A Short, Over-written Lament

There is a desperate cynicism that seems to pervade every face-to-face encounter these days. Everyone is oh-so-sensibly unhappy with the to-ing and fro-ing of the moon and the mornings. Even I, reluctantly, often feel the familiar weaving of dolorous tones around my own tongue.

Attitude. Skewed attitude harrumphs, "This is summer?" Pause for effect. "Not!"

And irony, in accord, adds, "When's the snow?"

Of course, this is mature irony, yet, like a brown child still living with both parents, and coloured in need by a non-denominational con-artist's palate, it is adopted unnecessarily.

Oh, yes, I know. This is nothing new--it was ever thus. The sophisticated contraposto of dispassion leaning on boredom has been around since Adam was a lad. Okay.

But! Today, those posing thus are so young! And so numerous. There is indeed a generational emptiness of eye and cooling of concern detectable in our youth that should disturb us much more than it seems to.

As well as a decided lack of wit and humour.

That's the most noticeable thing of all, to me. That so many young people are so verbally clumsy and unfunny. Is this a natural result of their linguistically artless parents? Those mush-mouthed scions of mush-brained hippies?

Or is it some as yet uncatalogued communication-retarding syndrome caused when the wrist and thumbs are swollen beyond reasonable limits through the constant twiddling of remotes, mice and video game controllers?

Perhaps it is simply that the human imagination is stunted to eventual mortification by the continuous influx of audio-visual offal on tap 24/7 in our electronic nurseries?

Personally, I'm more inclined to believe that their souls have been paralyzed by the egregious immorality floating like detritus through the atmospheres. This, and the varnish of anti-transcendence that covers every heirloom their parents bequeathed. When a father and mother no longer wish to court favour with the God of their fathers and mothers, what messages will the midnight bedtime stories contain? If King David is a gentile, he merely dances naked in front of a lewdly unpolished mirror. What could he hope to teach a nation? How to table dance?

This is summer?

Not.

The Rabbit Heart

Cornered deep beneath a gasp
The rabbit heart trips thunder
As the teasing, staggered hedges wink
Suggestively at plunder.
Risk is lashed to a moment’s dash
From still to silent islands
Leaving unseen wakes of tiny fright
Through the pirate sea of gardens

Above panting in the warren dank
Where the rabbit heart soft stumbles,
Winter even softer struts
Upon the heath that autumn humbles.
But light, not cowed, bright showers down
Warming acres spliced and spoiled.
In shading shafts the rabbit sees
Pirates failed by famine foiled.

jsk.10 Aug 04

What Do You Love Most?

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
—Mark 8:36


I’m not sure of the background of the following parable. Yesterday, a friend of mine gave me a hard copy of it; his wife sent it to him in an email. Wanting an e-copy, I googled “king 4 wives”, and found this version on an “Islamic Forum”. That it might be of Arabic origin isn’t so surprising, seeing that, on the surface, it concerns a king with multiple spouses.

The King Who Had Four Wives

Once upon a time there was a rich King who had 4 wives. He loved the 4th wife the most and adorned her with rich robes and treated her to the finest of delicacies. He gave her nothing but the best.

He also loved the 3rd wife very much and was always showing her off to neighboring kingdoms. However, he feared that one day she would leave him for another.

He also loved his 2nd wife. She was his confidante and was always kind, considerate and patient with him. Whenever the King faced a problem, he could confide in her to help him get through the difficult times.

The King's 1st wife was a very loyal partner and had made great contributions in maintaining his wealth and kingdom. However, he did not love the first wife and although she loved him deeply, he hardly took notice of her.

One day, the King fell ill and he knew his time was short. He thought of his luxurious life and pondered, "I now have 4 wives with me, but when I die, I'll be all alone.

Thus, he asked the 4th wife, "I have loved you the most, endowed you with the finest clothing and showered great care over you. Now that I'm dying, will you follow me and keep me company?"

"No way!" replied the 4th wife and she walked away without another word.

The sad King then asked the 3rd wife, "I have loved you all my life. Now that I'm dying, will you follow me and keep me company?"

"No!" replied the 3rd wife. "Life is too good! When you die, I'm going to remarry!" His heart sank and turned cold.

He then asked the 2nd wife, "I have always turned to you for help and you've always been there for me. When I die, will you follow me and keep me company?"

"I'm sorry, I can't help you out this time!" replied the 2nd wife. "At the very most, I can only send you to your grave."

Then a voice called out "I'll leave with you and follow you no matter where you go."

The King looked up and there was his first wife. Suffering from long years of neglect and malnutrition, she was very weak and thin. Greatly grieved, the King said, "I should have taken much better care of you when I had the chance!"

Now, as with the parables in the Old Testament (i.e. of the Creation, or of Noah), and those of the Lord Jesus Christ (of the Sower, of the Foolish Virgins), ostensibly the preceding tale is curiously unsatisfying as narrative. However, the minute the deeper, spiritual meaning is revealed, there is a marvelous, intellectually satisfying flash of understanding. Here is the explanation of the "Parable of The Four Wives":


The 4th wife represents the body: No matter how much time and effort we lavish on it to make it look good, it'll leave us when we die.

The 3rd wife represents our possessions, status and wealth: When we die, it will all go to others.

The 2nd wife is our family and friends: No matter how much they have been there for us, the furthest they can stay by us is to the moment of death.

And the 1st wife is our Soul: Though often neglected in pursuit of wealth, power and pleasures of the ego, this is the only thing that will follow us into eternal life.

A Poetic Return


The Mendicant

On grins of golden bread I feed
Just like the chary mice of greed.
Gnawing to my hungry heart's delight
While the rats of avarice take flight.

Soundly step my unshod soles
As a beggar walks on slabs of holes
Up the mountain path so steep
Passing those who town-ward creep.

Then the too-near world withdraws
Into a gray, unfocused fog.
And these aging eyes are forced to stare
At the light that crests the next day's glare.

jsk.4.7.04

An Indefinite Sabbatical

Due to a sudden, astounding and most wonderful turn of events in my life, I will be withdrawing indefinitely from the blogosphere. I want to thank any and all who have been dropping by to read my wayward scribblings.

Thanks and Take Care. The Lord Jesus Christ bless and keep you all!

Ex Animo,
J. S. Kern

A Separation of Belief


An interesting debate is shaping up on the newly redesigned and much improved Politics Canada Forum between the editor and yours truly:


Secondly, to Rob:

KERN says – “uhm...if a politician is a "Satanist", I'd want to know about it.”

ROB says – “Indeed as others may want to know if a candidate is a Christian Scientist, an Islamic, a Jew, or a Catholic. Such knowledge while irrelevant to governing a nation is essential for discrimination.”

KERN – Are you equating Satanists with Jews and Catholics? How someone governs anything (himself, a household, a business, a country), whether ethically/morally or not, is directly related to his character. His character can be gauged by the belief system to which he subscribes. Such knowledge, because it is essential information about a candidate’s character, is highly relevant to, as you put it, “governing a nation”. Discrimination in favour of politicians of good character is a duty we owe our nation and fellow citizens.

KERN says – “As well, this secular humanist "Theophobia", so pervasive in those who object to Harper's religious identity, apparently render's a person blind to the differences, subtle and overt, between, say, an Islamofascist and a Presbyterian.”

ROB says – "Harper’s religious identity has nothing to do with politics. Objecting to revealing religious identity does not make one blind to risk of fascism for it preys upon the weak irrespective of denomination. Prejudice on the other hand, is forever busy and never blind."

KERN – See above. You have, once again, equated all people of faith regardless of doctrine (this time casting them as fascists) thus revealing your own “Theophobia” and confirming my point. Perhaps you didn’t realize that the most tyrannical, murderous regimes of the 20th Century (fascists) were constitutionally irreligious and practically anti-religious?

KERN says – “Historically, Canadian politicians, in order to promote harmony, avoided the sectarianism of the UK & Europe between the Roman Catholics and Protestants. They did not, however, avoid references to Jesus Christ as the incarnate God of both. This anti-Christian stance is a recent invention.”

ROB says - "The founding fathers desperately sought cooperation from a conquered French population. Parading religious differences was regarded as divisive then, as it remains today."

KERN – This is a tautology. You have simply restated my point as a rebuttal: Historically the differences were avoided, but the similarities (i.e., Jesus Christ as the incarnate God of both “founding nations”) were not. Today references to any religion are not seen as divisive between French Catholics and English Protestants, but are seen as an affront to the secularist sensibilities of the anti-religious establishment.

It is folly to accept and/or desire that the doctrine of separation of Church and State precludes people of faith from holding office. No one wants a Theocracy run by an established sect, but all the virtues civilized people hold dear, that are responsible for the highest degrees of national success, are Christian virtues. The undermining of this religious/philosophical basis of our own nation is a disasterous turn of events. As we have had demonstrated time and time again, a nation of increasing antipathy towards Christianity is a nation descending into a hellish chaos.

J.S. Kern

...so, go on and add your zero-point-zero-two of a dollar!

The Better Alchemist Won

That Stephen Harper breezed casually to victory on the first ballot at the new Conservative Party of Canada’s Saturday leadership vote was neither unexpected, nor unwelcome. Of the three candidates, only Harper has the requisite experience and acumen to master the political alchemy of turning underdog lead into leadership gold. At this time, with the Liberal government floundering in the deep end of the hubris pool, the Tories need a seasoned man at the helm. As I noted in my last column:

"By next week, after dealing with the earnest but forsaken Tony Clement and the obscenely opportunistic Belinda Stronach, Stephen Harper will be the newly elected alpha male of the federal pack. With the right leader, a series of well-organized forays over the next few months could return them to the top of the political food chain. And they should all feed well this season. Their primary prey is scattered, ill and broken. There will be many necks exposed. My advice is to go for the jugular every time."

Even the fiscal Socialist Michael Coren thinks Harper is the right magician, at the right time, for not just the party, but the nation. And, as he wrote last week, even some far-left NDPers think so, too:

"I am writing this column before we know who will be the new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. I can only hope, and believe, it will be Stephen Harper....

"But it is Harper who can seriously undermine the rancid Liberal machine and change the political future of this nation. Federal Liberalism stinks. Let me be specific and careful here. There are many fine men and women in the Liberal Party, who care very deeply for Canada. But the confidence of power has become an arrogant smugness, a malodorous assumption of victory.

"I've even heard some hardened New Democrats and labour leaders tell me they would rather have a Conservative government in power than more of the Liberal chokehold on the throat of this country. That, let me tell you, is quite something."

It is indeed, Michael. What’s next; editorialists at the Globe & Mail quietly whispering of a secret revulsion to buggery? CBC writers holding a Seder and selling Israel Bonds?

Right.

And Michael, his leftist friends, and I aren’t the only ones who see Harper as a viable candidate for Prime Minister. On Coren’s CFRB radio show last night, the Live Listener Poll asked the listeners whether or not they would vote for Stephen Harper. Well over 80% of a predominantly Ontario audience, one not noted for it’s Tory sympathies, said they would.

Looks like the chattering wizards of the punditry coven are wrong again: This ex-Alliance alchemist has got appeal east of the Manitoba border, after all.

Of course, this appeal will in no way stifle the invective of those in media who cannot stand the thought of anyone even liking a Conservative leader, never mind being willing to vote for one. The Warlocks of Wordiness will ceaselessly chant their tired incantations of "red-neck", "racist" and "misogynist Christian war-monger", hoping to cast a decent, sensible prince of a man into a warty toad. The uninformed Zombies of the Canadian electorate will soon be spoon-fed a witches brew of raw lies and bile in order to revivify them just long enough to vote Liberal.

But Stephen Harper is on to them. In his victory speech he nailed it:

"The tired, old, corrupt Liberal Party is, right now, cornered like an angry rat. They are going to attack us like we've never been attacked before.

"They will attempt to open old wounds. They will do this because this is the only way they can survive. We cannot allow this to happen. We must unite as a team."

It is a testament to the skill and dignity of the man that he stopped short of including the members of the mainstream Canadian media when he spoke of cornered rats, and the openers of old wounds. And, it is a measure of the wisdom and morality of the man when, to the certain disgust of those unnamed enemies he ended his speech with “God Bless Canada.”

All I can think to say now is, "Hurry up Stephen. Let’s get the lead out!"

Snow-Mexicans & the Scabs of Scandal

The new edition of The Right Page has been posted on Rob McGowan’s Politics Canada website:


In Ottawa the tumbrels are working over-time as St. Paul the Unknowing continues to feed the Ad-scam Apostles of that malignant Messiah, Mean Jean Chretien, to the cleansing teeth of the guillotine. The PM promised he would cure the sickness, and the cranial amputations of our corrupted crown corporations show he's written an effective prescription. One at a time these Liberal pustules are being found, exposed, and then lanced. A good beginning has begun.

Yet, I was not entirely convinced that the PM was going to maintain the course of treatment he'd plotted. For a moment there, in his first appearances in Parliament after his cross-country Mad Martin Tour, I thought we were about to be treated to the same old Liberal bedside spin. I detected a few feeble attempts at stifling criticism of those involved in the sponsorship scandal by playing the "race card". All the ministers and malefactors surrounding these misappropriations were citizens of the often distinctly uncivil Distinct Society®, and any mention of this glaring fact was being cited as evidence of anti-Quebec bigotry, rather than as a genuine call to examine how relevant this unanimous cultural character of the perpetrators might be. To Martin’s mind, I guess, as with Toronto Cops and Immigration Inspectors, racial profiling should be the third-rail of public policy.

So, once again, the embarrassing boil of Canadian politics, Quebec Separation, popped up overnight on the face of our nation’s newspapers. Any insulting attempts by the opposition to characterize this made-in-Quebec scandal as a made-in-Quebec scandal, we were warned, would be used by the Bloc as an excuse to re-animate the stinking corpse of succession. Ignoring the fact that they had already convinced the CBC and their six viewers that the almighty Chretien had cremated that particular stiff with a bolt of lightening from his right eye, Liberal propagandists cautioned that care was to be taken, lest the thin skin of the Sovereignists be pierced and they flee the federation in a huff. After those two ugly and humiliating episodes over plastic masks and rubber dogs, what the London Free Press would call “firestorms”, the humourless Province was in no mood to be further abused.

More...

Kneeling to Feed the Crocodile

Don't think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm.
—Malayan proverb

If the measure of any work of art is the degree to which it provokes us into facing something about ourselves, then how well it presents us with both the loftier and the baser extremes of our human nature can be used to determine whether it is a masterpiece or a mediocrity. Fewer events in recent history have given us wider latitude to exercise these extremes of our nature than the Holocaust; and fewer works of art have successfully confronted us with mankind’s extremes of conduct in this event than Steven Spielberg’s extraordinary film Schindler's List. Released last week for the first time on DVD, this poignant and compelling film satisfies every requirement, in every way, for it to be rightfully hailed as a modern cinematic masterpiece.

Now, while it is true that the ultimate message one takes from Schindler’s List is uplifting (that even an immoral reprobate can be stirred by conscience into thwarting evil), for me, given the geopolitical realities of the present day, there are other, less savory, messages in it that should be examined: One is the frighteningly thin divide between civility and barbarism. The other is humanity’s seemingly limitless capacity to rationalize our inhumanity with denial.

It is a curious fact of human psychology that people will appease those who seek to do them harm, in the vain hope that the abuser will somehow be mollified by surrender. We all do it at various times in our lives, with family, spouses, bosses, friends; and many never stop. Yet, while denial in dealing with those who love us is often a handicap of character, denial in dealing with those who hate us is often fatal. This is especially true in the case of nations. Winston Churchill, the classic anti-appeaser, said it best: "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."

In this regard, whenever my thoughts turn to the Holocaust, I am always struck by a troubling clash of two conflicting emotions: On the one hand, I find it impossible not to be staggered by pity for those who suffered under such sadistic, inhuman brutality. On the other, I am outraged at the contemptuous capitulation of those same people. With incredulity I watch both the Nazi’s cultured and bureaucratic sadism, and their victim's mad psychological scramble to deny this sadism; and their frantic attempts to maintain this state of denial.

And, curiously enough, along with this denial and supplication before the “strong”, there is always the fierce lashing out at, and traitorous condemnation of, those who would stand up to the abusers. Even after the confiscation of their houses and property, and their relocation to the Warsaw Ghetto, the fear of the Nazi’s caused all too many Jews to be angry with those who merely spoke of resistance...never mind their reaction to those bravest souls who actively resisted.

Now, please, this is not in any way a condemnation of Jews; in any population group you will find an easy 40% who would debase themselves from fear of a seemingly unbeatable foe, while turning on those of their own kind who would not. Witness the disgraceful prostrations of the Left during the recent election in Spain. The slogan was a classic example of appeasement: Vote the Party Who Will Not Upset Our Killers.

This wanton cowardice is echoed by the Left in the U.S., Britain, and, sorriest of all, on the bloody streets of Israel herself. After the Pogroms of the past, the horrors of the Holocaust, and the carnage of the continuing Intifada, how any Jew in Israel could imagine that, to their enemies, compromise will not be seen as capitulation, that kindness will not be viewed as weakness, near beggars belief. They are simply repeating the same mistake, living in the same state of denial, as those before them who went quietly from their homes, to the ghettoes, then to the ovens.

Unable to face the truth about themselves, many today who subscribe to and promote the tactics of appeasement will always rationalize and glorify their fear by calling it “pacifism”, “anti-war”, or, laughably, “civilized”. Many will cite the passive resistance of Mahatma Ghandi or Martin Luther King. But this is simply a misreading of the reason for the successes of their campaigns: the civilized nature of those being resisted. Christian, democratic Britain and America were populated and run by a far different type of people than were Nazi Germany and the Palestinian Authority. And neither government, for all their failings, had explicit designs of genocide.

Schindler’s List is a must see movie, a magnum opus. It is both a memorial and a monument. A constant reminder of the banal savagery that murdered 6 million innocents; and an eternal caution to the higher aspect of our humanity, that the lower aspect of this same humanity is always there, below the surface, slavering, hungry and using our fear against us, ever ready to ascend.

Nie Wieder.

Calibrating a Western Standard

FYI: there's a new magazine starting up in Canada called Western Standard. As it’s being published by Ezra Levant, and being modeled on the recently defunct Alberta Report, it’s going to be the sole conservative, Christian, anti-abortion, pro-American magazine in the country. All the big right-wing Canuck loonies are going to be contributing articles, including my three fave's: Mark Steyn, David Warren and Michael Coren.

My subscription is already in the mail….


Helen Keller And The New Church

I was just reading the latest issue of ISI News (the newsletter of Information Swedenborg Inc.), and in it, there's a short review of Light In My Darkness, the revised edition of Helen Keller's book My Religion. The following paragraph from the conclusion of Chapter 11 (pg145) appears in the review:

"Were I but capable of interpreting to others one-half of the stimulation thoughts and noble sentiments that are buried in Swedenborg's writings, I should help them more than I am ever likely to in any other way. It would be such a joy to me if I might be the instrument of bringing Swedenborg to a world that is spiritually deaf and blind. His volumes are an inexhaustible wellspring of satisfaction to those who lead the life of the mind. If people would only begin to read Swedenborg's books with at first a little patience, they would soon be reading them for pure joy."


And Now For Fun...


What follows are excerpts from Windswept and Waylaid: Dispatches from the Edge of Sorrows, the latest memoirs of traveling duo J.S. Kern and Sandy Papillon, now available in paperback from Kia Ora Press:

Chapter II: Traitor's Talon and the Bandits of the Kahli Irkit

We left the relative sanity of Telawhopa in the gaudiest patchwork taxi this side of Islamabad. Part Mercedes, part Trabant, this vehicular mutt chugged along the twisting goat paths of the Kahli Irkit held together with swaths of orange cotton and a plastic brocade that appeared to be made from shaped sections of discarded Tupperware lids. But, ever grateful for small mercies, I appreciated the diesel fumes from the poorly maintained exhaust system wafting up through the torn Papier-mâché carpeting. The nausea and headache I was developing easily distracted me from the smell of goat spoor and offal emanating from the driver’s mouth, which, unfortunately, turned to spray us with entreaties and narration more often than it remained forward-facing to direct unrecognizable curses at the dust-powdered windshield.

As we bounded along the corrugated hard-pack at a pelvis-cracking pace, I looked over at Sandy to try and gauge her impression of the taxi trip’s “local colour”--as she likes to call anything unsafe, unsound or insane, so long as it has charming cultural antecedents. As usual, she just beamed that excited 12-year old girl smile of hers at me, and went back to holding on to one of the enormous silk tassels swinging wildly from the cabin ceiling. To look at her you’d think we were riding to Ascot in a 30 foot, calf's leather upholstered Roller as the honored guests of Lady Aspertame-in-Sprite and her charming paramour for the day, Tank. Instead we're swinging like khaki gibbons in an Afghani wardrobe being rolled down the jagged side of the Khyber Pass.

The Traitor's Talon is the 100m extension of a kilometer-long finger of rock pointing across the border of Pakistan into Afghanistan. When I first saw it I immediately thought of a petrified ICBM complete with a contrail frozen in stone….

Chapter V: Zeus on the Loose

Like the desk clerk in the Hotel Scoliosis, Athens in July is hot, dusty and old. Even the air in this city seems ancient as it idles familiarly around the historical landmarks of Western civilization. However, unlike the crone at the desk with the poor English and even poorer manners, Athens is noisy. Very noisy. From the minute we stepped out of the airplane the discordant cacophony of shouts, car horns and the bustling hum of humanity took our breath away like steam in a sauna. Only in the limo ride to the hotel was there any respite from the hammering thrum of this teeming, cross-sectioned beehive swirling beneath the blue Aegean sky.

Sandy's not a hotel person. To her, there is something subtly inhospitable in the bland uniformity and sterile fastidiousness inherent in rented rooms. She is particularly unimpressed when staying in any place where the windows don't open. Anything more than two days in the same hermetically sealed cardboard room and she's ready to run through the lobby naked waving a near-empty bottle of Chivas and screaming for oxygen. On those nights I usually find her sleeping at the nearest beach with some newfound friends and a gray, tattered Salvation Army blanket.

Okay, probably not. But I have to write things like that. You see, I usually do the first drafts of these memoirs then hand them to Sandy. Naturally, along with making factual amendments, she edits out everything that is too vulgar, too fanciful or legally actionable. It's a boring bloody job. So, prince amongst men that I am, I like to add the odd line of whimsy for her, just to keep her interest up. That way she'll gladly keep beavering away on the manuscript while I can enjoy the sleep of champions.

Of course, now she'll have to leave that bit about the bottle of Chivas in; or else that last paragraph won't make sense. Which, yes, was my plan all along.

As for the surly clerk and the Hotel Scoliosis, even Sandy just wanted to deal with the registration and get upstairs for a hot shower and at least 5 or 6 hours of straight, uninterrupted sleep. We were supposed to be in Malta by Thursday, which left just two days to experience enough of Greece to keep the publisher happy, so, after the trouble in Israel, we'd need all the rest we could get. But the tight-lipped grin on the unhelpful gnome in charge of the room keys told me that things were about to go terribly awry….

Chapter VIII: A Train of Bastard Children and the Curse of Quisling's Ghost

It's not that Oslo is uglier than Hamburg, or even that it's colder than January in Montreal, that makes it one of the worst cities in Scandinavia. It's things like the disgusting and outrageously over-priced beer; the lack of decent fast-food; or, the unending train of unwed mother's and their bastard children clogging the pavements outside the maddeningly hard to find Post Offices with ski-rigged baby-strollers enveloped in blue clouds of Marlboro smoke.

Everyone in Norway learns to ski from the moment they learn to put on shoes. They ski everywhere. As a Canadian, when I see deep snow outside the front door of a house, I instinctively look for a shovel. But here, the first reaction to the sight of fresh snow is to slap on a pair of skis and glide on over to the corner shop for a newspaper, or 300 grams of finely ground reindeer meat.

On the other hand, whenever Sandy, my intrepid Maori princess, sees snow, she instinctively clutches for a flight schedule and looks frantically for the next plane heading south….

Chapter XI: Constable Di Jones and the Poet of LLandwhaffglae

There is something unbelievably sad about the Welsh. Sure, they're happy enough singing their little hearts out while getting absolutely rat-arsed on strong ale at the local. And, true, they're damned glad to see the total numbers of those afflicted with Black Lung decline to statistical insignificance….

Mea Gulpa and The Grim Gospel of St. Paul

No posts for nearly 20 days…irregular posting since the new year started…humiliating…the blogger bund will be repossessing my membership card if this keeps up…but, honest, I haven’t let all my responsibilities slide…(gulp)

I just sent in another article for The Right Page…on Politics Canada…called The Grim Gospel of St. Paul…uhm…I think it’s funny…oh, and I wrote a couple of poems…uhm…one of them is actually quite good…no, really

…and I got my car fixed…I did, honest…fuel-pressure valve was sticking…cost me over 200 bucks...I drive a Mazda…(gulp)…it’s red….

Right.

Okay, okay, okay, look, I’m sorry…mea culpa…several things have happened since January that have helped dampen the fire in my belly, and govern my once-driving sense of outrage. Naturally, this has affected my give-a-damn gland vis-à-vis daily posting. It’s not that I don’t care about current affairs anymore, it’s just that I don’t feel the same sense of urgency to point out all the lies, prevarications and inanities of the western Left. I don’t have to, really. These whistle-heads, wild with anti-Bush hysteria, have been blowing gaskets every day since the war in Iraq. And, by showering everyone with their shallow platitudes and hostile invective (Al Sharpton uses the phrase “Jewing down the numbers” and he’s STILL considered a viable candidate for the Democrats? C’mon!), they’ve been turning more people conservative in one day, than I could help to do in a month of regular posting. They are their own worst enemy.

Hee, hee….

Besides, there are plenty of excellent conservative websites, commentators and bloggers out there (all the ones listed on the right-side of this page and many, many more.) lending invaluable assistance to The Cause.

Anyway, the only point I’m trying to make is that I’m going to continue posting, but I’m going to change the manner and style of my posts. I’ll still be commenting, but, just as I have with my Right Page articles, I want to move away from the dull and dusty tone of the serious, academic pundit, and sidle more towards a more enjoyable (for me, at least), iconoclastic, Gonzo-style of writing.

The greatest change, however, will be in the focus of many of my future posts. I’ve never hid the fact that I am a Christian, but I have purposely been non-sectarian in my religious expression. When I began this blog, I was satisfied with this generic Christianity—after all, in most cases, doctrinal differences are insignificant in relation to the secular world so sorely in need of any form of Christianity; but, recently I’ve begun to feel less content about this; I now want to use my blog as a way to proclaim my belief in the Christology and doctrine of The New Church (Church of the New Jerusalem). Not in an overt evangelizing way, but certainly much more directly.

Anyway, this’ll all become more obvious as I post later. So, let’s leave it for now. Here’s an excerpt from The Grim Gospel of St. John:

Edged-weapons and the lust for blood are everywhere these days. Last weekend in Toronto an as yet unknown psychopath repeatedly stabbed travel agency owner Paulson Chellakudam and visiting St. Lucian student Suzette Augustin to death during what police describe as an “apparent robbery”. In Oshawa a fight between two men resulted in a 24-year-old’s death by multiple stab wounds. And, in theatres around the country, the tortured visions of Mel Gibson’s Mediaeval Christology are assaulting the senses of moviegoers in the brutal, blood-soaked celluloid form of The Passion of the Christ.

Currently, in Ottawa, there is yet another macabre spectacle of running blood and sorrow. It is an on-going, slow motion political passion play detailing the last, albeit lengthy, days of a man once hailed as the Messiah of the Liberal Party of Canada: Mean Jean Chretien. The humble little millionaire, the crooked life-long civil servant, is stumbling to the hard and dusty top of a high and dirty hill. He will be haughty and arrogant to the end: the disgraced master of a disgraceful mission in the throes of hubris and denial. He will not be missed; he will not be mourned. Tears are only shed for victims, and although they both have the same initials, in Chretien’s Passion, the main character isn’t sinless. As well, the only persecuted innocents in it are the ignorant rabble of taxpayers, and those too-few souls, like Francois Beaudoin, who refused to follow along with the corkscrew plans of the would-be Savior of Canada.

Prime Minister Paul Martin, in what seems to be a state of righteous indignation, has traveled the country assuring everyone of his willingness to root out the rot in Canadian politics, and offer up the wrongdoers in his own party for sacrifice—to toss the money-changer’s from what should have been his father’s House, as it were—all to appease the hellish anger of the electorate. In the Gospel of St. Mathew, John the Baptist talks of swinging an axe through the roots of the evil trees, but in the autobiographical Gospel of St. Paul the Unknowing, the writer himself is going to do all the chopping, with, I suspect, a relish rivaling that of even the most insane Pharisee, or bloodthirsty Roman, conjured up by the febrile imagination of Mad Mel, The Road to Galilee Warrior....


The Lord bless you all...!

The Right Page

The latest edition of The Right Page has been posted on the Politics Canada website. Click here to read Of Frozen Rage and Poison Dogs. Here's a quick slice to whet the appetite:


“Anyone who has transgressed in this matter is going to pay the consequences” --Prime Minister Paul Martin.


Sleep will not come easy for Paul Martin over the next few weeks. He is already suffering. He has the look of a French nobleman hearing the dark, greasy swish of the guillotine blade just outside the tiny window of his cell. He’s going to have to do some fast talking to get out of this one. And, if he wants to save his hide, he better come up with phrases a damn sight less measured than “transgressed” and “consequences”. I suggest he start chucking out a couple of “criminal fraud’s” and “jailed for life’s”, because, unlike his predecessor, Martin can’t count on the decency of Canadians to look away and not call attention to the tortured monstrosities he passes off as sentences. We hear everything Martin says as clear as crystal, and we’re going to demand logic, precision and truth from now on. I have a feeling he’s going to regret those words above as surely as he regrets ever crossing the little palsied Napoleon from Shawinigan.

Mean Jean Chretien has just returned from pretending to be a lawyer and playing golf in the Far East. He is preparing a statement on this matter, say his handlers. Another screed of demented lies and gnarled prevarications, no doubt. The same Sgt Schultz tack that Martin defaulted to: Knew nothing; saw nothing. It’ll take a while before we see it, of course, because a team of real lawyers will have to dig through it like fat kids through a box of Timbits. But, when it’s finally released to the public, you can bet your last cup of double-double that Chretien won’t follow Martin’s lead and refuse to implicate his erstwhile friend.

Oh, and by the way, has anyone checked Sheila Copps’ head recently? Someone might want to call St. Joseph’s in Hamilton and have them dispatch the paramedics to see if they can unhook her grin from her ears….

O Tempora, O Mores!

With breathtaking regularity David Warren opines on an issue in such an incontrovertibly well-reasoned way, and articulates it so precisely, that I am compelled to call everyone’s attention to it.

The article entitled More Revolution is Warren’s take on the “Gay Revolution’s” victories to date. The situation, for those of us who abhor the willful hypocrisy and moral disingenuousness shown by the proponents of so-called “gay rights”, is grim.

For Canadians, from the shocking support by supposedly sensible parliamentarians of the dispiriting free-speech restricting Bill C-250, to the dizzying vacuity of Conservative Party leadership candidate, Belinda Stronach, Warren tabulates the dire state of political thought on this matter.

For Americans, Warren turns his attention to the latest learned pronouncement of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on same-sex marriage; and how they used, of all things, the Ontario Superior Court’s decision legalizing it to butress their own argument…and, with seasoned prescience, Warren prophesizes parenthetically that “our Supreme Court will cite the Massachusetts decision in return”.

Speaking of which, Warren makes a much more important parenthetical remark in his next paragraph, the thought behind which should be expanded into a full article itself, and then the article should be published on the front pages of every newspaper and website in the English speaking world:

"Civil unions" confer…privileges…including…full adoption "rights". (The quotes are necessary, for the idea that the adoption of a living child can be a human right is a moral obscenity, on a level with slavery.)

Think about that for a minute: that making the adoption of a living human child a right, an entitlement, is on a par with slavery! He’s absolutely correct. Once said, once pointed out in this way, it is astoundingly obvious, isn’t it?

This revelation alone should be enough to have this man canonized.

Of course, the wisdom keeps right on coming. Warren exposes the frightening level of megalomaniacal disregard for the public displayed in the thinking of Chief Justice Margaret Marshall:

[I]n a condescending dismissal of [the public's] right to an opinion, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall wrote, "That there may remain personal residual prejudice against same-sex couples is a proposition all too familiar to other disadvantaged groups. That such prejudice exists in not a reason to insist on less than the constitution requires."

When the opinion of what is likely the majority of the electorate is described as a "personal residual prejudice", we are dealing with something more than mere personal arrogance. And when a moral disorder is intentionally confused with a cultural or racial identity, we are dealing with a view of reality that is deeply twisted.

The degree of the condescension may be gauged by the fact that the constitutional right to same-sex marriage on which Madame Chief Justice based her decision, does not exist. Her invocation of it was a bare-faced lie. The idea that any such "right" existed, or anything resembling such a right, in the founding documents of Massachusetts or any other polity in North America, is a howling absurdity.

Well, I guess, to any Chief Justice who can so cavalierly disregard the Constitution upon which she is meant to base her rulings, dismissing the opinion of the majority of the herd she has solemnly sworn to faithfully serve must come easy. When one is so convinced one is right, it must be a simple matter to justify the illicit means for the self-evidently correct ends. Clearly, the possibility that those tens of millions, who disagree profoundly with homosexual conduct, and its judicial promotion, might be right has never entered Maggie’s concrete skull.

Incidentally, via positive synchronicity, I noticed Mark Steyn has re-posted an Aug 2003 article dealing with the same intolerance of dissent afflicting our tolerance-demanding elites:

Thirty years ago, in the early days of gay liberation, most of us assumed we were being asked to live and let live. But, throughout the Western world, “tolerance” has become remarkably intolerant, and “diversity” demands ruthless conformity. In New Zealand, an appeals court upheld a nationwide ban on importing a Christian video Gay Rights/Special Rights: Inside The Homosexual Agenda. In Saskatchewan, The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix was fined by the Human Rights Commission for publishing an advertisement quoting Biblical passages on homosexuality. Fining publishers of the Bible surely can’t be far off.

The coerciveness of the most “liberal” cultures in the western world is not a pretty sight.

Whatever happened to “live and let live”? If I can live with the occasional rustle from the undergrowth as I’m strolling through a condom-strewn park or a come-hither look from George Michael in the men’s room, why can’t gays live with the occasional expression of disapproval? Christian opponents of gay marriage oppose gay marriage, they don’t oppose the right of gays to advocate it. But increasingly gays oppose the right of Christians to advocate their beliefs. Gay activists have figured that, instead of trying to persuade people to change their opinions, it’s easier just to get them banned.

As Rodney King, celebrated black victim of the LAPD, once plaintively said, “Why can’t we all just get along?” But, if that’s not possible, why can’t we all just not get along? What’s so bad about disagreement that it needs to be turned into a crime?


What indeed?

I implore you to read both articles and e-mail them to everyone you know. To me, it seems that far too many people, who would be natural allies against these political/judicial machinations in favor of a cause few seriously support, are hopelessly misinformed. We who see what’s going on are duty-bound to at least try and alert those who don’t.

I leave you with Warren’s summation:

We are living in a dark time, in which we see the laws that bind our civilization together arbitrarily overthrown by judicial fiat, with no comprehension and verily, no interest in what the destructive consequences will be for our families and society at large. I am more and more convinced that we must drop the pretence that these judges are fulfilling a legitimate mandate. They are the deadly enemies of all we hold dear.