Stephen Roney's Blog, page 95

Christine Anderson Replies to Justin Trudeau

 

I think her point about gaslighting is exactly right. Trudeau is a classic narcissist, and his public pronouncements are often clear examples of gaslighting and what it looks like.

Narcissism is, naturally enough, a common problem with rich kids.

We will be lucky if Canada survives his premiership.

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

Dilbert Quits

 

Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, has just gotten himself cancelled. Dilbert has been pulled from the newspapers, his syndicate has cut him loose, and his book publisher will no longer publish him. He is still, for the moment, on YouTube.

This is because Adams on his daily YouTube broadcast cited a poll in which something like 47% of blacks could not agree with the statement “it’s okay to be white.” He says this shows that identifying as black now means you are a member of a “hate group”; he is sick of seeing videos of blacks beating up non-blacks on YouTube. He advised whites to stay away from blacks as much as possible.

Adams always calculates what he says. He knows what he is doing. He did this deliberately. He was being deliberately provocative. Those who say, "okay, he's right that there is a problem with black racism, but he went too far and should not have phrased it in such harsh terms" have missed the point. Adams wanted to create a stir. One does that by being provocative. One does that not by saying politely that buses rfeally shouldn't be segregated, for example, but by refusing to give up your seat on the bus.

I think he was tired of drawing the daily comic. He has all the money he will ever need. He is ready to retire. As long as he is going to retire anyway, he might as well do something useful, and force a conversation on the growing problem of black racism. And on the growing problem of censorship.

I think this is part of a larger sense on the right that accommodating to the forever expanding demands of the left, as Adams has tended to do until now, is no longer tolerable or really even possible. It is appeasement, and it works no better now than it did with Hitler. Their demands simply grow more outrageous. 

The left has been at war with civilization, with “whites,” with America and Canada and “the West,” with reason and objectivity itself, for a long time. They are like children throwing tantrums; they will never stop. It is time that the right recognized this and stopped trying to get along.

Adams is right that there is a growing problem of racism in America, it is primarily anti-white racism, and it is primarily among blacks.

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

Anderson's Crime Revealed

 

Alexa Lavoie may have uncovered why Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre have both declared Christine Anderson, without explanation, a hateful racist. In an interview for Rebel News, the MEP states her opinion that Islam is not a religion, but an ideology. Moreover, it is a “misogynistic, dehumanizing” ideology, more properly comparable with Communism than what we refer to otherwise as religion.

I can understand why Trudeau and Poilievre do not want to actually quote her or explain their opposition. The problem is, she has a good case. And if more people in Canada hear it, it is liable to lead to civil strife.

First of all, we must be free to criticize religions, as opposed to adherents of a religion. Nobody looks askance at criticizing Scientology’s theological claims, or those of the Unification Church (the “Moonies”); or for that matter Catholicism, or evangelical Christianity, or Christianity as a whole. In a free and pluralistic country, Islam cannot be exempt from such criticism. 

On the other hand, awkwardly, Muslims themselves are not tolerant of any criticism of their faith, and are liable to issue fatwas, and generally become violent. 

The politicians have a tiger by the tail. It is safest to just try to silence anyone who mentions the problem. Not that this will fix it—it will make it worse—but with luck, they will be retired from politics and living in a gated community somewhere by then.

As someone trained in Comparative Religions, I can say that Anderson’s questions about Islam are reasonable. People in general, and perhaps also our politicians, do not seem to understand that the definition of religion is uncertain in the field, and Islam is in fundamental ways not a religion like Christianity or Judaism. Unlike them, or Buddhism, it does not see a separation between religion and politics, church and state. For Islam, in principle, the only legitimate government is a Muslim government, and Islam can  only be practiced, in principle, under a Muslim government.

Hence, Anderson is right to say it is a political ideology as much as it is a religion. 

It cannot coexist with other faiths in peace on an equal playing field. Whenever and wherever there is a substantial concentration of Muslims, they will demand their own government. If they control a government, they will want to impose sharia law on all citizens.

This is not compatible with a pluralistic liberal democracy.

So—if we continue to accept Muslim immigration, should we require new citizens to take an oath to support liberal values like free speech, equality of the sexes, and religious tolerance?

Problem: we are then in effect asking them to renounce their religion. Those who do may not turn out to be ideal citizens; we may be selecting for the unscrupulous and irreligious.

It is a serious problem, which we are building for our future. It is probably past due for us all to have a discussion of this. Anderson is forcing such a discussion, as are some others in Europe. Trudeau and Poilievre fear one.

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

Pulling the Foot Out

 

Pierre Poilievre has made a serious mistake, in condemning Christine Anderson. He now risks losing enough voters to Maxime Bernier to take away his chance of beating Trudeau. Even if this does not happen, we know from past experience that moving to the middle does not get you any more votes. It gives people no reason to vote for you. Ask Erin O’Toole. Ask Andrew Scheer. Ask Tom Mulcair. Ask Mitt Romney. Ask John McCain. It is a losing strategy.

What Poilievre should have said is something like this:

“Christine Anderson is a democratically elected representative of the German people. Not to entertain and to respect her shows contempt for the German people, our good friends and allies. It does not mean we agree with all her views. Cooperating with those with whom we sometimes disagree, on matters of agreement, is the lifeblood of democracy. It is the lifeblood of civil society. Much of the ill-will and suffering in Canada today is caused by a Prime Minister who refuses to even speak with those with whom he disagrees, who simply calls them names and slanders them, as ‘racists or ‘misogynists’ or ‘antisemites’ and the like. 

This man who danced around in blackface with his tongue out and a banana stuffed down his trousers.

We Conservatives do not want that kind of Canada, nor that kind of world. We respect people, the people of Germany and the people of Canada, and we welcome those who come here from abroad.”

Poilievre has now stupidly missed his chance. I guess he thought he could duck the issue by having the statement sent out by someone in his office, and just to one reporter, Brian Lilley. Lamely playing right into Trudeau’s accusation that the Conservatives hide their true feelings behind claims they “just didn’t know.” That backfired, because everyone noticed it anyway, it painted Trudeau in the right and the Tories in the wrong, and it made him look like a coward.

Now that he has not immediately dissociated himself from it, he will not be able to convince anyone he is sincere in doing so, that it was some advisor going rogue. He will just look more cowardly, less principled, and callous as well. He will also be throwing Brian Lilley under the bus. He cannot afford to alienate the few members of the media not already trying to destroy him. He will not look like a leader.

I suspect his failure to either acknowledge the statement by his operative, or dissociate himself from it, reflects indecision. He and his office do not know what to do. Yet this too now makes him look weak and cowardly. He cannot stay silent now, and he cannot dissociate himself from the controversy. He put his foot in it.

He has t take full responsibility, and apologize. People will respect him the more for it. It worked for JFK after the Bay of Pigs. It is something I firmly believe as a teacher: if you do not know the answer, you immediately own up to it. If you gave the students the wrong information, you immediately own up to it. Indeed, if you are a good human being, and you realize you have done something wrong, you immediately own up to it. That is what real leadership looks like.

He should issue something like the following statement:

"I regret deeply my lack of respect last week, expressed through a member of my office, but with my knowledge and consent, for Christine Anderson, a duly elected fellow parliamentarian and representative of our friends, the German people. I cannot endorse all her views. That is not the point. We are all individuals, and have the inalienable right to our views, and to express them freely. We do not have to always agree with each other to support and love one another, to work together to build a better Canada and a better world—a lesson I wish our present Prime Minister would learn. I must humbly remember it too. I apologize to Ms. Anderson, a fellow democrat and believer in human freedom, and to the German people, for my lapse in judgement. And I pledge to try to do better."

If Poilievre is a good man, and a leader, he will say something like this.

But I don’t expect him to.

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

Spotting the Good Guys

 

MEP Christine Anderson has been on a Canadian tour. She has been welcomed by Rebel News, Maxime Bernier and the PPC, Leslyn Lewis, and the leaders of the Freedom Convoy. On the other hand, Brian Lilley, previously considered a conservative columnist for the Toronto Sun, Justin Trudeau, and Pierre Poilievre have denounced her in quite intemperate terms.

Trudeau:

She is “responsible for a particularly vile level of rhetoric and hatred … hateful, vile, intolerant rhetoric.”

Poilievre’s office:

“Christine Anderson's views are vile and have no place in our politics. … Frankly, it would be better if Anderson never visited Canada in the first place. She and her racist, hateful views are not welcome here."

Yet neither Lilley, Trudeau, nor Poilievre quote anything Anderson has said. We must take their word for it.

My web search also turns up nothing. The most controversial thing I find is that Anderson posed for a photograph with Jeremy MacKenzie and the flag of Diagolon. Many people, it is true, claim Diagolon is a dangerous terrorist group; but again, we have to take their word for it. MacKenzie claims it is only a meme, a gag.

I cannot imagine Osama Bin Laden insisting that Al Qaeda was a gag, or Hitler that his antisemitism was.

It is conceivable that either Diagolon or Anderson do hold racist views. We cannot tell, because those who accuse them not only present no evidence, but will not allow us to see the evidence. They are the same people who are censoring anything on the Internet they disagree with. Anderson’s or Diagolon’s views are silenced.

This being so, we must assume innocence of Anderson and Diagolon. They have never been given a hearing here.

We’re in a deeper hole in Canada than I had imagined. Brian Lilley appears to be a member of a Fifth column. Perhaps he once was a conservative, but he has joined the Family Compact and started attending the cocktail and Kool-ade parties. Poilievre, so previously promising, looks like another O’Toole. He’s just a politician playing the game, will run cover for the established interests, and will change nothing.

This was a litmus test, and we need to remember who passed and who did not.

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

Matt Walsh's Straight Talk

 

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

A Burning Question from 1600

 

Giordano Bruno

Recently over the transom, a poem protesting the death of Giordano Bruno: “423 years ago, on February 17, 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for saying that the Earth revolves around the sun.” Stunning. Brave. 

This, unfortunately, is part of the anti-Catholic “black legend,” about as historically legitimate as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, although much more socially acceptable.

Bruno was burned at the stake, but not for saying that the Earth revolves around the sun. The Catholic Church had no position in 1600 on that matter. Copernicus, a Catholic cleric in good standing, had advanced the argument as early as 1514, and faced no opposition from church authorities.

According to the poem, Bruno was also killed for saying

that God is inside us, and not out there,

a bearded man looking on from a cloud

There is no evidence that Bruno believed this, other than that all Christians did. He would have faced no opposition from the Church if this were what he was preaching in the square. Jesus said “the kingdom of God is within.” The Christian concept of God is not a bearded man looking on from a cloud, but as God chose to reveal himself to us, as a thirty-something Jewish carpenter. However, it was precisely this, God’s humanity, and God’s immanence,  that Bruno denied.

Killing someone for their opinions or beliefs, or even silencing them, is always wrong; but Bruno was condemned for denying the existence of Hell, denying the Trinity, denying the divinity of Christ, denying transubstantiation, claiming the universe itself was eternal and infinite, and advocating reincarnation. It was these doctrines, for what they were worth, he was prepared to die for rather than renounce.

That, and he was also suspected of being the spy and agent of a foreign power, Calvinist Geneva.

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

Is Democracy Coming?

 

A ray of hope: there has been a spontaneous revival, if you haven’t heard, at Asbury University in Kentucky. An estimated 50,000, mostly young, have flocked here over two weeks, before the event was shut down by the college administration.

This is what we need. This is what we needed in the Sixties and Seventies, but it was cruelly shut down then by a moral panic about “cults.” This, spiritual revival, is now the only alternative to societal collapse, and probably the US is the only place capable of it. Everywhere else has actually gone further down the postmodern rabbit hole, except perhaps for Eastern Europe, the Philippines, or Subsaharan Africa.

Let’s see if it spreads now, and hope against hope that it does. It has happened before in America, in the First Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening, in Azusa in 1906, in Duquesne in 1966. One sensed it in the Freedom Convoy to Ottawa a year go.

Leonard Cohen predicted this.

It's coming from the sorrow in the street

The holy places where the races meet

From the homicidal bitchin'

That goes down in every kitchen

To determine who will serve and who will eat

From the wells of disappointment

Where the women kneel to pray

For the grace of God in the desert here

And the desert far away

Democracy is coming to the USA

It's coming to America first

The cradle of the best and of the worst

It's here they got the range

And the machinery for change

And it's here they got the spiritual thirst

It's here the family's broken

And it's here the lonely say

That the heart has got to open

In a fundamental way

Democracy is coming to the USA

 

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

Spirituality without Religion

 

Pan: Father Nature

I fell recently into a Zoom discussion on spirituality among avowed atheists. Their challenge was that they found themselves experiencing odd emotions, when, for example, walking through a forest or seeing a sunset. They were discussing among themselves what words to use to express such things. They called it their “spirituality.”

I was fascinated to listen, since I have never knew what people meant by “spirituality” as distinct from “religion.” I do not think they were expecting anyone else at the meeting to be religious, although I think one other participant was. He had a thick accent which I could not place. Otherwise, surely they were being impolite to discuss things in this way, as though religion were out of the question.

One asked, “can there be negative as well as positive spiritual feelings?”

I offered, innocent at this point of their ground rules, “Obviously yes. People speak both of God and the Devil; of heaven and hell.”

This was immediately rejected. “We have to avoid using religious terms.”

“But why?” I asked. “These terms have been established. Why do you need to reinvent it all from scratch? I take it that you do not want to believe in the existence of any metaphysical beings, but then you can understand it all as symbolic.”

“No, no symbols. We can’t allow any symbols.”

Another participant chimed in soon after, although not immediately after, that panic was a negative spiritual feeling. It came, he noted, from a supposed encounter with the god Pan.

And everyone seemed to accept this.

“Wait,” I inserted. “You broke the rule. Pan is a metaphysical being.”

“No no. I was only using him for explanation.”

My point about symbols exactly. Although I did not pursue it, the problem here was evidently only with the Judeo-Christian God. He who could not even be mentioned. Along with the Devil. Pagan gods were fine. An anthropomorphized and deified Nature or Earth or Ecosystem or Environment was fine.

I asked one participant what their position on religion was more specifically. Why avoid all mention? Did they believe all religion was bunk, or is it that they were not interested, or that they just had not found one that rang true for them--yet?

I got no straight response; only what seemed a deflection. He asked: “How is it that God spoke to us two thousand years ago, then stopped speaking to us; at least, to most people?”

I tried to respond: who thinks God no longer speaks to us? Certainly Pentecostals, Catholics, Mormons, think he still does. But only some of us are listening. The Bible is sufficient for salvation and complete, but that is a different issue. Eternal truth does not change.

At this point another guy cited Dawkins and brought up the problem of evil: “how can you believe in a God who allows children to be born with some genetic defect, then suffer and die young?”

I pointed out that there was thousands of years worth of learned philosophical response to this among the world’s religions; it obviously occurred to everyone. But there was far too much material to go into here in detail. I pointed first to the Christian response: we do not know that physical pain or death is evil. The one thing we know is evil is moral evil; and all moral evil is from man. Eve, meet apple. The sufferings of life, including the physical sufferings, are a result.

Then I cited the Hindu response; the theology of play. Suppose you are playing a baseball game, and the third inning is going very badly. You do not feel good about it. Even so, you win the game, and somehow, you forget the terrible griefs of the third inning, and decide it was actually fun, and you want to play again. Even when you actually lose the game, it is still fun, and you want to play again.

Now suppose you were playing a baseball game in which every pitch was a home run, and you could not lose. Fun? No.

I did not then, but I should have also cited the example of a film or novel. We actually want to see dangers and sorrows. We are not happy with a story in which nothing bad happens.

Pain exists because without it, pleasure would be meaningless to us.

I’m not sure whether anyone got this. It did not seem to provoke a response.

Another guy—I think it was about the problem of evil—started by saying that nature is actually red in tooth and claw, and without this constant strife, we would never have evolved. 

And, he concluded, if we all died tomorrow, nature would go on without us. That is the one thing we know for sure.

I’m not sure where he was going with it, but I had to challenge that last statement. It is, at a minimum, not something we know for sure. I suspect it led on to a worship of Nature as some eternal being and ground of the real.

“That is, if you reject Berkeley. And nobody has been able to disprove him.”

“What does Berkeley say?”

“If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears, did it make a sound? To be is to be perceived by some conscious being. If we did not exist, and God did not exist, nothing else would exist.”

I think that one, too, sailed over their collective heads. It was ignored.

Then someone said something that made me think the real issue was the supposed need to defer to God. The problem was with worship. I cannot recall his words, but that is how I summarized them to him.

Another participant, a woman, spoke up. “If God really is omniscient and omnipotent, and made all things, he should not demand things from us. He doesn’t need anything from us.”

I chipped in: “but what if it is not something he demands, but something he deserves. Do you feel the same way about respecting your parents?”

That seemed to blindside her. 

“My parents were terrible.”

“But as a general principle. Not all parents are awful, are they?”

“I can’t answer that unless you define your terms. I don’t know what those words you’re using mean.”

I think I saw here an example of what Scott Adams calls “cognitive dissonance.”

“Which words?”

“God. Parents.”

“I’m using the dictionary definition of parents. I’m using your definition of God. You said it: omniscient, omnipotent, and made all things.”

Someone else said something here in the chat: “That’s a deflection.” 

I think they meant the woman I was speaking with, not me. 

But the woman I was speaking with disappeared from the Zoom call at this point, without saying goodbye.

I think that means I won my point. I wonder if the topic will come up again next week?

So what have we learned?

I believe there are no atheists. There are only people who do not want to acknowledge any obligations to God or to their fellow man.

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

Our Home on Native Land?

 

Jully Black sang “O Canada” to begin the NBA All-Star game in Salt Lake City recently. She made headlines the world over by changing the lyrics from “O Canada, our home and native land,” to “O Canada, our home on native land.”

According to her version, Canada belongs to the native people, aka “First Nations.” And not to its citizens. 

To understand how offensive this is, imagine she had sung, instead, “O Canada, our home on Spanish land.” After all, the Spanish have a traditional claim, since they “discovered” the Americas, and were assigned them in the Treaty of Tordesillas. I do not believe they have formally renounced this claim.

Unlike the First Nations of Canada, who formally renounced any claim of sovereignty many years ago, and passed it to the British crown in the Treaty of Niagara. And in all the other formal treaties with the British and then the Canadian government.

Or what if Black had sung “O Canada, our home is on French land.” The French once claimed us, and had settled here; the land was taken from them by conquest. The Acadian were actually expelled. Is that fair? By contrast, the ceding of sovereignty from the natives was by agreement and with compensation.

But either of these phrasings, surely would be intolerable. They would sound like treason. Like the Poles singing “Our home on German land.” Or the Americans singing “Our home on British land.”

If we leave aside racial prejudice, Black’s version of the anthem sounds just as treasonous.

As are the interminable "land recognitions" now found at almost every public event.

In a video interview, Black complains in explanation that aboriginal history was not taught to her in school, that the Indians had been “erased.” 

This is not true. Any check of old Canadian school texts—many are available online at the Internet Archive—shows Canada’s Indians have always been prominent in the curriculum. Unless Black went to some uniquely bad school, she seems to be thinking specifically of the supposed horrors of the residential schools.

This was not taught, of course, because until recent years it was not known. No prominent historians supposed there was anything especially wrong with the residential schools. Maybe a bad policy; maybe not. Not especially worth teaching about, any more than the history of denominational schools in Newfoundland, or Canadian orphanages.

And what is currently taught about the residential schools—and, I warrant, in every school in Canada—is not true. They were mostly just schools like any other, with some lousy cafeteria food. 

The notion of “genocide” in the residential schools is, in the end, a moral panic like the witch hunts of Renaissance Europe, or the Medieval dancing hysteria.

I hope we awaken from it soon. And without, say, selling Canada down the river.

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