{"id":1821,"date":"2016-11-05T10:41:08","date_gmt":"2016-11-05T14:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/?p=1821"},"modified":"2016-11-05T11:42:15","modified_gmt":"2016-11-05T15:42:15","slug":"the-danger-of-bagpiping-scotsmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/?p=1821","title":{"rendered":"Beware Bagpiping Scotsmen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bagpiper\"<\/a>A bag piping Scotsman<\/strong> was recently fined in Montreal for carrying an ‘illegal weapon’, namely, his sgian-duh<\/em>, literally his ‘black’, but more properly his ‘hidden’ knife, tucked into his thick Highland socks. I wondered at the triple standard:\u00a0 Sikhs are permitted by law to carry their own ceremonial daggers, so why not bagpipers?\u00a0 And the police in Montreal are still engaged in their own work defiance, wearing camouflage pants<\/a> to protest a proposed change to their (unrealistic) pension plan, signifying a petulance and a defiance of their own law, unbecoming an officer of said law.<\/p>\n

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This is, as are most things, part of a bigger picture, namely, the selective application of the burdens of law.\u00a0 Saint Thomas states that a promulgated law must be applicable to many, and if it is not proportionately applied in a reasonable way, it ceases to be a just law.\u00a0 One cannot have a curfew, or a ban, or any limitation, for only a select group of people, with some ‘getting away with it’, unless there is clear, a priori<\/em> and verifiable reasons why they should be so limited, such as 13 year olds driving, drinking or voting (and especially not at the same time).<\/p>\n

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So why Sikhs, and not Scots?\u00a0 Are Sikhs naturally more careful, or less prone or random, unpredictable violence, with their daggers?\u00a0 Then again, I suppose Scots are a volatile people, so perhaps should be more rigorously controlled. Next thing you know, they’ll be coming after our claymores…<\/p>\n

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The sad reality is that police, <\/strong>nor any security procedure, can rarely ever stop crimes a priori<\/em>, especially of the random variety.\u00a0 There is a serious side to knives and daggers, as the apparently random horrific killing of an Abbotsford teenager by a random drifter, and the wounding of another student, demonstrate (God rest her soul).\u00a0 How does one protect oneself against such aberrant acts of free will or, more properly, liberum arbitrium<\/em>?\u00a0 The mystery of the human heart, and its capacity for evil, know no limits.\u00a0 Again, as Saint Thomas states, following Aristotle, as\u00a0man\u00a0is the most noble of animals if he be\u00a0perfect\u00a0in\u00a0virtue, so is he the lowest of all, if he be severed from\u00a0law\u00a0and righteousness; because\u00a0man\u00a0can use his\u00a0reason\u00a0to devise means of satisfying his\u00a0lusts\u00a0and\u00a0evil\u00a0passions, which other animals are unable to do<\/em>.\u00a0 The only way to stop such crimes is to instill virtue in the citizens, which is accomplished through the gradual evangelization of the culture through Christian principles of morality. Canadian ‘values’, and ever-greater police presence, cannot stop our descent into mayhem.<\/p>\n

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That is why the upcoming election<\/strong> in the United States, although significant, will not really solve anyone’s problems.\u00a0 The difficulties with our society run deeper than that which can be ‘fixed’ by new laws and policies (although these may help).\u00a0 Again, back to Thomas, who declares that custom<\/em>, our ‘mores’ which flow from our culture, has the force of a\u00a0law, abolishes\u00a0law, and is the interpreter of\u00a0law<\/em>. \u00a0Trump may help instantiate better laws, which will ameliorate our customs, and Clinton will likely vitiate them, but it is ultimately up to us, each individual in the depths of his conscience, to choose between good and evil, truth and falsity, and so live in the light. \u00a0As John Paul II declared in his very first encyclical, that the Church’s focus is upon precisely this man in all the truth of his life, in his conscience, in his continual inclination to sin and at the same time in his continual aspiration to truth, the good, the beautiful, justice and love<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So let us too focus upon each and every ‘this man’ who enters the ambit of our influence.\u00a0 For only such will truth, goodness and light grow, dispelling the darkness that is spreading over our land.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bag piping Scotsman was recently fined in Montreal for carrying an ‘illegal weapon’, namely, his sgian-duh, literally his ‘black’, but more properly his ‘hidden’ knife, tucked into his thick Highland socks. I wondered at the triple standard:\u00a0 Sikhs are permitted by law to carry their own ceremonial daggers, so why not bagpipers?\u00a0 And the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1821"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1825,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821\/revisions\/1825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}