Everybody knows the old idiom about death and taxes being always with us but it could not be more true than today. I put taxes before death here simply for the organization of my post, but surely, taxes occur before, during, and after life.
Price inflation, the hidden tax in plain view, is raging. Who knew that stopping production and interrupting supply chains while passing around trillions in newly created money would cause price inflation? Anyone with any knowledge of Austrian economics knew. But even an old conservative like Peter Hitchens can say “This economic crisis isn’t down to war… it’s the bill for our Covid panic – just as I foresaw.” Add a shoot yourself foreign policy to cause additional disarray in the productive economy of the West leading us to the verge of a catastrophe.
Not to call out my virtue, I don’t really know how to pray properly, but I do regularly pray for the sick and for those who have passed. Lately folks are passing from the first category to the second. The three examples, TY, DK and MK, were elderly and had full lives. Thankfully, I don’t know a young person who has died from vaccine induced myocarditis.
TY, was a close friend of my brother. Into his nineties he was still as strong as an ox and piloting his plane. Fear of Covid caused him to stop doing what he loved, hanging around the airport and flying with his friends. He was a prisoner of propaganda in the last two years before he died.
DK was the mother of one of my best friends and college roommate. She led a long happy life and was suffering from more and more dementia such that her son took her passing as a blessing. I remember well that she sent us regular care packages of meatballs and sauce keeping to her Italian heritage. A feminist might take her life, rather her CV, and conclude she accomplished nothing. Yet DK was a person who brought happiness through nurturing care, like those packages, to everyone who came in contact with her for decades. I certainly cannot have more admiration than I had for her.
MK is Mary Kochan. Mary had been battling cancer for sometime. She was part of a small internet community that came together following Jordan Peterson. Eulogies from this community have appeared on the YouTube channels the Meaning Code, the Quality Existence, and from Paul Vanderklay. Mary was a committed Catholic Christian, well-read with a razor sharp mind. I have mentioned her work in previous articles (here and here) quoted below.
“The wise YouTube grandmother, Mary Kochan, has done a podcast series on raising chickens and on how to be a good husband to the earth (e.g., animal husbandry). Working with wood or metal, and machines will be helpful to yourself and your neighbors. Being a good neighbor is truly the best way to be a good citizen.”
“But there are also conservative critiques of the social/political/economic history of the industrial revolution and laissez faire capitalism. About 100 years ago G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc in his book The Servile State, presented a similarly negative view of capitalism while proposing the distributist economic system of small holders of capital. I recommend the YouTube channel of Mary Kochan who has explained the potential blessings of a distributist economy in a series of podcasts.”
I appeared on Mary’s channel to discuss economics and Natural Law (see the comments of the Bionic Mosquito here). Mary is a person whose very existence brought solace; someone I felt was on my side of the great social and political divide. She had a deep understanding of the real world, a world of husbands, children, work, growing plants, raising animals, all grounded on a bedrock of faith. As far as I know, she did not have much formal higher education, yet could debate on the highest level with professional intellectuals. She will be truly missed by me.
May TY, DK and MK rest in peace.
