Stephen Roney's Blog, page 236

The Poison of Credentialism

Our current society is afflicted with the disease of credentialism and professionalism. More and more specialized education is being demanded generation by generation for almost any job.

I have long thought this was mostly due to the GI Bill and its equivalents in the years after the Second World War. At about that point, going to college developed a huge new cachet.

But it occurs to me, in the recent controversy about private care homes in Canada, that there is a second factor, at least as important. The influence of the GI bill, after all, should have subsided in a generation or two. But credentialism and higher ed has only grown and grown.

I think a second factor, perhaps a more important factor, is the growth of government. And not just government growth, but the growing attractiveness of government work. This seems to me to have kicked off, in Canada, in the Sixties, when the Pearson government allowed government workers to unionize and to strike, and started giving them big pay raises at regular intervals. Similar things seemed to happen at about the same time in the US and UK.

This violated an ancient principle of democratic government. The traditional understanding was that, if you joined the government service, you were sacrificing the chance of high pay in return for job security. A fair enough trade.

As of Confederation, civil servants were actually not permitted to vote. To allow this was seen as self-dealing. Now they were not just allowed to vote, but allowed to set their own pay levels. For both sides at any negotiating table within the civil service are civil servants, and both benefit from a pay raise. In private industry, the employers will resist because they may lose profits, or market share. In government, there is no such annoying friction.

As a result, it has over the years since become significantly more profitable to work for the civil service than in the private sector. The civil service has become, in effect, the ruling class.

Traditionally, government jobs, not depending on meeting any customer’s or client’s needs, as private operations must, tend instead to hire based on “qualifications.” This is seemingly inevitable, and honourable: in ancient China, it produced the Confucian examination system. It is the way to hire on merit.

But it has produced its own problems, now that government work is so attractive. Since the pay is much higher, everyone wants to work for government, and so qualifications, and higher and higher qualifications, become greatly valued, even in the private sector. Because in any sector, people will still hold out hope for that possible government job.

As a result, for many jobs, perhaps virtually all, the required qualifications far exceed what is actually needed to competently do the job.

What happens in the case of a job, like caregiver in a rest home, for which any training of real practical value would take perhaps four weeks, yet the competition for the best jobs, those working in government-run homes, prompts the requirement for a two-year diploma or a four-year degree or more?

Several things. First, in the colleges and universities offering such formal qualifications, you must stretch four weeks of content over two years. You are therefore consistently pitching the job to the least naturally talented in the field. You are weeding out the more competent.

Second, and often as an alternative, you find the need to pad out the curriculum with irrelevancies. But what irrelevancies? Politics is the natural remedy. The politics of the field. Since those designing the curriculum will be those already in the field, this is what will seem most useful to them. Most of the trainee’s time in class may therefore be spent on an ideological indoctrination, into positions that favour the interests of that occupational group. Into class consciousness, and an awareness of class interests.

This is what is known elsewhere as a cartel, a conspiracy against the interests of the general public. Just putting two tradesmen together in a room, Adam Smith observes, is going to produce such schemes. Imagine putting hundreds together in a classroom for several years.

Third, the cost of getting an unnecessary education tends to exclude the poor from the given field. Not only do the poor therefore get poorer, while the rich get richer; this also means that the field is selecting not on competence, but on inherited privilege. The public suffers poorer service.

This is surely a problem in any profession. It is an especially serious problem in professions that in reality require special talents rather than significant formal training: in the vocations. For example, professionalizing has been visibly devastating for journalism. In the old days, kids became journalists out of high school, because they were independent-minded and could write. And they were worth reading. Now these bright poor kids have nowhere to go, and the rest of us have nothing to read worth reading.

Professionalism has been equally devastating to teaching. The ability to teach, like the ability to write, is not something that can be taught. It is a gift of the spirit.

I expect the same is happening with nursing and caregiving. Compassion cannot be learned in a classroom.

Medical doctors no doubt need their specialized knowledge; but perhaps nowhere is creeping professionalism more damaging than among the social sciences. Among social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and the like.

Happily, there are definite signs that the high-tech revolution is breaking this pervasive form of priestcraft. At the same time, it seems necessary to end the right to strike within the civil service, and have civil service pay rates set by an independent panel to be a fixed percentage of private sector salaries for the same job description.


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

Ezra Levant on Canada's Grievance Industry.

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

Does John's Gospel Promise Salvation by Faith Alone?

Jesus Pantocrator, National Museum of Catalunya, Barcelona. A Romanesque mural.

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned,
but whoever does not believe has already been condemned,
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

-- John 3: 16-18

Today’s gospel reading seems to be a clear endorsement of the Lutheran doctrine of salvation by faith alone: believe in Jesus, and you are saved. Jesus will never condemn you, no matter what you do. It sounds like the ultimate “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

Fail to believe in him, and you are damned, no matter how sincere you are or what your virtuous works might be. Mahatma Gandhi? Most certainly burning in Hell.

But that is not what it means. God is neither than capricious nor that unjust.

Begin with the context, from which these words have been untimely ripped. These words are spoken by Jesus himself, to Nicodemus. It is therefore striking that he refers to “him,” not “me.” Why would he do that? Why the ungrammatical circumlocution?

In the last sentence, too, there is something else odd. Jesus says not “believed in the Son of God,” but “believed in the name of the Son of God.” What does it even mean to believe in or fail to believe in a name? “Yes, I devoutly believe that your name is Catherine and not Elizabeth”?

And if it is the name that is crucial, we are presumably all in trouble, for we actually do not know Jesus’s name. We are not certain how it would have been pronounced in Hebrew or in Aramaic in Jesus’s day, and we are not altogether certain which form he would recognize. Joshuah? Yeheshuah? Johashuah?

So we’re all going to hell.

The puzzle is perhaps partly produced in translation. The original Greek here, onomia, also means “name” in the sense of “reputation.” So the import is probably something like “has not believed in what the only Son of God stands for and represents.” Or, “what stands for and represents the only Son of God.”

There is perhaps a second implication as well. When asked what his first task would be were he ever given civil power, Confucius famously answered, “the first task is the rectification of terms.” That is, calling everything by its proper name, telling the truth; “calling a spade a spade.”

Belief in the “name” of the Son of God therefore means belief in truth, and our commitment to always seek the truth.

For Jesus himself says, in this same Gospel, that truth is what the Son of God represents. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light.”

This explains then why he cannot say simply to Nicodemus “believe in me,” or “believe I am the Son of God.” Nicodemus, who shows himself to be a literalist, would likely misunderstand it: he would be bound to take this in the literal sense, and think he was speaking simply of the historical person standing before him, Yeheshuah von Nazareth.

The passage immediately following this one makes things much clearer; you might say it throws light on the matter:

“And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.”

“Son of God,” therefore, = light, = morality, and = truth. In sum, the Logos. The fact that Joshuah also = the Son of God is not critical at this level.

And now we are back to works. To believe in the Son of God means not necessarily to believe in Yeshua ben Yusef, or in anything particular about him, but to believe in the light, the truth, the moral law. Anyone who does ultimately believe in truth, and the good, and submits to them wholeheartedly, will be saved. Anyone who does not, is already damned. They damn themselves.

This does not mean such a one will always tell the truth and do the right thing; for such sins, we will be forgiven, so long as we acknowledge the fault and preserve the intent. The problem arises when we no longer acknowledge sin, no longer acknowledge truth. This is what happens with settled vice. Then we begin to flee the light, to flee the truth, to deny the Son of God.

Only secondarily, we as Christians assert that anyone who is fully exposed to the reputation, the name, of Yeheshuah the Nazarene, will also acknowledge that he personifies Truth and Good. A good man will therefore recognize him as his proper Lord and Savior.

But it equally follows that a truly principled Buddhist or atheist will enter heaven. “I have other sheep that are not of this fold.”

The person who merely proclaims himself a Christian, on the other hand, instead of sincerely seeking the True and the Good, will not.

“Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.”

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

Extraordinary Academic Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

That Shakesperian rag--
Most intelligent, very elegant,
That old classical drag
Has the proper stuff
The line, "Lay on MacDuff"
Desdemona was the pampered pet
Romeo loves his Juliet
And they were some lovers
You can bet, and yet
I know if they were here today
They'd Grizzly Bear in a different way
And you'd hear old Hamlet say
"To be or not to be"
That Shakesperian rag...

The New York Times published an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton suggesting President Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act if the rioting continues. An obvious point. Other Times columnists immediately branded the piece “Fascist,” there was apparently a general staff insurrection, and the paper apologized for allowing it into print. They promised never again to host such reprehensible opinions. In Canada, Stockwell Day, former leader of the Alliance, patriotically insisted on a CBC panel that there was no systemic racism in Canada. He was apparently promptly thrown off several corporate boards for this heresy.

If opinions someone in power disagrees with are going to be aggressively censored like this, democratic government will not be possible, because political discourse will not be possible. Especially if it includes opinions, like those of Day or Cotton, that are held by a majority of the people; especially opinions expressed by active politicians.

Tim Pool seems convinced this must now end in civil war; that civil war has already begun. It seems to me that is an optimistic scenario. It is more likely, at least in Canada, to end in either totalitarian government or social chaos and a “failed state.”

A bit more hopefully, it also seems to me likely that this latest extreme intolerance is a matter of mass hysteria. Calls to defund the police? That seems almost self-evidently irrational. That means, in effect, no government, and social chaos in one easy step. And how about this for tight reasoning: a week ago, it was deliberate murder to allow businesses to reopen. But now it is Fascist to break up gangs of tightly-clumped people getting physical and touching things in the streets. Words are violence, just as they were a week ago, but looting and destroying property is not violence?

War is peace? Assault is “peaceful protest”?

This is hysteria. People are acting out of blind emotion, without thinking things through.

Everyone saw the video of George Floyd being killed. Anger is a natural reaction. I felt it too. Finding someone to blame and punish is also a natural reaction, but an unworthy one. That is how scapegoating starts. A large proportion of the population is now a lynch mob looking for someone to hurt. Many others are going along and miming the slogans, spraypainting “BLM” on their boarded-up storefronts and publicly kneeling, for fear of the mob turning on them.

But here’s the big new problem: this time around, the mob isn’t only in the streets. It has taken over the newsrooms, the boardrooms, the government offices, the legislatures, even, it seems, the military. There is almost no leadership left taking that sober second look, weighing the facts, keeping it all within the established systems, and urging the mob to calm down. Only a small and embattled minority, themselves in danger of being lynched: the Tom Cottons, the Trumps, the Rand Pauls, the Candace Owens, the Stockwell Days.

The Ralphs are dangerously outnumbered by Jack and the choir.

This is what we have leaders for; this is the justification for elites. To see above the crowd and its passions. With their greater education, intellectual training, and demonstrated mental gifts, they are supposed to be able to deal with such matters calmly, without becoming hysterical.

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs, and blaming it on you…

Somehow, but for the odd seemingly self-educated exception, we have stopped producing such leaders, such an elite.

I think this general failure has to be traced back at least in part to the education system. It is the education system’s job to give us such leaders. Inculcating such a capability was always the essential aim of being schooled: to develop character and the ability to deal calmly and justly with whatever befell. In Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Tom’s father says this explicitly: he does not send his son to Rugby to learn to read Greek, but to become a decent Christian gentleman.

We lost this core of education at about the beginning of the 20th century, when the progressive ideal became instead to turn out useful employees in large numbers for industry. We have accelerated this emphasis over time, to the present concept that STEM is what education really should be all about. This was always in direct violation of Confucian principles: “a gentleman is not a tool.”

Over time, perhaps also in reaction to larger social pressures, we abolished religious and ethical education, those things that give the mind a reliable navigational system. We stopped teaching the humanities, the wisdom we had accumulated over the millennia. We say we still do in places, but instead, we teach “social science,” and simply call it the humanities. Social science produces nothing, and does not teach you how to think.

And now we are reaping what we sowed. We have no leadership, no elite, left. There is no one on the bridge. There is no one at the helm. Everyone is running around the decks waving their arms. And perhaps imagining someone else is in charge.

After a hundred years, after perhaps four generations wrongly educated, it is going to be magnificently difficult to rebuild amidst what is likely to be growing social chaos. Western Europe did it once before, in the medieval monasteries. Perhaps it is time for the Benedict option.

Or perhaps new light may come from the East, perhaps from East Asia or Eastern Europe. They too have been devastated by modernism; but at least, having recently known true hardship, having already hit bottom, they may be prepared to make the sacrifices and do the hard work of rebuilding civilization.


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

The Real World of Discrimination

During the current rioting over the death of George Floyd, every government at every level seems to be in loud agreement that anti-black racism is a problem in America. Many actually support the riots. Governments of other countries have quickly made the same claim regarding their own jurisdictions: everyone hates blacks, and this problem must urgently be addressed.

It should be obvious to anyone that, if government claims that a certain group is discriminated against, this cannot in fact be true. That group instead has the government supporting it. Moreover, in a democratic government, this proves they also have widespread popular support: politicians do not go out of their way to express unpopular opinions.

Can you imagine Hitler declaring anti-semitism a grievous problem in Germany? Or southern Democratic lamenting anti-black discrimination as a serious problem in the 1950s?

If the government is backing you, and giving you special advantages, you are being discriminated for, not discriminated against. If you can riot, and many or most people applaud instead of firing on you, you are being indulged to an extreme degree. Like the great nobles who once had free rein to hunt foxes over anyone’s ploughed fields.

Candace Owens cites the stats: in fact, white males are far more likely to die in the hands of police than blacks.

A group that is genuinely being discriminated against is probably not going to riot. They are probably not even going to complain loudly. To do so would take exceptional courage: they are going to bring the hammer down on themselves. A Gandhi or a Martin Luther King or a Nelson Mandela or a Patrick Pearse will do it: but will face execution or a long prison term or some other serious punishment.

If you do not and do not expect to, if you are shocked and offended if you are simply told to go home, you are not discriminated against.

In other words, the reality of discrimination is necessarily the opposite of what is publicly claimed.

N all the evidence, especially on the evidence of the current and recent rioting, one group we can be confident is not discriminated against in contemporary America is blacks; “African-Americans.”

Their ancestors of course were very much discriminated against, enslaved and then later segregated in the US South. But that is now distant history. If a black slave had merely spoken up in protest, he would no doubt have been flogged or worse. When, in the Sixties, an “uppity nigger” might get lynched.

This is notably not happening any more. Currently, black-led mobs seem instead to want a lynching of a white-skinned police officer. He is charged with murder; that is not enough. He might, after all, be found innocent. They want to string him up.

It’s not just blacks, of course.

By this same principle, “First Nations,” Indians, are not discriminated against in Canada. That the public has accepted the term “First Nations” makes this self-evident. It is dubious that they ever were, in Canada. Everything has been structured for their advantage, by men of good will toward them. Unfortunately, the sense of entitlement this has produced has ended up harming them—just as overly indulging a child can make them end up helpless

Nor have women ever been discriminated against in Western civilization. There was never any “patriarchy.” Since at least the medieval tradition of chivalry, women have instead always been given precedence over men, given mostly the same privileges extended to royalty. Every little girl grows up imagining herself a princess; a young boy who imagined himself a prince would be handled roughly.

So when women in the West decided their lives were too boring, that they wanted to work outside the home, there was no opposition from government or from men. Quite the reverse: society as a whole was turned upside down within a few years to accommodate their wishes.

It should be equally obvious who is really discriminated against. Who is it socially acceptable to publicly complain or joke about? In Nazi Germany, of course, the Jews. Today, in America, blondes, whites, men, straights, Christians, Catholics, business owners, perhaps especially the white rural working class. These are the people Hillary Clinton, while running for president, saw no possible cost to referring to as “deplorable,” that Obama thought he could safely call “bitter clingers” without any political fallout.

For comparison, just try to say anything critical of blacks as a group, or women as a group, or Indians as a group.

Just don’t tell anyone I advised you to do so. The consequences may be dire.



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

Some Straight Talk from Candace Owens

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

Go East, Young Man

When this virus outbreak began—you remember we are in the middle of a pandemic, right?—I proposed that it was a kind of stress test among nations. Perhaps sent by God to do just this. It would show which societies are most vital.

Whether fully consciously or not, others seem to be making the same assumption. South Korea and Taiwan, for example, seem to have gained immensely in international prestige due to their ability to manage the crisis so well. This may be part of what is behind this drive to go from G7 to D10.
We are probably far enough into the outbreak now to declare some winners and losers. The chart shows the death rates per capita by seven-day average for a selection of countries: the developed “G7,” plus other countries in Central/Eastern Europe and East Asia.
Tropical and antipodean principalities have been excluded because I assume the virus is sensitive to heat and light. China is excluded because their figures are probably not reliable. Russia is excluded because it seems to be still in the midst of it, and the ultimate outcome is not yet clear.
Most striking, to me, is how similar the trajectories are within the different cultural groups—with the interesting exception of Germany. This suggests that culture matters more than the particular government and the measures it took.
My conclusion is that, based on this stress test, civilizational vitality is currently greatest in East Asia, with Central and Eastern Europe next. This is where we can expect the future to emerge.

Now here's a thought: given that Canada could use a larger population, it might be wisest for the future of all Canadians to prefer immigrants from these most vital cultural regions. they may bring with them this cultural vitality, and infuse us with it. At the same time, in doing so, we are less likely to drain the parent society of its vitality.

Which would mean, for example, open doors to refugees from the current Chinese crackdown on Hong Kong.









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

Hydroxychloraquine Hoax

This is pretty incredible. Science says the paper published in Lancet that caused the WHO to end all experimentation on hydroxychloraquine and discourage its use seems to have been bogus.

A disaster for the reputation of the Lancet, a further blow, if one were needed, to the credibility of the WHO, and more evidence that private interests are determined to discredit hydroxychloraquine for the sake of their profits, possibly at the cost of many deaths.

And more evidence that our current ruling classes are hopelessly corrupt?


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

Sword, Famine, Wild Beast, and Plague

The Four HorsemenThe apocalypse still gathers momentum; like a handcart on the downhill slope. Rioting continues across the US. Meantime, the pandemic still rages. Not only that: the president of the US has walked across the street to hold up a Bible in front of a burned-out church.

And the media and the chattering classes erupt in rage and unbelief. Not about the rioting; they keep referring to it with the euphemism “peaceful protests,” and carefully select their coverage; the truth emerges mostly on Twitter. Not about the complete disregard of quarantine, likely to result in many deaths. Even though they were insisting only days ago that it was madness for businesses to be allowed to reopen. No, they are beside themselves over the president walking to the church. Even the bishop of the diocese promptly issued a statement condemning Trump’s show of support for everything she is supposed to stand for as “the very opposite of what Jesus taught.”

That is madness on the plain stark staring face of it. I did not believe it when I saw it first. Not the Babylon Bee?

Quite simply, the clerisy, the class generally in charge of everything in the US, is or long has been insane in the proper sense of the term: they are not acknowledging reality. Trump’s specific gesture here, and the reaction, hints too at where this insanity comes from. Indeed, where insanity generally comes from. True madness is usually a moral issue; as often as not, it is denial of reality due to a guilty conscience.

The ruling class has gone mad because it is corrupt. Anecdotally, murderers on death row are almost always delusional; although they almost could not have been as a practical matter when they committed their crime. The ruling class is mad, and they see their end coming.

I don’t know if or how Trump knows; perhaps he is just incredibly lucky. But he seems to have chosen an image that would most enrage them: visible support for traditional Judeo-Christian ethical values. It is surely for this same reason that the clerisy, and all the mainstream scribes, are so fierce in their support of “peaceful protesters” looting and killing. Nothing so salves a guilty conscience as seeing another behave badly. They will want to abet in any way they can. There is, to this extent, honour among thieves. Real foxes hate tails.

To be fair, the clerisy will say that at least some of their rage, although even they say it is a purely secondary element compared to the offensive display of piety, is that Trump had the park between church and the White House cleared of “peaceful protesters” to take this walk. Supposedly cleared using tear gas.

But it is obviously only an assumption on anyone’s part that Trump gave the order to clear the park. That would be micromanaging. The chief of the park police says Trump did not. The police moved in because the “peaceful protesters” had started throwing things at the police, bricks, rocks, and bottles of frozen water, and had climbed on monuments that had previously been the targets of vandalism. The police had found caches of weapons nearby. The rioters had set fire to the church the previous evening, and had forced the White House into lockdown.

Some parks need clearing. With or without a pandemic.

If, as almost universally reported, the police had used tear gas, how was Trump and half the cabinet able to walk through with no discomfort a few minutes later? Why, in the video, were the police not themselves wearing gas masks?

They gave everyone fair warning to leave three times through a loudspeaker. For those who did not clear the area, they used smoke canisters, which do nothing more than confuse, and horses trained to apply steady pressure to force a crowd back. Then they put up a new barrier.

Is there a better way to do it?

The mad elites further complain that Trump threatened to bring in the military if state governments cannot get the rioting under control. This, they say, is something a president cannot legally do; it is fascism; it is a totalitarian coup. It is “using the military against US citizens.”

Yet it was done in the Rodney King riots in 1992; many times during the Civil Rights struggle, in defiance of Southern governors; and many times before that. Protecting us from riots—from the capricious violation of our life, liberty, and property by fellow citizens—is the job of government, and the US is explicitly founded on this premise. That means protection from things like looting, arson, assault, and murder.

All common law jurisdictions—all liberal democracies—traditionally have a “riot act,” that can be publicly proclaimed if civil order has broken down. It prohibits all assemblies, including supposed “peaceful protest,” which of course cannot be distinguished or treated separately during a riot or insurrection.

The Canadian version goes like this:

Her Majesty the Queen charges and commands all persons being assembled immediately to disperse and peaceably to depart to their habitations or to their lawful business on the pain of being guilty of an offence for which, on conviction, they may be sentenced to imprisonment for life. God save the Queen.

The penalty for remaining in the streets was reduced fairly recently from summary execution.

This sort of thing is not a joke; this is not a drill. This is for very high stakes. It is a certainty already that many more people will unnecessarily die. Those promoting the riots have much blood on their hands.


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

A Season in Pandemonium

Pandemonium, the capital of Satan and his subjects.
It looks as though George Floyd may have killed himself after all. Autopsy has shown he had fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system. We do not know how much; but an overdose of fentanyl is deadly on its own, and causes death by asphyxiation. It is possible the officer was just following standard procedure, a procedure regularly used by Minneapolis police without serious consequences, but there were unknown additional factors in this case. This would explain why none of the other officers seemed concerned.

If so, it is awful to think of the poor officer, who is as much a victim in all this as Floyd himself. Even if he is acquitted of murder, he has lost his job, career, and marriage, and his face is known and hated worldwide. How can he live? And he might have only been doing his job.

A lot of people are publicly endorsing the “justified peaceful protests” since the killing. Police officers themselves have joined in. Slate magazine has run a piece helpfully advising on how you can demonstrate—or riot—without being identified by the police.

I think peaceful protests are illegitimate here, even without the rioting. What are they protesting against, or for? Against the killing of Floyd? But the policeman responsible is already charged with murder; the matter will be dealt with by the courts. They can only, then, be protesting this process; which is dangerous. Getting your day in court, and a fair, unprejudiced trial before a jury of one’s peers is a foundation of our freedom and our system of government. Mob rule and lynchings are unlikely to be an improvement. The very act of protesting publicly subverts the possibility of a fair trial.

Are they protesting police racism more generally? It seems hard to make the case that the Minneapolis police force is anti-black, since the police chief is black. Are there statistics showing that black suspects are treated more roughly than white? If so, that needs to be demonstrated by reasoned argument, not imposed by shouting in the streets, let alone threats of force.

And it seems incumbent on anyone making that charge to also offer specific solutions. It is hard to make proposals by shouting in the streets; but even given that, has anyone shouted or spraypainted any workable ideas for improvement? I’m not sure “down with capitalism” or “abolish the police” counts.

So long as we have freedom of speech and a free press, there is scant justification for taking any protest to the streets in any case. If you had a good argument, you pretty obviously wouldn’t. And while we can certainly criticize the media for limiting the opinions “given a platform,” it is still more possible to be heard now, with the Internet, than ever before in anyone’s history.

And the present context is not peaceful protest. That is an egregious lie. It is unrestrained looting, rioting, and what indeed looks like terrorism, violence directed at a political purpose. Trump is right about that, and whatever the practical consequences, it is essential to call a spade a spade. Anyone who sincerely believes in peaceful protest would nevertheless stay home in this case until and unless the rioting ends. Anyone present at a riot, even if they are not themselves engaged, unless they are trying to stop it, is aiding and abetting that riot. None so guilty as the innocent bystander, at least in this case; they serve as human cover. They grant the terrorists their opportunity and their anonymity.

Not to mention the obvious fact that milling about in crowds right now is likely spreading a deadly pandemic, and delaying the day when desperately poor people can again make a livelihood. If you sincerely care about the death of George Floyd, why would you immediately do your best to cause the deaths of more innocent people?

Those of us who genuinely care about George Floyd will stay home, light a candle, and put it in our window to express our concern and solidarity. Then we will pray for his soul’s repose.


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