Stephen Roney's Blog, page 124

Paxil In Terra

 

Jesus said to his disciples:

 “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!

There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!

 Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.

From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

This, last Sunday’s gospel reading, is an essential corrective to the “gentle Jesus” lie.

My local priest insisted in his sermon that of course this did not mean that Jesus or God wanted division. Jesus indeed came to bring peace. The division was that some would not listen to his call for peace.

Too clever by half. Besides, it contradicts Jesus’s actual words: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing.”

Had Jesus really called for peace, he would not have been crucified. The established powers would be delighted, as they embrace that message today.

If all you want is peace, Buddhism is the religion for you. Hakuna Matata. For Christianity, that is cowardice and acedia. Christian existence is an eternal war of good against evil. The Christian is, in St. Paul’s words, to “work out his salvation in fear and trembling.” The goal is not peace and acceptance of what is, but justice and the heavenly Jerusalem.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

A Rant from Neil Oliver

 

The one thing that makes me hesitate to agree with Oliver is the fact that he has still been able to say this, and to get it online.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Freedom at Midnight

 

Today marks India’s Independence Day, which friend Xerxes considers the end of empire and the beginning of the era of decolonization.

I think he’s off by a couple of centuries or so. I’d pick July 4, 1776. Not just because that date marked the independence of 13 former colonies, but because the USA then inspired and sponsored decolonization generally. Soon after, most of the nations of the Western Hemisphere declared their independence. I believe Canadian or Australian independence was also inevitable due to the American model. That’s a large portion of the world to overlook.

Moreover, the fundamental revolutionary principle, “no taxation without representation,” if applied anywhere, makes empire impossible. It’s not an empire, or a colony, if everyone gets the vote.

The nations thus formed, on the American model, therefore further refused themselves to have empires or colonies.

The next most important date in the history of decolonization was January 8, 1918. This is when US President Wilson declared his Fourteen Points, which he was more or less able to impose at the WWI peace conferences. This dismantled the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian Empires, another huge swath of the world. Ireland soon broke away from the British Empire. The Korean independence movement formed. The dissolution of remaining empires would have to wait, but the philosophical foundation had been laid. This is the novel idea that political boundaries should correspond to ethnic boundaries---the nation state. This made little sense for kingdoms; more for republics and democracies. When former German colonies were divided among the victors, they were assigned as League of Nations “mandates,” not as sovereign territory. Eventual independence was now assumed—for all colonies.

August 15, 1947, was just the biggest single colony to go.

But the British Raj itself did not end prior Indian independence. When the British arrived, India was under the control of the Mughals, from Uzbekistan. Empire and colonialism was not a European invention. It was the universal norm from ancient Mesopotamia until 1776, or even until Wilson’s Fourteen Points. It is the nation state, decolonialization, and democracy, and not empire, that is Europe’s historic contribution. Or rather, Europe’s and America’s.

Wilson’s ethnic nation states too have brought their problems. The nation state, after all, has given us Nazi Germany, the Young Turks, much strife at partition in India, and similar strife elsewhere—one might mention Ireland, Cyprus, Palestine, Rwanda, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sri Lanka, Burma, Timor Leste, … it is an almost endless list. The EU can be seen as an attempt to return to some of the benefits of Empire. So too NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Were it not democratic, modern India would still be an empire. It incorporates disparate ethnic groups, of disparate languages and cultures, under one government. So too for Canada, were it not democratic. Democracy is the key, not division into ethnic states--national ghettos.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Klavan on Truth

 

https://youtube.com/shorts/lWeYoYQqK6c?feature=share

It's a broken world. Anyone satisfied with it is depraved.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Lies My Country Told Me

 

The War of 1812 as Americans Remember It

A Chinese student wants to talk of Nancy Pelosi. Apparently she is trying to start World War III.

I took the tack that China really shouldn’t care, since Pelosi was just visiting, not declaring Taiwan independent. Why assume hostility? For that matter, why care if Taiwan is independent? America has no problem with Canada being independent.  But I had a hard time getting him to move on.

A colleague laments how everyone brainwashes kids.

Including our own countries and our own schools. I grew up convinced that Canada had trounced the US in the War of 1812. News to the Americans I met in grad school. Canada was involved? They understood that they had trounced the British. 

In China, I was similarly taken aback to learn that North Korea won the Korean War.

So were they brainwashed, or was I? 

A bit of both. I learned from these experiences.

I remember a group of Chinese teachers studying with me in Canada at a time when there was concern over North Korea getting nukes—before they actually got nukes. Without thinking, I lamented the problem. And the response was sharp: “Why does America think only they should have nuclear weapons?”

I had to think long and hard about that one. I think they have a point. Perhaps if every country had nuclear weapons, war would be eliminated as a possibility altogether.

I was in Saudi Arabia when Osama Bin Laden was shot by the US Navy Seals. My officemates were enraged at this murder by the evil Americans. I managed, “Well, at least he died bravely, with his boots on. Not like Saddam.” 

That seemed to satisfy them. I was not the enemy.

An Arab student wanted me to agree that Hitler was really a good guy. At least he did something about the Jews…

My awkward counter was, whether you agreed with him or not, you had to admit that he was a failure, and left Germany in worse shape than he found it.

Again, that seemed to satisfy him. Although I felt guilty for not immediately defending the Jews. It gave me a lot of sympathy for Pope Pius XII.

One of the advantages of the expat experience is that it tends to expose the biases you have been brought up with.

I think the Koreans and the Filipinos are pretty good on this score. They’ve been lied to by their governments so often and incompetently, that they rarely believe anything from anyone. We Westerners may be easier marks.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Raining Shoes

 

Amidst the current chaos, there is a sense that a second shoe has not yet dropped. Nobody seems sure what happens next.

Half of commentators are sounding the alarm about China’s imminent rise to world hegemony. The other half are saying its economy will collapse within weeks.

Half of commentators are saying Russia is winning against Ukraine, and any Ukrainian victory is a pipedream. Half say Russia is on the verge of exhaustion.

Half say Russia is near default due to sanctions. Half say Russia is actually benefitting from them, and the West suffering.

Half are saying the Trudeau government is on its last legs, and the rise of Pierre Poilievre is historic. Half are saying the Liberals are planning a snap fall election to grab their majority, and Pierre Poilievre will reduce the Tories to a fringe party..

Half are saying Trump has finally been caught red-handed, and faces prison time. Half are saying the recent FBI raid ensures he wins the next election.

Half are saying we are entering a period of severe inflation. Half are saying any inflation is temporary. And some are actually saying the problem will be deflation.

Half are saying we are in a recession. Half deny it. Some say it is a historic depression.

I expect this is an inevitable step on the downward slope, once the cognoscenti have declared there is no reality. Now nobody knows any longer what is real.

Add to this the real instability we have been living through; we have come to expect the unexpected.

I hold out hopes that, two years or so from now, Pierre Poilievre will be prime minister, Donald Trump will be US president, Xi will be gone, Putin will be gone, and Pope Francis will have resigned. The COVID crisis passed, the economies of Europe and North America will be booming, while India, Indonesia, Vietnam and others take up the manufacturing slack from a relatively weaker China transitioning to democracy. All appear to be real possibilities, 50/50 in the absence of reliable data. And if they all come true, it looks like a dawning golden age.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Sun on Trudeau

 

And the sins of the son are visited upon the father's legacy...

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Bill Maher on Cultural Appropriation

 

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Righteous Anger

 

An important theological point to make, because it is often misrepresented and falsified.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Salman Rushdie

 

Salman Rushdie has at last been gotten to by the Muslim terrorists. 

The perpetrator has been caught, and will no doubt face stiff punishment. 

And nothing will change, more broadly. Someone else will be next.

Muslim terrorism keeps resurfacing, and is growing. Nations with longstanding Muslim minorities, like the Philippines, can attest that Muslim violence has been a fact of life there for centuries. It is growing now simply because there are more points of contact between Islam and the rest of the world. 

Nobody has yet found a way to stop it; although there is the legend that General Pershing, or some other American or British worthy, when informed that it was simply the local Muslim custom to every now and then run amok and behead random citizens, and nothing could be done about it, explained that it was the American custom, when such events occurred, to open fire.

I expect this is apocryphal. The conventional protections and punishments do not work, because we are dealing, broadly, with “suicide bombers.” The assailant does not care about dying. They get a big reward in the hereafter. So what can we possibly do to stop or to discourage them? Execute them? To their minds, and those of their supporters, that just makes them an immortal martyr.

Here’s the way to discourage Muslim terrorism. Each attack, very publicly seize or destroy a mosque. A mosque of commensurate value. If, for example, there was a $5 million fatwa on Rushdie’s head, seize American mosques of equivalent book value. If the target is something like the World Trade Centre, a cruise missile hitting the Ka’aba.

Some, of course, will immediately protest. This is unjust to average Muslims, who have nothing to do with the assaults. This is Islamophobia. This is religious persecution.

Yet, for fair comparison, we have no problem with seizing Catholic Church funds and property to punish the crimes of individual priests and bishops. Obviously, ordinary Catholics did not endorse these sex crimes, had nothing to do with them, and are their primary victims. Yet they are being punished for them.

Surely it is fairer to seize mosques in response to religious terrorism. A pity for individual Muslims; yet after all, unlike the sexual sins of priests, the terrorists are motivated by the explicit idea of advancing Islam. Unlike seizing Catholic Church property, which looks only like religious persecution, seizing mosques might deter future crimes. A prospective terrorist would have to think twice: is he advancing Islam, or harming it? Can he risk the chance of being condemned in the next life instead of rewarded?

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.