Stephen Roney's Blog, page 131

For Canada Day

 

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

And Don't Drink Milk, Either, or You're a Racist

 

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

The Best Rock and Roll Groups

 

Although it is not my number one music pick, sometimes only rock and roll will do.

I don’t mean “rock.” That is a more general term. I certainly don’t mean heavy metal or acid rock. They lack the roll.

To me, real rock and roll is urban and working class. It speaks of the experiences of urban, working class young people. It is musically simple, generally based on a repeated signature or riff. More than three chords is suspect. And it does not end with a finale or have significant variations. It just drives that riff like a motor turning. Life is a highway.

What are some classic examples?

The music of the Beatles is much more diverse than only rock and roll, but when they do rock and roll they can be as good as anyone. They have two great rock voices in McCartney, who can do a Little Richard swoop, and John Lennon, who has a soulful crack in his voice. Both have written great rock and roll songs.

Rolling Stones have long billed themselves as the “world’s greatest rock and roll band,” and I am not inclined to contest the claim. Musically, they are well behind the Beatles; they have only one decent vocalist, and Jagger is no better than decent. Neither Richards nor Wood, nor Jones before him, are really top rank guitarists. Watts and Wyman were great, but neither a bassist nor a drummer can carry a band. Still, this is rock and roll, a kind of folk music. Exemplary musicianship is beside the point. The point is if you can strike the right tone consistently. The Stones have kept it up longer than anyone.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are more versatile, but when they do rock, they really do rock. Springsteen is magnificent as a lyricist, and writes very much from the working class urban viewpoint. I love their use of saxophone and keyboards. Rock and roll should not be limited to guitars.

ZZ Top has just the right groove too. Billy Gibbons is genuinely a top-rank guitarist. But his guitar work has the right mechanical grind. His voice too is mechanical and grinding. Made for rock and roll.

My brother, who prefers jazz, always objected that Creedence Clearwater Revival was too simple. That’s what rock and roll is supposed to be. The hallmark of true rock and roll, for me, is that I can listen to a song again and again and never get tired of it. This seems paradoxically more often true of simple songs. There is no better rock song than “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?”

Travelling Wilburys: the greatest of supergroups. As with the Beatles, you have the great swoop of Roy Orbison’s voice on the high notes. You have great rock songwriting, largely from George Harrison. These guys were having fun together, and that energy is what you want for rock and roll. You want the feel of busting loose.

Buddy Holly and the Crickets sound a little too bouncy and upbeat for contemporary tastes, but they deserve special recognition as pioneers. The songs still hold up, although Linda Ronstadt does a better “When Will I Be Loved” than Holly did. They were experimenting, and so can be forgiven. They must have been mindblowing in their day.

The Animals: I always thought Eric Burdon had a great rock voice, pitched towards the blues. As a bassist, I admired Chas Chandler’s runs, and Alan Price was great on the keyboard. He did marvellous solo work later. I wish the original group had stayed together longer. Burdon went weird when he went solo, and did things that did not suit his voice. They were best when they stuck to classics; but that perhaps limited their repertoire and so their potential to last.

Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. Some claim Detroit is the true and original home of rock and roll. Sounds right—the home of the automobile. Nobody did the good old straight-up full-tilt rock and roll any better than the Detroit Wheels.

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. As good as anyone, and keeping the torch high despite some metal influence. There is something special about seeing a woman who can rock.

Notably absent from my list: 

The Who. “My Generation” has some claim to being one of the best rock and roll songs, but often I find them embarrassing. Trashing your instruments on stage is a cheap gimmick. Swinging the microphone or windmilling your arm to simply play a chord are cheap gimmicks. Keith Moon was too busy showboating on the drums to keep a steady beat, and John Entwhistle did solos instead of keeping the rhythm. That’s not rock and roll; because it’s lost the roll. I call kitsch.

The Beach Boys; are magnificent, but they’re art rock. Too complex musically for r&r.

The Yardbirds too were too musically sophisticated and too artistically ambitious to be truly rock and roll. Led Zeppelin were too metallic. Cream lacked the roll.

Some individual songs from other groups deserve mention. You can’t do better than “Dirty Water,” by the Standells. But they were a one-hit wonder. Same for “96 Tears.” “Walk of Life” by Dire Straits is fine r&r; but Dire Straits generally is too musically complex for rock and roll. “You Really Got Me,” by the Kinks; but the Kinks are more art rock. Manfed Mann could rock, on “The Mighty Quinn.” But more generally, more towards jazz rock.

I’m arbitrarily limiting this to groups. Hence no Sister Rosetta Thorpe, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger. I have not forgotten.

No headbangers here. No hard drugs, Just good times, beer, girls, and fast cars.

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

Tamara Lich Rearrested

 

I am amazed by the stupidity of the Canadian authorities in rearresting Tamara Lich just before Canada Day.

Perhaps they are hoping to stir something up so that they can crack down harder. It is certainly not the move you would make if you were trying for a peaceful and unifying Canada Day.

But how are they not going to come across as the villains? How are they not going to be remembered less fondly than Orval Faubus, Bull Connor, Lester Maddox, or Francis Bond Head when the histories come to be written?

You could not come up with a more attractive figure as the face of the opposition to government overreach if you were a PR firm. Lich is a woman, attractive without being so attractive as to provoke envy, and Metis. Can’t plausibly tar her with the usual “white supremacy” and “misogyny” lie. Unlike Rosa Parks, who was chosen for PR value, she actually was a leader of the protest. She has just received a Jonas Freedom Prize, and is reputedly being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. And yet the government wants to give her more prominence, by arresting her, on no visible grounds, just before Canada Day?

And after their invocation of the Emergency Act against her has been shown to be fraudulent? Do they really want to remind everyone?

I suppose there are two possibilities here: either extreme stupidity and arrogance, or extreme fear. Of the two, I think it has to be stupidity and arrogance; for there is surely nothing worse for them to fear than losing power in a new election.

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

The Real World of Canadian Indigenous Peoples

 

There are a lot of misconceptions of the history of Canada’s indigenous population. Some of them appear in the latest column from Xerxes, my weathervane for understanding the leftist hive mind. He laments that all Canadians are “trespassing” on indigenous territory.

To begin with, indigenous people are not who Xerxes, or perhaps you, think they are. Indians are not, of course, actually indigenous, but came, like the rest of us, from somewhere else. And I do not just mean across the land bridge from Asia. Most tribes were nomadic; they did not remain in one place, and had no ties to any one place, but were in constant migration. In this sense, settlers are more indigenous than any native group. 

Studies suggest that 50% of the population of Quebec, and 50% on the Prairies, have some native genes. I do not have figures for other parts of Canada. Meantime, essentially everyone living on reserves has some European blood. Any racial distinction is nonsense, unless we are talking about recent immigrants. Do we want a distinction between “pur laine” Canadians and recent immigrants?

Why is it ever okay to make two tiers of citizenship, based on who was here first?

As for those folks arbitrarily separated from the rest of us and living on reserves, nobody seems to notice that indigenous land claims were settled over a century ago, in treaties signed in Ontario, the Prairies, Western and Northern Quebec, and the Northwest Territories. All legal claims to the land outside reserves were waived, by mutual consent and with payment. For comparison, does your home still belong to the previous owner? Are you trespassing?

What about the Atlantic Provinces, lower Quebec, or BC? No specific land settlements, as opposed to surrender of sovereignty, were signed there. 

In the St. Lawrence Valley, the indigenous population are unambiguously the Quebecois, even apart from intermarriage over the centuries. When Champlain brought the first French settlers to Quebec and Montreal, there were no indigenous people in the area. The Iroquoian culture Cartier had encountered sixty years earlier had disappeared without a trace.

As for the Atlantic Provinces and BC, there were indigenous populations. But―brace for impact—they did not own any land. “Aboriginal rights” elsewhere in Canada were bestowed as a gift by King George III in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. They applied only to the Indians living in the lands draining into Hudson’s Bay, and to the area of the Great Lakes. It did not cover the Atlantic Provinces, the St. Lawrence Valley, or BC.

In common law, and in natural justice, nobody can actually own land any more than they can own the air or the water. God made these things for all mankind. Nobody has a right to appropriate any of it to themselves and exclude others. One rightfully only owns one’s labour, and the products of one’s labour.

“Land ownership” occurs only when one’s labour is sunk in the land in such a way that it cannot be easily separated from it; for example, if you build a house on the land, or if you till it, tend it, work it. This is why “squatter’s rights” are recognized. If nobody else was using the land, you get the right to it if you put your labour into it.

Most indigenous groups put no labour in the land. They built no permanent structures, and they simply lived off its fruits. Ergo, no ownership was established—applying the same rules in America as would be applied in Europe.

This might still seem unfair. The Indians were accustomed to living by hunting and gathering, and if the land was taken for agriculture, they would at least involuntarily lose their way of life. But 89% of Canada’s land is Crown land even today, and not under cultivation. Indians retain the right to hunt and fish and scavenge on it. If anyone is minded to live the same way indigenous people did before Champlain arrived, they can. 

Of course, they do not. Instead, they find it preferable to live in one way or another off the presence of the newer settlers.

Meantime, something is to be said for the fact that now tens of millions are being sustained in greater prosperity on a fraction of the land mass.

All recognized native groups have also been given free land, the reserves, adequate for them to farm if they do not want to continue to live by hunting and gathering. If they have been given a bad deal, it is better than the Europeans got.

Xerxes misunderstands the concept of terra nullius, cited disapprovingly by Indian activists (often not themselves particularly Indian) as the legal doctrine under which Indian land was “taken.” He thinks it means that a land has no inhabitants, or that the inhabitants are not human. Of course it does not mean  that; how prejudiced we are prepared to be against our own ancestors. It means a land with no government—“with no master.” A state of virtual anarchy or gang rule. When such a situation is encountered, it is a humanitarian duty to introduce law and order—to protect the rights cited in the US Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men”

A near-total absence of government is a fair description of the prior state of most Canadian indigenous tribes. The term “tribe” more or less asserts this, as an anthropological term. Which is why the left insists on the word “nation,” incorrectly, for what are effectively extended families. As the French used to say of their native neighbours, “sans loi, sans roi, sans foi.” In such a state private property could not exist. Possessions, or the fruit of one’s labour, could be stolen at any time. Since we were speaking of land ownership.

In other words, if any Indian today owns land, they have the European settlers to thank for it.

A few “indigenous” groups had a relatively developed social structure, and so were able to farm—the Iroquois, the Huron, the tribes of the Pacific Northwest. But their societies always operated in violation of human rights: practicing torture, genocide, slavery, cannibalism, and human sacrifice. As a matter of morality and international law, and based on the doctrine of human rights and human equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence, a government, which violates rather than protects human rights, needs to be suppressed or overthrown. This doctrine has been reaffirmed as recently as Kosovo and Rwanda. The French and English came to impose peace. If they are honest, few Indians today would really prefer to return to the risk of torture, slavery, or violent death.

Xerxes repeats the claim that the doctrine of “terra Nullius” comes from a Bull issued by Pope Urban II with reference to Muslim lands. This is a myth. Urban wrote no bull by this title or on this subject. He then blames Pope Alexander for the “Doctrine of Discovery,” which supposedly divided the world between Spain and Portugal, refusing to recognize the sovereignty of any non-Christian lands. But this is obviously nonsense. If the Treaty of Tordesillas really did not recognize the sovereignty of the Aztecs or Incas, it equally did not recognize the sovereignty of England or France, or any other Christian lands. The pope was simply trying to keep forces apart to avoid war between two nations in conflict.

It seems to be the real case that British and French control of Canada came about by and large as a matter of mutual consent; by the native people embracing the social contract.

But let us suppose it came about instead by conquest. If so, the experience of the Indians would hardly be unusual in world history. And yet we seem to treat it as a unique injustice. Are the English trespassing on what once was British land? Why do we make no land acknowledgement to the French, from whom Canada was taken by conquest? Are the Texans and Californians trespassing on Spanish territory? These cases are at least far more clear-cut examples of involuntary conquest than the Canadian Indian experience.

If a Pakistani family moves next door, do I get reparations?

Even after I marry their daughter?

Read more in my book Playing the Indian Card.

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

Depopulation

 

I've been warning about this for at least thirty years. I recall a piece I wrote for Report Newsmagazne back in 2002.

But many people still believe the opposite...

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

What Are Guilt and Shame?

 

Xerxes and his readers have spent the last week trying to decide what the words “guilt” and “shame” mean.

This is superficially odd, of course, because both words occur in the dictionary.

The obvious reason is that they do not like the dictionary definitions. Because they imply the existence of good and evil.

From the Oxford English Dictionary, the ultimate authority:

Guilt:

The fact of having committed, or of being guilty of, some specified or implied offence; guiltiness.

The state (meriting condemnation and reproach of conscience) of having wilfully committed crime or heinous moral offence; criminality, great culpability.

Shame:

The painful emotion arising from the consciousness of something dishonouring, ridiculous, or indecorous in one's own conduct or circumstances (or in those of others whose honour or disgrace one regards as one's own), or of being in a situation which offends one's sense of modesty or decency.

Whenever folks start tinkering with the meaning of words, you know they are up to no good.

The worst culprit here is psychology, the main intent of which is to strip modern life of moral considerations. Thereby actually generating rather than healing most of what we call mental illness.

A therapist writes to Xerxes, “Guilt is an uncomfortable feeling resulting from the commission or contemplation of a specific act contrary to one's internalized standards of conduct."

By this definition, a Nazi who kills Jews is guilty of nothing. Indeed, we must all strive to be psychopaths.

And the issue with shame, according to her, is not that we have done something wrong, but that it might cause us to withdraw from others. We ought to be more shameless.

And a parent must never say to a child, “shame on you.”

A perfect recipe for breeding psychopaths. We are now beginning to see the results of this sort of parenting in society at large. It has been forty years—two generations—since the publication of The Drama of the Gifted Child. Narcissism is everywhere, and social norms are breaking down.

A Christian—presumably Protestant—respondent writes: “We are assured in our absolution each Sunday that God removes both our guilt and shame.”

No he doesn’t. He removes the consequences. The eternal punishment for sins is waived, and only if you feel shame. We are still obliged to do penance, in this world and the next. 

Anyone who declares themself righteous, who ignores the mote in their own eye, is a Pharisee. This is the high road to Hell.

It seems that many people are now on it.

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

Kathy Shaidle

 

Belatedly stumbled across this obituary on Kathy's husband's blog.

I am sure it was written by Kathy herself, and therefore serves as a fit obit for a great Canadian.

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

The Ottawa Is a Dark Stream

 

A recent writing exercise asked to try to remember the first words that struck you as beautiful, that pulled you in to the world of words.

What first occurred to me was this:

Do not forsake me, Oh my darling

On this our wedding day.

I cannot have been older than seven when I first heard it, on the TV; the theme to “High Noon.” I heard it once, and it stuck with me so powerfully that in adulthood I was able to connect it with the movie. Probably the movie had something to do with its power for me.

But what a sad two lines.

Another quotation from TV, from about the same time, that I have not been able to trace. It was from some movie. I do not remember the exact wording.

That is not distant thunder you hear

Those are the big guns. They are coming closer.

Again, dark, and mysterious.

Another bit of lyric verse, often sung by my grandmother, always caught my fancy:

East side, West side, all around the town

Ring around the rosy, London Bridge is falling down

Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O'Rourke

We tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York.

It was the last two lines that connected. “The light fantastic” suggested a portal to a world where things were as they were meant to be; although I knew this was not literally meant. It was the world of art—of dancing, music, and poetry.

Some years later, lines brought home by my older brother:

The Ottawa is a dark stream;

The Ottawa is deep.

Great Hills along the Ottawa

Are wrapped in endless sleep.

The poem spoke of a chance encounter with a beautiful little girl, who simply curtseyed and said “M’sieu.” But she too represented the mystery of art, of beauty. Somehow, this lead-in struck me more than the climax. It was the sense of mystery, of moving to a different dimension of experience.

Compare the tripe I got in school at about the same age as these words were entrancing me:

"Oh, oh!” laughed Dick. 

"Here are Sally and Puff. 

See funny white Puff.” 

Sally laughed, too. 

She said, "Puff is pretty. 

Puff is not yellow. 

Puff is white. 

I can make Puff look pretty. 

Pretty, white Puff.”

School texts are deliberately made boring, as though the intent was to prevent education.

Traditional fairy tales—the ones not adulterated by Disney--are full of dark corners and dangers, and lots of gore.  These are the real education.

It would be so easy to make school better.

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

The Growing Problem of Systemic Racism in Canada

 

The Toronto Star has published a piece on why Canada is racist.

 “In a Facebook group, a white woman responds to a post about new government funding for clean water at an Indigenous reserve, complaining that Indigenous people already get too much support and should do a better job of looking after themselves.”

A point worth making. Local government is responsible for clean water. Why are we blaming and billing the federal government, and not condemning or at least investigating the band council?

“At a bar, a man of European descent joins a discussion about police treatment of Black people and insists that racism and racial profiling happens in other countries, but not in Canada.”

It is incumbent on the author to demonstrate that racism and racial profiling is common in police treatment of black people in Canada. Otherwise he is simply begging the question here, assuming what he claims to prove.

The author then cites a survey of 6,601 participants on how they would respond to a white person who was:

• Speaking up when someone tells an insensitive joke;

• Appropriating Indigenous or Black attire;

• Asking where an Indigenous or Black person came from;

• Claiming racism doesn’t exist in Canada;

• Intervening when an Indigenous or Black person is hassled in public;

• Making a derogatory comment on Facebook; or

• Making a racial gesture at a hockey game.

Notice, to begin with, that the survey is interested only in the actions of white people. This is racial discrimination from the start. Can you imagine a survey that asked respondents to judge and condemn the actions of black people?

- Speaking up when someone tells an insensitive joke.

What counts as insensitive in a joke is entirely in the ear of the perceiver. We may simply be measuring the respondent’s lack of a sense of humour.

- Appropriating indigenous or Black attire.

“Cultural appropriation” is civilization. Is it wrong for “Whites” to buy records by black artists? Should Aryans refuse to patronize Jewish doctors? Is it, conversely, cultural appropriation for indigenous people to wear pants instead of loincloths and paint? Ought we to object, and insist on them having to wear distinctive dress? Perhaps for the Jews gabardine, a yellow star?

- Asking where an indigenous or Black person came from.

By definition, if someone is asking an indigenous person where they came from, they are not aware that they are an indigenous person. Therefore, this cannot be evidence of prejudice towards indigenous people.

If a black person is asked where they came from, how do we know this is because of their skin colour, as opposed to their having a foreign accent? To show this to be racial discrimination, you would have to control for this variable.

- Claiming racism does not exist in Canada.

Another perfect example of begging the question. If systemic racism does not exist in Canada, this is a correct observation. The present article claims to demonstrate that systemic racism does exist in Canada.

- Intervening when an Indigenous or Black person is hassled in public.

Surely this is a good thing, and understood to be so here. But to be evidence of racism, this would have to be compared to the likelihood of intervention when a white person is hassled in public, or an Asian person.

- Making a derogatory comment on Facebook

This is moot, because Facebook will block any racially “derogatory” comments. In other words, those who answer yes to this question are simply shown to be unreliable witnesses. Then too, what is “derogatory” has to be clearly defined to make this meaningful—for Facebook or here.

- Making a racial gesture at a hockey game

Bizarre to include this, since hockey is pretty racially homogenous. Why would anyone make a “racial” gesture at a hockey game? What exactly counts as a “racial gesture”?

Further down, the article gives an example: “a vigorous tomahawk gesture with a loud whooping cry.”

This is a traditional fan gesture for the Atlanta Braves and Kansas City Chiefs. Wrong country, wrong sport. Again, anyone answering yes is probably only showing themselves to be unreliable. And, of course, the American fan gesture is not racist—it is meant to express support and solidarity, not condemnation.

On the evidence of this article, racism is indeed a problem in modern Canada. 

Racism against “whites.”

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