Stephen Roney's Blog, page 62

Waiting

 

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

Billy

 

I have been binging on the British series “Call the Midwife.” A recent episode was about a Mongoloid man whose mother suddenly dies. Having always been taken care of, he is unable to look after himself. He is therefore taken in temporarily by the caretaker of the nearby convent, and his shopkeeper wife, until a permanent placement can be found. 

After a few weeks, they begin to love having him around, and now do not want to let him go. 

This sounds heartwarming, doesn’t it?

But the series is wise. This would not be happily ever after. He would only be trapped in childhood and dependency for longer. The young man himself points out that, living with this elderly couple, he has no friends. 

So they, more generously, consent to send him off to an institution, where he can socialize with other retarded adults.

This hit close to where I live, because my own family was faced long ago with a similar issue, and made the wrong choice.

My Uncle Billy was born retarded, reputedly due to brain damage at birth. And my grandparents would not hear of sending him off to some institution. No, he was going to be raised at home, not shut away somewhere.

It seemed no doubt like kindness, but it was cruel and selfish. He lived his life as a family pet. All his life, Billy never had any friends, never held down a job and made his own money, never met a girl, never learned how to act around people. And, not coincidentally, he developed a difficult, sour disposition. He was an angry man. As well as seeking troublesome sexual outlets.

I have known other mentally retarded people who led good lives; who went to work every day, if at a “sheltered workshop.” They managed their own affairs, with some supervision; even married and set up household. 

They had human dignity; the dignity God allowed us by giving us free will. We are not meant to be pets, and we are not happy in a cage. Even if it looks like a garden.

Billy had none of that. He was denied a life.

It is wrong to try to possess other people. It is if anything more wrong when you mask this as caring.

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

A Canadian Advent Carol

 

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

To Have and Have Not

 

Blue = core, red = periphery

I discover my kids’ world geography text teaches Marxism; but in a way subtle enough many parents might not realize. So, as a public service, I outline the problem here.

The text divides the world into “core” and “periphery.” These are all the same countries we used to call “developed” and “underdeveloped” or “developing.” Except, of course, that there are more developed countries now than there used to be.

The text asserts that “core areas pull in people, skills, and wealth from the periphery”: and that “the core depends on the periphery for food and raw materials.”

This sounds as though the core is exploiting the periphery, just as, in Marxist theory, the proletarians are exploited by the rich capitalists. Strictly speaking, this is Fascism; assigning class to race and nation. Mussolini identified Italy as a “proletarian nation,” and Hitler identified rich capitalists with Jews.

And this is what your kids learned today in school.

The essential premise, for Marxism and for Fascism, is that wealth is acquired by stealing it from others. This premise is false; and it leads to violence.

Begin with the claim that the developed world depends on the periphery for food. Before the “green revolution” of the 1980s, famine was widespread in the underdeveloped world. They were not exporting food; they were importing it from the developed world. Today, the world’s largest food exporter is the USA. Then Netherlands, Germany, France, Canada; none of the top ten are countries the text identifies as “periphery.” The poorer countries are still hard pressed to feed themselves.

As for raw materials, the trade does not seem one-sided. Broadly, raw materials are randomly distributed around the globe. Canada, the US, and Australia are notably rich in minerals, timber, oil. No doubt the core needs some raw materials from the periphery, just as the periphery needs some raw materials from the core. Each country sells what it can, for the price it can get. To claim that this is exploitative is like saying a customer is exploiting a store by shopping there. Rather, trade makes either richer.

It is true that the developed world draws people and skills from the periphery. But this too is liable to make their home countries richer, not poorer. These emigres may stay and settle in the new land. But they will still be inclined to send some money home, and to invest at home some capital they make abroad. Remittances from “Overseas Workers” make up, for example, one fifth of the Philippine economy. Moreover,  being or having ties to emigres from another country, over the longer term,  gives the rich country reason to invest there. When Japan became prosperous, their prosperity spread next to South Korea and Taiwan, places that used to belong to Japan, and then to Thailand, their former ally. Were else would they feel more comfortable opening a branch plant? When Britain became prosperous, their prosperity spread to Canada, the US, Australia. Taiwanese prosperity naturally spread to China.

Rich countries do not plunder wealth from the poor countries. Rather, poor countries gain wealth from the rich. Just as, if your near neighbour becomes rich, you do not become poorer; your opportunities to make money increase, by selling him goods and services.

So why is it then that some countries are rich, and others poor?

It is not strategic location. Singapore, the text suggests, is rich  because of its strategic location on a major trade route, the Straits of Malacca. But Yemen and Somalia are just as strategically located, as the Red Sea empties into the Arabian Sea: this is the same trade route from Europe to East Asia, at similar choke point. And they are as poor as any place on Earth.

It is not happening to have rich natural resources. Yes, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and Qatar do well from gas and oil. But Venezuela or Libya have comparable amounts of oil, and are starving.

Having ties with another country that is already rich certainly helps—an argument, actually, for colonialism. But the key is social stability and good social order. In order to invest either money or energy, you need to be confident your property is secure, and you are not going to be robbed or punished for doing well. If you can trust your neighbour to do as he says, to keep a bargain, this reduces friction in every transaction. 

Bad, corrupt, or unstable government can hinder this. So, more seriously, can a breakdown in shared social values. Things become expensive when you cannot trust anyone.

Observe the unusually high levels of public order and public trust in England, where the Industrial Revolution began. Observe the good social order in such successful economies as Germany, Japan, Switzerland, the Netherlands. Things work as they should in such lands, with a minimum of fuss. The wheels are greased.

Unfortunately, the West is increasingly seeing bad government, a breakdown in shared values, and a decline in community trust.

And this seems actually encouraged and promoted by elites. Who now scorn such “white values” or “patriarchy” in favour of “multiculturalism” and libertinism masquerading as liberalism.

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

Welcome to Advent Season

 

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

On Responsible Henhouse Management

 

Why is the government of Canada, the USA, and the Catholic Church now so historically awful?

It is simple. We have the foxes in charge of the henhouse. 

Trudeau dislikes Canada; he says there is no Canadian mainstream. It’s all just a romper room to him. Not admirable, like China.

Biden and his backers consider “Make America Great Again” an objectionable sentiment. They’re explicitly not on the side of America.

And would anyone who loves Catholicism and its traditions want to prohibit its central ritual for centuries, the Latin mass? A recent commentator insists that the modernists are well-intentioned, and think they are saving the church. I do not believe it. You do not increase your appeal by denying some option.

Of course these people are going to do what they can to trash the place while they have the chance. 

One might ask, would a moral person seek and accept a position running an institution they despise? Isn’t this deceitful? 

But we needn’t assume these are moral people. It would still be a good career move.

We can’t do much about Francis, but as voters, it was also unwise to put someone who condemns “populism” in charge of a democracy.

I hope there is still enough love for Canada, for America, and for God Incarnate, among ordinary people, those of the Beatitudes, that we can outlast this, outvote this, and salvage it all.

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

Get "Playing the Indian Card" at a Bargain Price

 

I’m excited to announce my book, Playing the Indian Card, will be promoted on @Smashwords as part of their End of Year Sale starting on December 15th! Be sure to follow me for more updates and links to the promotion for my books and many more! #SmashwordsEoYSale

Playing the Indian Card (smashwords.com)

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

The Lessons of Fairyland

 

One of the most alarming trends in modern culture is the suppression of fairy tales and fables. 

These are critically important. Along with reading, writing, and arithmetic, the Bible and the catechism, they are entirely what a proper general education consists of. Fairy tales and fables exist to teach each new generation the vital lessons they need for life. 

And most kids today don’t know them—not the real stories.

Disney has played a role in this—the original Disney. He took the traditional stories and always altered the message to “finding a sex partner is the key to happiness.” Which was never in the original stories, with their spiritual concerns. How much of the sexual “revolution” that began in the 1950s was due to this? For example, in the original Sleeping Beauty, when the prince awakens her with a kiss, the plot is still only half unravelled. Her greatest troubles lie ahead, at the hands of a cannibalistic mother-in-law. The real Snow White is not awakened by a kiss—she is only seven years old--but when her corpse is dropped in transit. Nor is any frog turned into a prince by being kissed—he transforms when thrown against the wall in disgust.

One sees the trend.

But once the tales had been so trivialized, it got worse. Largely at the hands of the latter Disney Corp, but also thanks to feminists and pomos generally. 

The new trend is not just to ignore or suppress the moral lessons, but to invert them; along with the warnings of dangers to a child’s well-being.  One is now to trust wolves and witches and ogres, who are all noble, well-meaning, oppressed and discriminated against. A good way to usher young people into witches’ ovens and ogres’ cooking pots and the wolves’ dark interiors.

It all seems part of a larger holocaust of the young, which is a general narcissistic tendency. Narcissists hate children, over the thought that one day their children will survive them. 

And our society as a whole has been turning narcissistic, immoral and selfish.

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

Speak Free or Die

 

I am not allowed to say this person's sex or name.

I hear that, like the box office failure of a string of recent Hollywood movies, recent “woke” books have failed to earn back their advances. One is “Elliot” Page’s autobiographical account of a female-to-male transition, a $3 million advance. Another, a “queer feminist western,” got a $500,000 advance and sold 3,500 copies.

Meanwhile, white male authors say they cannot get published.

It is possible to see firms like Disney or Anheuser-Busch deciding to take a loss to push politics. One imagines they have a financial cushion. It is harder to explain this in book publishing. Book publishing runs on tight margins, and publishers often go bankrupt. They need to be more careful.

I imagine something else is going on. The editors genuinely thought that the market craved these books. Perhaps, then, this is also the truth for Disney and the others.

Anyone who has been to university these days has been thoroughly indoctrinated in woke ideology. No other views are heard in class; or permitted. To be smart and educated is simply to accept these dogmas. It is easy to graduate imagining that everybody thinks this way, or should think this way, and only needs to be introduced to these ideas to accept their self-evident rightness.

Then, as all other views are unacceptable, they are suppressed if heard. In the classroom, in the media, in business, on the internet. Anyone who expresses them risks losing their livelihood. Some, even most, might privately doubt or disagree, but nobody dares say so. Safer to join in suppressing them so one is not suspected of holding them oneself.

The woke no longer hear any dissent; other than perhaps some “far-right” fringe. It is easy for them to imagine that they represent the vast majority. Silence, after all, implies consent. And so they push on.

But this no longer works when it gets down to individual discretionary spending. Even if you control the airwaves, the publishers, the internet, all the breweries, all the media of distribution, people can simply not buy something they do not need: a beer, or a movie ticket, or a book. They can stop attending church.

It’s not a boycott. It’s just their true preference. Nor are they easily swayed on these matters by lecturing them on their supposed social responsibility—an appeal that might work at the ballot box. One seeks here simple enjoyment, and the thing is fun, or it is not worth the money.

And so, get woke, go broke.

This is an argument against suppressing free speech. Over the longer term, it harms even those in power. Soon they are no longer getting reliable information, are operating in the dark, and will blunder off a cliff.

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

It's Already Illegsl to Deny the Existence of Residential School Mass Graves

 

No free speech in Canada.

Nobody's found any evidence of them; but one must agree that the mass graves exist.

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