Stephen Roney's Blog, page 269

A Christmas or Fifty Ago

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

-- from Dylan Thomas, "A Child's Christmas in Wales."


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

The Holly and the Ivy

Once I start listening to Steeleye Span, it's hard to stop.




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

Doesn't She Mean "Wine Cellar"?

Wine cellar in Spain
Political junkie that I am, I did not watch the latest Democratic presidential candidates’ debate. These things have just become too tedious, everyone mouthing almost the same slogans, with the exception, in this grouping, of Andrew Yang. Who is never given any speaking time.

It seems there was one dramatic exchange. Elizabeth Warren accused Pete Buttigieg of holding fundraisers in a “wine cave full of crystals.” He responded, “this is the problem with setting purity tests you can’t pass yourself.”



Commentators on the right all seem to think that Buttigieg destroyed Warren in the exchange. Commentators on the left all think Warren destroyed Buttigieg. It is as though we experience separate realities.

A possible insight into the difference emerges from a focus group of California Democratic voters. They seemed to hold to the idea that anyone who is very rich is morally corrupt. Accordingly, holding a high-price fundraiser shows that you are in league with the devil.

Conservatives presumably do not think so, and believe that wealth can be acquired either honestly or dishonestly.

But I still think the position of the leftists is illogical. If this is the assumption, Buttigieg’s response should also have been effective: he pointed out that he was the only person on the stage who was not himself a millionaire or billionaire.

So why do the leftists think Warren won? Two possibilities:

1. It is the power of the image: “wine cave filled with crystal.” Never mind that it is simply prejudicial language used to describe something common in politics. In other words, they want pleasing fantasies, not truths.

2. While the rich are evil, present company is always excluded. These are not real people they are thinking of, but fat cartoon people who wear top hats, spats, monocles and pinstriped pants, and smoke cigars. So no problems for themselves and those they know—no matter how rich they are, they are the good guys.

The hidden enemy of us all.
The real rich must be invisible, snickering unseen in their “wine caves.”



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

The House of Christmas

…This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

-- G.K. Chesterton'Od's Blog: Catholic and Clear Grit comments on the passing parade.

Ex Maria Virgine

One of my all-time favourites.



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

Politics

Why is politics intruding more and more into our lives? Why is everything now political? Even, say, the pronouns we use?

This too has to do with the decline of morality. Once morality is gone, all that is left is the struggle for power—in other words, politics.

The bad news is, this ends as a war of all against all.

The chilling thought emerges that Nazi Germany might only have been a dress rehearsal. The underlying civilizational currents that threw it up have only gained strength since.


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

Lean to the Left, Lean to the Right, Stand Up...

The face of Canada's most leftist province...

The talking heads remain relentless in insisting that the Canadian Conservatives must move left to be electable.

This is demonstrably false.

Where in Canada is the electorate supposedly most left-wing? Quebec? Quebec just elected a right-of-centre party provincially.

Ontario? Ontario twice elected Mike Harris, whose government was about as far right as Canada has seen. They just elected Doug Ford on a right-wing platform.

Okay, not Ontario as a whole, but Toronto specifically? The 416?

They elected Rob Ford mayor. And Mel Lastman before him.

When the Conservative Party chose Stephen Harper, he was from the right wing of that party, long in opposition. He was supposed to be too far right to be electable.

So, of course, was Ronald Reagan in the US. He’s the last candidate to have won a presidential election in a landslide—took every state but Minnesota.

Boris Johnson just won such a landslide in Britain. And who was the last candidate to win a landslide of similar proportions in the UK? Margaret Thatcher. Unambiguously right-wing Margaret Thatcher.

The evidence could hardly be clearer. Taking a strong right-wing position is an electoral winner, not a loser. Pose “right-wing” positions as individual issues in a survey, and most people agree with them.

The issue is sincerity. People want someone who will do as they say. Someone who will lead. Someone who is not conning them for votes, and who will only end up doing whatever is in the interests of the existing bureaucracy.

All this said, I see no candidate, nor obvious potential candidate, who could embody this in the current Conservative leadership contest.

Could have been Max.

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

Jean Charest Is In

Tom Mulcair has said unequivocally that Jean Charest will seek the Conservative leadership. He also claims he hears that Charest’s bid will keep Peter MacKay out.

Frankly, simply in terms of his resume, nobody else looks like a better choice. Charest has actually served previously as Tory leader. He has been deputy prime minister; served for nine years as premier of the second-largest province. He is perfectly bilingual.

Ought to take the leadership easily.

Charest also contrasts well with Trudeau. Trudeau looks callow, lightweight, underqualified and inexperienced. Charest is the opposite: he’s been around forever, and has an almost surreally strong resume. Looks like a man against a boy.

The only problem is that he is an old-line Progressive Conservative. He will look too leftist to many in the party. This may be an incentive for someone prominent on the right to enter. Mulcair thought Rona Ambrose, although early indications are that she is not running. Brad Wall? Who else has the stature to compete?

Having been out of federal politics for a while, Charest may have maneuvering room to adopt some policies to soothe the right wing.'Od's Blog: Catholic and Clear Grit comments on the passing parade.

I Sing of a Maiden

I sing of a maiden
That is matchless,
King of all kings
For her son she chose. 

He came as still
Where his mother was
As dew in April
That falls on the flower. 

He came as still
Where his mother lay
As dew in April
That falls on the spray. 

Mother and maiden
There was never one but she;
Well may such a lady
God's mother be.

--Anonymous, 15th century.

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

Sex and the Deep State

The SixtiesA friend sends along this link from American Thinker. A lot of great insights here. Some stuff that had never occurred to me. 

“Our divorce regime is a unilateral divorce regime. Anyone who wants a divorce gets to have one: The State always takes sides with the party who wants the marriage the least. The State incentivizes disloyalty and infidelity between spouses.”

“The injustices of the unilateral divorce regime have been known for a long time. The Deep State could, at any time, enact divorce by mutual consent. Yet, they do not.”

“Delaying childbearing has become the cost of entering the professions. That means many of our most successful and visible and influential people have used contraception or abortion. They literally cannot imagine what their lives would be without it. Journalists, lawyers, foundation officers, business executives, and politicians all join hands to protect the Abortion Industry from skeptics like David Daleiden.”

I do disagree, though, with the basic premise, that the Sexual Revolution was imposed from above by elites in order to seize more power.

I think it came from all of us, and it was far simpler. The attraction was the promise of sex on demand and without consequences. Couldn’t be clearer, really: “free love!”

To make it work, you then had to kill the traditional sex roles and make men and women interchangeable; the traditional roles required that women and men worked in tandem in a family unit. You had to subvert the family generally. Family, commitment to one partner and to children, went directly counter to random access to sex. It became the enemy. 


You also had to go for unrestricted abortion, and then—hey, if murder is okay, where are the limits?

Instead of sin being condemned, now it was “conventional morality,” or any appeal to morality, that was condemned. The whole gay and trans thing has been an attempt to discredit conventional morality as “discriminatory.” So, for that matter, is the overall attack on “Western civilization,” as though it were a blight upon human history. The target is the Judeo-Christian moral tradition.

This rejection of morality was simply more dangerous when embraced by the elites. If morality is no longer a constraint, the elites are free to pursue pure self-interest. They can just go for power and possessions.

It is also in their self-interest, now, to destroy the family, and religious authority, and even thinking for oneself, as rival power centres.

And so here we are.

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