Please read this

During Evening Prayer (see below tonight) these words from 1 Thess. 5 came alive:

But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. ²For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. ³For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. ⁴But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. ⁵Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. ⁶Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. ⁷For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. ⁸But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation. ⁹For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁰Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him. ¹¹Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.

¹²And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; ¹³And to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake. And be at peace among yourselves. ¹⁴Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men. ¹⁵See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men. ¹⁶Rejoice evermore. ¹⁷Pray without ceasing. ¹⁸In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. ¹⁹Quench not the Spirit. ²⁰Despise not prophesyings. ²¹Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. ²²Abstain from all appearance of evil. ²³And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. ²⁴Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.

²⁵Brethren, pray for us.

²⁶Greet all the brethren with an holy kiss. ²⁷I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren.

²⁸The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.

Evening Prayer according to the Book of Common Prayer

Evening Prayer (Want to join me?)

Minister. O Lord, open thou our lips;

People. And our mouth shall show forth thy praise.

Minister. O God, make speed to save us;

People. O Lord, make haste to help us.

Here, all standing up, the Minister shall say:

GLORY be to the Father, and to the Son, and the the Holy Ghost;

People. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Minister. Praise ye the Lord;

People. The Lord's Name be praised.

Then shall follow THE PSALMS.

Psalm 50

Isaiah 2:10-end

MAGNIFICAT. St. Luke 1:46

MY soul doth magnify the Lord, / and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

For he hath regarded / the lowliness of his handmaiden.

For behold, from henceforth / all generations shall call me blessed.

For he that is mighty hath magnified me; / and holy is his Name.

And his mercy is on them that fear him / throughout all generations.

He hath showed strength with his arm; / he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seat, / and hath exalted the humble and the meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things; / and the rich he hath sent empty away.

He remembering his mercy / hath holpen his servant Israel;

As he promised to our forefathers, / Abraham and his seed for ever.

GLORY be to the Father, and to the Son, / and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, / world without end. Amen.

Or Cantate Domino, Psalm 98, page 455.

Then THE SECOND LESSON as appointed. 1 Thess. 5

NUNC DIMITTIS. St. Luke 2:29.

LORD, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, / according to thy word.

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, / which thou has prepared before the face of all people;

To be a light to lighten the Gentiles, / and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

GLORY be to the Father, and to the Son, / and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, / world without end. Amen.

Then shall be said or sung the Confession of the Faith, called the Apostles' Creed.

I BELIEVE in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary, Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried: He descended into hell; The third day he rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost; The holy Catholic Church; The Communion of Saints; The Forgiveness of sins; The Resurrection of the body, And the Life everlasting. Amen.

And after the Creed these prayers following, all devoutly kneeling, the Minister first pronouncing:

The Lord be with you;

People. And with thy spirit.

Minister. Let us pray.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

Christ, have mercy upon us.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

OUR Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us; And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. Amen.

Then the Priest standing up shall say:

O Lord, show thy mercy upon us;

People. And grant us thy salvation.

Priest. O Lord, save the Queen;

People. And mercifully hear us when we call upon thee.

Priest. Endue thy Ministers with righteousness;

People. And make thy chosen people joyful.

Priest. O Lord, save thy people;

People. And bless thine inheritance.

Priest. Give peace in our time, O Lord;

People. And evermore mightily defend us.

Priest. O God, make clean our hearts within us;

People. And take not thy Holy Spirit from us.

Then shall follow THE COLLECT OF THE DAY, together with any other Collects appointed to be said, and these two prayers in order.

Collect of the Day:

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty, to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, now and ever. Amen.

The Second Collect, for Peace.

O GOD, from whom all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed: Give unto thy servants that peace which the world cannot give; that our hearts may be set to obey thy commandments, and also that by thee we being defended from the fear of our enemies may pass our time in rest and quietness; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen.

The Third Collect, for Aid against all Perils.

LIGHTEN our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

Here may follow an Anthem or a Hymn.

Here may be said the prayers found at this point in Morning Prayer or selections from the Prayers and Thanksgivings or such other prayers as are contained in this Book or set forth by lawful authority, always ending with the Prayer of St Chrysostom and the Grace.

A Prayer of Saint Chrysostom.

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplications unto thee; and dost promise that when two or three are gathered together in thy Name thou wilt grant their requests: Fulfil now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants, as may be most expedient for them; granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting. Amen.

2 Corinthians 13:14.

THE grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.

Advent Readings for the First Sunday of Advent

Today's readings:

Morning Prayer:

Isaiah 1:1-20

Matthew 24: 1-28

For the Mass:

Romans 13:8-end

Matthew 21:1-13

Evening Prayer:

Isaiah 2:10-end

1 Thess. 5

Celebrating Advent

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of a new liturgical year in the Church calendar.

It's not only a time to prepare one's heart for Christmas, but it's also a time to ponder the Second Coming of Christ. The Anchoress writes:

Advent coaxes us out. We look up and there is a darker sky than before. The stars show more clearly, and they inspire us to hack through the stuff that has begun to imprison us within the year so that we may walk a freer path, made clear. Engaged and with a certain goal, our awareness shifts and becomes heightened. We hear a memory: “All things, all senses, all times, all places are alive in the sight of their King.” And the King makes everything new.

Without Advent - without the putting up of purple in the midst of all the red and green in the tiring rush between Thanksgiving and the New Year - we might forget to mark this time, make straight this path, and ponder what transpired in a lonely cave in Bethlehem, 2000 years ago; what it meant then, and what it still means for all of us, today.

Because it is monumental, this Coming - it is the Coming of Love in a way never before (or since) encountered.

And yes, it has “already happened.” But if God is outside of Time, and we know He is, then that momentous event “is happening” right now.

A star is shining brightly.

A people are moving towards the places from whence they came.

A young woman is great with child.

Wise men are lifting their eyes to heaven, and wondering.

The place of our own origin, from whence we came, beckons and sends a flare, and One who is All in All will come - in love, and breathtaking humility - to show us the way back to the Creator.

We are great with expectation.

We raise our heads from the wilderness of our lives, and look about, and wonder. And hope.

For much of this fall, I have been heavyhearted as I watched the election coverage south of the border. And now there is more reason to be heavyhearted in Canada as we contemplate either another election within weeks of the last one or a a coup engineered by the socialist New Democratic Party and the Bloc Quebecois, a party dedicated to the break up of Canada. The coup-plotters have the ear of the lame duck Liberal Leader Stephane Dion,who must step down after a convention chooses a new leader in May. So Dion has nothing to lose by this deal to topple the minority Conservative government and everything to gain, i.e. the keys to 24 Sussex Drive, the Prime Minister's residence.

As someone told National Post columnist John Ivison:

The source in the Ignatieff camp said Mr. Dion is making all the running on coalition talks with the NDP and the Bloc Québécois, and is not consulting with leadership candidates, Mr. Ignatieff, Bob Rae or Dominic LeBlanc.

“Dion is like Frankenstein’s monster - he’s on the slab and just had a jolt of life injected into him. He’s going full tilt ahead with this coalition but his caucus isn’t going with him,” the source said.

If this coalition gets into power, then we can kiss any political gains on the freedom of speech front good bye. The three opposition parties are all--to put it kindly--convergence liberal---the one-size-fits-all-pantyhose new-fangled liberals who believe society is moving to a new consensus that will replace the former Judeo-Christian consensus of western civilization with multicultural relativism and fundamentalist secularism.

A less kind but appropriate word for the pantyhose style is soft totalitarian, or liberal fascism with a smiley face. It will be hostile to dissent, especially Christian dissent that holds that there is a power over and above the state.

But, I am choosing to reject heavyheartedness over Advent, except the heavyheartedness that comes with genuine repentance for my own sins. I choose to be joyful in the Lord, to put my hope in Him. Why don't you join me in the Advent readings for Morning and Evening Prayer?

As part of my Advent discipline, I am going to try to post the readings for Morning and Evening Prayer each day.

How to make yourself a laughingstock around the world

This will go down in history as a recipe for how to make yourself a worldwide laughingstock.

Mark Steyn writes:

So I wonder what it is Professor Ethics-Bore thinks I should have “checked”. That the Ayatollah disapproves of post-coitally chowing down on your barnyard sex partner? Check! Indeed, check mate. On the other hand, the E-Bore didn't check anything - not my original book review, not Oriana's original quote. He pronounced magisterially on the non-existence of any such "Blue Book" without checking a thing.

But, beyond all that J-school snoozeroonie stuff, what I find even more perplexing is why Prof Miller, M J Murphy and the nellies at Law Am Cool are so weirdly obsessed with insisting that somehow the Ayatollah's rulings about eating shagged sheep and having sex with nine-year-olds must be some malicious rumor got up by Oriana and me and a couple of other neocon buffoons. No one who knows anything about Khomeini or Shia jurisprudence would be in the least bit surprised, so why would a prissy PC drone like Prof Miller be so cavalier as to expose himself as entirely ignorant of the subject he’s loftily pontificating on? Not for the first time you realise that, for the lazy white liberal, driving around with a "CELEBRATE DIVERSITY" sticker absolves one from having to take the slightest interest in other cultures.

You have to read it all.

Kathy Shaidle adds her two cents:

The pitiful picture that emerges from this long and detailed post is a "battle" between mature, sophisticated world travelers who've studied their subjects firsthand for decades, and spindly, spiteful, envious little keyboard jockeys who never venture farther than the corner Starbucks yet fancy themselves instant authorities on any subject after a couple of quick Googles.

Iowahawk writes over at Big City Lib's comment section the following (BlazingCatFur has copied the comment so you don't have to drive Lib's traffic up:

Having just read Steyn's rebuttal in its entirety, I must say congratulations. You and "Doctor" Miller have just immortalized yourselves as the bumbling self-inflicted subjects of the single most exquisite literary evisceration in the history of the internet, nay, the world.

In fact, scratch "evisceration." Make that vaporization. At this point your next of kin will be lucky to find intact bits of "Doctor" Miller's reputation quivering in the treetops of Ryerson, let alone complete dental records.

No mind though, for your immortality is secure. For centuries to come students will study this marvelous episode: the pompous, clueless PC prof and his eager internet buttlick attempt to bell the famous cat Steyn, with completely predictable results.

Read the great Binkster

I'm going to take a break from the computer today, so please go on over to the Mighty Binkster's website for an array of interesting and crucial links.

And check out his excellent and respectful apologetic to a Muslim reader who was concerned for his soul.

I just got a stack of books out of the library, including F.A. Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" which I can see was that generation's "Liberal Fascism" and more. I got a bunch of David Horowitz books and a Michael Dibdin Aurelio Zen mystery. So I'm going to read a bit, snooze on the couch, maybe head over to the gym for some leisurely reading while on the elliptical trainer and try to enjoy a day off.

But first I have to read some of Binky's links.

I'm with Ezra on the Ahenakew thing

My newspapers were filled with Ahenakew's kooky and repulsive ideas about Jews this morning. Thousands of people read the Ottawa Citizen and the National Post. His second criminal trial on hate speech charges is the reason why his ideas are spreading far and wide.

Ezra writes that the man is now a celebrity because of the coverage:

My point is that Ahenakew is a kooky old man. He's racist. I doubt it's a deep racism, frankly -- I mean, how many Jews does Ahenakew bump into in a typical year in his home province of Saskatchewan, especially in his circles? It sounds like he's spent too much time surfing Left wing conspiracy theory sites -- I bet he's a 9/11 truther, too. The fact that he's Indian is just an interesting wrinkle -- he's basically a cranky old coot who has a long list of grievances, and the Jews are one of his many scapegoats.

Is Ahenakew violent? No, Does he advocate violence? No.

Does anyone in the world actually give a damn about what he says? No, other than his grandchildren who have to listen to him whenever they visit. But they probably ignore the old man, too.

David Ahenakew is a former somebody, who is now a nobody, who has views that are distasteful.

If a reporter hadn't been at the conference, none of us would know about it.

A reporter was there, and the resultant publicity marginalized Ahenakew even more in life, including stripping him of his Order of Canada. He was denounced nationally. He became a pariah.

And that's how it should be.

And it should have ended there, in 2002.

I agree.

Maybe when hate crimes charges are being laid, the officers should think about the capacity a person has to incite violence. I'd be a lot more worried about some religious leader in a religious institution full of people with similar hatred having their anti-Jewish hatred fomented than I would about a kooky old man making some remarks among aborigional Canadians who are not known for hatred of Jews and who were probably ashamed right on the spot of Ahenakew's ramblings.

There are real dangers to Jews in Canada but Ahenakew is not one of them.

Eclipse of the Moon

Well, thanks to the Tory's financial statement and the little matter of a $30 million subsidy for political parties, the Moon Report and its recommendation to axe the Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act the impending doom of the minority Harper government has eclipsed just about everything else.

Of course the Liberal non-confidence motion reads like a gargantuan gilded fig leaf that complains of the Conservatives' lack of response to the economic crisis. No stimulus package, no help for families, no job creation, blah blah.

And the consensus on the Hill is not that good. No one seems to be buying the talking points of either side: it's about the $30 million, not the lack of a significant "bail-out" package and Harper's getting criticized even by friends for being too provocative and Machiavellian, and the other parties for suddenly developing a backbone over their venal self-interest when the Liberals managed to cave on every important issue during the last session of Parliament.

It'll be bad, bad news for any reform of the Canadian Human Rights Commission if the proposed coalition Liberal/NDP government takes power. Imagine, Prime Minister Stephane Dion and Finance Minister Jack Layton and an NDP Environment Minister.

If this happens we might start yearning for the days of Jennifer Lynch and the "enlightened" dismissals of complaints against the likes of Steyn and Levant.

I had wished on many occasions during the last Parliament that the Tories would just bring forth a confidence motion on the Canadian Human Rights Act---at the height of the time when Dion was caving on everything else because he so feared an election. Well Dion doesn't care now. The man has nothing to lose since he is stepping down in May anyway. But he could gain the keys to 24 Sussex for as long as he can keep his strange bedfellows, including the separatist Bloc Quebecois happy.

The National Post echoes that sentiment this morning, expressing some dismay in an editorial that Harper didn't choose a more elevated hill to die on. The editorial says:

If Mr. Harper is looking for a worthy hill to die on, so that he can go into a 2009 election with a significant moral advantage, there are plenty to choose from -- an elected senate, a reformed Human Rights Act, health freedom, to name just a few. The key is to ensure that Canadians know he is looking out for the best interests of their country --not just his own party.

The Conservative party-financing ploy does not fit into this category. If the Prime Minister persists in this course of action, those who haven't already voted for him will never consider it. He may even accomplish the seemingly impossible: Making Stephane Dion Canada's prime minister.

It may be too late for Harper to pull the party-financing thing off the table, because there is too much of a vested interest in the other parties in appearing to care more about the economy than about their petty financing. The gilded fig leaf has taken on a life of its own.

I bet though, if the financial statement had appeared without the $30 million cut, the other parties would have whined, they would have complained, but they would have waited to see the budget in Jan. or Feb.

How are you going to celebrate Advent this year?

I love being a Traditional Anglican, because Advent, which begins Sunday, is marked with great solemnity. A new liturgical year begins at Advent and I always resolve to make a better effort to do the daily Morning Prayer and Evensong readings and canticles so that I live inside that calendar in a spiritual sense, to0.

Joseph Bottum as a great piece over at First Things (h/t CERC) on The End of Advent.

What Advent is, really, is a discipline: a way of forming anticipation and channeling it toward its goal. There's a flicker of rose on the third Sunday -- Gaudete!, that day's Mass begins: Rejoice! -- but then it's back to the dark purple that is the mark of the season in liturgical churches. And what those somber vestments symbolize is the deeply penitential design of Advent. Nothing we can do earns us the gift of Christmas, any more than Lent earns us Easter. But a season of contrition and sacrifice prepares us to understand and feel something about just how great the gift is when at last the day itself arrives.

More than any other holiday, Christmas seems to need its setting in the church year, for without it we have a diminishment of language, a diminishment of culture, and a diminishment of imagination. The Jesse trees and the Advent calendars, St. Martin's Fast and St. Nicholas' Feast, Gaudete Sunday, the childless crèches, the candle wreaths, the vigil of Christmas Eve: They give a shape to the anticipation of the season. They discipline the ideas and emotions that otherwise would shake themselves to pieces, like a flywheel wobbling wilder and wilder till it finally snaps off its axle.

Siddiqi makes sense at the end of his piece

Mark Steyn takes Haroon Siddiqui to task for his op ed today.

He writes:

(

*By the way, re Mr Siddiqui, the day after a Muslim terrorist assault on key landmarks of a major Indian city that left dozens dead, saw British and American tourists taken hostage, and the city's anti-terrorism chief and other municipal law enforcement figures gunned down on the street doesn't seem the most appropriate moment for him and Alan Borovoy to protest at Maclean's even raising the subject of how many Muslims support terrorism and its goals. That's an entirely responsible subject for the media to raise. And, given what's going on in the streets of Bombay, it's irresponsible for the media not to raise it - unless, that is, like Mr Siddiqui, you see yourself not as a journalist but as an enforcer for PC orthodoxy.)

Here's the quote from Alan Borovoy Siddiqui used:

Alan Borovoy of the Canadian Civil Liberties Union, a lifelong proponent of free speech, told me:

"Let's just take one statement that Steyn made: `Not all Muslims are terrorists, though enough are hot for jihad to provide an impressive support network.' I interpret that as saying that a significant number of Muslims support terrorism ... How much worse can you get? Doesn't that expose them to hatred? This looks to me like an awful exercise in rationalization by those who say this isn't hatred."

Borovoy has consistently argued--in interviews with me and with everyone else--that Section 13.1 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, with its lack of a defense of truth, makes it impossible for journalists to cover any conflict around the world, because true coverage of the conflict in the Middle East, or of Rwanda or of Northern Ireland could be deemed by one side or the other to be likely to promote hatred or contempt against them. I imagine Borovoy was using the Steyn example in the same vein. I'm rather shocked by the last sentence though: "This looks to me like an awful exercise in rationalization by those who say this isn't hatred." [More thoughts: Mark points out that he would love to hear what was cut out as represented by the [ . . .] in the quote. I expect that it was something along the lines of this: If Section 13.1 defines hatred (a definition Borovoy thinks is ridiculous and should be removed) then to say that the America Alone excerpt did not fit that overly broad censorious definition is an "awful exercise in rationalization." So in effect, Borovoy is saying the law was not applied in the same way against Macleans as it was against the basement Nazis and the hapless Christians who got ground to powder by the HRC process. He's NOT defending the law. He's NOT saying that from an objective, rational standpoint the article was hateful only by the provisions of the Act that would make just about any factual discourse on conflicts around the world hateful. If the contents of the quote represented by the ellipsis are what they think they are then "misheard" may be overly charitable on my part.

Frankly, I would have to hear an audio recording of Borovoy saying that for me to believe he said it. I doubt very much Borovoy would say Mark Steyn's book excerpt was an exercise in hatred. He might say that it could expose a group to hatred or contempt based on the very loose Section 13.1 "likely to" that never needs to be proven, but for him to impute a motive of hatred? No. I don't believe it for a minute. I think Haroon misheard. He ends his op ed thusly.

All these divisions cannot possibly be papered over by restricting the human rights tribunal's mandate, or tightening the definition of hate or even criminalizing speech, as Moon suggests.

We either go the American route and do away with all anti-hate laws or keep them, ideally in the non-criminal arena, but apply them equally to all. More immediately, all the key players need to rise above their self-serving agendas and pursue the common good, which is often best advanced through self-restraint rather than under the hammer of the law.

Well, I'm for going the American route before the Obaminator ushers in Canadian-style censorship.

The other alternative of applying them equally to all? Then you had better include us Christians in there, too. Imagine: Bill Maher and his stupid "Religulous" banned as hate propaganda by Jennifer Lynch's burgeoning department of censorship. Imagine Rabble.ca getting hauled before the CHRC for their disgusting cartoon of the Pope giving a Heil Hitler salute to a statue of the Virgin Mary. But we Christians know it will not be applied equally. All the hallmarks of hate will be used against us by our own government, while no criticism will be allowed against any other group. We can be depicted falsely as evil, as perpetrators of colonialization and genocide, as racist and creators of systemic discrimination, stereotyped as theocrats who want to take over governments to impose Old Testament Laws and if one of us complains to the HRC our complaints will be ROUTINELY dismissed, as they have been. No, instead, there is a litany of people who hold deeply-held Christian beliefs who have been persecuted by HRCs. [A shortened version of that litany appears in Tyranny of Nice, by the way. ]

I agree with Haroon though on the idea of pursuing the common good through self-restraint. But if we ignore the threat that violent jihad poses to our security, there will be no common good. We need Muslims to join us in fighting the violent in their midst, rather than trying to shut people up from warning people about them.

You know, for once, it would be nice if Haroon and other Canadian Muslims would have a flurry of op eds denouncing the violence in Bombay or other parts of the world as it pops up, instead of whining about how they are depicted in the media ever since 9/11. Then maybe Canadians like myself would feel an upswelling of warm solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters because we would know they hold the same freedoms dear.

Mark Steyn's latest on Canada's censorship regime

He writes:

It's now time for Parliament to act. A day or two ago, Deborah Gyapong expressed sympathy for the Justice Minister's predicament. But what's the political downside in promising to enact a proposal by the CHRC's own investigator and support a motion by a Liberal MP? What are the political risks? That Warren Kinsella will call you a Nazi of horrifyingly Toronto Star-like proportions? I have had just one encounter with Michael Ignatieff in my life - a long-ago dinner party for expats in London - but, granted the political realities that have required him to back pedal away from his muscular liberalism of five or six years ago, nothing I know of him suggests he would be comfortable supporting the totalitarian impulse of Section 13. As Ezra suggests, if you drop a line to the Prime Minister, drop one to the Igster, too. Let's keep it bipartisan.

Deborah Gyapong thinks nothing will happen until Iggy, Rob Nicholson and Jennifer Lynch start getting scrummed. Well, maybe. That may be one of those insider/outsider things. I got "scrummed" outside the courthouse in Vancouver and Iit struck me as just a bit of media theatre, a way of signaling to viewers that something's a real story. But, scrummed or unscrummed, this story is real. You can help keep it so by signing this online petition.

There are no substantive defenders of Section 13. It's time to move from talk to action. And the day that this ugly law and censor's charter is consigned to the garbage will be a true day of thanksgiving in Canada.

Be thankful we are free--Spencer

Robert Spencer, one of the world's foremost experts on violent jihad, has this to say on Jihadwatch today in honor of American Thanksgiving.

In past years I've written on this day that I'm thankful that there haven't been more jihad terror attacks on U.S. soil. I am thankful for that this year also, but this year's Thanksgiving comes in the shadow of the jihad attacks in Mumbai -- and we must not forget that their defense is our defense, their murders threaten us, they are facing the same jihad that we continue to face, although most Americans don't know it.

Above all this year I am thankful that I'm still able to write this. Now that the UN has approved an "anti-blasphemy" measure that is in reality an obvious and crude attempt to restrict open speech about the Islamic jihad threat, we shouldn't take for granted that those who are threatened by Islamic supremacism and jihad will always be able to speak freely about that threat -- and that includes Americans as well.

But this year, as hard a year as it has been in so very many ways, we have for the most part been able to do so (with the notable exception of some unlikely thoughtcrime states like Canada), and for that today we should give thanks, and hope and pray that we will continue to be able to do so long enough to turn back the tide of jihadist encroachment upon free societies everywhere.

If you don't trust the mainstream media to give you the full story on what's happening in Mumbai, then check out Atlas Shrugs and Gateway Pundit.

Mark Steyn weighed in yesterday on the Hugh Hewitt show:

And Bombay is, you know, to play demographics bore for a moment, Bombay is typical of a lot of parts of India. As you know, the largest number of Muslims in the world actually live in democratic India. But they’re birth rate is significantly higher than the Hindu population of India. And so remorselessly, cities that once had a relatively constrained Muslim population, that Muslim population is growing in relation to the Hindu population.

HH: Mark Steyn, when I first saw this starting to occur and unfold, I’ve been watching it for about two and a half hours now, my thoughts went back to the SWIFT program, which had previously successfully interdicted Hambali, one of the great sub-continent terrorists, caught him in Thailand. Of course, the news of the SWIFT program leaked by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and others, this is a massive attack involving many, many terrorists at many different locations, the sort of attack where vast amounts of money had to be deployed. And you have to wonder whether or not these security leaks over the years has made it very, very difficult for us to track these people.

MS: Well, I think the New York Times’ view of this situation, and indeed as far as one can tell, Barack Obama’s view, I don’t rule out, by the way, that this might be, insofar as it’s connected to Obama, it might be a preemptive response to his planned invasion of Pakistan, which should be taking place in two or three months time. But that aside, I mean, essentially the view here is, of the New York Times, is that terrorism is a law enforcement matter. Obama feels terrorism is a law enforcement matter. Well, what law enforcement means is you investigate a crime after it’s occurred. You wait until the liquor store’s held up, and then you investigate it and find out who held it up. I don’t think that works with terrorism. At the last count, dozens of people are dead, whatever it is now, 80-90 people are dead. British and American visitors in those luxury hotels like the Taj Mahal Palace have been targeted and singled out and taken hostages. And that is not a law enforcement matter. You don’t want to be investigating that after it happens. You want to stop it before it happens. And that’s where things like leaking the details of the SWIFT program by the New York Times are actually quite disgraceful, and in fact in most societies throughout human history would have been regarded as an act of treason.

By the way, Mark's celebrating the 6th anniversary of his site. Congratulations, Mark! Your site is another thing for Americans and freedom loving people all over the globe to be thankful for today.

The growing wave of anti-censorship public opinion

Ezra Levant has links to a range of editorials and op eds from across the country that urge the government to act on Professor Richard Moon's chief recommendation--to axe Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act so these "popcorn" bureaucrats can no longer censor unpopular opinion.

This is all well and good. It is a sign the tide is turning. But you know when I will know it's time to get on the surfboard and enjoy the ride into victory? When we start seeing flying scrums of outraged journalists that follow Justice Minister Rob Nicholson or Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff or any other person they want to hold accountable on freedom of speech right to the bathroom door, down the stairs and across the lawn on Parliament Hill.

You know those tight clusters of journalists, bristling with boom mics, glaring with the bright camera lights that make an angry "arrah! arrah! arrah!" braying sound as they all try to ask questions at once? They're like some monstrous, glittering hedgehog that was nuked too much, to borrow a phrase from Kathy Shaidle.

We'll know the tide of public opinion is unstoppable when Jennifer Lynch can't leave her office on Slater Street without encountering a paparazzi-like mob laying in wait for her, ready to make her defend the practices of her investigators.

During my short stint in politics, I worked for Stockwell Day while he was leader of the Canadian Alliance. For a brief time, three months or so, Ezra Levant was the Opposition Leader's director of communications and therefore my boss.

Thus, Ezra knows about these flying scrums. He used to get surrounded by them as one brown-enveloped "scandal" or caucus defection popped up after another. Stockwell Day couldn't go anywhere on Parliament Hill without running a rude gauntlet or being surrounded by a flying scrum with camera operators and sound techs in front of him, walking backwards as fast as they could.

But I don't think most journalists get the fact that their freedom of expression is in danger. Seems like their editors are starting to get it, at least the ones who write editorials. But we have to make sure the assignment editors and the line up editors get it, too.

Gee, Tories, when even the Toronto Star says axe it . .

Maybe it is time to act now.

In today's Star, this editorial:

Canada's Criminal Code is tough on hate speech, and rightly so. Those who incite or wilfully promote hatred against identifiable groups can spend two years in jail.

Beyond that, does society need to cast additional chills on freedom of speech and spirited public discourse, to combat hatred? In the Star's view, no.

But a controversial section of the Canadian Human Rights Act does just that. Section 13 makes it a "discriminatory practice" to communicate "any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt" via the Internet. That can be interpreted to cover defaming or stereotyping, a wider net than inciting hatred. Unlike the Criminal Code, there's no need to prove intent. And the penalty is serious. The federal rights tribunal can order the offending party to desist, to smarten up, and to pay as much as $30,000 in damages and penalties.

Given Criminal Code protections, this needlessly chills free speech.

That's why Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government should heed the advice of Richard Moon. In a cogent report released this week, the University of Windsor law professor argues that Section 13 should be repealed. The report says the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) should let the courts police hate speech advocating violence. Moon is right.

Stop Muslim immigration? I have a better idea . . .

Kathy Shaidle recently wrote a book review of Robert Spencer's latest book Stealth Jihad.

She writes (her bolds):

When we hear the phrase "Muslim terrorism," we tend to visualize the mass murders of September 11, 2001. Yet as that day's events recede into memory, and might as well be considered forgotten by some Americans, we need to understand that the jihadist threat to our culture and security takes many forms.

These alternative methods of jihad aren't as dramatic as the attacks of 9/11, but in their own way they represent a kind of slow motion, under the radar attack on America.

Robert Spencer's new book delineates these low level attacks. Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs makes for depressing reading, not just because Muslim supremicists are trying to take over the U.S. through our courts, charities, colleges and even public elementary schools, but because -- as the election of Barack Obama (the ultimate "September 10" candidate) seems to indicate, millions of Americans couldn't care less.

Using their own words against them, Spencer (a Koranic scholar who is fluent in Arabic) reveals that, according to one high level Sheik, 80% of the mosques in the US are controlled by Muslim supremicists.

Spencer also reveals -- again, merely by quote their own words -- that many so-called "moderate" Muslim spokesmen actually hold radical, anti-American views. Some of these leaders have even been welcomed to the White House, and served as trainers in "ethnic sensitivity" to the Armed Forces and law enforcement.

Spencer's diagnosis is dire, and his prescriptions are dramatic and definitely politically incorrect; halting all Muslim immigration to America is his most daring suggestion.

That's politically incorrect, all right. But I have what I think is a better, more permanent solution that would still keep America a welcoming beacon of light to the world, one that could include people of all faiths.

My solution is also politically incorrect.

Why not instead a revival of the Christian faith? I'm not talking just about campground meetings where people get the shakes and see visions. I'm talking about a real, deep, return to the faith as witnessed by the Apostles and handed down carefully from generation to generation.
We can all start right now in doing our part to pray that it happens.

I'm talking about a revival that includes not only a deep-seated faith formation of heart and mind, but an intellectual formation to go along with it. I'm talking about a revival that even atheists like the late Oriana Fallaci would appreciate because she described herself as a Christian atheist.

Why can't we start having babies as we revive Christian hope and love and a commitment to family and church and civic society institutions?

If we're too old for having our own babies, why can't we send some money to help a child go to a school like St. Timothy's, so that families who dearly want to pass a well-formed faith onto their children through a classical Christian education can do so.

Kathy writes: "Muslim supremicists are trying to take over the U.S. through our courts, charities, colleges and even public elementary schools . . "

Well, why shouldn't they try to do 'the long march through the institutions, following in the footsteps of all the rebellious hippies and Marxist revolutionaries like unrepentant terrorist Billy Ayers and his wife (who thought the Manson murders were a great political statement) who now hold respected positions as educators and opinion makers and shapers of elementary school students. (Be an interesting cage match once the temporary alliance these groups have formed against the remnant of Western Civilization breaks down and they battle it out between themselves.)

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure Muslim supremacists would be worse than these totalitarians, who thankfully do not run everything despite their pernicious influence. Remember that the Weather Underground was talking about eliminating up to 25 million Americans if they didn't get with their revolutionary program. Maybe I'd rather pay the special tax and wear the clothing identifying me as a Christian and other second-class citizen treatment than die in some gulag because some people's tribunal decides I'm not politically correct enough.

Better idea. Why not have Christians start taking back the courts, the charities, the colleges and the public elementary schools. Our own long march through the institutions. Shoot! We created them! And that doesn't mean a theocratic take over. God forbid. No, just a quiet, joyful, intelligent, well-informed and God-inspired and led movement to make a difference for good, while understanding the limits of human nature, the need for limited government and robust intervening social institutions.

Christians must to stop whining and start praying and fasting and feeding their souls with the Word of God and the vast riches of our intellectual and artistic heritage. We have so much to be thankful for. So much richness to rely on.

Every time I write about radical Islam, I think about a Muslim I know who acts as one of my financial advisors. I imagine how he might feel were he to read my blog. I would never want him to think I was in any way hostile to his being here.

He's done a great job on my small portfolio even in these troubled times. We have great talks when I see him. He comes from a troubled part of the world where he'd probably be dead now if he had not been allowed to come to Canada. He is grateful to be here. He also loves America and hopes she never loses her position as a super-power. He's seen enough of the world to know things would be far worse if say China were to supplant the U.S.

On the other hand, I think we need to pay attention to what people like Spencer discover.
Kathy plays a role in drawing that attention through her provocative, even jolting headlines.
She's issuing wake-up call.

Spencer specializes in keeping track of what's going on on the jihad front---the lawfare, the ways in which jihadists use our own liberal Western institutions to destroy them. I'm sure my Muslim friend could add to the litany of horror stories. He knows what extremists are doing to his home country.

Maybe there needs to be a better effort in distinguishing between those who have the intent to colonize the West to replace it with the Ummah vs. those like my financial advisor who just want to raise a family and worship Allah in a free country. Maybe something needs to be done to stop the jihadi money from funding mosques.

But the better solution is to be strong in our own culture, our own faith and to have the babies to prove it.

Then we can afford to be welcoming and we will have a culture we are proud of helping newcomers assimilate into.

The solution for everyting--a massive early learning program for young children

A friend of mine up in the Press Gallery and I have a running joke. The solution for many disparate problems facing Canada invariably seems to be an expensive Medicare like program to provide an early childhood learning system, aka. institutionalized daycare run by professionals who will save the kids from their families or lack thereof.

I went to the first press conference of rookie Liberal MP Justin Trudeau last week where the annual Campaign 2000 report card on child poverty in Canada showed that in the two decades since the promises were made in Parliament to eliminate the scourge, little has changed.

The advocates from an array of poverty groups pointed to Quebec as a model for tackling child poverty and said its daycare system should be a model for the rest of Canada. No one mentioned, and I didn't see it soon enough, that the child poverty rates in Alberta are even lower than those in Quebec and there isn't any institutional approach to daycare. Instead the province stresses supporting families so they can choose the childcare options they want, including having a parent stay at home.

My friend went to a health conference the other day and came back amused that the solution to health problems in Canada was--you guessed it---a system of institutionalized early learning for children.

What bothers me is that so often massive government programs are considered the compassionate option, the one that has the most concern for the common good. Often this is directly conflated with Catholic social teaching. It's why so many Catholics love the idea of Barack Obama and his progressive plans for America, despite his terrible record on abortion.

Catholic teaching stresses subsidiarity. David A. Bosnich at the great Action Institute site has this explanation. An excerpt:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

This is why Pope John Paul II took the “social assistance state” to task in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus. The Pontiff wrote that the Welfare State was contradicting the principle of subsidiarity by intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility. This “leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.”

In spite of this clear warning, the United States Catholic Bishops remain staunch defenders of a statist approach to social problems. They have publicly criticized recent congressional efforts to reform the welfare system by decentralizing it and removing its perverse incentives. Their opposition to the Clinton Administration’s health care plan was based solely upon its inclusion of abortion funding. They had no fundamental objection to a takeover of the health care industry by the federal government.

Why the troubling contradiction between Papal teaching and the policy recommendations of the U.S. Bishops? Part of the problem may rest with the reliance the Bishops have placed upon commentators such as Monsignor George Higgins. In the spring of 1994 Monsignor Higgins gave a lengthy talk on the principle of subsidiarity to the Albert Cardinal Meyer Lecture series. Higgins stated that the “principle of subsidiarity is concerned with the relationship of the state to other societies, not with the nature of the state itself.” This view is wrongheaded. Subsidiarity applies to all human institutions, including the state. When the federal government usurps the rights and responsibilities of state and local governments, a flagrant violation of the principle of subsidiarity has occurred. If upper echelon bureaucrats in a Cabinet department operate in a top-down manner and deny any flexibility to their subordinates, the effectiveness of this department will be diminished. Higgins’s interpretation of subsidiarity exempts the internal operation of the various levels and branches of government from any critical scrutiny.

The ultimate purpose of Higgins is to defend the welfare statist philosophy which he and his allies in organized labor have advocated for decades. This leads to serious distortions in his analysis of the principle of subsidiarity, especially in his treatment of Alexis de Tocqueville. Higgins cites de Tocqueville’s praise for voluntary associations as part of a larger discussion in which he endorses an enhanced role for government in fighting poverty. But Higgins ignores other aspects of Tocqueville’s work which would devastate his thesis. As Russell Kirk observed, Tocqueville strongly opposed the centralizing impulse which afflicts modern democracies. In accord with subsidiarity, true democracy is a product of local institutions and self-reliance. Consolidation is the weapon of tyranny, but the friend of liberty is particularism.

Something like a massive institutionalized daycare system of "early childhood learning" on the order of Medicare, a universal program, may help the poorest of the poor and the offspring of single moms, helping them get into the workforce.

But it would further dissolve the institutional family and its responsibilities for the rearing and education of children. The high costs of the daycare model and the one-size-fits all solution would force mothers into the workforce. High costs of living have already forced way too many families to decide they can't afford to have a parent stay home with young children.

Yet studies show most families would prefer a parent stayed home.

Here's the problem folks. There is a phalanx of anti-poverty groups, social policy think tanks, holding daily news conferences on Parliament Hill, constantly drilling a progressive mindset that frames any conservative approaches as lacking compassion, as deleterious to the common good, and as selfish, dog-eat-dog materialism.

If conservatives want to change the culture, there needs to be a phalanx of anti-poverty groups offering solutions based on conservative principles, and social policy think tanks that drum a pro-freedom, pro-market and pro-family and pro-religion and pro-small government antidote.

That's why there's no real debate on the Hill, because we're totally relying on politicians to do all the work. Civil society groups need to be supported and funded and new ones created. And they have to get onto the Hill and getting their message out.

Otherwise, it will never occur to anyone in Ottawa that there actually are legitimate and thoughtful responses to the challenges we face.

Is Keith Martin's Motion enough?

I interviewed Liberal MP Keith Martin yesterday for the piece I filed for Catholic papers. He continued to say there is a great deal of bi-partisan support for changing the Canadian Human Rights Act and that the Moon Report put the ball in Parliament's court, and not the Canadian Human Rights Commission's, which is continuing with its own study of the issue.

Keith has an Op-Ed in today's Post that reiterates some of what he said to me:

There are few true rights in our free and democratic nation. One of those, which is central to our freedom, is the right to free speech. This issue inadvertently came to the forefront last year due to a number of actions taken by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) and its application of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) in a number of high-profile cases. The furor sparked by the CHRC’s actions compelled the commission to undertake an independent study of its own activities. Well respected human rights expert Professor Richard Moon was tapped to lead the investigation. His report, just released, is a lucid exploration into this sensitive issue; his recommendations, courageous.

Prof. Moon’s foremost recommendation is that section 13 of the act be repealed in its entirety. This section gives the commission the ability to investigate, censure and levy penalties on individuals who have written something that may cause offence to someone from an identifiable group at some point in the future. Whether or not something is deemed offensive is entirely up to the interpretation of the members of the commission. Remarkably, a part of this same section exempts broadcasters for writing the very same thing that may land an individual in trouble with the CHRC — a shocking double standard.

While Prof. Moon’s report is excellent, the actual power to implement his recommendations, or any others that relate to the CHRA, resides not with the commission but with Parliament. It is the nation’s elected representatives who are ultimately responsible for the act. Therefore the ball is, as they say, now in Parliament’s court.

Last year, I introduced two initiatives to protect our freedom of speech. The first was a motion to remove section 13.1, the most noxious part of the Human Rights Act. The second initiative involved a request put to members of the House of Commons’ justice committee to conduct a public study of the CHRA, and by extension, the activities of the commission.
Prof. Moon’s report, along with bipartisan support for changes to the act, should give Parliament the confidence to, at the very least, undertake a justice committee study of the CHRA in a public, televised and transparent way. This would afford those with viewpoints on both sides of the divide an opportunity to debate the issue. Recommendations would be produced and the government could introduce legislation to enact those solutions that would change the act. Provincial legislatures, which have their own human rights commissions, should take heed and follow suit so that there is one standard for free speech across the land.

I asked Keith if he knew where the three Liberal leadership candidates stood on his motion. He said he didn't know. I asked him whether support for this issue would be the basis for his choice of leadership candidate, and he said that he does not expect a leadership candidate to represent everything he believes in. Instead, he said it was important for him to represent his constituents and that MPs not behave like trained seals.

I suspect that none of the Liberal leadership candidates will go out on a limb for freedom of speech or freedom of religion and conscience. We're going to hear lots of bromides about balancing rights--the right to be free from hatred and discrimination and the right to freedom of speech etc. Jennifer Lynch can count on support from the other side of the aisle in the Commons, because they share her alarm about hate speech on the Internet popping away like Microwave popcorn, though they will support freedom of speech when it comes to pornography getting government funding.

Joseph Ben-Ami, a conservative policy analyst, has an interesting though perhaps cynical perspective on the role Keith's motion is playing in the current debate. He writes:

The old-guard leaders of Canada’s confused conservative movement seem to never learn. The new Parliament is barely a week old and already they are whipping their followers into a frenzy in support of MP Keith Martin’s Bill to repeal Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act which deals with so-called hate speech. The only problem is, there is no such Bill, nor has there ever been – not even in the last Parliament.

What Dr. Martin resurrected last week, and what he had previously introduced, was a Motion calling on the government to amend the Act, not a Bill that, if passed, would accomplish that objective. It’s a way of having his cake and eating it too. Even if the Motion passes with a large majority – indeed, even if it passes unanimously – it will have no impact whatsoever on the current law. That’s the nature of Motions in contrast to Bills.

Dr. Martin knows this, which may or may not be why he chose to take this route rather than working with fellow MPs from both sides of the House of Commons to draft and introduce a real Bill and develop a strategy for its passage. This way he can capitalize on the goodwill of credulous supporters (who knows how many Canadians sent his campaign a small donation this fall) without actually having to risk doing something tangible on the subject.

I personally am thankful for the role Keith Martin has played and given the climate on the Hill, I think it is courageous.

The Conservatives don't want to risk taking a lead on this and it is important to them that they can have a Liberal member, especially one who is from a visible minority, to carry the political baggage on this potentially touchy issue. Keith has allowed himself to be a lightening rod on this, and as you can recall he took some flack, especially in the beginning. He stood up for this issue long before support started rolling in from the CAJ, from PEN Canada, and from editorial boards across the country.

Ben-Ami goes on:

Conservatives chronically fail to achieve their objectives in large part because they and their leaders keep on adopting strategies and employing tactics that guarantee failure. This is evident in the belief expressed by some that Keith Martin's Motion should be supported on the grounds that it would be an “important symbolic victory” if it were to pass.

I disagree.

Symbolic victories are for losers, and I for one am not interested in playing on a team led by people who aren’t just satisfied with such "victories", but who pursue them as a primary objective. My guess is that most grassroots conservatives are tired of being led like this also.

Here’s my advice, for what it’s worth. Instead of embracing Dr. Martin’s own symbolic gesture, people should demand that he get serious about the issue and introduce a Private Members Bill to amend the Act. Better yet, they should ask him to assemble a non-partisan coalition of MPs and professional staff who can quietly, without fanfare, draft a Bill and marshal the necessary bureaucratic, legislative and executive support to effectively guarantee its passage when introduced. It wouldn’t be easy, and it may not work, but at least it has a chance of bringing change, unlike a Motion which, even if successful, can bring no change at all.

Could Keith Martin go further than he has? I don't know. Could he risk getting bounced from the Liberal Caucus if he does? Could he end up another Garth Turner? But then Keith is not planning to run in the next election.

But even a private members' bill isn't going to be binding on the government.

No, the government has to act on this.

All that glitters in the Moonlight is not gold

While there is momentum building for a restoration of our fundamental rights to freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, it is only that--momentum--and we are very, very far from seeing the abolition of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act and an overhaul of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

As much as Justice Minister Rob Nicholson drives me crazy with his boring talking points and his inaction on this file, and as much as I'd like to hear a really effective apologetic for conservative principles coming from the Harper government (with legislation to match), I must confess to some sympathy for the position Harper is in, even though I share Mark Steyn's frustration. He writes:

With the greatest respect to a Minister of the Crown, this is why people despise politicians. Earlier this month, Mr Nicholson was one of that 99.5 per cent of Tory delegates that voted to repeal Section 13. Did his vote mean what it appears to mean in plain English? Or was he just fearful of sticking out as one of the 0.5 per cent of dissenters? Or has he got some nuanced-up-the-wazoo John Kerry I-voted-for-it-before-I-voted-against-it thing going on? The Attorney-General gives the impression, as was said of the British Tories in the twilight of the Major years, of being in office but not in power.

But one thing seems clear. He's in no hurry.

Those who do not live in Ottawa and work inside the Queensway on the Hill may hate the fact that doing so cuts one off from real grassroots Canadians, but the Tory government has to live with the fact that two-thirds of Canadians voted for Left-wing parties and that is reflected in the House. It's reflected in the make-up of the committees, where Tories will not hold a majority of seats on any of them as far as I know. So yes, the Tories are in office, but not in power in some ways that require some patience on all of our parts. Patience and persistence.

The Tories are also surrounded by a public service that is default Liberal, even though they are supposed to be non-partisan. This public service, in "Yes, Minister!" fashion can be prone to doing what it thinks best, regardless of the wishes of their political masters, especially in a shaky minority government situation. So no wonder Harper and his team are sticking to practical, tiny, incremental and achievable goals and want to damper down anything controversial.

While the editorial boards of all the major newspapers and many of the most prominent columnists are onside with the freedom of speech movement, I would say the National Press Gallery is ---uninterested for the most part.

How can I tell? Little things. Like the other day when I tossed a question out to Conservative MP Rick Dykstra as he was going into Question Period. The camera operaters dutifully turned on their lights and started recording and the boom mics descended, but when a couple of journalists came over to find out what it was about and I told them, they nodded and flitted off, uninterested. This was the day of the Moon Report. I can't tell you how many disinterested journalists I came across on Monday. There was more talk in the Commons foyer about the fact that Canwest and maybe CTV were not going to pay for everyone's tickets to the Press Gallery Dinner coming up this weekend than about the Moon Report.

There was the time I was printing off The Tyranny of Nice in the Press Gallery's Hot Room in Centre Block and a member was drawn to the cover picture. He thought it was a great cover, really catchy. But when he found out what it was about, he smiled dismissively, and went back to his cubicle.

This is still seen, apparently, as a fuss being raised by Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant, two columnists/writers who are seen as right-wing and over-the-top though some like them and find them amusing.

You'll note in this piece by Don Butler, Richard Warman is the go-to person for comment to defend CHRC.

But the piece has nothing about the controversy surrounding Warman.

As I said yesterday, we have to be prepared for the long haul on this front. And it is not something that can only be won politically. Hearts and minds have to be changed. Civil society needs to be rebuilt. We have to think of our own long march through the institutions. We're talking decades, folks, not months or even years.

Norman Doidge--A Canadian treasure

Dr. Norman Doidge used to have a must-read column in the National Post, back in the days of Conrad Black's ownership. A man with a breadth of classical and medical education and a terrific writer to boot, he should be a treasured public intellectual. Today I was treated by a long op-ed by him in my Post. Sounds like his book The Brain That Changes Itself is something I must buy. And it sounds like a great companion to Denyse O'Leary and Dr. Mario Beauregard's The Spiritual Brain. I hope people pay attention to his findings, because they blast the mechanistic and materialist models that so many people think is scientific, when it fact cutting edge science has moved well beyond them.

Doidge writes:

On Thursday night, on CBC’s The Nature of Things, Canadians will get to see the things that have led me to claim that we are now experiencing the biggest change in our understanding of the brain in 400 years — the discovery that the brain can actually change itself, its very structure and function, with the use of thought. Viewers will watch a blind man sink a basketball; a woman with half a brain functioning in life; learning disorders, strokes and brain traumas improved and cured; and chronic pain alleviated.

For 400 years we have been using the wrong model for thinking about the brain, thinking of it as a machine. Ever since Galileo explained that the planetary orbits could be understood as inanimate objects moved by the mechanical laws of motion, scientists have believed that for an explanation to be scientific it has to be mechanistic, or machine-like.

“Mechanistic biology” was born when William Harvey brilliantly showed that the heart was a pump with vessels and valves, a kind of machine. René Descartes argued that the brain and nervous system were similar, with currents running up and down the nerves, which were thought to be vessels too. Descartes also divided the brain into distinct parts. In 1861 Paul Broca showed that people process speech with their left frontal lobes. The triumph of 19th- and most of 20th-century neuroscience was to “map” the brain and show which part or location in the brain did what. The name for this view was “localizationism.” Once machines became electric, localizationists began speaking of the brain’s circuits as “hard-wired,” meaning that the relevant circuits were laid down according to a genetic template and that these circuits were formed, and finalized, in childhood.

Thus the brain came to be seen as a complex machine with parts, each performing a single mental function, an idea with us today when we describe the brain as a kind of computer. This doctrine of the unchanging brain meant that many born with mental limitations, learning disabilities or certain psychiatric problems, or those who suffered brain damage or strokes, were seen, almost by definition, as condemned to live with them. Machines do many glorious things, but they don’t grow new parts, or reorganize themselves. This doctrine promoted a neurological nihilism that spread through our culture: At times it meant that human nature, which emerges from the brain, was seen as being equally rigid.

The "shock doctrine" of the Left

Terence Corcoran writes:

Obama and the rise of Disaster Socialism

By Terence Corcoran

As is now well known, Barack Obama’s new Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, told a Wall Street Journal conference last week that, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” He added, his eye on the worsening financial environment, that “This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.” President-elect Obama appears to be taking the crisis strategy to heart. Announcing his economic team yesterday, Mr. Obama spoke of an economic crisis of “historic proportions” that requires immediate response: “If we do not act swiftly and boldly, most experts believe we could lose millions of jobs next year.”

The crisis mentality, the idea that disasters should be seized and used as springboards for the imposition of radical ideas, appears to be gaining favour in all circles.In an economic and financial meltdown, it’s time to bring in those languishing policy ideas — radical labour reform, ratchet up government spending, nationalize industries, roll-out energy controls, re-regulate banking and industry, socialize health care, turn the economy over to the carbon police. “Now is the time to confront the challenge of [carbon emissions and climate change] once and for all,” said Mr. Obama last week. “Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer acceptable.”

But wait a minute. Haven’t we heard all this before? Isn’t cashing in on crisis supposed to have been George W. Bush’s game, with the evil Dick Cheney at his side and propped up by the crisis-mongering cabal of capitalist free-market running dogs from the Chicago School, the Milton Friedmanites? Isn’t this Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine actually being implemented — not by the right but by the left?

Obama apppoints Bill Clinton president--Iowahawk

This made me laugh. Go read the whole thing. Here's a taste:

WASHINGTON DC - Ending weeks of speculation and rumors, President-Elect Barack Obama today named Bill Clinton to join his incoming administration as President of the United States, where he will head the federal government's executive branch.

"I am pleased that Bill Clinton has agreed to come out of retirement to head up this crucial post in my administration," said Obama. "He brings a lifetime of previous executive experience as Governor of Arkansas and President of the United States, and has worked closely with most of the members of my Cabinet."

Clinton said he was "excited and honored" by the appointment, and would work "day and night" to defeat all the key policy objectives proposed by Mr. Obama during the campaign.

Tyranny of Nice the American sequel?

Tyranny of Nice co-author Pete Vere warns Americans a bogus "human rights" regime might be in their future.

G.K. Chesterton once observed that “When orthodoxy is optional, it will sooner or later be proscribed.” With a new government about to be sworn into Washington, there is talk about implementing hate speech legislation similar to what we have in Canada. Unfortunately, as we have learned north of the border, tolerance and anti-hate legislation quickly becomes a euphemism for silencing orthodox Christian teaching.

Such is the case with Canada’s human rights commissions and tribunals — state-established quasi-judicial tribunals in which Christians are regularly hauled to account for their Christian convictions. These commissions and tribunals have a 100 percent conviction rate against Christians. Several of these cases are documented in Tyranny of Nice, a book I recently co-authored with Canadian blogger Kathy Shaidle, which features an introduction by conservative columnist Mark Steyn — himself a victim of three Canadian human rights commissions and tribunals for his bestselling book America Alone.

Vere includes an excerpt from the book on the case of Christian printer Scott Brockie. You would do well to acquaint yourself with this case.

Better yet, buy the book either through FiveFeetofFury or Mark Steyn's online store.

Very interesting---U.S. Bishops resisting Obama's FOCA promise

At the Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez quotes extensively from an article at Slate.

Here's a portion of what she quoted:

And the most ludicrous line out of them, surely, was about how, under Obama, Catholic hospitals that provide obstetric and gynecological services might soon be forced to perform abortions or close their doors. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Chicago warned of "devastating consequences" to the health care system, insisting Obama could force the closure of all Catholic hospitals in the country. That's a third of all hospitals, providing care in many neighborhoods that are not exactly otherwise overprovided for. It couldn't happen, could it?

You wouldn't think so. Only, I am increasingly convinced that it could. If the Freedom of Choice Act passes Congress, and that's a big if, Obama has promised to sign it the second it hits his desk. (Here he is at a Planned Parenthood Action Fund event in 2007, vowing, "The first thing I'd do as president is, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing I'd do.") Though it's often referred to as a mere codification of Roe, FOCA, as currently drafted, actually goes well beyond that: According to the Senate sponsor of the bill, Barbara Boxer, in a statement on her Web site, FOCA would nullify all existing laws and regulations that limit abortion in any way, up to the time of fetal viability. Laws requiring parental notification and informed consent would be tossed out. While there is strenuous debate among legal experts on the matter, many believe the act would invalidate the freedom-of-conscience laws on the books in 46 states. These are the laws that allow Catholic hospitals and health providers that receive public funds through Medicaid and Medicare to opt out of performing abortions. Without public funds, these health centers couldn't stay open; if forced to do abortions, they would sooner close their doors. Even the prospect of selling the institutions to other providers wouldn't be an option, the bishops have said, because that would constitute "material cooperation with an intrinsic evil."

The bishops are not bluffing when they say they'd turn out the lights rather than comply. Nor is Auxiliary Bishop Robert Hermann of St. Louis exaggerating, I don't think, in vowing that "any one of us would consider it a privilege to die tomorrow—to die tomorrow—to bring about the end of abortion.''

Some random Moon beams

In reading various posts on the Moon Report, I was struck by the print edition headline of Joseph Brean's National Post piece: "Ottawa urged to scrap hate speech law: It's just not practical."

He quotes Professor Richard Moon as follows:

"My position, which differs from quite a few people, is that it's not practical to deal with what one might generously describe as group defamation or stereotyping through censorship. It's just not a viable option. There's too much of it, and it's so pervasive within our public discourse that any kind of censorship is just overwhelming," Prof. Moon said in an interview. "I've tried to connect what we restrict to violence."

I read the whole report yesterday, all 45 pages, and it occurred to me after re-reading this quote that nowhere in the report does Moon ever say the kind of censorship the Canadian Human Rights Commission has engaged in is WRONG, and contrary to fundamental human rights.

While he makes a defense of freedom of speech in the report, it seems clearer to me that Moon is more disturbed by stereotyping and group defamation than he is by government abuses of inherent human rights. He seems to take a "functional" approach to the right of freedom of speech, in that it helps democracies function better, not that human beings have a God-given right to freedom of expression, of religion and of conscience.

I wonder if equality is a trump right for him as it is for many on the Left, who have replaced Western concepts of equality before the law and equality of opportunity with a utopian and statist model that requires equality of outcome and social engineering to achieve it. This perspective argues various inequalities among human beings are the fault of the system and we must make structural changes in society to level the playing field so that everyone has an equal outcome, even if that means muzzling or handicapping people who are more successful.

At least Moon recognizes that from the policing of speech perspective that's impractical, but it sure seems like he would like to see a society where there is never a disparaging word. At least he is trying to envisage using non-state actors to attain this kind of harmony in which all genuine difference is glossed over, so that we have a rainbow of outward diversity, but a fascist kind of one-size-fits-all pantyhose liberalism that "all cultures and religions are equally good and really the same underneath" because we have found ways to enforce social conformity, though without outward state coercion. It's called convergence liberalism and it's the opposite of a robust pluralism that allows for the accommodation of real differences in belief.

Yesterday I mentioned the the few paragraphs in the report where Moon he explains the process of investigating complaints. The only allusion --it's not really a mention--he makes to some of the disturbing techniques CHRC investigators have used such as joining neo-Nazi sites under assumed names like Jadewarr and writing anti-gay and anti-Jewish material on the Internet is in this paragraph:

"In preparing this report I repeatedly came across shocking misdescriptions of the CHRC's process. These misdescriptions appeared not only on marginal websites but also and all too often in the mainstream media. This was a reminder that there are commentators who will say anything to support a larger agenda and have no particular interest in being accurate."

Well, I've been following theses "shocking" "mis"-descriptions and I've seen lots of links to actual Canadian Human Rights Tribunal manuscripts where investigators have admitted doing these activities under oath.

In my conversation yesterday with the CHRC's senior counsel in litigation services Philippe Dufresne, I mentioned this paragraph and how I had actually seen examples of shocking real description in transcripts of CHRT hearings. He seemed to not believe me. I told him I would email him some examples.

Does someone out there have a list with hyperlinks to the various transcripts?

We do not need the Justice Committee to look at this mess. We need a Royal Commission headed by a real judge, with powers to subpoena witnesses. The Justice Committee will have a majority of MPs who love the idea of state censorship and state-imposed equality. Parliament, alas, is full of one-size-fits-all-pantyhose-convergence liberals.

I remain disturbed that Moon says hate speech is by definition untrue so therefore truth should not be a defence. He makes this claim in his second set of recommendations that would kick in should Parliament not repeal Section 13. He advocates a tightened up definition of hate speech (creating a parallel process to the Criminal Code only without the protections afforded by a real court--a lower standard of proof, for example).

Brean writes:

As it is now, neither truth nor intent is a defence, as they can be in libel law. Prof. Moon recommended that intent to advocate or justify violence be made a requirement for Section 13, replacing the test of "likely to expose."

He considered the possibility of truth as a defence, but did not recommend it, fearful that tribunals could become forums to debate, for example, the veracity of the Holocaust, the genetic inferiority of blacks, or the dangers of homosexuality.

I don't like the idea that government becomes the arbitrator on any of these things, or that courts become forums for people like Ernst Zundel to gain a platform for their odious views. I don't think government should be deciding between the Turks and the Armenians or the Palestinians and Israel or any other conflict where each side has a set of facts they use to make their cases.

Moon also objected to the discretion the Attorney General has in deciding whether on not criminal prosecutions of hate speech should go ahead. He noted that sometimes AGs have decided not to prosecute hate speech for political reasons--i.e. just so as to not give some obscure fulminator of hatred a forum. Frankly, I think that's a very GOOD reason for AGs to have that discretion.

Seriously, in Canada after World War II, where as Kathy Shaidle writes, we learned more about the Holocaust than we did about abortion, what danger, really, did Ernst Zundel pose to Canadian Jews? How many people would have even heard of his odious views if he hadn't been charged and prosecuted?

Kathy writes:

Most Christians of my generation (Catholic and Protestant) were raised in the post-Holocaust 20th century to believe that anti-semitism was THE worst sin; I certainly heard more about it than I ever did about, say, abortion. "Remember: Jesus was Jewish!" was the last word. At school we were inspired by stories of people like Irene Gut (who slept with an German officer to save the 12 refugees hiding in the basement), as well as Irene Sendler, the Polish nurse who smuggled thousands of Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto in toolboxes, trash cans and even coffins.

Yes, rabidly pro-Semitic Christians CAN be inept and goofy with their "red heifer" hysteria, but that's usually all they are; their hearts are in the right place.

But some things--like the kinds of diseases that can come from certain sexual practices--not only practiced by homosexuals by the way---have been suppressed in the interest of political correctness and threats of hate speech complaints, when thousands of lives could be saved. One only has to read Randy Schiltz's The Band Played On to see how political correctness in the early days of the AIDS epidemic led to thousands of unnecessary deaths. Because Schiltz was gay, he could write about it. Would a straight Christian have been charged with hate speech for saying the same things?

Of the 11 Hallmarks of hate, #2 is this:

2. The messages use “true stories”, news reports, pictures and references from purportedly reputable sources to make negative generalizations about the targeted group;

This is odious. Truth must always be a defense. Dismissing a truth defence is like the proverbial opening the window a crack to let Dracula in--the invitation to allow these censoring bodies to squash truth and eliminate legitimate dissent.

The only time I think governments should rightly engage in the censorship of truthful information is during war when truth would directly endanger our troops or our national security and I mean directly endanger. And censorship should cease when the war is over.

I have a great, great sympathy and respect for the Jewish people. My mother, sister and grandparents were stateless persons in France during World War II as Russian refugees. Though they were not Jewish, stateless persons also ended up in the camps. They managed to flee to the United States, but I grew up with the horror of Nazism. I remember seeing the pictures of stacked bodies in the camps that were in the Family of Man, a picture book we had in our living room. Could these truthful pictures one day be banned because they are seen as disparaging of Germans?

Yet there is a strange lack of sympathy among official Jews concerning the fact that HRCs have been used systematically to persecute Christian believers. When I brought this up with B'nai Brith's [correction, he is with the Simon Wiesenthal Center] Leo Adler at the March 25 Canadian Human Rights Tribunal his attitude in response to the concerns I raised bordered on rude. He seemed to not care about Christian mayors being forced--against their religious beliefs and conscientious objections---to proclaim Gay Pride Days, under penalty of huge fines, of Calgary Bishop Fred Henry facing complaints for a pastoral letter on marriage, of youth pastor Stephen Boissoin facing a life-long ban on every saying anything "disparaging" about gays and being forced to publicly renounce his deeply held religious beliefs.

Even though the tide of public opinion is turning our way, we have a long, long fight ahead of us.
As I reported yesterday, the Justice Minister wants to hand this off to the Commons Justice Committee, which in the last Parliament was so dysfunctional it didn't even meet last spring.

And Jennifer Lynch seems to be acting as if the recommendation to ditch Section 13 of the act doesn't exist. There is an appalling quote from her in Brean's report. He writes:

Jennifer Lynch, chief commissioner of the CHRC, called the report "one step in a comprehensive review" of her hate-speech mandate, which she described as "a hybrid of both regulation and education."

"We can envision Section 13 being retained with some amendments," she said.

She said the report was commissioned to introduce "fresh thinking" on the problem of Internet hate speech, which has changed drastically.

"It's kind of like microwaving popcorn, you know? For the first while on the Internet, there was this little pop, pop, pop. And now, the popcorn is in full popping formation. It's just omnipresent, 24/7, popping up here, popping up there, and so it seems to make it difficult for measured voices to respond," she said.

"The key thing here is that our commission exists to protect Canadians from discrimination, and I'm fervently going to uphold this core principle, and we're going to strive to find more effective means to protect Canadians from exposure to hate on the Internet," Ms. Lynch said.

Pop! Pop! Pop!????????? This is an example of fresh thinking?

I am a journalist and not a polemicist or even a columnist, so I have resisted some of the caricaturing of Lynch that is out there in the blogosphere. Let's just say I find these quotes deeply troubling for many reasons. First of all, she seems to be ignoring the top recommendation in the report she commissioned. As Ezra Levant notes, she is not passing this report to Parliament, she is continuing with her own investigation, until she gets the results she wants. He writes:

The CHRC was surprised, too, and obviously not pleased. Although Moon’s report used the word “repeal” 11 times — it was his primary recommendation — that word appears nowhere in the CHRC’s press release announcing his findings.

In fact, the CHRC has already thrown Moon under the bus, minimizing his report as merely some “suggestions,” and announcing that they want a do-over. In the very same press release, they announced another round of consultations on the subject, at untold public expense — and this time they’ll be more careful about who’s allowed to participate.

It’s a lot like Quebec separatists and their referendums. They’re just going to keep on asking the question until they get the answer they want: the power to censor Canadians.

When I worked as a journalist in Nova Scotia, I remember growing so tired of writing about Donald Marshall, the MicMac Indian who spent 11 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Yet it wasn't until journalists and columnists were about ready to shoot themselves if they had to write about this miscarriage of justice one more time that the general public caught on and a groundswell arose for a public inquiry.

People who support the censorship regime in place at various HRCs hope that the blogosphere will grow tired of this issue. They will keep postponing action and deepening the defences around their bunker until people like Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn and the Binks at FreeCanukistan move on to other interests. They hope columnists like Margaret Wente, Rex Murphy, Michael Coren and others will grow weary of this struggle.

Hey, who cares about a bunch of Christians getting fed to the HRC lions, eh? I mean, we had the Liberal government in several elections calling anyone who supported traditional marriage "unCanadian" and "anti-Charter" and "anti-Canadian values" when if it weren't for the Judeo-Christian basis of Western Civilization we would have no recognition of human equality or fundamental rights to freedom of expression, of religion or of conscience.

We have had our own government using hallmarks of hate against us, and using state coercion to silence some of our members.

By the way, the Canadian Family Action Coalition calculated that each page of Moon's $50,000 report cost more than $1,000.

Truth has to be a defense in hate speech cases

But Professor Moon says in his report that hate speech is by definition untrue.

Here are his exact words:

No Truth Defence: In my view, a truth defence is not required because hate speech is necessarily untrue. Hate speech makes the claim that the members of an identifiable group share a dangerous or undesirable trait – that they are by nature violent or corrupt or dishonest – and must be stopped by violent means if necessary.

As I said over at Jay Currie's combox, truth has to be a defense and yes, sometimes it is true that members of an identifiable group share a dangerous or undesirable trait. How about the Ku Klux Klan? What if some other group, different race perhaps, set up a racist, hate-oriented religion that had a creed that nonbelievers should be killed unless they join up?

We saw in the Maclean's/Mark Steyn case that the "obligatory 'of courses'" were deemed to be a smokescreen for hate speech, so even if we say that 'of course' not all people from a race or a religion are more inclined than others to do certain things but a troubling-sized minority of them are prepared to do things like strap on explosives or fly passenger jets into buildings for the sake of their God.

Andrew Coyne live-blogged about how the "of courses" passage was dealt with by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal:

Now we’re reading the “of course” passage, which has been a peculiar object of fascination througout the hearing. This is the one where Steyn specifically disavows generalizing his concerns to all Muslims. But here it’s interpreted to mean that he is. I’ll reprint it here, so the reader can judge:

Time for the obligatory “of courses”: of course, not all Muslims are terrorists — though enough are hot for jihad to provide an impressive support network of mosques from Vienna to Stockholm to Toronto to Seattle. Of course, not all Muslims support terrorists — though enough of them share their basic objectives(the wish to live under Islamic law in Europe and North America) to function wittingly or otherwise as the “good cop” end of an Islamic good cop/bad cop routine.

My own interpretation of those weary “of courses” are that Steyn feels he shouldn’t have to even say them — that a criticism of some Muslims should not open him to the charge that he is talking of all Muslims, but that since it probably will, he will spell it out explicitly. Fat lot of good it did him.

The example I used at Jay's site concerned a bizarre religious cult like that of Jim Jones. If someone knew in advance its leader planned to have them all commit mass suicide, that might be deemed hateful concerning this left-leaning former human rights commissioner who was such an eloquent speaker.

No, truth has to be a defense. Because it is possible that human beings having both the possibility of being depraved or divine that a whole group of them can start acting in a depraved fashion.

Now in general, I would agree that most hateful speech--the crap that's laced with conspiracy theories, that refers to various groups as vermin, that scapegoats them for every problem, that categorizes everyone in the group as stupid, dishonest, violent etc. and is false most of the time. But for the sake of that one per cent of the time when it might be important--on the level of warning of the fire in the crowded theatre---truth needs to be a defence.

Justice Minister responds to Moon Report

I just listened to an interview CFRB's Brian Lilley did with Justice Minister Rob Nicholson. The minister would not directly answer whether he supported Professor Moon's recommendation to repeal Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

He said:

"Well, we're going to have a very careful look at Professor Moon's recommendations."

It just came out today and it's fairly extensive."

He said he still hopes the Justice Committee will take it up.

"With the report just being released today I think its important that we have a very careful look at it."

As Justice Minister he said he gets lots of input on changes to various laws: drug laws, changes to criminal justice act, auto theft, identity theft. "It's very difficult to get any changes through Parliament."

He said he wanted to have the Justice Committee look at Section 13 in the last Parliament, but that was impossible. He said the election is over now and there is a new spirit of cooperation so he hopes the Justice Committee will take it up so all parties can examine this.

At the end of the interview, Brian asked if, given his vote at the Conservative Convention whether he personally liked the recommendation, he reiterated basically the same points.

Dykstra not sure he can re-submit motion

Well, another interesting development. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has been saying that he supported Rick Dykstra's motion to have the Justice Committee investigate the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

This morning, Darren Eke, Nicholson's communications direction, reiterated that his boss hoped Dyskra would re-submit his motion.

Well, I just scrummed Dystra on his way into Question Period. He said he's not even sure he's going to be on the Justice Committee as he is now the Parliamentary Secretary to the Citizenship and Immigration Minister.

More Richard Moon quotes

On page 19 he writes:

"The debate about section 13 of the CHRA is at root a debate about whether or to what extent the legal restriction of hate speech can be reconciled with our political and constitutional commitment to freedom of expression. The issue is often framed in more general terms as a contest between, on one hand, the right to equality, advanced by hate speech laws, and on the other, the freedom of the individual to express her/himself. Framed in this abstract way, the issue appears intractable. A resolution is possible, however, once we recognize the limited potential of hate speech regulation to advance equality and the limited value of hate speech."

"A finding that section 13 has been breached is based on the effect or character of the communication and not on the intention of the communicator. The remedies for breach of section 13 are compensatory rather than punitive--a cease and desist order and monetary compensation."

"Freedom of expression should be protected because it contributes to the public's recognition of truth or to growth of public knowledge; or becuase it is necessary to the operation of a democratic form of government; or because it is vital to individual self-realization or is an important aspect of individual autonomy."

Kathy's keeping track of web reax

Check out Five Feet of Fury for web reaction to the decision. Kathy's keeping track and adding stuff as bloggers and journalists weigh in.

Joseph Brean writes about the decision here.

Mark Steyn comments at the Corner.

CHRC will compile a report for mid 2009

Just got off the phone with someone from the CHRC who said the commission is inviting responses to the Moon report and welcoming the debate. They then plan to compile all the responses into a report they will submit to Parliament in mid-2009.

Shocking misdescriptions of the CHRC's process

Moon: "In preparing this report I repeatedly came across shocking misdescriptions of the CHRC's process. These misdescriptions appeared not only on marginal websites but also and all too often in the mainstream media. This was a reminder that there are commentators who will say anything to support a larger agenda and have no particular interest in being accurate."

Hmmmmm. Does that mean Moon has not looked at transcripts where CHRC employees admit some of the practices that various websites and mainstream media have criticized?

I guess this kind of thing would be for his compulsory national press council to deal with, eh?

A censorious impulse rises

There are still some censorious impulses in the Moon report. For example, he recommends the revival of press councils where various community groups could make complaints about how they are portrayed.

If these are not created voluntarily, he recommends the creation of "a national press council with compulsory membership."

"This national press council would have the authority to determine whether a newspaper or magazine has breached professional standards and to order the particular newspaper or magazine to publish the press council's decision."

Well, I suppose an independent-minded newspaper like Ezra Levant's now defunct Western Standard would run afoul of a body like this for publishing the Mohammed cartoons.

What might we expect?

I just spoke to the Justice Minister Rob Nicholson's communications person Darren Eke who said the minister is reviewing the Moon report and may respond in Question Period. (Hmmmm, who might ask a question?)

I pointed out Moon recommended the repeal of Section 13.

Eke said the Justice Minister had indicated he wanted to have the justice committee look at Section 13 and was hoping that Conservative MP Rick Dyskstra would again make a motion to that effect.

Perhaps the justice committee could also review the Moon report, he said.

[Sigh]

I told him the justice committee had been completely dysfunctional and hadn't even met last spring.

Eke said the new committees for the 40th Parliament were only now being set up and he hoped "all parties would work together."

Stay tuned.

Here's the summary of Moon's recommendations

The text is here. My bolds:

A pdf version of the report is here.

This is a summary of recommendations that were provided by Professor Richard Moon, in a report that will be issued on November 24, 2008.

Discriminatory expression – general

• The use of censorship by the government should be confined to a narrow category of extreme expression – that which threatens, advocates or justifies violence against the members of an identifiable group, even if the violence that is supported or threatened is not imminent.
• The failure to ban the extreme or radical edge of discriminatory expression carries too many risks, particularly when it circulates within the racist subculture that subsists on the Internet. Less extreme forms of discriminatory expression, although harmful, cannot simply be censored out of public discourse.
• Any attempt to exclude from public discourse speech that stereotypes or defames members of an identifiable group would require extraordinary intervention by the state and would dramatically compromise the public commitment to freedom of expression. Because these less extreme forms of discriminatory expression are so commonplace, it is impossible to establish clear and effective rules for their identification and exclusion. But because they are so pervasive, it is also vital that they be addressed or confronted.
• We must develop ways other than censorship to respond to expression that stereotypes the members of an identifiable group and to hold institutions such as the media accountable when they engage in these forms of discriminatory expression.
• The purpose of hate speech law, as the protection of the members of identifiable groups from the risk of violence generated by hate speech, is narrower than the more familiar justification which emphasizes the protection of dignity and the right to equal respect within the community. It may offer a better account of the actual practice of hate speech law in Canada, which focuses on the most extreme and hateful instances of expression. The few section 13 cases sent to Tribunal and in which the Tribunal has found a breach of the section have almost all involved expression that is so extreme and hateful that it may be seen as advocating or justifying violence against the members of an identifiable group.
• However, a narrowly drawn ban on hate speech focussing on expression tied to violence does not fit easily or simply into a human rights law that takes an expansive view of discrimination, emphasizes the effect of the action on the victime rather than the intention or misconduct of the actor and employs a process that is designed to engage the parties and facilitate a non-adjudicative resolution of the "dispute".

Professor Moon’s recommendations

Professor Moon’s recommendations, which are developed in sections 4 and 5 of the report, may be divided into three parts:

1. The first recommendation is that section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) be repealed so that the CHRC and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) would no longer deal with hate speech, in particular hate speech on the Internet.

Hate speech should continue to be prohibited under the Criminal Code but confined to expression that advocates, justifies or threatens violence. In the fight against hate on the Internet, police and prosecutors should make greater use of section 320.1 of the Criminal Code, which gives a judge power to order an Internet service provider (ISP) to remove "hate propaganda" from its system.

Each province should establish a provincial "Hate Crime Team," composed of both police and Crown law officers with experience in the area to deal with the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes including hate speech under the Criminal Code.

2. The second part of the recommendations concerns changes that should be made to section 13 of the CHRA if it is not repealed.

These changes would reshape section 13 so that it more closely resembles a criminal restriction on hate speech.

They include:

1. changes to the language in order to clarify that the section prohibits only the most extreme instances of discriminatory expression, that threatens, advocates or justifies violence against the members of an identifiable group;.
2. the amendment of section 13(1) of the CHRA to include an intention requirement; and
3. the amendment of the CHRA to establish a distinct process for the investigation of section 13 complaints by the CHRC. Under the amended process, the CHRC would receive inquiries and information from individuals or community groups but would no longer investigate and assess formal complaints.

The CHRC would have the exclusive right to initiate an investigation in section 13 cases. If, following an investigation, the CHRC recommends that the case be sent to the CHRT, the CHRC would have carriage of the case before the Tribunal.

This would remove the significant burden that under the existing system falls on the complainant. It would also enable the CHRC to dismiss (decide not to pursue) a "complaint" earlier in the process, when it finds that the communication at issue does not breach the section 13(1) standard and is unlikely to succeed at Tribunal.

3. The third set of recommendations concerns the role of non-state actors in the prevention of expression that is hateful or discriminatory in character.

The major Internet service providers (ISPs) should consider the creation of a hate speech complaint line and the establishment of an advisory body, composed of of individuals with expertise in hate speech law, that would give its opinion as to whether a particular website hosted by an ISP has violated section 13 of the CHRA or the "hate propaganda" provisions of the Criminal Code.

If this body were to decide that the complaint is well founded, the ISP host would then shut down the site on the basis of its user agreement with customers.

Newspapers and news magazines should seek to revitalize the provincial/regional press councils and ensure that identifiable groups are able to pursue complaints if they feel they have been unfairly represented in mainstream media.

If this does not happen, consideration should be given to the statutory creation of a national press council with compulsory membership. This national press council would have the authority to determine whether a newspaper or magazine has breached professional standards and order the publication of the press council’s decision.

A newspaper is not simply a private participant in public discourse; it is an important part of the public sphere where discussions about the affairs of the community takes place. As such it carries a responsibility to portray the different groups that make up the Canadian community fairly and without discrimination.

Moon recommends repeal of Section 13

The report is out. Get a load of this:

"The first recommendation is that section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) be repealed so that the CHRC and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal would no longer deal with hate speech, in particular hate speech on the Internet."

That was from the summary.

Most interesting. I can almost not believe my eyes.

Moon at 11:00 a.m.

I have been told on good authority the Moon report will be up on the CHRC website at 11:00 a.m.

Trying to use that website, or their phone directory is an experience similar to that of Mark and Connie Fournier's visit. The website is designed so you can't find what you want, such as the name of a communications person.

And if you happen to already know the name, good luck in typing in the spelling into the phone key pad. Even "Lynch" doesn't work.

Grrrr. I'm already cranky.

You would think that on a day like today their media relations person would be bright and bushy-tailed manning the phones.

Is there such a thing as a compassionate government?

This blog post at the excellent Acton Institute has some excellent food for thought:

I cannot tell you how many times Catholics have used “the common good” as an excuse for more government involvement in peoples’ lives and the installing of socialistic, “spread the wealth” programs. This version of the common good is the foundation for some people’s idea of distributive justice, but actually it is based on the “Robin Hood fallacy” of robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.

-snip-

The Church, as opposed to some Catholic writers, recognizes this. The Church holds to the principle of subsidiarity, originally enunciated by Leo XIII and actually named as such by Pius XI. Firstly, this principle states that nothing should be done by a higher level of society that can be done by a lower level. This means that, say, in my profession, the professor in the classroom is presumed to be doing his job unless some serious problem arises. His department chairman is not to be breathing down his neck and nitpicking his work. Certainly, the chairman’s boss, the dean, has no business butting into the professor’s work. If a problem arises, and the dean hears about it, he should ask the chairman to investigate it and take care of it, assuming the chairman has not done so already, which is an unlikely assumption. Secondly, the principle of subsidiarity says that nothing should be done by a government agency that can be done by a private agency. This means that government is a last resort, when all private possibilities are exhausted and the problem is a serious violation of justice or something that only a government can resolve, like an invasion.

Take a look at how Vatican II defines the common good: “The common good of society consists in the sum total of those conditions of social life which enable men to achieve a fuller measure of perfection with greater ease. It consists especially in safeguarding the rights and duties of the human person.” The fact that the Church does not have a list of specific positive programs here is that it is clearly stressing the notion that the common good is a “habitat” in which the human person can flourish. The onus is on the person to do the flourishing, with the assistance of the spontaneous institutions arising in a free society which are there for that purpose. On the other side of the coin, the onus is also on the individual to make sure that his fellows have that environment to flourish, with the government as a last resort remedy for that which individuals and social groups cannot do to provide that habitat.

Therefore, we can conclude with Bertrand de Jouvenel that a healthy society has many social organizations, and that the role of these groups should not be usurped by government. If government participates in this usurpation, it is rejecting the human person’s duty and ability to help himself and his brothers and sisters. Remember what we wrote about John Paul II and personal responsibility? (Maybe you should review it). Personal responsibility is founded on self-governance and self-governance leads to self-determination. Surely, self-governance of a social being like man leads him to take responsibility for the success of ourselves and of our fellows who cannot succeed by themselves, but it should never substitute for the action of the persons themselves.

There is more from the author Dr. William Luckey here at Catholic Truths on Economics. Great stuff.

The thought police at Queen's

The National Post has yet another editorial on the creepy thought police roaming the halls of Queen's University, a school that is rapidly losing its distinguished reputation. Too bad real intellectual diversity is dying out at universities.

Some salient excerpts:

Perhaps Mr. Deane needs a "facilitator" of his own to help him understand why his words immediately strike so many as creepy and totalitarian. Indeed, one sentence -- "Freedom of speech and thought is impossible without respect, consideration and a commitment to mutual understanding" -- is exactly the sort of pro-forma boilerplate that inevitably gets sputtered out by human rights commissioners before they bring the boom down on some poor conservative-minded fellow who had the temerity to speak his views.

AND

As numerous PC horror stories illustrate, the mission of "facilitat[ing] difficult or sensitive discussions" is inherently censorious when performed by university officials -- or, as in this case, their hired student contractors. That's because the thought police long ago decided that any hint of heterodoxy on issues touching upon group identity is, by definition, hurtful and oppressive. Bad-mouthing gay marriage, opposing abortion on demand, bringing conservative speakers to campus --all of these activities have been targeted for the allegedly hateful messages they send to politically favoured groups.

Which is to say: Any attempt to cast the Queen's Thought Control Six as chatty, happy-go-lucky cafeteria constables should be met with scepticism. All acts of substantive censorship on campuses tend to be dressed up in the false garb of diversity and "respect." This exercise will likely prove no different. Indeed, Mr. Deane's own reference to "social justice theory" -- a fuzzy, utopian doctrine that borrows heavily from socialism and other left-wing creeds -- is a dead giveaway of the program's politicized nature.

Not mooning for the Moon report

Ezra Levant lays out a lot of reasons why the Moon report is likely to be a disappointment for anyone who cares about fundamental rights and freedoms. But I'm preparing to go up to Parliament Hill for the release. I wonder whether they'll release it during a news conference? Or will they have a dial in conference call from the Bunker, so no one can see what Jennifer Lynch or Richard Moon looks like? Or will they release it on their website from some obscure platform that only a tech wizard will be able to find? But I doubt today's report will move the debate forward much.

Ezra sums up what to expect:

1. Richard Moon was hand-picked because he is on the record as pro-censorship.

2. He was paid an enormous sum by Jennifer Lynch -- $50,000 for a few months work – so he’s in a conflict of interest.

3. His contract specifically required him to submit a preliminary copy of his report to the CHRC, and to adjust his report as they direct him to. It’s not Moon’s report on Lynch, it’s Lynch’s report on Lynch.

4. His contract specifically excluded him from investigating abuses and corruption at the CHRC.

5. The few subjects left to his report are not properly his or the CHRC’s to comment on – that’s a job for Parliament.

6. The fact that the CHRC commissioned this report in the face of various Parliamentary efforts to have a true review shows Lynch's contempt for Parliament and its authority over her.

It's amazing to me that the Liberals have not seen this as a prime opportunity to embarrass the Tory government. Will they grasp the opportunity? Or do the leadership candidates basically agree with the Jennifer Lynch model of "human rights" that basically disguises a totalitarian approach to human freedom?

Moon advancer

Janice Tibbetts has an advance story on the Moon report coming out tomorrow:

OTTAWA -- The Canadian Human Rights Commission will release an independent report Monday that is expected to set the stage for a fresh round of debate over whether the organization should get out of the business of policing hate messages spread on the Internet.

The results of the six-month review come amid mounting pressure for the federal government to strip the commission's power to investigate Internet speech on grounds that it unjustly curtails free speech.

The Conservative party, at its policy convention this month, voted in favour of a resolution to eliminate the human rights commission's authority to "regulate, receive, investigate or adjudicate complaints" in the area.

(H/t Mark Steyn)

What is free speech for?

We've lost sight of what goods such as freedom of speech, marriage, sex and freedom itself are for.

Does freedom of speech exist so we can use profanity or obscenities when and where we please? Does freedom of speech exist so we can pour out the unedited contents of our mind, no matter how cruel? Does it exist to pour vitriol over other people or groups?

So many of the legal battles fought over free speech have featured some of the worst examples of "free speech"---Larry Flynt and his juvenile masturbation rag, various Holocaust deniers and racists, flag burners, neo-Nazis, and perverts like Robin Sharpe who likes to create fictional violent child porn in his diary.

So we get a libertine's view of what freedom of speech is for---a raucous, ugly free-for-all. And that's the picture censor's use when they want the state to impose restraint.

But the purpose of freedom of speech is to give men and women the ability to arrive at the truth through debate, even when the truth makes ruling powers uncomfortable. That's why it is crucial the state not create restraining bodies like human rights commissions. They will invariably used to stifle legitimate dissent on behalf of the leviathan state.

I still believe in restraint and responsibility though. Just not the government- imposed kind.

Bad speech drives out good. Name-calling begets name-calling. Obscenity begets more and more as people become desensitized to it. Epithets of "racist!" make it almost impossible to meaningfully discern who really is a racist anymore. Logical fallacies like the ad homimen attack are all about as elevated as discourse gets. Whatever happened to a genuine search for truth that wasn't all this political posturing and verbal going for the jugular?

The whole purpose of free speech is lost. We put up with the bad stuff so the good stuff--that will be offensive to many--can get through. But we can all do our own part to exercise self-restraint and responsibility in our communication---a respect for the facts, a respect for logic, a respect for the basic human dignity even of people we consider enemies of positions we hold dear.


The purpose of marriage is lost. Marriage used to be seen as a social institution for the procreation and rearing of children by their biological mother and father, an institution that expected a lifelong commitment and the virtue and self-sacrifice to go along with it. People had to grow up to become a wife and a mother or a husband and a father. Nowadays, marriage is seen as a recognition of romantic love, period. And when the love goes, so does the marriage and let the state look after the kids. Fatherhood is dismissed as a worthwhile endeavor. Now kids pay more attention to learning how to drive a car than they do learning what it means to be a real man and a self-sacrificing father. Very sad.


Sex? The purpose of sex is babies. It is why we have a sex drive. Sex has become so divorced from procreation that I wonder if we should come up with a new word for the misuse. Oh, we had a word, a perfectly good word for non-procreative activities using sexual organs.

And freedom? Freedom isn't "choices" to be able to sit around in our pajamas watching porn or aborting the offspring from sex that was supposed to be just for pleasure. So much of what masquerades as freedom is really slavery to the basest appetites.

A free human being is not the slave of their belly or their sexual organs. A free human being is not at the mercy of physical cravings for this or that drug or alcoholic beverage. A free human being is not a slave to shopping or maxing their credit cards or the need to consume, consume, consume.

Freedom exists so that we can become virtuous and exercise self-control and so that we can choose and act heroically and sacrificially out of love for God and our neighbor.

But how seldom, if ever, do we hear about that kind of freedom.

The bunker mentality of the CHRC?

Connie and Marc Fournier visited the Canadian Human Rights Commission's Ottawa office recently. Here's an account of their visit. Read the whole thing at FreeDominion.ca. Bizarre.
UPDATE! (Ezra Levant has more on this here).

Connie writes:
A few moments later, a young, timid-looking girl came out and handed something to the security guard, whispered something to him, and then retreated quickly from our sight. I honestly thought the poor girl suspected we were wired with bombs!

The security guard then told us that Heather Throop wasn't in, but asked if we would like to talk to Deborah Cansick. I said that that would be fine because I have talked to her by email several times.

Mark and I stood waiting as the security guard walked out the back door of his booth and we prepared to go in to see Deborah Cansick.

To my utter astonishment, he, instead, picked up a phone in the waiting room, dialed a number, and handed it to me. I wasn't even allowed to see Deborah Cansick...I had to speak to her on a phone while she hid in another room!!

Well, to make a long story short, Cansick told me there was no point in giving her the paperwork I brought because they weren't planning on fulfilling my request.

I hung up the phone, took my letter back through the little hole in the window, and Mark and I left the office for the elevator. As we were waiting, an older woman and a guy with a bunch of earphones attached to him came and waited with us and got on the elevator as we rode down. I said to Mark later that it seemed like they appeared out of nowhere to make sure we actually left the building!

On the HRC front

Mark Steyn looks at the dangers of human rights commissions in Stop them before they kill again!

Joseph Brean profiles Mohamed Elmasry in today's National Post. We've been victimized, he says.

In his own agenda, Prof. Elmasry revealed a vision of human rights law that, while not uncommon, is at odds with the established Canadian model, and he danced around some of the philosophical and moral questions with which Prof. Moon has likely been wrestling. Is it proper to bring the same complaint in multiple jurisdictions? Do people have a right not to have their religion mocked or derided? Should journalists enjoy a special exemption, and if so, what? Are violations worse if a victim is a member of a cultural minority, and if so, how? Do human rights belong just to individuals or also groups?

Interesting piece.

This is disconcerting

One of the biggest defenders of Section 13(1) posted this quote of Michael Ignatieff's on his blog.

The quote is, of course, taken out of context, but if this text means what I think it means, then Canada would be in trouble with this man as prime minister.

Here's the quote:

"The precondition for order in a liberal society is an act of the imagination: not a moral consensus or shared values, but the capacity to understand moral worlds different from our own. We may be different, but we can imagine what it would be like to be each other.

How do we generate a world in common? We take actual human individuals – rich, poor, young, old, homosexual, heterosexual, white, black, in between, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jews (i.e., human beings in all their embodied difference) - and we imagine them as equal bearers of rights. Go into any courtroom, police station, or welfare office, and you will find real individuals ignoring the different surfaces of each person they deal with and addressing the juridical equal beneath. They are addressing a moral fiction. Yet it is this fiction, and our devotion to it, that enables us to be just. The entire legitimacy of public institutions depends on our being attentive to difference while treating all as equal. This is the gamble, the unique act of the imagination on which our society rests. "

(Emphasis Ignatieff`s, in 'The Rights Revolution,' 2000)


So our fundamental rights are merely an act of the imagination and a moral fiction?

Sorry, but my human rights and my inherent human dignity belong to me and so does my intrinsic equality because I am made in the image of God and so are all the individuals Iggy lists above. That has been the basis of our freedom and our justice system. Not the state. And it is something that you discern through

But now, I suppose Ignatieff is so sophisticated that he has reduced the entire Judeo-Christian foundation of Western civilization to some epiphenomenon, some evolutionary quirk that enabled humans function together in society a little better because of a shared fiction.

Perhaps he thinks the real truth is that we rose from the primordial slime, totally by chance, and there is no God, but these moral fictions do us good in providing social cohesion. But when they are not useful to the state--such as in the case of aborting nearly full term babies or the coming of legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia, then we can dispense with these fictions, because any act of the imagination is just that, pouf! imaginary. Good and evil are just fiction, folks. Justice is a human construct, a moral fiction. Which is like saying the only justice that exists is what the law says is just. No justice over and above the law. Nada, just the starry universe and a dog eat dog evolving world.

Of course, if the state dispenses rights, then rights are whatever the state says they are. And if the state insists we all agree to a moral fiction --on pain of human rights commission remedies or worse--then we in deep trouble.

We already are in deep trouble because more people probably agree with Ignatieff--they don't really believe people are equal or have inherent rights, they just believe in power and obtaining rights for themselves.

Interesting, that in Ignatieff's list you don't see anyone disabled or with Down Syndrome listed.

Now, we don't have our system of rights because people conjured up an act of the imagination and a moral fiction. We have our system of rights because people really believed, through divine revelation, that we are made in the image of God, that as Jesus said in Matthew we would find him in the face of the hungry, the poor, the sick, the prisoner. It's through this understanding of the human person that our whole system of hospitals, schools and charities came into being.

A moral fiction does not have this kind of power. It depends on human rights commissions to enforce, on the state. And yes, there have been times when Christian leaders surrendered to the lure of temporal power to force people to toe the party line.

But now we have little bodies of inquisitors who really believe in nothing except fiction and imagination, and want to persecute the Christians who still believe in inherent human dignity from life to natural death.

This is a sad state of affairs, folks.

It's character, stupid

It's fascinating to me how all these fiscally conservative but socially liberal types think that you can just throw social conservatives under the bus.

As if you can have an economic system work without people who have a coherent set of moral standards that they live by. How can you have a banking system, business deals and other activities without basic trust? How can you run a company if you can't trust your employees not to steal from you?

We're seeing the results of that disconnect of morality from the economy as we speak. And unfortunately, a lot of us who have been honest and gratification-delaying are suffering along with the greedy and the imprudent.

Pope Benedict when he was Cardinal Ratzinger had it right back in 1985:

It is becoming an increasingly obvious fact of economic history that the development of economic systems which concentrate on the common good depends on a determinate ethical system, which in turn can be born and sustained only by strong religious convictions. ⁹ Conversely, it has also become obvious that the decline of such discipline can actually cause the laws of the market to collapse. An economic policy that is ordered not only to the good of the group — indeed, not only to the common good of a determinate state — but to the common good of the family of man demands a maximum of ethical discipline and thus a maximum of religious strength. The political formation of a will that employs the inherent economic laws towards this goal appears, in spite of all humanitarian protestations, almost impossible today. It can only be realized if new ethical powers are completely set free. A morality that believes itself able to dispense with the technical knowledge of economic laws is not morality but moralism. As such it is the antithesis of morality. A scientific approach that believes itself capable of managing without an ethos misunderstands the reality of man. Therefore it is not scientific. Today we need a maximum of specialized economic understanding, but also a maximum of ethos so that specialized economic understanding may enter the service of the right goals. Only in this way will its knowledge be both politically practicable and socially tolerable.

Preparation for spiritual battle . . .

The Catholic Education Resource Centre put out its periodic email of interesting things to read today.

One of the offerings was this article. Here's an excerpt to ponder:

In the nineteenth century, Cardinal Newman warned that naïve Catholics would fall into "mass apostasy" through lack of preparedness in spiritual combat: "Do you think (the Prince of Lies) is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform. This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, -- he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them. He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

Many have warned about the consequences of yielding the Faith to false messiahs. Years before becoming pope, Benedict XVI wrote: "Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic" (Truth and Tolerance, p. 116).

Give Sohardwardy a break!

I believe in U-turns and second, third and even fourth chances. I believe people can and do see the light and repent of their ways. Transformation does not usually happen overnight, but when someone makes a 180 turn, I'd like to encourage the process.

Thus, I think this is a good thing.

Calgary Imam Syed Soharwardy has started a Freedom of Speech Centre to help educate Muslims and new Canadians in general on the importance of freedom of speech as a fundamental principle.

As I've said before about this man, I think his willingness to publicly change his position takes guts. I am going to give him the benefit of a doubt.

I welcome Muslims to our free speech movement. I especially welcome religious Muslims. It's one thing to have the secular Muslims, or the atheist Muslims supporting the movement. It widens the movement when religious Muslims come on board as well.

Anti-Christian bigotry at the CHRC?

Ezra Levant thinks so. He published Alberta Youth Pastor Stephen Boissoin's exact letter to the editor, the one that both the Alberta Human Rights Commission and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal deemed anti-homosexual hate speech, but the complaint against Ezra was dismissed.

He writes:

I published the exact same words Rev. Boissoin used.

I published the words in the exact same jurisdiction that Rev. Boissoin did -- in Alberta.

I published them in contravention of the exact same laws that Rev. Boissoin did -- the Stalinist human rights acts.

And a complaint was brought against me, just as it was against Rev. Boissoin.

Only one thing was different. Rev. Boissoin is Christian. I'm Jewish.

In the entire history of section 13, stretching back to 1977, not one single Jew, Muslim or gay has been taken before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal by the CHRC.

Not one.

Gentle reader, do you really think that not one single Jew has uttered hate speech in 31 years? I'll answer that for you: I published hate speech on my own web -- I published Rev. Boissoin's comments. I know that's hate speech, because both the Alberta HRC and the CHRC said so.

Do you really think that not a single Muslim radical, or Sikh radical, or Tamil radical, has uttered hate speech in 31 years?

Don't be ridiculous. But Lynch's McCarthyist inquisition has never gone after those. 100% of the CHRC's targets have been white, Christian or conservative.

Interestingly, the letter from the CHRC to Ezra's lawyer says "the respondent does not necessarily agree with the content of the article.

Hmmm. Where did I miss the "intent" defense in Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act?

In some ways, this is even worse. It means that because a Christian pastor puts his sincerely-held religious beliefs into a letter to the editor, he's guilty of hate speech, but if someone reprints his letter "insincerely" or says the exact same things only maybe doesn't mean them, he or she is not guilty of hate speech.

I wonder if they are trying to establish some precedents so they can exonerate all the staff who posted anti-gay and anti-Jewish bigotry online as members of neo-Nazi groups. Hey, they didn't mean it, right? So therefore, even though the words are out there, the subjective meaning the posters brought to the text is supposed to trump the meaning of the words to those enumerated groups who may find them exposing them to hatred and contempt.

This makes the Christian persecution aspect of these bodies even more evident. It also shows how these bodies are making up their "jurisprudence" as they go along.

RCMP investigation into CHRC ends

Joseph Brean reports that the RCMP investigation into the Canadian Human Rights Commission has failed to produce evidence they consider "beyond a reasonable doubt" in order to mount a criminal prosecution for the use of an private citizen's wireless account.

He writes:

The complaint arose in March at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hate speech prosecution of Marc Lemire, webmaster of freedomsite.org, when his legal team brought a subpoena against internet service provider Bell Canada.

They were seeking the identity of whoever logged on to the neo-Nazi website stormfront.org under the name "Jadewarr" in December, 2006, just as bloggers were using technical data to reveal "Jadewarr" as the online pseudonym of Dean Steacy, a lead hate speech investigator at the CHRC. Mr. Steacy later acknowledged this under oath.

In his testimony, Alain Monfette, director of Bell Canada's law enforcement support team, read out the name and address of a woman, coincidentally a Bell Canada employee, whose computer IP address matched that of Jadewarr at the time in question, according to the Florida-based owner of stormfront.org, Don Black.

Neither the CHRC lawyers nor Mr. Lemire's team had ever heard of her. She has no connection to CHRC investigators, but she did have a laptop computer with a wireless connection, and the address Mr. Monfette gave for her apartment in downtown Ottawa is near the CHRC offices.

This led to speculation that CHRC staff were illegally using an innocent woman's internet account to hide behind her identity when investigating target websites, a claim Mr. Lemire made in a formal complaint to police, while also posting detailed photographs and schematics of her apartment building. That investigation is now concluded without charges.

H/t Ezra Levant

Harper government urged to back off thought crimes

In the Western Catholic Reporter:

Grassroots Conservatives want Ottawa to gut the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s (CHRC) power to investigate and punish free expression complainants deemed hateful or discriminatory.

At the Conservative Party’s policy conference in Winnipeg Nov. 13-15 delegates passed a resolution to “remove authority from the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Tribunal to regulate, receive, investigate or adjudicate complaints related to section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.”

Subsection 13.1 is the so-called thought crimes provision that allows the CHRC to investigate anything that is “likely” to expose a group or individual to hatred or contempt. No proof of harm is necessary and truth is no defence under this subsection.

“Freedom of speech and the right to life are certainly integral human rights we would like to see upheld,” said Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL) executive director Joanne McGarry. “I certainly hope policies will be followed by legislative initiatives.”

Canada’s Justice Minister Rob Nicholson voted in favour of the policy resolution, even though his department has continued to defend section 13.1 before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

He also said he had supported a motion put forward in the last Parliament by Tory Rick Dykstra to have the justice committee investigate the CHRC.

But it remains to be seen whether these resolutions will translate into legislation.

Brian Lilley on why social conservatives should not be thrown under the bus

Great op ed on Mercatornet.com. Brian writes:

Ronald Reagan built a coalition on what he called the three legs of the American conservative movement; fiscal conservatism, social conservatism and defense conservatives. What O’Rourke and Frum appearing to be calling for is cutting off one of those legs, or at least hiding it from view and telling supporters to shut up.

What these writers and others in the Republican Party need to remember is that the 2008 presidential election turned on the economy. In the final weeks of the election, an economy threatening to boil over since the summer of 2007, finally did just that. People were worried about their jobs, their savings and their homes. Had President Bush and Republicans in Congress stuck to conservative values on fiscal issues and kept the books balanced instead of ratcheting up ever greater deficits, then perhaps the American people would have felt more comfortable turning to Republicans when the economy soured.

David Frum is worried that when times are tough, Americans feel their wallets are safe with the Democrats. He should be worried, having your opponent steal voters on one of your key issues is bad for any party, but Frum looks at the problem and draws the wrong conclusions.

According to exit poll data posted by Steve Waldman, Editor of Beliefnet.com, John McCain carried the majority of both Catholics and Protestants who attend church weekly, just as George Bush did in 2004, albeit with slightly smaller numbers than Bush. These are the very people most likely to care about family and life issues. If you are losing voters to your opponent on one of your key issues, the handling of the economy, why switch to your opponent’s position on another key issue; it would be like handing them the next election.

The kind anonymous donor

Several weeks ago I put a donation button in the top post on the blog. Just recently, a donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, clicked the button and sent a generous donation.

I can't tell you how encouraging it is to have that gesture of support. And I plan to take some of that money now in my PayPal account and spread it around to the various bloggers who are providing me far more value every day than my daily newspapers.

How about you? It takes time and energy to blog. Have you ever dropped five or ten bucks into the tip jar of the blogs you like?

I know these are troubled economic times and there is little extra money to go around. As Christmas approaches, I am thinking carefully about how and where I will spread my wealth around.

I plan to order a whole bunch of these excellent goats milk soaps made by a friend of mine in Nova Scotia because everyone who got a bar last year loved them. (These soaps are so moisturizing you probably won't need lotion).

. The Anchoress has some great gift suggestions that would also help out various monasteries. Think about supporting a small business or an artist or an author or magazine you like when you think of Christmas giving this year. How about a subscription to First Things? Or to National Review?

Another way you can support me is to buy my novel, The Defilers. It would make a great Christmas present for those who like a suspense thriller under their tree.

Buy it through Kathy Shaidle's or Bink's Amazon button. The Defilers and Gyapong should get your there.

Great Binks post--a must read

Binks at FreeCanukistan has a great post up. He writes:

In the United States, we’re seeing an outbreak of ugly protest and extreme church-redecoration, against Christians and Mormons over the recent vote in California on Proposition 8, defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman. In Obama’s moral world, the squeaky wheels get power, money, special treatment– witness his beloved ACORN, or his Chicago buddies, his shadow cabinet, or the Annenberg Trust and $160 million in education funding. They are the self-identified Victims, fighting The Man: it’s the same old revolutionary fairy-tale, in which the supposedly oppressed are justified in doing whatever they are driven to, by their sufferings under injustice. It’s all our fault, not theirs. Unlike ancient times, we’re not worried about barbarians at the gates: we’re creating our own varieties already inside the gates.

Politically active same-sex activists — often the most politically aware and cutting edge of radicals– have read the Obama subtext early and correctly. It’s there in big glowing letters for those who are paying attention. You scream, you win: the biggest babies get all the milk.

Prepare for a lot more screaming in days ahead, as people get the clue that the politically correct human rights mentality is now in play in the USSA. Prepare for more marginalization, as ordinary contented hard-working folks lose rights, get legally trampled, and labelled as extremists. How do we know this? Canada, 1968-present.

Of course there are are huge number of great links following his editorial.

Shared public space and who's likely to be headed to the camps

Covenant Zone analyzes some of the comments in defence of human rights commissions and state censorship on the Michael Coren show recently.

Covenant Zone writes:

Yet believing we do live in such a potentially genocidal society has all kinds of negative implications for those who must defer to Kinsella's and Farber's expert class, instead of fighting things out in freer less centralized arenas. It makes all of us less free. And ultimately that is the challenge we need to put to people: do you realize that only greater freedom can solve certain kinds of post-postmodern problems - the problems now posed by our previous "solutions" to the Holocaust - and that we are not in the 1930s? If we live forever with Farber's thoughtless "genocide starts with [bad] thoughts" then we can be sure that we will remain trapped in a world where all kinds of discussions can't be had. To question gay marriage, e.g., is to threaten a queer Holocaust... But how is such an understanding really liberating for anyone?

And so K and F should be questioned not largely in some abstract philosophical world but in terms of pragmatic realities in Canada today. (That is what K and F's opponents in the debate, Noa Mendelsohn Aviv and Mike Brock were starting to get at in the clip I saw.) I don't think you can tell people whose lives are genuinely threatened to grow a thicker skin; but you can tell people that there are many downsides to playing the group whose lives are ostensibly threatened - as if that's the only way your leaders and patrons can get "heard" - and who are thus in need of the state to put a chill into their "enemies".

Taking this step almost guarantees these opponents will become enemies and not potential interlocutors in a debate that can hope to find a basis - i.e. the ongoing debate whose healthy existence continually renews the basis - for mutual co-existence, either nationally or internationally. It may be true that there can be little accommodation or dialogue with those who hold to some more primitive understandings of what is sacred and non-negotiable to their group. But to the extent there is any hope for finding something sacred that individuals in a free society or global economy can share and divide, we don't get anywhere near there under our present victim-worshiping discussions and regulations in Canada, it seems to me.

The problem with the state picking victims to defend and so-called "victimizer" groups to marginalize is that instead of enforced multiculturalism preventing a holocaust or internment camps or widespread discrimination, it sets society up for all of the above by marginalizing, then demonizing those who dissent from the state-imposed program. In this case, the people who the state is sanctioning criticism and hatred towards happen to be Christians and traditional believers in other religions.

While gays are playing the victim card, groups of gay thugs are victimizing Mormons and Catholics and evangelicals who voted to preserve the traditional definition of marriage in California. I have not heard Obama or the California governor or any of the progressive news media speaking out against this. Have you? Only the odd conservative columnist.

Have you even read or seen that it is going on?

Imagine if it were groups of Christian or Mormon thugs creating these blacklists and vandalizing gay clubs and forcing gay men to repent publicly for their vote. The outcry would be huge. (as well it should be). But why the silence on the other end? Is it like the silence when Jews first started experiencing persecution in Nazi Germany?

Now, through the courts, activists have forced a Christian dating site to include same-sex couples. Michelle Malkin writes:

So, this is “progress?” eHarmony, a Christian-targeted dating website, gets sued by a gay man demanding that the business match him up with a same-sex partner. The New Jersey Attorney General intervenes on behalf of the gay plaintiff and forces eHarmony to change its entire business model. To be clear: The company never refused to do business with anyone. Their great “sin” was not providing a specialized service that litigious gay people demanded they provide. This case is akin to a meat-eater suing a vegetarian restaurant for not offering him a ribeye or a female patient suing a vasectomy doctor for not providing her hysterectomy services. Sadly, eHarmony has settled . I wish they hadn’t, but I understand the decision given the chilling antics of the anti-Prop. 8 mob.

Mark Steyn responds at The Corner:

The "tolerance" enforcers are jeopardizing the very possibility of any shared societal space. Good luck with that.

See, we have a new "liberal" totalitarian fundamentalism as the new religious dogma that is being stuffed down everyone's throats or else. It's a soft totalitarianism so far, but fascist nonetheless.

The big danger to groups comes not from other groups who disagree with them, but from the state's coercive power being hijacked to serve the interests of one group against another. The state as the guns and the money for creating the gulags and the internment camps and the railway tracks to nowhere. That's why all people of good will, gay or straight, religious and non-religious must resist any state efforts to undermine fundamental rights and freedoms. Then we must agree to disagree, sharing the public space peaceably while airing our real differences in the public square.

Apocalyptic is right--what's ahead for our society--and a prescription for the soul

Thanks to the Anchoress, I am reading this amazing essay over at The Doctor is In (my bolds):

These vignettes in modern medicine are really not about medicine at all. They are in truth about a culture which has lost its compassion. Our calloused and cynical society has become a raging river fed by a thousand foul and fetid streams. We have, by turns, taught our children that ethics are situational and values neutral; taught our women that compassion and service are signs of weakness, that they must become hard and heartless like the men they hate; taught our men that success and the respect of others comes not through character and integrity but through callousness, cynicism, and greed; and taught ourselves that we are a law unto ourselves, the sole and final arbiter of what is right and what is good.

We have, in our post-modern and post-Christian culture, inexorably and irrevocably turned from our roots in Christian morality and worldview, which was the foundation and font of that which we now know — or used to know — as Western Civilization. Yes, we have preserved the tinsel and the trappings, the gilded and glittering exterior of a decaying sarcophagus, where we speak self-righteously of rights while denying their origin in the divine spark within the human spirit, made in the image of God; where we bray about liberty, but are enslaved to its bejeweled impostor, the damsel of decadence and libertinism; where compassion is naught but another government program to address the consequences of our own aberrant and irresponsible behavior, duly justified, rationalized, and denied. Others must pay so that I may play, you know.

This toxic stew of self-centered callousness has percolated into every pore of our society. In health care, the effects are universal and pernicious.

So true. Ethicist Margaret Somerville also sounds a warning this morning about the new eugenics, another consequence of our selfish, libertine, post-Christian culture. In today's Ottawa Citizen she writes:

History teaches us that the use of science in the search for human perfection has been at the root of some of our greatest atrocities in terms of respect for human life, individual human beings and human rights. That warning is of particular importance today, because of our unprecedented new technoscience powers. We must take great care only to use them ethically and wisely.

Proposals, such as in Quebec, to offer genetic screening for Down syndrome to all pregnant women, communicates a message that a woman is conditionally pregnant, until she is told there is "nothing wrong" with the baby. The affirmation of the pregnancy is suspended until the fetus is certified as "normal," which is a major change from needing an ethical justification to end the pregnancy, as has been the traditional approach.

We need to ask questions such as: How does this approach affect our concept that parental love is unconditional -- that we love our children just because they are our children? And if parental love is conditional -- we will only love them if they don't have certain traits (negative eugenics) -- should the same apply to traits we want in them? That is, we should be allowed to genetically design or enhance our children (positive eugenics)?

The Doctor is In has a prescription for the nihilism and selfishness that's taken hold. He writes:

So it’s time for a counter-revolution.

There is an alternative to our current cultural narcissism with its corrosive, calloused, destructive bent. It is not a new government program, nor a political movement; no demonstrations in the street, no marches on Washington. Its core ideology is over 2000 years old, and the foot soldiers of the revolution are already widely dispersed throughout the culture.

This revolutionary force is called Christianity, and it’s long past time to raise the banner and spring into action.

The true antidote to the nihilism and corruption of the age will be found, as it has always been, in the church. It has since its inception been a revolutionary force, transforming the hopeless and purposeless anarchy of the pagan world of its infancy by bringing light, hope and joy where there was none before.

It can happen again.

The church, of course, has to no small degree been co-opted by the culture it should have transformed. From TV evangelists preaching God-ordained health and wealth to liberal denominations rejecting the core truths of their foundation and worshiping instead the god of government and humanistic socialism; from pederast priests to episcopal sodomy, Christianity in the West has whored itself to a prosperous but decadent culture. Its salt has lost its saltiness, and it has, not surprisingly, been trampled underfoot by men.

It is time to return to our First Love. It is time once again to become light to an dark and stygian world. It is time for a revolution of the soul.

Let the revival/revolution begin. Let it begin with me, to paraphrase the old hymn "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me."

The Anchoress on Kathleen Parker's "staggering bigotry"

The Anchoress gets at one of the things that bothers me about the many conservative pundits who bailed out on Sarah Palin and Christian conservatives in general. It's a phenomenon I see among Christians up in Canada, a tendency among some to point fingers at others and say, well, they're anti-intellectual, divisive, American-like "religious right" types, but we're not, we're reasonable, "nice" Christians who know how to keep our religious views private. Tell you what, folks, you endanger all of us when you participate in the hatemongering against Christians and conservatives. Instead of participating in it, you should be decrying it.

The Anchoress writes:

If I am cruel, it is only to be kind. I would hate to see Parker deluded into thinking she has actually won the respect of the press because she has become “one of the good ones…”

You remember, Archie Bunker right? He was the bigot who hated blacks and if he was talking about his African American co-worker, whose name escapes me, he would say the man was, “you know, one of the good ones…”

When Kathleen Parker, famously joined the “Palin Pile-On” she went - in the estimation of the press and some others - from “Who’s Kathleen Parker,” to “the intelligent and brave Kathleen Parker…you know, one of the good ones…” who would dare to dissent with the always-wrong right. Her column today, gleefully moving from reasoned argument to unreasonable and ugly caricature, reads like Sally Field playing to a desired audience and saying, “you like me! You really like me!”

John McCain was “one of the good ones” too, for a while. The press liked him! They really liked him!…until he ran for president…at which time he was nothing but a bad old, stupid, mean-spirited, enfeebled, out-of-touch and possibly evil conservative, again. Parker should take note, that’s all I’m sayin’!

Perhaps its a form of Stockholm Syndrome that takes hold when you live and work inside the Beltway (or the Queensway in Ottawa) and you are subject to the constant "progressive" media barrage and you just want so badly for the media pack to see you as the reasonable, thoughtful person you see yourself as.

See, this is the thing, Christians who want to be "nice" and accepted, and conservatives who think by moderating their positions they can persuade centrists to come along......your acceptance is only tactical. As soon as you are no longer useful in helping the "progressives" smear all Christians or all genuine conservatives (religious or non) with the knuckle-dragging stereotype, they will still go after you.

Cardinal James Stafford on Obama

When I was in Rome, I had the privilege of hearing Cardinal Stafford speak to the Church Up Close Seminar I attended at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. So I was most interested in seeing this post at Gateway Pundit this morning:

James Francis Cardinal Stafford told an audience last night that America’s future with Obama as president will be like Jesus’ agony in the garden.
The Catholic University of America Tower and LGF Quick Links reported:

His Eminence James Francis Cardinal Stafford criticized President-elect Barack Obama as “aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic,“ and said he campaigned on an “extremist anti-life platform,” Thursday night in Keane Auditorium during his lecture “Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II: Being True in Body and Soul.“

“Because man is a sacred element of secular life,” Stafford remarked, “man should not be held to a supreme power of state, and a person’s life cannot ultimately be controlled by government.”

“For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will know that garden,” Stafford said, comparing America’s future with Obama as president to Jesus’ agony in the garden. “On November 4, 2008, America suffered a cultural earthquake.”

Thank you Jonah Goldberg

He brings Katherine Parker up short for her disgusting stereotyping of religious voters in the Republican Party.

To my friend Kathleen Parker — This act is getting really old.

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.

Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.

I'm bathing in holy water as I type.

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth — as long as we're setting ourselves free — is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.

The choir has become absurdly off-key, and many Republicans know it.

But they need those votes!

So it has been for the Grand Old Party since the 1980s or so, as it has become increasingly beholden to an element that used to be relegated to wooden crates on street corners.

Short break as writer ties blindfold and smokes her last cigarette.

Which is to say, the GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows. In the process, the party has alienated its non-base constituents, including other people of faith (those who prefer a more private approach to worship), as well as secularists and conservative-leaning Democrats who otherwise might be tempted to cross the aisle.

Me: I don't know what's more grating, the quasi-bigotry that has you calling religious Christians low brows, gorillas and oogedy-boogedy types or the bravery-on-the-cheap as you salute — in that winsome way — your own courage for saying what (according to you) needs to be said. Please stop bragging about how courageous you are for weathering a storm of nasty email you invite on yourself by dancing to a liberal tune. You aren't special for getting nasty email, from the right or the left. You aren't a martyr smoking your last cigarette.

Meanwhile, Christians and Mormons in California are facing vandalism, attacks, black lists and other forms of persecution for voting to uphold the traditional definition of marriage.

Where are the people crying out against this thuggery? No, instead people like Parker foment contempt against fellow Americans who believe in God.

It bothers me that some in the Republican Party are going to try to throw all the religious voters under the bus.

Freedom of speech vs. responsibility

The journalism doctor wants Ezra Levant to engage in a debate on freedom of speech vs. responsibility.

Ezra is perfectly right in stating that this is a false dichotomy. The better one would be freedom of speech vs. censorship.

Hey, I am all for responsibility and for getting facts right and for fairness and making an effort to be objective. But having the government breathing over my shoulder is not the way to make me exercise it.

The "doctor" has a strange essay on his blog which concludes with the following statement:

I believe we owe that to the “collective responsibility” of civility and respect that the Canadian Multiculturalism Act placed in our consciousness so long ago.

That is an astonishing statement. It says that the law placed "collective responsibility" of civility and respect into Canadians. What a totalitarian concept of both the law and the state, as if they together encompass every aspect of our very being including our consciousness.

What Miller seems to dismiss is the notion of civil society as something distinguishable from the state, that there are other institutions besides government that have an impact on our lives and that these other institutions play a role in inculcating civility and responsibility--and in providing social controls for deviant behavior.

First of all, respect that is legislated and punished by the force of the state is not respect. Civility like the forced apology of Alberta youth pastor Stephen Boissoin is not civility. Anyone who thinks it is does not understand freedom or conscience and the importance of both.

Yet, most Canadians are responsible and civil. Not because they worry about human rights commissions breathing down their necks---until the past year most probably had never heard of them---but because their mom and dad taught them to be polite, or they learned in church about the Good Samaritan or the Holocaust or Martin Luther King Jr.

I am all for that kind of responsibility. And I am all for civility and I try to practice it. But the idea that ideologically-driven bureaucrats with collective mentalities are going to police my civility--you say this or else-- or act as grand-fact-checkers for the news media and the Internet when they have all the force of the state to punish and marginalize legitimate dissent horrifies me.

You see, no matter how good the state tries to make everyone be, a state--or a religion for that matter--that forces people to be good is evil, because it has robbed human beings of their God-given freedom.

Of course, we want people to choose to be good. But it is a delicate process of education (not indoctrination) of painstakingly inculcating by example and by patient instruction, the choices that become habits that become virtues. And the best institution for this is the two-parent biological family.

I also believe that freedom of speech exists for a purpose and that it is crucial that it be exercised responsibly.
Freedom of speech exists so that the truth can be sought and proclaimed. Tyrannies don't like truth, especially about their grievous faults, so they shut down free expression.

Elsewhere in the column, the doctor goes on about the f-word and the n-word. That's interesting because apparently on the Coren show the other night the pro-censorship forces tried to equate restrictions on child pornography with those found in Section 13 (1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

A year or so ago, I participated in an academic symposium in New York, at which I was asked to explore the differences between broadcasting policy in Canada and the U.S. As my example, I used the controversy over "shock-jock" radio programs like Don Imus in the Morning.

In Canada , a broadcaster was censured by the CRTC for airing an Imus program where the host and guests advocated bombing Palestinians and portrayed them as dirty animals unworthy of our consideration. This commentary was aired during the funeral of Yasser Arafat. It was hateful and I think a majority of Canadians would agree with the decision.

In the U.S. , the FCC would not have acted at all. It would not have been allowed to. The only thing that broadcasters can be castigated for in the U.S. is obscenity. So the keynote of my talk was "What's worse -- the f-word or the n-word?"

This whole line of argument makes me shake my head. They're both lousy, thank you very much. But that's not what we're talking about here in Canada. We're talking about political and religious expression being censored by the state, not licensing regulations for scarce public airwaves.

I detest the fact that the so-called "free speech movement" has been tied to irresponsible uses of obscenity, but I fear that we may have to put up with a certain amount of the bad speech in order to make sure good, truthful speech also gets through.

TAC bishops invited to Rome for Easter?

I came across this on the Internet this morning. I have no independent confirmation. But wouldn't it be nice if it were true?

Fr. Steele, like this writer, has been closely following the story of the Traditional Anglican Communion and its overture toward the Holy See for consideration of full communion. He was one of several sources today who reported a development which, if confirmed, should be of great interest:

"There is often much going around by way of rumours and reports and I do my very best to only provide substantiated claims on this blog to the best of my ability. ... I think we all need to enter into prayer for Christians within the Anglican Communion and those who lead the Catholic Church to be wise and generous in looking for a way to realign Catholic Christendom in the West so that we can join in force against the radical secularism of our present culture.

"I have some interesting news given to me today about the TAC but I am waiting for fuller confirmation of details before much more is mentioned. What I have heard that is public is that the TAC bishops have been invited to Rome 'en masse' for Easter. More details on that to follow. I will update this post when and if any further clarification on that is given."

Easter is April 12.

Still feeling ill--but the Anchoress cheers my heart this morning

The Anchoress is a regular stop for me when I check the blogosphere. I think of her as a good friend even though I've never met her or exchanged correspondence. I love her kindness and her clear-sightedness.

Today she has some lovely words of wisdom, quoting a Benedictine Abbess who writes:

I think one of the most precious things we have is our opinion. Sometimes we even have to give that to God and let Him dispose of it. We need to be able to give everything to God. Take notice of the things that ruffle you a little. Notice the things that your heart is entwined around. If it’s not the Cross it’s not of God. If we purify our heart we won’t be rooted in the earth, we’ll be rooted in Heaven.

I had been feeling better, so I bought groceries Saturday, went to church on Sunday, and worked the last couple of days, writing from home. And yesterday, I felt my symptoms returning. The store throat seems to be coming back in a different part of my throat. It's kinda discouraging.

But a friend told me to offer up my sickness and discomfort for the sake of loved ones that I pray for. Even when I don't feel well enough to pray, I can still offer up this illness. It makes it more meaningful somehow.

Moon report out Monday

Brian Lilley reports:

According to a government source, the Moon report on how to deal with freedom of expression and hate messages on the Internet will be released Monday, November 24^th. No time or place yet.

Professor Richard Moon from the University of Windsor's law school was picked by the head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, Jennifer Lynch last June. When she made the announcement, Lynch said "The current debate on how to balance freedom of expression with the need to protect Canadians from hate messages in the Internet age is an important one. We are confident that this review will provide insight into the issues and move the discourse one step further."

For what it's worth, I think professor Moon's research into the topic should have ended with a reading of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, specifically section 2b.

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

a) freedom of conscience and religion;

b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;

c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and

d) freedom of association.

We'll see what Professor Moon comes up with next week. While many critics of the commissions expect there to be a whitewash, a report telling everyone that things are just fine with the CHRC, I don't expect that.

Liberal MP Keith Martin started the battle among MPs to change section 13.1 of the Human Rights Act. This is the section of the act that says it is discriminatory if what you post online is "likely to expose" a person or group to hatred or contempt. No actual hatred or contempt needed, it just needs to be likely that what you said could expose someone, somewhere, sometime.

More good stuff. Read it all.


Hmmmm. I wonder if they'll hold a news conference in 130-S?

Or will they choose the big, fancy National Press Theatre?

Or will they just release it onto the Internet?

I'm going to pass on reading this book

I think there is a cautionary tale here for appeasement-oriented Westerners who think conciliatory approaches to radical jihadists will be "bridge-building."

Robert Spencer reviews Jewel of the Medina.

Jones, correspondent for the Bureau of National Affairs news agency, never expected her novel about Aisha, daughter of Abu Bakr, the first caliph, and favorite wife of the prophet of Islam, to become a battleground in the war over free speech between the West and the Muslim world. Rather, as she explained, "I have deliberately and consciously written respectfully about Islam and Mohammed … I envisioned that my book would be a bridge-builder."[1]

The Jewel of Medina became a cause célèbre when Random House dropped it in August 2008 just before publication, citing fear of threats from Muslims—threats, it bears noting, that had not yet materialized. Subsequently, three Muslims were arrested in London for firebombing the offices of the book's new British publisher, Gibson Square, which also then dropped the book.[2] It has now been published in the United States by Beaufort Books, which, in a press release, said that it "knows how to look for trouble."

But whoever reads The Jewel of Medina, after suffering through stilted Hollywood historical epic dialogue larded with Arabic tidbits for authenticity's sake, will wonder what the fuss was all about. True to her word, Jones offers a portrait of Muhammad that is so flattering as to be worthy of British religion writer Karen Armstrong, who compared Muhammad to Gandhi.[3]

Must-read post on "The Way Forward" by Rev. Robert Sirico

We have a lot of work to do. Work that not only includes the blogosphere, but with the repair of every area of our lives. Part of it is educating ourselves, in forming good arguments that go beyond name-calling. We must take responsibility for our own intellectual, moral and faith formation. Why? Because we are experiencing in North America a crisis of virtue. It is character, stupid, not the economy, stupid. But though we must start with ourselves, we need to reach out and repair what's broken around us.

Part of it is supporting the education of the young--whether our own children or grandchildren or those of others who want to raise them with a formed faith and intellect. Part of it is developing and supporting our own media--magazines, newspapers, radio and television. Part of it is developing our own fiction writers and movie makers.

Please read this wonderful text by Acton Institute's Rev. Robert Sirico (h/t/ Michelle Malkin).

Here's an excerpt, but please read the whole thing:

Tocqueville taught us long ago the lesson we are about to re-learn, namely that a society where the moral tie is weakened and where no one accepts responsibilities and consequences for their actions will quickly morph into an authoritarian, State-centered society.

The only society worthy of the human person is a society that embraces freedom and responsibility as its two indispensable pillars which is a society that understands that our individual good depends on our common good and vice versa. Let us reflect upon some crucial facts that are too often overlooked.

The institution of government—what many view as the first resort of charity—is the very thing that unleashed and encouraged those vices of greed and avarice and reckless use of money that got us into the current financial imbroglio. It did so by first placing a policy priority on a worthy goal, increased home ownership, but pursued it with a fanaticism that neglected other goods such as prudence, personal responsibility and rational risk assessment.

Moreover, its official banking centers enjoyed subsidies which distorted that most sensitive of price signals—the price of money—to delude both investors and consumers into believing that capital existed to support vast and extravagant consumerism when in fact no such capital and savings existed.

It’s an obvious point but one the mainstream media appears intent on missing: The financial crisis did not occur within a free market, a market permitted to work within its own indigenous mechanism of risk and reward, overseen by a juridical framework marked by clarity, consistency and right judgment. Quite the contrary. The crisis occurred within a market deluged and deluded by interventionism.

Today we find institution after institution “in the tank” for unrestrained government intervention. One is reminded of Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s call for the left to begin a long march through the institutions of Western Civilization. The left, it seems, got the memo. How will we respond to this disheartening situation? Now is no time to retreat in disarray. Now is no time to stumble. There remains a remnant … a potent remnant who has not bowed the knee to big government. My call to you tonight is a transparent one: strengthen the soldiers of that remnant.

Wow! Good news!

See Ezra Levant's site for more.

Maybe we have at least one party that stands for inherent human rights and not a whole bunch of made up "rights" at the expense of freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.

Rod Dreher on Lavender Brownshirts on the March

He writes:

Understand what is happening here. This is a business owner who has served clientele, including gays, without incident for many years. She even gave money to gay charities. But she is a Mormon, and her religious commitment leads her to support traditional marriage. For that, she is treated like a criminal, and reduced to either renouncing her faith or possibly losing her business.

Is this really where gay activists want to take this country?

Because I assure you, if you put people in the position of this Mormon restaurant owner, and the Mormon theatrical director who just resigned under pressure for defending the idea that marriage should be between one man and one woman, you are summoning up demons that you will not be able to control.

What if traditionalist/conservative Christians began to harrass people who gave to the effort to defeat Prop 8 in a similar way, on the grounds that the anti-Prop 8 people supported a cause that would have taken away some of their religious freedom? What then? Would it be just to drive them out of business, or humiliate them into confessing their sin of having given money to a political cause out of conscience?

If a gay man who'd given money to fight Prop 8 were hounded out of his job by Christian protesters, I'd send him money to help him pay rent until he got on his feet again. I would have voted for Prop 8, but I don't see people who fought against it as bad people. I concede that same-sex marriage is enormously important to them. I regret that we can't all find some sort of live-and-let-live agreement here (I would have thought extending all the civil and legal benefits of marriage to them without calling it marriage would be an acceptable compromise, until the culture changes enough to reach a consensus on the acceptability of gay marriage, but obviously not). But for reasons of religious belief, and out of the conviction that religious liberty must be protected, I would have voted for Prop 8.

Meanwhile, the FBI is investigating possible hate crimes against Mormon temples.

And some gays are even employing the 'n' word to attack blacks who voted in favor of traditional marriage.

I am opposed to any group that uses thuggery to impose its views on others. In a pluralistic society we may have to put up with views we don't like and democratic decisions that go against our deeply-held beliefs. Like Ron, I would be appalled if Christian groups behaved like this and I would denounce them. I hope that the many freedom-of speech and democracy respecting gay activists I know will do the same and rein in these thugs that are doing terrible things for their cause.

Can't we all accord one another some respect and some civility as we go about trying to effect reform or change?

Rex Murphy understands/Jennifer Lynch does not

Rex Murphy has a great column in today's Globe and Mail in which he distinguishes between real human rights, the ones that belong to us because we are human, and the fake rights "human rights" commissions get all excited about at the expense of real rights. (Please read the whole column).

Rex writes:

Human rights, the real ones, are ours from the beginning. They are not bestowed by the state, because the state does not "own" them; they are not a state's or a ruler's or, for that matter, a human-rights commission's to give. It equally follows that they are not a state's or a commission's to abridge, circumscribe, tamper with or make a toy of.

The concept of human rights, real human rights, has been long with us. But only in modern times did we learn what immeasurable darkness falls on the world when they are nullified. The butcheries of Auschwitz and Buchenwald followed as a straight and bitter line from Hitler's assumption of absolute power in 1933 and his cauterization and extinction of the concept of freedom in the German Reich. Nothing less than the Holocaust underwrites the modern understanding and appreciation of human rights. They are as profound and central a concept to the democracies of the world as we have.

They constitute the core of human freedom. They are the antidote to tyranny. They are fundamental.

Of late, in Canada, however, this most painfully acquired understanding has been utterly unmoored. The various provincial human-rights commissions and their federal godfather have been cutting away at the core of, and extending into utter fatuity the term, human rights. They are capricious, agenda-riven, a great mishmash of political correctness and "right thinking" bulldozing away at the basic freedoms of thought, speech and expression while they, under some osmotic impulse, investigate, prescribe and torment with zealous and self-righteous abandon.

Which is why I find Ms. Lynch's presence at Remembrance Day ceremonies odd. Because Canada's human-rights commissions are diluting and trivializing and thereby offending the very core of the concept that gives them their name. And a Remembrance Day ceremony is an awkward occasion to be reminded of that.

H/t Ezra Levant

Is a fact a fact? Or are only the facts of progressives true?

I see that the Journalism Doctor is hauling me across the coals for not getting the right quote or the right color of Ayatollah Khomeini's book concerning various fatwas on how to deal with animals after having sex with them.

Okay.

I found a similar quote in the "Green Book" among many other similar quotes that would lead me to believe that if I took another ten minutes I'd find the quote Mark Steyn referred to in this translation of a book that maybe at one time had a blue cover when it was published in Italian. The color of the book is not what's important. It's the contents.

I provided proof enough that a book of such sayings exists and a translation is available over the Internet.

I think Nova Scotia Scott says it very well:

Professor John Miller has an air-tight defence against the copy of Ayatollah Khomeini’s “Blue Book” that Mark Steyn promised to send him. Whatever it says, he won’t believe it.

The Blue Book “is a collection of quotes purportedly from him, but without any documentation”.
[…]
[N]o one has verified that the Ayatollah ever said: “A man who has had sexual relations with an animal, such as a sheep, may not eat its meat. He would commit sin.”

Mr Steyn says that quotation appeared in Oriana Fallaci’s The Force of Reason. Prof Miller rejects Ms Fallaci’s reliability because she wrote that book after 9/11, when she had morphed from an internationally respected journalist into an unmitigated Islamophobe. Pre-9/11, she was sound; afterwards, unfortunately, she lost all good sense.

“In three books beginning with “The Rage and the Pride” (Rizzoli: 2002) and many interviews (after 9-11), she [Oriana Fallaci] attacked not only Islamic extremists but Islam itself, as well as a West that she said had become too complaisant and tolerant to realistically understand the threat.
[...]
Fallaci, unlike you, was charged in Switzerland and Italy for violating laws against vilifying religion, and many regarded her as a racist in her later years. So discount the late Oriana Fallaci as an unimpeachable source.

So, says Miller to Steyn, send me The Blue Book if you want—but it won’t prove a thing.

Like I said, Miller’s position is now unassailable. His mind is made up before he reads the alleged source material.

When it comes to a defense of pure facts, then on this particular instance, because I care more about truth than about being right, I admit I did not go the extra mile and find the exact quote.

I found the book and something similar in five minutes on Google. That was good enough for me in terms of a blog post to prove John Miller's inability to use Google effectively. It indicated to me that the Ayatollah did write extensively about such matters as what one does with an animal one has had sex with.

If John Miller is telling journalists about the importance of facts, as if he believes in some objective reality that is out there to be discovered, then I say, John Miller, good on you.

But I detect something different going on. I detect a post-modern whiff of facts-are-only-important-when-they suit a progressive cause, otherwise they are only the tools of power, or of systemic racists or whatever other ad hominem attack he can muster against those with whom he disagrees. I'm sure he holds to the idea that "facts" only belong to the victor in power struggles, thus they are inherently suspect.

I find it bizarre and troubling that this man stood for the freedom of speech of someone who thinks sex with children is a-okay, as long as it's consensual but who dismisses Oriana Fallaci as a racist because she ran afoul of totalitarian laws in Europe that prohibit criticism of religion. (Laws it seems Miller would like to see in Canada, given his unabashed defense of Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act). First off, criticism of Islam is not racist, because Islam is not a race. All races belong to this worldwide religion.

Fallaci, who had the guts to tear off her burka and throw it at Khomeini, during the course of an interview with him, probably knew more about the Iranian regime than any other western journalist. I bet Fallaci, who was a left-wing," speaking truth to power" journalist prior to 9/11 was probably a hero to Ryerson types until she started criticizing radical Islam, the new gay (or the new black, which ever trumps which) for chic progressives like Miller.

Fallaci was also a defender of facts and truth as an objective reality. Far from being a right-wing journalist, she is more like Christopher Hitchens, another left-wing journalist who woke up after 9/11. But where Fallaci and Hitchens fail vis. a vis. postmoderns like Miller is they oppose cultural and moral relativism. Alas, there are no fundamentalists quite like relativists, and no greater haters of Western civilization and the recognition the West gives to inherent human rights.

Mark Steyn responds to Miller here:

Professor Miller seems to be overcomplicating this. I didn't "hang my hat" on any website. That's his argument: He's the one who thinks the veracity of a quotation is determined by who cites it on the Internet. The book was published in Iran before the Internet was invented, so Prof Miller's argument is a bit like complaining that a wax cylinder from 1904 isn't available on CD. That may be so, but it doesn't mean the wax cylinder doesn't exist

I've offered to send him the book by the Ayatollah Khomeini in which the original statement appeared in the original language. If he doesn't like Oriana Fallaci's translation, he's welcome (as a renowned Islamic scholar) to offer his own. All he has to do his give me his mailing address. All the rest is blowing smoke.

But Miller's mind is already closed. He only cares about facts in order to nitpick about irrelevant ones the way an octopus squirts ink to ward off predators. He wants to confuse with facts when it suits him, and when it doesn't, never let them get in the way of a good story that would attempt to destroy all dissenters--with the state's jackboots if need be.

What a sad spectacle he is making of himself.

Binky also saw the original incident where Miller in effect claimed Mark Steyn had made up the quote because he could not find it on Google.

He writes:

Currently, Dr. Miller is denying reality, as in the existence of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Blue Green Book of Shi’ite Ettiquette for All Occasions. This appears to be the final collapse of the modern mind into willful illogic, when it encounters disagreeable or indigestible facts: ‘You only say that because you’re Mark Steyn’, or even ‘You can’t tell ME what to think!’ Season with ’so there!’ and ‘nyah, nyah!’ to taste.

As Mr. Gilbreath points out, we’ve moved from the realm of opinion into the realm of facts: the widely attested Blue Book by Khomeini either exists or doesn’t: it is a telling but sad sign if Dr. Miller– as an all-powerful journalism prof– imagines he can change facts simply by refusing to believe them. Or that he holds with the ugly little creed that whatever people whom He Really Doesn’t Like may happen to say, it’s automatically untrue, because he doesn’t like them or their so-called facts. He’s wise to the Conspiracy™, dontcha know.

Enjoy the following: I don’t know about you, but if I were a journalism student, I would much rather listen to this disreputable Scott-blogger person as a professor, than anyone with the views of the self-beclowning Dr. Miller. Otherwise, you have the hard slog of backwards-decoding Dr. Miller’s bizarre views into something approximating reality and reasonable opinion. I’d much rather get things straight from the horse’s mouth, rather than from the messy end of said equine.

Ezra Levant pegged Miller from the get-go:

As I said when I received this invitation, I wanted to find out what made John Miller tick -- he's the Ryerson journalism professor who tried to intervene on behalf of the Canadian Islamic Congress, and against Maclean's magazine and Mark Steyn, in the five-day show trial in Vancouver this spring.

What would possibly possess a journalism professor to be pro-censorship?

The answer is pretty simple and boring, actually: he's a guilty white liberal who is willing to sacrifice our ancient liberal values of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the separation of mosque and state, in an act of journalistic affirmative action. That's it. You can see a near-transcript of his remarks here, where he essentially opened with an apology for being a white man.

It was nothing more thoughtful than that: he's white, Maclean's magazine is white-ish, so any brown-skinned Arab who complains against it has moral authority, even if they have no legal or moral case.

Pretty lame.

Miller didn't seem very familiar with the depth of the anti-Semitic bigotry at the Canadian Islamic Congress; over dinner, he expressed surprise when I told him that, at a Canadian Association of Journalists forum in 2006, Elmasry repeatedly condemned the "zhoos" who owned the media in Canada, and abused their zhooish powers to keep down good Muslims.

There was a weird moment during the panel when Miller said that Mark Steyn simply wasn't a good journalist -- compared to him, one presumes -- because Miller couldn't find corroboration for one of Steyn's quotes about Ayatollah Khomeini's weird fatwas about sex.

Those quotes were from Khomeini's famous Tahrir-ol-vasyleh, his Iranian version of Mein Kampf -- his master plan for the world, right down to how to have sex with chickens -- the part Miller thought Steyn was making up.

I went to Google as Miller was talking, and found a ton of references for it. There's even a reference to it in the bestselling novel, Reading Lolita in Tehran. Harper's magazine referred to it; there's a whole Iranian feminist foundation dedicated to repealing Khomeini's rules, including his sex rules.

It was pretty sad: an ageing journalism professor, looking down his nose at Steyn and accusing Steyn of sloppiness (and disparaging mere bloggers, too), while half the kids in the room could have found what Miller couldn't in about five minutes on the Net. Some "expert" witness.

Diana West on the new "tolerance"

Conservatism isn't simply in political retreat, it is fast travelling beyond the pale, fast becoming anathema in America. And not just "conservatism"--any bumper sticker sentiment that denies due reverence for the precepts of progressivesm as exemplified by the leftward evolving sensibility of the media and cultural mainstream. We had support for McCain-Palin support garner a concussion for a college freshman here; an arrest for a passer-by here; and now general opprobrium and even curses here--and toward a middle schooler!

It is anything that smacks of the traditional that is under assault now in the public sphere, in the cultural mainstream, and sometimes literally.

Look at the reaction to the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which amends the California Constitution to limit marriage to one man and one woman. Having seen homosexual marriage fail at the polls by a margin of 52 to 47 percent, Prop 8 opponents are already busy filing lawsuits, hoping to overturn the poll results in the courts, staging protests, and singling out for ridicule and attack at least the weaker elements of the coalition that brought the proposition to victory: namely, the Mormons, who heavily supported the measure. Opponents of the measure are not, notably enough, targeting black voters, who also heavily supported the man-woman marriage measure.

The Los Angeles Times reports generally about what it describes as "an outpouring of demonstrations ranging from quiet vigils to noisy street protests against Proposition 8, including rallies outside churches and the Mormon temple in Westwood as well as boycotts of some businesses that contributed to the Yes on 8 campaign."

In a nod to the Other Side, the Times notes:

Supporters of Proposition 8, however, have expressed outrage at the demonstrations and boycotts -- particularly the ones targeting Mormon temples and Catholic churches.

"This activity shows great disrespect for the will of the voters," said Andrew Pugno, the lawyer for the Yes on 8 campaign.

"It also shows religious intolerance," he said, adding that his Catholic church was vandalized.

The mainstream media have so far failed to get across the intensity of the ordeal that supporters of Prop 8 may now be subject to--something I realized on coming across this extraordinary blog account of a meeting at the legendary restaurant El Coyote in Hollywood, not far from where I grew up in Laurel Canyon.

(Read her whole post and follow her links to the blog account. Horrifying)

New meaning to the word "unrepentant"

Gateway Pundit writes:

Domestic terrorist and Obama "family friend" Bill Ayers was interviewed on Good Morning America this morning.
Ayers still believes he was on the right side when he was bombing US government offices:

Taking Obama at face value

Blogging's going to be light because I am still ill. I tried working through it last week and my illness has only become worse, so I have been trying to sleep it off as much as I can.

But in the meantime, it's interesting to see various editorials praising Obama and seeing how easily people project their hopes and dreams onto him. It's also easy to see, too, that people are taking him at "face value," i.e. believing his talking points, believing the mainstream media accounts of his policy and "moderation."

Anyway, Mark Steyn has a good post on Obama today that outlines the work conservatives have in taking back our culture.

He writes:

That’s it in a nutshell: Culture-wise, conservatives are only up for the supporting role.

That’s the problem, and pulling the lever for a guy with an R after his name every other November isn’t going to fix it. If the default mode of a society’s institutions is liberal, electing GOP legislators eventually accomplishes little more than letting a Republican driver take a turn steering the liberal bus. If Hollywood’s liberal, if the newspapers are liberal, if the pop stars are liberal, if the grade schools are liberal, if the very language is liberal to the point where all the nice words have been co-opted as a painless liberal sedative, a Republican legislature isn’t going to be a shining city on a hill so much as one of those atolls in the Maldives being incrementally swallowed by Al Gore’s rising sea levels.

However the election had gone, conservatism’s fractious precriminations – David Frum vs Tony Blankley, Mark Levin vs Peggy Noonan – would be set to continue. But the lesson of the last grim year is that it’s not merely about candidates or policy or electoral strategy. We have to get back in the game in all the arenas we’ve ceded to liberalism – from kindergarten to blockbuster movies.

Too much of conservative policy has already been framed as heartless, dog-eat-dog capitalism or shrill theocratic social conservativism.

Lots of work needs to be done to defend the idea of liberty, limited government, strong intervening institutions like families, churches, synagogues, charities, bowling leagues, and the idea of a compassionate society as opposed to a "compassionate" government.

Check out Cardus. It's a think tank devoted to expanding our thinking on those intervening institutions and going beyond the limited conservation that usually devolves into "governments should" vs. "governments should not, but markets should"

Camille Paglia on Ayers/Dohrn and Palin

She writes:

Pursuing the truth about Ayers, I recently rented the 2002 documentary "The Weather Underground," from Netflix. It was riveting. Although the film seems to waver between ominous exposé and blatant whitewash, the full extent of the group's bombing campaign is dramatically demonstrated. It's not for everyone: The film uses gratuitous cutaways of horrifying carnage, from the Vietnam War to the Manson murders (such as Sharon Tate's smiling corpse, bathed in blood). But the news footage of the Greenwich Village townhouse destroyed in 1970 by bomb-making gone wrong in the basement still has enormous impact. Standing in the chaotic street, actor Dustin Hoffman, who lived next door, seems like Everyman at the apocalypse.

Ayers comes off in the film as a vapid, slightly dopey, chronic juvenile with stunted powers of ethical reasoning. The real revelation is his wife, Bernardine Dohrn (who evidently worked at the same large Chicago law firm as Michelle Obama in the mid-1990s). Of course I had heard of Dohrn -- hers was one of the most notorious names of our baby-boom generation -- and I knew her black-and-white police mug shot. But I had never seen footage of her speaking or interacting with others. Well, it's pretty obvious who wears the pants in that family!

The mystery of Bernardine Dohrn: How could such a personable, attractive, well-educated young woman end up saying such things at a 1969 political rally as this (omitted in the film) about the Manson murders: "Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach. Wild!" And how could Dohrn have so ruthlessly pursued a decade-long crusade of hatred and terrorism against innocent American citizens and both private and public property?

"The Weather Underground" never searches for answers, but it does show Dohrn, then and now, as a poised, articulate woman of extremely high intelligence and surprising inwardness. The audio extra of her reading the collective's first public communiqué ("Revolutionary violence is the only way") is chilling. But the tumultuous footage of her 1980 surrender to federal authorities is a knockout. Mesmerized, I ran the clip six or seven times of her seated at a lawyer's table while reading her still defiant statement. The sober scene -- with Dohrn hyper-alert in a handsome turtleneck and tweedy jacket -- was tailor-made for Jane Fonda in her "Klute" period, androgynous shag. Only illegalities by federal investigators prevented Dohrn from being put away on ice for a long, long time.

Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.

How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the State University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don't know their asses from their elbows.

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology -- contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.

I like Sarah Palin, and I've heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is -- and quite frankly, I think the people who don't see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn't speak the King's English -- big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns -- that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World.

This made my day--come back to Rome with me

I'm moping around, still feeling sick. My throat has been sore for well over a week. But then, on checking my email, I received this wonderful audio/visual presentation from one of my fellow students who took the Church Up Close seminar with me in Rome.

Tanya Goodman has a wonderful reflection here, with great pictures by Daniel Sone, one of the other participants. Enjoy.

Joseph Ben-Ami would fire the lot of them

He writes:

The sad fact is that time after time, on issue after issue, the McCain team was out-classed and out-performed by a better organized, better disciplined, Obama campaign.

Even the post-election criticism of Sarah Palin illustrates the grade-school level of thinking that permeated the McCain campaign. If everything being said about the Alaska Governor is true – and I do not believe for an instant that it is – what does that say about judgment of John McCain who chose her to be his running-mate, or his advisors who one can reasonably assume played a role in the selection process?

It says a lot that those who think they are throwing mud at Governor Palin are blissfully unaware that it’s Senator McCain himself who is on the receiving end of their attacks.

It’s obvious that there are many things wrong with both the Republican Party and the Conservative movement in the United States that will need to be sorted out if the GOP is to return to power as the representative of common-sense conservative values in Washington. Sarah Palin is not one of those problems.

What’s needed now is a frank assessment of the competence and capabilities of key GOP operatives, and the cutting loose of all those who cannot make the grade. And the place to start is where the most damage is being done – the remnants of the 2008 McCain presidential campaign.

Frankly, if I were running the show, there are a few people who would never work for, or with, Republicans again.

White guilt is dead. In the U.S.A.

I've been thinking of the irony of Michelle and Barack Obama's speeches at the Democratic Convention into which they quite plausibly shoe-horned their stories into the American Dream.

You know, the old American Dream where, if you worked hard, opportunities abounded and you could become, gee, president of the United States or Oprah Winfrey. The Michelle Obama who wasn't proud of her country was not at the convention; instead we had this gorgeous woman talking about her working class roots and her father's dogged work ethic and telling us what a great country America is.

And Barack retrieved his grandmother from under the racist bus and rehabilitated her and his grandfather as exemplars of good, solid American values.

Well....one of the reasons why I am looking at the bright side of Obama's win is that it does signify in some big symbolic ways that the American Dream is alive and well and that Obama the Messiah has been trumped by the American Dream. The office of president is going to change him far more than he is going to change the office of the president.

No....he can't change America. America allowed him to become what he has become.

You gotta love it. And I hope he is going to be a good solid role model to all the men of any color out there who would abandon their babies' mothers.

Now this column kind of puts some of my thoughts into a little sharper language, perhaps a little more tart or politically incorrect.

Tom Adkins writes:

Congressional Black Caucus? Irrelevant. U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.)? Shut up. ACORN? Outlawed. Black Panthers? Go home and pet your kitty. Black separatists? Find another nation that offers better dreams. To those Eurosnots who forged careers hating America? I'm still waiting for the first black French president.

No more quotas. No more handouts. No more complaining that "the man" is keeping you down. "The man" is now black.

It's time to toss that massive, obsolete race-hustle machine upon the heap of the other stupid '60s ideas. Drag it over there, right between free love and cop-killing. Careful, don't trip on streaking. Just dump it. And then wash your hands. It's filthy.

Obama's ascension also creates another gargantuan irony. How can liberals sell American racism, class envy and unfairness when our new black president and his wife went to Ivy League schools, got high-paying jobs, became millionaires, bought a mansion, and are now moving to the White House? How unfair is that? Now, like a delicious O. Henry tale, Obama's spread-the-wealth campaign rendered itself moot by its own victory! America is officially a meritocracy. Obama's election has validated American conservatism.

So ... Wham!!!

That's the sound of my foot kicking the door shut on the era of white guilt. The rites have been muttered, the carcass lowered, dirt shoveled, and tombstone erected. Dead and buried.

Mark Steyn on Jennifer Lynch's wreath-laying

Mark writes at The Corner:

November 11th is a day to honor the sacrifice of soldiers of the Queen who fought for their country in brutal bloody wars Commissioner Lynch's self-serving press release can't even be bothered to mention, as Ezra Levant notes.

This is one of the signature techniques of the left: The co-option of historical memory. You still have the same outward dress — the cenotaph, the dignitaries, the poppies, the old stooped veterans — but the meaning of the event is hijacked and inverted. The contamination of Remembrance Day by this ghastly woman is disgusting even by her standards.

By the way, Canada's pseudo-"human rights" bureaucracies are in sustained systemic breach of key aspects of the UN Declaration, including the right to the presumption of innocence and the right to due process. Having been on the receiving end of Commissioner Lynch's "human rights" for the best part of a year, I regard her as, at best, an ahistorical nitwit unfit for public office. But, if she's so eager to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the UN declaration, why doesn't she get her own thug bureaucracy to comply with it?

We need vouchers for education and health care

I read somewhere that in France, the public health care money follows the patient. So hospitals compete for patients and patients get to choose the best hospital for their care. They can even rate hospitals and find out about them online.

Here in Canada we have global funding for hospitals. Thus if too many patients descend on a particular hospital, they could be seen as a liability.

I like this approach, of having the money follow the patient rather than the institution. In fact, I'd like to see a voucher model give patients the opportunity to choose the health care providers they like the best. We have it to some extent in Canada where we choose our own doctors, who receive a fee for service.

But soon I hope that we will one day have a choice between those health care providers who respect the Hippocratic Oath and those that don't. And a return to distinctively Catholic and Jewish hospitals and Salvation Army run hospitals that can promote life. Or other hospitals, maybe a Morgentaler/Kevorkian hospital for those who think abortions and lethal injections are good things. (If we must live in a culture of death).

Let these two (or more) systems compete for our dollars. I betcha if people had a choice, they would fund the doctors they know aren't going to kill them rather than care for them.

As for education, I would like to see parents have vouchers for education money that would follow the child. If that parent wanted to spend it on a classical Christian or Jewish or other religious education, fine. (As long as that educational institution was not teaching the overthrow of democratic government in Canada and preaching violence against nonbelievers).

The one-size-fits-all pantyhose model of education, health care, welfare and community services does not work, especially when the pantyhose is woven with progressive, fundamentalist secularist ideas that are antithetical to the West's Judeo-Christian foundations.

Obama and religious freedom and conscience rights

The bishops support some of Mr. Obama's goals, such as universal health insurance. But they are alarmed by his promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would abolish restrictions on legal abortion and require health providers -- including Catholic ones -- to offer the procedure.

"We are particularly concerned with the freedom of conscience of health-care workers and the Catholic health-care system," he said, saying Catholic institutions provide at least one-third of all health care in Illinois. "They stand as witnesses to the world that there is someplace in our society where no one is deliberately killed."

I don't have a problem with this--not yet anyway

Kathy Shaidle is annoyed by the reaction of a race relations group to a Toronto Life story about the honor killing of a young Muslim girl.

She writes:

Anyway, here we go again. This group is, typically, more upset about Islam being "insulted" and "misrepresented" by the violence perpetrated by its own members (and by a mere infidel's decision to publish an article about it) than by the actual dealth of a young girl.

Seems this group has formed a Facebook group and are urging members to phone or email Toronto Life to register their complaints. They have even devised talking points.

I have no problem with this group's doing this. No problem whatsoever. I have read their talking points and while I don't necessarily agree with them, I think it is good for me as a journalist and a blogger to have read them and to know something about their point of view.

My problem would begin as soon as they started using state power via so-called human rights commissions to coerce Toronto Life to regurgitate their talking points, apologize, take sensitivity training or offer equal space for an article by someone of their choosing. I am opposed to state censorship, I am not opposed to people organizing a campaign of letter writing, phone calls etc. or organizing consumer boycotts or whatever. It is when people try to get the state to censor people on their behalf that I get upset.

I would also object strongly to this group's using tactics of threats, intimidation or violence to get their way. Thuggery has no place in a civil democratic society. But so far, I have seen no evidence of that either. I haven't exactly looked for any and there may be some out there, I don't know. But my view is they have every right to complain if they don't like the way this article possibly stereotypes their community.

I hope Jennifer Lynch changes her mind

Ezra Levant has more:

But sometimes you've just got to go bigger, faster. You want to tell every single newspaper editor, TV producer and anyone else in the MSM, because you know the story is that big.

That's when you get Canada Newswire to send a press release for you to every English language media outlet in Canada. So that's what I did, at 7 a.m. ET today:

Attention News Editors:

Disgraced bureaucrat to crash Remembrance Day ceremony

Ottawa – In a cheap publicity stunt, the chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission has announced that she will crash today’s National Ceremony for Remembrance Day.

Jennifer Lynch was not invited by the government, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. But that didn’t stop her from issuing a crass press release boasting of her intentions to use fallen soldiers as a political photo op.

“It’s disgusting that Lynch is politicizing Remembrance Day,” said Ezra Levant, a free speech advocate. “Remembrance Day is about the sacrifice of our fallen soldiers. It’s not about some glad-handing bureaucrat giving out business cards and mugging for the cameras.”

“But it’s worse,” added Levant. “For a censor like Lynch to crash Remembrance Day shows she doesn’t understand the sacrifice our soldiers made for freedom of speech.”

Lynch’s brief tenure at the CHRC has been marked by scandal. This spring, the RCMP and the Privacy Commissioner both launched investigations into the conduct of Lynch’s staff who hacked into a private citizen’s Internet account. Lynch’s staff have also admitted under oath to joining neo-Nazi organizations, and publishing hundreds of bigoted remarks on the Internet.

“It’s grotesque that the woman who approved of neo-Nazi memberships for her staff would show her face when we give thanks to the men and women who liberated us from Nazism.”

In her bizarre press release, Lynch doesn’t mention the First or Second World Wars, the Boer War or Korea. But she has plenty of praise for herself, the CHRC and the United Nations.

“Jennifer Lynch just doesn’t get it. Remembrance Day isn’t about her, or her pathetic attempt to rehabilitate the discredited CHRC. It’s about our fallen soldiers. Greg Thompson, the Minister of Veterans Affairs, should order her to keep away from the ceremony,” concluded Levant.

For more information, e-mail ezra@ezralevant.com

I'm still ill, so I won't be going up to the Hill today. But I trust some enterprising blogger will be watching the television coverage and will upload the sad event onto YouTube.

John step up!

It took no time at all for Senator John McCain to rebuke Republicans who ran an anti-Obama ad featuring foaming-at-the-mouth preacher Jeremiah Wright.

Why hasn't he come out to rebuke the whisper campaign against Sarah Palin?

I agree with Debra J. Saunders, the nasty allegations against Palin are hurting her less than McCain's silence is hurting him.

Human rights fiasco tomorrow at the War Memorial?

Human Rights Commissions in Canada have become Orwellian opposites of real human rights like freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and freedom of religion.

Thus, when I find out that the Canadian Human Rights Chief Commissioner is going to be laying a wreath tomorrow during Remembrance Day ceremonies in downtown Ottawa, I join thousands of others across Canada who are appalled by this.

Canada's veterans did not fight so that these commissions could try people for their opinions in courts where no rules of evidence apply and truth is not a defense.

I hope Jennifer Lynch reconsiders. I also hope she actually reads the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As much as that document does make an attempt to find those universal principles upon which human rights are founded, it still errs in that it grants states the powers to grant or restrict rights. That is totally outside our Western tradition. We have rights because God gave them to us--we're made in His image after all-- and the state can only recognize them.

But that said, I don't think it is appropriate to use Remembrance Day to mark the 60th anniversary of the UDHR.

I'm feeling ill. I have a wicked sore throat. But if I feel strong enough I may go downtown and get a photograph of the travesty that I hope Ms. Lynch does not follow through with.

Ezra Levant, Kathy Shaidle, Blazing CatFur, Jay Currie and others have already weighed in.

'Fur has posted a copy of a letter my friend Denyse O'Leary has sent to the Veteran's Affairs Minister:

Dear Mr. Thompson,

As a blogger who was forced to become involved in the ongoing battle against the infamous "human rights" commissions when friends were coming under assault, I am stunned to discover that the CHRC - target of a number of investigations for assault on the civil liberties of our citizens - is permitted to lay a wreath at the Remembrance Day ceremonies in Ottawa.

The Commission employs/uses people who actually post racist filth the Internet, if testimony under oath is to be believed.

My father was one of the few men to survive his squadron of Bomber Command in World War II. He was shot down on, I think, his 43rd mission but escaped to Gibraltar via the Resistance. (He burst into tears (very rare for him) when I showed him a photo of his flight graduation - all the men he graduated with had died.)

A couple of months ago, he phoned me, asking, "What is happening? Why is Mark Steyn charged? Why is Maclean's Magazine charged?"

I had to tell him that, as a blogger/journalist/commentator, I myself might not be safe. The problem is, no one can know who the CHRC or their provincial/territorial counterparts will attack next or why.

He said, somewhat plaintively, as he is nearly ninety - "It makes me wonder why we fought the war ... "

Please, Mr. Thompson, can you stop this travesty? Please try.

I realize that there is a good chance you can't. As a Minister of the Crown, you hardly carry the same weight as the "human rights" thugs - who can generate faux outrage at the drop of a hat. So the memory of the men who died will be soiled by this completely contrary association, and the rest of us must cringe.

But can't you at least distance yourself from these state-paid thugs? Preserve a bit of what my father's fellow airmen died FOR? Could you support a Canada that makes the Diefenbaker Bill of Rights - of which my father was so proud - meaningful again?

Denyse O'Leary
Toronto

Ezra's google experiment

Professor John Miller is crying foul about Ezra Levant's use of his laptop to prove that he could easily find the reference to Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah concerning sodomized animals on Google.

Miller writes (emphasis mine):

My sexual prowess has been questioned, I’ve been accused of being an ageing fossil who doesn’t know how to Google shit, a guilty white man ashamed of my race, an idiot and a pro-censorship traitor to journalism. My qualifications to teach anyone anything anywhere have been mocked in public.

And I realize this stuff will be permanently parked on the Internet to be read, perhaps, by my grandchildren some day.

I blame it all on Ezra Levant.

Canada ’s sawed-off, ultra-right-wing Sultan of Shout likes to wage nuclear war with anyone who dares to hold a reasonable thought in his presence, which means he never has any shortage of material to put up on his half-cocked personal blogging site.

Oh. If Miller is arguing for a more civil Internet, he just lost his argument by engaging in the same kind of nasty remarks that he objects to about himself. I hope he is not the kind of individual who thinks anything against his political opponents is fair game, any similar style criticism against himself or those on his side is something for the state to crack down on.

I have no opinion on Miller's age, or prowess, or ability as a journalism professor but I do have an opinion on the fact he would like to use state power to censor the Internet. Since he seems to think Ezra is ultra-right-wing, does that mean he also wants Ezra censored?

Then he says:

I checked the references Levant gave me afterwards, and realized it was a staged ambush. None of his 100 links contained the particular quote I was talking about. The link he has on his website to the supposed source, Khomeini’s book Tahrir-ol-vasyleh, contains no mention of that quote. The 1995 collection of Khomeini’s quotes published by Harper’s magazine does not contain it either. When I Googled other paths to finding it, all I came up with was various right-wing blogsites, which are as loose with the facts as their patron saint, Levant .

Well, I decided to get on Google myself. And guess what, I found an English translation of the whole bleepin' book. With five minutes I found this:

The meat of horses, mules, or donkeys is not recommended. It is strictly forbidden if the animal was sodomized while alive by a man. In that case, the animal must be taken outside the city and sold.

If one commits an act of sodomy with a cow, a ewe, or a camel, their urine and their excrements become impure, and even their milk may no longer be consumed. The animal must then be killed as quickly as possible and burned, and the price of it paid to its owner by him who sodomized it.

Either John Miller does not know how to Google shit, or he excludes factual information from what he determines to be right wing sites like the one above that bothered to provide a translation. Does he know about Memri? Does he think the folks there are just making stuff up, too?

What the future looks like for the Right?

Quin Hillyer makes some dark predictions over at the American Spectator:

Other ways the Obama axis will tilt the playing field: "card check" legislation to eliminate secret ballots in unionizing and to force union victories in contract negotiations. Provision after provision giving favors to the trial bar so it can sue enemies into submission. Copious new regulations, especially environmental, to be used selectively to ensnare other conservative malcontents. Invasive IRS audits of conservative think tanks, other conservative 501 organizations, and PACs.

What Ohio officials did in rifling through so many of Joe Wurzelbacher's files will serve as ample precedent. (Just watch, by the way: Nobody ever will be effectively disciplined for the violation of Wurzelbacher's rights.)

And, only when the time is right and the ground (or air) has been well prepared, will come the grand-daddy of all fights, the re-enactment of the misnamed "Fairness Doctrine."

Oh, they'll be clever. They'll pick their spot. They'll wait until Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or Mark Levin says something innocent they can twist out of context and call "hate speech" -- and then they'll highlight some schoolyard fight where a member of a "victim group" gets the worst of it as if the "attack" were caused by talk-rad…no, make that "hate radio," which will be the new moniker the Fifth Column/Fourth Estate hangs on the talkmeisters.

Character counts---Michelle Malkin

I agree totally. Michelle writes:

Palin’s response to the campaign fragging? At a late Wednesday night
airport press conference in Anchorage, immediately upon landing home after the
election defeat, she smiled cheerfully. The Alaska governor shrugged off the
McCain saboteurs saying “foolish things” and said simply: “It’s politics…It’s
rough and tumble and you’ve got to have a thick skin just like I’ve got.”
Hollywood savaged Sarah Palin. Journalists mocked her. Liberal blogs slimed
her. Opponents cursed her, Photoshopped her, hacked her e-mail, hanged her in
effigy, called her a bigot, Bible-thumper, and bimbo, and attacked her husband
and children. But nothing Sarah Palin endured during the election season
compares to the treatment she’s receiving from these back-stabbing blabbermouths
who worked on the same campaign she poured herself into the last three
months.

Sarah Palin worked her heart out. She energized tens of thousands to
come out who would have otherwise stayed home. She touched countless families. I
didn’t agree with everything she said on the campaign trail. But she vigorously
defended the Second Amendment and the sanctity of life more eloquently in
practice than any of the educated conservative aristocracy. And she did it all
with a tirelessness and infectious optimism that defied the shameless,
bottomless attempts by elites in both parties to bring her and her family
down.

Liberty needs a virtuous people to survive; self-governance requires
virtuous leaders. “Knowledgeability” is a necessary trait in political life,
but it is not sufficient. The elitist critics of Sarah Palin, so blindly
enamored of Barack Obama’s ability to hold forth for hours on theologian
Reinhold Niebuhr, ignored the Founding Fathers’ counsel: Character counts. In
times of adversity and crisis, it counts more than IQ points and instant trivia
recall and bloviation skills.

A little bit of Saul Alinsky on the right?

Saul Alinsky divides the world into three groups: the haves, the have-nots, and the have-a-little-want-mores.

It`s kinda interesting that the new have nots are now becoming the social conservative, free market, Constitution-loving Americans, while former Weather Underground bomber Billy Ayers and ACORN-style community organizer Barack Obama are now establishment, the haves, the ones holding the levers of power.

One of the tactics Alinsky brags about in his book Rules for Radicals involved having hundreds of people show up at a bank with requests to open accounts with small amounts of money--five or ten bucks, basically seizing up operations and using the banks own middle-class rules against it. There was nothing illegal about it, nothing really the bank could do about it without overreacting and making itself look bad.

Hmmmmm. How would the left like it if Alinsky tactics were used say on abortion clinics. What if hordes of women started making appointments for abortions, then canceling them? In Canada, since taxpayers pay for abortions, we would only be shooting ourselves in the foot, driving up health care costs, so maybe it isn't such a good idea.

How would the Lefties like them apples? Of course Billy Ayers actually organized bombing campaigns but he`s polite company now, he`s a `have`. But Sarah Palin, who merely brought a Down Syndrome baby into the world, and advocates a "culture of life" is treated like she's an inbred monster, someone who should be exiled from political life.

Everyone must read Jonah Goldberg`s book

I have finished Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg and I am now assigning it to everyone who reads my blog. You must read this book.

It explains how America has been swimming in a sea of progressive, totalitarian (in the sense of holistic,) liberal fascism for generations now. It is the atmosphere most of us have inhaled since childhood.

I guess the only good thing about Obama coming now is that many of the ideas that seemed to hopeful when Wilson and Roosevelt tried them were proven, when taken to extremes, to have murderous consequences. And when not taken to extremes have merely lead to prolonged economic malaise.

The gist of problem we face is this: the American Constitution was written by men who understood the lure of tyranny and untrammeled state power. What the progressive or utopian model wants to do is allow the state to make claims on citizens that only God can make. It`s the impostion of a state religion though not necessarily one that includes a transcendent God.

The disestablishment clause was meant to protect religious freedom, so that no one religious institution could impose its truth claims on everyone else. But now we have ardent fundamentalist secularists who eagerly want to impose their relativist truth claims--also based on a priori assumptions taken on faith. Forcing medical students to perform an abortion in order to get licensed, or, to take give someone a lethal injection might soon be part of the brave new world we`re looking at down the road. Already in Canada, nurses don`t have the right to conscientiously object from participating in abortions, and if the Ontario Human Rights Commission has its way doctors`rights in this area will soon disappear, too.

What Obama offers is a state that encloses and encompasses us like a benevolent but smothering mother. But this smothering mother does not brook conscientious objection, or a view that one`s allegience to God is something the state must protect rather than run roughshood over.
Churches will be fine as long as they are compliant with the new sexual dogma that undermines the traditional family and stick to social Gospel messages that participate in utopian ideas of eliminating systemic poverty and racism.

It`s the choice between God and one`s own conscience vs. Caesar, or Leviathan, or the divine right of the Emperor.

Now what is very clear, given the win of the marriage proposition in California is that many Obama voters also have a socially conservative streak. But they are not small government conservatives. Entitlements, affirmative action, state programs to ensure `social justice` trump what they see as dog eat dog capitalism that progressive thought has trained them to believe are code words for racism and lack of compassion for the poor.

There is going to be lots of talk among Republicans about throwing social conservatives under the bus. We`ve already got tire treads on us up here in Canada.

But what needs to happen are cogent arguments for a limited state that appeal to both social conservatives, to libertarians, classical liberals and moderate conservatives and even some moderal liberals.

Mark Steyn on Hewitt dangers posed to freedom in Obama administration

From the transcript of Hugh`s Interview:

MS: I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of individual liberty in Barack
Obama’s America. I think the virtues of this country, which is individual
liberty and self-reliance, are not part of Obama’s vision for America.

HH: Now Mark Steyn, I was exiled to California not long after
Jimmy Carter won, and got out here, and a friend said let me take you to a hotel
dinner, which meant about two hundred people in a dank hotel room in Carlsbad.
And there was Ronald Reagan with his jacket off talking to 150 people in that
basement about the glories of liberty. Do you see anyone on the Republican Party
side, the conservative movement, who not only is willing to do that, but will
actually be able to draw 150 people to a dark ballroom with their jacket when
the air conditioning’s not working?

MS: No, I don’t, and my worry is that the conversation, and both the push from the media, the convention wisdom from the media is Republicans are too strident and right wing and have to move to the center, move to the center. And you know, the problem with that analysis is that as I always say, George W. Bush is essentially Tony Blair with a ranch. He’s a classic third way politician who occasionally wears jeans and a cowboy hat. But his approach to government, compassionate conservatism, no child left behind, is already way, way down toward the center. If you look at John McCain,
John McCain is nothing but the center. He spends his whole time talking about
reaching across the aisle, a phrase I never want to hear again. Mitt Romney in
Massachusetts was a centrist politician. Giuliani a centrist on all the social
issues. So the idea that we are this movement of crazed right wing kooks is hard
to detect either from the last eight years or from this last primary
season.

HH: And is the possibility that Palin representing…you
know, there were a lot of people out there seeing Sarah Palin, thousands and
thousands wherever she went. She’s being trashed now by the
McCainiacs…

MS: Yeah, and shame on them.

HH: Shame on them indeed, because she was the one who drew the crowds But that tells me there remains a movement, although it may not have a figurehead or someone around which it can rally at this point. I mean, she’s got to govern from Alaska. She can’t come down here and run rallies. Anybody else out there?

MS: No, but I think what it shows is that there is a great, there is a yearning, there
is a yearning for someone who can articulate the eternal truths in the American
vernacular. And I think that’s what a lot of her critics, some of whom are
friends of mine, people I like very much like Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker.
But I think that’s what they don’t understand. The trick is to articulate the
eternal truths in the American vernacular, and that’s what I hope to find
sometime before we’re consigned to another four years of this in
2012.

Conservative Party to debate gutting Section 13 (1)

On page three of this leaked policy document, it shows one of the resolutions the Conservative Party may debate next week at their policy convention is the following:

PROPOSED BY VICTORIA AND KELOWNA - LAKE COUNTRY

iii) The Conservative Party supports legislation to remove authority from the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Tribunal to regulate, receive, investigate or adjudicate complaints related to Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Section 13 (1) is the thought-crimes provision that says anything (truth doesn`t matter) that is likely (in other words it does not need to be proven) to expose someone from an enumerated group to hatred or contempt.

Kady O`Malley has more here.

This may or may not make it to the convention floor, sources tell her.

The Convention runs Nov. 13-15 in Winnipeg.

Media lawyers conference bars media

Okay. So I went up to the Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa to attend the Canadian Media Lawyers` Convention, where Ezra Levant is going to participate on a panel concerning human rights commissions tomorrow.

It`s a great lineup. But I got turned away at the door. They don`t want any media coverage.
Say what? The people we hope will be defending the media against encroachments on freedom of the press want to hold their meeting behind closed doors?

Today I hoped to hear Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin`s keynote speech on libel and various panels on libel chill, and what the conference bills as ``The New Fair Comment Defense`` in the Supreme`s Rafe Mair v. Kari Simpson case. While Ezra thinks the case expands fair comment, I am among the doubters who thinks it merely signals that the most unreasonable hallmarks of hate (see sec. f.iii) can be used against conservative Christians and that`s fair comment, but try it against any other group and the fair comment options suddenly shrink dramatically.

Tomorrow I hoped to hear Michael Geist on `The New Media--Perils of the Internet` and of course the closing panel featuring Ezra, Mark Freiman and Julian Porter who will go down in history books for saying:

"Against the argument that you cannot cry fire in a crowded theatre: 'Oh
yes you can — you must, if in your considered view there is a fire'.""In that
case there is a duty to cry fire."--Julian Porter, Robson Square, Vancouver ,
June 6, 2008 Closing arguments in the show trial against Maclean's
Magazine

President-elect Obama

Congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama. I hope my concerns about him prove to be wrong.

So much for Amerikkka. I hope that disgusting trope has been put to rest forever. America is not a racist country. It is a country that offers more opportunity to everyone, regardless of skin color, than anywhere else on earth.

I'm not feeling all that well, so blogging will be light. I'm fighting a virus of some kind and my throat is a little sore.

HillBuzz looks at reasons why Obama will lose

One of them is the way he treated Joe the Plumber:

Canvassers don’t even have to bring it up: residents we visit start the
conversation with the same thing: We can’t believe Obama’s attacked that plumber
who only asked him a question.

Journalists aren’t getting this.

They wrongly think the fury is over Obama’s admission that he wants to make this a
socialist nation that redistributes its wealth. They don’t make the mental leap
to realize that, no, this isn’t the whole picture. People reject Obama’s
socialist nature, of course, but what really steams them is that his campaign
worked to destroy an innocent man who DARED question the Obamedia’s chosen
candidate.

Yesterday, we met four separate contractors who flat-out told us that they actually were thinking of voting for Obama because they have always voted Democratic, but once they saw what the Obamedia did to poor Joe, they realized they could only vote for John McCain. One of these men told us, “If Obama had people in the state government pull up his child support records just for asking a simple question, then I am scared of ever doing anything to cross Obama, because he could try to take away my truck or tools, and then I can’t make my living, or do some other tactic like this against me. I never want this man in office, because his people attack regular working Americans and have no problem doing that.”

When guys work on a building crew together, they talk about stuff like this at lunch. These guys work outside, are open with their opinions, and aren’t scare of much. But a government led by Obama, where computer records are abused to come after those who oppose him TERRIFIES these men, and we’re told that just two days after the attacks on Wurzelbacher, there was not an Obama supporter to be found in the lot.

The Obama campaign and its media lackeys might use all their power to destroy Joe the Plumber, but all the Joe the Plumbers out there will use their own voting power to teach Obama a lesson tomorrow. We are sure of it. Too many people on the ground, in too many different cities in Ohio and Pennsylvania, have told us this for it to be anything less than endemic of what we’ll see at the polls tomorrow.

The Binks on The Ez and HRCs

The Binks was not only at the Halifax conference featuring Ezra Levant, Margaret Wente and others on various sides of the freedom of speech battle, he has links to some of the coverage in addition to his own. The web elf writes:

During the event, Professor John Miller of Ryerson (live-blogged here.. his stuff starts around 1:06.. he’s Head Of The “Ezra For Prime Minister Committee” ) slagged Mark Steyn [see 1:33] as a mere ‘polemicist’ and not a responsible journalist. As an example, he used Mark’s quoting of Ayatollah Khomeini from (he said) the now infamous Macleans article. Looks like he’s been trusting the citations of the SockPuppets, because as Steyn himself notes, it’s actually from the Maclean’s article ‘Celebrate tolerance, or you’re dead‘.

Miller asserted that after a thorough Internet search, he found the Khomeini quote only in one comment on one [echh, ptui] blog. Meanwhile, Ezra was surfing online, and interrupted a minute later to point out he’d just then Googled 100+ references to the quote in question, including one from the eminently liberal Harper’s Magazine, 1985. Public pantsing accomplished.

The point isn’t the fact that Ezra scored a point, but that the new media mindset is different. “Fact? Fact-check. Don’t take old media or other political speech as taken for granted. Dig around; check the sources.” In leading up to this presentation– for which Dr. Miller and others presumably had week and weeks to prepare, why didn’t a journalism professor know how to Google and fact-check on the internet? If he did only a cursory search, why would he assume that all would sit at his feet and nod, going “Mmmm.. Steyn bad! Journalists good! Trust the Professor!” If he thought to smear Steyn, he was surely risking a pantsing from someone as confrontationally light on his feet as Ezra.

No matter: the point was made, and the reality is unfolding even if the establishment are puzzled about why their liberal narrative isn’t universal, and keeps getting sniped by pesky [ecch- ptui!] bloggers with other real-world skills and backgrounds.

Mark Steyn weighs in at his site.

Catholic Insight on Obama

Here's a sample of what Catholic Insight has to say about Obama:

The election of Obama as president would turn out to be a disaster. On the most important issues of all, the equality and dignity of all human beings, he represents the greatest threat ever, even more so than the notorious Bill Clinton. Obama serves as an idol for ruthless feminists in the world who seek to exterminate our future by exterminating our preborn.

Obama has a 100 per cent approval rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America, the U.S.’s leading pro-abortion organization. As the Population Research Institute points out, that rating is based on a record of consistently voting against the unborn. Obama has told Planned Parenthood he regards so-called choice as “a fundamental issue” on which he will not yield.

Obama has pledged to immediately sign into law the “Freedom of Choice Act,” which would have the effect of wiping out all laws and restrictions on abortion, including those passed my more than 40 state legislatures. He would also: veto any pro-life laws and amendments that reach his desk; serve with a vice-president, Joseph Biden, who shares his determination to promote abortion on demand without restrictions both at home and throughout the world; devote enormous sums of money to promote the culture of death everywhere; and repeal the Mexico City policy, which has curbed U.S. support and funding for foreign abortions.

-snip-

Obama voted against an Induced Infant Liability Act in the Illinois legislature in 2002, which would have given legal protection and medical assistance to a baby born from a botched abortion. Obama also voted against banning partial-birth abortion in the Senate in October, 2007.

On another key issue, the integrity of the traditional family, Barber says Obama will be the most radically pro-homosexual, anti-family president in history. “He's very quietly pledged as much to the homosexual ‘Human Rights Campaign,’ says Barber (http://oregonmag.com/Barber1108.html). Barber adds that, despite any public protestations to the contrary, the overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that Obama fully endorses the concept of same-sex “marriage:” “He's promised homosexual activists – in hushed tones – that if elected, he'll do everything possible to make it happen.”

In 2004, Obama called the Defence of Marriage Act an “abhorrent law” and declared: “The repeal of DOMA is essential … For the record, I opposed DOMA in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying.”

“We must be careful to keep our eyes on the prize – equal rights for every American,” he has told homosexual activists. “We must continue to fight for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). We must vigorously expand hate-crime legislation and be vigilant about how these laws are enforced. We must continue to expand adoption rights to make them consistent and seamless throughout all 50 states, and we must repeal the ‘don't ask, don't tell’ military policy.”

40 Days for Life vigil ends in Ottawa

The 40 Days for Life Vigil ended in Ottawa tonight with a candlelight procession from the Morgentaler abortion clinic to St. Patrick's Basilica.

This top photo, I tried to show how the procession snaked around the intersection. You can see the spots of light from the candles across the street. There was a good-sized crowd.


These have been an amazing 40 days. You can see how much the faith and the hope of the participants has grown. There's a glow about them that's beautiful to see.

444 people took part in the procession, but I think there were more people than that at the closing mass. St. Patrick's was packed.

There were more people taking part at the end than attended the launch on Parliament Hill Sept. 23.

They plan to keep up a weekly vigil on the two days abortions take place at the Bank St. clinic and perhaps do another 40 Days during Lent.

Bollywood Obama

Found this on Jay Currie's site. Whether you are pro or anti-Obama, enjoy!

Obama supporters assault McCain/Palin supporter in Chicago

Sebastian sent his report into HillBuzz. I pick it up after some preliminary scene setting:

But, if someone talks to me directly, and asks me a direct question, I will answer. Honestly. So, don’t ask me any questions, because I won’t tell you any lies.

One of the guys making fun of Sarah Palin and calling her misogynistic names spots me trying to walk past them and says, “Can you believe McCain picking her as VP? She’s never done anything.”

So, I asked him very nicely, “Well, if that’s how you feel, can you name one accomplishment of Barack Obama’s that qualifies him to be president? Just one. It doesn’t even have to be a big one. Any accomplishment as a state legislator or US Senator will do.”

Well, the guy was surprised, because being Boystown, he thought I would bash Palin too. And I have to say how ashamed I am of living in Boystown these days, with so many guys attacking Palin as a woman in sexist terms, even though she has more government experience than Obama, and has more executive experience than anyone else running on either party’s ticket. She’s the only governor amongst them, and when they make fun of her and call her dumb, they’re really saying that’s because she’s a woman - and because she’s not from a big city and didn’t go to an Ivy League school. Palin’s just like most of the women I grew up around — smart, kind, sharp, down to Earth, and successful in a world that is generally stacked against them.

The fact that I DARED to question “Dear Leader” Obama’s experience and qualifications as a rebuttal to their attacks on Palin drove these Obama followers NUTS. One of them said, “Oh, so we’ve got one of those.” And I asked, “One of what? I asked you to name one of Obama’s accomplishments that qualify him to be the nominee, let alone president. Can you think of one?”.

And with that, one of the guys came right up to me, shoved me hard, and told me to “shut the f*** up”. He pushed me so hard I went backwards a few steps. I pointed over to the police station and told the guy that we could take this across the street and talk about it there with the officers if he wanted, because pushing someone constitutes assault — and I was not going to stand there and just let him push me around. These guys started talking to me, while bashing Palin, and all I did was ask them a simple question and they attacked me.

I tried to walk past these guys — none of whom were even what I would call drunk, so they can’t use that as an excuse — and the guy who pushed me came at me again, calling me a name I won’t repeat here, and saying, again, “Sarah Palin is a c***”. He shoved me again, hard, and this time I shoved him back in self-defense. He then took a swing at me, but missed, because I swerved to avoid getting hit. I lost my balance, though, and he was close enough to me that as I started to fall, I somehow grabbed ahold of his shirt collar as I was falling and the two of us ended up tripping over a small metal rail in the parking lot — his shirt ripping right off him as the rail caught me in the calves and I toppled over.

HillBuzz adds this warning:

HillBuzz Note: PLEASE, everyone be careful out there. Obama’s followers can be violent and destructive. They key cars, throw rocks through windows, push and shove anyone who doesn’t agree with them, and generally provoke fights like this — all part of what Obama himself told his followers to do and “get in people’s faces and argue with them”. BE CAREFUL, because these Obama followers are DANGEROUS.

And if anyone in Chicago recognizes the guy in the photo — who claims to be a lawyer — it would be really interesting to find out who he is, what firm he works for, so we can forward Sebastian’s story to the firm’s partners.

From the comments section:

Keying cars was a tactic of Kerry supporters too in ‘04. That is nothing new.

Back in March the battery was ripped out of my car. Stolen? I don’t think so. There was too much damage than necessary for a simple robbery. Way too much. They cut all the cables, even those not attached to the battery. I assumed it was vandalism because I have a “W Still the President” on the back bumper. It wasn’t until this week that I equated it with the Obamaton Macoute.

That’s why I would guess that 30% of the Obama signs and bumper stickers are from people that are just trying to keep their windows from being broken and their tires from being slashed. I used to really get angry when I would see Obama signs, but now I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are using them like a garlic necklace to ward off vampires.

I think McCain's going to win, too

From Rush Limbaugh's gut, to Ezra Levant's prediction this morning, I, too, have a sense that McCain is going to win on Tuesday.

My reason is intuitive, as well. I think the many who have been fasting and praying throughout North America have won the victory in the heavenlies. Perhaps there really is a battle like that on Mount Carmel between Elijah and the priests of Baal going on in the unseen realm. As you might recall, Baal was either asleep or on vacation. Baal is kind of an appropriate pagan god for those who think sex should be liberated from all constraints and unborn babies sacrificed on the altar of "choice." These "prayer warriors" (to use a Sarah Palin term) will overcome the the Oprah-style visualizing of the Obamessiah's religious followers. Jonah Goldberg posted this video of what they are up to this morning at The Corner.

I posted this a couple weeks ago and since then it was taken down from YouTube. A bunch of readers wanted to watch it. So here it is again:

11/01 10:18 AM

But if I'm wrong, I also am looking on the bright side of an Obama victory.

1) His win will be a great silencer for those who love to call America a racist country. Of course if McCain wins, there will be lots of anger and charges of racism behind his victory. I do love the symbolic nature of a black president, just wish the man or woman were Thomas Sowell or Condoleezza Rice instead. I hope an Obama victory could spur young black youths to pursue excellence and the American dream. (On the downside, it could build expectations that Obama's going to give them a job and pay their mortgage, and when the promised utopia and social justice does not materialize, there might be civil unrest. ) We can hope that his victory will indeed help American rise above identity politics. (Hoping big time)


2) Obama will have to moderate his positions so that he can get re-elected. He may be like Nixon going to China and have a surprising effect on social police like Clinton's welfare reform. (Though we cannot underestimate the role a Republican Congress played in the sounder economic policies credited to the Clinton administration.)

3) Obama is naive but he is not stupid and the Oval Office will change him more than he will change the Oval Office.

4) The mistakes and missteps and the honeymoon ending may mean we'll get some real reporting from what's left of the mainstream media. (Though we may end up with the Fairness Doctrine and fewer outlets for Conservative opinion).

5) Obama's promised cuts in defense spending will force countries like Canada and those in the European Union to pull their own weight militarily.

On the latter, I can't tell you how tired I am as an American-Canadian of Canadian anti-Americanism, of the accusations against American militarism, the willingness to poke Bush in the eye and call him a moron (yes, a former communications director for Prime Minister Chretien did that) and the preening self-righteousness about Canada's generous social programs in comparison to those of the United States. Yet it is America's protective umbrella that allows Canada to spend its money on social programs instead of defense. You think Putin would dare threaten Canada across the North Pole over oil reserves with Bush or McCain as president?

Those self-righteous, weak Europeans who have already kowtowed to the oil kleptocracies of the Middle East, undermining America at every turn, will also find that gee, America's cut back on military spending, it's now just like us, but whoops! We're much closer to the missiles of Iran and the predations of an oil-rich Russia and the Americans are gone, what are we going to do? (Alas, I think they will just deepen their bow to tyrants).

Thomas Sowell agrees:

The American nuclear umbrella has enabled Western European nations to escape responsibility for their own military survival for more than half a century.

Lack of responsibility has bred irresponsibility, one sign of which are unionized troops in NATO and NATO bomber pilots who have office hours when they will and will not fly, not to mention NATO troops letting American troops handle the really dangerous fighting in Afghanistan.

Maybe the time is overdue for NATO to try to rehabilitate itself and for Americans to stop trying to be “citizens of the world.”

Yeah. So there's something Obama that appeals to the isolationist streak in me. Unfortunately, I think his weakness will tempt aggression against the U.S. and force him to be even more militaristic than Bush ever was. I also think Obama is far more likely to bring in a draft than McCain would be.

Some Obama satire that made me laugh this morning

This is a bit over-the-top in places, but I found parts of it funny.

This was another gem from a pro-Hillary Clinton site, Hill Buzz.

Every American must watch this video before voting Nov. 4

I think Barack Obama is dangerously naive and ill-informed on foreign policy.

This video puts into perspective the kind of world we live in. And how wrong Obama has been.

Mark Steyn on the two-dimensional Barack Obama

Mark writes:

The senator and his doting Obots in the media have gone to great lengths to obscure what Barack Obama does when he's not being a symbol: his voting record, his friends, his patrons, his life outside the soft-focus memoirs is deemed nonrelevant to the general hopey-changey vibe. But occasionally we get a glimpse. The offhand aside to Joe the Plumber about "spreading the wealth around" was revealing because it suggests a crude redistributive view of "social justice". Yet the nimble Hope-a-Dope sidestepper brushed it aside, telling a crowd in Raleigh that next John McCain will be "accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten."

But that too is revealing. As John Hood pointed out at National Review, communism is not "sharing." In a free society, the citizen chooses whether to share his Lego, trade it for some Thomas the Tank Engine train tracks, or keep it to himself. From that freedom of action grow mighty Playmobile cities. Communism is compulsion. It's the government confiscating your Elmo to "share" it with someone of its choice. Joe the Plumber is free to spread his own wealth around – hiring employees, buying supplies from local businesses, enjoying surf 'n' turf night at his favorite eatery. But, in Obama's world view, that's not good enough: the state is the best judge of how to spread Joe the Plumber's wealth around.

The Senator is a wealthy man, mainly on the strength of two bestselling books offering his biography in lieu of policy and accomplishments. Many lively members of his Kenyan family occur as supporting characters in his story and provide the vivid color in it. But they too are not merely two-dimensional cartoons. His Aunt Zeituni, a memorable figure in Obama's writing, turned up for real last week, when the dogged James Bone of the London Times tracked her down. She lives in a rundown housing project in Boston.

In his Wednesday night infomercial, Obama declared that his "fundamental belief" was that "I am my brother's keeper." Back in Kenya, his brother lives in a shack on 12 bucks a year. If Barack is his brother's keeper, why couldn't he send him a $10 bill and nearly double the guy's income? The reality is that Barack Obama assumes the government should be his brother's keeper, and his aunt's keeper. Why be surprised by that? For 20 years in Illinois, Obama has marinated in the swamps of the Chicago political machine and the campus radicalism of William Ayers and Rashid Khalidi. In such a world, the redistributive urge is more or less a minimum entry qualification.

Stephen Harper has concerns about human rights commissions

Important breaking news on human rights commissions over at Ezra Levant's site:

My friend Kathy Shaidle of Five Feet of Fury brings to our attention Prime Minister Stephen Harper discussing Canada’s human rights commissions. CFRB’s Brian Lilley deserves credit for being the first journalist in the Parliamentary Press Gallery to put the question to the PM. (Really, shame on the rest of the PPG for their inactivity on this file, and kudos to Lilley.)

Here’s the audio clip. And here’s a transcript:

In terms of the free speech issues and some of the activities of human rights commissions, I think that everyone has had some concerns about this. This is a complicated area of law, balancing what most people understand to mean by free speech with obvious desire to not have speech that would be intended to incite hatred towards particular groups or individuals. I think some of the most egregious cases, if you actually look at this, are in provincial human rights commissions and obviously, you know I can't control or comment on that. I think there has been some - I think the Canadian human rights commission has been moderating some of what - some of its practices a little bit recently to respond to some of these concerns and I hope that will continue.

Let’s look at that line by line:

In terms of the free speech issues and some of the activities of human rights commissions, I think that everyone has had some concerns about this.

Stop and think about how incredible those last ten words are. The Prime Minister has declared that the activities of human rights commissions are a threat to free speech. And he acknowledges that it’s not even a subject of debate – “everyone” agrees.

My friends, when the Prime Minister says that human rights commissions are a “concern”, that’s what we call denormalization. Because human rights commissions aren’t normal. They’re not Canadian. It’s encouraging to hear the Prime Minister say so publicly, too.

This is a complicated area of law, balancing what most people understand to mean by free speech with obvious desire to not have speech that would be intended to incite hatred towards particular groups or individuals.

It is a complicated area of law, precisely because it’s so inconsistent. It’s complicated, because it’s incoherent; it’s whimsical; the exact same words are considered legal or illegal, depending on who says them, and depending on who the “offended” party is. It’s complicated because it’s junk law. It’s not really even law – it’s anti-Christian, anti-conservative bigotry dressed up as law.