De Me Ipso

It is the Feast Day of the Circumcision of Christ otherwise known as New Year's Day. The year that begins today is the 2018th Anno Domini and never have I been happier at being completely out of sync with the times. This is, of course, the opposite attitude of that of the ignorant, mindless, nincompoop of a pretty boy who deceived my country into putting him into the office of Her Majesty's First Minister a little over two years ago and who has been using the calendar year as an excuse to justify his misdeeds ever since. To have little in common with that obnoxious twerp pleases me as well.

It is my custom, one picked up from the late Charley Reese of the Orlando Sentinel, to begin each year with a full disclosure essay, letting my readers know exactly where I stand. I am a patriot of the Dominion of Canada, which celebrated her 150th anniversary last year, loyal to the Old Canada, to the vision of Sir John A. MacDonald and the other Fathers of Confederation and to the heritage of the United Empire Loyalists who fled north after the rebellion of 1776 to build a country on the foundation of honour and loyalty rather than progress and commercialism. If little traces of this Canada remain in the Canada of 2018 it is because of the treachery, deception, and betrayal of the vile Liberal Party, of which I am a sworn, lifelong, foe.

I am a Christian. I had a United Church upbringing, "accepted Jesus Christ as my Saviour," in evangelical lingo, when I was fifteen, was baptized by immersion in a Baptist church when I was in high school, studied theology for five years at Providence Bible College and Theological Seminary (now Providence University College) in Otterburne, Manitoba and was confirmed in the Anglican Church of Canada as an adult. I hold to the orthodox theology of the Apostles', Nicene-Constantinopolitan and Athanasian Creeds, and to the final authority and infallibility of the Holy Scriptures of which, like any fundamentalist, I prefer the Authorized translation of 1611 but, unlike fundamentalists, regard as incomplete without the portions of the Greek Old Testament that had been read as Scripture by the Christian Church since the first century but assigned deuterocanonical status due to their absence from the Hebrew Old Testament. I reject the so-called "higher critical" interpretations of the Scriptures as codified unbelief masquerading as scholarship, but neither do I accept that proper interpretation can be found through simplistic, formulaic rules such as those of literalism or by private believers guided only by inner illumination that they associate, rightly or wrongly, with the Holy Spirit. The Scriptures were given to the church as an organic community of faith and it is to that body, collectively indwelt by the Holy Spirit, that the enlightening ministry of the Spirit is promised, and individual believers must pay heed to how previous generations of believers from the Church Fathers on, understood the Scriptures, if they are to hear "what the Spirit saith unto the churches."

Politically, I am a Tory. That is a statement of political conviction rather than partisan allegiance. As much as I dislike the Liberal Party, and despise everything that the parties to the left of the Grits stand for, I have little use for politicians of any brand, including those of the Conservative Party. As a Tory I am first and foremost a royalist and a monarchist, who believes in our parliamentary form of government if not in the politicians who make up its composition or the bureaucrats who carry out its daily business, and who looks upon his country as an organic whole, in which past and future generations are united with those living in the present who have a duty, as trustees acting on behalf of previous and future generations, to preserve and pass on our constitution and institutions intact. I am neither a Red Tory nor a neoconservative. Red Tories try to associate Toryism with socialism, pacifism, feminism, and all sorts of other left-wing causes I despise. Neoconservatives want to further Americanize our country making them no different from the Liberals who did so much damage in previous generations.

I am right-wing in the original and true meaning of the term - an opponent of the vision, values, and ideals of the French Revolution of 1789 rather than a supporter of those of the German Revolution of 1933.

I am a social, moral, and cultural reactionary. By this I do not mean a Puritan who wants the state to dictate everyone's personal choices and control their private lives and who condemns art, theatre and the music on the basis of non-aesthetic judgements. The Puritans were the first liberals, progressives, and leftists. What I mean is this: societies are made up of communities, which in turn are made up of families, and it is families, supported by churches, schools, and the larger community, that are responsible for passing on the customs, ways, and manners that make up culture and the basic rules of right and wrong to the next generation and for trying to instil in them the habit of choosing the right over the wrong. If families, and the institutions that make up their social support network fail in this task, the state cannot step in and do it for them, although it may have to clean up the mess that ensues. When I say I am a reactionary I mean that I firmly believe that our social organization, our idea of what constitutes right and wrong, our manners, customs, and habits, and our aesthetic sense of the beautiful, which is the good of that highest of cultural expressions we call art, have all undergone severe decay and degradation since the beginning of the Modern Age and that this process has been accelerating in the last sixty years or so.

I agree with most of the basic components of capitalism such as the private ownership of property and the general superiority of market freedom over central economic planning but I am less than enthusiastic about the whole which they comprise. If I am a capitalist, in the sense of a believer in capitalism, then, like Sir Roger Scruton, I am a "reluctant capitalist." While I think that most if not all of the accusations socialists make against capitalism are silly, stupid and easily debunked nonsense, I would say that it is quite vulnerable to the charge that it is the engine of progress, a bulldozer which uproots communities, breaks down traditions, and otherwise destroys everything the worth of which cannot be measured in dollars and cents if it stands in the way of economic growth. I do not believe international free trade to be the path to global prosperity and universal peace that liberals have been touting it as for centuries and believe that it is important for countries to maintain strong borders and that often a country's national interests might require it to protect its domestic producers even if it is more economical to import on the cheap.

I am opposed to the Third World invasion of all Western countries, aided and abetted by treasonous politicians, bureaucrats, and cultural and academic elites, which amounts to a reverse colonialism and which if allowed to continue much longer will culminate in the genocide of all Western peoples, culturally, if not in the literal, physical sense of the term that the whites of Rhodesia and the Boers of South Africa have faced since the Communist takeovers brought about by the cowardice and treachery of Western governments determined to sacrifice these countries on the altar of anti-racism. I realize that it is extremely unpopular to express such sentiments but, to anyone who takes offence at this I refuse to apologize and say bluntly, that if you have a problem with what I have said, then it is you, not I, that has a problem, and I am not sorry in the least. Furthermore I scoff at the idea that there is anything at all "racist" in these sentiments. The word "racist" is a weapon rather than a unit of communication, it is designed to inspire anger, hatred and rage towards those against whom it is hurled, by imputing to them the motivation of an irrational desire to oppress and harm others because of their ethnic origin and/or skin colour. In reality, however, those who hold to the views expressed in this paragraph generally do so because we do not wish to see our countries torn apart by violent racial strife, and it is those who throw accusations of racism around liberally who wish to stir up ill will towards others. They are bullies and tyrants, who hide behind masks of "tolerance" and "compassion" and who deserve to be stripped of their guise of virtue and exposed for the thugs they really are.

My resolution for 2018, apart from seeing the publication of my finally completed book The High Tory: Essays On Classical Conservatism By a Patriotic Canadian, is the same as my resolution every other year, which is to grow even more out of sync with our increasingly corrupt times!

Happy New Year,
God Save the Queen!