Stephen Roney's Blog, page 52

Being Mean to Our Elected Representatives

 

Let them eat merde.

Our local MP has complained on Facebook about being told by a local business owner, “we will attack you because you signed up for it.” He decries the lack of civility this represents. “I’m human and hurt too.” “Nobody signs up to be abused.”

I’d feel more sympathy if his own party leader, Justin Trudeau, had not called ordinary Canadians who resisted the Covid vaccinations—and for no other reason-- “fascists,” “Nazi sympathizers,” Russian agents, “homophobes,” “Islamophobes,” “misogynists,” “white supremacists,” “racists,” “transphobes,” holding “unacceptable views,” and pondered publicly on whether they should be allowed to “take up space.” Not to mention forcing them out of their jobs and livelihoods, freezing their bank accounts, and imprisoning many for mere protest. While two wrongs do not make a right, it seems only natural, and natural justice, for a member of the public to be angry, and want to respond in the only way they are still allowed.

If our local rep now finds this sort of hurtful language unacceptable, why did he not condemn it in Trudeau? Aren’t people people too? Did the rest of us sign up for it?

It also leaves a bad taste in the mouth that he is concerned about being attacked verbally when so many Canadians are suffering terrible times, and government seems to be responsible for much of it: the housing and homelessness crisis, people freezing in the streets, while the government keeps letting in a record number of immigrants and imposing onerous environmental regulations on any construction. Inflation and the spiralling cost of food, while the government keeps raising the carbon tax, spending lavishly, had recklessly printed money, and seemingly stuck any sticks they had available in the spokes of farmers and truckers, forcing food costs ever higher. Not to mention supply management and enforced shortages of the most basic foodstuffs. The health care crisis, caused largely or mainly by the government cutting their contributions to health care, but also by firing health care professionals who resisted vaccination, and preventing trained nurses and doctors from pursuing their profession. This looks like a government at war with its people. 

And the problem is that the people are complaining?

The kindest explanation is that the ruling cadre is out of touch. 

How can they not see the tents? Do they never walk to the supermarket? 

But then again, how did all the writers, performers, and crew on Saturday Night Live recently mock Trump for inventing the word “de-bank.” It is not just that they must never have never heard it, when it is a current issue—and keeping track of current issues is an essential part of their job. How could they have been so arrogantly sure of themselves as to not even look it up? This is supposed to be standard practice in any writing shop.

Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with hubris. We are at that point when the madness is obvious to everyone but themselves. They think they are gods.

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

On the Role of Government

 

Xerxes, my friend to my far left, has opined that he does not know clearly what the proper role of government is. He says he wants it to be “scientist, always searching for a fuller understanding. Teacher, conveying wisdom. Priest, upholding a vision of what we can be. Mother, nurturing and caring for those less able to look after themselves.” In other words, all things to all people. One thinks of Mussolini’s formulation: “Everything within the state, nothing against the state, nothing outside the state.” 

That is where current leftist thought is; current “mainstream” leftist thought.

He begins with a tale of a group of friends, who regularly meet to debate about Donald Trump.

Isn’t it odd, unnatural, that the main topic of discussion among a group of Canadian friends would be a guy who is not in our country, not some important writer or philosopher, and not in power anywhere? This speaks of obsession.

And it is clear who is obsessed, isn’t it?

“Three of us think Trump is a poo-pile of all the worst traits of humanity.”

That is literally to say that Trump is at least as bad as Hitler, as Mao or Stalin, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson, or the Marquis de Sade—"the worst traits of all humanity” must be at least this bad.

This is not a rational position. This is Trump Derangement Syndrome.

I am confident, on the other hand, that Xerxes’s characterization of the one Trump supporter in the group is a straw man: “Trump is the Messiah, come back to straighten out a broken and misguided world.” 

Nobody, even his strongest supporters, thinks of Trump in that way. This is necessarily so, because people on the right do not look to government to solve their or the world’s problems. They see its role as clearly defined. There is no room in contemporary “right-wing” politics for a messianic figure or a man on a white horse.

The right has a clear understanding of the role of government. It is limited, and so their expectations of their leaders are limited. 

It is the left that follows politics as a religion or as a substitute for religion, able to create heaven on earth. Recall the ink spent on Barack Obama being a “light worker.” “Hope and Change.” Remember Kennedy “charisma.” I recall posters of Jimmy Carter in 1976 adorned with a halo and the slogan “JC will Save America.” 

Justin Trudeau arrived in Liberal Ottawa as such a man on a white horse.

Ask any actual Trump supporter, and they will inevitably say something like, “I was sceptical, or didn’t like Trump at first; but I like that he did X or says Y. That won me over. But I also wish he wouldn’t/hadn’t/wasn’t Z.” Fill in the blanks, and it works as well for Pierre Poilievre, or Maxime Bernier, or Nigel Farage, or any leader on the right of the spectrum. There are always reservations on the right.

The proper role of government is summarized in the US Declaration of Independence: 

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

This is the charter of liberal democracy per se. It is actually as old as Athens and the Greek city states. One might disagree with it, but one is at least obliged to address it, and say why. In the older formulation that appears in the BNA Act, as old at least as the Roman Empire, governments exist to keep the peace. We can ask governments to do more, with the general consent of the governed. Such as a “social safety net.”

No room for a Messiah here. Expecting a political Messiah or government to save you is also of course anti-Christian, and by definition following the antichrist.

Not to mention, it is fascism. It is the Fuhrer principle.

Government should NOT be better informed than the people it governs, not be scientist, or expert, because it must be with the consent of the governed. They must have all available information in order to consent. This is why we must have freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of information. Government must not know anything the people do not know.

Government must be ethical, but is not there to enforce ethics on others. 

Xerxes thinks the problem is that nobody can agree on what is right and wrong. That is false. Ethics are not complicated: they are the same everywhere, utterly unmysterious, and can be summed up in a sentence, or a choice of sentences: do unto others as you would have them do to you. Or, as Kant expressed it, all others must be treated as ends, not means. Or, act as you could wish all others to act. Each formulation amounts to the same thing, and the principle is in most cases easy to apply. 

That said, governments do not exist to enforce morality. That would be a limit on human freedom. Freedom is required for morality itself. If one acts only under compulsion, by government or by another person, one loses all ability to act morally, because one has lost freedom of choice. That is why Adam and Eve were left free to eat the apple.

Governments are there only to protect your rights from infringement by your neighbour—or from those invading from further afield. “Your right to swing your fist ends where your neighbour’s nose begins.” 

A moral government honours, and stays within, this mandate.

“I do not believe anyone has a divine right to rule over others,” Xerxes adds, waving his flag on the dungheap of liberty. 

Here he is surely pulverizing the sun-bleached skeleton of a very deceased horse. Yes, some European monarchs briefly tried to push the idea, around the time of the Reformation, but always in opposition to the religious authorities, at least in the Catholic Church; I cannot vouch for Martin Luther. It is a pagan doctrine, that of the God-King, as in Japan or ancient Egypt.

The Devil always tries to complicate; the devil loves words like “nuance.” Make the ways straight.

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

Here's Johnny

 

On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, 60 but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.”

…

62 Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child. He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, “His name is John.” 64 Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue set free, and he began to speak, praising God. -- Luke 1

This passage is commonly passed over without comment. I believe it is the only place in the Bible where the custom to name a child after the parent is mentioned. And it seems to be here to make God’s position on the matter clear: don’t do it. It goes against the divine will. Here God strikes the father dumb to prevent it. 

Although we readily accept it today, although it is almost a commonplace, it is obviously wrong. It denies the child their individuality. You are declaring them a part of yourself. It shows a terrifying narcissism.

As practical advice, if you know someone of this sort, you are wise to steer clear.

And, if we were truly a society that cared about children, this would not be acceptable in polite company.

We do not. It is precisely in said "polite company" that it is most common.

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

The Hidden Original Sin

 

The actual mandate of John the Baptist, in Luke 1:

“He will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

This suggests that the key sin necessitating Christ’s coming was a lack of parental love for children. This was the crucial of not indeed the original sin.

This is also why God made the Jews his chosen people: to end child sacrifice among the surrounding nations, most notably the Canaanites. Christianity then in turn ended the legal right of parents to murder their children among the Greeks and Romans.

Since this is the core issue in all morality, isn’t it odd that it is even today overlooked? Isn’t it odd that people commonly only speak of an obligation for children to honour parents?

That this is so shows the sin continues, unabated. We see it obviously, of course, in abortion. We see it in the callous sacrifice of the interests and lives of aboriginal children since the closing of the residential schools. We see it in the growing practice of genital mutilation of children. We see it in the unnecessary bullying of the education system.

We pretend, of course, to care about children above all. The Devil always says the opposite of the truth, to conceal his crimes.

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

The Fix Is Coming

 

Reports are that the Liberals and NDP are working on a bill to alter the Canadian election laws.

They want to expand voting by mail, and extend voting to three days.

These resemble the US voting practices that have caused people to doubt the validity of recent elections.

The fact that the Liberals and NDP would want to push this, despite the controversy in the US, suggests strongly that the purpose is to steal an election. And they very much believe that it can work for them.

For otherwise, why would they risk stirring up this hornet’s nest, of doubts about the security of the voting process? The payoff must be significant and certain. They must have backdoor information that it has worked to manipulate elections in the US.

Until now, the election law has taken pains to avoid people knowing any numbers until all voting is in; because this might influence later votes. Extend it for three days, and it becomes easy for some to find out—and stuff boxes strategically, or tinker with the count.

The excuse for this trickery in the US was the historic experience that blacks were, generations ago, prevented from voting by electoral trickery blocking them from the polls. This is no longer the case, but it provides cover for making the process more open, and less secure. And they could claim in the last presidential election, Covid made it more difficult for people to vote in person. And never get around to changing the law back after that.

In Canada, there is no history of any group being prevented from casting ballots by any manipulation of the rules.

If the Liberals and NDP agree on this, they will be able to get it through. 

The people who work for Elections Canada, although nominally neutral, are civil servants. The civil service heavily favours the Liberals and NDP politically. The left can count on their fix, given these new rules, being permanent.

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

The New University

 

Canada's most photographed building

Jordan Peterson, who should know, has joined a chorus saying that our current university system is unsalvageable, and needs replacing. This is true even purely on technological grounds.

Here is what we need:

First, no funding from any government for the social sciences. If fortune telling is illegal, the social sciences should also be illegal, for the same reason: fraud.

No legal recognition should be given, and no public money spent, for academic qualifications in education, journalism, or art. These degrees do harm and no good.

All universities must have a charter of first principles, and be required to adhere to them in all courses. Without such principles, the humanities, based on deductive reasoning, are impossible. This indeed used to be the case: St. Michael’s was Catholic, McMaster was Baptist, Queen’s was Presbyterian. These charters need not be religious; the US Declaration of Independence, for example, would work. These charters must vary to ensure diversity and justify the existence of different institutions. No two institutions with the same or very similar charter in the same state or province.

Professors cannot be selected by existing faculty, as now happens. Once the existing faculty is corrupted, this system cannot work. Instead, professors establish their credentials as was originally the case, by attracting students. They offer video lectures, and see how many students sign up.

Students must therefore be allowed their choice of professors and lecturers online, from anywhere in the world, given that they are approved as doctrinally sound by the given institution.

To prevent corruption, we need to separate the job of teaching from the job of evaluation. Marking can be done by AI, which can plausibly now create challenge tests by auditing the lectures and the course materials, together with the university’s charter. 

Sitting for an evaluation will have to be done in person at the institution—so that the students cannot, for their part, resort to AI. The institution can also offer “study pods” and tutors, including residence if desired, so that students studying the same field can discuss matters and socialize.

And it would all be much cheaper than what we are doing now. And it would be far easier to upgrade and learn throughout one’s career, necessary when technology is changing so fast.

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

Tell All the Truth

 

“I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kin,
and will put my words into his mouth;
he shall tell them all that I command him.
Whoever will not listen to my words which he speaks in my name,
I myself will make him answer for it.
But if a prophet presumes to speak in my name
an oracle that I have not commanded him to speak,
or speaks in the name of other gods, he shall die.” 

Deuteronomy 18:17-20

Deuteronomy 18: 15-20 was the first reading at today’s mass. It is God’s promise to always send prophets to guide his people.

We should assume prophecy continues in our time. God would not abandon us. Nor do we have God’s wishes all down by law. There must be prophets among us now.

The task of a prophet is to express God’s concerns regarding current human actions. Prophets warn and admonish. They do not tell the future. This is necessarily so, since there is free will. The entire point is to allow us to repent.

Where are the modern prophets, then?

These are our writers and artists. If we no longer have the job and title of prophet among us, the ancient Israelites did not have an artist class. What we call “art” is simply the melding of craft, craftsmanship, with inspiration.

Prophets speak by inspiration; artists speak by inspiration. It is the same: inspiration speaks.

Why do modern prophets, unlike Moses, speak indirectly? For the same reason Jesus spoke in parables. The mighty will persecute a prophet. Ask Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor. They were presecuted in the Old Testament. Those of swinish disposition will trample their insights underfoot. It is wise to half-conceal the point, so that “those who have ears to hear, will hear.”

So, as Emily Dickenson said, “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant.” 

This too is the tradition of the court jester.

However, this is not to say that all art is from God. We see that some current offerings seem positively Satanic. There are more ambient spirits than one. Inspiration can come from God. It can also come from demons.

But if it does, Moses warns, the prophet will be truck dead.

Should a prophet speak for demons, God has an urgent need to silence him. He raises prophets to guide his people; a false prophet does the opposite with equal force. He must be silenced as the Canaanites had to be extirpated, the cities of the plain immolated: they misled souls into Hell.

The 27 Club is a celebrated list of pop musicians who died at the age of 27. An odd coincidence, if it is coincidence. The first member of the Club was actually Robert Johnson. Robert Johnson reputedly went in a short time from being an adequate to an uncannily good guitarist, because one day he met the Devil at a crossroads and sold his soul.

He died gruesomely within two years of that encounter.

Jim Morrison is another member of the club. His family never knew him to be musical or able to sing, and were amazed when he became a pop star. He actually claimed to be possessed by some ambient spirit that entered him at the scene of a traffic accident in the desert.

Other members of the club: Brian Jones, who reputedly was into Satanism; Amy Winehouse; Kurt Cobain; Jimi Hendrix; Janis Joplin.

This can explain why artists have a reputation for dying young; some are wrestling with devils. If the Devil doesn’t kill them, to take their soul, God must.

It’s a risky business, channelling spirit voices.

Those artists who defy the Romantic stereotype and live to a ripe age seem to turn to religion. I think, for example, of the Byrds. Of the original five, two survive: Roger (Jim) McGuinn and Chris Hillman. Both are openly Christian, unlike their bandmates; and have been spreading subtly Christian messages since “Turn1 Turn! Turn!” Of the Beatles, the public atheist, John Lennon, was the first to go, in an unnatural way. There are rumours he sold his soul to the Devil, like Robert Johnson, to become a rock star. Two survive, and they are the two Christians. Ringo Starr is open about it; Paul McCartney as been spreading Christian messages in his lyrics at least since “Let It Be” and “Long and Winding Road.”

For ordinary people, the contrary principle that “the good die young” logically applies. God wants to give the merely wicked a long leash in this life to have the opportunity to repent. The good deserve their reward. 

But the math reverses in the case of prophecy. The longer a true prophet lives, the more souls he can save. The longer a false prophet lives, the more he condemns.

What about George Orwell? Despite his political interests, he seem to have been on the side of the angels. Yet he died young.

But he had already said everything good he had to say. 1984 simply repeats the same lesson as Animal Farm. His spirituality was tenuous; he might have had no more in him. 

What about Keith Richards? If he is a prophet, is he really on the side of God? I mean—the Rolling Stones? Yet they seem to just keep on going.

First, Richards writes the music for the Stones, not the lyrics. If there is a satanic message in the lyrics, that’s down to Mick Jagger. Silencing Richards would not silence Jagger, but silencing Jagger would be sufficient without silencing Richards. Richards may be a bad man personally; but he is being given all the time he needs to repent.

But there is no satanic message in the Stones lyrics. Despite the hype, if you listen to them, Jagger’s lyrics are never advocating immorality, and are sometimes obviously Christian.

It just doesn’t pay to say it straight. Success in circuit lies.

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

What We Look Like from Abroad

 

And a lot of Americans watch Tucker Carlson.

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

Canada's Hope

 

The recent ruling by a federal court that the Trudeau government acted illegally in imposing the Emergency Act in 2022 gives a glimmer of hope that some human rights and some limits on the powers of the government of the day still exist in Canada. But it is only a glimmer—this ruling will be appealed to a higher court, and there is no reason for confidence that they will uphold it. Canadian courts have a bad reputation when it comes to defending human rights.

Jordan Peterson is right that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is no more substantial than the lofty guarantees of human rights in the Chinese constitution, or the old constitution of the USSR. Documents can say anything. By themselves they have no force. One needs to look at what governments actually do.

In Canada, we have no property rights. The government freezing of bank accounts under the arbitrarily imposed Emergency Act demonstrated this. And, of course, if it suits them, they do not recognize land title. Leaving aside seemingly endless “environmentalist” constraints on land use, they reserve the right to declare any property aboriginal land.

We have no mobility rights. The lockdowns demonstrated this. You could not board a plane or a bus without proof of vaccination; or at times at all. There are also endless restraints on the right to live and work in another province, due to arbitrary and onerous licensing requirements.

We have no freedom of speech. This has been true since the “Hate Laws” went on the books. The restrictions have become more aggressive almost monthly, up to and including compelled speech. 

We have no free press; we even have government censorship, like China, of the internet.

We have no right to peaceful assembly or to petition the government. This is what the Emergency Act was invoked to suppress. And participants are being prosecuted for the vague crime of “mischief.” Which could surely be construed to punish, Chinese Communist style, any act the government decided retroactively it did not like. The excuse that vital transportation corridors were being blocked by the protest is simply not true.

We have no freedom of religion. Merely quoting passages from the Bible may now be illegal. Any suggestion that homosexual sex is sinful, as all major religions teach, is a criminal offense. Churches are being burned down, with little reaction from authorities—or even with muted signs of approval.

We have no freedom of conscience. Doctors and nurses, for example, who have a moral objection to abortion or to assisted suicide, are legally required either to submit to patient wishes or at least to refer, making them accomplices in what they may consider grave sin.

We have no freedom of association. Various “affirmative action” programmes, for example, legislate whom we must hire or serve. And the lockdown and various government blacklists determine whom we must not associate with.

We have no equality. Aboriginal rights, for example, now being aggressively promoted, are in direct contravention of human equality. As are racial or gender quotas, and other such government initiatives. Like government programmes targeted specifically at funding “black” businesses. The “Gladue rule” is an unambiguous violation of equal protection under the law.

We have no right to life. Abortion is unrestricted and government funded in Canada. And now MAiD has been unleashed. Consent, granted, is still nominally required for the latter, but it is a perilously slippery slope. You can almost see the future. Homelessness has become an epidemic, governments seem unable or unwilling to do anything about it. Those who do not simply freeze to death are offered the friendlier option of assistance in dying. As we slide along this slippery toboggan run, one can foresee governments progressively cutting supports for the poor, distraught, or chronically ill, compelling them to “voluntarily” ask to be killed. 

This decision by the courts, if upheld may be our last chance to save Canadian from both tyranny and endemic poverty. 

Te alternative being a friendly invasion by the US, and no doubt the loss of Canadian independence, for whatever it is worth. Tucker Carlson, at least, is now openly calling for this.

And being cheered by huge crowds in Canada.

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

What Is Real?

 

"Everything you can imagine is real”—Picasso

This quote appears on the cover of the latest issue of Verse Afire, a Canadian poetry journal.

The observation is self-evidently true. 

If you imagine a unicorn, for example, said unicorn is necessarily real, or you could not imagine it. The only question is whether it exists as a physical entity, or a spiritual entity: sensed, or imagined.

This is also the fastest and simplest proof of God: if he did not exist, you could not formulate the statement “Does God exist?” The question automatically answers itself.

You may object that by “exist,” you mean, does the thing exist independent of me thinking about it? Is its existence purely subjective?

Yes, God exists apart from your thinking about him, and unicorns exist apart from your thinking about them. Otherwise, when you say “God” or “unicorn,” your listeners would not know what you mean. Yet they immediately do. Moreover, you can stop thinking about unicorns, or God, and then, the next time you think of them, there they are again. It is just the same as with that chestnut tree down the street: you know that it exists objectively because others also see it, and because you can turn and look away, then look back, and it is still there. So too with unicorns.

In sum, the idea that things you imagine are not real is a primitive materialist superstition

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