Barrel Strength

It started with Roger Scruton, naturally. A review of his book, “The Uses of Pessimism”, by Ed West in the Telegraph got me going, Oban responded, and Rebel Yell got into it.

Here is a quote from Scruton’s book:

“As Scruton notes: “Since the 1960s western countries have adopted policies in the matter of immigration that no person schooled in the elementary truths of pessimism would have endorsed. Anybody who has studied the fate of empires, and the difficulties of establishing territorial jurisdiction over communities that differ in religion, language and marital customs, knows that the task is all but impossible, and threatens constantly to break down in fragmentation, tribalism or civil war.”

Ed West continued in his Telegraph review:

Like Communism, mass immigration was based on a denial of human nature, and an inability to distinguish between what might work in individual human relationships and in society as a whole. Just because people of different groups are capable of getting on perfectly well as individuals, becoming friends and falling in love, it does not mean that a multicultural society (and one as diverse as ours will be multicultural as well as multiracial, whatever the Government does) can become a racism-free paradise; anymore than the willingness of people to give money to perfect strangers means Communism can work.

There were other comparisons with Communism: thought crimes were created, and eventually passed into law; dissidents were made public enemies (it was Scruton who published Ray Honeyford’s article about multiculturalism in Bradford, for which the headmaster was victimised and vilified); history was rewritten to educate the next generation in the new realities of their multicultural history; and children were indoctrinated “to embed a culture of equality in our schools and communities“. Even the language was changed, so that holders of non-revolutionary opinions could not express their opinions without becoming outcasts.

Contrary to what was said after Communism fell, we did not reach the end of history, merely a new chapter in the endless story of human stupidity.

This set me going on a rant of agreement and Oban responded:

This sent Rebel Yell into orbit:

To which Oban replied:

-Oban

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/university-illinois/2010-07-09/instructor-catholicism-ui-claims-loss-job-violates-academic-free

I am not making this up, and when you read the article, it gets worse. The complainant was not actually in the professor’s class.

Apparently everything is a code word for the oversensitive. And code words are forbidden. But what is code for what? Even to ask the question is insensitive.

Please sue the university for big bucks, Kenneth Howell.

The paralyzing influence of the Leftist mind set is discussed in today’s article in the National Post by Shelby Steele. 

One reason for this is that the entire Western world has suffered from a deficit of moral authority for decades now. Today, we in the West are reluctant to use our full military might in war lest we seem imperialistic; we hesitate to enforce our borders lest we seem racist; we are reluctant to ask for assimilation from new immigrants lest we seem xenophobic; and we are pained to give Western Civilization primacy in our educational curricula lest we seem supremacist. Today, the West lives on the defensive, the very legitimacy of our modern societies requiring constant dissociation from the sins of the Western past–racism, economic exploitation, imperialism and so on.

This philosophy is not for me, not for us at Barrelstrength, but you can smell the prevailing wind, can’t you? And what a fine ally this miasma of leftism has in militant know-nothing Islam! As AIDS is to HIV, so is the spreading blight of Islam to the immuno-depressant effect of political correctness. We are the best (civilization and culture) and they can go fuck off.  Say it repeatedly. You will feel better and you will be right.

I find myself in total agreement with the decision of  Judge Gerard Dugre in the case of  Loyola High School in Montreal versus the Quebec government, which appears to be engaging in a clear-cut attack on the right of Catholics to be Catholics, and in so doing, for parents to educate their children with any religious conception of existence whatever. However ironic it is to find Jesuits on the side of religious freedom, nonetheless the clear and present danger comes from the overmighty and pretentious State, not the Roman branch of the Christian church.

Reading the case judgment is a revelation of the intolerance of the new secular humanist establishment. In the words of the expert witness for Loyola High School, Douglas Farrow:

« … first, that the Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC) program represents a significant transfer of power from civil society to the state; second, that its ambitious goals belie any claim to neutrality; third, that the ERC program is intended to provide formation (i.e., to cultivate a world view and a way of thinking and acting consistent with that world view) and not merely information, and that the formation it hopes to provide is at points incompatible with a Catholic formation; fourth, that the imposition of this curriculum (with its mandatory pedagogy) on Catholic schools constitutes, from the perspective of the Catholic Church, a breach of fundamental rights as well as a defeat for certain of the program’s own objectives in recognizing diversity. »

The case concerned whether Loyola could teach its students about other cultures and religions from a Roman Catholic point of view. Specifically, the objection of Loyola to the government’s approach was based on the idea that the government was calling for the acceptance of all practices without any reference to the underlying beliefs that gave them meaning. Loyola wrote:

“Nous avons conçu un programme qui affirme la valeur des religions du monde et qui enseigne leurs coutumes et croyances d’une manière bien plus approfondie que le nouveau programme d’éthique et de culture religieuse.  Notre programme examine non seulement les coutumes externes des autres religions mais aussi leurs croyances fondamentales.  En effet, nous sommes convaincus qu’une simple explication de pratiques externes accomplira bien peu en termes de promouvoir la tolérance et l’acceptation des autres sans une compréhension plus complète des autres fois, comme il est proposé dans notre programme

“We have developed a program which affirms the value of the world’s religions and which teaches  about their customs and beliefs from a much deeper viewpoint than the new program of ethics and religious culture. Our program examines not only the external customs  of other religions but also their fundamental beliefs. In effect, we are convinced that a simple explanation of external practices will accomplish much less in terms of promoting tolerance and the acceptance of others without a more complete understanding  of other religions, as it is proposed in our program.

The government of Quebec wrote to the high school saying that:

“Les deux grandes finalités du programme Éthique et culture religieuse sont la reconnaissance de l’autre et la poursuite du bien commun.  L’approche et la conception du bien commun développées dans le programme Éthique et culture religieuse et celles proposées par Loyola High School sont très différentes.  L’approche préconisée dans le programme Éthique et culture religieuse est culturelle et non fondée sur la foi.  Or, suivant le sommaire du programme proposé par Loyola High School et soumis au Ministère pour évaluation, il appert que le programme de Loyola High School est fondé sur la foi catholique et a pour principale finalité la transmission des croyances et convictions catholiques.  Il englobe une conception de l’autre, mais toujours par rapport à la perspective chrétienne catholique.

“The two great goals of the ethics and religious culture program are the recognition of the other and the pursuit of the common good. The approach and conception of the common good  developed in the ethics and religious culture program  and the one proposed by Loyola are very different. The approach extolled in the ethics and religious culture program is cultural and is not founded on faith. Now, according to the summary of the program proposed by Loyola High School and submitted to the Minister for evaluation, it appears that the program of Loyola High school is founded on the Catholic faith and has for its principal goal the transmission of Catholic beliefs and convictions. It encompasses a conception of the other, always in relation to the Christian Catholic perspective.

and further:

“…il appert que, contrairement au programme Éthique et culture religieuse, le programme de Loyola High School n’amène pas l’élève à réfléchir sur le bien commun, ni sur des questions d’éthique, mais l’amène plutôt à adopter la perspective jésuite du service chrétien.

“It appears that, contrary to the ethics and religious culture program, the program of Loyola High school does not lead the student to reflect on the common good, nor on questions of ethics, but leads him rather to adopt a Jesuit perspective on Christian service.

The Quebec government’s guidelines for teaching the Ethics and religious culture program were another triumph of compulsory ethical relativism.

« De plus, elle [la formation] ne propose pas à l’élève un univers particulier de croyances et de repères moraux. »

Dans ce contexte, il lui [l’enseignant] faut comprendre l’importance de conserver une distance critique à l’égard de sa propre vision du monde, notamment de ses convictions, de ses valeurs et de ses croyances.

Posture professionnelle

Pour favoriser chez les élèves une réflexion sur des questions éthiques ou une compréhension du phénomène religieux, l’enseignant fait preuve d’un jugement professionnel empreint d’objectivité et d’impartialité.  Ainsi, pour ne pas influencer les élèves dans l’élaboration de leur point de vue, il s’abstient de donner le sien. »

Moreover, the course does not propose to the student a particular universe of beliefs and moral benchmarks.

In this context, the student must understand the importance of keeping a critical distance in regard to his own view of the world, notably his convictions, his values and his beliefs.

Professional approach

To encourage a reflection by the students on questions of ethics or an understanding of the religious phenomenon, the teacher demonstrates a professional judgment characterized by objectivity and impartiality. Moreover, so as not to influence his students in the development of their point of view, he abstains from giving his own.

 I would characterize this approach by saying that Quebec allows teachers to expose students to religion as long as it is done in such a way that they deal with the outer behaviour and not the beliefs which inform them, and requires the student to refrain from any kind of critical judgment of others’ beliefs, convictions, and world views, ultimately with the effect of rendering him incapable of moral judgment – including judgment of his own beliefs, convictions and world view. Belief is all absurd, religious and ethical questions become a “whatever”, a zone from which critical thinking is excluded.

Hence the welcome decion of Judge Dugre  when he said:

“…l’obligation imposée à Loyola d’enseigner la matière ÉCR de façon laïque revêt un caractère totalitaire qui équivaut, essentiellement, à l’ordre donné à Galilée par l’Inquisition de renier la cosmologie de Copernic.”

“…The obligation imposed on Loyola to teach the ECR course in a secular fashion reveals a totalitarian character which is equivalent essentially, to the order given to Galileo by the Inquisition to deny the Copernican cosmology.”

Marci McDonald’s dimwitted expose of the vast conservative and Christian plot to change Canada is a classic example of a very narrow mind encountering people who do not agree with her, and recoiling in shock . Glendronach nailed it a few days ago. Marci McDonald manifests the curious and increasing phenomenon of the left bigot; the side that used to believe in the inexorable triumph of their brand of rationalism is frightened that the tide has turned.

“Who are these revolting people, anyway?”, she seems to ask. The same people who voted for Reagan, honey.

 In an interview in the Toronto Star, she says:

“That showed the canniness of Harper’s strategy,’’ explains McDonald. “Most people saw it as, ‘Oh yes the neocons don’t like government-funded social policies.’ What they didn’t realize was that he was also pandering to social conservatives who don’t believe that the government should have any role in child-rearing, who believe that mothers should be at home bringing up their children or who send their children to religious daycares and schools. It was one of those policies that cut across both of his constituencies, economic and social. That would characterize most of his policies.”

“This was not a polemic I wrote; I do not reveal that Stephen Harper has a secret altar in his basement. But I did try to connect the dots because everybody was telling me this isn’t happening here, not in nice, tolerant, moderate Canada,” says McDonald.

For a conservative (or sensible moderate, for that matter), it would appear normal that governments have a highly restricted role in child-rearing, that mothers as much as possible be enabled to stay home to raise children, having regard to women’s free choice and economic opportunities, and that the family, not the state, have the preponderant if not exclusive voice in religious education. This has been the way societies of all religions have modelled themselves, since time out of mind.  The late 19th and 20th century  fixation on the state as the levelling, progressive, and liberating vehicle for social progress is the exception in millennia of human history.

The challenge to all those folks down in Toronto’s Beaches area is that they have inherited a civilization whose tolerance in based in the evolution of Christian thought, and who believe that Christianity is per se the enemy of that nice, decent moderate Canada in which they live.  As far as I can see, their anti-Christianity  is to the polity as carpenter ants are to a house. They seem to believe that belief in our creaturehood by a higher power, who is also the author of this universe, is something that should not be allowed to inform politics, but their “nice”, secular, “moderate” beliefs are to be the exclusive legitimate basis of both  political participation and set of goals which politics seek to achieve.

As Charles Lewis observed in the National Post, if McDonald wished to find intolerance in Canada, she need only look at her face in the mirror.

This morning I believe I have found a worthy successor to Linda McQuaig’s mantle as Canada’s weedy and not very bright leftist. Marci McDonald, who has just scribbled the tome The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, regaled listeners with a conspiracy theory marked by the same depth of research as those who are convinced the moon landings were faked by NASA.

Am I exaggerating? Consider these cubic zirconia-like gems of wisdom:

How was Stephen Harper transformed into a millenialist Protestant fundamentalist? Preston Manning encouraged him to read C.S. Lewis and Malcolm Muggeridge.

• Obviously reading the contemplations of Anglo Catholics is the gateway drug to eschatological fanaticism. And Khalil Gibran’s “The Prophet” will set you on the path to jihadism.

Christian activists look to the growth of the Fraser Institute as a model for research and advocacy. But the media no longer calls the Fraser Institute “extreme right-wing”.  So Christian activists are working under stealth.

• Because it is inconceivable that the Fraser Institute could have somehow developed a reputation for policy analysis over the course of years. And only Marci McDonald has remained immune to Michael Fraser’s use of The Voice as taught to him by the Bene Gesserit Order.

The naming of Canada can be attributed to fundamentalist biblical prophecy.

• The Dominion of Canada and the motto “A mari usque ad mare? The work of notorious end-of-days advocate Sir Samuel Leonard Tiley. Or maybe not quite .

Clearly “The Current” is degenerating into the “Coast to Coast AM” for the brie and chardonnay set.

UPDATE

The audio is now available.

AND MORE

If McDonald can’t convince a jazz-loving cosmopolitan journo like Paul Wells, then there is a small ray of hope for the chattering classes.

In the past week the British papers I have perused have reported:

• A town councillor gets a visit from two policemen for putting a sign in his window in red and blue letters, on a white background, saying: “Get the lot out”. The police suggested that a red, white and blue sign had “racist” connotations. “They said the Union Jack-coloured lettering on a white background could be considered ‘racist’.”
  He was told there had been a single complaint and he was ordered to remove it or change it otherwise he would end up in court.”

“And the furious pensioner , chairman of his local history society and a former Samaritan , slammed police for wasting their time.

“He said : ‘Three years ago vandals put a brick through my window and when I called the police all they offered me was a crime reference number.

No police visit was required for a physical crime, but the possibility of thought crime deserved their special attention.

• A black Christian evangelical counsellor was fired from his job, without recourse, for failing to provide sexual advice to a gay couple on how to improve their love-life, on the grounds that his christian faith required such conduct it. Regardless of his interpretation of Christianity, he failed in his lawsuit because religious belief was not a suitable ground of refusal. The same appeal court judge (Lord Laws)  who ruled this way had also ruled in a previous case that a man fired for excessive adherence to global warming doctrines was entitled to a religious defence.

“Lord Justice Laws condemned any attempt to protect believers who take a stand on matters of conscience under the law as “irrational” and “capricious”.

“In comments likely to set the church on a collision course with the courts, he claimed that doing so could set Britain on the road to a “theocracy”, or religious rule.

“While acknowledging the profound influence of Judeo-Christian traditions over many centuries, he insisted that no religious belief itself could be protected under the law “however long its tradition, however rich its culture”.

“The promulgation of law for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds cannot therefore be justified,” he said.

“It is irrational, as preferring the subjective over the objective. But it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary.”

He added: “If they did … our constitution would be on the road to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic.”

But Darren Sherborne, a partner at the law form Rickerbys, said that Lord Justice Laws’s judgment “wrong” open to challenge at the Supreme Court because it placed sexual practices over religious beliefs.

“For him to say a subjective idea isn’t capable of protection completely undermines the 2006 Equality Act which was intended to protect people from discrimination on the grounds of their beliefs,” he said.

“The law has developed to the point where even a belief in the environment is held to be protected.

“There is scope for a challenge to the Supreme Court and I would expect it to be.

“If he doesn’t (challenge it), in my opinion this is one more straw in the camel’s back which is heading for the encouragement … of more extreme religious beliefs.

• A Christian street preacher was arrested and locked in a cell for telling a passer-by that homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God.

“Dale McAlpine was charged with causing “harassment, alarm or distress” after a homosexual police community support officer (PCSO) overheard him reciting a number of “sins” referred to in the Bible, including blasphemy, drunkenness and same sex relationships.

“The 42-year-old Baptist, who has preached Christianity in Workington, Cumbria for years, said he did not mention homosexuality while delivering a sermon from the top of a stepladder, but admitted telling a passing shopper that he believed it went against the word of God.”

• Atheists seek to ban Christian prayer before town council meetings on the grounds that it offends the human rights of non-believers.
• A Muslim defaces a war memorial with a slogan saying “Islam shall prevail over all” , among others, but his prosecution fails to prosecute this as a “religious” or “racially motivated” act.

“A file was sent to lawyers at the Counter Terrorism Division of the CPS in London to see if there was a racially or religiously motivated connotation.

“However when Shah appeared before magistrates this week, prosecutor Andrew Bodger said: ‘It was decided there was not enough evidence to prove this, and they decided it was politically motivated.’

“Defending, Mumtaz Chaudry said Shah did not hold extremist views. ‘This is nothing to do with his religious beliefs, his family’s beliefs or his cultural beliefs,’ he said. ‘He is just an ordinary guy. ”

“Khadim Thathall, a former president of a mosque in the town, said: ‘This young man has clearly been radicalised by groups which are looking to cause trouble and it’s a pity that the court hasn’t been able to deal with him more strictly.’

(Good for you, Khadim Thathall!  You are cleaer on the concept than the Director of Public Prosecutions.)

 

• The strange thing is, David Cameron has resolutely refused to take up any of  these issuea in the British general election. Thinking minds ask: why not?

I am bored stiff with Canadian politics and I suspect you are too. Indeed I am bored with US politics. The global warming scare is fizzling out. The outcomes on several fronts are predictable and they work,  in general, towards conservative aims and outcomes. The only uncertain issue, in the grand strategic sense, is whether we will be forcibly Islamized in 25 years, or not.

Glorious Leader Harper moves the jello which makes up this country to the right, and any change he can make below the level of public discussion he makes, and any change requiring public discussion he does not make. Thus immigration and refugee policy can get fixed by administrative action, but the Human Rights Commissions march onward until they meet their deserved fate: ignominy and dismantlement. But not now.

Obama continues to screw up at his own pace, stiffing his allies and appeasing our enemies.  He will be punished at the mid-terms in spectacular fashion, and the issue is whether he will be considered worse than Jimmy Carter, or slightly better. I already have several bets out that he is a one-term President and I see no sign that my money is at risk.

Free-speech issues, which are really substitutes for the Islamic issue, are now being engaged, and they will play out over years. Sensible people  are not always winning them, but we are engaging a larger segment of society in the necessary discussions of race, class, religion, intelligence distribution, and why they cannot be discussed in frank terms.   The free-speech issues are important because they mark the boundaries that leftists want to put on freedom of discussion in the West, which is to say: they want to end it entirely for everyone, possibly including themselves. And, just as they did in the days of Communism, there is always a large contingent of leftists who hate liberal constitutional democracy and their own culture more than they fear the outside threat.

Only in the case of Islam, the threat is now inside the house, because of senseless immigration policies.

The Muslim issue is the new Communism. The same issues ae being asked. What is communism?Are there  really such people as communists? What do they intend towards us? Have they infiltrated our governments?

Islam is resuming  a thousand three hundred year long battle with everyone else, after a pause when their political arrangements (the Ottoman Empire and the Barbary pirates) were crushed.

The same sorts of naivety, enthusiasm, folly, intimidation, appeasement, infiltration and refusal to discuss the matter are occurring in relation to Islam as occurred in relation Communism.

The collapse of Christianity is leaving a vast spiritual vacuum in the West, and the Muslims are merely filling it.

Thus it was with great pleasure I turned this past Easter weekend from secular concerns to Jesus’ really bad day upon the cross, and to a brilliant, deeply learned, and well thought out book by the San Francisco philosopher and historian of religion, Jacob Needleman, whose What is God? counts among the 30 most important books I have read.

I thought it would be one of those duty-books that I occasionally read because, like broccoli, they are good for me, though dry and distasteful. Nothing of the sort. It caught me from the opening pages of childhood recollection, and continued straight through to the end, opening larger and deeper vistas. (His description of his boundless loathing, as a young Jewish man, for Saint Augustine aroused in me nothing but sympathy, and outright laughter, as he burns every page of The City of God one evening in outrage).

Needleman’s book leads through a painless and engaged  discussion of western philosophy and religious thinking to spiritual pratices and thence to an exposition of the thought of George Gurdjieff and his followers.

I have bought two copies of “What is God?” to lend to my children and friends, and I have just ordered a dozen books on Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, John Sinclair (Lord Pentland), Jeanne de Salzman and the other disciples.

Jacob Needleman’s “What is God?” is a tonic for your soul. You have one, you know, and it needs exercise and refreshment. It is a good guide to begin thinking about the question because, as he says, the answer to “who is God?” is entirely bound up with the question “who are you?”. And I am  more concerned with those two questions than I am with any other at this time.

_______________________

An engaging on-line resource of writing by Gurdjieff’s disciples can be found at http://books.google.ca/books?id=oyZ14dBwIZMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=gurdjieff&source=bl&ots=D0EsZqpKq6&sig=NqoXKG0W5l_DWFI-vw4gCghG7HE&hl=en&ei=ZlG_S42JFMH78Aai0az8CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=17&ved=0CDUQ6AEwEA#v=onepage&q&f=false

This morning’s article in the National Post trumpets Capitalism made us Kinder, study says.

Obviously it is not capitalism, which is a late development of the post-1400s in Europe, but the universal human tendency to trade, which has softened barbaric manners.

“The finding, reported in the journal Science, suggests people trust and play fair with strangers because markets and religion — not some deep psychological instinct inherited from our dim tribal past — have helped shape our neural circuitry over the eons.”

“The hunter-gatherer and tribal societies studied are known for sharing among family and close acquaintances. But the researchers found fair play in monetary transactions with strangers was almost an alien concept. People in the simpler societies treated strangers less fairly, and were less likely to punish people who kept most of the money for themselves.

“Social scientists — and economists in particular — have long been baffled with the way people in large societies are so trusting and fair in dealings with strangers. Many academics have argued it is a throwback to a time when humans were hunter-gatherers.

“Mr. Henrich and his colleagues say their findings indicate playing fair with strangers is a behaviour that was favoured as the size of societies and populations grew.

“The emergence and growth of markets allowed for the exchange of goods, skills and knowledge and enabled large complex societies to emerge and function, Mr. Henrich says, noting that humans in large societies are not nearly as selfish as some would suggest.

“There are all these aspects to our lives that just seem to work, because we are not actually baboons,” Mr. Henrich says in an interview.

This is what we would have expected. Read the rest…

Whingeing Seventies rock star Sir Elton John announces to the world that Jesus Christ was a “super-intelligent gay man“.

And the increasingly awful Church of England does little to refute this fabulous theologian:

A spokesman for the Church of England said: “Sir Elton’s reflection that Jesus calls us all to love and forgive is one shared by all Christians.”

“But insights into aspects of the historic person of Jesus are perhaps best left to the academics,” he added.

Fittingly, at one point in the interview with that bastion of religious reflection, Parade Magazine, Sir Elton claims that “fame attracts lunatics”.

No argument here.

Conducted by Bruce Bawer, author of “While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within“:

http://www.rights.no/publisher/publisher.asp?id=59&tekstid=3259

No actually I don’t. I hate his doctrines. David Warren is a tower of intellectual strength and and integrity. On many issues, he represents a voice of long-term sanity, though as a Holy Fool he aggravates many.

My problem with David Warren is that he is not of our species, and does not know it. Consequently on the subject of sex he preaches to some other class of being not commonly found among humans – those who feel no lust. He may share human DNA; but I can scarcely believe it from the way he talks.

In this week’s sermon, he writes:

“A woman, who is not the victim of a rape, has always had that right; and even my Catholic Church recognizes a method of contraception that is quite infallible. Gentle reader may guess what that is. And while it is only a rule of thumb, “no sex without babies, and no babies without sex” does in fact provide adequate guidance for any conceivable life issue.”

How else can you account for his advice in a major newspaper, that the best course was “no babies without sex, no sex without babies”. Wilful perversity? Possibly, but not on this issue.

This is not Roman Catholicism, David. It is just the voice of a man in whose veins no testosterone runs. I am not saying that you lack courage, for clearly you have profound moral convictions and have suffered greatly for them. I am saying that you have critical absence of the vital juices that make humans the most sexual of all species.

A man who explained his conversion from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism on the basis that the Anglican Church was getting too gay-friendly has some serious thinking to do about the nature of the priesthood of the Roman Church, the largest gay-owned and -operated institution in the world.

Warren continues:

“This moral injunction (no babies without sex, no sex without babies) is dismissed as “too simple.” Yet merely by trying to draw some alternative line, say between contraception and abortion, we have already found the means to become irretrievably lost. All moral injunctions are simple, and the sinful heart has always cried out for a little complexity.”

Warren continues in the long line of Catholics from Saint Paul and Saint Augustine forward, to find something inherently sinful about the human desire for sex, whether with oneself, or others, whether with the opposite sex, or one’s own.  One of the 39 articles of the Anglican religion, written in the 1540s,  expresses it thus.

 IX:…..”the lust of the flesh, called in Greek, phronea sarkos, (which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh), is not subject to the Law of God. And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized; yet the Apostle doth confess, that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin.

If lust be something not subject to the law of God, one asks how it is different from the production of bile or hemoglobin, or the production of neurotransmitters or snot, or any other bodily function. And if lust is subject to the will of God in the same way as other bodily functions and processes, one asks how or why it has the nature of sin.

Sex is how we got here. I mean more by sex than by how we were given birth. I mean sexual selection, how you chose your mate and how you were chosen, is the only means of evolution directed enough, intelligent enough, discriminating enough, to take us from furry-faced bipeds under the plains of Africa to listening to Mozart under northern stars, dining on food with cutlery and table cloths, in the space of 30,000 years. Read Geoffrey Miller’s The Mating Mind for a more complete exposition of this argument. To place in sexual selection the burden of sin is a portion of traditional Christian doctrine that we have all walked away from, for many profound reasons.

All but David Warren and his lonely band of traditional Catholics. May God bless them and preserve them, for they have been made crazy. Our revenge shall be to outbreed them.

All the conceits of enviro-’watermelons’ and the simply awful United Church of Canada come together in one package:

Mardi Tindal, the newly elected moderator of the United Church of Canada, returned from last month’s climate change summit in Copenhagen with a deep malaise. Not a true clinical depression, but an anxious despair that reduced her to weeping.

[...]

“And I said, ‘Doug, I’m weeping for the millions of lives that have been lost as a result of what did and did not happen in Copenhagen,” Ms. Tindal said. “My experience was that I had a place to go with my tears and my lament … It’s an expression of pain for the world’s suffering.”

Climb down, madam, that cross isn’t a two-seater model!

I admit that I have lived a long time, and yet it seems like nothing until I talk to younger people, who do not remember a time before the Internet.

Recently I saw a photograph I took of my two eldest children, as teenagers, beside my then living parents. The season was March, the day sunny, everyone in sweaters but no coats or hats, and the field behind them still covered in snow, which might have lasted another week. It was 1995. My father, still black-haired at 83, was to live until 2000, five years later. He would be healthy for another two years, until a gentle decline. My mother is still alive, somewhat frailer than in the picture, but mentally still sharp at 91.

It struck me that that photo was 15 years old! I would have been 45 years old when I took it. Forty five is full middle age.  Wait! The realization how old I am only gets  worse.

I recently spoke to a group of 22 year-olds in fourth year university. It means the average person in that class was born in the last year of Reagan. Their infancy was in the regime of George Herbert Walker Bush, their childhood under Bill Clinton, their teen-age under George W. Bush the Younger.

These young people do not remember the Cuban Missile Crisis or the fall of Communism any more than we remember the coronation of George VI, which my mother remembers well, she then in her 18th year, passing down sandwiches to the equally young Bud Drury, later Pierre Trudeau’s minister for everything,  from her hotel window in London before the parade was to pass by.

I suppose if we had the privilege of asking our forebears, some would have remembered Armistice Day in 1918, and others would have remembered bells ringing to mark Trafalgar in 1805, and Waterloo ten years later.  Or the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, which solidified the claim of Protestants to the throne of England.  Or how Bach the elder used to forget his frustrations with the Lepizig town council by going into the organ loft at Thomaskirche to improvize for hours on the organ, and communicate as directlyas a man can with God. Or what Akhnaton said to his priests when he established worship of the one true Sun-God against the polytheism of Egypt. Or how one of our forefathers worked out the bow and arrow, or one of our foremothers who first brewed beer. God bless you, madam!

The next miracle, if you will forgive the word, is how my contemporaries are so much younger than 60-year-olds in my parents’ day. Sure, there were healthy looking parents at sixty and well-preserved people at seventy forty years ago in the year 1970, but they were exceptional. 

If it were not for the face in the mirror, I would not know I was getting older, and even now I suspect some Dorian Gray portrait may exist somewhere, doing the ageing for me, because I feel great!

As in the Academy awards, my thanks to the following list of people and forces:

• my parents, or giving birth to me
• the healthsystem, for dealing with my ailments, few though they be
• for the victors of World War II, for making the world safe for liberal democracy
• for the Cold Warriors, for keeping Communism contained
• for my guardian angel, for looking out for me
• for my children, for confirming me in my life’s choices
• for those who have loved me, for upholding me
• to the Creator of this Universe, for giving us all a place to live
• to my Saviour, for keeping me in mind.

Thanks to you all! I could not have done it without you! Thank you!

I am not a climate warning alarmist. As readers will know, I am an Islamic jihad alarmist. Our very occasional correspondent Oban and I dined last night.  The outline of the conversation goes as follows. I will leave it to Oban to correct the record.

It all started with listening to Iris Dement singing confessional protestant hymns. Her religion is a deeply personal encounter with Jesus. She sings in an accent so hillbilly it seems unchanged from when her ancestors left the lowlands of Scotland in the 1730s. She is an artist of surpassing power, and ranks with the best female artists we listen to, not excepting opera stars. This led us to a discussion of religion,and the difference between this highly personal encounter with Jesus religion and what Oban calls “state atheism”, namely, the Anglican Church.

Oban – Whenever you go into a real church, you see plaques listing the war dead on the wall. I don’t look at the cross. I look at the plaques commemorating the war dead. That is my religion. Real religion teaches you that you may be called upon to die in the defence of your country, for the maintenance of civilization.

Dalwhinnie – (accompanied by table pounding) – Oban, that is the most Tory thing I have heard in my life! Bravo! But clearly that is what religion is for those of us raised in institutional and establishment religion. But how are we going to deal with the Islamic thing, in that case, because according to them, any ten guys who haven’t been laid in six months have a right to wage war against the surrounding society? Not just go out and get drunk and puke in the streets, but to plant bombs on buses and kill lots of people.

Oban – I agree that this war-making tendency is a fact of Islamic life. But if they make war without the authority of the state, the result will be so disorganized that it is a recipe for societal failure. And indeed, their propensity to wage ceaseless war on all concerned is why they are so backward.

Dalwhinnie – Agreed. But, what if societal failure were a self-reinforcing state? What if a society could function at the Islamic dysfunctional level forever? I see no sign that Islamic societies are reforming out of their dysfunctionality after a thousand years of Islam. In fact the dysfunctionality seems to be intensifying.

Oban – The overwhelming attraction of Western society is that it gives vastly greater pleasure to its participants. At the basic level of sex, western men have more orgasms with better partners. Islam cannot offer this. All it can offer is repression.

Dalwhinnie – The attraction seems to be highly resistible. Children of Islamic immigrants tend to wall themselves off from the outer society more than their parents.

Oban – I think you are underestimating the huge and overwhelming attractiveness of Western society for all people. It is so much better than anything Islamic societies have developed for themselves. And if the young jihadists do become a problem, I think we can roll over and crush them.

Dalwhinnie – Nothing I have read about the invasion of Europe by Muslims, the increasing presence of no-go zones for police and firemen, the use of human rights law to prevent any free expression of distaste for Muslim social practices, the supine passivity of European political leadership, the use of welfare to support a stagnant population of slackers, the sexual self-isolation, the attacks upon European Christian women, suggest that there has been any change in Islamic behaviour. Any tens guys who feel pissed off have the right and duty to wage war against the surrounding infidels, and they do.

Oban – I think you underestimate the assimilating powers of western civilization. It is a much better offer.

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And that, folks, was what I can recall to tell you. Debate continued until it was time to go home. An excellent exchange was had.