The secular roadside bomb

I think I went a little bit overboard yesterday in my 'Canada day rant.' Every country has skeletons in its closets and when I'm in a generous mood Canada's skeletons seem pretty tame. What always gets me about the 'Canadian character,' if there is such an animal, is that there isn't one. Maybe Quebec is an exception to that rule, and not just because of language. The influence of the Church is definitely a factor. For centuries the parish priest was the main pipeline to the outside world for all those farming communities stretched along the St. Lawrence River. There is also the matter of blood- an unfasionable word now- which included the idea of genetics but also a spiritual sense of ancestry and connection to the past that modern genetic scientists would find suspect. During this period of Quebec's history Its population burgeoned. The priests, keen to spread the faith, knew that the key to success was located in a mother's womb. It was this progeny that explored North America before anyone else. "How about the 'First Nations?" you scoff? Well, the fact is the North American natives' knowledge of continental geography was severely limited due to the incessant warfare between adjacent tribes. To venture out of one's tribal territory was to risk the most fiendish tortures imaginable. That's why the inquiries made of them by the early explorers were met with such fanciful replies. But while the French voyageurs were endowed with indominatable courage, unbelievable physical endurance and a native intelligence so great that they routinely learned dozens of Native languages in their travels, they were uneducated and so left no written journals or maps. That was the work of literate Scots and Americans.
What was I saying? Oh, yes, about national character. Quebec, to its misfortune, became afflicted along with the rest of us with a certain disease in the '60's. Unfortunately, no adequate label has yet been invented to describe this destructive cancer. Political correctness, socialism, leftism, secularism, even postmodernism fails to do it justice. In Quebec it was called the Quiet Revolution, a catchall term that had room in its nebulosity for every socially destructive fad of the 20th century. Quiet. But effective. Today the Nation of Quebec is on a fast track to demographic oblivion. Quebecers should have listened to those priests. The leaders of the Quiet Revolution detonated a time bomb far more destructive than what the Islamists did to the World Trade Center.
Looked at from that perspective the Islamists are doing us a favor. They are showing us how bankrupt the various isms have been. We have even been convinced that it's all right to kill our babies. If you can believe that you can believe anything. Islam is a backward facing religion that closes down the human spirit. In my own analysis it is the ultimate atheism, but I won't go into that now. It has one virtue. It supplies an identity and an iron clad formula for social cohesion. It may lead to a dead end, but it is stable and it is able to go on the attack. It supplies its adherents with focus and passion. And it produces babies. Our isms do the opposite. They are corrosive and dissolve all the ties that bind our societies one to another and between the generations.
Isn't it a bit ironic that a society under the influence of a celibate clergy should be so prolific while the secular society's abandonment of sexual morality has led to the collapse of populations all over the world? This may not seem like a bad thing to the envirocultists who regard mankind as the scourge of the earth. They fail to take into account that well known dictum that that says nature abhors a vacuum. Certainly, the human ecosystem abhors a power vacuum and a community that fails to have children is just asking to be replaced by one that will.
The secular society has substituted the pursuit of pleasure for the self sacrifice of child rearing. They aren't compatible. Children crave the stability of a home. They want to know who their parents are, and they want to know they are loved by them. The creche works for ants but not for humans. But children get in the way for people who want to earn lots of money and want to spend it. They get in the way of promiscuous sex. They cost money to maintain with no obvious benefits in return. They require a long period of education and by the time they are old enough to look after themselves the parents are getting old and have missed out on the good life. And who wants to confine oneself to having only one bed partner for his entire life, one who gets older and less attractive with each passing year. Who wants to cheat himself out of all the fun he could have if only he didn't have a wife with saggy boobs and squabbling brats all over the place.
A strange thing about the logic of feelings and sensual gratification is that in very short order it grows boring. You can only eat so much. You can only screw so much. You can only live in one house at a time, wear one pair of shoes at a time, drive one car at a time. And then what? A sense of grievance. What's missing. Who is responsible. Try drugs, anything to stop that dull ache, anything to shut up that busy brain. After sex, after all the chocolate you can eat, after the single malt scotch palls, and if you don't go in for arts or have an all consuming interest, like electric trains or Ming vases, then there is one pleasure left, more potent than all the rest: power. And if there is anything that stands out about the left it is their craving for power. Not power to accomplish good but power for its own sake. They will do anything, say anything to get power. Whatever works. Lie, steal, cheat, but above all lie. Don't worry about getting caught, brazen it out. Bill Clinton showed how to do it. The trick is not to let anything embarrass you. Eradicate any sense of shame you may have, and cultivate an easy grin. Women especially are suckers for a loveable rogue. Cultivate grievances among the resentful. Pull the wool over the eyes of the gullible. Make promises you have no intention of delivering. It's a well worn path. We have lots of that type in Canada, too.
What is surprising, and I always have to remember this, is that in spite of the best efforts of Michael Moore, Al Gore, and every lying, BSing public figure you can think of, the average everyday jerk just chugs along living his life, raising his kids, doing useful work and being a good friend and neighbor. I was thinking about that as I watched the crew that set up the crane last weekend. They had worked three weeks straight but there was no slacking off. Every man on the crew knew his job and did it well. They never complained, being too busy joking around, kidding each other and doing their work for that kind of nonsense. True, they were getting overtime, holiday pay and everything else. I said to one of the guys that it would all be worthwhile when they got a chance to spend some of that money, "They'll only take it away in taxes," he said matter of factly. I had forgotten, we live in a country that punishes people for working hard. These were real Canadians and when I'm around guys like that I'm not sorry I'm a Canadian, too.
Somehow or other, despite the tireless efforts by our elites to destroy everything that matters in our culture, most people are still pretty good. And there is something distinctive about Canadians that I like. Luckily, it seems to be indestructible.