Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. The story of Thanksgiving that we remember, with the turkey meal, etc is based on the Thanksgiving celebration held by the settlers of the Plymouth colony in 1621. They had a lot to be thankful for. These Pilgrims had decided to immigrate to the New World so that they could practice their religion freely. They had intended to settle at the mouth of the Hudson River, but their departure from England on the Mayflower had been delayed, and the trip across the Atlantic had been rough. They reached America farther north than they had intended, at Provincetown Harbor in November 1620. While they did not really have a legal right to create a colony in what is now Massachusetts, no one really wanted to spend the winter at sea so, on December 21, 1620, the Pilgrims began to build the settlement at Plymouth.

Would you spend any more time in a leaky ship like this than you had to? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The first winter at the new colony was very hard. About half of the colonists had died by spring. By what must have seemed incredible luck or divine providence, the colonists were able to make contact with two Natives who could speak English. One of these was named Samoset, and he had learned some English from English trappers and fishermen. He introduced the Pilgrims to the other man, Squanto, who had a truly remarkable life. Captured by Englishmen, he was taken to England and instructed in the English language in the hope that he could serve as an interpreter. When he was brought back to New England, he was captured again, this time by members of John Smith’s expedition who planned to sell captured Indians as slaves in Spain. In Spain, some friars learned of this plan and had the Indians freed and instructed in the Catholic religion. Squanto was able to make his way back to England and then across the Atlantic. There, he discovered that his whole tribe had been destroyed by the diseases, probably smallpox, that the Europeans had brought to the New World.

Squanto was willing to help the Pilgrims and taught what they needed to know to survive in New England. The harvest in the summer of 1621 was good enough that the Pilgrims did not need to fear starvation that winter. They had a feast that Autumn to celebrate their good fortune and give thanks to God. This celebration was not considered to be very remarkable. Thanksgiving celebrations were fairly common at the time, especially among people who had successfully made the difficult and dangerous voyage across the ocean. It was not really the first Thanksgiving.

The First Thanksgiving, painted by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863–1930).

There were proclamations of thanksgiving at various times in American history, especially during the Revolutionary War, but the holiday we know of as Thanksgiving really began in 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation that a national day of Thanksgiving was to be celebrated on the final Thursday of November. It might not seem that there was all that much to be thankful for in the middle of the Civil War but the tide was turning in the North’s favor after the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg that July, and the country was continuing to grow in strength and prosperity despite the horrors of the war. Lincoln’s proclamation set the date for the national holiday that has been celebrated ever since. Franklin Roosevelt set the date a week earlier in 1939 in the hope that an earlier date would mean a longer shopping season for Christmas, thus helping the economy still mired in the Great Depression. This was not without controversy, and in October 1941, Congress officially set the date of Thanksgiving on the fourth, and almost always the last, Thursday in November.

So, enjoy your turkey, but remember to be thankful to God. If you happen to be an American, you really are one of the luckiest people on Earth.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Voltaire once said that if there were no God, it would be necessary to invent Him. I agree with the words of that statement, but perhaps not with the spirit in which Voltaire uttered it. I suspect Voltaire’s meaning was the cynical observation that people often invoke the Deity to exert control over people. Appealing to God has been a means to justify the rule of autocrats from the Pharaohs and Caesars demanding worship to the divine right of kings proclaimed by Louis XIV and his kind.

It would be necessary to invent God for almost the opposite reason. It would be necessary to invent God because God is necessary for the human soul for the same reason oxygen is essential for the human body. If oxygen did not exist, we would have to invent it. But oxygen does exist. We know that oxygen exists because we would not live without oxygen. Oxygen fulfills a need in our bodies. We know that God exists because we would not exist without God. God satisfies a need in our souls. For this reason, atheism as a philosophy cannot endure. Atheism cannot endure because it ignores a fundamental need of the human soul. The atheist is like a child who insists on holding his breath and denying himself oxygen.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a brave and intelligent woman. She is intelligent enough to understand that, in the end, atheism fails to satisfy a basic human need. She is brave enough to admit when she has changed her mind.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells of her spiritual journey from Islam to atheism and finally to Christianity in an article she wrote for Unherd.

In 2002, I discovered a 1927 lecture by Bertrand Russell entitled “Why I am Not a Christian”. It did not cross my mind, as I read it, that one day, nearly a century after he delivered it to the South London branch of the National Secular Society, I would be compelled to write an essay with precisely the opposite title.

Yet I would not be truthful if I attributed my embrace of Christianity solely to the realisation that atheism is too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes. I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable — indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali did not convert to Christianity solely to satisfy her spiritual needs. She is also concerned about the future of Western civilization and particularly the freedom that only Western civilization brings to the world.
I have often thought of the so-called New Atheists, the Hitchenses, the Dawkinses, and others as being a little like a man who is walking around in a beautiful cathedral. He sees before him a pillar that is in his way. Perhaps he does not like the shape or the color of the pillar. He decides the cathedral would be better without the pillar blocking people’s way, so he pulls it down. The man does not see that the pillar he dislikes is holding up the ceiling, and if he succeeds in pulling it down, the whole edifice will come crashing down on top of him. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali puts it:

Part of the answer is global. Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces: the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism in the forms of the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the rise of global Islamism, which threatens to mobilise a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fibre of the next generation.

We endeavour to fend off these threats with modern, secular tools: military, economic, diplomatic and technological efforts to defeat, bribe, persuade, appease or surveil. And yet, with every round of conflict, we find ourselves losing ground. We are either running out of money, with our national debt in the tens of trillions of dollars, or we are losing our lead in the technological race with China.

But we can’t fight off these formidable forces unless we can answer the question: what is it that unites us? The response that “God is dead!” seems insufficient. So, too, does the attempt to find solace in “the rules-based liberal international order”. The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

That legacy consists of an elaborate set of ideas and institutions designed to safeguard human life, freedom and dignity — from the nation state and the rule of law to the institutions of science, health and learning. As Tom Holland has shown in his marvellous book Dominion, all sorts of apparently secular freedoms — of the market, of conscience and of the press — find their roots in Christianity.

And so I have come to realise that Russell and my atheist friends failed to see the wood for the trees. The wood is the civilisation built on the Judeo-Christian tradition; it is the story of the West, warts and all. Russell’s critique of those contradictions in Christian doctrine is serious, but it is also too narrow in scope.

For instance, he gave his lecture in a room full of (former or at least doubting) Christians in a Christian country. Think about how unique that was nearly a century ago, and how rare it still is in non-Western civilisations. Could a Muslim philosopher stand before any audience in a Muslim country — then or now — and deliver a lecture with the title “Why I am not a Muslim”? In fact, a book with that title exists, written by an ex-Muslim. But the author published it in America under the pseudonym Ibn Warraq. It would have been too dangerous to do otherwise.

To me, this freedom of conscience and speech is perhaps the greatest benefit of Western civilisation. It does not come naturally to man. It is the product of centuries of debate within Jewish and Christian communities. It was these debates that advanced science and reason, diminished cruelty, suppressed superstitions, and built institutions to order and protect life, while guaranteeing freedom to as many people as possible. Unlike Islam, Christianity outgrew its dogmatic stage. It became increasingly clear that Christ’s teaching implied not only a circumscribed role for religion as something separate from politics. It also implied compassion for the sinner and humility for the believer.

The New Atheists have made a career of debunking and discrediting Christianity. They have sought to debunk and discredit Christianity in the defense of Western Enlightenment values such as freedom of speech and thought. The problem is that by debunking and discrediting Christianity, they are debunking and discrediting Western Civilization. They are debunking and discrediting the ideals they hope to defend. The result of their efforts will not be the free and rational world they expect. The skeptics who attempted to debunk Christianity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did not create a free, rational world. They have created a world in which people searched for new faiths in the form of Fascism and Communism. The skeptics who are debunking Christianity today may well form a world in which people search for faith in the form of neo-fascism, Islam, and nihilism.

If I may be permitted the presumption of criticizing a woman my superior in courage and intelligence I notice that Ayaan Hirsi Ali omits the most important reason for becoming a Christian. The reasons she cites for converting to Christianity are practical. However, the only real reason to become a Christian is because Christianity is true. One becomes a Christian because the central belief of Christianity, that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins and that he was resurrected, defeating sin and death for all time, is a true belief.

It is this belief that separates Christianity from every other religion. In Islam, Allah demands that we die for Him. In Christianity, YHWH gives His only son to die for us. In Hinduism, gods like Vishnu assume human form to smite their enemies. In Christianity, God becomes human to be smitten. Socrates, the Buddha, and Confucius taught the truth. Jesus asserts He is the truth.

The Christian belief that each human being is worth dying for leads to the liberal Enlightenment ideal of liberty. The Christian belief leads directly to the statement in the Declaration of Independence that “we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights.” In Islam, we are all slaves of God. In Christianity, God makes us His sons. Slaves have no rights. Sons inherit the Kingdom.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is humble enough to admit that she is only a beginning Christian. Let us all pray that she grows in her new faith and continues to be a powerful warrior on the side of Western civilization.

Pandemic Special

I have long been a fan of South Park, but somehow I stopped watching the show right about when the COVID pandemic hit. I am not sure why. Perhaps I had other things on my mind. Maybe I disliked the increasing prominence of Randy Marsh, Stan’s dad. The creators of South Park, especially Trey Parker, have been making more Randy-centered plots because they are getting older and identify more with Randy than the boys. That might be, but I don’t care for the character because I see him as a rather selfish man-child. It is one thing to watch and be amused by childish behavior in children. It is less amusing to see childish behavior in an adult, especially a parent who neglects his responsibilities.

I have been thinking a lot about South Park recently, so I decided to check out the Comedy Central website to see what was going on in that Colorado mountain town. I was delighted to discover that both specials from the twenty-fourth season were free, so I watched the Pandemic Special and then the Vaccination Special. They were every bit as entertaining as I remembered. It was nice to see that Trey Parker and Matt Stone haven’t lost their touch.

However, as I watched the Pandemic Special, I began to develop a mild case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I don’t mean that I felt any real distress from seeing the people of South Park suffer through the pandemic. Instead, I felt a certain unease as the events in the episode reminded me of the lockdowns and the shelter-in-place orders so many of us had to endure. I think Stan spoke for many of us at the end of the episode.

 

Trey and Matt couldn’t have known but the worst part of the lockdowns was that they were wholly unnecessary, even harmful. Many people died from COVID, but not so many as to justify the complete upheaval of many societies and national economies. COVID was not the return of the Black Death. At most, the deaths resulting from COVID were no worse than a severe flu season. Most of the people who died from COVID were already unhealthy. Perhaps this sounds callous. It is not my intention to be callous. Every death is a tragedy to the people who love the deceased. Yet, in a pandemic, we must adopt sensible policies that reduce the number of deaths while balancing the needs of the healthy. The lockdowns failed in that regard.

It makes sense to quarantine the sick from the healthy to prevent the spread of disease. It also makes sense to isolate persons who may have been exposed to a disease to control the spread of that disease. It makes no sense to quarantine an entire population regardless of the health of each person. Even if such isolation served to slow the spread of COVID, and the example of those nations that bucked the trend and stayed open suggests that it did not, the costs, mental and physical far exceeded the benefits of slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

Human beings are social animals. Our psychological health requires contact with other human beings. Remote Zoom conferences do not meet this psychological need. Human beings do not generally like to be confined to limited areas. There is a reason incarceration is used as a punishment for criminals. There is a reason solitary confinement is regarded as a cruel punishment to be used only against the worst criminals who are a threat to other inmates. Putting entire populations who have not committed any crime regardless of their actual risk of carrying the coronavirus is not a sensible measure to protect public health. It is a crime against humanity.
The increased rates of depression, loneliness, drug and alcohol use, obesity, domestic abuse, and many, many other dysfunctions during and after the lockdowns attest to the cruel nature of the lockdowns. Physical health, as well as mental health, was negatively affected. It will never be known how many people developed preventable medical conditions because they were unable to schedule routine health screenings while under lockdown. We will never know how many people died of cancer or heart disease that was not detected in time, due to the lockdowns. Perhaps far more than would have died of COVID if the lockdowns were not in place.

If the lockdowns had lasted only the original “two weeks to slow the spread”, they might have been bearable. The lockdowns might actually been of some good. Extending the lockdowns over many weeks, months, and in some cases, years, did no good, except for the profits of those businesses that were big enough to convince their friends that they were essential and should remain open. Extending the lockdowns sated the lust for power demonstrated by all too of our political leaders who displayed for all to see their sadistic, authoritarian glee in having, at last, the opportunity to push the rest of us around.

I believe that there should be a Nuremberg-style tribunal to investigate the criminal acts of our political leaders who foisted the cruel lockdowns on us in the name of health. Such a tribunal ought also to investigate the businesses that profited from seeing their smaller competitors forced out of business while they were deemed too big to be locked down. Ideally, such a tribunal would judge leaders from around the world, but I would be satisfied if only the leaders of my own country, the United States, were tried. The first person on the dock would be Anthony Fauci. followed by the worst of the governors who unleashed their inner authoritarians.

It is perhaps too much to expect that the tyrants who imposed the COVID lockdowns will ever face justice. They will likely never have to spend time confined in their own homes and still less in a prison cell. It will have to be enough to remember the harm they have done and ensure it never happens again.

Veterans Day

Today is Veterans Day. This day began as Armistice Day, November 11 1918 being the day that Germany signed the armistice that ended World War I. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first Armistice Day in 1919 to celebrate the courage of the men who fought and died in that war. The day was changed in 1954 in order to honor the veterans of all the wars of America.

I don’t have anything else to say except Thank You to all of the veterans who have served your country. You are better men and women than I am.

Misinformation

I caught this fact-checking Associated Press article the other day, which I consider to contain not a little misinformation, if not outright disinformation in that the AP seems unwilling to call murderous terrorists from Gaza terrorists. The first paragraph says it all.

In the days since Hamas militants stormed into Israel early Oct. 7, a flood of videos and photos purporting to show the conflict have filled social media, making it difficult for onlookers from around the world to sort fact from fiction.

Militants who stormed into Israel? What happened on October 7 was that members of the organization called Hamas invaded Israel and murdered some 1400 Israelis, including 1033 civilians. Approximately 200-250 persons were seized and taken back to Gaza as hostages. These civilian casualties were not the inevitable collateral damage that occurs during any military strike. They were deliberately targeted and murdered by persons to spread terror. The purpose of these attacks was not to defeat Israel militarily but to compel the submission of the Jewish population of Israel through the use of terror. There is a word in the English language for people who use such tactics. That word is terrorist. The people who attacked Israel were not “militants”. That word implies a military group that abides by the rules of war. The people who attacked Israel were terrorists. The people who have expressed support worldwide for the actions of the Hamas terrorists are supporters of terrorism.

Few of the many conflicts in this world are definitely good versus evil. There is usually at least some and some evil on both sides. The war between Ukraine and Russia has often been presented as a clear case of good against evil, yet the conflict is not as unequivocal as the partisans for Ukraine like to portray. Ukraine is far from a paragon of honest, democratic governance, and Russia may well have a historical and demographic claim to the regions of Ukraine it covets. Russia is in the wrong because its leader, Putin, decided to settle the dispute with war, but this is a conflict where there is at least some justice on both sides.

That is not the case with the present conflict between Israel and Hamas. This war is as clear a case of good and evil as we are ever likely to see. Hamas has deliberately attacked civilians. Even worse, they have deliberately placed Palestinian civilians, their own people, in harm’s way to maximize civilian casualties to use as a reproach to Israel in world opinion. Their actions are evil. If there is any justice on the Palestinian side, it is negated by the atrocious actions of the Palestinian leadership in Gaza.
The Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005. They compelled Jewish settlers to leave and gave control of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians. If the Palestinians had made use of their freedom to invest in their economy; if they had made Gaza into a Singapore or Hong Kong on the Mediterranean; and if the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank had negotiated in good faith against a recalcitrate Israel, I might concede that they had justice in their claims against Israel. Instead, the Gazans elected Hamas to govern them. They destroyed the infrastructure that the hated Jews had left behind and launched rocket attacks against Israel. They sent suicide bombers to kill Jews until the Israelis built a wall along the border to keep them out. Hamas and the people of Gaza have not sought to live in peace with Israel. They want to destroy Israel.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas is a struggle between good and evil, between civilization and barbarism. The Associated Press is not being objective and even-handed by referring to the murderous barbarians of Hamas as “militants.” It actively supports evil.