Stephen Roney's Blog, page 96

The Pink Tax

 

Ben Shapiro has come across a feminist on TikTok complaining about the “pink tax.” The problem, she says, is that identical items marketed to men or women coast ten percent more for the women’s version. This is discrimination against women.

But here’s a comparison. Identical food items cost more at Sobey’s than at No Frills.

Clearly, this is discrimination against those living in wealthier neighborhoods.

Or maybe, the free market being what it is, items are priced in part for how much the customer can or is prepared to pay. And the higher price for women’s goods is evidence that women have more money to spend than men.

They do. Women spend 80% of the consumer dollar. Men may make more money on average, or used to, but they don’t get to spend it.

If you think this is a case of oppression of women, here’s a simple test: if the male and female items are identical, why don’t women just buy the male item? That would end the practice immediately.

They don’t because women have enough money to be picky and not care about the cost. They will actually spend 10% more to get a pink razor instead of a blue one.

The same TikTokker notes that new drugs are always tested on men, not women. And this too is discrimination against women.

But by the same logic, it is more discriminatory against white laboratory rats and guinea pigs.

The eternal truth is that society considers men more expendable than women. If there is anything risky that needs doing, they use men.

Like trying experimental drugs.

Why do women insist that they are ill-treated? Because people will always listen and they get results.

Those who really are ill-treated are more likely to keep quiet about it and keep their head down. Because nobody will listen, and, if they do, it will just mean another blow of the lash.

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

The Death of Canada

 

The recent decision by Justice Rouleau that the Trudeau government was justified in declaring the Emergency Act to end the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa last year demonstrates that the corruption of democracy in government extends to the judiciary. 

But this is not news. The Canadian courts, and the Canadian Supreme Court, have been partisan for decades, and have been eagerly legislating from the bench. There is an obvious flaw in the system: judges being appointed by the Prime Minister, they are political appointees. They are beholden to the government. 

Once, we relied on professional ethics to overcome this: in effect, the old code of chivalry. There was a gentleman’s agreement binding on the powerful not to abuse their power, and to protect the weak. It was the strength and durability of this code of chivalry, not found elsewhere, that allowed Europe to outpace the rest of the world from 1500 on. It seems that it was strongest in Britain, and Britain did best of all. It was all, ultimately, founded on Christianity: the premise that all men were brothers, and so had intrinsic dignity; that government was not the supreme authority; and that, on Christ’s example, he who would lead must be servant to all. 

“Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, ‘Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.’”

It is also this code of gentlemanly conduct that allows democracy to function. Without it, as in the Third World, those in power would hunt down and imprison or kill those out of power. We would simply shoot those we disagree with politically. We would not bother with Marquess of Queensbury rules.

And this code of chivalry has broken down. It is breaking down everywhere in the Christian world, but perhaps fastest in Canada, which has now gained a reputation for being especially “progressive.”

Beginning I think, with the rejection of “conventional morality” for the sake of more sexual pleasure in the 1950s. Then feminism rejecting the chivalric code of courtship. That slipped down the toboggan run to everyone doing as seemed advantageous to themselves, and feeling morally justified in it. You have power—why not use it?

After all, as Hitler argued in Mein Kampf, if anyone else had the power, they would use it against you.

All of which has now put the full stop and the hand brake on freedom and democracy in Canada. Freedom may return—although it is not evident how—but it no longer exists when the government can arrest anyone or freeze their assets if they feel threatened; and without recourse. It seems likely it will get worse now, perhaps much worse, before it gets better.

The one bright light is the convoy itself. If the government and judiciary cannot be expected to act honourably, the members and leadership of the convoy acted throughout with remarkable decency, public spirit, and restraint. They were a spontaneous model of what Canada is supposed to be: a community of peace, order, and good government.

How can it be, then, that the elites are depraved, while ordinary people are still moral and decent? At least a large part of the problem, surely, along with the inevitable temptations of power, has to be with our system of education. For this means that, the more formal education a Canadian has, these days, the less moral and tolerant he is. Our education system is doing the opposite of what an education system is for: creating good people and good citizens.

Because instead of instilling morality, our current system mocks it and demands transgression.

Providentially, then, our education system is in any case technologically obsolete. For that matter, any kind of ruling elite, corrupt or not, is probably technologically obsolete. Everyone can in principle now study online as and when needed. They can have their choice of instructors. 

And with expert systems, “experts” will find it harder to obfuscate and maintain a monopoly on information.

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

What Genocide Looks Like in Canada

 

Students at Carlisle Indian Residential School, US, circa 1885. 

This SubStack article written by a former Indian residential school teacher points out a few salient facts, although he tends to buy his lede:

- The death rate from tuberculosis in the residential schools in the period 1930 to 1950, according to the Truth And Reconciliation Commission’s own data,  was many times lower than that on reserves generally. “TB mortality in the residential schools was consistently much lower than among the general First Nations population.”

- The Indian Residential Schools were brought “up to code,” so to speak, to conform with expert opinion on preventing tuberculosis, at least sixteen years earlier than the public schools of Toronto.

- A 1909 survey of kids at the residential schools found that “only 60% of the fathers of residential school students, and 70% of the mothers, were still living.” They served primarily as orphanages, taking those whose families could not care for them. Closing them may not have helped these children.

- At the same time, 1909, death rates for children on reserve were 25 to 50%. It should not be surprising if some children died at residential schools as well. Nor is it likely to be entirely the school’s fault.

- Young people living on reserve even today, with all our medical improvements, have a higher death rate than in the residential schools any year since about 1950. Child and youth death rates on reserve today are three to five times higher than among the general population.

- “By several key measures, residential school students fared better as adults than their peers who did not attend.” Only one third of Indian children attended the residential schools, as opposed to regular day schools. This select group were more likely to earn a diploma or degree, more likely to be employed, less likely to be on welfare. They were taller on average and less likely to be obese. This despite the fact that they were, commonly, orphans or from the most impoverished families.

So what is the solution to the sufferings of our “First Nations”? Don’t close the schools. Close the reserves.

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

Sex and the Single Cell

 

Can you spot the difference? Need a minute?

The gospel reading last Sunday was this one:

“Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.”

King James has the colourful “not one jot nor tittle.”

This is because the Law is the Logos, Christ himself, the order on which the cosmos is formed. Pseudo-Chrysostom comments:

“…since all things which should befall from the very beginning of the world to the end of it, were in type and figure foreshown in the Law, …, He therefore here declares, that heaven and earth should not pass till all things thus foreshown in the Law should have their actual accomplishment.”

There is a Law, a Logos, to the universe.

I have not been inclined to comment on the whole gender thing, because there is little to say, and saying it gets you in trouble. 

But here goes:

Gender is a grammatical concept. People do not have gender. Nouns do. People have sex.

There are only two sexes. This is a binary system.

If you are male, every cell is identifiably male. If you are female, every cell is identifiably female. But for the rare anomaly of an XXY in the 23rd chromosome pair, there is no ambiguity.

Women and men differ in many more ways that the visible shape of their sex organs. Women’s bodies are different from men’s in many appealing details. Their brains are also different.

It is a denial of reality for a man to declare himself a woman, or a woman to declare herself a man.

Denial of reality is delusional by definition. It is insanity.

It is not helpful to anyone to encourage a delusion. This is like encouraging an alcoholic to stay drunk. It is usually a way for people to avoid their problems.

Why do people want to deny the two genders? Because they want to deny binary systems as such. All binary systems are limiting to the human will. Each is a line you cannot cross. Gravity is annoying. Not being able to stay 18 forever is annoying. Not being able to eat some given apple is annoying. As a graffito seen during the Paris uprising of 1968 had it, “Be careful: even the ears have walls!” The border between life and death, human and non-human, self and other, is annoying. It prohibits abortion. Not to mention offing your inconvenient grandparents or Republican neighbour.

But the ultimate binaries are true and false, yes and no, Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction; and good and evil. These are the enemies that the non-binary really want to destroy.

No surprise that Biden’s transgender appointee as undersecretary of state for whatever turns out to steal other people’s luggage; or that transgender swimmer Lia Thomas worships Satan. Or that more men in prisons declare themselves transgender women than in the general population.

Vive la difference. 

“La difference”: there’s an example of gander.

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

Will the Last One Out Please Blow Out the Candles?

 

According to current projections, the last Anglican in England will die by about 2060.

Evangelical and Pentecostal groups, on the other hand, are growing.

The Anglican Church serves no purpose. They now simply tailor their teaching to whatever the public wants. They have just approved the blessing of gay marriages; despite the prohibition of homosexual sex in the Bible.

So why bother with church? 

Imagine if you went to a doctor, and the doctor simply asked “What do you think the problem is?”

Whatever you suggested, he agreed with. Then he asked,

“What do you think would help?”

And agreed with whatever you said.

Why would you bother going to the doctor?

Perhaps Evangelicals and Pentecostals only have snake oil to sell. Revivalist denominations seem to lose all energy within a generation or two. But at least they offer hope of something better.

The Catholic Church in Britain cannot be complacent. It is dying at about the same rate as the Anglicans.

But Catholicism really does have something to sell. Even without appealing to the truth of its doctrines, to religious faith, it has in its traditions the wisdom of the ages on the care and feeding of the human soul.

This demands strict adherence to the Bible, the ancient creeds, the ancient liturgies, the old traditions. They are valid and do their good whether or not the ordained cleric has any idea what he is about. 

Unfortunately, the Anglicans have thrown out all that dusty old ballast. Because the Anglican hierarchy decided they were smarter than their ancestors.

Under Pope Francis, that seems to be the Catholic program as well.

It is a fatal mistake.

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

Jesus at the Superbowl

 

People on the left are unhappy with the “He Gets Us” ads that ran during the Superbowl. Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez claims they are fascist: “Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign.” A leftist friend on Facebook objects that the huge sums they cost should have been spent instead on the poor.

Why does she not express the same concerns about the huge sums spent on the Satanic performance in the recent Grammy Awards ceremony? All the celebrities dressed in outfits costing thousands of dollars; all the big production numbers; all the expensive talent?

Why does she not ask the same question about the huge sums spent on the Super Bowl halftime show? What about the money spent on Superbowl tickets, and trips to Glendale Arizona to watch the game? How many bowls of soup for the poor could that have bought?

The left has immense hypocrisy here in claiming their concern is for the poor.

That is an alibi.

And why is a message of tolerance and reconciliation fascist? The ad I saw ends “Jesus loved the people we hate.” 

Can you imagine that as the concluding line of a speech by Hitler or Goebbels?

It is obviously the opposite of the Nazi message, if not so clearly of the Fascist, message. 

Here is another example of how the modern left classifies any reference to morality as “fascist,” or “racist,” or “white supremacy.” 

They feel hunted and victimized by any reference, even oblique, to morality. They feel like the Jews being hounded by the Nazis, forced to wear the yellow star. But what is really hunting them is the Erinyes, their own conscience, morality itself. It is their pervasive sense of guilt over abortion and sexual libertinage. And their terror is making them increasingly hysterical and violent

Ironically, it was probably their identification with morality—what Nietzsche called “slave morality”—that really motivated Hitler to hate and persecute the Jews.

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

Disney Calls for Reparations

 

This little rap from the new Disney+ series “The (New) Proud Family” is causing a stir. It demands reparations for those of darker skin tone on the grounds that “slaves built this country.”

If the current prosperity of the USA is built on the labour of slaves up to a hundred and fifty years ago, why is it that, even at the time of the Civil War, the South, where there were slaves, was far poorer than the North, where there were none? How did nations like Canada, Australia, the UK, Germany, or Japan also get wealthy, without slaves; while any other country you might mention in which African slaves were a large part of the labour force remains relatively poorer: Brazil, Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad, the other islands of the Caribbean?

Why isn’t black Africa rich?

The “slaves built this country” concept is Marxist: it sees manual labour as the only form of labour and the only source of value. And then black slaves as the only labourers.

Remove this materialist assumption, and it makes better sense to say that folks like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson built the USA. And maybe Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, Walt Whitman, the Wright Brothers, Stephen Foster, Mark Twain, and the like.

It looks as though the US suffered, rather than profited, from slavery. Enslaved workers, perhaps, do not do a very good job of it. And then the US paid a heavy price, in lives, money, and property destruction, to rid itself of slavery. Perhaps more than the profit slavery ever generated, for anyone.

And of course, it only generated profit for a small number of people, perhap one percent of the US population at the time. Poor whites necessarily suffered, as the jobs taken by slaves were not available to them, and their labour was devalued. They too were victims of slavery.

So perhaps we should trace family lines back to the actual slaveholders? Then their descendants could pay the reparations

If we did so, it is likely that many of their descendants would turn out to be the very blacks demanding reparations. Most modern “African Americans” are of mixed race. Much of this mixing surely occurred on the plantations, with plantation owners taking full advantage of their ownership for sexual services. It all has nothing to do, on the other hand, with the probable majority of “white” Americans whose ancestors arrived in America after the days of slavery.

Of course, there are other reasons to see the demand for reparations as nonsensical. It requires the sort of “blood guilt” that led to the persecution of the Jews for centuries. Everyone who was ever enslaved is now dead. Everyone who enslaved them is also dead. Far from being discriminated against, modern American blacks can point to many laws and “affirmative action” programs that discriminate in their favour.

One might counter with the “lingering effects of slavery.” Then what about the lingering effects of the Holocaust on the Jews? That was worse, and more recent. The lingering effects of the Great Famine and indentured servitude on the modern Irish—now apparently the richest nation per capita in Europe? The lingering effects of the Holodomir on modern Ukrainian-Americans? The Armenians? The Chinese?  Why are they not suffering economically as blacks are, and why are they not also deserving of reparations?

One reason these other groups are more successful, perhaps, is that they have never learned to depend on handouts. The result, not of slavery, but of progressive Marxist "Great Society" programs.

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

The Growing Menace of Catholicism

 

You may have wondered how the American FBI has decided that traditionalist Catholics are “white supremacists.”

I think I can explain.

In a recent class with a middle school student, the text offered this proposed essay topic:

“Why everyone should be vegetarian.”

“That’s really racist!” he responded.

“Racist? Why?”

“It is forcing everyone to be vegetarian.”

“I don’t see that. It says ‘should,’ not ‘must.’ It could be giving health advice.”

“OK, my bad. It’s not racist.”

This seems to reveal the assumptions children are getting indoctrinated into, either in school or, possibly, on the Internet.

“Racism,” in woke vernacular, no longer has anything to do with race. It is about culture. Or rather, it is about morality. 

Because cultures supposedly have different moralities, any mention of moral issues is racist. Even if the moral stance cannot be identified with a particular culture, let alone a particular race. You are claiming racial superiority the moment you say anything is wrong. 

It is the belief in “cultural relativism” that makes the woke so supportive of multiculturalism. It even leads them to support Islam, a highly moralistic religion. Because its morality is supposedly different from Christian morality; so it helps to undermine morality generally. 

But Satanism is better. Any reference to religion is prohibited in the public square; Super Bowl commercials about Jesus are widely condemned by the woke. But Satanism figures prominently at the Grammies.

This belief that the different world religions differ in their moral values is false. Except around the edges. Kant has proven that the basis of morality is universal and self-evident. The woke believe in moral relativism because they want to believe this. They need to out of a guilty conscience. Which goes back to abortion and the sexual revolution. For proof, mention the word “sin,” or phrase “conventional morality,” and they will automatically think of sex.

So, because traditionalist Catholics hold to traditional moral values, they are by this definition white supremacists. No matter what their skin colour, or opinions on race. Anyone who believes in right and wrong is a white supremacist.

Of course, the awkward corollary is that all non-whites are evil. This may, in time, come back to bite. You never know. Funny how conscience leads us into self-condemnations like that.

Now go away and let the woke do whatever their baser instincts tell them to.

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

On the Conscience of Psychopaths

 

This video goes into more depth, but I want to note their lede: psychopaths and narcissists do not do well on polygraph tests. This disproves the common claim that they have no conscience. Everyone does. They know perfectly well that they are lying or doing harm to others. Rather than not feeling guilt, they experience a high level of ambient guilt at all times. They are jumpy about it, and liable to explode in a tantrum or melt into self-pity if challenged. This is one reason why they are prone to alcoholism or drug use, and prone to complain of symptoms often diagnosed as “depression” or “chronic anxiety.” And then often put on SSRIs that, like alcohol, allow them to commit their crimes with greater alacrity.

This also explains something I have noticed for a long time, and been unable to really account for: you can commonly recognize a psychopath by smell. They stink; Mao Zedong famously did. This might have something to do with their corporeal self-love—they love the smell of themselves, and assume that others would too. So they do not shower or bathe as often as they might. But I’ve known narcissists who did shower and bathe, and still smelled. It might also be because they tend to sweat more than others, an anxiety response.

Another sign of narcissism or psychopathy, touched on in the video, is that they lack spontaneity. This too is anxiety; they must always guard their words. They tend therefore to seem robotic, their responses predictable, “NPC.” The unexpected or unfamiliar is to them threatening. As a result, narcissists and psychopaths lack a sense of humour, and rarely laugh in a natural way. This is also the source of the celebrated narcissistic smirk: their smiles are never sunny or spontaneous, but calculated.

The Greeks believed in the Erinyes, which would pursue malefactors to their death. Christians call it conscience. It is real.

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

On Canada's Pressing Need to Track More Health Data

 

“among advanced OECD countries, we are 31 out of 34 in acute care beds per thousand population, 26 out of 31 in medical doctors and 17 out of 32 in nurses….We have 10 times as many health administrators as Germany although Germany has more than twice the population of Canada.“

--Fraser Institute, quoted by Conrad Black, National Post.

So why is it that the Trudeau government sees the first priority to be imposed on the provinces as improving the tracking of medical data?

I have a guess.

See below.

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