Grey Matter

The Tyranny Of Foreign Aid

An excerpt from the full article:
What is generosity? Perhaps it's best philosophical treatment is found in Aristotle’s “Nichomachean Ethics”, which holds that when generous persons give appropriate things in proper measure at the best times in proper ways and for the appropriate reasons, they do so for the sake for what is divinely beautiful. Generosity, therefore, is a human excellence, and those who develop it as a habit excel as humans. Accordingly, generosity cannot tyrannize.
What is tyranny? Perhaps its most authoritative treatment is found in Aristotle’s “Politics”, which states that tyrants tend to arise when the same person becomes leader of both the people and the military, and then disregards the common interest of his own people unless it happens to coincide with his own. Aristotle asserts that of all forms of government, tyranny is the most dangerous to its subjects, since tyrants make it their purpose to accumulate wealth and to undermine the excellence of others, all of whom they see as rivals. A tyrant is thus incapable of generosity.
It is not always easy or appropriate to be generous. Every decision we make influences the choices and life circumstances of others. When we engage in political activism, we seek to sway public opinion. Organizations for which we volunteer do not always meet our best expectations. Even our purchasing decisions exert influence over the employment opportunities of others. Each choice entails its own set of risks. We are, as Aristotle declared, social and political creatures, bound tougher in a complex socio-political tapestry rendering us responsible to and for each other; meaning that we are always implicitly shaping one another’s lives.
To read the rest of the article visit: https://www.greymatterpodcast.ca/the-tyranny-of-foreign-aid/

The Price of Speech is Not Free

An excerpt from the full article:
Canadians can justifiably demand investigative hearings into government abuse of executive power during the Covid-19 Pandemic. These hearings ought to have occurred long ago, and when they do happen, they will undoubtedly vindicate many Canadians who suffered under
the capricious, authoritarian rule of public health officials. At the core of this investigation must be an inquiry into government campaigns to manipulate public opinion. We know that public officials misrepresented opinion as fact and covertly suppressed contrary opinion, even those expressed by the eminent scientists who crafted The Great Barrington Declaration six months into the Pandemic. The pronouncements of bureaucrats,
Who cared more for their own celebrity and power than truth, went largely unchallenged. This represents an utter failure of Charter guarantees to free speech; a failure which evidences a completely unbridled and expanding Canadian bureaucracy.
It is tempting to think that tyrannical public officials are ultimately to blame for our embarrassing foray into censorship. But if we accept this explanation prima facie, assign scorn, and then move on, we risk ignoring entirely the cultural rot that is far more insidious than any government overreach. It is we Canadians, and not government bureaucrats, who must bear the lion’s share of responsibility for censorship, because we are the last line of defense against the suppression of speech. It is we who have lost sight of or appreciation for the essential right which defines a free and democratic society: the freedom of speech carved out of centuries of bloody conflict and civil discourse
You can read the full essay here: https://www.greymatterpodcast.ca/the-price-of-speech-is-not-free/

The Illusion Of Control: And The Pointless Pain We Suffer To Sustain It

An excerpt from the original article:
Helmut Thielicke was a 20th Century Lutheran theologian who stood between two worlds: academia and the church.
Thielicke was born in 1908 in Barmen, Germany, a boiling pot of cultural and religious upheaval. It was there that Thielicke’s cultural teeth were cut. Following his early schooling, he attended the renowned Gymnasium in Wuppertal, known for its successful graduates and astute teachers. Thielicke was drawn to theology because he perceived it to be the most learned and complex of all disciplines.
He entered the University of Greifswald in 1928 before going to Erlangen to study with Paul Althaus. He later enrolled in the University of Bonn, where the great Professor Karl Barth taught. He concluded his education at the University of Marburg, where he wrote two dissertations for which he received doctorates in both philosophy (1931) and theology (1934).
Like his contemporary, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Thielicke struggled under the Hitlerian regime during the period of conflict between the Confessing Church and the Nazi Party, which essentially put Der Fuhrer at the head of both church and state. Thielicke’s public critiques of Nazism caused his expulsion from a coveted teaching post at Heidelberg in 1940, where he had taught since 1936. Bishop Wurm aided Thielicke by ordaining him in 1941, and he served quietly as lecturer and pastor at Stuttgart for the remainder of the War.
As a theological professor, Thielicke exhibited the remarkable ability to communicate effectively with both the German academy and laity alike. He was not a theological reformer who sought to change the face of Christianity or the structure of society. He was not at all concerned with politics, except to the extent that they interfered with the work of the church. He was however keenly concerned with updating the language of theology so that it addressed and inspired people from all walks of life.
Thielicke quickly resumed his post-war professional career in August of 1945. He joined the faculty in Tubingen, where he remained until 1954, before resigning to join the newly formed theological faculty at the University of Hamburg. In his writings of that period, he took on the complex dilemmas and perplexing problems which Germans faced in their families, churches, institutions and government.
He strove to set forth theological and ethical premises for living within the new German milieu. Thielicke’s most popular sermonic work is called “The Waiting Father” (1959). This treatise is a book of sermons on the parables of Jesus, including a prescient exposition on the parable of the Seed Growing Secretly, in which he both reflects upon the scientific arrogance of the early Cold War era and presages the current 21st century globalist agenda: (at page 84)
“Now, what will this human voice say?"
To read the full article visit: https://www.greymatterpodcast.ca/the-illusion-of-control/

Slaying The Tarantula: Is Nationalism The Antidote To Leftist Tyranny?

An excerpt from the full article:
The main goal of the left in any discourse is first to stake out their faux moral high ground. Regardless of the issue under discussion or how absurd their arguments are, it is pivotal for them to assert the claim of unassailable “virtue”. From that perch, like a great poisonous spider, they project sanctimonious venom condemning the inherent evils of all recalcitrants and their conspiratorial views.
It is equally essential to realize that leftists do not actually care about any of their championed people or causes. Once these aggrieved groups or special interests are no longer useful, then they are unceremoniously cast aside. Leftists are first and foremost, hypocrites. Their alleged concerns are but a veneer from behind which they shamelessly exploit the suffering of others (which they cause) as political currency. Put simply, if the left did not employ a double-standard, then they would have no standard at all.
From Covid-19 to climate hysteria and radical gender ideology, race baiting, cries on behalf of minorities, the radical feminist agenda, or insistence upon distributive justice for the poor and underprivileged, the cause of today is contradicted by their behaviour tomorrow. Leftists only care whether such realignments and treachery advance their political agendas and personal fortunes, which are their sole motivation. Anyone or anything in their path must be ideologically annihilated.
To read the article in it's entirety visit: https://www.greymatterpodcast.ca/slaying-the-tarantula/

Out From The Shadows: Could Christian Nationalism Be The Antidote to Globalist Tyranny?

An excerpt from the written article:
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, Socrates paints a striking portrait of people chained from birth deep in a cave by the neck and legs so that they can only see the dark wall inside the cave. Consequently, they only “know” the shadows cast by firelight behind them on the blackened wall of the cave. There are others: unchained “puppet masters”, who manipulate their manacled prisoners. Some puppet masters carry objects, such as a sword, between the fire and their captives and utter the word “sword” when its shadow flits across the rear wall of the cave. Since those in bondage never see an actual sword, they come to associate the word “sword” with the apparition projected upon the black cave walls.
The same is true for all objects; thus, they do not even know what their own words mean. The word “sword” actually means a sharpened metallic weapon, but the prisoners imagine it is a fleeting shadow dancing across the cave wall. Conditioned from birth in this way, the prisoners do not even realize that they are in a cave nor have any concept of what a cave is. They therefore cannot conceive that they are prisoners in a captive reality. Their “reality” is an insubstantial parade of shadows dancing before their eyes. The “puppet masters” have kept them in a state of complete illusion about both themselves and the world.
When the antagonist, Glaucon, says that these are strange prisoners, Socrates retorts “they are like us.” We are the prisoners in the cave. The fact that Glaucon finds the image alien shows that he does not know himself. He may even think himself free, but he too is a prisoner in a cave being manipulated by puppet masters. He cannot even imagine the kind of prisoner he is, let alone the extent of his slavery. Plato’s allegory is not a strange fancy. It is meant to describe the human condition. We have no idea what reality is. We do not even know the meanings of our own words. This has never been more true than it is today.
The point of Plato’s allegory is that tyranny is the rule rather than the exception. Indeed, history chronicles that tyranny is the homeostatic state of humanity. After all, Plato did not reside under Sparta’s military dictatorship, but in Athens, the inaugural democracy, populated by glorious minds such as Pericles, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Pythagoras, and more. If even Athens in the golden age of Greece was a disguised tyranny, then tyranny itself is prevalent. It is not as though there is tyranny over there in China but we are free here in Canada. The nature of the control may differ, but the methods of authoritarianism are so diabolical that Canadians who fancy themselves fortunate citizens of the “True North Strong & Free” are so deluded that they do not even feel the chains rattling at their necks.
The WOKE puppet masters in government, big corporate, news media, social media, and Hollywood are so arrogant that if you ask too many questions (like some of us have done), you are censored, or worse. You are told what to think. You do not want to be a Covid or climate catastrophe denier, do you? That can only win you one or all of the leftist labels such as “racist”, “misogynist”, “islamophobe”, “transphobe”, “conspiracy theorist”, or “misinformant”. These terms are now equivalent to murderers and rapists in attracting public scorn. You do not want any trouble; so you announce your pronouns, you call Kaitlin Jenner a “she”, and go along to get along. You deny what you know to be true until truth itself has no meaning. It is just another shadow flickering along the wall of the cave.
We once thought we knew what a woman was, but now we have an Ontario shop teacher with 80 inch prosthetic breasts and a blond wig whose asserted right to be called a woman trumps all reason. He knows that he is not a woman, but we are still expected to all play along. Everything is play acting now. We used to know what bo

Modern Canadian Censorship: Should We Be Concerned?

An excerpt from the full essay:
Censorship is typically considered to be the removal or blocking of information, speech, or expression. It includes self-censorship, which is when individuals or organizations limit what they say for fear of repercussions. Historically, repressive governments have often shut down or silenced media sources, legislation has prevented journalists from freely reporting the truth, and those who did speak out were imprisoned or killed. In Canada, censorship is more often subtle than overt. It can take the form of muzzling scientists, refusing activists entry into Canada, book seizures at the border, and libel chill. The common denominator is that free voices are silenced.
Free expression and press freedom in Canada face bigger threats than ever. Journalists are unable to protect their confidential sources, public interest stories are not told, reporters are removed from prime ministerial media scrums, and journalists lose their jobs for publishing pieces that criticize government policy. National security agencies have greater access to our private data than ever before, without any oversight to protect our rights. Many journalists are routinely spied upon by police.
Censorship has followed the free expression of men and women like a shadow throughout history. The origin of the term “censor” is traced to the office of censor created in ancient Rome, around 443 BC. Just as in ancient Grecian communities, the Roman ideal of good governance included shaping the character of the people. Censorship was thus regarded as an honorable task. In China, the first censorship law was made over 1,700 years ago, and it is still a basic feature of Chinese society today.
To read the full essay visit: https://www.greymatterpodcast.ca/modern-canadian-censorship/

Five Lessons From My Father

An Excerpt from the full article:
Albert Einstein once quipped that there are only three ways to influence others: (1) Example; (2) Example; & (3) Example. The following are five lessons from my father. They are presented here in order of ascending importance.
Here is an excerpt from the eulogy given at the funeral of my late father
(1) TAKE RESPONSIBILITY
When I was 10 years old, my father noticed that I was an early riser. I had a terrible habit of waking everyone up in the house, especially on weekends. My family is still tormented by this proclivity. I have always been restless. Dad called this "having ants in my pants". That gave me a great idea about how to make fun of my eldest brother, Lance. Ants, France, Dance, Lance, etc. One day, I made the mistake of asking my father about this cool thing that the other kids at school were talking about.
Apparently, there was something called "an allowance", by which sorcery children actually got $ from their parents through the application of some childhood version of socialism. When I asked for an allowance, my father's response was one that will be both familiar and ominous to my siblings: he said "we'll see". A few days later, I was rousted out of bed on a July morning at 6 a.m. Dad was careful to get to me before even I awakened. Bleary eyed, he led me to the sidewalk outside of our rented duplex in Kensington.
There were newspapers, and I was to deliver them. Dad explained how this was done, and for the first two days, he walked the route with me and we delivered the newspapers. This was fun; the best part was just being with my dad. It felt special to have alone time with your Dad in a house filled with 5 kids. On the third day, I got up on my own. Dad was not around. I went to wake him up. He said that as of today, I was on my own. If I wanted $, I would need to deliver those papers every day, rain or shine. I would have to collect the $ from customers.
All of the profit would be mine. He did not force me to deliver those papers. He gave me the choice. I kept delivering those papers and came to fancy myself rather an Elon Musk. One day, I decided to show off to my friends by flashing all of the $ I had collected from customers to my friends at the local arcade. They were so impressed. I was on a real high, until I noticed on the way home that all of the $ was gone. I had not yet paid the Sun for the papers I delivered, and had no $ to pay for them.
I had a sort of Justin Trudeau approach to fiscal matters back then. Knees were trembling and palms were sweating when I told my dad. It was like walking down death row. He was not above spanking, especially when it was deserved. Dad would go for that belt like Burt Lancaster went for his gun as Wyatt Earp in "Gunfight at OK Corral", one of Dad's faves within his favorite movie genre.
I thought that I was really going to get it—and I did. But not the spanking. He paid the Sun but then made me pay him back. Every cent. For two months, I was working for the man, just like Roy Orbison. There was no profit. Just debt. This was lesson #1: Take Responsibility. I have never forgotten this, and it guides me in my business and private life to this very day.
To read the whole thing you can visit: https://www.greymatterpodcast.ca/five-lessons-from-my-father/

Drag Race To Dictatorship

An Excerpt From The Full Article:
Is Justin Trudeau grooming us to expect hypocrisy?
“Hypocrisy in anything whatever May deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.”
- Leo Tolstoy
While on a French-Canadian television show earlier this year, Justin Trudeau lamented that there were still people in this country who are “fiercely against vaccination, who do not believe in science, they are often misogynistic, also often racists…it is a small group that muscles in. And we have to make a choice, in terms of leaders, in terms of the country. Do we tolerate these people?”
Among ‘these people’ are about 7 million well-informed Canadians who refused to participate in an experimental drug trial, even if it cost them their jobs. Also among them were the peacefully protesting Truckers whom Trudeau reviled, refusing so much as to meet with them to address their concerns. He suspended the civil liberties of an entire country in order to invoke state violence against them over a medical choice. He froze their bank accounts.
He seized their property. He arrested a 49 year old Métis grandmother and persecuted her for many months. While testifying under oath at the recent inquiry into use of this Draconian law, Trudeau explained that he did it all to protect us. He only regrets not getting more people injected with the experimental Covid-19 drugs that are now widely known to be ineffective and to cause grievous injury and even sudden death to otherwise healthy men, women, and children:
“Every heartbreaking story I hear of a family who sat beside the bed of a loved one who died because they believed the vaccines were more dangerous than the disease, I take personally, because I wish I could have done more to convince people to get vaccinated.”
- Justin Trudeau, Public Order Emergency Commission
Continue reading this article here: https://www.greymatterpodcast.ca/drag-race-to-dictatorship/

Bully Boy - Alberta Responds to the Trudeau Agenda

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Remember that scene in “A Christmas Story” when little Ralphie finally decides that he is tired of running from and being pushed around by big, bad, Scut Farkas? After years of torment at the hands of this bully, Ralphie finally has had enough. He decides to reverse course on the fight or flight response and something inside just snaps.
Before he can even realize what has occurred, he is on top of Farkas, hailing punches down upon the prostate villain, who is lying on his back, sobbing and screaming for mercy. The scene reveals what we have always known, and what our parents used to teach us in less gynocentric times: that bullies are all cowards, and if you stand up to them and bloody their noses a little, it is likely as not that they will leave you alone or even run away.
Justin Trudeau is Alberta’s Scut Farkas.
It all started back in 2010:
Of course, this was a mere prelude to a kiss. The full brunt of his Scut Farkas assault upon Alberta was all yet to come, awaiting only Trudeau’s rise to power in 2015. Since then, he has repeatedly emerged from behind his rotted out fence in Ottawa to invoke various forms of political violence upon Albertans. The resulting barrage has been both punishing and constant. In no particular order...
To read the full article visit: https://www.greymatterpodcast.ca/bully-boy/

Accountability Before Amnesty

An excerpt from the full essay:
A century ago, Adolf Hitler noted that ‘the receptivity of the masses is quite limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few select points and must harp upon these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want them to understand by your slogan.” Today, Leftists lie and hope that our attention spans are short, as do their media allies. Recently, “The Atlantic” published an article advocating for a “pandemic amnesty”, stating that we need to forgive each other because we were all in the dark about Covid. This is pure, unadulterated sophistry.
We were not at all in the dark. The mass media, social media, big Pharma, big corporate, and big government all conspired to violate our freedoms and destroy the lives of Canadians. This occurred not because these evil forces were ignorant or uncertain about the true threat that COVID posed to our health and safety; but instead because we were emphatically told that such tyrannical policies as eliminating church services, closing businesses, and imposing vaccine mandates would save lives. There was no ambiguity or conflation about what slogans were being propagandized or for what reasons.
With inflation raging nationwide, grocery and energy bills sky-rocketing, carbon taxes escalating, and an economy teetering on the brink of stagflation due to the Trudeau government’s disastrously incompetent COVID policies, we are still being told daily by witnesses at the Emergencies Act inquiry in Ottawa that COVID deniers are a threat to democracy. What about the damage to democracy and to our rights and liberties caused by the COVID lockdowns? The destruction of democracy and the erosion of social trust was far more dangerous during the pandemic lockdowns than a virus that only kills .04% of the population.
Moreover, if the future of democracy rests upon the next generation, then the lockdowns caused extraordinary harm to the developing minds and lives of Canadian children. This does not yet begin to address the propaganda being pushed in our public schools; however, plummeting mathematics ability and reading comprehension directly attributable to COVID lockdown hysteria will have generational impacts, the societal costs of which we must expect to be both profound and dire.
To read the full article visit: https://www.greymatterpodcast.ca/accountability-before-amnesty/