Reparations for Slavery?

      You will no doubt be aware of a recent movement to claim reparations for West Indian populations in general from Britain in particular and Europe in general because of past slavery. Here we see two popular tropes: (1) negative experiences have permanent, intergenerational effects, and (2) those poor dark skinned people can't possibly improve themselves without the help of a (left wing) white saviour. Let us shine a more rational light on the subject.

The Perpetual Virginity of Mary (Part 1 of 4)

     St. Joseph is nowhere mentioned during Jesus' ministry, least of all in places where you would expect it, so it is normally assumed that he had already passed away by then. Nevertheless, complications would have arisen if he had died while Jesus was still a teenager. Probably, therefore, Mary and Joseph were married for 20 to 25 years. Yet it is an article of faith in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, and accepted by many of the Reformers, that this marriage was never consummated, that it was completely sexless and, not only that, but this was a good thing, an act of piety. This doctrine is held with an emotion which is highly resistant to logic. Centuries of devotion to the Holy Mother has turned her, in the view of many, into an ethereal figure on a pedestal far above normal human experience. Along with centuries of the monastic adulation of celibacy, it means that idea of her being carnally touched by a man produces an almost visceral response that it is an attack on her sanctity. Anyone would think that a virtuous wife and mother is less holy than a virgin! Also, it is a teaching of their church, and their world would start to collapse if they at once admitted that the church might have got it wrong.

      Nevertheless, it has got it wrong.

The Perpetual Virginity of Mary. (Part 2 of 4: Sacred Tradition)

     In Part 1 we looked at what the Bible says, or doesn't say, about the purported perpetual virginity of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Now we shall examine the earliest Christian writings to see whether they can provide any evidence for the doctrine.

The Perpetual Virginity of Mary (Part 3 of 4: Stepsiblings)

      You will often hear it said that Jesus' brothers and sisters were the children of Joseph by an earlier marriage. After all, their attitude towards Jesus resembles the resentment of older children over the success of the baby of the family. I suppose younger children never resent their eldest brother. Nevertheless, there are a couple of problems with this, irrespective of the lack of evidence.

The Perpetual Virginity of Mary (Part 4 of 4: Cousins)

      St. Jerome is famous as the scholar who produced the Vulgate, the standard Latin translation of the Bible. As such, his other writings became hugely influential. Jerome was a monk particularly obsessed with ascetism: the denial of the pleasures of the flesh. And he had a special animus against marriage, even going so far as to say that St. Peter had wiped out the filth of marriage with the blood of martyrdom. The warmth of married love was outside of his world view; he seems to have no concept of marriage except as a channel for sexual desires. Virginity was the highest virtue, and marriage, according to him, was of value only in producing more virgins. So you may guarantee that he did not take it lightly when another writer contradicted this world view.

The Chancellor in Tears

       "It's enough to make a grown man cry!" That's the sort of thing one would say about the Labour Government in the United Kingdom these days. But recently the world was presented with the spectacle of the second highest officer in the UK cabinet, the chancellor (finance minister), Rachel Reeves bursting into tears in Parliament. To this, The Guardian ran an opinion piece entitled, "Crying in the Commons: why are women's workplace tears a source of shame?" Well, as an ethologist i.e. a zoologist who specialises in behaviour, let me explain.

Coming Up Trumps in America

      I see that the lunatics are still in charge of the asylum over in the U.S. How is it that an advanced democracy like the United States can't put up a better choice than between two flawed characters such as Trump and Harris? In 2016 it was a choice between the mad and the bad. This time it was between the mad and the sad. Nevertheless, as an Australian I was praying for a Trump victory. Anything else was too terrible to contemplate.

Once More: the Moral Panic Over Domestic Violence

      It is hard to believe it is 9½ years since I wrote Why I Didn't Wear a White Ribbon, in which I provided the true statistics for domestic violence in Australia, and put them in perspective. Since then the figures have only got better, but everybody claims they have got worse, and they talk about an "epidemic of domestic violence". 28 women killed by their partners or ex-partners in the first four months of 2024, or one every four days! That certainly sounds like a spectacular increase since last year. Or is it?

Aboriginal Issues

       Despite being an Australian, I have a significant library on the North American Indians, mainly because they had a wider variety of lifestyles to those of our own Aborigines. They were hard done by by the Americans. However, that does not mean that their lifestyles were idyllic. The tribes tended to break down into two categories: the predators and the prey, the latter being the smaller tribes. Constant warfare was the order of the day, sometimes with unimaginable cruelty.

     The Australian Aborigines were also hard done by by white Australians. But that also does not mean that their lives were idyllic.

A Rare Defeat for the Establishment

       2023, and another Australian referendum bites the dust! Australians are wary of changing their Constitution. They know that if they make a mistake, they will never be able to fix it, so if any significant group opposes the referendum, they vote No. And this one was especially egregious. Ignoring the bread-and-butter issues with which the people were really concerned, the Prime Minister had made it his priority to establish an Aboriginal "Voice" to act as an addition to Parliament. It could have been established simply by legislation, but for reasons on which we may speculate, he wanted it in the Constitution. As for the details - its size, the cost, the choosing of its members, and everything else which might interest the population - these were ignored. The great unwashed citizenry were not supposed to know anything as trivial as that before they affirmed their masters' plans. The result was predictable: 61% No to 39% Yes. Just 90 minutes after voting closed in the eastern states, the referendum was declared lost. But that was only half the story. 

The Gospels - Harmonized and Annotated

      This is a work I have been wanting to produce for 57 years. In hindsight, I can see how the information and facilities have been coming in for many decades without any actual planning on my part, but it is only in the last few years that they have all come together. It began when, as a teenager, I attended a Crusader camp in the Blue Mountains, and took along my father's Bible. The publication date was not recorded, but he must have acquired it before the Second World War. More importantly, it contained an appendix, of similar size to the New Testament, entitled Helps to the Study of the Bible, 2nd edition, the first edition having been published in 1890. And in the middle was a Harmony of the Gospels. "What a useful tool!" I thought.

The Tribulations of Peter and John

      Good Friday is again upon us. Seven years ago I discussed the reaction of Pontius Pilate when he found himself, unwillingly and unwittingly on the cusp of history. This time it might be appropriate to examine the actions of two of Jesus' inner circle of disciples, St Peter and St John, at what appears to have been the first time they acted together as a team. The reason for this is that, when reading first hand personal accounts, one thing I've noticed quite frequently is that the really brave men seldom emphasize or make an issue of their own bravery.

Blackwashing

      Over the last few years, I've noticed a peculiar trend in Australian TV ads. They are constantly featuring African Americans. The trouble is, despite the flood of non-white immigration, sub-Saharan Africans - negroes - remain the rarest of racial groups in this country. There are more full blooded Aborigines in Australia than negroes. There are more South Sea Islanders. There are more of every race with the exception of Eskimos and Amerindians. At first it seemed the ads were of big cosmopolitan brands, and were made in the US, but now I see them more and more in ads for Australian companies. I don't know where they get the actors. They are clearly not African Australians.

Blackfellas - and Not-So-Blackfellas

     My tour leader in Kakadu and related areas of the Northern Territory in 1986 was half Aboriginal. "Because my mother is Aboriginal," he told us, "I am able to relate to them. But I would never be considered one of them. I'm khaki coloured."

     "Yellow fellow" is another term they used for mixed bloods. (I myself don't.) Aboriginal society makes distinctions which we whitefellas in the coastal zones fail to see. Nevertheless, in the interest of clarity, I shall now show you what Australian Aborigines look like.

     And in case anyone objects to my use of the term, "blackfella", kindly note that they use it for themselves, and call us "whitefellas", a term which causes no offence. I regard these words as informal terms, like "paleface" and "redskin" - not derogatory, but more likely to be used in informal conversation than in formal essays. Nevertheless, someone was taken to task recently for using the familiar word, "Aborigines" on the ABC. It is getting harder and harder to keep up with political correctness. In any case, here is a series of photos of what Aborigines look like. Make sure you scan down to the end, to see the significance.

Love, Honour, and Obey?

      When I was a boy, I happened to look through one of the women's magazines which turned up in my home, and read the advice column. A woman was complaining that her husband wanted to move to a new house in a new neighbourhood, and she didn't. What should she do? The female columnist provided some suggestions as to how she might get him on side, but she did point out that, as the head of the house, her husband would be the one to make the final decision. Up to then, it had never occurred to me (I was only a child, after all), but it suddenly made perfect sense. That is, after all, what headship means: to make the final decision on important matters.

Did The Pill Really Do All That?

      The sexual revolution has been an unmitigated disaster. Since the oral contraceptive was introduced, there have been more out-of-wedlock pregnancies. Since abortion was legalised, there have been more out-of-wedlock births. The effects on the children have been appalling. Couples who approach marriage on the "try before you buy" principle have a much higher divorce rate. When I was growing up, there were three STDs you needed to know about, and they could be cured by antibiotics. Since then, I have lost count of the number of new STDs, most of which are highly resistant to treatment. One of them can kill you horribly if you don't keep it at bay with very expensive drugs for the rest of your life. The sexual revolution has been a failure even in what it promised. More sexual partners do not equate to more sex. Most sex still occurs in the bond of matrimony, but these bonds are breaking up faster these days. And a commonly expressed opinion is that it all started with the introduction of the contraceptive pill. But did it? I think the truth is far more nuanced.

"Anti-Racism" Comes to Australia.

      Parents beware! Anything which the corruptors of society get away with in America will eventually be introduced into Australia. And the obvious place to introduce it is in the schools, under the radar of the parents. We have already been alerted to the "Safe Schools" abomination, and questions are now being asked about how the new curriculum undermines the national identity. Now we have a three-part ABC  documentary on "The School That Tried to End Racism". No doubt the intentions were good (which is more than can be said for some other teaching programs), but the sum result was to introduce racial tension into an area where it did not previously exist.

We Didn't Need No "Consent" Lessons!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Ireland's Malthusian Apocalypse

     If my great-grandfather had been born in 1846, as his obituary claimed, and not 1844, as he himself had claimed, then it is possible his parents had migrated to England because of the Great Irish Famine. You probably know the essential details: the Irish peasantry had become dependent on the potato - they lived on almost nothing else - and when the potato blight struck, famine and starvation ensued on a previously unimaginable scale. I myself had heard a lot about it, but it was only recently that I read Cecil Woodham-Smith's classic history, The Great Hunger, Ireland 1845-1849, and something leaped out at me which the author herself did not press, and few others have mentioned: the underlaying cause of the disaster was overpopulation. It was a classic case of the Malthusian limit being reached.

America Should Run Elections Like Australia

   Another leap year, another U.S. Presidential election! And, regular as clockwork, allegations of voting irregularities, of varying plausibility, are making the rounds. What is it about Americans? Such allegations practically never occur over here. All right, Australia is probably the gold standard for election procedures, but the allegations are also rare to non-existent in other democracies. Britain and France have both acquired large racial minorities (more fool they!), but one never hears it suggested that they are being "suppressed". Other countries make no issue about voter ID, and I am sure that none of them would tolerate ballot harvesting or election day registration. So what's wrong with America?