Link Byfield on what progressive parties want

He writes:

But before going further, let’s define “progressivism.”
Quite simply, it’s the assumption that government should get bigger.
This is not how the progressive parties themselves think of it it. They’d say they just want government to become more compassionate, more green, more fair, more feminist, more helpful. But it’s how a very astute retired McMaster political scientist, Janet Azjenstat, defined it in her useful 2003 book “The Once and Future Canadian Democracy.”
Progressivists take it for granted, she explained, that whatever governments are already doing, it is not enough. They must move forward and take and spend more of our money – to register our guns, restrict our speech, protect our self-esteem, choose our television programs, schedule our surgeries, raise our children, plan industrial strategies, eradicate sexism, save the planet, nurture our culture, and address the root causes of crime. And it is never enough. There are always more problems to solve, and it is always government’s responsibility to do it.
Progressivists argue about which specific problems matter most, but they solidly agree on the underlying point – that the primary duty of the state is to solve a never-ending series of problems.

Great video on the U.S. Election

I love this guy. Too bad Barack Obama wasn't sitting under this guy's pastor.

Laughing out loud about Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder

I felt bummed out all day yesterday about the American election, but for some reason, I am light-hearted, even laughing this morning. And what has me laughing out loud is the way Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder have become icons. In the National Post there's a little headline saying Joe is thinking of a country music career in Nashville. Just struck me as funny. Only in America. Then, in the cornucopia of great posts today over at HillBuzz, there's Tito the Builder telling the media off for its pro-Obama bias.

HillBuzz also has video of Joe the Plumber showing up at a Palin rally.

This is happy warrior stuff. It's fun. It's gaining traction. It will be what people remember about this campaign long after it's over.

Also HillBuzz has started playing a card of her own whenever someone plays the race card. Again more laughs. Head on over and enjoy her site, and send a little money so she can go to Ohio this weekend and work with Hillary Democrats to secure a McCain/Palin victory.

And HillBuzz notes that no one is paying much attention to Obama's 30 minute "big brother" like infomercial. Heh heh heh.

Anti-Christian bigotry gets a pass

Ezra Levant is all fired up about new evidence of anti-Christian bigotry on the part of the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

He writes:

Comrade Andreachuk's rationale is a smokescreen, of course. It's made up -- just like the rest of the crap that HRCs publish as "rulings". It's not jurisprudence; it's not coherent; it pretends to adhere to precedent, but it clearly doesn't. It's legal mumbo-jumbo to cover up the bald political fact here: Comrade Andreachuk thinks it's fine to call for the murder of Christians. And this same anti-Christian bigot sentenced Rev. Boissoin to a lifetime of silence about his faith.

Don't get me wrong: I don't think that the filth in Music World should be illegal. I don't think it quite rises to the criminal code standard of hate speech; I don't think it quite meets the test of incitement to murder. But I wonder if, instead of saying "Kill the Christian", it said "Kill the Jews" or "Kill the Blacks" or "Kill the gays". You could imagine Comrade Andreachuk going nuclear. Well, no need to imagine -- just look at what she did to Rev. Boissoin for merely preaching peacefully.

Let's state the obvious. The human rights industry is full of ani-Christian bigots like Comrade Andreachuk. I am unaware of a single non-Christian ever being convicted of a hate speech offense -- certainly none have been at the federal CHRC. But the HRCs pick on Christians like a bully pulling the wings off of flies, roughing up Toronto's Fr. Alphonse de Valk; the Christian Heritage Party; Calgary's Bishop Fred Henry; and, no doubt, a dozen other martyrs who quietly paid off their tormentors with some sort of plea bargain.

There is another bigotry that is increasingly getting a pass, and is extremely worrisome to me. That's misogyny.

We saw it in the treatment of Hillary Clinton during the primaries and we're seeing it in the treatment of Sarah Palin. For example, an effigy of Palin is hanging by a noose in West Hollywood and despite complaints, authorities are treating it like a artistic Halloween display. But of course, instances of Barack Obama effigies are quickly denounced and removed.

Everyone should abhor effigies of black men hanging because of the horribly legacy of lynchings in the American south.

But horrible, horrible things are being done against women all over the world and the Left is silent. And misogyny has become integral to rap lyrics that treat women as bitches and hoes and sexual objects to be denigrated, used and despised.

I think Palin gets a double whammy because she is a Christian and a woman.

All conservatives must read this post by Joseph Ben-Ami

The whole post is at his site. Here's an excerpt:

High spending and high taxes, failing schools, a shortage of doctors and nurses, human rights commissions run amok, family breakdown, the assault on community standards…the list goes on and on. These problems are not isolated from one another. They are symptoms of a government colossus that has become so bloated and so all-powerful that it literally cannot help but interfere in the smallest of decisions that we make on behalf of ourselves and our families, often with disastrous consequences.

Liberal statism is the common foe of both fiscal and social conservatives, as well as traditionalist and libertarian conservatives. Our common goal, therefore, should be to reduce the size of government and restrain its power. Our reasons for wanting to accomplish this may differ, but all are equally valid.

Fiscal conservatives may believe that big government slows economic growth and jeopardizes prosperity; social conservatives may believe that big government undermines family and church; traditionalists might add, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn observed, that the line separating good and evil runs through the heart of every man, and that power concentrated in any individual or group of individuals is, therefore, an invitation to despotism; libertarians may believe that absent a compelling reason otherwise, the sole arbiter of personal behaviour ought to be the individual.

Regardless of what intellectual path we conservatives travel, the point of intersection for all branches of the conservative movement is a shared commitment to small government. Everything flows from there.

David Horowitz tries to wake Hitchens out of his trance

I have loved reading Christopher Hitchens on the war the West is engaged in. I have loved his moral clarity. But then, I used to love visiting Andrew Sullivan's blog everyday, back when he made some sense. But both of them are supporting Obama and suffering from variations of a derangement disorder. It seems Sullivan contracted Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) over Bush's opposition to gay marriage and since then, Sullivan's mental acuity and rationality has declined markedly. His BDS has morphed into a full-blown case of Palin Derangement Syndrome (PDS).

Well Christopher Hitchens seemed to have an immunity to BDS, but he has contracted an acute case of PDS so severe that he has chucked all his common sense on the war with radical fascist jihadists and endorsed Obama.

David Horowitz has written a wake up plea to Hitchens that is a must read (it was hard to pick an excerpt because it is all so good).

Instead, Hitchens suggests that with Palin “the contempt for science may be something a little more sinister… She is known to favor the teaching of creationism in schools….” Well, not exactly. As Hitchens himself explains, she has not advocated imposing Creationism on the schools. She merely wants to “smuggle” the doctrine through the door in “the innocent disguise of ‘teaching the argument.’” Oh. She wants students to be made aware of the discussion over evolution, whereas Hitchens wants the fact that some members of the scientific community believe in Intelligent Design to be suppressed – and this in the name of “knowledge and learning”!

Hitchens is normally able to make the sharpest distinctions, but this ability is strikingly absent from these electoral ruminations. Perhaps his instincts have been blunted by the new company he is keeping among the bigoted hysterics of the political left, to whom distinctions appear as mere distractions from the righteous Path of Truth. “The Republican Party s has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic, and a proud boastful ignoramus,” writes Hitchens, adding that on November 4, those who care for the Constitution and reason will “repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.” The wickedness and stupidity are more aptly reflected in baseless, mean-spirited remarks like this.

Anti-God is not great either, Christopher. While you refuse to cut Governor Palin slack in an election season, look at the gaping latitude you provide to her opponents. Obama’s election (should it come to pass) will not put him a heartbeat away from the presidency but anoint him commander-in-chief. This makes your burden of responsibility that much greater, particularly since as a man of the left you understand exactly who Obama is.

Some years ago, you wrote a memorable book about Bill Clinton called No One Left To Lie To. When you wrote it, you shared many of Clinton’s political agendas but parted ways with him over his moral corruption. Your defection turned on the issue of presidential character. You were repelled by Clinton’s easy ways with the truth. But Obama’s lies make Clinton’s pale by comparison.

Consider that Obama’s closest counselor and spiritual guide over a twenty year period is a racist kook, a Jew-hating, terrorist-loving acolyte of Farrakhan. When confronted with this fact, Obama responded he had no idea who Jeremiah Wright really was. What Clinton lie comes close to that in brazen coolness? Or this one: My name is Barack Hussein Obama; I grew up the son of a Muslim father and went to a Muslim school in an Islamic state, but I wasn’t raised as a Muslim – I’ve always been a Christian. I do not believe being raised as a Muslim should matter. But I believe the lie should.

Keepin' it real, Obama style, according to The Anchoress

She writes:

People are hoping to get the LA Times to release the tape it is holding - is refusing to release in order to protect Obama (can you even believe I’m writing that sentence in America?) - but you know, we don’t really need it to learn who Obama is. His actions speak volumes. For all his dodginess, all his unreleased medical reports, all of his his unreleased transcripts, all his votes of “present” and smooth evasions, Obama has effectively shown us who he is; all that is needed is for the twinkle-dust to be rubbed out from the eyes, to see it.

He’s the guy who lets his auntie live in a slum and tells her to keep silent until after the election, while he’s lecturing Joe the Plumber about “sharing the wealth” and talking at his rallies about the “selfishness” of those who disagree with his policies.

He’s the guy who does not talk to the press anymore, takes no questions, and expects only softballs and agreement.

He’s the guy who spends over half a billion dollars to win an election because he could not keep his word about public funding. He wants to ’share the wealth’ and he wants to talk about ‘fairness’ - but he doesn’t have any moral qualms about outspending his opponent by $518 million, thanks to a dishonorable flip-flop which - it must be said - his GOP opponent did not copy.

He’s a guy who spends half a billion dollars on electioneering while talking about how to help the poor and the downtrodden. Note - he does not share his wealth. Someday he’ll drive past those downtrodden and give them a thumbs up for keeping it real, as they stand in their lines full of “shared” discomfort.

Bill Clinton you gotta love him

Bill Clinton suddenly showed up to undermine, I mean, campaign with Barack Obama in the final days of the campaign. ABC News Jack Tapper reports:

Clinton's explanations of why Obama is qualified were interesting, to say
the least.

"You know what he did?" Clinton said, heralding Obama's reaction
to the financial crisis. "First he took a little heat for not saying much. I
knew what he was doing. He talked to his advisers – he talked to my economic
advisers, he called Hillary. He called me. He called Warren Buffet. He called
all those people, you know why? Because he knew it was complicated and before he
said anything he wanted to understand."

Got that?

"If we have not learned anything we have learned that we need a president that wants to understand and who can understand," Clinton said.

Thank heaven the Clintons were there to help Obama understand!"The second thing - and this meant more to me than anything else, and I haven't cleared this with him and he may even be mad at me for saying this so close to the election - but I know what else he said to his economic advisers - he said, 'Tell me what the right thing to do is. What's the right thing for America? Don't tell me what's popular, you tell me what's right, I'll figure it out and sell it.' Clinton's explanations of why Obama is
qualified were interesting, to say the least.

"You know what he did?" Clinton said, heralding Obama's reaction to the financial crisis. "First he took a little heat for not saying much. I knew what he was doing. He talked to his advisers – he talked to my economic advisers, he called Hillary. He called me. He called Warren Buffet. He called all those people, you know why? Because he knew it was complicated and before he said anything he wanted to
understand."

Got that?

"If we have not learned anything we have learned that we need a president that wants to understand and who can understand," Clinton said.

Thank heaven the Clintons were there to help Obama understand!"The second thing - and this meant more to me than anything else, and I haven't cleared this with him and he may even be mad at me for saying this so close to the election - but I know what else he said to his economic advisers - he said, 'Tell me what the right thing to do is. What's the right thing for America? Don't tell me what's popular, you tell me what's right, I'll figure it out and sell it.'

(Hat tip National Review`s Corner)

Lots of good stuff at the Corner this morning

National Review Online`s the Corner is a recommended stop for thoughtful insights about the U.S. election.

John Hood explains why Obama still does not get what it means to be a collectivist redistributionist aka socialist. And it seems that those who believe governments should be the source of social justice and compassion (about two thirds of Canada`s population voted for parties that hold this view) also need this simplified lesson. As Hood`s post, excerpted below shows, we need to develop civil society and intervening institutions so that strong families inculcate virtues, as do churches and other religious institutions, so that people will support charities and other efforts to improve the common good--through their formed consciences and free choice. That is a truly generous society. Hood writes:

Speaking in front of a huge audience at downtown Raleigh rally yesterday,
Barack Obama threw off a humorous line about John McCain's accusation that the
Obama tax plan is redistributionist:

McCain has “called me a socialist for wanting to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class,” Obama said. “I don’t know what’s next. By the end of the week he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten.”

Ha ha.

Only, in this passage Obama revealed precisely why he is vulnerable to such charges: he can't seem to tell the difference between a gift and a theft. There is nothing remotely socialistic or communistic about sharing. If you have a toy that someone else wants, you have three choices in a free society. You can offer to trade it for
something you value that is owned by the other. You can give the toy freely, as
a sign of friendship or compassion. Or you can choose to do neither.

Collectivism in all its forms is about taking away your choice. Whether you wish to or not, the government compels you to surrender the toy, which it then redistributes to someone that government officials deem to be a more worthy owner. It won't even be someone you could ever know, in most cases.

Dispatch from Obama country

Ed Whelan captures some of what I am thinking about Obama:

In the abstract, given the long and terrible history of slavery and
institutionalized racism in much of the country, it will be a wonderful and
glorious thing when the citizens of the United States elect our first black
president. For that reason, if I believed that the cases for two competing
presidential candidates—one black, the other white—were reasonably close, I
would eagerly vote for the black candidate. But one point on which ardent
supporters of Barack Obama and I agree is that the cases for Obama and John
McCain are not remotely close. Many of those who think otherwise, I
suspect, just haven’t been paying enough attention.

If Barack Obama is elected next Tuesday, his election will be seen as a striking symbol of yet further progress towards respecting the American ideal that “all Men are created equal.” Insofar as our fellow citizens who have endured, and continue to
endure, discrimination and other indignities because of the color of their skin
would take special joy in that symbolic achievement, I would extend them my
genuine congratulations and find some consolation in their joy.

Only consolation, though, for, alas, we do not live in the abstract, and symbols are no substitute for substance.In the abstract, given the long and terrible history of slavery and institutionalized racism in much of the country, it will be a wonderful and glorious thing when the citizens of the United States elect our first black president. For that reason, if I believed that the cases for two competing presidential candidates—one black, the other white—were reasonably close, I would eagerly vote for the black
candidate. But one point on which ardent supporters of Barack Obama and I
agree is that the cases for Obama and John McCain are not remotely close.
Many of those who think otherwise, I suspect, just haven’t been paying enough
attention.

If Barack Obama is elected next Tuesday, his election will be seen as a striking symbol of yet further progress towards respecting the American ideal that “all Men are created equal.” Insofar as our fellow citizens who have endured, and continue to endure, discrimination and other indignities because of the color of their skin would take special joy in that symbolic achievement, I would extend them my genuine congratulations and find some consolation in their joy.

Only consolation, though, for, alas, we do not live in the abstract, and symbols are no substitute for substance.

Binky on the Obama

He writes:

~ WHATEVER OBAMA BELIEVES, it’s not classical Christianity. As we’ve noted before, no Christian would permit music, accolades and statements to be made about them that infringe on the turf of divinity. The One? Halo-pictures? If that was me being divinized, I’d rightly fear the flames of eternal punishment for presumption. But so far as I’ve heard, Obama hasn’t called it off, whatever he’s heard of thusfar. Indeed, he seems to have deliberately wrapped himself in religion: healing the planet, change, hope, transformation! That’s why his opponents are given heresy-trials in the media, before their media-executions. It’s ironically fitting for the non-absolutist left to long for an absolute candidate; no secularity, just Obama & anti-Obama. Soon, like the Taliban, there will be trials for any blasphemy and desecration and doubting of The Obama. It’s evil to claim God’s proper praise for oneself.

On the other side, to vote for someone who winks at such popular divination of a political candidate is also a questionable matter. Read Mark Levin’s brilliant The Obama Temptation: and that’s what it is– a fundamental testing of our beliefs and character, and 50% + of the American electorate is flunking the test of “No Other Gods Before Me”. Aside from the usual political post-mortems of elections, this one is a wake-up call to the American Churches. ~

I'm in love with Hill Buzz

I am now a regular visitor to Hill Buzz, a PUMA (party unity my ass) site run by a Hillary Clinton Democrat who, along with others, is working hard for a McCain Palin victory.

There is great stuff at this site.

Go on over and check it out.

Human rights update

Well, a lot has been going on. I don't know where to begin, so I suggest you check out Ezra Levant's and Mark Steyn's sites as well as Free Canuckistan for many updates.

I want to call your attention to how Canada's reputation for civil rights abuses is seen south of the border, and our socialist-style suppression of negative rights is used as an object lesson for what's to come if Obama and his thugs gain power.

Dr. Sanity has a most interesting post with great links that you must read.

She writes:

UPDATE: Jeff Jacoby wonders if Obama intends to stifle his critics when (if) he becomes President. We have seen numerous signs in both the Democratic primary and in the general election that is exactly what he will do (see above for one of his favorite techniques--kill the messenger).

Thus we will have a perfect crossover experiment set up when the messiah reigns. For 8 years the left have been wailing that Bush has stifled their free speech; or that he was imminently going to stifle their free speech and trample on their rights; shred the Constitution; that he was going to impose a theocracy etc. etc. etc. (lace of space restrains me from listing all the accusations hurled at the BusHitler). No evidence to support such accusations has ever materialized, and the sheer number of [unrestrained, unjailed] voices raised in this outcry would seem to detract from their essential point.

I have maintained all along that these accusations are primarily a psychological projection on the part of the left; i.e., that it is they who in their deepest hearts wish to silence all opposition to their agenda--but since they don't want to face that unpleasant little reality about themselves, they outsource it to the other side. I therefore predict that under an Obama adminstration, these leftist hitler-wannabees will feel completely psychologically free to impose their dictates on all of us. They will stifle free speech (and call it "human rights" as they do in the so-called "human rights panels" of our socialist neighbors to the north); they will subvert the U.S. Constitution (and call it "social justice"); they will silence all opposition (and call it "fairness") and so on. We have already seen how a supposedly "post-racial" candidate who is going to "bring us all together" has wonderfully succeeded in advancing his entire campaign on accusations of racism and bigotry; it should not be much of a surprise to discover that the same psychological dynamic will infuse his Administration.

In fact, I predict the greatest suppression of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the history of our country.

The problem with much of the left is that they really do see anyone who disagrees with them as evil, insane or stupid. That cannot conceive of any sane, well-intentioned person not sharing their worldview. That's why their arguments never rise above the ad hominem attack, because they think what they believe is self-evident and only unreasonable, evil people don't see it. Thus there is no need to understand the other person's argument, then use facts and logic to make a better case. That's so old school.

By the way, I'm reading Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals while I also read some Jack Cashill and Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, which is a must read book.

I can see the allure of Alinksy and why he would be persuasive to the moral relativism crowd. I don't know where the "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" originated, but I would not be surprised to come across that statement in the book. There's also a lot of good practical rather Machiavellian notions about human nature and human responses that maybe we conservatives ought to co-opt when we're stuck in the conservative gulag.

Not that the end justifies the means you know.

Reaction to Obama's anti-Constitution stance

Rush Limbaugh (emphasis mine):

The Constitution is too big an obstacle is what he's saying. This whole discussion of negative versus positive rights can be boiled down to something very simple. What Obama wants to do and his buddies, they want the Constitution to be used to forever require judges to rule as a matter of law for economic and social justice. That's the bottom line. They don't think there are enough rights in the Constitution. They think the Constitution limits the federal government too much. They want the Constitution to have more rights but they can't do that, it's too big a problem to change that so they want the judges to do it for them, just the way they found rights to allow Roe vs. Wade. They want new rights found in the Constitution by judges and they're calling this positive. They're calling all of this positive rights. They're looking at it as expanding constitutional rights for social justice and economic justice, and social and economic justice simply equals redistribution. They want judges to find these rights, since it's too problematic to go argue before the courts all the time because it takes time, the judges are going to get caught up in the Constitution itself.

So he's saying to change the Constitution, we're going to have to get judges appointed that will simply invent law and therefore call it constitutional. That's his idea. And along with that, when he says "One of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change." Let me translate that for you. Yeah, the courts aren't the place to do this redistributive work. The Constitution's usefulness in this regard was limited by the founders. There are all kinds of separation of powers claptrap; this bogs down our mission. The secret of transforming America to my Obama utopia is community organizations and all the hell they can raise, like ACORN. That's the fulcrum of the power we can leverage to remake society, community organizations just raising hell. I mean, the notion that Obama believes the key to his radical agenda is organizations -- the reason he says that, by the way, is 'cause they last. You set up an ACORN, you find a way to get the federal government to fund it and it's there forever.

It's all over his early writings. It's all over his early interviews, and this one, too, from 2001 that we're playing. And it's easy to gloss over these kinds of statements 'cause community organize -- we still make fun of it. We make fun of the fact he was a community organizer, but he's dead serious about it, and that's his foundational building block to change the Constitution from outside, not within. He was doing that. He got hold of ACORN, he aimed it straight at the heart of the American republic. It was the key to voter fraud and the torpedoing of the American economy. Without ACORN, they would have had a much tougher time bringing off this calamity that the subprime mortgage crisis is, because ACORN was out there agitating, which is what community organizations do, everybody, banks, government, politicians, you name it, and they were getting federal money to do it to boot. So if you take ACORN out of this subprime mess, you have less of a subprime mess. I am convinced that ACORN is and has been far more significant and dangerous than we even realize.

Victor Davis Hanson (emphasis mine):

I don't know why Obama's supporters object to the airing of these quotes. His past views, his tax plan, and other spontaneous offerings ("Spread the wealth around") are a fair enough representation of a European socialist view of how to take money from higher wage earners and redistribute it to the less well off, apparently on the twin premises that one's income is really property of the state, and, that the mechanism by which a market compensates people is arbitrary and unfair and in need of 'redistributive change.' This view is shared by former associates like Wright and Ayers, Obama's parents, and almost everyone in his circle in Chicago.

There should be no apologies for such views, since until 2005 (when he was ascended to the Senate and broke off contact with Ayers) they were a proud part of the Obama hope and change agenda.

I was reminded of such a well-worn ideology two years ago recovering from an emergency ruptured appendix operation in a Libyan state-run, universal health-care clinic in Tripoli, where an exasperated doctor lamented to me that the fellow who was mopping the floor beside the bed by fiat made exactly what he did. Perhaps we can bring such an 'redistributive' ideology to Hollywood and the university where a Tim Robbins or Cornell West would make after taxes (or perhaps even before?) exactly what those who cleaned up the set or office did.

Barack Obama on the U.S. Constitution

This is a bombshell. But will anyone outside the blogosphere, though, pay attention? I hope and pray they will before it is too late.






Bill Whittle writes:

This redistribution of wealth, he states, “essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time.” It is an administrative task. Not suitable for the courts. More suitable for the chief executive.

Now that’s just garden-variety socialism, which apparently is not a big deal to may voters. So I would appeal to any American who claims to love the Constitution and to revere the Founding Fathers… I will not only appeal to you, I will beg you, as one American citizen to another, to consider this next statement with as much care as you can possibly bring to bear: “And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and [the] Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [it] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

The United States of America — five percent of the world’s population — leads the world economically, militarily, scientifically, and culturally — and by a spectacular margin. Any one of these achievements, taken alone, would be cause for enormous pride. To dominate as we do in all four arenas has no historical precedent. That we have achieved so much in so many areas is due — due entirely — to the structure of our society as outlined in the Constitution of the United States.

The entire purpose of the Constitution was to limit government. That limitation of powers is what has unlocked in America the vast human potential available in any population.

Barack Obama sees that limiting of government not as a lynchpin but rather as a fatal flaw: “…One of the, I think, the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.”

Government data bases used to undermine Joe the Plumber

This is scary business, and augers badly for what America would be like under an Obama administration.

Where are the cries of outrage on the part of those who complained about Bush's NSA snooping on emails and phone calls? Are they only concerned about the rights of potential terrorists and not about the rights of ordinary Americans who ask a question of a political candidate?


Michelle Malkin has more:

You’ll remember that a national media uproar ensued after it was discovered that State Department contractors had snooped through Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain’s passports. (Later, it turned out that the CEO of a company whose employee was involved in Passport-gate was a consultant to the Barack Obama campaign.)

Will the privacy champs come to Joe the Plumber’s defense?

Where are the cries of outrage on the part of those who complained about Bush's NSA snooping on emails and phone calls? Are they only concerned about the rights of potential terrorists and not about the rights of ordinary Americans who ask a question of a political candidate?

"State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about "Joe the Plumber."

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher became part of the national political lexicon Oct. 15 when Republican presidential candidate John McCain mentioned him frequently during his final debate with Democrat Barack Obama.

The 34-year-old from the Toledo suburb of Holland is held out by McCain as an example of an American who would be harmed by Obama's tax proposals.

Public records requested by The Dispatch disclose that information on Wurzelbacher's driver's license or his sport-utility vehicle was pulled from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times shortly after the debate.

Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.

Team Sarah Town Hall livestreaming now

Go to www.teamsarah.org and listen live.

See ya!

Thomas Sowell on Obama

He writes:

If Barack Obama had run as what he has always been, rather than as what he has never been, then we could simply cast our votes based on whether or not we agree with what he has always stood for.

Some people take solace from the fact that Senator Obama has verbally shifted position on some issues, like drilling for oil or gun control, since this is supposed to show that he is “pragmatic” rather than ideological.

But political zig-zags show no such moderation as some seem to assume. Lenin zig-zagged and so did Hitler. Zig-zags may show no more than that someone is playing the public for fools.

Some people who see the fraud in what Obama is saying are amazed that others do not. But Obama knows what con men have long known, that their job is not to convince skeptics but to enable the gullible to continue to believe what they want to believe. He does that very well.

Stanley Kurtz deserves a Pulitzer prize

...for the work he is doing on Obama's connections to unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, the radical ACORN now being investigated for rampant voter registration fraud, and the present economic crisis. Here's an excerpt of a must-read interview with Hugh Hewitt (emphasis mine):

I think Obama’s ties to radicals have everything to do with this economic crisis. I wrote a piece the other day called O’s Dangerous Pals with the New York Post, all about how ACORN, which Obama was very close to, this radical group of community organizers, used to go around to banks, trying to get them to make high-risk loans to customers with bad credit histories. This is absolutely at the core of why we’re looking at the current financial meltdown. And at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Obama was doling out money to ACORN among other groups. So I don’t think these are separate issues.

HH: Have you seen any pronounced curiosity as to the Ayers-Obama connections among your colleagues in the mainstream media, Stanley Kurtz? Is anyone digging into this issue?

SK: (laughing) I don’t think I’m at liberty to say the detail on this, but there is one organization that might surprise people where I know some reporters are looking into this, but no other. And I, you know, I’ve been asked to go on Fox News a fair number of times, and I’m going to be going on again tomorrow, but I haven’t been asked to go anywhere else except CNN did invite me a few weeks ago to speak, and they taped an interview and they asked me a lot of questions, all very suspicious about whether the Ayers connection was important. I answered them all in great detail, and they ended up not showing any of that on the air.

HH: And in terms of the other news organization that might surprise, do you have any expectation that they will publish this before the election when it might matter?

SK: I think that the reporters I’ve interacted with there want to do it. Whether they’ll be allowed to do it, I really want to wait and see what’s going on. But the mainstream media, it just seems like every four years, it gets worse and worse. I remember back with the rats business, I think it was, in 2000, and then of course the Dan Rather thing in 2004, and now, no one even bothers to argue about this bias thing. It’s just assumed by everyone, I think.

Please read the whole interview, because the patient, scholarly Kurtz, who has done the research to piece together an astounding and alarming puzzle, has much more disturbing evidence in this interview.

Mark Steyn on the Obama reign

Great column by Mark Steyn on what an Obama reign will be like, aka. why the prospect sends chills down my spine and not in a good way.

To govern is to choose. And sometimes the choices are tough ones. When has Barack Obama chosen to take a stand? When he got along to get along with the Chicago machine? When he sat for 20 years in the pews of an ugly neo-segregationist race-baiting grievance-monger? When he voted to deny the surviving "fetuses" of botched abortions medical treatment? When in his short time in national politics he racked up the most liberal – i.e., the most doctrinaire, the most orthodox, the most reflex – voting record in the Senate? Or when, on those many occasions the questions got complex and required a choice, he dodged it and voted merely "present"?

The world rarely stands as one. You can, as Reagan and Thatcher did, stand up. Or, like Obama voting "present," you can stand down.

Nobody denies that, in promoting himself from "community organizer" to the world's president-designate in nothing flat, he has shown an amazing and impressively ruthless single-mindedness. But the path of personal glory has been, in terms of policy and philosophy, the path of least resistance.

Peggy Noonan thinks a President Obama will be like the dog who chases the car and finally catches it: Now what? I think Obama will be content to be King Barack the Benign, Spreader of Wealth and Healer of Planets. His rise is, in many ways, testament to the persistence of the monarchical urge even in a two-century old republic. So the "Now what?" questions will be answered by others, beginning with the liberal supermajority in Congress. And as he has done all his life he will take the path of least resistance. An Obama administration will pitch America toward EU domestic policy and U.N. foreign policy.

Thomas Sowell is right: It would be a "point of no return," the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America. For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence.

Margaret Wente gets it wrong on Palin

She writes:

"She's a former beauty pageant contestant and a real honey, too," one bedazzled pundit wrote. Another couldn't help noting that she was "exceptionally pretty." A (male) Newsweek writer described her as "a mix between Annie Oakley and Joan of Arc." It didn't matter that she'd only been governor for a few months. She was a moose-hunting fertility goddess! It was these men who talked her up and up, and got her on the list, even though she didn't have the résumé. By the time Mr. McCain picked her for vice-president, he'd spent less than three hours in her company. But hey! Rush Limbaugh had called her "a babe."

Conservative pundit William Kristol, the most vigorous Palin-promoter of them all, referred to her on Fox TV as "my heartthrob."

Phew. Can you imagine any man being vetted in such a way? Can you imagine any serious person gushing over any male candidate in those terms? I thought not.

Er, Margaret, have you not seen any of the "thrill up my leg" Obama is the One, the-savior-of-the world coverage? There's a reason why we on the conservative side call him the Obamessiah.

And, you know, femme fatale has nothing to do with the image of Sarah Palin. She's beautiful but not in a femme fatale way, because her inner beauty more than matches the outside packaging. A femme fatale is beautiful on the outside and hell within--that's where the fatale comes from. She lures you to captivity and death. That inner beauty, like that of Mother Theresa, is what makes Palin so powerful, so confident and yes, so lovely.

H/t ProWoman/ProLife

Newsweek reporter watched a lot of porn

What a sad admission. Newsweek's Michael Hastings watched porn every night in his hotel while covering various candidates during the U.S. Presidential election, and fantasized about taking Rudy Giuliani out and writes about it in the new self-absorbed confessional that's become postmodern journalism. These are our betters in the media. This guy needs a lot of prayer. What's even sadder is that he seems to think, and maybe he's right, that his colleagues are all porn devotees, too.

J. Budziszewsksi has it right in the Revenge of the Conscience, that when we no longer have the proper outlets for repentance, confession and reconciliation, our conscience will force us to behave in strange ways, with inappropriate confession being one of them. The last stage in this revenge is seeing evil as good and good as evil.

Join Team Sarah

Are you tired of the focus on Sarah Palin's wardrobe and shoes? On the constant attacks not only on Palin, but on her family? Have you had it with media and campaign misogyny? Are you an educated, well-read conservative woman who is happy that Sarah Palin, a woman who actually lives her principles and loves and celebrates life, even vulnerable human life, is on the Republican ticket in the U.S.?

Then join Team Sarah! Tomorrow they plan a one million woman conference call. I plan to listen in.

More scary Obama footage the MSM will never show you

Gateway Pundit has this:

Founding Bloggers discovered this video of Barack Obama praising fellow New Party socialist Danny Davis at a political rally in Chicago in 2004.
Obama and Davis go way back to their days as New Party candidates:

Founding Bloggers has more on the New Party's socialist values.

Barack Obama started his political career in 1996 in the living room of a domestic terrorist.
Obama began his career as a member of the quasi-Marxist New Party.

Obama is the most liberal member of the US Senate let alone the most radical candidate to ever run for President of the United States.
This man is no moderate.

By the way-- The New Party, ACORN and Project Vote shared the same address in Chicago.

I think markets are tanking all around the world in anticipation of the United States going the way of failed socialist utopias everywhere. But its not just the economy. What if Obama makes good his promise to divert military funding to, as he says, pay everyone a living wage. Then America would be a soft target for China, or heck, even Mexico, to come in and take over.


I'm with Charles Krauthammer who writes:

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the past year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of "a world that stands as one"), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

There's just no comparison. Obama's own running mate warned this week that Obama's youth and inexperience will invite a crisis -- indeed a crisis "generated" precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he's been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

Gerson's thoughtful and interesting look at Obama

Bush's former top speechwriter has this to say:

This might seem like cynicism, but Obama does not appear to view himself as a lapsed radical. He sees himself as the reconciler of opposites, the seer of merit on both sides, the transcender of stale debates. He is the racial healer who understands racial anger. The peace candidate who prefers a more aggressive war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The outsider who surrounds himself with reassuring establishment figures.

During the presidential debates, Obama reinforced this image as an analyst, not an ideologue -- the University of Chicago professor, not the leftist community organizer. His entire manner douses inflammatory charges of extremism.

So conservatives are left with what might be called the Niebuhrian hope. One of Obama's favorite philosophers is Reinhold Niebuhr (though I imagine Niebuhr's favorite philosopher might have been the same as George W. Bush's). Niebuhr's thought is complex, but he is properly known as the theologian of conflicted humility -- for his belief that human nature is flawed and fallible even, or especially, in the pursuit of good causes. Man, Niebuhr said, is an "ironic creature" because "he forgets that he is not simply a creator but also a creature."

All things being equal, conservatives prefer liberals to be ironic and self-questioning rather than messianic and filled with gleaming-eyed intensity. In Obama's case, this humility might translate into an administration focused on achievable goals, run by seasoned, reasonable professionals (such as Tom Daschle and Dennis Ross), reaching out to Republicans in the new Cabinet and avoiding culture war battles when possible.

But there is a reason we don't generally praise Niebuhrian soldiers, Niebuhrian policemen -- or Niebuhrian presidents. Sometimes events call for courage and clarity, not a sense of irony. And courage may be required to confront a genuinely radical and passionate Democratic Congress.

Read it all. Most interesting.

Beyond a partisan media and blogosphere

It would be very easy to have the blogosphere and the media devolve into partisan spin zones full of propaganda coming from both sides and let the facts be damned.

Dr. Sanity has a most important post this morning on how important it is to realize there is a fundamental philosophical battle going on. She writes:

WE MUST NOT LET THE DEMOCRATS AND THE LEFT GET AWAY WITH THE PREMISE THAT OBJECTIVE REALITY DOES NOT EXIST. WE MUST NOT LET THEM ARGUE THAT ALL TRUTH IS RELATIVE, BUT THEN CLAIM THAT THEY ALONE POSSESS IT EXCLUSIVELY.

The issues that underscore journalistic incuriousity and the distortion of truth are philosophical and thus the battleground must also be on a philosophical level. And it's important to remember that philosophical battles cannot be won unless we go back to fundmental philosophical premises. And that brings me around to the role of our academic institutions--supposedly the repository of our knowledge--in understanding reality and searching for truth.

As it turns out, these institutions are also in thrall to postmodern relativism / nihilism.

And the Right must not succumb to postmodern, nihilistic attempts to merely spin its own truth perception.

Please read her whole blog and the excellent links.

I think one of the reasons why the Left is so quick to engage in ad hominem attacks. There is among them such a group think, and such a self-righteousness as gatekeepers of the truth that truth is relative that they assume anyone who disagrees is false and evil. They won't even admit the logical fallacy of their absolutist claim that the truth is relative.

So why bother to painstakingly and logically address the facts and the arguments of the other side. Just kill the messenger.

What kind of woman becomes a "human rights" apparatchick?

I am so very tired of having a certain brand of feminist purport to speak for me as a woman. And I am so very, very tired of misplaced attacks against well-meaning men who happen to misspeak or who happen to disobey their ludicrous speech codes. It annoys me when feminists accuse conservative men of oppression because their views are by default patriarchal. Ugh.

And I am FURIOUS that not one of these feminists has spoken up about the very real and dangerous misogyny that is right out in plain view. Where is the critique against the treatment of women in countries like Saudi Arabia or Sudan? Where is the outrage against honor killings right here in North America? Where is the protest against the misogyny that Hillary Clinton faced during the Democratic primaries, and the unhinged hatred that Sarah Palin faces now from the left? (Or is that okay?) Crickets chirping.

So when Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant push back against some feminists who dominate the so-called "human rights" industry that is really an exercise in radical thought control, I can't help but say "it serves you right." And I'll add that you are failing me as a woman because of your silence and complicity. There is real misogyny, real oppression out there and you either ignore it and by default become that hatred's useful idiots or you share the hatred of Western Civilization that, patriarchal or not, has given women more true freedom than any other culture in history.

Ezra Levant has a scathing piece on Jennifer Lynch, the Conservative appointee who heads up the Canadian Human Rights Commission. This is what he found:

I have been doing research into Lynch's background -- research that, it's clear to me, wasn't done by the Conservatives before her appointment. Take this little gem that I found.

It's a story about Lynch back when she was a feminist activist within the old Progressive Conservative Party.

It seems that when Kim Campbell was briefly prime minister, she was introduced by Wayne Taylor of the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce as Canada's "first lady". That, of course, is the term of art used for the wife of the U.S. president, though it might have been just a generic phrase that popped into Taylor's head, like "first citizen". It sounds more like a verbal stumble than a pre-meditated insult, the kind of thing that grown-up politicians quietly wince at, but quickly move on from.

Then lawyer Larry Carr apparently told a joke about Campbell's mother being a "free spirited feminist" who ran away with her boyfriend when Kim was 12. That's an embarrassing anecdote, of course, though it's true.

So what's the point of all that? That, at a chamber of commerce event, a couple of the old boys club made ham-fisted remarks? Fair enough. The "first lady" comment might be stretched to be sexist; the story about her mom was just inappropriate. A grown-up -- say, a prime minister -- would laugh it off.

But not Jennifer Lynch. This was her moment! She was a feminist, and she was going to pounce!

But Lynch didn't pounce on Taylor or Carr. She didn't criticize those two men, however petty their offences may have been, and however petty it would have made Lynch (and Campbell, by extension) look for doing so.

No, Lynch smeared the entire province of Alberta. Here are her quotes, from the Toronto Star.

"This movement away from sexism doesn't suddenly lift like a fog off of the country," she said. "What happens is, it lifts in certain areas faster than some others, and one area it hasn't lifted from is Alberta -- and I've heard that often."

"I just wonder why would somebody think that something like that was acceptable, and it has to be because things are not as quick to catch on in Alberta."

So Lynch condemns stereotyping by engaging in stereotyping.

So instead of criticizing two men -- for verbal misdemeanours -- she lashes out at an entire province.

Then Ezra goes on to correct the record about Alberta's role in women's rights.

Okay, Jennifer. Where's your criticism of the very real misogyny from the Left against Hillary Clinton during the primaries? Where is your criticism of the even worse hatred against Sarah Palin? Have you no problem with the Sarah Palin is a C*** t-shirts Obama campaigners are wearing? That's real hatred against women, whereas these stupid "verbal misdemeanours" could have easily been corrected politely and privately by taking the man aside and explaining to him why the remarks were not appreciated.

Or does the present "human rights" regime think it is fine to express bigotry against women if they go against the feminist model and support the culture of life in word and dead? Is it okay to hate women who are Christian, since your CHRC seems to think it is okay to persecute Christians?

Mark Steyn pushes back against Pearl Eliadis, a "human rights" apparatchick , who seems unhappy with the fact that three complaints against him and Maclean's magazine were dismissed, as if the process was not punishment enough.

He writes:

But the tireless "human rights" apparatchik Pearl Eliadis isn't going to let any tedious technicality like three dismissals get in the way of her pushback against the Steyn-Levant threat to the deranged Dominion's "human rights" racket. She returns to the fray in a long snoozeroo of a piece in Maisonneuve magazine called "The Controversy Entrepreneurs" - a not-quite-good-enough concept she's been valiantly attempting to plant in the zeitgeist for some months now. "The Controversy Entrepreneur" is meant to be me, frantically milking my notoriety, although dear old Pearl seems to be the one who can't let go of the udders.

This woman apparently would like to see the state silence people like Steyn, but where is her critique of real dangers to women worldwide, such as female genital mutilation or getting sold into slavery? Such as punishments like stoning for adultery because you got raped? Where is her critique of forced marriage? Where is her criticism of attacks on women who get attacked for choosing life, for choosing motherhood?

This is why we need a new movement to represent women's rights. Barbara Kay said recentlyshe does not like any word that ends in an "ism." Okay. Let's jettison feminism and find a common sense approach that is pro-woman and pro-man, pro-human dignity and pro our being the best we can be, without the state calling the shots on whether I become a professional woman or stay at home with my children or decide to have it all like Sarah Palin.

Pearl and Jennifer do not represent me. I am ashamed of them.

The resignation of Justice Harry LaForme

I do write about other things besides the election and "human rights" commissions. I spent all day Tuesday trying to get a handle on why the chair of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC) resigned suddenly on Monday.

Here's my story, published online at the Catholic Register's site.

Why I love Sarah Palin: reason #649

Listen to her conversation with Dr. James Dobson.

Denyse O'Leary on Liberal Fascism--part one

Don't forget to check out Denyse O'Leary's look at Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism

The link above will take you to the first post that has links to the others in the series.

From Part one:

In general, anyone who thinks that government should be small and limited (as Goldwater did) is, by definition, not a fascist. All fascists believe in Big (and powerful) Government, though different fascist identity groups would aim their government juggernaut at very different Enemies.

Unfortunately, the confusion around the word "fascist" means that when actual fascist political movements become a power in the land, people find it hard to discuss what they sense is wrong.

From Part two, where she asks if fascism can exist on the left among "progressives":

Yes, certainly. Remember, fascism is a mood in politics, not a specific set of policies. And the further left the progressives are, the more likely they are today to exhibit the fascist mood.

Notice the unhinged anger, the sense of grievance, the eagerness for conspiracy theories on the far left today. That is not because they are left-wing but because they are fascist. Right-wing fascists behave similarly - but in North America today, right-wing fascists are simply not as numerous or powerful.

The breath of the beast at dinner with colleagues

A fascinating story over at Breath of the Beast:

I felt the breath of the beast for the first time over dinner with a group of colleagues recently.

Before I tell this story, I should explain as background that I was on the last PATH train into the World Trade Center out of New Jersey on Sept. 11, 2001.

We were headed into Tower One either as or just after the first plane hit. As I left the train, I smelled jet fuel. I exited the building by walking out under the gaping hole the first plane made. I was walking up Church Street when the second plane hit. I turned around just in time to see the side of Tower Two blow out.

One would think I would have felt the breath of the beast that day. I didn't. I knew Islamists had been trying to nail us for a long time and that this time they succeeded.

To me the world had not changed. It simply finally caught up with us.

Read what happened at the dinner.

Need a good laugh? Iowahawk does Biden heh heh heh

Read it all.

SEATTLE -- Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden promised a group of supporters Sunday that running mate Barack Obama "will absolutely 100% trigger a nuclear Armageddon kinda thing" within the first 20 minutes of his presidency, but added that "Barack Obama is looking forward to this apocalyptic opportunity to test his mettle, because he totally aced his LSATs."

Most fascinating look at Obama's narcissicism

An expert on narcissism analyzes Obama. This is a long article but well worth reading.

Obama displays the following behaviors, which are among the hallmarks of pathological narcissism:
a.. Subtly misrepresents facts and expediently and opportunistically shifts positions, views, opinions, and "ideals" (e.g., about campaign finance, re-districting). These flip-flops do not cause him overt distress and are ego-syntonic (he feels justified in acting this way). Alternatively, reuses to commit to a standpoint and, in the process, evidences a lack of empathy.

Ignores data that conflict with his fantasy world, or with his inflated and grandiose self-image. This has to do with magical thinking. Obama already sees himself as president because he is firmly convinced that his dreams, thoughts, and wishes affect reality. Additionally, he denies the gap between his fantasies and his modest or limited real-life achievements (for instance, in 12 years of academic career, he hasn't published a single scholarly paper or book).

Feels that he is above the law, incl. and especially his own laws.

Talks about himself in the 3rd person singluar or uses the regal "we" and craves to be the exclsuive center of attention, even adulation

Have a messianic-cosmic vision of himself and his life and his "mission".

Sets ever more complex rules in a convoluted world of grandiose fantasies with its own language (jargon)

Displays false modesty and unctuous "folksiness" but unable to sustain these behaviors (the persona, or mask) for long. It slips and the true Obama is revealed: haughty, aloof, distant, and disdainful of simple folk and their lives.

Sublimates aggression and holds grudges.

Behaves as an eternal adolescent (e.g., his choice of language, youthful image he projects, demands indulgence and feels entitled to special treatment, even though his objective accomplishments do not justify it).

The comprehensive argument against Obama

Is right here, with video, audio and extensive links that reveal why his myriad associations with Marxist, America-hating "intellectuals," radical groups like ACORN, his pro-abortion extremism and other reasons why this inexperienced, naive, narcissist with a Messiah complex should never be president of the United States.

Christian voters---why you can't support Obama

H/t Gateway Pundit:

This video slams the most radical pro-abortion and infanticide candidate in the last 35 years.

This is the real Barack Obama:

This video is designed especially for undecided Christian voters. It is suitable for all ages and there are no graphic images. The goal here is to give American citizens a solid grasp of where Senators McCain and Obama really stand on the life issue, using their own words.

I was horrified and alarmed back then, too

Mark Steyn is running some of his old National Post columns to celebrate that paper's 10th anniversary. It is a sorry, bland caricature of its former self, alas.

But interestingly, in that column he talks about Canada's growing official intolerance masked as niceness and mentions the latest abuses of human rights commissions. I have been alarmed and appalled by these commissions for this long, too. He writes:

Canada’s much-vaunted niceness is smug and suffocating, but it’s our national characteristic. It’s what all those National Lampoon non-jokes boil down to: “How do you get 40 Canadians into a phone booth?” “You say, ‘Pardon me, but would you please all go into the phone booth?’” Etc. The truth is it requires a vast panoply of restrictive legislation to shoehorn us in: Canada’s “niceness” has always been somewhat coercive. It’s not just anti-totalitarian demonstrators being denied the right to protest, but also fellows like that Mayor of Fredericton, forced by New Brunswick’s Human Rights Commission to proclaim officially the city’s Gay Pride Week.

Canada’s famous “tolerance” has become progressively intolerant. It’s no longer enough to be tolerant, to be blithely indifferent, warily accepting, detachedly libertarian about gays – as the Mayor and his electors were. For tolerance is, by definition, somewhat grudging. Instead, gays must be accorded official mandatory fulsome approval, no matter that enforcing Gay Pride means inflicting Straight Humiliation on a hapless mayor and displaying a cool contempt for his electorate. As the Queen put it a couple of Canada Days back, “Let us celebrate the unique Canadian ability to turn diversity to the common good.” But the uniquely Canadian thing about “diversity” is the ruthless uniformity with which it’s applied.

I’ll bet those B.C. students protesting against Suharto would approve of the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission’s ruling that Hizzoner was guilty of discrimination. But the trouble with letting the state restrict free expression in the interests of nice cuddly causes like gay liberation is that you make it a lot easier for them to restrict free expression in the interests of non-nice causes like Suharto. In Canada, we’ve let the state go too far in policing dissent. Our official niceness has led, inexorably, to official intolerance – or to put it in culinary terms: If you cook up something that bland, it’s bound to get covered in pepper.

John Bolton and Obama's a Kumbya kinda guy

John Bolton wouldn't call Obama an appeaser. Instead he describes him as naive and a kumbya kind of guy who doesn't understand that foreign leaders might be less reasonable than he is.

Great stuff:

John Bolton has a few thoughts about Joe Biden’s dire warning that electing Barack Obama will result in an immediate international crisis.

Silent, peaceful anti-abortion protestor back in jail

Sheila Dabu, a great new reporter at the Catholic Register has more:

For Gibbons, time in prison has turned into a pro-life ministry. After being arrested at least a dozen times and spending 75 months in prison over the past 14 years for her silent protests outside abortion clinics in downtown Toronto, the 60-year-old grandmother of five and mother of three said she was looking forward to seeing some familiar faces at the Vanier Centre for Women in Milton, northeast of Toronto.

Gibbons and other pro-life protesters are prohibited from carrying on their protests within 60 feet of the Scott Clinic on Gerrard Street East. A 1994 injunction by the Ontario Supreme Court bars pro-life activists from picketing, sidewalk counselling and interfering with access to abortion services or the economic interests of the clinics. Gibbons, however, has chosen to disobey the order and stands near the entrance of the clinic with her sign, walking back and forth and talking to a few passersby. This has led to her frequent imprisonment.

For Gibbons, the abortion issue is personal. As a pregnant 22-year-old young mother with one daughter already, and who was separated from her husband, Gibbons said she felt like she had to choose between staying in college or keeping the baby. So after 13 weeks of pregnancy, Gibbons went into a downtown hospital for an abortion.

“Even though I was reckless in my thinking at that time, there was conscience that came into it. There was a certain sense of shame that you shouldn’t be, you know,” she said.

Gibbons’ protest has taken on a familiar routine. First, there’s the arrest like the one on Oct. 8. Two police officers and two local sheriffs surrounded Gibbons outside the Scott Clinic. Just before she was handcuffed and driven to a nearby police station, they took away her placard with a baby’s face on it that reads: “Why mom? When I have so much to give.” The sheriff then read aloud part of the injunction which Gibbons is accused of disobeying. After the injunction was read and the sheriff handed her the document, Gibbons ripped it in half and continued her silent protest.

There was also an overnight stay at the police station, sleeping on a cement bench in a cell, without socks or shoes, before the court hearing the next day.

Read it all. And ask yourself why this woman's freedom of speech is being infringed on like this.

Denyse O'Leary on Liberal Fascism

Denyse O'Leary does a multi-part review of Jonah Goldberg's bestselling Liberal Fascism.

She writes:

Recently, I read a book by an American political analyst Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism, which helped me understand a political landscape that I have watched with growing concern: increasingly authoritarian government and increasingly supine citizens.

Culturally, it reached the point recently where the term denialist began to characterize anyone who departs from a consensus - as if departing from a consensus were not part of the engine of progress in the Western world.

Goldberg calls the new mood "liberal fascism." To interpret the political landscape correctly, we need to understand fascism clearly.

At present, most people think fascism is simply "the way the Nazis behaved." While there is no question that the Nazis were fascists, it is quite easy to be at the opposite end of the traditional political spectrum and also be a hard core fascist. And so far as I can see, there are currently more fascists in North America at the leftward end of the political spectrum than the rightward end. That's what Liberal Fascism is about.

So what is fascism?

Fascism is not a program in politics, it is a mood. It can be a mood of the right or the left.

It is the mood of an angry identity group. The group could be vegans, transgendered people, the losers in a war, members of an impoverished ethnic group ...

In their view, they have been wronged - by members of another group. The government must make things right by giving them money, status, and power and punishing members of the evil group that has wronged them.

Typically, fascists thrive on crises. When they don't have actual crises, they proclaim or even manufacture them in order to get what they want.

This post has links to all the various other posts on this.

I haven't read them all, but I will link to them regularly as I go through them.

I think Jonah's book should be on people's Christmas shopping lists. You can buy it through Denyse's site.

Ezra Levant's great "HRC" theatre

Ezra Levant makes following human rights commissions and tribunals juicy and entertaining. Why? Because he has great dramatic flair. He knows how to tell a story, to lard on the telling details, to insert conflict into every scene, to make a gripping and entertaining farce out of serious, grueling, bureaucratic gobbledy-gook that would otherwise be eye-glazing, trance-inducing and stupor-creating even as it robbed us of all our fundamental civil rights.

By doing so, Ezra then tempts the otherwise boring bureaucrats to play their kangeroo court roles with "you can't make this stuff up" dexterity.

For example, the latest scene involves the censoring of Ezra's own letter of defense to the human rights commissioners who will determine whether his republishing of Stephen Boissoin's letter warrants his going before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

Ezra writes (emphasis mine):

In her letter to me today, Dagenais says she's finally going to pass my defence along to the commissioners who will rule on whether I've commited a hate crime by republishing an Op-Ed by an Alberta pastor named Rev. Stephen Boissoin. You'll recall, Rev. Boissoin has been fined, given a lifetime ban on expressing his faith, and ordered to publicly renounce his faith, for daring to express a politically incorrect religious view.

If the commissioners find me guilty, they'll prosecute me before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. In the thirty years they've been prosecuting section 13 "hate speech" cases, they've never lost. Political prosecutors in Iran and China would be impressed.

But here's where Dagenais becomes a symbol of everything that's wrong with the CHRC and its censorship fetish: she blacked out portions of my defence before passing it on to the commissioners. Seriously -- she censored what I wrote in my own defence, before she passed it along to the people who will sit in judgment of me. She's only allowing me to say things in my defence that she approves in advance. Look at the version of my letter she's passing on: several of my arguments are blacked out.

Of course Ezra has links to both the blacked out version (???!!!!!???) and his original over at his site.

Amazing! How they have become like caricatures in a play!

The scary thing is this is real life. Why not head over and drop some change into Ezra's tip jar for the service he is providing us.

Gotta say, the CHRC and the BC Human Rights Tribunal showed some smarts by dismissing the cases against Mark Steyn, because he has the same kind of flair Ezra does in pointing out the humorous absurdies in this tragicomedy.

But Denyse O'Leary may be on to something when she writes that the HRCs were merely using Islamic groups to go after conservatives like Steyn and Ezra, that they are really as anti-Islam as they are anti-Christian because the progressive ideologues who gravitate towards these bodies are opposed to religious expression. O'Leary argues that's why the socks and their Canadian Islamic Congress puppet masters lost.

She writes:

But I heard a rumour recently that some of the Islamists think that they've been had by the leftists. They were, after all, encouraged to use the "human rights" commissions to go on the offensive against anyone who, in their opinion, had insulted Islam. And look what happened ... they didn't win.

Note to Islamists: Yes, that's right, folks. You've been done had. The leftists hate Mark and Ezra because they are fifty times smarter and more articulate than any Canadian leftist. They used you to go after them, because they daren't do it themselves. They were probably hoping you'd lose, as long as you inflicted lots of damage on Mark and Ezra.

The irony is that leftists despise you way more than most Canadians could ever imagine doing. I, for example, do not think you are at all wrong to believe in God and want to serve him. But I recommend that you pay a little more attention to the carefully worked out structures of religious tolerance here in Canada. Remember, tolerance means putting up with things you don't agree with, because the general welfare is better served that way.

Ezra may not get a pass on the Rob Wells complaint because it stifles Christian expression and that seems to be a new value on the part of these bodies. As postmodern progressives, their idea of tolerance does not mean putting up with things you don't agree with, tolerance means state-mandated approval and acceptance of what you disagree with and permanent bans on ever dissenting against your forced approval.

But this new tolerance stifles Christian expression in an area where sincere, religious Muslims agree with Christians. In fact, sock puppet Khurrum Awan gave a most compelling argument against same-sex marriage before a legislative committee in 2005 on behalf of the CIC. I even thought he was pretty smart back then.

What Syed Soharwardy realized is that these HRCs could easily be used against him. That's what we've been trying to tell the CIC, too. Your freedom of speech, your religious freedom, depends on the old-fashioned, fundamental civil rights that have evolved from the Western tradition and that the HRCs in their rabid, progressive way, have been undermining and replacing with a secularist, anti-religious model. Ezra and Mark were fighting for you as much as they were fighting against your complaints.

Frankly, I don't want Sharia and I don't want the HRC secularist version of non-religious fatwas either. I want Rob Wells to be free to spout his anti-Christian nonsense, but not free to shut down Pastor Boissoin's criticism of his beliefs. But the way things are stacked, Rob Wells opinion has become the state-sponsored one.

We get a world crisis with Obama says Biden

Rush Limbaugh weighs in on Joe Biden's guarantee that a world crisis would test Obama within six months of his presidency. Me? I'd like to pass on the world crisis, thank you very much, and elect McCain. I see that my MSM papers picked up this story, but it is tiny, packed at the bottom of inside pages. But at least they covered it. I thought of the cloud no bigger than a man's fist on the horizon. Let it rain, rain, rain on Nov. 4. (Please read the whole post at Rush's site. It is sobering. Link it.)

Rush said:

BIDEN: Mark my words, within the next -- first six months of this administration, if we win, they're going to -- we're going to face a major international challenge, 'cause they're going to want to test him, just like they did John Kennedy, they're going to want to test him, and they're going to find out this guy's got steel in his spine.

RUSH: Really? Okay, well, we're all comforted by this. Got steel in his spine? Keep in mind what Biden has said. Biden said that it's patriotic to pay higher taxes, and now he said the country will face an international crisis only if Obama is elected. Note what he didn't say, that we'll face international crisis if McCain is elected. So we can assume Joe Biden says no international crisis if McCain is elected. Well, that's what he said. No international crisis if we elect McCain. Obama gets elected, bammo, I guarantee you, buddy, the first six months, we're going to have a international crisis. So under McCain we'll get lower taxes, not higher, and apparently according to Biden we'll have a far more peaceful world. McCain's already been tested, no one's going to mess with him according to Biden. Higher taxes, attacks on our country, attacks on an ally. Biden says the world is going to test Obiden, Obama. Hell, these guys are screwy, confusing me now, Obiden, Obama.

So what's it going to be, folks? Is China going to try to take Taiwan, North Korea, both of them? Is Russia going to take over a bordering country or two? Will Iran make its move against Israel? Or will it be all of the above? I don't know, but Biden is guaranteeing this. And, you know, that's a fair price, I guess a fair price for electing an inexperienced little guy like Obama to run our elections, wants ACORN to run the elections. Can't wait to surrender in Iraq, by the way, can't wait to proclaim defeat in Iraq. Colin Powell said (paraphrasing), "I don't like Palin, but I do love Biden. Biden is ready to be president on day one." Well, my question is this: Does Powell agree that the price for electing Obama is a world crisis? Biden is stating this as a fact beyond dispute. He says this is a guarantee that we are to "mark my words." Do you realize the import of this? Then Biden said this: "Obama's going to need help and the kind of help he's gonna need is he's gonna need you, not financially. We're going to need you to use your influence, your influence within the community to stand with him because it's not going to be apparent initially, it's not going to be apparent that we're right in dealing with the international crisis."

Now, this is creepy, creepy stuff, and everybody is out there going, "Wow, this is so honest. I can't believe they are telling us how bad it's going to be." This is one thing the libs love. They want everybody to be told how rotten things are going to be, how rotten things are, how much worse they're going to get. That's honesty, that's reality. There is no future for America. Our best days are behind us. Obama said so in Berlin. And now Biden's guaranteeing an international incident, maybe more. Then he's telling us that Obama's first reaction may not look like it's right, but you gotta hang in with us. You have to support us. It's up to you, folks, you want to take this risk?