Hic et Ille VI

A Correction

In my essay of March 30th, on the race for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada I declared that anything less than wholehearted support for the institution of royal monarchy ought to disqualify anyone from running as a candidate for the Conservative Party, much less for the party’s leadership. On those grounds I said that Erin O’Toole ought to be ruled out. This was based upon a survey of the prospective Conservative leaders done by the blogger A Kisagari Colour of the blog Maple Monarchists who had reported, on March 3rd, that O’Toole “has refused to answer my question regarding the monarchy.” On the ninth of this month, Maple Monarchists posted a second entry on O’Toole. It turns out that he had been given several policy questions at once and that his collective response was one of “While I don't have these detailed policy positions right now, I am working on it... I intend to release my policy proposals in the near future.” Commenting on this, A Kisagari Colour says “in hindsight 'refusal' was too strong of a word to have used” and quotes a statement Mr. O’Toole has given to the Monarchist League of Canada, expressing his “steadfast support for the monarchy as a foundational element of our parliamentary democracy and a positive force in our society” and outlining his past track record of support for the institution. Welcome back to the race, Mr. O’Toole!


Common Sense from Kellie Leitch

Kellie Leitch, one of the other candidates for the Conservative leadership, sent out an e-mail on April 22nd with the subject line “a common sense approach to immigration” and the content of the message lives up to this. She talks about a visit she made to Emerson, the border town in my home province of Manitoba that has been deluged with illegal aliens crossing over from the United States since the Trump administration introduced its highly sensible immigration/refugee policies a couple of months ago. While the pinheaded dolt who to the great misfortune of our Dominion has been put in charge of Her Majesty’s government in Ottawa has refused to talk to the people of Emerson whose lives he is ruining with his bloody “compassion” and his damned obnoxious and obscene “welcoming” attitude towards anyone and everyone who self-identifies as an “asylum seeker”, Leitch did so talk to them and stated the following:

Throughout this campaign I have been clear:
• I will ensure that every immigrant, refugee, and visitor to Canada receives an interview with a trained immigration officer

• I will ensure they are screened for their agreement for Canadian values before they are admitted to the country

• I will ensure that illegal border crossers are detained, questioned, and returned to the United States

• I will ensure that any city that declares itself a sanctuary does not receive federal funding for transportation

While this still leaves much to be desired it is by far the most sensible position on these matters that a major Canadian political leader has taken in the last twenty years.

Common Sense From Andrew Scheer

Andrew Scheer, as noted in my essay on the Conservative leadership race, has taken a particularly strong stand for the monarchy for which he ought to be commended. Now, in his bid for the Conservative leadership, he has also proposed measures to combat the Social Justice Warriors who harass, bully, and intimidate officials on the campuses of our universities into cancelling events and banning speakers with whom they disagree. Pointing to incidents such as the harassment of the University of Toronto’s Professor Jordan Peterson and the cancelling of pro-life meetings at Wilfred Laurier, Scheer has called on the government to withhold federal funding from any university that gives in to this kind of bullying and refuses to protect freedom of speech. This proposal is long overdue and it is greatly to the credit of Scheer that he has put it forward, just as it is to his credit that he has fought for freedom of speech in Parliament against the draconian thought control bills of the present Liberal government.

If there are any who question why it is laudable in a prospective Conservative leader that he be a strong and consistent advocate of a liberal doctrine like freedom of speech the answer is that while classical liberals may have been the first to formulate the idea of free speech it is an idea to which all people who genuinely believe the creeds they profess can subscribe. The person who believes his creed is the person who believes it to be true and truth is what it is independently of whether a single soul believes it. While there is danger in error to the minds, hearts and souls of those it misleads error can pose no threat of harm to truth itself. Truth, therefore, rather than suppression, is the answer to error. Whether you are a Tory like myself, who believes in Christian orthodoxy, in time-tested ways, in ancient institutions like royal monarchy, and in his country or some left-wing radical who believes in socialism, feminism, egalitarianism, anthropogenic global warming and other such asinine drivel you testify best to your confidence in the truth of your creed by responding to those who disagree with you with persuasion rather than suppression. Those who seek to suppress views they do not like testify only to their own lack of faith in their supposed convictions.

Liberals may have been the first to formulate this idea, but today they are the ones who seek to abridge the freedom of speech of others. Eleven years ago Sir Peregrine Worsthorne memorably noted that “with remarkable rapidity, from a doctrine designed to take government off the backs of the people, liberalism has become a doctrine designed to put it back again.” Nowhere is this more evident that when it comes to freedom of speech and what this tells us is that liberalism is a creed that has run its course, which everybody is now required to pay lip service to, although no one really believes it anymore.

SJWs Lampooned by The Simpsons

In a recent episode of the long-running television cartoon The Simpsons the kind of campus bullies referred to in the previous segment were brilliantly and hilariously lampooned. At one time, successful satire required quite a bit of exaggeration. Those days are behind us now for there is very little exaggeration in this.

When do we get to Stop Clapping?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn tells in the Gulag Archipelago of a conference in the Soviet Union during the days of Stalin in which a tribute was given to the tyrant and the standing ovation went on for over three hours because the NKVD were watching to see who would be the first to stop. Eventually, the director of the paper mill sat down, thus relieving everybody else, but later that night he was arrested. At the end of the interrogation, before he disappeared into the Gulag for ten years, he was reminded “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.” The same held true for all the speeches of the Soviet dictator himself. Eventually a system was devised whereby a bell would ring letting people know when they could stop clapping.

Stalin’s Soviet Union was what is known as a hard tyranny – a state where the absolute rule of the tyrant is enforced by naked force such as making people disappear into hard labour camps or just outright shooting them. Today, in a Canada whose government is once more led by a Trudeau, the son of the Communist traitor who did everything he could to replace our beloved Royal Dominion with a People’s Republic, we have what is known as a soft tyranny. The enforcers wear smiles on their faces, speak softly, and use sweet sounding words like “compassion”, “tolerance”, “understanding” and the like. Rather than forced labour camps and bullets we have sensitivity classes, the loss of jobs and careers, and Human Rights Tribunals, the last mentioned of which should perhaps be classified as medium-soft, or medium-hard tyranny. The effect, however, is remarkably similar. People are afraid to be the first to stop clapping – not for the goofy, sappy, superficial, empty-headed, shallow little twit who is a disgrace to the office of Her Majesty’s First Minister – but for the causes he champions, foremost among them being that of the alphabet soup gang.

Twenty years ago the average Canadian, if asked, would say that what people did behind closed doors was their own business, that if it was two men or two women rather than a man and a woman it wasn’t hurting anyone else, and as long as they weren’t shoving it down everyone else’s throats, we shouldn’t care. In the Canada of the Current Year, it is no longer safe to take that attitude. Today, we are all expected to agree – in the name of diversity, no less – that if a man likes men, or a woman likes women, or a man thinks he’s a woman, or whatever, that it is wonderful, superb, marvelous, and of course, absolutely fabulous, that they are that way, and if your enthusiasm is detectably less than that of the next person, you might be suspected of being a horrible, homophobic bigot with criminal thoughts from which the public must be protected.

If you think this to be an exaggeration contemplate the words of Justin Trudeau during his recent visit to Auschwitz “Tolerance is never sufficient. Humanity must learn to love our differences.” Those differences which we must learn to love do not include, of course, differing in opinion with Trudeau and other progressives. Observe also the amount of pressure that is now being placed on public officials and politicians of all parties, to attend the ostentatious displays of depravity and bad taste that are now known merely as Pride parades, “gay” being too limited a designation to please the crowd that calls itself something like LGBTTQAEIOUANDSOMETIMESY.

As bad as it is that progressives like the Trudeau Liberals insist on bullying everyone into professing conformity with their “enlightened” way of thinking, it is even worse when this sort of thing goes on in the church. Which is exactly what has been going on in the Anglican Church of Canada. At the General Synod of the ACC, which convened this month in Toronto, a motion was heard proposing that the marriage canon be changed to allow for same-sex marriages. When the motion, which to pass required two thirds support from the bishops, clergy, and lay delegates each, was initially defeated by a small margin, the activists who have been agitating for this change despite its clear and obvious violation of the teachings of both Scripture and Church tradition and the fact that it threatens the ACC’s standing with the See of Canterbury and the larger Anglican Communion worldwide which, in contrast with the ACC and the Episcopal Church (USA) in North America, is overwhelmingly orthodox, demanded a recount, and several of the bishops declared that they would allow same-sex marriages within their dioceses with or without the canon change, on the grounds that it is not explicitly prohibited. One wonders how these bishops would react if one of their parishes were to justify holding a Black Mass, complete with human sacrifice, with the same reasoning (assuming this is not explicitly prohibited by canon law – I have not bothered to check). At any rate, the next day the vote was examined, it was determined that someone’s vote had been misclassified, and Archbishop Fred Hiltz declared the motion to have passed. It requires a second vote at the next General Synod before the change can take place, although the same bishops, with the same specious reasoning, have said that they will be going ahead and authorizing the ceremonies anyway.

I am not going to spend a whole lot of time explaining why the Synod had no business hearing such a proposal in the first place. The arguments I put forward in my essay “Why the Church Should Not Perform Same Sex Blessings” when my own Diocese (Rupert’s Land) approved the blessing of same-sex couples four years ago are as applicable to the fiction of same-sex marriage. It can be added that the Founder of the Christian Church, when asked about the lawfulness of divorce, pointed out that in the beginning God made mankind “male and female” and said that “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh”, concluding that “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Matt. 19:4-6) If man ought not to break up the union of marriage because God is its Author, how much less ought he to mutate it beyond recognition. The Anglican Church has considered itself since the Reformation to be both Catholic – a Church in organic and organization descent from the Apostolic Church in possession of magisterial authority to teach the Word and administer the Sacraments – and Reformed – acknowledging the revealed Word of God as the highest authority. The Church’s authority, therefore, does not extend to changing the truth of God, which is not subject to democratic vote, and to make this change makes complete mockery of the admirable canon of St. Vincent of Lérins, supposedly revered by Anglicans, in which Catholic orthodoxy is defined as holding to that which “has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.”

My point, rather, at least for the sake of this essay, is that the same kind of smiley-faced Stalinism that is the essence of the Liberalism of Justin “Sunny Ways” Trudeau, has been the tactic used by the Gaystapo to effect this transformation in the Canadian arm of the Church of Richard Hooker, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson and C. S. Lewis. As Dr. David W. Virtue reports:

VIRTUEONLINE has received word that intimidation and bullying took place behind the scenes at the recent Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada over the push for same sex marriage…Here is what VOL learned. When the Synod members broke up into small discussion groups, some members complained about being “intimidated” and “harassed.” Archbishop Fred Hiltz spoke against harassment tactics, but the victims weren't identified. It wasn't until later that the identity of the "harassed" was made public. Those bishops and their delegates from the orthodox dioceses of Caledonia, Yukon, and the Arctic, because of their opposition to same-sex marriage, were identified as the victims.

The same harassed and intimidated bishops have issued an excellent dissenting statement, which I recommend that you read in its entirety, drawing your attention in particular to the following:

The Resolution as carried does not provide adequate protection for the consciences of dioceses, clergy and congregations. We are concerned for all those of a traditional conscience on marriage within the Anglican Church of Canada.

There is plenty of reason for such concern. Intimidation, harassment, and bullying have been the tactics of the pro-homosexual activists within the Church all along, as anyone who has followed the sad story of how they have gotten their way over “same-sex blessings”, by hook or by crook, in diocese after diocese, beginning with New Westminster in 2002, is well aware. Now that they have a sympathizer in the Prime Minister’s Office, these bullying wolves-in-sheep-and-shepherd’s clothing, are even more emboldened and brazen about it.

It is somewhat ironic that these Social Justice Warriors claim to be motivated by the desire to protect the alphabet soupers from something called “homophobia”, when this term would seem to more accurately describe the fear and hatred that are sure to be generated by their tactics than that to which it is more usually applied, namely the orthodox doctrine that male and female were designed to be attracted to each other, that homosexual erotic relations are sinful, and that forgiveness and freedom from such can be found in Jesus Christ through faith and repentance. Stalin, was not exactly highly esteemed after his passing, except among idiotic liberal academics, and eventually, when the progressive regime falls, as all regimes that govern by fear do, Justin Trudeau and those marching under the banner of the Pride that precedes their inevitable fall, will be remembered in the same way.

In the meantime, kudos to the orthodox bishops who dared to sign their name to the dissent. One wonders when all other Canadians will get to stop clapping.

Pride and Pietas

In my last essay I discussed Nancy MacDonald’s recent cover article for MacLean’s which accuses my city, Winnipeg, of being the most racist city in Canada. I pointed out several holes in the conventional anti-racist narrative to which the MacLean’s article was uncritically faithful. I pointed out, for example, the double standard in the narrative’s definition of racism in that expressions of racial pride on the part of the group consistently identified as the villains in the narrative, i.e., white people are considered to be racist whereas expressions of such pride on the part of groups designated the victims, i.e., non-whites and in this case one specific none-white group, Indians, are not considered to be racist. I had observed that everywhere in the city one can see baseball caps reading “Native Pride.” This does not stir up the kind of indignation that a single instance of someone wearing a cap that read “White Pride” would.

In response to this, a friend argued that it was silly to compare “White Pride” with “Native Pride” because of all the sinister connotations the former phrase has due to its association with websites like Stormfront and organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. Now, at first glance this argument does indeed seem to be valid. Whatever else might be said about the “Native Pride” merchandise line it does not have any apparent connections with any sort of hard, zealous, racialist, ideology the way the phrase “white pride” does. Nevertheless, if we pursue this comparison further, I think that it ultimately supports my own argument.

Is there something inherently vicious and violent about racial pride on the part of white people but not on the part of the members of any other race? If yes, this suggests that there is something seriously defective in the collective character of white people but not in the collective character of other people groups. This, however, resembles nothing so much as the theories by which the National Socialists justified their mistreatment of Jews and other groups they considered to be defective. The logic of any argument that “white pride” is inherently vicious but “native pride” or other non-white racial pride is not, leads ultimately, therefore, to a conclusion that itself resembles Nazi theory, except that in it the Aryans have taken the place of the Jews. That this logic must inevitably lead to this conclusion has brought many to the realization that in many, if not most, cases, what is called “antiracist” is simply a euphemism for “antiwhite”.

Now, if the answer to the question is “no”, then either a) racial pride is dangerous and wrong on the part of all groups or b) racial pride is good or at least harmless on the part of all groups. If the latter is the case then the question that immediately arises is why something that is good or harmless only ever seems to be associated with fringe groups among white people. This is not a question for which we need to look far and wide for an answer. The prevailing political orthodoxy of the day defines white racial pride as being dangerous, radical, and beyond the pale. When a thought or sentiment is defined as being on the fringe outside the mainstream than only people and groups who are on the fringe and outside the mainstream will express that thought or sentiment and any person or group that attempts to express it in a reasonable, non-radical, moderate way will find him or itself branded as on the fringe and extreme.

I will provide an illustration of this last point that is relevant to our current discussion. Jared Taylor, a genteel, intelligent, and articulate man, who was raised in Japan as the son of missionaries, holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Yale University, has since 1990 been editor of a publication he founded entitled American Renaissance. This monthly publication features articles that deal with matters of race, intelligence, culture, and immigration, from an editorial perspective that is staunchly pro-white. The articles are well-written, do not use racial epithets or any other sort of vulgar abuse of other races, do not promote violence or other mistreatment of people, and tend to have a libertarian political slant. The contributors are journalists and academics, sometimes writing under pseudonyms to protect their identity. This is deemed to be prudent, if not necessary, because the organizations that have appointed themselves the watchdogs of public moral and intellectual hygiene on matters of race treat American Renaissance as being no different from some publication that uses a swastika for its logo, calls for the establishment of a Fourth Reich, and devotes every article to praising the ideals of Adolf Hitler and demonizing other races.

This, I might add, is typical of the “honesty” one can expect from social justice warriors of any stripe, but especially the antiracists. Dave Wheeler, of the Winnipeg radio station 92 CITI FM interviewed Nancy Macdonald. He demonstrated in the course of this devastating interview just how misleading her article had been. Violence against Indian women that is largely committed by Indian men, as statistics Macdonald herself referenced indicate, was nevertheless presented in such a way as to make it sound like it was the result of white racism. An incident of sexual harassment was discussed in which the information that the person making the offensive remarks was himself an Indian was omitted.

My point, before we get lost down this side trail, was that when a thought or sentiment, such as racial pride on the part of whites, is ruled to be beyond the pale, only those who are on the fringes will express that thought or sentiment. This means that the fact that expressions of “white pride” can for the most part only be found among groups that disturbingly revere Adolf Hitler cannot be taken as evidence that white racial pride is inherently Hitlerian.

Groups that admire Hitler and speak the language of racial violence are small and have no power and influence in our society. The amount of time, legislation, and effort spent in combating this virtually non-existent threat is simply unjustifiable. It is also counterproductive. What makes groups like this potentially dangerous is not so much that they are racial as that they are radical. The forbidding of racial pride to whites while allowing it to other groups will only have the effect of producing more of this radicalism both because it allows for no non-radical expression of such pride and because it will drive young whites angry at the injustice of this double standard into the fringes.

You will recall that we identified two possibilities if white racial pride is not inherently more dangerous than other racial pride. The first was that all kinds of racial pride are dangerous and wrong, the second that all kinds of racial pride are good and harmless. So far we have been pursuing the line of thought that opens up if the second of these possibilities is the correct one. Now it is time to consider the first possibility – that all kinds of racial pride are wrong.

There are grounds for considering this to be the right possibility that are firmly rooted in the ethical tradition of Western civilization. Just as the problem with Hitlerite groups is not so much that they are racial as that they are radical, so the basis for considering all racial pride to be wrong is not that it is racial but that it is pride. This, of course, runs contrary to the thinking of today’s social justice warriors who encourage pride on the part of part of groups that they regard as having been unfairly excluded from Western society throughout history – they have even adopted the term “pride” as the name for the movement for inclusion on the part of one of these groups – but social justice warriors are almost always wrong about everything so the fact that something runs contrary to their way of thinking is evidence in its favour.

The Greeks, as the saying goes, had a word for it. That word was hybris. Its connotations evolved from the deliberate humiliation of others to a defiance of the rule of the gods but beneath these connotations the general sense of a haughty, arrogant, pride remained consistent. The Greeks considered it to be the greatest of human failings. In Homer’s Iliad, the hybris displayed by Agamemnon towards the equally proud Achilles brings disaster upon the Achaeans assembled against Troy, as Zeus decrees that the war will swing against them until Achilles rejoins their ranks. At the end of the classic Western epic Achilles own hybris, displayed in his treatment of the body of the defeated Hector, brings the threat of divine retribution upon him. Hybris was the chief fatal flaw of Athenian tragedy and had even been criminalized in the reforms of the Athenian lawmaker Solon.

That pride was the greatest of human sins is also the judgement of the Christian Church, which built its moral theology upon foundations in both Greek thought and Hebrew Scriptures. The latter, of course, preached brokenness and humility – the opposite of pride –as the way to God’s favour. Psalm 51:17’s “a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” and Micah 6:8’s “what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God” are but two of the best known examples. The Hebrew Psalms and prophets frequently depict God as laying low the proud. In the New Testament this is taken further, as St. Paul tells Timothy that he who desires the office of a bishop must not be “a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil” (1 Tim. 3:6). The implication of this is that pride is the source of all sin – the sin that led to the devil’s fall from grace. This was stated explicitly in the book of Ecclesiasticus or Sirach: “For pride is the beginning of sin” (v. 10:13) and is a point that is repeatedly reiterated by St. Augustine of Hippo who identifies pride not only with the sin of the devil, but with the original sin of man as well, based upon the nature of the serpent’s deception (“ye shall be as gods”). St. Thomas Aquinas defended St. Augustine’s identification of pride with the first sin of man in the Summa Theologica (Article I of Question 163 of the Second Part of the Second Part). In the traditional order of the Seven Deadly Sins, superbia or pride, is listed as the worst.

If, on the basis of the long Western tradition of identifying pride, hybris, or superbia as the worst of all sins, we argue that racial pride is always dangerous and wrong, not because it is racial but because it is pride, this must apply to other forms of pride, one’s embraced and endorsed by political correctness such as “native pride” or “gay pride”, as much as those condemned by political correctness such as “white pride.”

There is a danger, however, that in making this particular judgement we will throw out the baby with the bathwater, or in this case the virtue of pietas with the vice of superbia. Pietas is the Latin word from which our English word piety is derived. It was the virtue that consisted of doing one’s duty, first to one’s parents, then, by extension, to one’s ancestors, kin in general, and to one’s country. It was regarded as one of the most important virtues by the Romans who associated it with one’s duty to the gods which is how the term piety came to be associated with the concept of being dutiful in religion. A similar association underlies the argument in Plato’s Euthyphro, in which Socrates challenges the title character’s assertion that piety required him, out of duty to the gods, to prosecute his father on a trumped up charge of murder.

What is the Christian view of pietas?

While Christianity makes it very clear that in the hierarchy of duties, one’s duties to God must come first – “He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me” (Matt. 10:37), in other respects, as with pride, Christianity’s understanding of pietas was quite similar to the classical view. The association of one’s duty to one’s parents with one’s duty to God would seem to be present in the Ten Commandments. These include obligations to God alone (“thou shalt have no other gods before Me”, “thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain”, etc.) and obligations to one’s fellow men (“thou shalt not steal”, “thou shalt not commit adultery”, etc.). The former are at the beginning of the list, the latter at the end. The commandment to “honour thy father and mother”, however, immediately follows the commandments that contain obligations to God. Indeed, if the commandments were thought to be divided equally in number between duties to God and duties to man, this one would have to be numbered with obligations to God. When the Lord Jesus challenged the Pharisees as to why they used their traditions to get out of obeying the commandments of God the commandment that He pointed to specifically was the commandment to “honour thy father and mother” (Mk. 7:6-13). This could hardly be coincidental. That we have special duties to our kin apart from our duties to mankind in general and that these duties are associated with our duties to God is clearly present in the thought of St. Paul when he wrote “But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim. 5:8).

How does this pertain to the topic at hand?

Those who would deny racial pride to one race – white people – while affirming it in other races, usually require white people to adopt an attitude of impiety – the opposite of pietas – to their ancestors and in many cases even their parents. We are required to denounce our ancestors as the villains of history, to demonize them, to take the side of every other people group except our own, and if our own parents have ever used racial epithets, displayed politically incorrect racial attitudes, or otherwise offended against the current political orthodoxy, we are required to denounce them in order to prove that we ourselves are enlightened and pure, in a manner that is reminiscent of the way in which children were expected to behave in police states like, for example, the Third Reich.

It is time we think long and hard about what this tells us about antiracism and the politically correct orthodoxy of the present day.