Stephen Roney's Blog, page 40

Ireland, We Hardly Knew Ye

 

The Irish immigration situation is ironic. The UK voted to leave the EU mostly because the common people were alarmed at the levels of immigration, in particular “asylum seekers.” They felt their culture was being lost. It was urgent to take control of their own immigration policy. They could not so long as they belonged to the EU. 

Ireland cut up a fuss, demanding that the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland be kept open and unrestricted—they did not want a more divided Ireland.

Now the Irish general public is also up in arms. They fought Britain for centuries to establish their independence. And now they are being colonized by mass waves of foreigners? How is this different from what Cromwell did?

And Britain has begun to take command of their asylum seeker problem, by shipping them off to Rwanda. So, unsurprisingly, the asylum seekers are taking advantage of that open border to flood into Ireland, to avoid deportation back to Africa. 

Putting Ireland on the brink of a general uprising.

This is awkward for the Irish. They are instinctively left-wing, anti-British, and welcoming to outsiders. But they seem to have reached a limit. 

So now what?

The leaders of Europe as a whole are going to need to follow something like the Rwanda model. Popular opposition to mass immigration has become a central issue in many countries now, in Sweden and Denmark, in Italy, in Greece, in France. As it was and continues to be in the US as early as 2016, leading to the election of Trump.

It was a bad idea. It needs to be reversed. The question is, will the EU care enough about Ireland\’s problem to do anything quickly enough to save that nation.

I fear Ireland may have to act unilaterally, perhaps in defiance of the EU, and take the consequences. If the borer is to remain “soft’, they must have the same asylum policies as the UK. They must negotiate their own flights to Rwanda.

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

Downfall

 

The common wisdom is that Justin Trudeau’s poll numbers are collapsing now because people are tired of his government. There is a natural cycle, and nobody stays in for more than about ten years.

That’s what the established punditry wants you to believe. Because they like Trudeau’s policies, and hope they continue.

I think this is wrong. Canada is actually unusual among democracies for keeping governments and leaders they like in power for a long time: Mackenzie King, Ontario’s Big Blue Machine, Smallwood in Newfoundland, Hatfield in New Brunswick, the Tories in Alberta, Duplessis in Quebec, and so on.

Second, Trudeau was never popular. He squeaked in twice by merely coming second in a three-way race. 

Third, only being tired of him does not tally with such a dramatic poll collapse. It looks more like some pent-up anger is at last being allowed expression.

Until now, quite simply, nobody offered an alternative. Scheer and O’Toole promised to govern the same way he was. They effectively endorsed Trudeau. All you got was a new face. The NDP under Singh was also indistinguishable on ideology. Much as they may have hated Trudeau’s policies or approach, they despised Scheer or O’Toole or Singh as much as Trudeau, or more, for denying them that choice.

Poilievre is their first chance to vote against6 Trudeau. They are excited about it.

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

Peterson on the Ed Schools

 

You want the truth? Resentful radical leftists took over the Faculties of Education in the 1960s.

Now they control the entire K-12 system and half (half!) of all state budgets.

The Ed schools are among the worst faculties in the increasingly demented universities. Every bit of the "research" they have conducted in the last sixty years was a lie: whole word reading, multiple intelligences, self-esteem. Nothing but destructive.

Their students are by and large lazy, unintelligent, uninterested and ideologically captured.

The worst of them become administrators.

These are the people to whom we give our children, and much of our tax money. And we've done it for four generations, with no end in sight.

The Faculties of Education should be eliminated. They have done a worse than terrible job, and they are destroying our culture. Intentionally. Starting with your kids.

Jordan Peterson on X (Twitter)

All true; I agree 100% and have been saying the same thing for some years. We must abolish the Ed Schools. Having graduated from one should be a disqualification, not a qualification, as a teacher. They deliberately teach how to teach badly, so that any homeschooler can actually produce better results than their "professionals." And this is measurable. 

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

Why Everyone Hates the Jews

 

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

The Diaspora

 

I am uncomfortable with the increasingly common use of the term “diaspora.” Before the 1960s, there was only one “diaspora” in common usage: the Jewish diaspora. Nowadays, everyone sees themselves as part of a diaspora. There is the African diaspora, the Irish diaspora, the Italian diaspora, the Chinese diaspora, and on and on.

This implies we believe our proper home is elsewhere. This implies in turn a lack of allegiance to the community in which we reside, and an alienation from our neighbours. This is not a healthy attitude.

It seems reasonable in cases when people are actually driven out of their original homeland and cannot return: a diaspora of Russian nobles after 1917, perhaps. The more so if the homeland had some special religious significance; such was the case with the Jews. They were indeed living in exile. “Next year in Jerusalem!” 

But if this is not the case, the usage seems frivolous.

If it is just a description of a group of people who emigrated somewhere, should we speak of a diaspora of the English to Canada, the US, Australia, Malaysia and South Africa? A French diaspora to Martinique and Quebec? A German diaspora to Eastern Europe?

We do not. We understand that English Americans are no longer English ethnically, and Quebecois are no longer ethnically the same as the French. Austrians are not Germans. They are their own thing. 

Diasporas are people living in exile. You are not a diaspora if you are free to go back, but do not wish to.

Given this new expanded usage of “diaspora,” I am a member of the Irish diaspora which is commonly referred to nowadays. I think it is even fair to say that the Irish in Canada, or the Highland Scots, were forced out of their homeland. 

However, it still seems absurd to speak in these terms. My Irish ancestors integrated to this new nation, and intermarried. My DNA is mostly Irish, but mixed. My culture, generations later, is not that of Ireland; it is Canadian. When I go to Ireland I find much that is familiar, but there I would not be home, and it would not feel like home. Nor do I have so much in common with my fellow members of the “Irish diaspora” in Australia or the Appalachian mountains of the US South. There is a common cultural substratum there, true, but they are Australians, and Americans.

It is as absurd to speak of an “African diaspora.” The culture of “African-Americans” is American. It is jazz, the blues, gospel, soul. All of this is mainstream America; and essentially all “African Americans” are racially mixed. Were an “African-America” to “return” to Africa, they would not even know which of the dozens of African cultures they were supposed to be returning to.

It is pleasant and commendable to trace one’s ancestry, and preserve one’s cultural traditions, and to cherish them. But to make being a “diaspora” part of your own identity is tragic. It condemns you to a life in exile.

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

On Ending the Pro-Hamas Protests on University Campuses

 

Those on the right are faced now with a common challenge: why is it they generally approve of shutting down the current pro-Hama protests, while they generally objected to shutting down the Freedom Convoy?

No, it is not because the pro-Hamas protesters are advocating racism and genocide, while the freedom truckers were simply demanding their freedom and their right to make a living. I approve of the aims of the one protest, and oppose the aims of the other; but that is not the standard. Freedom of speech and the right to petition government applies to everyone.

It is because the nature of the two protests is different. The truckers protested peacefully on public property, where they had every right to be. The Hamas protesters seized and occupied private property, preventing its use by its owners and their clients. The truckers, by contrast, allowed parliamentarians to come and go throughout. Although they were accused of preventing nearby businesses from operating by their presence, this is a slander. The government forced the businesses to close; the truckers were demanding they be allowed to open. Those that did open did good business. In the current protests I see windows smashed, police attacked, and demands to be fed—not free food being distributed to passersby, and bouncy castles.

The issue is not protest, but trespass, vandalism, and assault.

It remains to be seen whether the government reaction to the current protests will excessive and an egregious violation of human rights, as it was for the truckers or those who, sometimes inadvertently, trespassed on January 6. 

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

Diagolon Responds

 

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

And It Gets Worse

 

The Speaker's office is falsifying Hansard.

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

Wacko Trudeau

 

Whatever else might be said, Poilievre and the Conservatives scored a rhetorical win when Speaker Greg Fergus expelled him from the House. “You can’t call Justin Trudeau wacko” immortalizes the idea that Trudeau is wacko. It might otherwise have been missed. And everyone now wants to make a point of calling him wacko, reinforcing it endlessly.

And even though it was the Speaker and not the PM who expelled Poilievre, it reinforces the idea that the current government wants to suppress dissent, and is subverting democratic institutions to do so.

I wonder if Poilievre is such a rhetorical genius that he planned this. If not, God is taking a hand in Canadian politics.

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

Withering on the Vine

 

Jesus said to his disciples:
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit,
and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.
You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.
Remain in me, as I remain in you.
Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own
unless it remains on the vine,
so neither can you unless you remain in me.
I am the vine, you are the branches.
Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,
because without me you can do nothing.
Anyone who does not remain in me
will be thrown out like a branch and wither;
people will gather them and throw them into a fire
and they will be burned.
If you remain in me and my words remain in you,
ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.
By this is my Father glorified,
that you bear much fruit and become my disciples."

This was last Sunday’s Gospel reading. 

It contradicts the Deist position, that scorns asking God for things in prayer. 

It contradicts the position that everyone is basically good, and everyone is equally a sinner: the “don’t be judgmental” pose. It instead makes a radical distinction, as the Gospels repeatedly do, between good people and bad people: the good bear much fruit, the bad are thrown into the fire.

The question: what is meant by “fruit”? 

If it means “good deeds,” the claim does not seem to work. Surely we all know of bad people, and of course atheists, who do some good things by an objective standard. Hitler was a vegetarian who was kind to his dog. He built some fine highways. The moral law, according to Christians, is binding on everyone, not only Christians.

And why would God “prune” those who do good deeds? “Every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.” It sounds as though he is punishing his followers for doing good.

Nor can “fruit” have the most obvious meaning, children. Everyone can, in principle, have children if they so desire.

I think the passage works only if by “fruit,” the gospel means what we call art. As any true artist knows, you can do nothing alone. The work comes to you from somewhere else. Steven King describes it as a process of excavation. Michelangelo said he freed a figure that was already in the rock. In other words, it is inspired. By whom? By God. By Jesus, the Logos.

Hence, “without me you can do nothing.”

It continues to come so long as you are connected to Jesus as the Logos, that is, so long as you are sincerely aligned with truth, good, and beauty. The last thing an artist can ever do is lie. So long as you are fully committed to this, if you pray for inspiration, it will come. 

“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.”

If you are not committed to telling the truth, if you are trying to lie, promote what is sinful, or create something ugly, the inspiration will dry up, like a branch withers. 

“People will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned.”

This is not a reference to hell as afterlife. God won’t do this, according to the passage. Their conscience won’t do it. That is what sends you to hell. People will do it. The audience, the readership, human posterity will do it. Their works will fail the test of time, and will not be preserved.

This all no doubt sounds wrong to many: since when were bohemians our standard for morality? Plato calls poets liars; fiction writers write fiction. Since when is this our standard for truth?

But that apparent dissonance is largely the fault of established religion, which is inevitably co-opted by pharisaism. Pharisees will hate the truth, and will malign and slander artists for it.

An art too is of course infested with poseurs. But that is the art that will not endure. 

Individual artists can also hold wrong beliefs, and be wrong in their behaviour. That does not change the equation, so long as they are sincerely seeking the true and the good. The thing is, they are sincerely seeking, not just accepting it from authority without consideration. They are communicating with the Logos, not the local magistrates.

And we cannot always believe what we hear about artists. They are obviously vulnerable to slander from the pharisees, who will see them as a threat, just as they saw Jesus and the prophets. One interesting datum: Jim Morrison, of the Doors, was legendary as a sexual predator. Yet not one paternity suit was ever filed against him. Despite his great wealth. How could that tally? Ray Manzarek, his bandmate and friend, insists he was entirely unlike the common portrayal.

And artists may even promote this reputation as outlaws, as it can gain attention for their art while protecting them from worse attacks. Morrison seemed to.

And if artists lead disordered lives, it may be as victims, not perpetrators. God does seem to “prune” artists. If this seems unjust, it also seems that suffering provokes art, just like pruning forces the tree to turn to fruit. “Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain.” “You have to have suffered to sing the blues.”

This may be the universal justification for the existence of suffering: it leads us to truth, good, and beauty.

If we are not speaking of hell, what does it mean to wither, die, and be thrown into the fire? That can indeed also be a reference to hell in the afterlife. But perhaps we can see it in this life as well. Those who turn away from truth seem to lose all inspiration, and then seem to lose their will. They become like automatons, NPCs, in the grips of some vice or addiction. They live their lives with blinkers on, to avoid truth, and the blinkers keep getting larger until all is darkness, and they live in a deluded world.

In the truest sense, at this point, they have lost their soul. All that is left is ash.

The moral of this story is that we are created to create: made from the clay by the divine potter, and inspired by his own image, to go forth and create as he did.

Everything else in life is zero sum.

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