Trying to Speak the Sweet Sounds of Human Liberation

Yesterday, King Charles III showed up in person in Ottawa to wave his magic royal wand over Mark Carney’s kleptocratic conquest of the Kingdom of Canada. Here is my critical response.

Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me

I once was lost but now am found

I was blind but now I see

What were those sweet sounds of grace that saved a wretch like me, that caused this wretch to be found and to overcome blindness?

Those sweet sounds of God’s grace might be musical. But I picture the sweet sounds as well-conceived sequences of words that become the basis of saving grace.

In the beginning there was the word. To be able to speak with words is truly miraculous. This gift has dangers as well as blessings. Words are like fire. They can do much good and they can to do stupendous damage.

Gradually the speaking of words created the basis for many forms of writing. Then came the ingenious innovation of a system of writing based on symbols used to depict sounds. What do pictures of sounds look like? Such pictures are all around us. As the name implies, the invention of the phonetic alphabet is usually attributed to the Phoenicians.

The mysterious comings and goings of the Phoenicians on the sea lanes and colonial outposts of the Mediterranean run through the enormous body of work by the ever-controversial Miles Mathis.

https://mileswmathis.com/phoenper.pdf

With literacy in reading and writing come many advantages and opportunities. Subtack is one of those places full of practitioners devoted to reading and writing as the root of much knowledge, art, and networking. Writing has a number of advantages over speaking.

Writing creates a permanent record whereas talking in the days before audio and video recording happened in-the-moment. Words disappeared into the either unless a written transcript was captured. Writing can be altered and edited by the author whereas once words come out of the mouths of speakers, nothing that is said can ever be taken back. We live with the consequences of what we say.

Nevertheless the sweetness and grace of the spoken word, where thought first becomes incarnate in articulated sound, can sometimes stir the heart and soul. Sometimes words can even be stretched to enact the redemption of sinners, even of wretches like me.

I love the arts and science of writing. The process is often therapeutic for me. For this wretch my writing about history and contemporary politics became a ticket to an academic career. Such careers often involve a lot of public speaking, often in the format of lectures.

With secularization, preaching and sermons evolved into lectures often delivered at universities. Unfortunately, universities are becoming places where major obstacles are often put in the way of free speaking and writing.

Like the majority of contributors at Substack, most of my effort has been going into writing. In the bullet-point frenzy of these tumultuous times, however, there is less and less patience for reading long items. Concurrently, many people, including me, make more time available to enjoy the sweet sounds of speakers whose video talk often includes telling body language. More and more during these early decades of the twenty-first century, video production on the Internet is becoming a core cultural currency and a mainstay of public discourse.

In recent weeks I have felt the urge to communicate in the form of video speech from my home base here in southern Alberta. I feel a strong need to give verbal expression to the thundering of ideas going on in my head.

This recent mental thundering began with the initiation of Trump’s second term as President. I was surprised to hear his premonitions of Canada’s transformation into the 51st US State. Then came Canada’s national election.

As events unfolded I chronicled here on Substack the abusive and illegal manipulation of the institution of the Canadian Crown to bring about the truly weird transition of power from Justin Trudeau to Mark Carney. Then yesterday, King Charles III showed up in person in Ottawa to wave his magic royal wand over Mark Carney’s kleptocratic conquest of the Kingdom of Canada.

Yesterday, as the King of Canada was reading Mark Carney’s Speech from the Throne, I was presented with a very neat video platform to give voice to a flood of observations on the topic of the sudden clash in Canada over competing concepts of sovereignty. The platform is Peyton Askari’s regular webcast, “In Lay Terms.” My thanks go to Mr. Askari and to Hannah Luise who played a behind-the-scenes role in setting up the forum where I attempted to come up with some sweet sounds of human liberation.