Essays in Idleness

In an unusual moment of optimism, this morning, I was reminded of the first Canadian Thanksgiving, celebrated by Martin Frobisher in what has been officially called the Qiliqtaaluk region of Nunavut since 2021. Or, Frobisher Bay off Baffin Island, in Meta Cognita, as the Canadian arctic was called from the XVIth century.

Frobisher and his men, audacious privateers, had regathered after being scattered by a formidable storm in the Davis Strait. They were offering thanks to Our Lord for their safety, and successful crossing of the North Atlantic, a most dangerous passage. Ice floes seemed to be blocking their voyage farther into the Northwest Passage to the interior of Cathay. But hell, they had salt beef, biscuit, and mushy peas (the ideal Canadian Thanksgiving repast), and the sailors of the expedition — at least those who had not already perished — were treated to a sermon by an Elizabethan divine, before the Sacrifice of the Mass.

Moreover, today is Christopher Columbus Day, or was, throughout the Americas. This holiday, which Ms Kamala Harris proposed to cancel before changing all her “most deeply held” opinions recently, may nevertheless survive in the hearts of all civilized men, even as DNA investigators opine that Columbus was not from Genoa, but from a family of Sephardic silk-spinners in Valencia. Then as now, the Jews were persecuted; and then as now they were persistently over-achieving.

If you aren’t Catholic, you can at least pretend to be.

Glenn Reynolds quotes Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Samuel Eliot Morison’s incomparable Life of Columbus:

“At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavouring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. …”

The saintly Instapundit, who joins me in calling fashionable Woke Marxists “worthless” and “garbage people,” recalls a scene just before the pioneering “colonialist” landed in the New World. The Aztecs sacrificed 84,000 men, women, and children at the re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan, in 1487. He wishes us a Happy Indigenous People’s Day.

“Si vis pacem, para bellum.” … No Roman adaptation of an adage in Plato has caused such vexation among the vegetarian types. “If you want peace, prepare for war.” It is directly in conflict with their instinct to the plausible, the glib. (That’s why I call them “vegetarians.”) Peace through being nice, and arranging ceasefires, has a track record like all the other glib, plausible ideas. And the sort of people who would ban guns are responsible for the high murder rates in all the progressive, Democrat towns. This comes to the same thing: that nature does not reward stupid.

Instead, “Peace through strength.” I get sick of explaining this.

Hezbollah has asked for a ceasefire; and while Israel is unlikely to grant it, the Americans who can be relied upon for “stupid” think, “Hooo! Ceasefire! Whoopee, peace, peace!” They will then advocate for a “two-state solution,” for a region which contains fifty-eight states, fifty-seven of which are Muslim. “Peace, peace” is what they recommend, using the expression ridiculed in the Bible. For even the Arabs understand that “Palestinians” are, and have long been, trouble. After half a century of brainwashing by terrorists, they have not improved.

If you want peace, prepare for war; but if you are in a war already, through no (or very little) fault of your own, the way to prepare for peace is through Victory. Ceasefires are merely tactical, as any well-informed Islamic scholar could tell you. They are useful for a loser, to avoid defeat. “Hudna” they call it, and recommend it to jihadists, when their pips are about to be squeaked.

As the BBC, and other malicious, but low-intelligence observers, proclaim, “the Middle East is threatened by a wider war.” They were all-in for Oslo Accords, and very sentimental about the late, alas replaceable (Egyptian) psychopath, Yasser Arafat. Indeed, granting him a visa was among the stupidest things Israel ever did.

The entire war machine of “Palestine” is due for annihilation. Verily, the Israelis are working on this, against Hezbollah and the several other Iranian proxies. And their sponsors, in Shia Islamic Persia, are also nearing “the cusp of history” on the exit side. Peace can come to the Middle East, along with excellent prospects for liberty and trade, when they are ushered through the gate into non-existence.

For those who have an interest in politics, who also wish to have some knowledge of this subject, I can recommend a book published in 1944. It is by Friedrich Hayek, and is dedicated “To the socialists of all parties.” The title is, “The Road to Serfdom.”

It is extraordinarily well-written, for an academic whose native language wasn’t English, in less than two hundred exhilarating pages. The book predicts, correctly, that while they will lose the War, German ideological notions that began to prevail before the War in e.g. Germany, Russia, Italy, and throughout the West, would continue to do so, in Britain and America. They were plausible and were thought to have been proved in wartime. In the coming peacetime, all the intellectuals would be on board.

Yet they were wrong, and had always been wrong. The professor, Hayek, shows why neither a little nor a lot of socialism will ever work; why it invariably makes everyone poorer, except for an ideological elite; and why it traps whole societies in the condition of serfdom. Oddly enough, almost no one wants to be a serf, but some wish to have power over serfs. Hence the popularity of socialism among the power-hungry.

Too, ambiguous and poorly understood political terms fool people. (My father explained this as the Triple-B principle: “Bullshit Baffles Brains.”)

The idle reader should still be captivated by this book, which hasn’t dated, even slightly. Re-reading it, as I have been doing since high school, I find the arguments irresistible and compelling. Other members of the “Austrian School” out of which Hayek sprang (it was originally a Catholic movement, incidentally) are also informative, but none are so articulate.

The “Chicago School,” of Milton Friedman et alia, was the nearest American equivalent. But that was based on numbers, more than upon the ironical ideas, which old Austro-Hungaria had the leisure to mull.

For we should realize that political principles are not mysterious and mathematically complex. Within the realm of human understanding, the universal truths of supply and demand are like the truths of everyday physics: simple and constant through time. Gravity doesn’t turn off and on; the sun doesn’t rise in the west, ever.

Thanks perhaps to his English disciple Margaret Thatcher, this Austrian candidate was once knighted by our Queen. While waiting backstage for the presentation, he was approached informally by Her Majesty herself, who had one question. It was a time when the Irish Republican Army was much in the news, and London was perhaps over-informed about its demands. Things were blowing up daily.

“How is your name pronounced?” the Queen whispered. It looked like it might be, HAY-eck, but you can never be sure with these foreign persons.

“HIGH-eck, ma’am,” the learned professor replied. … “As in, HAYEK-splosive.”

Today, and tomorrow the 8th, will be glorious anniversaries for the Jew-killers of Hamas and Hezbollah respectively; and for their admirers and conspirators all over the world, including many (mostly recent) immigrants to Canada, Britain, Europe, USA. I would rain on their bloody parade, to begin diluting the foetid gore, were it possible. But our progressive politicians, and other filth, stand in judgement whether the IDF response is “proportional,” or if they might be guilty of “genocide.”

I think it was Douglas Murray who suggested that a “proportional” response would be for Israel to commit exactly the same number of rapes, butcheries, murders, and hostage-takings on Palestinian civilians as Hamas/Hezbollah has performed on Israeli civilians (in thousands), and I would suggest hurling a matching throw-weight of randomly-targeted missiles into Gazan and Lebanese neighbourhoods — say, just a few hundred thousand.

A sane person would not suggest this, as Murray implies. But in their bottomless stupidity and malice, it is impossible to calculate whether our loud “liberals” and narcissists are sane.

My own conception of a “proportional” retaliation would be a response that is unrestrained. War is war, after all, once it has started. Israel has been unambiguously and repeatedly attacked. Let the Israelis, however, proceed by wantonly destroying all of their mortal enemies (including the Houthis of Yemen, and mad mullahs of Iran); until all have declared unconditional surrender. This should satisfy the Geneva Conventions.

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LEPANTO. — The 7th of October is also the Feast of Blessed Virgin Mary of the Rosary, instituted by Pope St Pius V to keep alive in memory the naval battle by the Christians against a massive force of Ottoman Turks. By this action, western Europe was saved (quite miraculously, and not for the first time) from Islamic invasion. It was a frightfully close-run thing; go read Chesterton’s “Lepanto” immediately!

In the face of a disaster, that has proved worse than “Katrina” — upon which the media have obsessed for almost twenty years — we are reminded how things work. If there is a way to politicize a natural disaster — and there will always be a way — it will be used for political purposes. But if the party that is the darling of the media happens to be in power, the mess must be cleaned up by the locals. The bringing of supplies and voluntary help will happen, mostly without government assistance. For governments only serve themselves.

One may learn from a variety of sources that FEMA, the “Federal Emergency Management Agency,” proved its essential uselessness in New Orleans, together with the rest of the “Department of Homeland Security.” It is, of course, failing again in Asheville. It has been swamped by the Democrat Party’s scheme to bring many million new Democrat voters into the United States, in defiance of American immigration law, and had few resources left over, anyway. For it is an incredibly expensive business, when illegals from all over the world are given priority over U.S. citizens. They must, after all, be given food, shelter, and every other sort of government gift, with a path to voter registration.

I do not criticize the various state National Guard units that have selflessly thrown themselves into action, and other voluntary citizen forces. Too, I should acknowledge that there is a formidable traffic jam in the air, that does need regulation to avoid collisions. Too, there are stories circulated by Republican hotheads. We need more weeks and months to sort them out.

But from the Internet (for instance updates from Elon Musk), we note that non-governmental charitable efforts are not merely “discouraged.” The government is alleged to be seizing and impounding desperately-needed local goods and services. The rest of the federal bureaucracy is also “chipping in,” to stifle relief efforts. The FAA, for instance, is restricting private aircraft with supplies, and making it almost impossible to fly in drones, demanding that flights be individually approved by their slothful trolls. Those who wish to bring help to the survivors have both the wreckage of the storm, and government agents to block them.

This is how things work in this world, and have worked, since the Reformation, when the state took over welfare, hospitals, schools, and all other eleemosynary institutions. Rather than allow inspiring expressions of Christian charity, they became the means for cynical political posturing and control. And with “democracy,” we have detailed laws and policies, to prevent the people from helping themselves — as they would do, by laws of nature.

If I were Satan (and I must assure my readers that I am not), I would go about my task of corrupting the human race by working on their supply of information.

First, I would practise on the animals, during the leisure time before the humans were created. I would observe their innocent trust, then teach the smarter ones how to exploit it, by leaping out of the shadows to slay them for food. Their appetites would, of course, have to be corrupted, too, so that they hungered for flesh. This is how I would scheme to subvert God’s plan, and bring death into the world. (How the world flourished, before the invention of death, I cannot remember. This happened too long before my time.)

By now, food ingestion through animal-eating is so well established, that in order to cut a figure, the apprentice devils are all vegetarians. (This is why they are so smug.)

But the question is, how to corrupt the human, who was designed, at least “in theory,” to be capable of conscious good, and endowed with smarts greater than a cat’s, although we have reflexes much slower. (Wisdom does not work at greater speed.) Where the animals could be fooled with simple conjuring tricks, people might see through these, and prepare to defeat them. But remember, if you are Satan, the “father of lies,” you are not a pathetic novice.

I gave my method away (misleadingly) at the start. It is “misinformation.” Genius requires that the main source of misinformation (or, lies) should be government programmes to correct misinformation. How better to launch the cleverest lies? But how to spread them? For after all, government can’t be everywhere, and do everything: not even Satan can rely on socialism.

Women, it is said, have the oldest profession, but this is not true. Rather it is “the media,” which began with malicious gossip in the ancestral cave. Women may have been the first “debate moderators,” but the significance of lying had already been demonstrated. The mass-media is merely its latest (and most effective) institutional framework. I think even the announcement of the End Time will begin, “This is the BBC News.”

Perhaps even more urgent and important than the destruction of our universities, is the destruction of each and every “faculty of education,” around the world. This was something that first occurred to me in high school, and led to the many benefits of dropping out.

We should begin by vacating the certification authority: that is how, not the majority, but every single teaching candidate receives an ideological bath, or drowning; although only most (perhaps 95 per cent) come out of this process mortally filled with water.

We should try to reduce the proportion of the brain-dead teaching in our schools, ideally, to less than half. But whether public or private, common or “elitist,” all have passed through the government-regulated teacher certification process. Until all these certifying institutions have been crushed like Hezbollah, and the grounds that lay beneath them have been salted and scraped, no prospect of improvement is conceivable. The absolute elimination of governments from any contact with, let alone influence upon, the schools, should be a matter of law, and would present an opportunity to imprison administrators and politicians in considerable numbers. Let them teach the polar bears on Ellesmere Island, and supplement the walrus as a source of protein.

I hope, from this, I have made my views on teacher certification fairly clear. I wouldn’t want to waste time explaining them in detail. Anyone who has been to school in Canada, or the other countries, should understand my meaning, unless they have themselves become victims of these teachers.

But I consider myself a true friend of “learning,” and even of universities, “in principle,” as they say. Let the schools that replace them hire whomever they want — let them even recruit from the land of muskoxen — as they wish. And may they grant whatever degrees they please, and to flourish or decline on personal tuitions and endowments, without the fondest scent of tax money.

The argument against this is that if “minimum” government standards were withdrawn, and schooling ceased to be mandatory, there would be a collapse of intellect in the general population. But let us look around: the collapse has already occurred.

One continues to think of Saint Michael, archangel in the Haggadah, throughout all Abrahamic lands and the world; because yesterday was his feast in Western Christendom. The Israeli incursions, through the skies above Lebanon and Yemen, gave it an illustration; and the celebrations, even within Shia communities in Beirut and Tehran, reminded us of the final victory.

The modern, alas, does not believe in victory, but in a “negotiated two-state solution” between Heaven and Hell — and in the perpetuation of bureaucracy. But victory remains possible, and it is possible that Israel, by ignoring e.g. all the idiots in the Biden administration, has changed the rules of play. The isolation and defeat of Iran and “Islamism” is beginning.

For peace comes after Victory. It is the end of war, as we seem to have forgotten since World War II (the last time we achieved an undisputed victory, against Germany and Japan). But even that was succeeded by the Cold War, as the Christian West no longer had it in them to take on, and permanently extinguish, Communism — an even worse evil than Nazism. We entered the “brave new world” of containment.

And the world must permanently face the prospect of war, until the end of the world; and Saint Michael will always be fighting for us, within every conscience, when we are on God’s side. And we will never be defeated, though we are defeated in battles along the way. There is War in Heaven, and it unambiguously continues on the battlefield of earth. We “fight, fight, fight.”

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TWELVE YEARS. — We began on Michaelmas, 29th September 2012, to write these Idle Essays, upon being tossed out of the last Canadian daily that was printing our column. We thus went “underground,” in what was once a free, and Christian, country. I haven’t given up, idly writing, and will continue for as long as I can. O Prince of the Heavenly Host, pray for us!

I should think the limit of American diplomacy should be, to contain our enthusiasm when certain desiderata are achieved: for instance, the death of Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli air raid on Beirut; and indeed of almost the entire Hezbollah command in previous air strikes. Or, (to stick with that once-Christian, Islamist-afflicted nation of Lebanon), the brilliant bombings, using pagers and walkie-talkies, that maimed and killed Hezbollah operatives in their thousands; and the plausible broadcast warnings, that make a building’s occupants identify it by scrambling out in panic. This also spares casualties should the IDF decide to obliterate the building.

That “civilians” are seldom targeted by Israel we may take on trust, for it is not in their propaganda interest to harm civilians. It is, however, very much in the interest of their Islamist enemy, whose crocodile tears immerse the BBC.

The Arabs, too, are among today’s winners. This is quite apparent if the reader will consult Arab media, where Hezbollah’s fate is currently being mocked. If Hamas, too, can be completely annihilated, together with the Houthis of Yemen — and the mad mullahs of Iran could be recalled each to his 72 exploding virgins — peace and prosperity may come to the Middle East. This is Trump’s “Abraham Accords” in practice.

Alas, in this earthly psychomachia, not everyone can win, but I am delighted to survey the losers. Trump more and more obviously exhibits a real genius for foreign policy; for instance, he has put himself in a position to negotiate peace between Ukraine and Russia. His (realizable) objective has been world peace, all along. But the Democrats can still hope to steal the election, or that Trump will be assassinated.

Even if they succeed, there is hope for “abroad.” Both Israel and Ukraine have now learnt, the hard way, that depending upon the USA for direction is a very, very, stupid idea. They should do what they must without American permission. And as Trump says, they should consult their own interests; and tell Leftists, Progressives, Liberals, and Islamists, what is never said in a family weblog.

It is true that most Democrats are vicious, unprincipled people. This statement would be misleading if I omitted to write that most Republicans likewise stink of corruption and duplicity. While this is true of the “progressive” majority (all politics is Progressive, or as I said yesterday, Socialist), mention should be made of the numerous exceptions. These are the people who are abnormally stupid, although they may also think, quite wrongly, that they are pursuing self-interest. Still, they aren’t intelligent enough to do much harm, except when organized into a mass by a democracy.

There are saints, of course; but as any religious person (i.e. not a saint) can tell you, saints have generally avoided politics for the last twenty centuries. The Church does not recommend we get into politics except during those brief embarrassing moments when the Church is ruled by neo-pagan popes, or has gone non-Catholic.

An initial sign that a man (a term that includes men and women) is dangerous, is when he starts pretending to be good. As we know from Scripture, men are not good, and even to canonize a saint requires that functionaries in his cause neglect certain details.

The same goes for politicians, though in a morally relaxed, and informal way. I think for example of Donald Trump as “a good man” — oddly, on the analogy of a saint. He is a grievous, almost unnatural, sinner, but even more sinned against than sinning. He is an appalling liar, but his lies, which mostly count as exaggerations, are cancelled by the lies told against him. His heroic stamina speaks for itself. He is responsible for far less mindless or intentional slaughter than most of the politicians who have enjoyed his level of success; and he generally means well, at home, and tries to avoid war.

So why is he decried as “Hitler,” and hated more than any American politician, living in the present century? (According to poll, 28 percent of Democrats wish him dead.)

I do not love Mr Trump, but prefer him to his potential assassins. My hope is that more American voters also sort-of like him (plus a few million, to overcome cheating) — than psychopathically hate him — for if so, America may last another four years.

All politics is essentially Socialist. It all works on the assumption that we can know what’s what, and can do something about it. Whereas, in a more candid analysis, we can’t.

The Law of Paradox is perhaps our most important scientific discovery yet to be made. It holds that what we get will be the opposite of what we were expecting, including all those exceptions that we were anticipating. It is the reason why, for instance, the present accelerating population decline came after a generation of tedious warnings about a population explosion; why nuclear war will never happen, even though increased radiation levels would have been a boon to human health; why a dearth of carbon dioxide threatens the world’s agricultural production; why microplastics and oil spills will come to our rescue; why global warming will end in a new ice age; thus why sea levels will fall, leaving huge seaside conurbations far inland; and why the Toronto Maple Leafs will win the Stanley Cup.

It is why the record of our material expansion is the tale of our spiritual diminution. It is why the “Internet of Things” is more disappointing than the sprawling “Internet of Nothings,” and “Artificial Intelligence” is so provocatively stupid.

It is because of my preternatural (though not supernatural) appreciation of paradox that I am generally right about most trends, and the consequences of events; whereas the experts tend to be wrong, or rather, are always wrong. For them to be wrong so consistently suggests they are taking supernatural hints, i.e. from the Devil. Indeed, what the Devil predicts is always the glib.

(My Iron Law of Paradox is incidentally closely related to my Paradoxical Law of Irony.)

A friend, who makes colourful predictions from his readings in the Book of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of the Apostle John, has also a success rate of zero-point-zero. He should give it up.

Saint Mark also recommends he desist, in Chapter 13:

“But of that day or hour no man knoweth, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father. … For ye know not when the time is.”

While I am not an expert on secret security services, I know that at least on this topic, as on most others, I know much more than Biden, Harris, Walz, &c; unless they are perhaps well-informed, in which case they are even more evil than I had imagined. My impression is that their post-Christian party worships Moloch, less subtly than before. (Moloch, mentioned in the Book of Leviticus, is the Canaanite “go-to” lord for child-sacrifice.)

My assumption is that the Democrat Party, from fear of the criminal investigations he might attempt, if he became President again, wants Trump dead. They would have preferred to jail him, on false charges, but have run out of options. For if they fail to murder him, there is always a chance he might win the election, and by so large a margin that he will overcome the millions of stuffed (“harvested”) and electronic ballots.

Indeed, American elections have become more predictable. President Lula has no trouble controlling huge opposition crowds in Brazil, and President Maduro won his election in Venezuela even though his opponent, Edmundo Gonzales, scored an estimated 73 percent of the vote. (Gonzales has now fled to Spain.)

On the other hand, the “far right” (i.e. economically literate) Javier Milei won the Argentine election by such a landslide that even the Peronists were moved (for the moment) out of his way.

The persistent, quite official, Democrat comparison of Trump with Hitler, should tell the observer everything he needs to know about that party; for their presidential candidates have been comparing their opponents to Hitler since Truman. Reagan was so Hitler-like they got someone to shoot him. They’ve had two shots at Trump so far, and there will be more, for they say he is really, really, just like Hitler, to America’s liberal supply of the unhinged.

The paradox is that Trump is not at all like Hitler, nor does he resemble a Nazi so nearly as the senior Democrats do, when they plot to shut Trump down. In no civilized jurisdiction would their legal manoeuvres be tolerated.

My advice to Republicans, watching the election being stolen from them, with the usual assistance of a poisonously corrupt “media,” is to remain calm and non-violent. Remember that the issue isn’t Trump: “put not your faith in princes.” Christianity is rich with instructions for defeating Satanic opponents. The trick is to remain uncompromised, in faith, come what may. A single saint can defeat them; be that saint.

My thoughts had turned to “eastern” (i.e. Central) Europe, where the climate alarmists were reporting terrible storms and floods, when I received this sensible report. It was from a couple returning to Moravia from Prague. They saw rivers and creeks that had overflowed their banks, including a marvellous sight on the River Elbe (“Labe”), but nothing to suggest the end of the world.

“Inhabitants of this land living fortunately in a place rarely visited by real natural disasters have developed a certain yearning for the excitement they believe such events provide. This time their hopes were pinned to weathermen’s predictions of apocalyptic floods. I suspect they were a little disappointed, although a few houses were destroyed beyond repair. However, this showed that only a fool would place his trust in a meteorologist.”

Here, in America, too, we must expect severe weather reports, and apocalyptic climate warnings, a few times each year. These seem more plausible in the hurricane season, although (did you notice?) we’ve had only drizzle this year. So the prognosticators say, “Don’t let the quiet fool you.”

They know what we don’t know: that they are only wrong 99 percent of the time. On the 100th occasion, they may correctly predict an inundation, over perhaps one percent of their reporting area; though nothing to compare with their boasting about it. Tsunamis and asteroids would make us much happier.

The Devil, who controls the media, promotes anxiety over the wrong things: principally those that seldom happen, which we cannot possibly avoid when they do. As a reactionary “mediaevalist,” I wish that we would spend more time laughing at the Devil, than he spends laughing at us.