Has Reason been Abandoned?

Vincent J. Curtis

25 Mar 15

Wednesday was a really, really bad day for the local newspaper.

RE: Transgendered woman barred from HSR bathroom, left in tears.

RE: Rob Ford’s legacy of fear.

These stories seem to depict ‘the gradual victory of delirium over reason and of passion over truth.’

It occurred to no one at the transgendered press conference to ask about the rights of actual women for privacy, and for their right to use a “woman’s” bathroom without a deviant male being present.  The crying jag was a nice touch and probably deflected attention from the real issue, which was why should a security guard accept the word of a self-interested deviant male about human rights?

The author of the trash piece on Rob Ford did not seem especially fearful in light of the legacy of fear that the cancer-stricken former mayor allegedly left behind.  But Ford is a Conservative and the Toronto Star is a Liberal paper, and Liberals never let anything as implausible as truth get in the way of whacking a Conservative.  Liberal writers like those which type for the Star justify themselves upon ‘the Greater Cosmic Truth that exists independent of objective truth.’  That Greater Cosmic Truth holds that anything conservative is evil and deserves to be destroyed.

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With thanks a a hat tip to Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review for some fine turns of phrase.

For those who might object to the use of the word 'deviant' to describe a transgender, the term is used in its strict philosophical sense of that which deviates from the norm, as the norm for a male is to be a male.  It also serves as a poison pill.

Supreme Court Clears Way for Loyola's Religious Course

Vincent J. Curtis

20 Mar 15

The decision by the Supreme Court of Canada to allow the private Jesuit Loyola High School to teach its own course rather than Quebec’s provincially mandated ethics and religious course is a rare victory for good sense.

If true to its roots, the Loyola course is founded upon the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest philosophical mind since Aristotle.  The course on ethics and religion the Loyola students would get would be vastly superior in rationality and content to anything founded upon secularism offered by anyone, Quebec’s included.  It would be embarrassing to deliver the secular course after the students had been exposed to Thomism – the students would tear secularism apart in the best Jesuit tradition.  Its message would be laughed out of the room on the basis of its dogmatism and irrationality.

On the other hand, Catholic ethics simply cannot be taught from a neutral perspective (if such a place exists) because Aquinas rationally demonstrated those ethics in his works on natural law and ethics.  It makes no sense to speak of a neutral perspective on something that is rationally demonstrated.  One can choose to be rational and accept the proof, or be irrational.

Secularism is rationally incoherent.  Secularism is a religion of anti-religion.  The secular assertion that one religion is pretty much of the same value as another is simply false on the basis of Thomist analysis.  And to say that because one religion has pretty much the same value as another means that one ought to be tolerant of other religions is a non-sequitor.  Students in a Jesuit school would quickly pick up on that.

The objective of the Quebec provincial course was to inculcate the idea that other religions and ethical traditions were deserving of respect and tolerance.  It does so by laying down dogmatically the secular notion of moral and ethical relativism.  Thomists can reach a conclusion approximating respect and tolerance without falling into the error, as the secular course must, of saying that the ancient Hindu practice of Suttee, and genital mutilation are things to be accepted rather than abhorred.

The worrisome part of the decision by the Supreme Court was that the decision was rendered on the basis of freedom of religion.  The actual merits of the two courses were not the basis of the decision.  The decision would have been stronger had the Supreme Court judged on the merits of the courses, and told Quebec officials that they were plain wrong and ought to recur to stronger intellectual rigor.

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Harper calls Muslim face-covering veil 'anti-women,' unacceptable

Vincent J. Curtis

11 Mar 15

A response to the CP article of this headline. 

Justin Trudeau, Charlie Angus, and other quasi-intellectuals of the left are quite right to take Stephen Harper to task for his condemnation of certain Muslim practices.  Harper does Islam the disservice of taking Islam seriously.

Elitist leftist like Trudeau and Angus are inclined to treat Islam as some harmless, quaint religious practice to be cherished and valued as an anthropologist would cherish the discovery of the religious practices of a recently discovered tribe of the Amazon jungle.  However, Islam is anything but harmless.

In the first place, Islam treats women as second-class citizens, contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  An expression of the shabby treatment of women is the obligation for women to wear certain clothing lest they be treated as prostitutes or available women.  Though the niqab and the burka are not strictly a part of Islam, it became an Islamic cultural practice for women to wear such clothing as a sign that as tribal breeding stock they were already spoken for.

The hijab has an altogether different history.  The hijab originated in the 1970’s as a sign of Islamic support for the Palestinian cause against Israel, and evolved into a sign of political Islam as such.  In effect, the woman wearing the hijab is saying that she is Muslim first, last and always, and Canadian somewhere far down the list.  And being a Muslim woman means to be inferior to a Muslim male and superior to non-Muslims.

Politically, Canada can withstand a small number of people who bear no loyalty to her; but it is a farce for a woman wearing a hijab, a niqab or a burka to take an oath of loyalty to Canada when plainly they are demonstrating the absence of such loyalty.  They might as well be crossing their fingers before the citizenship court judge.  It is quite permissible for such people to live as they wish in Canada as landed immigrants, but if they want the full rights of citizenship then they ought to accept Canadian law, such as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and not say they do while withholding true consent.

The basis for tolerating these face-covering practices is a combination of ignorance and arrogance.  Stephen Harper knows enough about Islam and the law to realize the hazards of allowing Muslims to avoid taking seriously the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

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Yes, Canada Should Get More Involved

Vincent J. Curtis 

25 Feb 15

The work below was prepared at the request of Esprit de Corps magazine.

Item: ISIS beheads James Foley, Posts video of beheading.

Item: ISIS beheads Steven Sotloff, Posts video.

Item: ISIS beheads Peter Kassig, Posts video.

Item: ISIS beheads Alan Henning, Posts video.

Item: ISIS beheads Hervi Sourdel. Posts video.

Item: ISIS beheads Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa, Posts videos.

Item: UN:  ISIS beheading children, crucifying children, burying them alive.

Item: ISIS burns Jordanian pilot alive, Posts video.

Item: ISIS sells Yazidi girls into sex slavery.  “Sold me from one man to another.”

Had enough?  These aren’t half the notorious items that could be listed as authenticated examples of ISIS barbarity that have occurred since July 2014.  And the purpose of posting videos is for recruitment.  Between June 2014, and February 2015, ISIS apparently gathered a further 20,000 “fighters.”

There is an evil afoot in the Middle East the like of which the world has not seen since World War II.  It does not matter a whit for the sake of what religion these acts are being done.  They are objectively evil.

What should Canada do about it?  What can Canada do about it?

Presently, the Canadian Army has about seventy advisors or trainers working with the Iraqi military on the ground in Iraq.  We also have a squadron of CF-18 fighters based in Kuwait that attack ground targets in ISIS controlled areas of Iraq.

The Canadian army troops have, in the course of their work, indicated targets on the ground to be struck from the air.  While doing their job, these Canadian soldiers came under fire from ISIS forces.  The skilled Canadian soldiers wiped out the threat with their own organic weapons, which technically means that they engaged in combat.  Some in Canada are saying that this amounts to “mission-creep,” since engaging in combat was not the purpose of sending soldiers to Iraq.

Canada’s mission in Iraq may need to creep a lot more in order that ISIS be annihilated.  ISIS is an evil the world does not need.  History has demonstrated time and again that the decisive answer to evil of this nature is to annihilate it.

Canada has a powerful moral position in the world.  Canada has never been an imperial power.  She has no capacity or desire to be an imperial power.  Yet Canada has been on the side of successful moral right in world affairs for as long as anyone can remember.  Canada fought the Nazis in World War II, fought to save South Korea in the 1950s, stayed out of Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, invented modern UN peacekeeping and participated in numerous UN peacekeeping missions, as part of NATO defended Western Europe from the Soviet Union.  A Canadian travelling abroad sooner or later becomes aware of the high regard in which Canada is held in the world.  Only bad guys dislike us.

If Canada makes the world aware that she is so moved by ISIS savagery that she is willing to take risks and put a significant effort into ending it, that act itself would be a moral blow against ISIS.  A country with an impeccable record of making moral decisions would not be standing aside and remain aloof in a matter of no direct interest to it.  Canada would be making a serious moral statement to the world concerning the ISIS movement.

The next question would be: to what extend should Canada become involved?

The reason ISIS has survived up to this point at all is that it is remote from any serious ground military force, except that of Turkey.  For its own reasons, Turkey has stood aloof.  ISIS controlled territory consists of a road net in Syria and northern Iraq that includes several major population centers, and is held by only 30,000 men, most of whom are foreign.  Their standard of training is low, and their military staff and logistics system could not withstand a mobile battle against so much as a mechanized brigade group.  ISIS has no air defense to speak of.  Engaging ISIS on the ground would be like pricking a balloon.

The Iraqi military, however, is thoroughly corrupt; and the Jordanian army is not equipped to project power far beyond Jordan’s borders.  The United States has announced that the Iraqi army is going to attack Mosul in ISIS controlled Iraq some time this spring.  Corseting that Iraqi effort and enabling Jordan logistically are the obvious places in which a middle power like Canada can maximize its diplomatic and military effort to rid the world of ISIS savagery.

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