Writing on Stone Provincial Park, Alberta
What Hope for Canadian Conservatism?
by Mark Wegierski
Donald Trump is currently renegotiating Free Trade with Canada. Over 80% of Canada’s trade is with the United States; and probably over 80% of the population detests him. Canada’s armed forces are notoriously underfunded, and Canada’s contribution to NATO has been pitifully small. Canada is quite happy to be a “free rider” on U.S. military defense spending. It is also to some extent a “free rider” on the U.S. healthcare system, making use of advances in medical technology that only the more free-market-oriented medical system of the U.S. could bring about. Furthermore, the U.S. is where many wealthy Canadians go for health care, when they are tired of the ridiculous waiting periods for surgery such as hip-replacement at Canadian hospitals.
One of the main differences between Canada and the United States is that — with the possible, partial exception of the Western Canadian province of Alberta — most of the country would tend to fall into the camp of the “Bluest” of the “Blue States.” If the left-wingers in the “Blue States” were frustrated by the Trump victory, one should just imagine how “small-c conservatives” have felt in Canada over many decades. The main origin of the term “small-c conservative” is a pointer to the fact that the “big-C Conservatives” in Canada, i.e., the Progressive Conservative party, were “ultra-moderates” and mostly spent their time fighting what they snidely called “cashew conservatives,” i.e., those who were presumed to be “right-wing nuts.” The net result of the failure of the Canadian Right has been the emergence of a political culture after the 1960s where outlooks similar to those of moderate Republicans and centrist Democrats would probably be considered as “far right.” Somewhat ironically, the entire “broader Right” in America, from Pat Buchanan, who once called Canada a “Soviet Canuckistan’, to David Frum, who once heaped disdain on Canadian “wimpishness”, probably have a rather similar view of America’s northern neighbor. Continue reading →
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Postscript on St Paul’s “Anti-Semitism”
St Paul, El Greco, credit Wikipedia
Postscript on St Paul’s “anti-Semitism”
by Darrell Sutton
In two previous papers I introduced a letter of the Apostle Paul to Christians in Rome. The letter was written in the first century AD. Some of the recipients may have been former partisans of Judaism; others of them were converted from non-monotheistic faiths. The letter was a theological tract. Paul’s observations were perceptive even where his viewpoints were not wholeheartedly accepted. However, his points of view on the beliefs of ancient Jews, and their status among other religions, have recently come under fire. One book after another asserts that he was bigoted and spurred the Christian faith in wrong directions. These published conclusions are mostly based on revised notions: contemporary scholars have superimposed modern lexical meanings on ancient ideas.
Jean-Paul Sartre published his Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate in 1944. An essay of over 100 pages, it transformed debates on attitudes toward Jews and how Jewishness could be understood. Other writers broached the subject, but few intellectuals of his day were as influential as Sartre. Biblical studies were not unaffected. Since the late 1940s, many books and papers have been issued on the topic of “anti-Semitism” in the New Testament. The analyses were rarely formed through rigorous studies of lexemes. Contexts were re-imagined and re-interpreted in accordance with the latest critical theories: sociological and psychological methodologies were employed.
The end result was a recasting of personality traits of characters affiliated with New Testament documents. Primarily the focus has been on the Pauline corpus of texts. There are a variety of consensuses among scholars today regarding him. Many modern commentators entertain the notion that Paul in fact was anti-Semitic. I disagree, and set out my reasons below. Still, it is only natural that observant Jews might feel this way. They find certain remarks by him distressing; but they are no less distressed when people of other faiths bring up the Old Testament stories of Israelites waging war in Canaan land, of brutal activities, all of which may be considered to be kinds of anti-Philistinism, anti-Hittitism, anti-Moabitism and so forth. Continue reading →
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