The punishing penal sentences meted to two groups of protestors – a group of pro-lifers who blocked an abortuary, as well as those who wandered through the Capitol on ‘January 6’ – are indicative: People – at least, the ‘wrong’ sorts of people – with no weapons, nor prior criminal records, and who caused no bodily harm to anyone, have been handed down near-life-long prison sentences, harsher than those meted out to rapists and murderers with rap sheets as long as your leg.
What gives?
Totalitarian regimes, aspects of which are already infecting the United States and Canada, always have a shaky and uncertain hold on their authority. There are two reasons for this: They know the vast majority of the populace despise them, so whatever governance they have must be coerced, rather than elicited, as would be the case were their authority legitimate, or at least legitimately exercised. And many of the laws that they put in place and enforce are manifestly evil, which, again, most of the populace recognizes, and, again, despises.
Hence, they must increasingly impose their rule with ‘vim et metum‘ – ‘force and fear’, as Saint Thomas would put it. Machiavelli said it’s better to be feared than loved, but if all you have is fear…Well, that is why they can brook no dissent, even of the moderate sort. Those who do so must be made an example of, pour encourager les autres. Curious, as an aside, that the sentence imposed on the pro-life protestors was handed down on the Beheading of John the Baptist, who lost his head to an inebriated and infatuated adulterer, but who, in doing so, gained his soul for God. There is a bit of Herod in all of us, but also something of John the Baptist, and it all hinges on which one wins out.
Examples abound of such Herods, weak, flaccid, corrupt leaders, veritable mediocrities or worse, who would never be chosen to lead a lemonade stand in real life, but who maintain their positions by raw power – which is not the same thing as authority. As Nero advised, they pay their legions of subservient police and soldiers well. But woe unto them if these latter start to see the truth, and turn against the hand that feeds them.
Now our own Trudeau here in the Dominion of Canada is about to enforce his censorship law, so that even saying or writing the ‘wrong’ thing could land you in the slammer – or, what may be worse, ‘re-education’ camp, a la Jordan Peterson, who of course will not go, for he has the resources to refuse to comply – but many do not.
But they can’t put everyone in jail, or in white-walled brainwashing compounds, and eventually all such tottering regimes fall. This, either by their own inherent contradictions, or by fomenting the conditions for revolution, or, as is often the case, both. As Christ prophesied, a house divided against itself cannot stand. But the Church is built on solid rock, and will withstand what floods and storms there be.
So stay strong and steadfast, and resist, dear reader, in the ark of salvation, the holy Catholic Church. By our own strength, we’d be like a flimsy can of woke beer, crushable with the least whisper of force. Most of us are like Thomas More, not the stuff of which martyrs are made. But by the grace of God, we are able, and capable, of far more than we may think.