Recovering our natural experience takes argument, today, because we’ve all been poisoned by two generations of lunatic public education theory, distilled from four hundred years of philosophic bafflegab. We all still have our more-or-less orderly natural experience, shared among friends and fellow citizens, sufficient to keep us all alive. But we’ve lost a lot of the vocabulary for clearly expressing a lot of reality’s (singular) built-in rationality. And without the words, we can’t think clearly, so we often do stupid things.

For example: somebody says, in all fervor, “animals are people, too,” and we know that’s not quite right, but we don’t know how to say so. We don’t have the words. We know intuitively that “it ain’t so,” but we can’t think when we don’t have the words. Words matter.

In this case, the words we’re now missing are higher and lower. Human beings are higher than animals, and animals are lower than human beings. This does not mean that animals aren’t wonderful and worthy of respect. They are. But it means that human beings really are more wonderful and even worthier of respect. Unless we know how to speak and think in terms of higher and lower, we can’t really appreciate just how amazing and worthy of respect are even animals, plants and even rocks.

Let’s begin from the beginning. Plants are higher than rocks. Animals are higher than plants. Humans are higher than animals. These distinctions aren’t just a matter of perspective. They’re objective reality.  Here’s the formula: P is higher than Q, if P is or does everything Q is or does, but Q cannot be or do everything P is or does. So now watch how this works.

Continue reading “REALITY 101.1: Higher and Lower” →

            In mid-May, 1988 – thirty years ago now – I was sitting in a dark, air-conditioned theater in musty Washington DC, at the hearings of the US Commission on Civil Rights:  “Civil Rights Issues in Controlling the HIV-AIDS Epidemic.” On stage were the Chief Commissioner Clarence Pendleton, my boss William Allen, and a half-dozen other USCCR commissioners. A few hundred invited witnesses filled the theatre – spokesmen from the medical associations, the transfusion-decimated hemophiliacs, gay lobbies, hospices and epidemiologists.

            At the back stood dozens of uninvited demonstrators from the radical ACT-UP, wearing rubber pig-head masks. Much photographed, they whooped and hollered until the unflappable “Penny” Pendleton told them that they could stay only if they quieted down. So, petulantly turning their backs to the proceedings, they mostly did.

            The medical associations testified that the pillars of epidemiology were well-known and worked:  screening the infected, restraining recalcitrant carriers, and closing known loci of infection – like Typhoid Mary’s laundry or gay bathhouses.

            The hemophiliacs testified that gay blood donations were killing them, but we had found out too late.  And the hospice operators – generally Christian – testified that, in whatever manner AIDS victims ended up on their door-steps, they could still have a happy death.

            Gay activists testified that AIDS was stoking the age-old prejudice against homosexuals, and it was no more than rank bigotry, treating homosexuals as if they were contagious.  And from the back, ACT-UP heckled indignantly about their right to anonymous bathhouse promiscuity. Medical researchers should have found the cure for AIDS, and if they hadn’t, that was only was because nobody in this gay-hating society really wanted to cure the disease.

            I still remember the president of the Texas Medical Association, stating into the public record, in complete bewilderment, “This is a disease with a lobby.”

             Continue reading “SEVENTEENTH FIT: Hijacked Victimhood” →

In the fall of 1971, I was sitting in a big lecture theatre at the University of Alberta with over 500 other freshmen, at the introductory lecture of Biology 298: Ecology. The charismatic professor was touting the fact that this was one of the first environmental courses offered across North America. The course was advertised as not a prerequisite for higher-level biology courses, so most of the students were there to make up the obligatory science credits for non-science students. But the professor was obviously passionate about getting out The Message, so maybe the more business, econ or poli sci students, the better.

Professor Ecology proceeded to deliver a really gripping and convincing harangue on the hidden destruction of the environment, inflicted by the unthinking habits of the marketplace. If only I’d known then, what I know now.

He took a package of Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum© out of his pocket, and counted the number of layers between the gum and its consumer. On the outer package, there was the clear plastic coating on the green paper Wrigley’s wrap, the paper itself and the silvery coating on the inside of the paper – that’s three layers. Then there was the paper sleeve around the gum itself – that’s four. And then the wrapping around the individual gum stick of gum, another piece of silvery paper, the silver and the paper – that’s five and six. Six layers of packaging around a simple piece of gum.

Imagine! Six layers of packaging! Think of all the raw materials going into all this packaging! Think of the waste! Continue reading “THE SIXTEENTH FIT: The Church of Science and Hidden Costs” →

During high school, my “home away from home” was at the house of working-class family, a house so old that their ancient, monstrous furnace, consuming half the basement, had been converted first from coal to oil, and then from oil to gas. They raised five cheerful, self-reliant kids in 800 sq. ft., with bunkbeds and a big kitchen table. When not at his job as a railroad clerk, their dad was working in his garden. The mom was cooking, mending, volunteering at the church or reading. Come winter, the dad made extra income – and in time financed a lake-side house for their retirement – by carving very good hardwood plaques of wildlife scenes, which he then sold in local flea markets.

I still remember the Mare and the Bear (as their three comedic sons called them) drinking coffee at the kitchen table. The Bear was what we once called “a good man,” competent, responsible and incapable of lying. However, he didn’t have much patience for doing his own research, when it came to issues like where to put their savings or how to vote in the next election. The Mare, on the other hand, was the reader in the family, a smart and clear-sighted woman. She would talk to the bank managers and read the newspapers, and then they sat with their coffee (from an old, aluminum percolator), talking about what she found out. After a half-hour of back-and-forth, pros-and-cons, the Bear would decide how they’d handle things, and the Mare invariably ratified and respected his decision.

Now, it would be possible – maybe inevitable, today – to give a cynical interpretation about the Mare and Bear’s relationship. Some particularly bitter individualists might even condemn the Mare for not demanding more respect and recognition as the smarter of the two. But the fact is, the Mare and the Bear were a team. They loved each other and lived one life. And after all, “smart” isn’t the only virtue. The Mare was smart, so she saw the 60-40 or 55-45 arguments on both sides of a situation. The Bear was a good man, knew they had to decide something, and he would take responsibility for whatever they decided. They were a team. They complimented each other in ways that Post-Modern gender activists today refuse to see.

(Incidentally, Nature doesn’t care if gender activists’ stuff fingers in their ears, squeeze their eyes closed, and chant “la-la-la… I can’t hearrrrr you…” Nature has the last word.)

Now, when women first got the vote a hundred years ago, that initially gave an enhanced representation to teams like the Mare and the Bear. United couples would vote as a team for policies that, looking forward, should benefit their kids. Continue reading “THE FIFTEENTH FIT: Votes for Kids!” →

Something is changing, finally for the better. “Drive out Nature with a pitchfork,” says the old Roman reprobate Lucretius, “and she always comes back.”

We’ve just received our 14th or 15th invitation in this year’s wedding season. No kidding. We had ten or fifteen years of wondering, “Where are all the men for all these lovely young women?” Yearly, we’d have maybe one or two 40-something second marriages.  So where’s the next generation coming from…? Then suddenly the sheriff’s posse rides over the ridge and rescues the besieged young ladies from the ornery cattle rustlers. After a half-generation of lamenting the feeble Gen-Xers and Millennials – and a looming demographic winter, suddenly all these 25-35 year-old guys are manning up and getting the job done. They’re all marrying confident, family-ready, young women, and they’re all intent on having babies.

Phew!  Dodged that bullet!  These second- and third-generation victims of the Sexual Revolution were plainly failing to launch, endangering our whole civilization.  

Continue reading “THE FOURTEENTH FIT: When the Culture Zigs, Hope Zags” →

Most civil servants, working on the Administration’s shop floor, don’t actually live in the Public Service Bubble. They live in real neighborhoods with the rest of us, and visit the Bubble, only when they face some sensitivity training or personnel problem. So, when you work with normal, pleasant people, week after week, you forget just how wacky the whole, bloated, bouncy thing really is. Then some senior administrator says something…

So I’m working at my desk, one day, when a typical personnel announcement arrives via the federal email list.  “Please congratulate Salome Bat Herodias,” the email says, “the former director” of the eight-words-long strategy office , because she’s now been promoted to a more senior position, “working on the results and delivery” of something else.  Salome did a great job where she was, and now, in her new position, she is (and I quote) “embracing a new challenge where she will pursue her contribution to building Canadian society.”

Building Canadian society.

Her contribution to building Canadian society.

The Public Service, building Society.  Ahem.

Continue reading “THE THIRTEENTH FIT: The Public Service Bubble” →

In the mid-Eighties, I visited a favorite old prof, back in the old home town. He was a tenured professor, so he didn’t care what he said, but his wife was a lowly lecturer in the Faculty of Education, on yearly contracts, so she cared. Judy was a model of common sense, with her specialty, “Testing” in Educational Psychology. And she saw at ground-level the disastrous results of the new ideology, dominating her profession. Already, kids were failing.

Child Liberationists, mandating a pedagogy of Creativity and Self-esteem, now ran the Education Faculty, and she feared to lift her head over the edge of her trench. “It’s insanity,” she warned, “but if I say anything, it’ll cost me my job.” She was confirming what a friend had told me, ten years earlier. He’d done a real Honors Psych degree, then went into Education for a teaching diploma.  Already in mid-Seventies, he had to keep his head down:  “They’re crazy,” he marveled. “They don’t want to do real testing, and they don’t care about content.”

Continue reading “THE TWELFTH FIT: Dumbing-Down Educators” →

Stepping out of the federal building, one morning, I met a couple of settlement workers, on their way to an interview with one of the private settlement agencies. For the five-to-fifteen percent of immigrants who enter as refugees (maybe 15-30,000 yearly), these contract agencies are vital, teaching them everything from opening a bank account to grocery shopping.

These agencies run on a shoestring. That shoestring is really frayed by the government’s reporting obligations, the hours spent meeting all the Transparency and Accountability regulations. These regulations prevent anyone from getting rich off the public purse.

So here were these two settlement workers, waiting at the bus stop.  How come? Why were they taking the bus, when our office had a stack of taxi chits and two cars parked in the basement parkade? Because all the paperwork just to get a taxi chit or borrow the car was such a pain in the ass. They had their own monthly bus passes, and transit was just plain easier.

Continue reading “THE ELEVENTH FIT: Transparency and Accountability” →

      The most annoying thing about the Universal Administrative culture?  Once you become aware of a particular lunacy, it smacks you in the face, over and over, every time you see it.  It’s like waking up with “Bohemian Rhapsody” playing in your head, and being tortured for the rest of the day. The only advantage:  each lunacy – and there are many – forces us to exercise some “Independent Thinking.” Independent thinking? 

    For example:  you stand at a drugstore checkout, with a half-dozen small items, debating whether to spend five extra cents on a 0.05 cent plastic bag. After all, “We All Know” that plastic products are filling our landfills at a terrifying rate. So a five cent levy either encourages us to avoid them or does… something… about the deadly landfill scourge.

    Then you remember:  every time a dog-owner takes their beloved Shiatzu for a walk, they follow lovingly behind, dutifully encasing each canine stool in… a plastic bag!  Plastic bags are too environmentally expensive to carry your medications, but not Buttercup’s poop.

Continue reading “TENTH FIT: Waste is Good” →

This woman was sitting across the desk from me, 50-something but looking twice as old: wizened, weathered, and all decked out in East African silks, a headpiece and mountainous jewelry. She looked back at me with complete calm and patience. Almost 20 years earlier, she’d been living in an illiterate East African village, raising five boys under 15. Then a local militia came through her village and killed her husband. She decided it was time to leave. Somehow, she got her boys through hundreds of miles of jungle to a refugee camp in Kenya, where an aid worker registered them as Convention Refugees. When they got to Canada, her boys attended a Canadian high school, and now one of them sat beside her, signed in as her interpreter.

She had a Backbone of Iron. Unfortunately, she spoke no English or French, and she knew nothing about Canada. Once she had got all her boys to safety, alive and settled in a home of unimaginable luxury, fed with unimaginable abundance, and coddled with central heating, not surprisingly, she decided that she’d done enough. It was now her sons turn to take care of her. So she hung out in the “East African Community,” drinking coffee, gossiping with her girlfriends, and observing Canada only from afar – and who could blame her?

Continue reading “THE NINTH FIT: Tribes, Law and Regulations” →