Barrel Strength

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.”

How many big stupid ideas have marched through our institutions in our lifetimes, wrecking as they go?

Let us define what we mean. A Big Stupid Idea is any idea which, though it may once have been true, or is partly true, is pushed to such an extreme that it lasts beynd its time, or worse, is pushed to the exclusion of its necessary qualifications. a truth can become an untruth when it is claimed to be the Whole Truth.

I invite anyone to add their own Big Stupid Ideas to the list.

And pardon the offence to my market-oriented friends, but the latest big stupid idea is:

1) The market is the solution.

Uh, no. The market is a restricted sand-box whose rules and dimensions are determined by non-market institutions such as courts and parliaments, the rule of law, and the guardian forces of the state which protect the sandbox, and the tolerance of the public for its outcomes.

When those who play in this sandbox load the ordinary joes of this life, including you and me, with their failures, but privatize the winnings, society reacts negatively. The social contract between those who play in the sandbox and the rest of us is a real fact, which the Ayn Randists ignore at their peril.

2) Genetics has no (legitimate) role to play in the determination of social outcomes.

I can never figure out whether this is an “is” argument or an “ought” argument, but in either case it is wrong. The abundant new evidence accruing daily about the role of the genetic in every social outcome (viz. The Bell Curve, Before the Dawn, The Ten Thousand Year Explosion) and in the fundamental composition and success rate of various humans is so overwhelming that only an ideologist could be blind to it. As to the “ought” portion of the argument, I rely on the immortal words of Eric Voegelin:

“All men are equal, and all men are unequal. And the ways in which they are equal are as interesting and important as the ways in which they are unequal. Any society which forgets the truth of either fo these two propositions will end in violence.”

Thus, recent findings include the facts that: race is not a social construction, but a real biological fact; intelligence is distributed differently among ethnic and and racial groups; evolution has not stopped, but is in fact accelerating; a great deal of the different outcomes among nations and peoples is not therefore the result only of unfair exploitation, but of genetic factors. How to make outcomes fair in such as situation is not a trivial exercize in forced redistribution.

From the failure to provide for the genetic factors of life proceeds many further errors and false ideas.

On a smaller scale, here are few more:

3) Isreal is an apartheid state: the Palestinians are the blacks; the Israelis, the Afrikaners.

From this narrative, everything flows. ThePalestinians are the virtuous underdog, the Israelis the white supremacist masters. The role of Islam in making this inter-ethnic and religious issue intractable is ignored. Apparently intelligent people believe this. It has the effect of letting them know they are on the right side, which is its main function. No further thought required.

4) Islam

God has commanded you to obey God’s ravings, accurately recorded verbatim in the Koran, to tyrannize and subdue every other person in the universe, and the female sex especially. Jews are to be exterminated on the Day of Judgment. And so forth.

Need I say more?

5) Man is causing irreversible damage to the environment through burning fossil fuels, and only a concerted, coordinated global campaign to reduce carbon emissions can save the planet.

This is the latest emanation of leftist control fantasies, after the failure of Marxism. It is just the zombie of state socialism with an another compelling pseudo-scientific justification, rising from the grave of Communism.

The fact that we can and should take better care of resources (fish, forests, air, soils) than we do has nothing to do with the spiritual impulse to control every living thing which lies at the core of ecologism. Making the production of carbon dioxide as sin is about as sensible as making lust a sin. If it worked for the Christians, then why not for the Greens?

What are your candidates for Big Stupid Ideas? At best they should not be restricted to Canada or North America. They should be working through the culture more or less around the world, or the english-speaking portion of it that we are familiar with.

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.

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…

What do you do when you have just filled in the crossword puzzle? You toss it away with complete lack of interest, right? Up to that moment, you have been obsessed with every letter. Up to that moment, you have been spending hours, over the course of days perhaps, decoding. Then poof! A sudden change of value is made in your mind. I draw this to your attention because I am obsessed with attention, and how it shifts, and what happens when it does.

Once I removed an old piece of equipment from a circuit board in my house. The heavy piece of electrical equipment had been functioning perfectly all its life, since the 1920s probably. The next moment it was scrap. Who declared it scrap? I did. Another mental event. Useful one moment, scrap the next. 

Global warming of the man-caused variety. When did it move from “useful”or “true” to “scrap” or “false” in your mind?

But this is only one of any number of changes, decisions, evaluations we make in life.  Some of them are far more significant for our self-perception and social status. Grew up Protestant, become a Jew. Grow up Jewish, become a Unitarian. Grow up Unitarian, become a Roman Catholic. Grow up atheist and find yourself thinking a whole lot about Jesus and what He accomplished. Always thought you were gay, marry a woman and live happily. Always thought you were straight, move to Sante Fe with Allan and open a boutique. Eat meat, dyke and, behold! you do, and marry the rancher who tends to the cattle, move to southern Alberta and join the Presbyterians.

Most of our changes are far less dramatic in nature, I grant you, and occur at a slower pace than dropping the old circuit breaker into the garbage.  Most of them, in my case, have involved ceasing to concern oneself with issues that used to fascinate me. Most of them have involved retreating from publicly relevant associations, such as political parties and church, into my own private pleasures and concerns. As I am not the first to have done so, I assume it is a feature of ageing. Many go in the opposite direction.

But the topic  here is evaluation: the mysterious process that says this one, not that one. Which brings me around to us, you and me. Who does the deciding? You and I. So in effect, and in reality, you and I are the source of the value. We make the decisions. We make the evaluations. We say: “this, not that”. So how on earth did we ever get the idea that value comes from somewhere outside of us? We are the value. We are value. Not God, not earth, not Gaia, not dad, not neighbours, nor the wife. Us. You and I.

So value is not extrinsic to us. It is us. It is we who judge a thing or a person by its or their fitness to a purpose, and we judge the purpose.  We are not just making valuations, we are the source of the value by which things and people are evaluated.

Maybe this is just this morning’s approach to the saying that the Kingdom of Heaven is within you. It is amazing sometimes to consider what happens when you decide to throw away the crossword puzzle.

Geert Wilders, the oppressed Dutch politician, under fire from the establishment for saying true things about Islam, has the momentum in forthcoming national elections.

See the article by Paul Belien in the Brussels Journal.

Will everyone please pay attention to the Wilders phenomenon? It is a huge issue, whether a leading national politician can be thrown in jail for saying that Islam is an enemy to civilization, and there is no defence possible under Dutch law? Except by taking over the government, that is.

First, Geoffrey Sachs. Then me, in five carefully worded megatons.

Geoffrey Sachs in the Guardian:

We are witnessing a predictable process by ideologues and right-wing think tanks and publications to discredit the scientific process. Their arguments have been repeatedly disproved for 30 years — time after time — but their aggressive methods of public propaganda succeed in causing delay and confusion.

Climate change science is a wondrous intellectual activity. Great scientific minds have learned over the course of many decades to “read” the Earth’s history, in order to understand how the climate system works. They have deployed brilliant physics, biology, and instrumentation (such as satellites reading detailed features of the Earth’s systems) in order to advance our understanding.

And the message is clear: large-scale use of oil, coal, and gas is threatening the biology and chemistry of the planet. We are fuelling dangerous changes in Earth’s climate and ocean chemistry, giving rise to extreme storms, droughts, and other hazards that will damage the food supply and the quality of life of the planet.

 On the motives of those who oppose the global warming agenda:

“the same group of mischief-makers, given a platform by the free-market ideologues of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, has consistently tried to confuse the public and discredit the scientists whose insights are helping to save the world from unintended environmental harm.”.

Finally, it is our duty to obey:

“The IPCC and the climate scientists are telling us a crucial message. We need urgently to transform our energy, transport, food, industrial, and construction systems to reduce the dangerous human impact on the climate. It is our responsibility to listen, to understand the message, and then to act.”

So let us review his argument:

• Those who oppose us are against the scientific method itself, it is not a mere disagreement about some facts.
• Our side is filled with wonderfully intelligent minds.
• Their side is corrupt and evil.
• Obey or be damned.

And now I am going to  give some of it back.

[After the passage of a few days since first reading the Sachs article, I realize what drove me and Antony Watts up the wall about it. It was not intended to rationally persuade anyone who differs in the least from its views. It was the equivalent of an officer slapping a dazed private, saying "get back in line, soldier. Nothing has happened". The entire eastern front has collapsed. The shattered wreck of armies is drifting past the position, and the officer is merely trying to cow the soldier back into line. It was an assertion of authority over weak minds, and the insult lies in the author's belief that we are weak minded. But he was not talking to us. He was talking to the wavering fanatics.]

First, this line of attack is entirely typical of all global warming alarmists whom I have encountered personally and in print, without exception. I have not met any global warmist who has failed to use his adherence to the dcctrine as a signal of his moral superiority, rather than as a position in a rational discussion. The most disturbing thing about warmists is their religious enthusiasm and intolerance.

Second,  I have observed this form of argument many times before.  I have argued with Jews, of whom Geoffrey Sachs is one, for over forty years on all matters political, theological, factual or legal. Many Jews, if not most, exhibit a strong tendency to overstate the argument in the terms used by Sachs. We shall discuss what those features are below.

Third, the global warming movement shows many of the features associated with ideological movements of the twentieth century: Feudianism, Boasian sociology, and subsequent intellectual movements making  left-wing critiques of society (the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer, Marcuse et al). These were mostly Jewish in origin, composition, and working styles. These groups exhibited or exhibit:

• high degrees of authoritarianism: intellectual subordination of the group to a charismatic leader or his ideas;
• sharp in-group out-group distinctions, between the elect/the saved/the initated and the rest, who are divided into the possibly useful and the damned (those who knowingly disagree).
• a conspiratorial style: worldly success in ensuring members of the in-group are placed in the right spots to manage the propagation of the group’s ideas and the upward mobility of its members;
• Condescension towards and failure to respect the ideas of others. Indeed, failure to agree is a sign of psychopathoogy.

To summarize:

1. The pattern of thought and behaviour of the global warming alarmists exhibits many resemblances to the intellectual fads of the 20th century.
2. The style of argument of Geoffrey Sachs is particularly Jewish.
3. People should not be cowed by Sachs’  style of discourse, particularly they should not be afraid of being called anti-semitic for saying that this style of argument is obnoxious, authoritarian, and anti-liberal.

Freud, Boas , Marcuse and their doctrines  have turned into the equivalent of a pet rocks.  Global warming via CO2 emissions is rapidly joining these intellectual poseurs on the rubbish dump of failed ideas.

The style of argument, the conspiratorial methods, the inability to withstand criticism from members of an out-group: all this will persist. It will simply find a new authoritarian ideology to latch onto.

So Geoffrey Sachs can go fuck himself.

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.

I got a letter — I got a note today from one of my staff — they forwarded it to me — from a woman in St. Louis who had been part of our campaign, very active, who had passed away from breast cancer. She didn’t have insurance. She couldn’t afford it, so she had put off having the kind of exams that she needed. And she had fought a tough battle for four years. All through the campaign she was fighting it, but finally she succumbed to it. And she insisted she’s going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt.  (Laughter.)

As is His wont, He chose not to name her and at the end of the Revelation, the Doubters laughed.  Barrack Hussein Obama is pictured below with the ever present halo.

The women in question was Melaine Shouse who died on Jan 30th, 2010 Anno Domini or 2 After Obama, in Overland, Missouri.  These then are the humble origins of Shroud of Overland.