{"id":4036,"date":"2025-02-14T23:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-02-14T23:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/?p=4036"},"modified":"2025-02-14T23:24:34","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T23:24:34","slug":"dead-souls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/?p=4036","title":{"rendered":"Dead Souls"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Throne, Altar, Liberty<\/a><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

The Canadian Red Ensign<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Friday, February 14, 2025<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Dead Souls<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The second of February is the fortieth day after Christmas and therefore the day on which the Church commemorates the Presentation of Jesus Christ in the Temple and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  This commemoration is popularly known as Candlemas from the tradition of blessing candles in Church on this day.  There is an ancient folk tradition that says that if it is a clear day on Candlemas it will be a long winter.  A tradition derived from this one says that a hibernating animal \u2013 which depends on where you live \u2013 will temporarily awaken on Candlemas to predict the remaining length of winter by whether or not he sees his shadow.  In North America, the hibernating animal is the groundhog or woodchuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year Candlemas fell on a Sunday.  On most Sunday evenings a friend comes over to watch movies and the obvious choice was \u201cGroundhog Day\u201d the 1993 film by Harold Ramis in which Bill Murray plays a weatherman who goes to Punxsutawney, the small community in Pennsylvania where Groundhog Day is a much bigger deal than elsewhere, and becomes trapped in a personal time loop that forces him to relive the day over and over again.  The way in which Phil, Murray\u2019s character who shares a name with the famous groundhog, responds to this dilemma evolves over the course of the movie.  At one point, fairly early in the plot, his response is gross self-indulgence since there are no consequences due to the slate constantly being wiped clean.  In this phase, the character of Rita portrayed by Andie MacDowell, watching him engage in reckless gluttony in the local diner, quotes Sir Walter Scott to him:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wretch, concentered all in self,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, doubly dying, shall go down<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To the vile dust, from whence he\u2019s sprung<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unwept, unhonour\u2019d, and unsung.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the movie, Phil\u2019s response is to laugh and make a joke about having misheard Walter Scott as Willard Scott.  Watching the movie with my friend, my response was to point out that Rita had misapplied the lines she quoted.  The lines are from Canto VI of the Lay of the Last Minstrel<\/em> and refer not to a hedonist but to the person lacking patriotism.  The first part of the Canto goes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;\u2014
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After this comes the lines quoted in the movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Clearly Sir Walter Scott shared the opinion of Scottish-American, neo-Thomist philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre<\/a> that patriotism is a virtue<\/a> as well he ought for that opinion is correct.  Note, however, that the correctness of the opinion depends on the definition of patriotism.  Nationalism, which is frequently confused with patriotism, is not a virtue.  It is not the opposite of a virtue, a vice, either, but this is only because it does not belong to the same general category, the habits of behaviour that make up character, of which virtue and vice are the good and bad subcategories.  Nationalism is an ideology.  An ideology is a formulaic substitute for a living tradition of thought (see the title essay in Michael Oakeshott\u2019s Rationalism in Politics And Other Essays).<\/em>  Shortcuts of this type are always bad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recent column<\/a> Brian Lilley spoke of \u201cnational pride\u201d and criticized those who have only recently started to display national pride as Canadians in response to Donald the Orange.   While Lilley\u2019s argument is related to my main topic in this essay, I bring it up here to make the point that \u201cnational pride\u201d is not a good way of describing the patriotism that is a virtue.  To be fair, Lilley did not equate patriotism with \u201cnational pride\u201d but this is because the word patriotism does not appear in his column.  Pride appears four times and the adjective proud appears nine times.  While it is easy to see why Lilley would use these terms, since much of the column is appropriately critical of the attacks on Canada and her history, identity, and traditions that have been coming from the current Liberal government for the duration of the near-decade they have been in power, pride is not the right word.  It is the name of a vice, indeed, the very worst of the Seven Deadly Sins, rather than a virtue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, we do not have to look far and wide to find the right term.  Patriotism, correctly defined, is neither the ideology of nationalism that values one\u2019s country for its perceived superiority to all others requiring that all others be insulted and subjugated nor the deadly sin of pride as directed towards one\u2019s country, but simply love of one\u2019s country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Love of one\u2019s country is indeed a virtue.  Whereas pride is the worst of all sins, love is the highest of all virtues. Of course, the love that is the highest of all virtues is a specific kind of love.  The Seven Heavenly Virtues include the Four Cardinal Virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude and the Three Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope and Love.  The Cardinal Virtues are habits that anyone can cultivate and so make up the best moral character that man can attain in his natural or unregenerate state.  While faith, hope, and love in a more general sense can be similarly cultivated, the Faith, Hope, and Love that make up the essence of Christian character must be imparted by the grace of God although the Christian is also expected to cultivate them.  Love is the greatest of the three as St. Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 13:13, and therefore as Henry Drummond called it,<\/a> \u201cthe greatest thing in the world\u201d.  It incorporates the other two since they are built upon each other.  Natural loves are lesser than Christian Love or Charity, but they are still virtuous insomuch as they resemble, albeit imperfectly, the Theological Virtue.  Patriotism, the love of country, is such a love.  Edmund Burke famously described how it develops \u201cTo be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle \u2026 of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love of our country and to mankind.\u201d  The \u201clittle platoons\u201d include one\u2019s family and local community and is Burke had wanted to belabour the point he could have said that the first principle is love of one\u2019s family, which develops into love of one\u2019s local community, and then outward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been heartwarming to see Canadians display their love of country over the last month or so in response to the repeated threats of Anschluss coming from America\u2019s Fuhrer.  While not all of these displays have been in good taste they do all demonstrate that Captain Airhead\u2019s efforts to kill Canadian patriotism by endlessly apologizing for past events that need no apologies, cancelling Canada\u2019s founders and historical leaders such as Sir John A. Macdonald, and other such nonsense have failed.  This resurgence in Canadian public patriotism ought, therefore, to be welcomed by the \u201cconservatives\u201d who rightly despise Captain Airhead.  Oddly, however, it has not been so welcomed by many of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In part this is due to the fact that Captain Airhead, the Liberals, the NDP, and their media supporters who were all on the \u201ccancel Canada\u201d bandwagon until yesterday are now wrapping themselves in the flag and these do deserve to be called out for this.  The right way to do so, however, is to say something to the effect of \u201cyou are rather late to the party, but thanks for showing up.\u201d  To Brian Lilley\u2019s credit, that is the gist of what he says in the column alluded to earlier.  Many other \u201cconservatives\u201d, however, have responded quite differently.  In his 2006 book, In Defence of Hypocrisy: Picking Sides in the War on Virtue<\/em>, Jeremy Lott pointed out the difference between Jesus\u2019 condemnation of hypocrisy and Modern condemnation of hypocrisy.  In condemning the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, Jesus did not condemn them for the high moral standards they taught, but for falling short of those standards by sinning.  Moderns, however, when they condemn hypocrisy, condemn the moral standards rather than the sin.  The response of many \u201cconservatives\u201d to the newly discovered Canadian patriotism of progressives resembles this in that they seem to be criticizing the progressives more for their expression of patriotism today than for their lack of it yesterday.  One even quoted Samuel Johnson\u2019s \u201cpatriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.\u201d  I refer him to the comments of James Boswell, whose record of the remark is the reason we are familiar with it today, as to what it means.  Dr. Johnson was not impugning love of country, but a kind of pseudo-patriotism which interestingly enough was associated with the founding of America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can hardly be a coincidence that these same \u201cconservatives\u201d have been rather less than patriotic in their response to the threats from south of the border.  The founder of one \u201cconservative\u201d independent online media company first responded to these threats by saying they should be treated as a joke and a funny one at that. Then, when Donald the Orange said last weekend that it was no joke,  she flip-flopped and criticized Captain Airhead for having initially done exactly that and said the Anschluss threat was a joke.  In between she conducted and published an interview with an immigrant from America who twelve years ago proved herself to be exactly the kind of immigrant we don\u2019t need when she published a book proposing the merger of our country with her country of birth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The general response to these threats in this organization\u2019s commentary has been to treat the American dictator as a reasonable man, with legitimate grievances, who can be negotiated with and to propose an economic merger between the two countries that falls short of a political merger.  Ironically, their website is promoting a children\u2019s book they just published on the life of Sir John A. Macdonald intended to counter the negative propaganda about the Father of Confederation that progressives have been spewing based on their skewed narrative about the Indian Residential Schools.  The book was a good and patriotic response to this blood libel of our country.  Sir John must be spinning in his grave, however, at the thought that the defence of his memory could be merged with the idea of an economic union with the United States.  Sir John spent his entire career as Prime Minister promoting internal east-west trade within the Dominion and fighting the siren call of north-south trade because he knew that this was the greatest threat to the success of the Confederation Project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Free trade is a good idea from an economic perspective, but each of the \u201cfree trade\u201d agreements we have signed with the United States has been a terrible idea from a political perspective.  The kind of economic union these \u201cconservatives\u201d are promoting would be worse than all of the other \u201cfree trade\u201d agreements, since the United State is currently led by a lawless megalomaniac, who respects neither the limits placed on his powers by his country\u2019s constitution nor the agreements he has signed and cannot be trusted to keep his own word \u2013 the \u201cfree trade\u201d agreement he is currently, and deceitfully, claiming is so \u201cunfair\u201d to his country is the one he himself negotiated \u2013 and who looks at tariffs and economic measures in general as weapons to accomplish what his predecessors accomplished by bullets and bombs.  By his predecessors I do not mean previous American presidents, but Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin.  I recognized that this was what we were dealing with the moment he made his first \u201c51st<\/sup> state\u201d remark and was confirmed in this when he doubled down on this talk after Captain Airhead announced his intention to resign.  No Canadian patriot could fail to recognize it today after he has continued to escalate his lies and rhetoric and threats for the last month.   Yes, the Left\u2019s endless likeness of everyone they don\u2019t like to Hitler has desensitized us to these comparisons, but let us not be like the villagers in Aesop\u2019s story about the boy who cried wolf.  This time the wolf is real. The sort of things the Left objects to in Donald the Orange, his immigration policies, his termination of the racist, anti-white, policy of DEI, do not warrant a comparison with Hitler, but his threatening us with Anschluss, his demand for Lebensraum from Denmark, his intent to take back his \u201cDanzig Corridor\u201d from Panama, his finding his Sudetenland in Gaza, most certainly do, as does the insane personality cult his followers have developed into<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canadian conservatives ought to be leading the renaissance of Canadian patriotism, and yes, Brian Lilley, you are right that it should not have taken something like Trump\u2019s threats to bring that renaissance about.\u00a0 Liberals have always been the party of Americanization in Canada.\u00a0 Sadly, today\u2019s conservatives are mostly neoconservatives. \u00a0David Warren once said that a conservative is a Tory who has lost his religion and a neoconservative is a conservative who has lost his memory.\u00a0 On the authority of Sir Walter Scott I deduce from the disgusting anti-patriotism I have seen recently that many have lost their souls as well. — Gerry T. Neal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AM<\/abbr><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

tt<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throne, Altar, Liberty The Canadian Red Ensign Friday, February 14, 2025 Dead Souls The second of February is the fortieth day after Christmas and therefore the day on which the Church commemorates the Presentation of Jesus Christ in the Temple and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  This commemoration is popularly known as Candlemas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2863,1997,2864,1435,228,1773,2129,1628,2865,2867,2866,1028,1257],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4037,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036\/revisions\/4037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}