau’s can be missing or all black to express history’s disapproval. It would be an insult to the others honoured there to feature him in the same lineup.
Other official commemorations of any kind might also be prohibited. It would at least send a message.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
December 11, 2022
Happy Gaudete Sunday!
Christos est natus
Ex Maria virginae
Childhood Memories
Wise words from W.B. Yeats:
We should not make light of the troubles of children. They are worse than ours, because we can see the end of our trouble and they can never see any end.
Of his own childhood:
I know that I am very unhappy and have often said to myself, “when you grow up, never talk as grown-up people do of the happiness of childhood.” I may have already had the night of misery when, having prayed for several days that I might die, I had begun to be afraid that I was dying and prayed that I might live.
