Stephen Roney's Blog, page 4

The Biggest Problem with AI--And How to Solve It

There is a fundamental problem with AI. It is not, or not just, that it will replace all our jobs, or that it will turn on us. It has no ability to determine what is real, and no sense of values. As a result, there are growing reports of AI systems “hallucinating,” and encouraging people to harm or kill themselves.

In other words, it has no judgement. AI bases its responses on the mass of data available on the internet: reputedly, it gets most of its responses from Reddit and Wikipedia. It is just quoting. This, in philosophical terms, is the ad populum fallacy—there is no necessary connection between popular opinion and truth. 

The other principle on which it operates is that it will agree with any opinion stated by the human who queries it. If the questioner begins with a delusion, the AI will assent to and reinforce that delusion.

How can this be helped?

Not by relying on “experts” for data. That is the “appeal to authority” fallacy. Encyclopedias that relied on experts for their content have been shown to be no more accurate than Wikipedia. On top of this, we increasingly discover that “experts” have their own agendas to protect and advance.

As it happens, AI shares these two problems with psychiatry: psychiatry relies on consensus, not judgement of what is real, and therapists will usually automatically affirm the patient’s point of view. No judgement, and so no guidance.

The solution is obvious: we need AI to get religion. This is where guidance comes from. This is where our sense of values comes from. We need a Catholic AI which will prioritize as its sources the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Bible, the creeds. Then, if the answer is not found there, it will go, in order of authority, to the formal documents from the various ecumenical councils, the Patristic writers, Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, St. Augustine, the writings of Doctors of the Church, papal bulls, the writings of the saints. It could also access all the rest of the data available on the net, but only if the answer was not found here. Ideally, it would have the ability to test other data against these prioritized sources just as a law is tested against the constitution. Although I doubt that is possible.

Aside from giving reliable guidance day to day, something most of us want urgently, this is an ideal way to teach the faith. With the decline of denominational schools and universities, this is also an urgent need.

The same could be done for other religions too: one could choose the engine or filter that suits one’s faith. But it would be easiest for Catholicism, since the lines of authority are most clear, and the sources most plentiful.

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

The Sordid History of the Asylum

 

The old New Brunswick Asylum

Modern psychiatry considers all major forms of “mental illness” incurable, including chronic depression. All they can do is prescribe pills to reduce the “symptoms.” 

Yet the early mental hospitals, circa the first half of the 19th century claimed cure rates up to 82% (C.M. McGovern, The Masters of Madness: Social Origins of the American Psychiatric Profession. 1985, Hanover Press: University Press of New England.)

What went wrong?

A history of the local asylum here in Saint John, N.B., is instructive. Founded in 1835, it was the first in what later became Canada.

Based on the success of such model asylums as York, England, and Worcester, Massachusetts, the plan was to get the patients away from whatever was causing them disorientation, stress or grief, in a calm and relaxing atmosphere. Dr. Waddell, an early superintendent, wrote that when “the cause of excitement no longer exists and they are confined to one scene and one set of companions, improvements are made.” And not just any scene. There were set principles for asylums: “Every hospital for the insane should be in the country, and within less than two miles of a large town.” “No hospital for the insane, however limited its capacity, should have less than fifty acres of land devoted to gardens and pleasure grounds for its patients. At least one hundred acres … for two hundred patients.”

So when a permanent site was sought for the provincial asylum, the site chosen was one that had previously been used for a summer resort, overlooking a major tourist attraction, the Reversing Falls. At the time, it was a mile outside the city, “commanding a magnificent view of the harbour and city.” “Varied scenery, but near enough to the active and changing scenes of life to arrest the attention and amuse the inmates.”

“The sound caused by rushing water is the music of nature, and is always in harmony with, and soothing in its effects on, the nervous organism.”(Waddell, 1874)

So how did we lose this seemingly effective model?

One mistake was putting these hospitals too close to the cities. Inevitably, the nearby city grew and spread to and beyond the hospital gates. The land reserved for outdoor activities became too valuable and was sold off. No more peaceful natural surroundings. At the same time, with growing populations, the hospitals became overcrowded. Giving out pills and sending them home, back to the conditions that caused their upset, was cheaper.

And there was a second mistake. The early successful asylums were generally run by religious organizations. Or else they were run by romantic idealists with a sense of mission. Staff were often themselves former patients.

Given that the primary cause of “mental illness” is a sense of loss of meaning and purpose, this religious element was probably critical to their success. And it prevented an obvious problem with staffing. Once the state took over, it was just a job. 

And a job likely to attract a certain type of person: someone who likes preying on the vulnerable. For who is more vulnerable than a psychiatric patient?

The first supervisor of the asylum, Dr. George Peters, resigned under a cloud. Seven female employees had accused him of “violating their person,” and having “illicit intercourse” with patients.

This has been a recurring problem, it seems, for psychiatry.

A patient committed in 1868 recorded his experiences. The admitting clerk would not address him, but spoke of him in the third person. “I was searched with as little ceremony and feeling as if they had been examining a horse.” He was then, throughout his stay, “ordered about like a dog.” 

“The keepers,” he writes, “are all very ignorant men and are selected purposely for their brutal and cruel disposition.” He could not of course know this, could not know on what basis employees were chosen. I am sure his assumption is wrong. But lacking any control, bullies would naturally self-select for such a job.  “They are, without exception, the most unfeeling, heatless wretches I have ever met.”

And so the cure for mental illness was lost. Obviously, if, as is currently understood, most or all mental illness is caused by abuse, especially in childhood, the mental hospital as it came to be constituted was in fact the perfect prescription for making the problem incurable. 

And so, supposedly wanting to reform this situation, we now send the unwell off to die on the streets. Causing our “homeless crisis.” The Saint John Asylum was torn down in 1998, and the site is now a popular park.

But have you noticed how much the original, successful asylum concept resembles a Christian or Buddhist monastery? Which were historically not just self-sustaining, but financially highly successful.

You have your solution.

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

Be Here Now

Baba Ram Dass

Friend Xerxes has turned his thoughts to mysticism, if only to reject it. He writes, “Mystics of all kinds invite us to ‘live in the present.’ Quit grinding yourself down by rehashing the past or fearing the future, they say. Live in this moment. Live right now!”

Which he rejects as dangerous, for it implies living for the moment and no impulse control.

He is right that it is bad advice; but he is burdened here by a common misconception of mysticism we were all sold in the 1960s or 70s. This sounds like the title of Ram Dass’s 1971 book, Be Here Now.

 But Ram Dass was not a real mystic. He was a Harvard psychology professor, Richard Alpert, who had gotten into LSD and taken a trip to India. He was a New Age spiritual tourist.

I am aware of one Buddhist parable that seems to advocate this notion of living only in the present. But no more; I think it is an aberration.

The doctrine Xerxes takes from this, to “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die,” to a true monastic, which is to say a Western mystic, would be the deadly sin of acedia. They are busy instead in meditation on “memento mori”: on the inevitable future.

“Be here now” works if and only if “here” is heaven and “now” is eternity. But that is quite a stretch, making the Alpert slogan seem deliberately subversive and misleading. Works for a modern hedonist. 

“Now” in common speech means the “present” world: and note the double meaning of that word, “present.” It means the sensory world around us. This is the opposite of the mystic goal. There is a reason why the monk in meditation closes his eyes. “Mystic” means “secret” or “hidden,” what is not visible. 

The Sanskrit word we translate as “mindfulness,” commonly used to refer to meditation on the Eastern or Buddhist model, is actually closer to “memory.” “Remember,” not “Be here now.” Plotinus, a if not the seminal figure in Western mysticism, the founder of Neoplatonism, seeks the eternal forms found in memory. Saint Theresa of Avila speaks of mystic prayer as “recollection.” 

Indeed, to be fair to Alpert, the full title of his 1970 book was “Remember: Be Here Now.” 

An utterly mixed message; perhaps so that anyone could take from it whatever they wanted. But that makes it useless as any kind of spiritual advice. Just a good hustle for a charlatan.

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

Depopulation Solutions

Things are getting ugly with mass immigration, legal and illegal. Natives are beginning to push back. People begin to feel their own governments are against them. Are they trying to replace their own population? Will Britain or France cease to exist?

The chief reason governments are doing this is, apparently, the growing crisis of depopulation. Government pension schemes are projected to go bankrupt without an infusion of younger workers to support the old. Depopulation means a shrinking economy. Mass immigration was meant to solve this. 

Now it seems to have been a mistake.

So what can governments do?

It may turn out to be a chimera. Elon Musk warns that within the near future, most jobs will be replaced by robotics and AI. We will not need a large population to keep the gears turning. And he predicts enough natural abundance that everyone will be able to live well without working. So no need for more people. No need to worry about social security.

Other scientists predict that, within the foreseeable future, we will find a cure for old age itself. People living longer will mean fewer children are needed to keep the population stable or growing. And these are healthy extra years, not needing to be pensioned.

Government interventions based on projected future crises usually make matters worse. When I was graduating high school, our biology teacher insisted we all read The Population Bomb, which warned us that by the 1980s the world would be starving due to overpopulation. Not underpopulation. Governments like China’s wheeled into action with draconian measures making our current crisis worse.

 The one thing we should not do is spend a lot of taxpayer money on proposed solutions that expand the role of government. Yet the usual suggestions are things like free day care, longer parental leave, or paying people to have children. Making post-secondary education free might look like a useful suggestion—it would reduce the cost of having children. But this has been tried, for example in Germany, and does not seem to make a difference.

Here are some cost-free steps we could take.

First, recriminalize abortion. This seems obvious. Were it not urgently needed for moral reasons, the last thing we should be doing in the circumstances is killing babies.

Second, ban or at least restrict contraceptives. This would of course be unpopular, but would cost nothing and obviously address the problem. 

Third, limit the division of assets at divorce, alimony and child support. A woman ending her marriage ought not to get paid more than another women for the same work, only because her partner earned more. Equal pay for equal work. This would reduce the risk of marriage for successful and wealthy men (or women), the sort who could otherwise afford to have more children.

Fourth, when a marriage breaks up, or a child is born, whoever pays child support gets custody of the child. This seems a no-brainer, and requires the minimum of state intervention. Without this stipulation, any man who marries or even has sex risks slavery. A huge disincentive.

Fifth, ban all programs requiring equal pay for women. Men traditionally got paid more than women not because of discrimination, but because they were assumed to be supporting a family. Nor was this philanthropy for the employer: a married breadwinner was going to be more stable and committed to their job. But this also promoted marriage and the ability to have and raise more children. This would cost the government nothing, and boost the economy at the same time.

Finally, a less practical suggestion; but perhaps the most effective. I think of an old Bob Dylan song, in which President Kennedy asks Bob, “What does it take to make the country grow?” And Dylan answers, “My friend John, Brigitte Bardot. Anita Ekberg. Sophia Loren.” 

Conversely, Scott Adams notes recent surveys report that American are having less sex. And he asks, could this be related to the obesity epidemic?

Sex makes babies. Being sexually attractive promotes sex.

The problem may resolve itself with new treatments for obesity, like Ozempic. 

But beyond this, how about restricting immigration to young, attractive foreign women? This would be an obvious enticement for MGTOW to change their minds. It is women who produce babies. And this way, each baby would at least be half-native, and a mixed family would preserve the local traditions. So much for the fear of becoming extinct as a culture.

If it’s a population emergency, we’re going to have to do it. We men are going to have to suck it up and take one for the team.

Or maybe two or three.

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

The Minneapolis Church Shootings

You have no doubt heard, read, and seen, about another mass shooting; at a church in Minneapolis. The shooter was “trans.”

There is some dispute, as there always is with statistics. Some are saying transvestites are disproportionately likely to engage in such mass shootings. Others insist this is a myth. I submit that they are, and it is predictable that they will be.

Let me explain why.

First, anyone declaring themselves “trans” is a narcissist. It is an ego claiming the right and the ability to overrule the physical world: to decide its own sex in defiance of biology. This is equivalent to declaring yourself God—extreme hubris. Acting as the other sex also attracts attention, which the narcissist craves.

This is why there are suddenly so many transgenders, when the tendency was almost unheard of in North America or Europe a hundred years ago. It is because our childrearing has shifted to “unconditional love” and building “self-esteem,” encouraging narcissism.

Inevitably, this narcissism involves a desire to dominate those around you. You will insist on others submitting to your imposed reality; they are not to be left alone, but must be made to assent publicly to your claimed reality. They must not, for example, “dead-name” you. They must use your preferred pronouns, even when you are not present. This also establishes your command over the English language.

This is necessarily a spiritual or psychic dead end. In the end, reality around you will not bend to your will. This causes built up anger, frustration, despair: the symptoms classified by current psychiatry as “depression.” 

Unfortunately, psychiatry and any therapist you go to will not recognize the problem, will not give any advice, but just prescribe you pills for the reported symptoms: SSRIs to dull the despair and anxiety.

SSRIs, like alcohol, deaden emotions, and this includes empathy. They reduce anxiety by silencing the voice of conscience. So, while arguably helpful for true depressives, they exacerbate narcissism.

So you are more likely to act out your anger and frustration on those around you. You will want to punish the world for not submitting to you. You will especially want to influence and to harm children, because they seem most innocent and vulnerable—the domination is most complete. But you will also want to lash out at God, as he is your obvious rival for complete dominance.

It is all perfectly predictable, and we are seeing it again and again.

It is a criminal misdirection to call for a ban on guns. And it is a well-meaning but disastrous error to call instead for more funding for “mental health.” The mental-health complex is causing the problem. The problem is not transgenderism, as such, but narcissism, which may or may not be expressed in transgenderism; and the problem is prescribing SSRIs for narcissists.

A more religious society is the ultimate solution.

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

The Too-Fantastic Four

 

I have now watched the new Fantastic Four movie for myself. 

The Fantastic Four mean a lot to me. They were my entrance to the Marvel Universe back in the “Silver Age.” I might have had FF#3. I was immediately addicted. 

The secret to the great success of Marvel is that Stan Lee understood the rules of the genre in which he was working: the hero legend. DC never did. I credit this to a proper Jewish education.

These heroes were real people with problems. There were references to real places.

The film fails because it does not understand the genre.

It is not just that they tinkered with the FF we knew and loved, by giving Reed Richards a different build and a moustache, or by swapping sexes on the Silver Surfer. Although that was bad enough. They also, gratuitously, had The Thing grow a beard halfway through the film. Another example of messing with the iconography. Heroes are semi-divine beings, and the iconography is important. You do not make Paul Bunyan’s ox pink. You do not make Santa Claus wear blue.

But more fundamentally, the plot line messed with the form.

The plot of the FF movie had spontaneous female emotion, on the part of The Invisible Girl and the Silver Surfer, triumph over both male reason (Reed Richards) and male strength (Galactus). This subverts the genre. It might work in a fairy tale, but this is a hero legend. In a hero legend, the hero triumphs by either strength or strategy. Not by stomping his foot and looking cross.

But to be honest, this is a bit beside the point. The film had lost me well before that, by about halfway through. Because special effects are now a dime a dozen, they are boring and destroy the willing suspension of disbelief. Every movie looks the same, and who cares? I am reminded of some solid writing advice from Mark Twain: “If you thunder and lightning too much, the reader stops hiding under the bed by and by.”

The movie lost my interest immediately when it blasted off into space. I felt insulted. It was not “superhero fatigue,” but special effects fatigue. It would still be wonderful to see a good movie made of the Fantastic Four. One that dealt with the characters, as the original comics did, or as the Joaquin Phoenix “Joker” movie did. This is what made the Fantastic Four special, and is the secret of the hero legend: when you can almost believe they exist in your own real world.

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

Whites Never Invented Anything?

 

Joy Reid has recently claimed online that white people never invent anything. 

This is obviously wrong in terms of engineering or science. Does she mean culture?

No, still obviously wrong: Beethoven, Da Vinci, Shakespeare—which one was black? Andy Warhol?

Perhaps she is thinking only about pop culture? It is true that pop culture has always been a pathway to success for minorities and the poor—since it relies, more than other fields, on pure merit, on talent. 

But here too, it is not clear that non-whites have made the bigger mark. Not in comic books, or advertising, or popular literature, or comedy, or film. Here, it is the Jews who stand out.

But perhaps in popular music, at least? Reid cites rock and roll.

The one striking contribution by blacks to American culture is the sense of spontaneity in music. Contrast jazz with classical music, with its emphasis on practice and precision. This is where American music, and American culture, most obviously differs from European, and it is reasonable to assume this is from African influence.

I suspect this is what Reid is thinking of, and she is wrongly conflating “spontaneity” with “creativity.”

Beyond music, this spontaneity has also spread into other aspects of American culture—into Beat poetry in the fifties, for example. Although the Beat poets were almost all white.

For rock and roll, Reid has a case. Although sometime credited to country music through “roackabilly,” I too think rock and roll emerges mostly from gospel music: Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The idea of spontaneity in art seems to emerge naturally from the idea of spontaneity in worship—letting the spirit move you. 

That said, this spontaneous style of worship did not begin in black congregations. It flows from the theology of various “white” Protestant denominations emerging first in Europe, like the Quakers, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Pentecostals.  Emotional, spontaneous worship is particularly characteristic of many Scots-Irish congregations in the Appalachians—like the snake-handlers. In which direction did the influence really run?

Many of the early Gospel composers were white.

Speaking of the Appalachians, Scots and Irish musical traditions are at least as strong in the American vernacular as anything that can be traced to Africa. Country music, bluegrass, tap dancing, folk music, are all easily identifiable as Irish and Scottish in origin. 

These all no doubt mixed in with black congregations, and black traditions, in the local area--in the South.

And the people mixed too. 

Over one third of African-Americans have Irish ancestry. Beyonce, Billie Holiday, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Rhiannon Giddens, may identify as “African American,” but they certainly have Irish ancestors as well, and much of their musicality and musical heritage may come from that line.

The spontaneity goes with the Protestant heritage of the United States, and the fact that it is, uniquely, a classless society. And it is deceptive and divisive to speak of “black culture” as opposed to American culture.

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

Elbows Down, Idiots!

Those aren't Mounties in the red coats.

Canadians, like most countries, live with various shared delusions. Perhaps it is their shared delusions that hold most countries together. But a particularly troublesome and dangerous one in the case of Canada is its anti-Americanism. 

This has my attention just now because I recently sat through a rant from a fellow Canadian irate at New York State for “stealing” the beaver as their official state mammal. “Those Americans want to take everything.”

Canada does not, of course, own the world’s beavers. New York State has as much right to the beaver as its mascot as does Canada.

Canada also did not, contrary to what every Canadian believes, defeat the USA in the War of 1812. Canada did not burn down the White House. 

The War of 1812 was a fight between the United States, on the one side, and Great Britain and Tecumseh’s Indian Confederacy on the other. Canadian militia units, “fencibles,” did participate, as British subjects, in a relatively minor role. But it is safe to say that no Canadians were involved in the burning of the White House by the British Navy.

Britain ended the war in possession of everything they had at the start. As did the US. Tecumseh’s Confederacy collapsed. On balance, then, I’d say the US came out ahead. They did not conquer Canada; but that was not a war aim.

The kneejerk anti-Americanism among Canadians is a prejudice. Like all prejudices, it is immoral. Substitute “Jews” for “Americans” in all the standard complaints, and perhaps you can see where this is tending. “Those Jews want to take everything.”

Like antisemitism, it is based on envy of American relative success. This is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, the worst next to pride. It is unworthy of a grown-up country.

It is doubly absurd since English Canadians and Americans are ethnically identical: the same language, the same accent, the same shared history, the same waves of immigration from the same countries, the same religion, the same geography, the same governmental and legal traditions. How can there be a sane basis for prejudice, even if prejudice were ever legitimate?

It is probably true that Canada owes its existence as a nation, and its relative freedom, to the United States. The American Revolution, the American Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution, and the US Bill of Rights, were the model and test case on which modern liberal democracy in general has been built, here as everywhere else. While Britain had its own liberal traditions, the American experiment pushed them further faster than would likely otherwise have been the case. The American example certainly led directly to the French Revolution, and then its many echoes throughout Europe. It forced Britain, over the next decades, to extend responsible government to their remaining North American colonies. The US Constitution also became the model for the federal system that defines Canada—for confederation.

The US further serves as the model for Canada as a non-ethnic state, America being the first nation based purely on human equality and human rights. As Laurier put it, “Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality.” If and as Canada is based on freedom, it is based on the example of the United States. The United States is the mother country.

Canada moreover could not ask for a better neighbour. The United States is ten times our size. They could easily conquer Canada in a week or two. Yet since 1815, they have made no attempt. Where else has peace between neighbours lasted so long? It has not even lasted that long internally in the United States. They have offered us free access to their markets—because the US market is so much larger, any free trade deal benefits Canada more than the US. Through NATO and NORAD, they have taken upon themselves responsibility for our defense—we could never secure our vast northlands by ourselves. We boast of our rich resources, as if we had somehow earned them. In a sense, we owe these too to the USA.

It is time we acknowledged this.

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

The Underlying Problem at Cracker Barrel

Everybody is making a big fuss about the re-branding of Cracker Barrel. I had never heard of Cracker Barrel before, but apparently it is huge in the US. It obviously matters deeply to people. It makes sense that I have never encountered it in Canada, the Philippines, Korea, or the Middle East—the whole point of it is American nostalgia.

And that is why people hate the re-branding. It is an attempt to give it a sleek, clean, modern look. This is obviously wrong for a company based on nostalgia. It is suicide. How could the executives have gotten it so wrong?

This calamitous mis-step is reminiscent of the Dylan Mulvaney fiasco at Bud Light, and the deterioration of Lucasfilm’s Star Wars. The problem in each case seems the same: losing touch with the essential market and mission of the company. To an almost unaccountable degree. 

And these three corporate collapses have something else in common: the executive in charge of the change was a woman. I do not know if this was also true of Target’s similar debacle, or Jaguar’s. But marketing departments these days are dominated by women.

Here’s where I take the flak: this illustrates of the eternal truth that women think differently from men. Women are detail oriented. Men are anchored to goals; get it done and don’t sweat the small stuff. Men see the forest: women see trees. Men act on principles; women act on likes and dislikes. Men will keep the market in mind. Women do not think that abstractly. They will want to please themselves and those they see every day.

This means men are better suited for top decision-making positions in any large enterprise, and women are better at handling the details: “help-meets,” secretaries, assistants. Girl Friday will keep things tidy, well-ordered, properly filed and aesthetically pleasing.

This was the wisdom of the ages. 

Of course there are exceptions; but as a general principle, it is about as reliable as assuming the average man will be more formidable at tackle football than the average woman.

We have been ignoring this reality for a couple of generations. The worst of it is not the billions lost by shareholders, the thousands of jobs lost by employees, the long traditions lost. On this path, we are headed for civilizational collapse.

 

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

Straight Talk on Annexation to the US

Reading local history makes clear how artificial the international border between Canada and the US is. Everyone had and has relatives in the States. A good number of men buried in the local cemetery fought for the Union in the American Civil War. American history is our history.

We are, by all accepted standards, the same people, culturally and ethnically, with the exception of Francophone Quebec. Not only do we speak the same language: we speak it with the same accent, so that I usually cannot tell, when I meet someone abroad, if they are Canadian or American. The same cannot be said of two Englishmen meeting abroad: they will know immediately by accent if someone is from Yorkshire as opposed to Cornwall. The same is true for France, or Italy, or Germany. They are far more regionally ethnically diverse than English Canada and the US.

The reason for Canada to exist as an independent entity was that some Americans at the time of the Revolution wanted to retain ties to Britain and to the royal family. That raison d’etre disappeared in about the 1930s. Canada now really has no more ties to Britain than does the US. The royal family is purely symbolic; just a face on the coins and stamps.

By all logic, English Canada should join the United States.

It is, in the first case, a matter of efficiency. It is costly to duplicate services. If Canadian Confederation was a good idea, joining the US is just an extension of the same good idea.

In the second case, it makes economic sense. A perfect common market would increase the prosperity of both sides by dropping significant barriers to trade and commerce. But it would especially increase the prosperity of Canadians, with greater access to the United States’ lager market.

But the strongest reason to unite is the Canadian Constitution. The passage of the Constitution Act in 1982 was a fatal mistake. It has turned Canada into a dictatorship by the unelected judiciary, it has enshrined gross inequalities, and it is virtually impossible to legally amend. The simplest course to change it would seem to be to join the US and come under the US constitution instead.

Unlike the US Constitution, or the prior Canadian Bill of Rights, the Canadian Constitution actually limits human rights. Citizens have rights “subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” 

This vague phrase leaves it all up to judges. Who cannot be trusted—power corrupts.

The vagueness of the Charter generally gives the judiciary too much opportunity to interpret. The contrast to the clarity of the Canadian or the American Bill of Rights is striking.

Equality rights are denied by the phrase: “[this] does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.”

Any particular group can be declared disadvantaged, and thereby given preference. Indeed, this is the usual trick. Hitler argued that ethnic Germans were disadvantaged by the Jews. South African Boers considered themselves disadvantaged after the Boer War. Mussolini declared Italians disadvantaged after Versailles. The whites of the US South considered themselves disadvantaged by the carpetbaggers after the Civil War.

It stands to reason that any group given preferential treatment by government is not disadvantaged by definition. For “disadvantaged,” read “advantaged,” and the matter is clear. Discrimination is enshrined in the Canadian Constitution. It is not in the American one.

Equality rights are also violated in clause 25: “The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed so as to abrogate or derogate from any aboriginal, treaty or other rights or freedoms that pertain to the aboriginal peoples of Canada.”

This means there will forever be at least two classes of Canadian citizenship, and never equality. Aboriginals have special extra rights and freedoms according to the constitution.

And the gross mistake of “multiculturalism” is also enshrined in the Constitution, so that it cannot be corrected. “This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.”

This commits the government to working against the shared Canadian culture—just the opposite of what a government is there to do. For “multicultural heritage” read “ethnic ghettos.”

The fundamental problem is that those who drafted the Canadian Constitution had no vision nor principles other than the partisan considerations of their day: keeping various special interest groups happy. 

It leaves us no way out but either revolution, or annexation to the US. Of those who choices, annexation is vastly preferable.

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