Support efforts to protect free speech in Ontario

I'm not sure in the end that I'll support Randy Hillier for the Ontario Tory Leadership campaign, but I sure support his efforts to abolish the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

In fact, I think all of us who share that aim should rally behind Randy on the first ballot to send a message to the other contenders.

You can do so here.

Zobama Under My Bus Music Video

LOL, literally.

Watch it as an antidote to the frightening montage that led off Sean Hannity's program on Fox News last night.

Torture for the unborn but not for terrorists

This piece in the American Spectator by Neumayr says it all:

If achieving world peace required torturing a single baby, asks a character in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, would it be worth it?

"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature -- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance -- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."

The liberalism that Barack Obama seeks to complete answers Dostoyevsky's question with an emphatic yes. What is Obama's abortion-on-demand-forever policy but the building of a modern American way of life upon the graves of tortured babies? And not just the unavenged tears of one baby but millions of them.

This week, however, Obama did avenge the tears of terrorists. World peace, he said, isn't worth theirs. He lectured the CIA that "What makes the United States special and what makes you special is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and ideals even when it's hard."

Obama's prim pontifications about America's "values and ideals" inspired Chris Matthews and Jack Cafferty, among other deep and careful thinkers, to mull over the question: If torturing terrorists works -- as the Obama administration had to admit grudgingly this week -- is it okay? No, of course not, the chattering class proudly concluded.

One wonders why. What do they care? Having already accepted abortion and euthanasia -- which are nothing more than the expedient killing of the unborn and the elderly -- why should the expedient torture of terrorists, a lesser evil, trouble them? Oh, that's right: the terrorists are guilty and the guilty under the ministrations of modern liberalism never suffer. Pain in modern life is for the innocent.

Read it all. He rightly talks about the liberal embrace of crass utilitarianism and puts the torture of terrorists in the right perspective. I just wish that voices on the right that are defending waterboarding would re-examine their "it worked" arguments. Neumayr writes:

It is a little late in the day for Obama to worry about America's moral reputation. Resisting evil even "when it is hard" hasn't interested liberalism for at least four decades. It rests on an ideology of expedient evil and crass utilitarianism.

With St. Paul, Western civilization, before modern liberalism ransacked it, said: "One may not do evil so that good may result from it." But then modern liberalism came along and reversed the formulation and now insists in the case of everything from therapeutic cloning to killing unborn children to dehydrating the elderly that one should do evil so that good may come from it.

Obama only now rediscovers the Christian ethic for terrorists, even as he weaves the "fabric of human destiny" with the tissue of tortured children.

H/t Lifesitenews.com

Catholic Civil Rights League on Aberta's Human Rights "reform"

The Catholic Civil Rights League:

TORONTO, ON April 30, 2009 - The Catholic Civil Rights League today expressed disappointment that changes to the Alberta Human Rights Code have not addressed the problem of the commission hearing free speech cases. The League has long argued that such provisions should be removed from the Code. This section of the Code has been relied upon in the past to attack Bishop Fred Henry for statements made in a 2005 pastoral letter about the re-definition of marriage, and to prosecute Pastor Stephen Boissoin for a letter to the Red Deer Advocate.

The Alberta government introduced amendments Tuesday to the province's human rights code that will enshrine sexual orientation as a ground of prohibited discrimination, with a companion provision to allow parents to remove their children from teachings that conflict with their religious or moral beliefs.

But the government declined to make changes that would strip the Alberta Human Rights Commission of its power to adjudicate cases of free speech, an area which has proven to be highly contentious.

The Stelmach government has said in the past that free speech issues are better handled by the hate laws in the Criminal Code rather than the commission.

However, with Bill 44, the Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Amendment Act, the province appears to have decided the federal laws provide insufficient protection and that the commission should continue ruling on free speech cases. "People have lost faith in the commission," Culture Minister Lindsay Blackett said Tuesday, according to a report in The Calgary Herald. "We want to make sure that it's a transparent, equitable system."

Says Phil Horgan, CCRL President, “This reform was an opportunity to protect free speech, particularly speech based on religious belief, and it is unfortunate that this has not occurred. This portion of the provincial code, like its cousin, Section 13 in the federal Human Rights Code, can be and has been used to stifle the expression of religious belief just because not everyone agrees with it, or with how it was expressed. Human rights commissions were designed to prevent discrimination in everyday living, such as employment and the provision of services. They should not be adjudicating free speech cases.”

The problems with human rights commissions addressing free speech cases include the absence of due process, the ability to bring complaints free of charge while respondents must defend themselves at their own expense, and the absence of a presumption of innocence or normal rules of evidence.

In addition to the complaint against Bishop Henry, which was eventually withdrawn after considerable expense for the diocese, previous charges include 1) the complaint against Stephen Boissoin, a Protestant youth pastor fined a total of $7,000 in 2008 and ordered never to speak or write publicly in future about homosexual conduct. The case is currently under appeal, and 2) a complaint filed against Ezra Levant, former publisher of the Western Standard, for publishing the controversial cartoons satirizing the Prophet Mohammed in 2006.

Great One Cosmos post on why reality can't just be made up as we go along

Gagdad Bob writes (my bolds):

In order for leftism to be effective, it must first dissolve the sacred covenant between word and thing -- which is where truth resides -- and replace that bond with mere power.

This is the magic through which they can make the Constitution mean anything they want it to mean, or redefine marriage, or say that the Geneva Convention applies to terrorists, or that rough interrogation intended to save lives is torture, or that Israel is responsible for Muslim terror, or that Boy Scouts are bigots, or that there is a right to abortion, or that Porkulus is stimulus, or that terrorists are freedom fighters, or that Gitmo is a gulag, and on and on and on.

snip

This, I think, is the nub of the crux of the gist of problem. There is no question that reality is "ambiguous" and subject to multiple interpretations. However, that should not be taken as an excuse to believe that all interpretations are of equal value. Nevertheless, this latter belief is the hateway drug into the various pneumapathologies of the left, e.g., multiculturalism, moral relativism, the "living Constitution," etc.

Again, if there is no objective way to arbitrate between competing versions of reality, then it comes down to a matter of raw power. Or, as Obama put it, "I won."

This is obviously how political correctness has slithered its slithery way into every corner of reality. In the world of political correctness, it is always 1984. Take the example of Miss California. Because even beauty pageants are run by tyrannical leftists, all points of view are of equal validity. However, if you voice the incorrect truth, then you are punished. You see? Perfect nonsense -- not the liberating kind, but the oppressive kind, AKA hell.

And it is hell, quite literally, for hell is anyplace that is beyond the rule of reason -- where reason, quite simply, does not apply.

H/t Dr. Sanity, who adds:

METAPHYSICS (What is existence?)----> EPISTEMOLOGY (How do we know it?)

The answers derived from these two branches lead directly to the Ethics (how should we behave?) that one chooses to adopt and to the Politics (what degree of force is permissable?) that one practices.

For those of you who think all this philosophy business is too abstract and irrelevant to your life; you are very very wrong. Catastrophically wrong.

These ideas have everything to do with your life and how you live it. They are also the crux of why the world we live in seems to be more and more incomprehensible and insane. When you start off with the belief that reality doesn't exist outside your own head, then, it is just a very short--and minor--leap to accepting that words don't matter and can change meaning; or that it doesn't matter how you behave; that everything is relative anyway, including truth and morality.

But, as Bob points out, just because reality is ambiguous and sometimes difficult to determine; it hardly gives us carte blanche to say that every interpretation is of equal value and should be treated as such. That way lies madness...and madness is exactly what we are dealing with in today's world.

Ideas matter.

Torture? Waterboarding is a walk in the park compared to this

Atlas Shrugs has many more horrific details.

Ilan Halimi's Muslim torturers/murderers phoned the family on several occasion during the period Ilan was held hostage s and made them listen to the recitation of verses from the Koran, while Ilan’s tortured screams could be heard in the background.

23 people participated in torturing Ilan, another 20 were involved indirectly. The custodian of the building gave them the key to an apartment where they said they wanted to "keep someone."

Three weeks of unimaginable torture. Three weeks. So many clues. So many guilty animals partaking in the continuing torture in their "homemade concentration camp."

A book club is going to read my novel--I am so excited

Remember I mentioned I met a young lawyer the other day at the Supreme Court? She told me she loved my novel The Defilers. We traded contact information. Since then she has persuaded her book club to read it and they have invited me to lunch in July to discuss it.

That happened once before, when a group of bright young women invited me to lunch and then discussed the story and the characters, giving me insights into them! It was very cool.

You know, my novel is not selling like hotcakes. It's very sad since I put so much work into it and while it's not great literature, it's a great read for a long plane ride and it will not insult your intelligence.

And people like Kathy Shaidle liked it. (And you know she wouldn't say she liked it just to be nice, that's not her style. She wrote:

"Deborah's debut, The Defilers, is the first fiction book I've read in years. When she sent it to me, she described it as "an airport novel", and indeed, some smart mass market paperback publisher should snap it up. This police procedural has it all: exorcisms and the occult, murder, cultish kiddie p*rn, romance -- but Deborah didn't win this year's Best New Canadian Christian Fiction Award for nothing. Believe it or not, she manages to tell this twisted mystery tale without graphic sex scenes -- or even swearing -- but this isn't "goodie goodie" tacky "Christian" fiction, either.

Each chapter is a cliff-hanger. It was a fun, yet reverent read, with lots of unexpected plot twists (and characters who aren't who you think they are...) to keep you guessing. I think most of my readers would be quite touched by the angry heroine's faltering journey back to the faith.

Deborah's own faith history is harrowing in its own way. She has more about the book, including reviews, at her site."

The Defilers is my contribution to changing the culture.

If you want a signed copy made out to you or the person of your choice, hit my PayPal button and deposit $28 and you'll can email me where to send the book.

If you want to buy a book more inexpensively, go to Amazon.com or Amazon.ca. It costs me about $10 something for postage, plus a mailing bag and I don't get a huge discount on my books, and what you might pay at Amazon isn't that far away from my author's cost.

Read what people are saying about The Defilers here. An excerpt here.


IMPORTANT TO NEW READERS: The site was designed to look its best and works well if you use Firefox. If you must use Explorer, and the links don't work, try navigating away from the site, then coming back.

If you like this site, why not encourage me by making a donation? And if you just want to email me: dhgyapong AT rogers DOT com

Sorry, but I liked Obama's answer on waterboarding

I much prefer to "Americans don't torture" position. Even waterboarding, which is extremely mild when compared to what is routinely done to cause pain and mutilation and depersonalization by our enemies.

Wouldn't it be nice though if he had this firm a stand against the dismemberment of innocent human beings in the womb, or against leaving babies born of botched late term abortions to die without medical attention in a soiled linen closet?

I also think he's soft on dealing with terror. Not that we have to become like our enemies and repeat the monstrous things they do, but we can't be naive about them either.

It alarms me a little all this utilitarianism (aka it worked!) on the right. Just because something works doesn't make it right.

Stelmach is such a disappointment

Ezra Levant has no time for Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach. And with good reason. This is stomach churning.

Here are the changes that Stelmach approved. He's actually giving the HRC a $1.7 million raise.

That's right. In the face of their abusive conduct, their bullying and censoring, their Islamic fatwa against me for publishing a cartoon, and their atheist fatwa against Rev. Boissoin, he's actually rewarding them with a 25% pay hike.

Look at the bottom of that backgrounder if you want to see just how dense Stelmach is. In his rationale for clotheslining Blackett's proposals to dump the censorship provision, Stelmach writes this incomprehensible bumf:

Alberta's human rights legislation will balance freedom of speech with our responsibility to others.

Huh? I know about my freedom of speech. It is an ancient, inalienable right. It happens to be enshrined in Canada's Bill of Rights and Charter of Rights. But this "responsibility to others"? That's a legal concept now? So my freedom of speech -- my right to publish a magazine, Rev. Boissoin's right to give a sermon -- is limited by some new responsibility to -- I love this part -- "others"?

So I can't publish a magazine if someone "other" than me doesn't like it. So Rev. Boissoin can't give a sermon if someone "other" than him doesn't like it.

And then there's this gem:

Jurisdictional issues are complex, but recognizing the responsibilities that come with freedom of expression is also important.

That's not just grammatically novel, it's legal junk. I've read our Charter a dozen times. Where is the list of responsibilities that I have to submit to before Stelmach will let me have my freedom of expression?

I think Lindsey Blackett should quit cabinet and announce he is mounting a leadership campaign to unseat Stelmach.

More from the Russell E. Saltzman post on torture

This is important. Please ponder this.

Yet torture is wrong because it can never serve a moral purpose. It serves instead only an immoral purpose: the destruction of an individual’s personhood. It is violence against the imago Dei, the image of God carried by every person.

Crucial to the use of torture is the intentional, systematic, step-by-step reduction of identity and selfhood, the purposeful diminution of the person as person, as the image of God cheapened to something less, to something “unperson.” The “other” is depersonalized. It is this process of thinking which gives us license for abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and torture—everything that strips the person of personal humanity.

The enormity of the crime is of course granted. I don’t ever want to see Khalid or the others like him released. But I certainly regret that my government tortured him. His torture may have begun in a manner that was thought, even sworn, to be a measured and reasoned response for protecting a civil populace, part of a wider battle being waged to prevent actual and imminent dangers. But torture remains and will always be an abominable assault upon the imago Dei. At some fundamental level we declared that Khalid was not made in the image of God. From that, all else was inevitable.

However it was initiated—all the lawyerly vetting that went on, and all the jabber about military necessity and keeping America safe—Khalid’s torture ended up being nothing more than torture, and only that. Somewhere well before the one-hundred eighty-third trip to the waterboard, torture was no longer merely an unproductive means of coaxing information from a suspect. It became an impersonal bureaucratized process that swiped his individuality. It was a form of mental murder.

Along with an account of Khalid’s crimes also must come an account of his humanity. Personhood carries an elementary dignity, even when the person carrying it is one of our cruelest enemies.

Words fail on the Air Force One buzzing of New York

You know the old saying: "words fail" oft employed by Leftists? Well, I have literally experienced a "words fail" state of such opened mouth state of appalledness over the Air Force One buzzing of New York City the other day.

Thankfully, Michelle Malkin has some words that describe this insanity. Here's an excerpt. Be sure so read the whole thing because it puts the latest personality-cult behavior in a nauseating perspective:

Come on, who’s surprised? The White House-engineered photo-op of low-flying Air Force aircraft that caused terror in New York City this week epitomizes the Age of Obama. What better way to mark 100 days in office than with an appalling exercise in pointless, taxpayer-funded stagecraft.

The superficiality, the unseriousness, the hubris, the obliviousness to post-9/11 realities: They were trademarks of the Obama campaign and they are the tattoos on his governance.

He never leaves home without his teleprompter. All the Obama world’s a stage. Or a world ready to be staged.

So, is it any wonder he would staff his White House Military Office with a clueless paper-pusher who saw nothing wrong with spending inordinate government resources – and recreating 9/11 havoc — to update Air Force One publicity shots? And who planned, believe it or not, to do the same in Washington, D.C., next month, where 53 passengers and 6 crew members on board American Airlines Flight 77, and 125 military and civilian personnel inside the Pentagon were murdered by the 9/11 jihadists?

All for some damned publicity shots.

The photo op cost $325K plus.

Fausta has a great parody.

Scaring the crap out of thousands of New Yorkers on a Monday morning: priceless.

There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s government.

Hillbuzz writes:

We actually have many friends living in New York City, at least two of whom were looking up at the sky as one of the President’s Boeing 747’s appeared to come out of nowhere on what appeared to be a collision course with the Statue of Liberty. One of our friends freely admits to, in her own words, “soiling herself” in the very literal sense, believing 9/11 was happening again because, in her own words again, “Obama has been taking the side of terrorists and not doing anything to stop an attack”.

People running through the streets crying, soiling themselves, believing we’re under attack again.

Welcome to the Golden Age of Hope and Change, already in progress…for EXACTLY 100 Days today.

snip

Knowing all of this, the President of the United States thought it was a great idea to take some great publicity shots for his own personal use, so he had one of his planes scare the absolute, literal, fill-in-the-blank, out of New Yorks.

Unbelievable.

Or more aptly, it’s what our teachers used to call foreshadowing. For, going all the way back to Cassandra at Troy, colossal disasters are presaged by the smaller-scale hubris of the vain and narcisisstic: being so painfully myopic about a photo open identifies fatal flaws in an administration we do not believe will take seriously enough the chatter and background noise that could prevent another attack on this nation. We hope for Heaven’s sake we are wrong, but we truly do believe this President is having so much fun with his celebrity and all the many perks of his “historic presidency” that he and his staff are now completely removed from reality.

Not realizing buzzing New York with a massive jet plane would cause many New Yorkers to head home for a change of undies is a sure indication of a deep, lasting, permanent, terrifying flaw in the abilities and competence of this administration. Evidence keeps coming out that the White House was directly warned by New York officials that its plan would cause mass chaos and emotional distress, but the current President chose to do this needless and expensive photo op anyway.

Welcome to Hope and Change, people.

We hate to say this again, but it’s only going to get worse from here, too.

An intelligent post entitled "against waterboarding"

Here is a thoughtful post on waterboarding by Jim Manzi over at National Review's The Corner:

The simplified case that waterboarding is categorically evil goes something like this.

“Applying extreme coercion to a human being when he is entirely in your power is inherently evil. This is why, like most universally-recognized evils, torture is done in dark, hidden places. Those who skillfully do interrogations on our behalf – doing difficult work in the worst conditions – have refused to waterboard. You sit in safety, unwilling to actually pour water down the throat of a human while he gags, struggles and thrashes in agony strapped to a table 36 inches from you; instead you write words that egg on the worst among us. If you can not see that torture is wrong, you live in a different moral universe than I. You’re a monster.”

The simplified case that waterboarding is not inherently evil goes something like this.

“We live in a violent world. While there must be limits to what we do to defend ourselves, simply describing the unpleasantness of waterboarding doesn’t cut it. We must do lots of terrible things to other human beings during war in order to prevent yet-worse things from happening. Inducing fear in a manner carefully calculated not to produce physical harm is not torture, and is very, very much less severe than most things done in war. Your supposedly refined moral sentiments are vanities; failure to consider bad versus worse consequences of our actions is the real abdication of moral reasoning in an environment of extreme violence. You live in a bubble that must be protected by methods that you find distasteful, without confronting the fact that if we were to follow your scruples, evil men would rule and do far worse things. You’re a child.”

This deep moral disagreement of course creates the practical political problem of how to reconcile these conflicting views. Beyond this problem, however, I think that any thoughtful person who aggressively advocates for one position or the other surely asks himself in quiet moments: “Am I certain I’m right?” The waterboarding critic asks himself “Am I being naive?”; the waterboarding defender, “Am I losing my soul?”. Nobody’s experience of life is comprehensive. Many, many people hold each position. These facts are presumably enough to give any thoughtful person pause, even if they will not voice these doubts publicly.

So, if the deeply-entangled questions of strategic effectiveness and ethics both have non-obvious answers – and if we need to decide, not just wring our hands endlessly – how should we answer them?

Read the whole post.

And while I HATE the way the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress are using the torture issue against the previous government for partisan reasons (because there is ample evidence of their complicity) as I ponder this issue, I'm afraid I have to come down on the side opposed even to the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that are on the lighter end of the torture spectrum. This is a good post by Russell Saltzman over at the First Things blog.

I’ve been trying, like many Americas, to think this thing through. There is the altogether practical question: Did torture help us? Did it make America safer? Was the information really good, helpful, in thwarting terrorists? Did it actually in fact spoil pending plots? Frankly, the evidence is mixed.

But I really don’t care. Whether torture “worked” or not as an interrogative tactic is far from the main question. I’m a pastor. I think as a pastor, which is to say as a parish theologian. I don’t care if these guys shrieked like little girls on the playground and blubbered out plots for everything from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre to knocking over Bagdad candy stores as juvenile delinquents. Torture is morally wrong. It is morally wrong, theologically speaking, because it is an attack upon the imago Dei, upon the image of God inherent to every human life.

Now, I’m not so dumb or so liberal that I can’t understand and remember and share the anger the September 11 attack produced in America, nor was I the least bit hesitant in supporting the studied determination of making sure that nothing like it ever happens again. But if there is anyone suggesting the American homeland is safer today for having abandoned the ordinary principles of humane treatment for prisoners in American custody, then he’s a moral midget. Torture is not what Americans do. Not if we still have some lingering respect for the rights with which God endows humanity.

That said, I would still rather have Dick Cheney as Vice President than Joe Biden. Why? Because Biden has no problem in violating the human person when it comes to babies in the womb. He probably also approved these "enhanced interrogation methods" when high-ranking members of Congress were told about them. And he would probably lie about his support.

As the Hillbuzz gay Democrats write:

Dick Cheney, as Vice President, was the twisted, relentless, ruthless love child Batman and the Penguin biologically could never have. He may even be a robot sent from the future to keep us all from harm. He was, without question, the exact Vice President needed at just the right moment in history. Who knows what he was up to, but we’re certain, 100%, that it helped keep this nation safe for the last eight years.

It’s probably what he’s still working on now, from somewhere secure and undisclosed as you read this.

And Cheney never needed to be babysat. Whenever he said strange things on television, there was clearly an alternative motive at work. Most of his oddball appearances on the Sunday morning shows were so ballsy that even though they often made steam shoot out of our ears at the time, we laughed at how utterly brazen and in your face they were. Cheney was the master of the F-U, in a way we doubt we’ll ever see in politics again. When one reporter, in March of last year, told Cheney that 3/5 of Americans thought the Iraq War wasn’t worth it, Cheney said, “So?”.

Great Merciful Zeus, that’s ballsy. Refreshingly so.

Joe Biden would have said something memorably ridiculous in response to the same question, but more likely than not he would have made up crazy nonsensical things, and contradicted himself as he stumbled and rambled his way to commercial.

Shhhh! I've started listening to Mark Levin

And I confess, I found him rather shocking. Way too angry and I hated the way he shouted. But then he started reading long passages of Alexis de Tocqueville, or talking about Edmund Burke vs. Thomas Paine in an intelligent way. That made him worthwhile. Then his over-the-top schtick started to make me laugh. There's a part of him that's like my undisciplined "id" that I am ashamed to admit I have--you know the part of yourself that wants to yell at jerks who drive too slow in the fast lane or tailgate. I would still prefer he didn't do some of that stuff and in order to listen I have to turn the sound really low so his yelling doesn't curdle my stomach.

Well, Kathy Shaidle has a review of his bestselling book:

In-the-know conservative reviewers of Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto all say the same thing: the Mark Levin you’re used to hearing (or tuning out) on radio – who harshly yells “Shut up, you dummy!” at callers, and comes off as a slightly saner version of Michael Savage – is nowhere to be found between the covers of his blockbuster book.

snip

Liberty & Tyranny is more infuriating than inspirational, therefore. However, the fact that millions of readers have taken the book to heart most certainly is.

At this point, Levin’s Liberty & Tyranny is one of those books all American conservatives now have to read, whether they want to or not, because it has struck a nerve with enough readers to hit #1 on Amazon.com and stay there for weeks.

Will Liberty & Tyranny have a lasting impact? Obviously, it is too soon to tell. For now, Levin has helped restore the passion, patriotism and sense of purpose of countless ordinary Americans in truly trying times.

I've ordered the book.

Those times when God speaks

I try to do Morning Prayer according to the Book of Common Prayer every day. I'm not always successful at meeting this goal. Today is one of those mornings where I'm having trouble. I got up a little later than usual and read the newspapers first. I find there is almost always a natural inclination to avoid praying so I can jump into the day. Yet when I discipline those desires and pray instead, my day generally goes so much better. I have put God first and everything else falls into place. I am more likely to exhibit the fruits of the Spirit than the impatience, irritability and anxiety to which I am prone.

Well, I am itching to start reading the blogs this morning, but instead I pulled out Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest and read today's devotional. Anyone else love this little book as much as I do? Many times I have opened up the day's reading and God has filled the words with life as if He was speaking directly to me and my condition right at that moment.

If our certainty is only in our beliefs, we develop a sense of self-righteousness, become overly critical, and are limited by the view that our beliefs are complete and settled. But when we have the right relationship with God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy. Jesus said, ". . . believe also in Me" (John 14:1 ), not, "Believe certain things about Me". Leave everything to Him and it will be gloriously and graciously uncertain how He will come in— but you can be certain that He will come. Remain faithful to Him.

Well, that was like a forerunner of how today's Psalm hit me. Forerunner in this sense: God is telling me "Leave everything to Him and it will be gloriously and graciously uncertain how He will come in--but you can be certain that He will come."

He will come in!

Yes! Doesn't that brighten your day? There is no formula. No turning God on like a spigot or being punished with spiritual dryness if I don't turn the spigot on properly in the morning with my prayers. It's all about a relationship with the living God.

But instead of approaching my prayers like a duty, a discipline to cultivate what I believe about God, isn't it better to look forward with great anticipation and joy to what God is going to say to me through His Word? Then opening up the Bible and the Prayer Book becomes like Christmas morning, where presents await under the tree, gifts that I know I'm going to cherish.

This Bible we have is pretty amazing. So here's the Psalm. I think it is something that all of us bloggers can pray today because it is so easy for us to become occupied with and disturbed by the wickedness of others:

PSALM 141. Domine, clamavi.

LORD, I call upon thee; haste thee unto me, / and consider my voice when I cry unto thee.

2 Let my prayer be set forth in thy sight as the incense, / and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice.

3 SET a watch, O LORD, before my mouth, / and keep the door of my lips.

4 O let not mine heart be inclined to any evil thing: / let me not be occupied in ungodly works with the men that work wickedness, neither let me eat of such things as please them.

5 Let the righteous smite me in kindness, / and let him reprove me; it shall be as oil for the head;

6 Let not my head refuse it; / but still my prayer shall be against their evil doings.

7 BUT mine eyes look unto thee, O LORD God: / in thee is my trust; O cast not out my soul.

8 Keep me from the snare that they have laid for me, / and from the traps of the evil doers.

9 Let the ungodly fall into their own nets together, / and let me ever escape them.

I like this guy

So does Pamela Geller:

If America is to survive the coup, we must elect leaders like Lt. Colonel Allen West

Debate on Western civilization

Mark Steyn links to a blog post that encapsulates a debate about whether Western civilization is worth saving.

It's well worth the read, especially the Roger Scruton link in the great City Journal:

What, then, should our stance be in this existential confrontation? I think we should emphasize the very great virtues and achievements that we have built on our legacy of tolerance and show a willingness to criticize and amend all the vices to which it has also given undue space. We should resurrect Locke’s distinction between liberty and license and make it absolutely clear to our children that liberty is a form of order, not a license for anarchy and self-indulgence. We should cease to mock the things that mattered to our parents and grandparents, and we should be proud of what they achieved. This is not arrogance but a just recognition of our privileges.

We should also drop all the multicultural waffling that has so confused public life in the West and reaffirm the core idea of social membership in the Western tradition, which is the idea of citizenship. By sending out the message that we believe in what we have, are prepared to share it, but are not prepared to see it destroyed, we do the only thing that we can do to defuse the current conflict. Because forgiveness is at the heart of our culture, this message ought surely to be enough, even if we proclaim it in a spirit of irony.

Blogger Charles Crawford concludes:

The Left want an enfeebled West to Just Give Up and submit to a new Islamisticly-inclined collectivism based on 'cooperation' on the state's terms.

Conservatives say that the West is not feeble, but needs to get back to some core values to keep the forces of extremist, nihilistic Islamisticly-inclined irrationality at bay.

I would say we need to get back to core principles not values, because values is a relativistic term. We need to get back to Truth. Western civilization has a rich repository. Let's revive it.

The latest Obamamessiah "art"

So what do you think of this latest work of art concerning Obama?

World Net Daily reports:

"The Truth" by Michael D'Antuono

On his 100th day in office, President Obama will be "crowned" in messianic imagery at New York City's Union Square.

Artist Michael D'Antuono's painting "The Truth" – featuring Obama with his arms outstretched and wearing a crown of thorns upon his head – will be unveiled on April 29 at the Square's South Plaza.

According to a statement released about the portrait, "The 30" x 54" acrylic painting on canvas depicts President Obama appearing much like Jesus Christ on the Cross: atop his head, a crown of thorns; behind him, the dark veil being lifted (or lowered) on the Presidential Seal. But is he revealing or concealing, and is he being crucified or glorified?"

However, I see a new story saying the unveiling will not take place thanks to widespread outrage:

NEW YORK, April 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Painter Michael D'Antuono has cancelled the planned public unveiling of his latest work "The Truth" at NYC's Union Square Park on President Obama's 100th day in office due to overwhelming public outrage. The artist's decision was based in part on thousands of emails and phone calls; online blogs and other public commentary received in the first 48 hours following its release.

Good!

I kinda shrugged when I saw it, but that doesn't mean I'm not alarmed by this Obamessiah crap that has about half of the U.S. population in a trance.

The Anchoress writes:

For one such as I, who is rarely “outraged” by the all of the tedious pop-culture “art” that tries to provoke (and guarantees itself headlines) by bastardizing the name or image of The Christ, this image brought forth a surprisingly visceral reaction from me. I threw up a little in my mouth.

That, I suppose, means this is powerful art. After all, neither The DaVinci Code nor Madonna’s Summer Concert Tour Disco Crucifixions have ever elicited more than a yawn out of me.

Or, maybe the rise of my bile had nothing to do with the power of the image, and indicated only that I am powerfully sick of seeing the iconic trappings of my Lord and Savior adorning a man who -until the last 100 days- hadn’t so much as run a hot-dog stand. He’s healed no one, lifted no one from suffering and poverty, invented nothing, taught nothing. Though he has been raised-on-high by his connections and by a sycophantic press that has crumbled upon itself with the strain of supporting him, Obama has himself raised nothing but (for some) expectations, (for others) trepidations and, (for everyone) taxes.

-snip-

Although they are more discrete than Louis Farrakan, who once opined that when Obama opens his mouth, it is the Messiah who is “absolutely” speaking, I begin to think that these artists and journalists really do want to communicate Obama-as-godling and messiah, even if they say otherwise. In this I am jumping off an idea from Richard John Neuhaus’s American Babylon; Notes of a Christian Exile, where he wonders if some Protestant Americans -those bereft of liturgy and sacraments- have not created a sort of ecclesiastical substitute for those things in their intense nationalism. That is, are they making up for what is lacking in their worship -the outward pageantry, the sensory cues- within their patriotism? And interesting question, it prompts me to wonder if the journalists, artists and others who are dipping toes into the Lake of Faith that is Obamism (or jumping in with gusto) are not also trying to supplement their Secular Humanist beliefs (or their insistent atheism) with a sense of transcendence that is otherwise lacking.

If you don’t like a Eucharistic Procession, an endless campaign with a messianic center will do. Anything to enhance the faith.

Speaking of faith, Obama is a guy who goes to Georgetown and has them cover the name of Jesus before he speaks. He tries to sell his economic plans on Jesus’ parable of the building on sand or rock, but can’t be bothered to utter Jesus’ name. But he has never, not once, told these people to stop with the messianic stuff. He’s a Christian, right? He sat in Jeremiah Wright’s (for better or worse) Christ-professing pews for 20 years. He allowed George Stephanopolous to correct him when he said “my Muslim faith” in order to clarify his Christianity.

One would think that as a Christian, Barack Obama would have long-ago asked his supporters to stop the messianic stuff. He is a politician; he could diplomatically have said, “you know, guys, I’m not the messiah, let’s tone it down, can we? The comparisons to JFK, FDR and Abraham Lincoln really are enough…” That would have been charming and it would have stopped this nausea-inducing messianism in its tracks.

It is really creepy.

I come across this kind of thinking all the time

Ezra Levant spoke about how much better off we were with the "moron" in the White House.

I think President Obama has signaled a Carteresque weakness. He apologizes to and appeases dictators and genocidal thugs, apologizes for everything America has done prior to his birth, yet demonizes conservative Americans, people like Rush Limbaugh.

Here's Rush's view on what Obama's thinking is as he gives away intelligence secrets and talks American down all around the world:


No, in his mind, he's making us a more moral nation. He is improving our image around the world. He is getting rid of these techniques that created, in his worldview, more terrorists. You said that he has to know that an attack on our country during his presidency will utterly finish him. I don't know that you can say that. An attack on the country, if it happens again, if you carefully watch what's being set up here, it's all being set up to be blamed on the Bush administration. Remember, Barack Obama's mind-set is that everything that came before him was unjust and immoral, from George Washington all the way to Bush. If we're hit again, it's going to be not because we have penalized ourselves and tied our hands ourselves, it's because the Bush administration so mishandled it with the unfair, immoral interrogation and torture that he drove these people to it.

Alas, probably a majority of Canadians and Americans believe this way too.

Ezra is a gay rights activist! (And so am I)

Like many of my readers, I have read a lot of Ezra Levant on human rights commissions and seen a lot of interviews, so I don't always expect to hear new stuff when I go seem him talk about this important issue. But he sure delivered some great stuff yesterday in Ottawa.

It was nice to see some other bloggers there, such as Stephen Taylor, Fred of Gay and Right, and the guy behind Officially Screwed, who I'd not met before.

I sat with Fred and his friend Andrew. We all agreed that Ezra could have a second career doing stand up comedy. The guy is hilarious.

Ezra said he was pleased to suddenly be allowed into polite company, especially in a writers' festival featuring literary writers. He spoke of how he was in some ways a true liberal in the sense that liberal and liberty share similar roots. He said that he was certain that most Liberals also still cared about liberty and that's why the ideas in his book Shakedown are popular across the political spectrum. (BTW, Shakedown is at about half price at Amazon.ca. I just bought two copies. Since I get about a page long mention in the book everyone in my family's getting it for Christmas or birthdays this year.)

He also said he was a gay activist and a womens' rights advocate in addition to being a liberal.
That's because the left, many gay rights organizations and feminists were silent on the dangers posed to gays and women by radical Islam.

I guess that makes me a gay activist too. I may not agree with gay marriages for a whole bunch of reasons foremost among them being that it ignores the procreative nature of the social institution of marriage based on the biological family which demands the complementarity of the sexes. If you re-write the definition of marriage to exclude the biological basis for procreation---one man, one woman and their offspring---then you can basically rewrite marriage or the nature of the human being to mean anything those in power want those terms to mean and you are one step closer to tyranny. And it opens the way to polygamy and all the horrors for the oppression of women that entails. But I also think that we heterosexuals are the ones who wrecked marriage by putting our own preferences ahead of the needs of our children and turning marriage into a romantic love relationship. We redefined it ourselves by dumping the inconvenient procreation part, so of course on that basis it is discriminatory to exclude gays who also love each other. I don't think marriage is merely a romantic love relationship and adult choices. It's more than that.

That said, I abhor any form of bullying or marginalization of people simply because they are gay or women or Muslim or Jewish or black or whatever. And alarm bells are going off for me when I hear about the rise of gay bashing incidents in places like Amsterdam that get little or no attention in the mainstream media. Lots of people probably still think Amsterdam is a haven for relaxed social mores and tolerance.

In gay activist mode, Ezra pointed out that Islamists are "so conservative on sexual issues it makes Stephen Harper look like Liberace."

That got lots of laughs. Fred and I agreed it was worth the price of admission.

Another thing that had people laughing was his riffing on Ernst Zundl's hard hat. He noted that Zundl wore the hard hat everywhere. He asked what people would think of him if he were standing before them wearing a bicycle helmet and wore that bicycle helmet all the time. You'd think he was a nut, he said.

He said the day the Western Standard printed the Danish cartoons was like a Bar Mitzvah.
"It was the day the magazine finally became a man."

Ezra pointed out that because of media concentration bascially "five guys" (and he insisted they were all guys) made the decision not to print the cartoons, despite the fact that a majority of journalists thought they should have been printed.

"We were holding up the standards of western journalism," he said.

He also called his human rights case a "one man stimulus program" for lawyers and government bureaucrats. Heh heh heh.

When asked about limits he would pose on free speech he mentioned forgery, copyright laws, defamation, and official secrets. "The act of expression is not the central element," he said.
Instead it is the fraud, theft, destruction and treason that are illegal.

He described himself as a "slightly huskier Erin Brockovich."

Interestingly, he said most of the cases now brought before the Alberta HRC are from white guys who have been injured on the job and want to top up their severance pay with a $5-6K pay out. For big companies its less expensive to pay the "shakedown" than it is to fight the complaints.

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Ezra in Ottawa

I caught two of Ezra Levant's panels at the International Writers' Festival in Ottawa yesterday.

The first one my friend Barbara Powell and I attended together. The subject matter was western alienation and I didn't expect to find it as interesting as I did. The other guest was Globe and Mail business writer and author Gordon Pitts who read from his most-interesting and well-written-sounding book Stampede!: The rise of the west and Canada's new power elite. In fact, I think I will probably buy his book at some point.

He spoke about how the oil sands development, coupled with the collapse of the industrial heartland in Ontario, has seen a major shift of population and influence to Alberta and now Saskatchewan. He also spoke of how the Alberta economy is helping keep alive some small Newfoundland communities because workers commute back and forth between work in the oil sands and the west.

Interestingly, there was an exhibit of photographs of the oil sands showing huge tailings ponds and giant pits. Ezra joked that you could see his apartment from the photographs.

But he also launched into a most interesting defence of the project, noting that yes, oil is dirty, but this is the cleanest oil when you consider it is done by companies which have a concern for the environment, that pay their workers good union wages, and so on. Then he compared the oil coming from the regimes of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Sudan and Nigeria. Needless to say, Ezra was on a roll detailing the terrorist funding, thuggish behavior, genocide and kleptocracy of these countries. The photographer happened to be present and I can't even remember what the poor mild-mannered green-inspired chap said because Ezra was on a roll and made mincemeat out of him by pointing out that he had taken the photographs from a plane. Then he asked the guy what social programs he would like to see cut if the oil sands were put out of business. He also accused him of picking an easy, accessible target, noting that he would not be allowed to fly over Saudi Arabia or Iran to show how these countries treat the environment.

This is so true, the whole principle of the easy target in the west: you know, poke a finger in George W. Bush's eye or accuse Dick Cheney of "torture" or America of not being perfect, majoring on the light gray while ignoring the horrors of other countries. Worse than that, not only ignoring the horrors but accusing those who do have the courage to name them of some phobia or other or racism or hatred.

Ezra would have none of it. He's also very funny.

Then some guy got up and hogged the microphone in heavily-accented English for about ten minutes pointing out I don't know what, but something along the lines of America created Al Quaeda and so on. It was a defence of Islamism 101. Finally Ezra blew a gasket and said, yeah, I know, it's the f****** Jews!

I'll do more on Ezra's talk on free speech soon.

The pictures show Ezra with Barbara. And the panel, showing Ezra taking notes, moderator Richard Cleroux and author Gordon Pitts.

The danger of liberal guilt-wallowing---Robert Sibley

Robert Sibley writes on the new decadent liberals:

The reason western governments tolerate such incoherence can be found in what political theorist James Piereson has called “punitive liberalism.” Guilt and liberalism go hand-in-hand, Piereson says. Contemporary western liberals might be convinced of their moral superiority — they know what is best for the world — but they suffer a deep sense of guilt. Unlike previous generations of liberals, today’s decadent liberals no longer believe in the primacy of freedom. Nor do they regard liberalism as a fighting creed.

Instead, they indulge in high-minded dreams for improving the world that ignore geopolitical realities. This dream is rooted in guilt, Piereson argues. Liberals look at the sad state of the non-western world, compare it to the affluent societies of Europe and North America, and, well, feel guilty.

According to the doctrine of punitive liberalism, the West is guilty of endless historical misdeeds — slavery, imperialism, war, genocide, capitalism, environmental destruction, male aggressiveness, etc. — and, therefore, deserves chastisement. For the effete liberal, this means apologizing for the actions of ancestors, making reparations for past conduct and endless abasement to history’s perceived victims — namely, anyone who isn’t white or male or Christian.

No one denies the West has a dark side to its history, but perhaps we should remember that moral horrors are not limited to western civilization. Arab countries continued the slave trade long after it was outlawed in the British Empire in 1883. Even today Africans enslave other Africans as child soldiers.

Why doesn’t the Muslim world condemn those Afghan men who stoned Afghan women during rally for women’s rights? What about the killing in Darfur, the ethnic slaughter in the Congo or Robert Mugabe’s withholding of food from Zimbabweans who don’t support his dictatorship? Did anyone raise these human rights violations at Durban II?

It is well to remember that it was western ideas about freedom and the sanctity of the individual that gave birth to concepts of rights and freedoms that the non-western world now pretends to adopt. By contrast, the writings of Islamist intellectuals — Hasan Al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb and Ayatollah Khomeini, for example — refer to a worldwide totalitarian theocratic order. It is these ideas that Ahmadinejad and his Islamist supporters feed on in their denunciations of Israel.

But Israel isn’t the ultimate source of their hatred. Israel has nothing to do with Pakistani mullahs lashing a young girl for violating Shariah law. Israel’s existence has nothing to do with Afghan men throwing acid in the faces of schoolgirls. Even if Israel didn’t exist, the Islamists would still hate the West.

That so many western leaders remain unwilling to accept this reality, preferring to wallow in their western guilt syndrome, is dangerous.

H/t Gay and Right

Dr. Sanity on the frenzy of undoing and full blown mania

Dr. Sanity has an interesting diagnosis of the Democrats need to dial back to Sept. 10, 2001:

In fact, they are in an absolute frenzy of undoing, and the smell of hysteria is overwhelming.

This hysteria is absolutely essential for them to be able to remain on the [psycho]path of denial: the Democrats and the left have staked so much--their entire self-concept, in fact--on losing in Iraq and the evil of George Bush and the Republicans, that they cannot be satisfied with merely winning the Presidential election. 'Hope and Change' was just a motto for them, it was the only way they could continue to keep their eyes closed.

This is emotional excess that disguises a severe, disabling anxiety; an anxiety that has been tenously held in check by the psychological denial that came before. It is as if the bizarre national depression the media have been hyping for the last eight years suddenly flipped into a full-blown mania--with all the euphoria, grandiose ideas and plans, delusions of grandeur, wildly impulsive spending, irritability and inappropriateness one sees in an acute manic episode.

It is the Greek temples and the Obama Presidential Seal to the nth power. And it is symbolic of the lengths to which many in this country, led by the political left and the Democrats, will go to in order to maintain their psychological denial at all costs so so as to continue to be oblivious to the danger in our world.

Okay, so I was at the Supreme Court today

Today the court heard arguments on the Assisted Human Reproduction Act. Quebec (and New Brunswick, Alberta and Saskatchewan agreeing) has said this Act interferes with provincial jurisdiction over health care.

I don't have my notes here but some interesting arguments about the Criminal Code as a "Trojan horse" to expand federal powers. The federal lawyer argued that assisted reproduction involves the creation of a human being and is not the same thing as making the jam that goes on toast in the morning. Anyway, this is an important issue because it speaks to the value we give to human dignity. Some were arguing sperm and ova are no different from blood or other tissue.

What about the child? Does anyone think of the consequences to children born as the result of these techniques? That's what the Act is supposed to cover. It also forbids the commercialization of human sperm, ova and surrogacy, among other things.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about. I met a young lawyer at the court who told me she reads my blog and that she and her mother both read my novel The Defilers and loved it.

She wants to get together for lunch one of these days. Excellent!

And the other day, I got an email from a blog reader on the west coast who wanted to order a signed copy of the novel. I only had two left. He not only ordered a book but added a nice donation through my PayPal button. So I threw in a copy of Hot Apple Cider, too. It contains my testimony along with some wonderful inspirational writing by Canadian Christian authors.

I decided I ought to order some more books in case any other readers want to order signed copies. And I was amazed to find a box had already arrived today.

If you want to buy a book more inexpensively, go to Amazon.com or Amazon.ca. It costs me about $10 something for postage, plus a mailing bag and I don't get a huge discount on my books, and what you might pay at Amazon isn't that far away from my author's cost.

But if you want a signed copy made out to you or the person of your choice, hit my PayPal button and deposit $28 and you'll can email me where to send the book.

Another way you can support this blog is by hitting the PayPal button below and making a small donation. Thanks!

Read what people are saying about The Defilers here. An excerpt here.


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Obama is uniting the right!!!!!

Instead of attacking at other conservatives, David Frum is taking aim at the Obama administration. It's about time!

He writes:

Barack Obama may chose to become the first president to prosecute his predecessors for carrying out official duties in ways disapproved by their successors. If so, we can guarantee: He will not be the last.

And if he finds himself prosecuting America’s counter-terrorism combatants before the conviction of a single enemy international terrorist – in that case, prepare for a firestorm.

Amen! I don't like the idea of torturing anyone, and I think that the notion of human dignity needs to prevail from conception to natural death and torture is a violation of human dignity.

But I also think that torture should not be too broadly defined. That trivializes the eye-gouging, hand chopping, beheading tactics of our enemies.

Saul Alinksy and incitement of the mob

From American Thinker:

And then little Saul grew up and wrote Rules for Radicals, and dedicated his life to ... the very same art of whipping up mobs that his parents fled from. Rules for Radicals might have been written by a medieval mob agitator; only a few words need to be changed. 'Pick the Target, Freeze It, Personalize It and Polarize It.' Substitute "heretic" or "witch" for "target" and you have all the religious persecutions in human history. Substitute "blacks," and you have a Dixiecrat lynch mob. Substitute "whites," and you have all of J-Wright's sermons at Trinity United, Chicago. It's all the same thing. Human nature doesn't change. Alinsky:

"Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution."

Funny thing is, Emma Lazarus thought that America was the revolution those huddled masses were looking for.

Alinsky did not write his little book of Rules against the Tsar of Russia, nor against mob demagogues in general; rather, he wrote it in a rage against free market wealth, against capitalist individualism, against the prosperous middle class and its most successful home, the United States of America. Alinsky became the hero for other agitators -- people who used to call themselves "communist agitators." Those were not shameful words when little Saul was growing up, they were proud words.

Agitare comes from the Latin word for "stirring up," the same root as the word "activist." A "community activist" is just a slightly different name for the old phrase "communist agitator" -- one who stirs up a group, just like those old hairy demagogues in Tsarist Russia and Poland, and then in Soviet Russia, Germany, China and Cambodia, in Rwanda and Kosovo, the Punjab and Indonesia ....

Question: How is it that little Saul Alinsky, child and grandchild of victims, became the new persecutor?

Here is a strange twist of fate. Starting with the huge expansion of the US college campuses in the Sixties, Saul Alinsky's little book went viral. Alienated middle-class kids with no personal experience of poverty or suffering -- in the sense that blacks knew it in the South and the Jews and many others in Europe and Asia -- they all went around with Alinsky's Rules for Radicals in their backpacks. Radicalism became romantic. Alienated and ignorant kids yearned to become Che Guevara and kill the capitalists. That's how rich kids like Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn learned their theology. It's how they became heroes in their own eyes. Such saintly people, giving their all for the poor and helpless.

I dunno. Is Obama this astute a revolutionary? Or is he just an incompetent leftist naif nincompoop who has a nice image?

Wrestling with the "torture" issue

....or is it "harsh interrogation techniques"?

First of all, I think the word torture covers a wide spectrum. Some people define torture very broadly to include sleep deprivation, loud music and so on. It reminds me of the way people define sexual assault to include everything from the most vicious rape to being groped on the subway.

I think it is good to have a debate on where one draws the line, but the danger of defining torture too broadly is that it trivializes the beheading, throat cutting, hand chopping, foot shredding death, mutilation and severe physical pain on the far end of the spectrum. We need to have a little perspective here. I would like it if every time someone complains about waterboarding on the American side, there was also at least a bare acknowledgment of what the other side does to its prisoners.

So, I think we do need to get some perspective on where to draw the line on the torture spectrum and I don't necessarily think "harsh interrogation techniques" is a euphemism. I'm just not sure what to think at this stage. I know, however, that I find it difficult to relate to the moral superiority coming from the Obama administration when Obama has no qualms about leaving newborn babies to die in soiled utility closets simply for the crime of being born as the result of a botched abortion. In other words, I would listen much more carefully to someone with a consistent life ethic than someone who thinks an infant should die alone without any medical attention. It bugs me that some on the left seem to care more for the treatment of our enemies than for their victims or potential victims. I do worry that releasing the memos has hurt American intelligence capabilities and emasculated the people who are supposed to protect us.

That being said, I'm uncomfortable though with the "it worked" argument. I know utilitarian principles are quite popular these days, but I don't care for them. Many hideous things can be defended on the basis of the greatest good for the greatest number.

But I also think that it is wrong to allow our own moral scruples to cost us the war. I would not want to have a pacifist in the white house, just as I would not want someone who thought lying was a sin to think he or she had to tell the Nazis the truth about the Jews hiding in the attic.

I'm glad I now have Fox News so I can hear some counterspin to the "Bush allowed torture, isn't he heinous and how evil that Cheney is" refrain that is a constant drip drip drip from the mainstream media.

I think they did what they thought they had to do in a tough environment. I may not like some of the things they did but I need to know much more of the context before I lay judgment.

I think America is less safe with Obama and that joke of a homeland security secretary.

Here's a thoughtful take on the subject from Right Wing Nuthouse:

The entire bleeding government of the United States appears to have lost its collective head and engaged in practices that are both abhorrent to our traditions and a violation of national and international law. The idea that Los Angeles was “saved” by torturing people misses the point. What certainty is there that other, legal means used on the prisoner(s) might not have yielded the same information? This piece by Heather McDonald in City Journal a few years ago that goes into detail about our early attempts to get information from battlefield detainees clearly shows that the real professional interrogators didn’t have to break the law in order to glean excellent, actionable intelligence from al-Qaeda prisoners. They skated quite close to the edge but never went over, according to McDonald. And these interrogations were taking place at the same time the whole torture issue was roiling the Bush Administration - a bureaucratic battle of which the interrogators were unaware.

In short, we’ll never know if using legal methods would have gotten the same results. And that’s one of the things that bugs the hell out of me. Even the Los Angeles plot was not a ticking time bomb scenario for the simple reason we didn’t know about it until the “enhanced interrogation techniques” had already been used. Hence, retroactive justification for their use is a non-starter.

I made my feelings known about the release of the memos here. But it is apparent that Gutfeld, who claims to be a fan of 24, hasn’t been watching very carefully recently because if he had, he would have known that Bauer had come to grips with his guilt in breaking the law and wanted America to know why he did it. He wasn’t evading responsibility. But he questioned whether anyone who didn’t have the full story could judge him without standing in his shoes.

This is the latest attempt to whitewash history on the part of torture advocates; it worked so why get all bent out of shape? I will be the first to make the case that we cannot judge what went on in a vacuum, employing the premise that the law is the end all and be all - a force into and of itself - and that any slight deviation from the spirit and the letter of the law must be punished severely. This is the absolutist position and I am not comfortable with it. The law was never meant to be a straitjacket. Otherwise, the entire population would be walking on eggshells.

The National Review Online links to a 2007 Washington Post story:

But these aren't mere "GOP charges." In December 2007 the Washington Post (notorious for being easily spun by Republicans) reported:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.

Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

The scary Liberal agenda to expand the CHRC

Blazing Cat Fur has been checking out the Liberal's policy priority resolutions for the 2009 Convention where Ignatieff will receive his coronation and discovered on page 26 and discovered the Liberals plan to EXPAND the powers and the reach of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

They want to add social condition to the enumerated grounds, among other things.

Fur is also worried about this:

The Liberals are also in lockstep with the CHRC's desire to march in time to the beat of their cultural marxist masters at the U.N.

The Libs propose:

• the CHRC be given the power to monitor the implementation of our commitments and obligations to enforce its recommendations;

This means subservience to the UN plain and simple, the goal is to do an end run around our elected officials and judiciary. I see new HRC legislation calling for an end to the Defamation of Islam as a main plank in the Liberals next election platform.

This is similar to the drumbeat of transnationalism being heard south of the border. The Obama administration has people who would like to put America under international laws so that the Constitution and its precious amendments could be bypassed.

My picture with the great Mark Steyn and the PM

. . . is on the inside dust jacket of his latest book Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech and the Twilight of the West.

This is the picture. It was taken by Deb Ransom in the Prime Minister's Office at the garden party last June at 24 Sussex Drive.

I had asked Mark if I could listen in on his conversation with the Prime Minister when he brought up human rights commissions, so there I was when the official photographer came by.

This was the day Mark found out the Canadian "Human Rights" (his quotes and mine) dismissed the Canadian Islamic Congress's complaints against Maclean's Magazine.

I also got a mention in Ezra Levant's new book Shakedown, which is also excellent!

Ezra's back in Ottawa Saturday. He writes:

Ottawa, Saturday, April 25

I've been invited to the Ottawa International Writers Festival this weekend. I'm speaking at two events on Saturday. The first is a panel discussion on the West's place in Canada -- what a great subject! It's at noon, featuring Gordon Pitts and moderated by Richard Cleroux of the Hill Times. Tickets are $15.

The second is all about my book. It's at 4 p.m., hosted by Alison Buchanan. It's also $15

Margaret Somerville explains why incest is taboo

I hope Leonard Stern reads this essay at Mercatornet.com for his edification.

Somerville writes:

Like limiting marriage to monogamous, opposite-sex couples, the incest taboo can be seen as primarily meant to benefit children, not adults, and to do so at the cost of some adults’ freedom of choice regarding their sexual partners and family structure. It’s an example of where the needs and protection of children, and society fulfilling its obligations in that regard, take priority over individuals’ preferences.

Even some people who advocate decriminalizing incest admit that they have a “yuck factor” response to it. This can be an expression of a moral intuition that there is something ethically wrong in the conduct that causes that reaction. We need to listen to our moral intuitions and, as recent research shows, “examined emotions”, not just our cognitive reason, in deciding what is and is not ethical.

In conclusion, we need to keep in mind that an important function of the criminal law is to establish and uphold our most important collective, shared values. And, paradoxically, that role of the law is more important in a secular society than in a religious one, because in the former the law is one of the few games in town available to do that.

Read the whole thing.

Author of new book on exorcism gives Rod Dreher an interview

Matt Baglio tells Dreher:

I was able to see about 20 exorcisms, some of which Father Gary participated in. The thing that most surprised me was the relative normalcy of the people who had come to be prayed over. You could even have conversations with them. Of course once the exorcist began praying the Ritual then all that would change and the person would react, sometimes violently. Most of the cases I saw were of the milder sort where the person coughed, or just sat completely still. However I did see a few violent ones in which the person thrashed and their personality changed and they began speaking in a gruff and guttural voice that to me sounded very unnatural. In those instances I was really struck by the intense suffering that these people undergo.

Another thing that surprised me was the way the exorcist went about praying the Ritual. Initially I expected things to be more dramatic in the sense that the exorcist would be shouting and really berating the person. Instead the exorcists I followed were very calm and prayed the Ritual almost under their breath.

The biggest and best March for Life ever

Please mark your calendars and plan on coming to Ottawa May 14.

That's when the National March for Life will take place. That evening there is the annual Rose Dinner. I already bought my ticket. I expect it will be a sold out event as usual.

At least nine Canadian bishops will be participating in the march, along with busloads from various dioceses in Ontario and Quebec. Among those bishops, Ottawa's Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins and Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet.

And! the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, Carl Anderson, will attend. He, along with retired Liberal MP Tom Wappel, will be the Rose Dinner keynote speakers.

This is the 40th anniversary of the Omnibus Bill that paved the way to abortion on demand in Canada. Campaign Life Coalition is calling the national march Exodus 2009:

Every year, thousands of Canadian pro-lifers speak out against the injustice of abortion at the National March for Life in Ottawa and Provincial demonstrations across the country. Please take part in this very important demonstration this year. We want Canadians to take notice of the tragic consequences of abortion - the killing of so many unborn children, the damage it causes to women and the harm it has inflicted on society. Human beings are the earth’s most precious resource but Canada is blithely eliminating nearly 100,000 unborn children - future teachers, artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, laborers, parents, taxpayers - without consideration of what we are really doing.

Join us for this year’s Marches for Life to mark the historical importance of this tragic day in our country’s history and join the movement demanding something far better – a Canada without abortion. For information about the Provincial March for Life events, contact your local pro-life group. If you can make the National March for Life in Ottawa, please plan now to be there. See details of this years March and sign up to receive updates at: http://www.campaignlifecoalition.com/march2009/index.html

This year’s theme is Exodus 2009 – A Future without Abortion. It begins on Wednesday, May 13th with a Mass at St. Theresa’s Parish at 7:30 p.m. followed by a Candlelight Vigil at the Canadian Tribute to Human Rights Monument in the nation’s capital at dusk. On May 14th there are a number of ways in which Christians might spiritually prepare for the day’s events. At 10 a.m. there is a Mass at both Notre Dame Cathedral and St. Patrick’s Basilica, a Prayer Service at St. George Anglican Church, and a worship and meditation service hosted by the Canadian Reformed Church at the Merivale United Church.

At noon, the gathering begins on Parliament Hill with the introduction of dignitaries and select speeches. The March will begin at 1:30 p.m. and lasts about an hour. When people return to the Hill, the Silent No More Awareness Campaign will make a presentation at 2:45 p.m. The Eastern Catholic Chaplaincy of Ottawa will lead a closing Prayer Service at 4 p.m.

Second thoughts on the Susan Boyle phenomenon

Like many millions, I watched Susan Boyle on YouTube and I was gratified to see her wipe the condescension off the faces the judges and the derisive audience. Was I duped? See below.

Also, Spengler has some interesting thoughts:

There is an undercurrent of self-worship in the aptly-named American Idol and its British knockoff, which lifted Boyle to stardom. As I wrote some years ago (American Idolatry Asia Times Online, August 29, 2006), at some time during the 20th century, the people of the West elected to identify with what is like them, rather than emulate what is above them.

Churlish resentment of high culture comes from the slacker's desire for reward with neither merit nor effort: the sort of artistic skill that requires years of discipline and sacrifice is a reproach to the indolence of the popular audience of the West. Better voices than Boyle's can be found in a thousand choirs and amateur theatricals, but the crowd has embraced this late-hatching Scottish songbird as a symbol of its own aspirations.

With no prejudice to Boyle, who seems amused rather than beguiled by her success, the fantasy-life of nations has consequences in the real world.

And the New York Post wonders if the whole thing was just a big marketing ploy:

By now at least 30 million people worldwide (roughly the same number who view the Oscars, or the Super Bowl) have watched an extraordinary clip from a popular UK show called "Britain's Got Talent." A dowdy, 47-year-old virgin named Susan Boyle takes the stage, wearing her low heels and her Sunday best. The crowd laughs at her, and Boyle - how devastating - laughs along. She says she wants to be a professional singer; people laugh harder and louder. They point. It's grammar school and the Roman coliseum combined. Simon Cowell - panelist and show creator - rolls his eyes. And then Susan Boyle sings.

snip

But there is something disturbing about the collective rejection-embrace-elevation of Susan Boyle. There is the element of self-congratulation in the viral spread of this link around the Web, the idea that we, the secondary viewers, the judges of those who are judging, are far more evolved. There is the clip itself, suspiciously ready-made for online consumption: A 7-minute movie, slick and pithy in its perfect execution of the underdog narrative. (That something like "Rocky" took two hours to tell now seems antediluvian.) There is the classic David vs. Goliath subplot, the primal satisfaction of seeing the bully (Cowell) slain by such a seemingly inferior force. And there is the profound desire for this entire thing to be authentic, which in and of itself suggests that it probably isn't.

I think both these writers have a point. Though I don't wish to take anything away from Susan Boyle, both my former next door neighbor's daughters sing better than Susan Boyle does.

In fact, these beautiful young gals and a friend toyed with starting a group called "Too Good to Be Famous."

Imagine the consequences of legalized euthanasia

Every major city in Canada has abortion clinics or hospitals that perform this procedure, resulting in almost 100,000 deaths of unborn children a year. Perhaps if these children had been born, we might not face the demographic winter looming as fewer and fewer young wage-earners support a growing cadre of elderly pensioners.

But Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review imagines a hideous outcome of today's debate on euthanasia and assisted-suicide. She writes:

If we don’t question the media’s almost casual acceptance of assisted suicide, we’re going to find before long that we have moved way beyond debating extraordinary care and the legality of assisted suicide in terminal cases. They sure have moved beyond that point at Dignitas. Mentally ill patients have been assisted in their suicides there. “Suicide is a very good possibility to escape a situation which you can’t alter,” Minelli told the BBC.

What’s next, an organization with centers in every city dedicated to helping end human life?

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day

Please look at this Auschwitz Album via the Yad Veshem website.

Atlas Shrugs has more on this sad day.

It is disgraceful Durban II is taking place today, literally laying down a red carpet for Iranian president Ahmedinejad, who is calling for Israel to be wiped off the map.

And it is also sad that the Pope has praised the conference. I am a big supporter of Pope Benedict XVI, but this is yet another example of a tone deaf communications strategy. Here's what Benedict said:

The Holy Father then went on to mention the forthcoming review of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. The review conference is due to begin tomorrow in Geneva, Switzerland.

"It is an important initiative", he said, "because even today, despite the lessons of history, such deplorable phenomena still exist. The Durban Declaration recognises that 'all peoples and individuals form a human family rich in its diversity. They have contributed to the progress of civilisation and of the cultures which constitute the shared heritage of humankind. ... The promotion of tolerance, of pluralism and of respect can lead to a more inclusive society'. On the basis of these affirmations, what is required is firm and substantial action, at both the national and international level, to prevent and eliminate all forms of discrimination and intolerance. What is needed above all is a vast programme of education to exalt the dignity of individuals and protect their fundamental rights. For her part, the Church reiterates that only recognition for the dignity of man, created in the image and likeness of God, can constitute a sure foundation for such an undertaking. Indeed, it is this shared origin that gives humankind its shared destiny, which should arouse in everyone a strong sense of solidarity and responsibility. I express my sincere hopes that the delegates present at the Geneva conference may work together in a spirit of dialogue and acceptance to put an end to all forms of racism, discrimination and intolerance, thus taking a fundamental step towards affirming the universal value of the dignity of man and his rights, in a context of respect and justice for all individuals and peoples".

The Pope is praising what the conference should be and someone neglected to tell him what kind of hate-fest this conference has become. Are some people within the Vatican deliberately dropping the ball to make the Holy Father look bad?

Rod Dreher writes:

The Pope, who is sending a Vatican delegation, spoke out yesterday in support of the conference. What a shame. It is, of course, necessary to speak out against racism. But if Benedict thinks that this worthy goal is what this UN conference is all about, he is awfully naive. One doesn't think of Pope Benedict as naive, but that's the most charitable interpretation I can think of.

Damian Thompson writes:

I don't often have a go at Pope Benedict XVI, but WHY is he supporting the United Nations conference on "racism" in Geneva? You know, the one where leading anti-racist (and Holocaust denier) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a major participant. The one convened by that celebrant of human rights, Libya. The one where speaker after speaker is lined up to gibber about the most evil racist regime the world has ever known, ie the Zionist entity.

Please, Holy Father, withdraw the Vatican delegation. Or have them stand up and walk out when one or another dictator accuses the "Zionist entity" of abuses that are routine in their own countries.

Ooof! My Amazon ranking is plummeting. Help!

I see my Amazon.com ranking is drifting past 1.6 millionth and past 101Kth on Amazon.ca. How about wishing me a Joyous Easter (and doing yourself a favor if you like an engaging read) and buy my book? Try it, you'll like it. (See below)

Another way you can support this blog is by hitting the PayPal button below and making a small donation. Thanks!

Read what people are saying about The Defilers here. An excerpt here.
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Binks has some interesting analysis

Binks is reminding people about his discernment concerning the character of President Obama.

He writes:

His universe is small, and makes perfect sense: he is the main character therein, and we all players, perps, or tools. The real universe– and real people– are mysterious, complicated, and surprising.

This struck me because it is not only Obama's universe but that of the typical progressive liberal (as opposed to classical liberal) who thinks everyone would be better off with their universalizing principles that dissolve all that is mysterious, complicated, and surprising by penalizing what is particular, local, human (as in male and female and human nature in general) in favor of concepts like gender and equality.

Binks offers some similar comments further down in his post:

~ THE WORLD IS FIGURING OUT– at least for a moment– that the ordinary often isn’t. That the inward kingdom of each person can be full or riches and surprises and hidden depths; that the much-despised ‘ordinary middle-class/ bourgeois’ is not a boring wasteland for smug elites and smart-ass revolutionaries to look down on.. or worse, to practice their theories and improvements upon. Nor are They™ the final arbiters and exemplars of all things cool and worthwhile.

The rich talking heads on the news turn out to be pimps and political hacks; the ’stars’ are too often talent without a decent human underneath; the experts and utopians are people so clueless they can neither learn nor grasp lessons spelled out in illuminated letters a mile high, of blood and horrid noise over a century, refuting their foolish visions of solving all human problems forever.

This is a wonderful story about an Orthodox saint

Rod Dreher was reading a book about Father Arseny's time in the gulag and included on of the stories about this saint on his blog. It's amazing and makes me want to read the book.

Father Arseny had not seen the beginnings of the fight; he had been piling up logs near a stove at the other end of the barracks. He suddenly saw what was happening. Ivan was going to kill Alexei. By now Alexei could only cover his face with his hands; Ivan was slamming him and smashing him repeatedly. Father Arseny silently put the logs near the stove, calmly walked over to the fight and, before the amazed eyes of the whole barracks, grabbed the arm of Ivan the Brown. Ivan looked surprised, shocked! The priest had interfered in a fight. This meant he must die. Ivan hated Father Arseny. He had never dared touch him for fear of the rest of the barracks, but now he had a true reason to kill him.

Ivan stopped beating Alexei and pronounced, "O.K. Pop, it's the end for both of you. First the student, then you." A knife appeared in his hands and he lunged towards Alexei.

What happened? Nobody could understand, but suddenly the gentle and weak Father Arseny straightened himself up and slammed Ivan on the arm so hard that the knife fell from his hand. Then he pushed Ivan away from Alexei. Ivan stumbled and fell, and hit the corner of a bunk with his face. Father Arseny went to Alexei and said to him, "Go, Alyosha, wash your face, no one will hit you anymore." Then, as if nothing had happened, he went back to his work.

Everyone was taken aback. Ivan the Brown stood up. The criminals did not say a word. They understood that Ivan had lost face in front of the whole barracks. Somebody discreetly wiped the blood from the floor with his foot. Alyosha's face was completely smashed up, his ear was torn, one eye was closed, and the other one was dark red. Everyone was completely silent. They knew that it was all over now for both Father Arseny and Alexei. The criminals would kill them both.

There's more and it is wonderful.

More on the House built on a rock with five pillars

Obama's use of the Sermon on the Mount to illustrate the new rock (to replace the rock of Christ) upon which he will build America's economic prosperity gets this interpretation from The Dawn Patrol:

In Obama's hands, the words of Our Lord become just another way to tell the story of the Three Little Pigs.

Ouch!

Rush on Obama's "house on a rock" speech

I have already said I think Obama's recent speech using a parable of the house built on a rock from the Sermon on the Mount is blasphemous and points to some kind of messiah complex on his part or at the very least what Douglas Farrow calls an allegiance to the Savior State. Here is Rush Limbaugh's take:

RUSH: I want to share with you Obama's flourish yesterday. This was the end of his big speech yesterday on -- what was the speech on? What the hell was it about? That's right, the economy. All of his speeches are about how he's going to rebuild America and so forth. But this was the flourish.

"It is that house upon the rock. Proud, sturdy, and unwavering in the face of the greatest storm. We will not finish it in one year or even many, but if we use this moment to lay that new foundation; if we come together and begin the hard work of rebuilding; if we persist and persevere against the disappointments and setbacks that will surely lie ahead, then I have no doubt that this house will stand and the dream of our founders will live on in our time. Thank you, God bless, and may God bless the United States of America." The foundation, he wants to redo the foundation. I guarantee you if he succeeds in this, the dream of our founders will have been killed. It will not live on, and that is the precise point. The foundation. That's what Obama called his soothing talk about gutting and remaking the American economy, built on free markets, built on capitalism, President Obama gently explained how the business model was flawed, that Milton Friedman was a kook, that the greatest economy in history was built on quicksand and knowing that nothing of permanence could be built on quicksand, Obama proposed building a new foundation for our economy, one built on a rock. What rock? Marxism? What rock? Socialism? Hard to say.

All we get is the dreamy, silky speeches that promise a better day. But, my friends, we know what Obama's economics are built on. We know what his new foundation is. His new foundation is built on money we don't have. His foundation is built on money created out of thin air and debt. Debt that is an anchor around all of our collective necks, so heavy is the anchor, we, the people can't move. We're weighed down by a plan that's designed to pull off a seismic switcheroo. We're going for an economy driven by the private sector to one driven by Obama, except we aren't told that. We're told the exact opposite. Barack Obama is building a new economy on a foundation of so much debt that he has reached into our children's and grandchildren's pockets. They will be born broke. It's called generational theft.

It's funny that when George W. Bush embedded Christian references in his speeches I loved it, but when Obama does it I find it offensive. Why? Well, George W. Bush was a fellow believer for one thing who was grateful for Jesus Christ's turning his life around and who lived accordingly. As much as Obama says he is a Christian, he is a post-modern, cafeteria-style pick and choose Christian who believes it is okay to let babies born as the result of a botched abortion die in a dirty utility closet. He voted against their getting medical care. Sorry, but that is not Christian. He doesn't use the references properly. His ignorance shows. He also wants to rob Christians of conscience rights. That is not Christian.

His use of Christian terms are window dressing for his real agenda which is utopian. They are an effort to massage the minds of folks who voted for him because they bought the hope and change rap.

Instead of acknowledging Christ and a transcendent heaven, Obama wants to make heaven on earth through the state. Unfortunately, we have lots of evidence of how utopian schemes actually work out. Stalin? Mao?

Another reason why Gitmo looks humane

Leave it to Rush Limbaugh to point this out (my bolds):

RUSH: You know what we have learned about the Somali pirates, the merchant marine organizers that were wiped out at the order of Barack Obama, you know what we learned about them? They were teenagers. The Somali pirates, the merchant marine organizers who took a US merchant captain hostage for five days were inexperienced youths, the defense secretary, Roberts Gates, said yesterday, adding that the hijackers were between 17 and 19 years old. Now, just imagine the hue and cry had a Republican president ordered the shooting of black teenagers on the high seas. Greetings and welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.

They were kids. The story is out, I don't know if it's true or not, but apparently the hijackers, these kids, the merchant marine organizers, Muslim kids, were upset, they wanted to just give the captain back and head home because they were running out of food, they were running out of fuel, they were surrounded by all these US Navy ships, big ships, and they just wanted out of there. That's the story, but then when one of them put a gun to the back of the captain, Mr. Phillips, then bam, bam, bam. There you have it, and three teenagers shot on the high seas at the order of President Obama. David "Rodham" Gergen was discussing the ramifications of this last night. Let's go to sound bite eight. We'll use number eight. He was on Anderson Cooper 360 last night. Cooper said, "Does Obama need to move forward in this --" by the way, the Somali merchant marine organizers have hijacked four more ships today, four more ships have been hijacked.

It was three earlier today. They've hijacked an additional one now for a total of four today. And, of course, we predicted this yesterday. While bestowing upon Obama all the brilliance and credit he deserved for a brilliant operation, we were very much concerned here that this kind of action against three young teenagers, black Muslim teenagers on the high seas could anger the pirates, merchant marine organizers even more and heighten and increase hijack activity. The left itself warned us of this in Iraq, they said all we're doing is creating more terrorists. So apparently we've created more hijackings on the high seas, in the Gulf of Aden by teenaged black Muslims, the merchant marine organizers.

And Victor Davis Hanson weighs in on Spain's desire to prosecute Bush administration people for Gitmo "abuses."
(Note to self: boycott Spanish products):

I know I'd prefer to be shown some upsetting nudie magazines as humiliation to make me talk than have a bullet take apart my skull.

Once Team Obama chose to trash Bush as a Constitution-shredder, while blinking and nodding at Spanish theatrics — all the while either not changing, or, in fact, stepping up Bush-era anti-terrorism measures — it put itself in a soon-to-be untenable position that even a fawning media won't long be able to ignore.

Who knows what's in our future — a Spanish indictment of "judge-and-jury" Barack Obama for ordering the executions of Pashtun and Somali suspects in foreign or international territories, without an arrest warrant, habeas corpus, rights to counsel, and recourse to appeal?

The double-standards are appalling, but so what else is new? By the way, Hanson's piece at the Corner is entitled: Guantànamo Bay, No — Bullet in the Brain, Okay?

And frankly, I really, really don't like the criminal/international law model for fighting terrorism. I mean, what were FBI agents doing investigating the hijacking? And Mark Levin pointed out on his radio program (April 13) that all Obama actually did was sign some legal agreements authorizing the use of force to save the captain's life. Those agreements should not even have been necessary. They speak to this law enforcement approach.

And while there was an element of facetiousness in Rush's post, I do actually feel sadness about those teenagers. While I'm proud of the American Navy, I still think we need to keep our humanity here and realize we're not blowing cartoons in a video game out of the water.

But I feel even sadder about the kind of appeasement and ransom-paying and weakness on the part of the world community that rewards piracy and jihad so that Somalia remains a failed state so groups like Al Qaeda can operate and recruit with impunity---more than impunity--with ample financing from various oil-rich nations and teenaged boys risk their lives on the high seas in search of plunder rather than helping their country become a stable place to raise a family.

Why the Tamil demonstrations are problematic

For about a week, Tamil demonstrators have snarled traffic in downtown Ottawa, blocking off the street that passes in front of Parliament Hill. It's a huge annoyance for commuters and certainly not winning the Tamils any public relations points.

David Harris has an op ed in today's Ottawa Citizen that lays out some even more important reason why this kind of unlawful protest should not be allowed. He writes:

To the astonishment of many, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been allowed to flex their muscles in Ottawa, the heart of Canada's democracy.

snip

Thanks to the organization's penchant for mass-casualty suicide-bombings of civilian targets, and its use of child soldiers, Canada's Conservative government banned the LTTE in 2006.

Here in Canada, Tigers have also extracted "taxes" from Tamils, and are implicated in drug and other criminal fundraising.

Canadian Tamil shop owners have seen their premises wrecked for carrying insufficiently pro-Tiger literature. At least one Canadian politician has participated in a Tigers' flag-raising ceremony. And there are Tiger-affiliated street gangs in Toronto, where most of the hundreds of thousands of Canadian Tamils live.

Following similar disruptions in Toronto, LTTE supporters were heavily represented in the demonstration-cum-invasion of downtown Ottawa that began last week. Apparently without bothering to secure municipal permits for the protests, Tiger supporters laid siege to the national capital, their red LTTE flags casting shadows over Parliament itself. These disruptions periodically paralysed citizens' lawful and legitimate business in the Wellington Street area and other central Ottawa routes bordering on Parliament. The daily commutes of thousands were disrupted.

Bluntly put, this meant that Tiger sympathizers were illegally allowed to dictate the suspending of legitimate traffic and citizen access at will. Meanwhile, plentiful terrorist flags fly in an appropriately scarlet stream, some held aloft by children.

snip

The enforcement of our laws is doubly important at a time when near-boundless immigration, related demographic shifts and radicalizing communities mean that officials could increasingly be tempted to profit politically from appeasing dangerous, but influential, groups. Canadians must hold their politicians and bureaucrats accountable for acting in the national interest.

In the meantime, we must remember that our behaviour in such matters is studied carefully by Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and other extremist groups that target Canada and the West. They take a professional interest in knowing which cities conduct themselves like soft targets.

House on a rock with five pillars

I was struck by Obama's ignorance of both Christianity and Judaism when he noted how different Passover and Easter were as holidays in his Easter/Passover message. Obviously, he has no clue about the relationship of Easter to Passover. Obviously he never heard that kind of teaching in Rev. Wright's hate church. Today he gave a speech where he borrowed from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Frankly, I think his comparison of his economic plan to the rock of Christ referred to in Jesus' parable about a house built on sand vs. a house built on a rock is blasphemous. It is another example of his grandiose sense of himself as messiah.

But that's not all. He spoke of Five Pillars. Atlas Shrugs has the willies:

Today he declared his dedication to what he called the "five pillars" of his new "house upon a rock".

Obama pledged "an unrelenting, unyielding, day-by-day effort from this administration to fight for economic recovery on all fronts." Unrelenting indeed. Dear leader is on our TV screens every day.

He is looting our wealth, our children's wealth, and the country's future wealth to the tune of nine trillion dollars............. and he speaks of recovery. And as scary as that is, that is not what is so unnerving.

President Obama's speech called "A New Foundation" and his five pillars. Obama says it's meant to explain his economic strategy "as clearly as I can."

There is a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that tells the story of two men. The first built his house on a pile of sand, and it was destroyed as soon as the storm hit. But the second is known as the wise man, for when “…the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house…it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.” We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand. We must build our house upon a rock.

[...]. It’s a foundation built upon five pillars that will grow our economy and make this new century another American century: new rules for Wall Street that will reward drive and innovation; new investments in education that will make our workforce more skilled and competitive; new investments in renewable energy and technology that will create new jobs and industries; new investments in health care that will cut costs for families and businesses; and new savings in our federal budget that will bring down the debt for future generations. That is the new foundation we must build. That is our future.

Obama ends the speech by noting the Biblical story again:

It is that house upon the rock.

I am shaking my head. Obama has replaced the rock of Christ with his economic plan as if he is the messiah.

Last night I went to see a couple of films put on by the Free Thinking Film Society--one called The Monster Among Us about the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the other on The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz. There was also a panel with National Post columnist Barbara Kay and former CSIS strategic planning head David Harris. I got up and asked about the bow to the Saudi King.

Both Kay and Harris described Obama as a naif, a dangerous innocent whose leftwing views made him think everyone could be dealt with rationally. They were noncommittal about the bow--and whether or not it in fact occurred. They focused more on the scary incompetence represented by his administration.

I had to leave before the event ended and a man followed us out to the lobby. I didn't get his name. He had an accent I could not place. He could have come from the Middle East or Eastern Europe, I don't know. He told us he is a Christian. He said Obama bowed to the Saudi King because he is the protector of the two holiest sites in Islam: Mecca and Medina.

He also said he thinks Obama is "Orwellian" and part of a much darker plan for the United States.

We had to go. I would have liked to have talked with him longer. For me the jury is still out.
Sometimes I think he is the naif. Other times I think something much more sinister is afoot.

The Globe hates Gairdner's book---sounds like a must-read

The Glop and Mail (Glop is the way my Russian grandfather used to say Globe, as he was a Boston Globe reader) hates William Gairdner's latest book. That means it must be great and I must read it. Novelist (?) Chris Scott writes:

Ponderously titled, The Book of Absolutes: A Critique of Relativism and a Defence of Universals (hereinafter The Book) targets the spawn of Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Derrida, those postmodern zanies in the groves of academe who are responsible for the death of God, history, literacy and, if William Gairdner can be trusted, much else besides.

Author of The War Against the Family, After Liberalism and The Trouble with Democracy (titles that, like The Book, emit distinct whiffs of reactionary powder), Gairdner, the president of a Toronto investment firm, is a 1963 Pan American Games decathlon silver medalist who holds a PhD in English from Stanford University.

He has many other devices tacked to his banner. A defender of the rights of the unborn (he has compared abortion to slavery), he opposes gun control and supports capital punishment and generic religion. A foe of bureaucracy and big, bad government, he has earned the praise of the late William F. Buckley Jr., who hailed Gairdner's "mobilizing passion" as "the reason for a national - bi-national - celebration."

No doubt he is what the Germans call a serious person, but what is this relativism of which he complains? Nothing in this world and the next, according to Gairdner, can escape its reach. "Cultures ... moral values ... laws are relative. ... Ironically, [relativism] is our only absolute." Worse, "under the sway of relativism, there is no longer any expectation that an individual ought [Gairdner's italics] to hold consistent, connected beliefs..."

I dunno. Scott does not really engage any arguments. He just repeats some of what Gairdner says as if it is self-evident that it's ridiculous. Which makes it self-evident that Scott is ridiculous and I will not be buying any of his novels, though I expect they will win many awards, given his progressive philosophical bent. Probably it was Gairdner's attack on John Stuart Mill and Darwin that made the snide Scott so smirkily all-knowing in his condemnation and derision.

Vintage Kathy Shaidle at packed event in London

Ezra Levant reports here on the panel discussion in London where he, Kathy Shaidle and Salim Mansur drew a crowd of 600 people.

Blazing Cat Fur has posted Kathy's remarks:

The Left is very concerned about something they like to call “social justice”, which I define as the stubborn application of unworkable solutions to imaginary problems.

Two great movies in Ottawa tonight---plus a panel

If you can't make it to London tonight for this, don't despair. There will be an event in Ottawa tonight that will be as interesting and important. Plus, there's food and drink!

The Free Thinking Film Society Presents “The Monster Among Us” & "The
Case for Israel"Date: April 13, 2009, 6:30 PMPlace: National Archives/Library of
Canada, 395 Wellington Street OttawaAdmission: $10.00

On April 13, 2009, The Free Thinking Film Society will present its first double feature – “The Monster Among Us” & “The Case for Israel”. “The Monster Among Us” is Media Projects' film about the alarming rise of anti-Semitism in Europe – and includes excerpts from almost 200 hours of footage shot in Germany, Hungary, France, England, Holland and Belgium. Anti-Semitism has surfaced on university campuses, in the media, on the streets, on the Internet, at political demonstrations and in seemingly innocent social situations. The Monster Among Us examines this wave of anti-Semitism against European Jews and their institutions, mainly from the
point of view of those who have directly experienced the violence or live every
day with the threat. “The Case for Israel” is a new landmark Feature Documentary
with Alan Dershowitz, one of the most outspoken supporters of Israel in the
United States. The film provides a vigorous case for Israel’s right to exist, to
protect its citizen from terrorism, and to defend its borders from hostile
enemies. Through incisive conversations with key judicial, political and
academic leaders, Dershowitz refutes deeply entrenched misperceptions about
Israel's history, Jewish claims to a homeland, individual rights under Israel's
democratic system of government, the security fence, and military conduct in the
face of terrorist attacks.

In addition to the two films, there will also be a
panel discussion. Among the guests who will take part is Barbara Kay, columnist
for the National Post.The Free Thinking Film Society was established in 2007 in
Ottawa to provide an alternative to the dominant narrative provided by regular
art-house fare. To that end, The Free Thinking Film Society is dedicated to
showing challenging conservative/libertarian films - films that would otherwise
NEVER play in Ottawa. The Free Thinking Film Society is now on Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?ref=sb#/group.php?gid=5497857286

Rick Warren was told to build people and God would build the church

This is really cool. As I said earlier, I can't help but like Rick Warren. May God bless him and keep him. (My bolds below)

God said to me, you build people, and I’ll build the church. And I said
well you know what the problem is, they didn’t teach me how to do that in
seminary. How do you build people? And I went back, and I began to study how
Jesus actually trained leaders. And I noticed that He took them through a
systematic, sequential, constantly turning up the heat, the side of discipleship that brought them from total immaturity to high maturity. And so we began a system. And for instance, the very first words that Jesus said to his disciples, the very first recorded words are, they ask him a question. Peter and John are there fishing, and they turned around and they go, where are you going, Lord?

And He says, come and see. It’s the first recorded words of Jesus – come and
see. That’s about as low of a commitment as you can say to people.

HH: Yeah.
RW: But that’s where you start. And so for thirty years, we’ve said to
Southern California and around, come and see. Come check out Saddleback. Just
check us out, no commitment required, you don’t have to get dressed up and all
these kind of things. And a lot of churches do what they would call a come and
see approach, a seeker-sensitive approach. That’s the front door, but that is
only 1/10th of what the church is all about. And if your whole church is built
on simply attracting a crowd, a crowd is not a church. You have to have a
strategy by which you turn a crowd into a church. And over Jesus’ ministry, over
the next three years, Jesus started turning up the heat, and He would define
what the relationship was all about. My daughter calls them DTR’s, defining the
relationship moments, okay. When you’ve got a boyfriend, we need a DTR. And so
Jesus would say you’re My disciple if, and then He’d add a qualifier, if you love Me, you’re my disciple if you stay in My word. You’re My disciple if you take up your cross, deny yourself, and follow Me. At one point, Jesus says, turns around, now this is three years into his ministry, He’s built a
relationship of trust and love, and He says you’re My disciples if you eat My flesh and drink My blood. And people are going ugh, what is He talking about? I mean, that was so yucky, so unbelievable. It says many people couldn’t handle it. It was too hard. And it said many people turned away and followed Him no
more, because it just seemed so repulsive. And Jesus looks at the twelve
disciples, and He goes, are you guys leaving, too? And they said well, where
would we go, Lord? You’ve got the words of life. We’ve got no other place to go.
Now here’s the point. There’s a big difference between come and see and come take up your cross and follow Me, because in those days, take up your cross meant you’re going to die. So there’s a big difference between come and see and come and die. And what we have today, Hugh, is we’ve got churches that are only single message churches. They’ve got half the message. We’ve got the come and see churches that come in and they do felt need evangelism, and they do genuinely good work in encouraging people, in taking people at 001 level, and bringing people in the front door who had no religious background at all. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that’s not all there is to church.

Then we’ve got other people at the other end who tend to be more doctrinally smart people, and they tend to be the come and die church. And they tend to be real heavy on come and die, come and die, and they don’t do anything about meeting needs of…you know, I’ve got a mixed family of children, of
step-children, and all of the different felt needs, of financial, sexual,
social, relational, mental needs. And then we have these guys on one side
criticizing those on the other. And what has made Saddleback grow consistently,
30 years of consistent growth, is we built a holistic thing based on the steps
of Jesus. We start with come and see, and we move them to come and believe, come
and love, come and take up your cross, come and die. And so we lead in both
areas. In the last ten years, I have baptized over 20,000 new adult
converts.

I can't help but like Rick Warren

Even though I thought his book "The Purpose Driven Life" was rather a dog's breakfast theologically, I love it's opening line:

"It's not about you."

And for those just getting their feet wet when it comes to learning about God, the book does just fine. I just hope readers will then move on to Benedict XVI as a much better, more consistent evangelist and apologist and theologian for this age.

I also thought Warren's interviews of Barack Obama and John McCain during the presidential campaign were the most revealing and intelligent of the whole race. They were a return to a civil discourse that I yearn for in politics.

So I enjoyed reading this paragraph from his interviews with Hugh Hewitt (my bolds):

Christianity is growing. There are two religions that are growing. Islam is
growing, and Christianity is growing. Christianity is growing at a much more
rapid rate than Islam. Islam is growing primarily through birthrate, okay?
Christianity is growing through conversion rate. And so there are…and the
greatest rates of growth are in China, in Southeast Asia, in Africa, and in
Latin America. I take usually an around the world tour each year where we go
visit our network. I, Hugh, over the last 30 years, I’ve trained over half a
million pastors in 162 countries, so we have these networks pretty well
connected, and I go back to regularly check on, kind of like Paul’s missionary
journeys, go back and see how they’re doing, and encourage, and see what they
need, and we learn a lot from them. And it’s the best of times, and the worst of
times. Right now, we are in a stage here in America where we’re going to decide a number of major factors. One of them is will America return to the historic roots, Christian roots, that are foundational for every one of our institutions. Or will we go the way of Europe, and go secular. The bottom line is that secularism doesn’t last, because no faith will always be filled by something
else, and so that’s why Islam is making strong inroads into Europe, because
faith of any kind will always beat no faith.

He's right on this front. It's cool as well that the numbers of people coming to church have grown exponentially since the financial doom and gloom began. Come Holy Spirit! Come! Let there be a revival, a new Great Awakening in North America, a return to our Christian roots.

This is kinda sweet, spoken off the cuff on the radio:

And both Passover and Easter are about redemption. They’re about freedom from
your past, they’re about how God turns bad into good, they’re about the fact
that you need a savior. People say well, I don’t need a savior. Believe me, if
you didn’t need one, God wouldn’t have wasted the time sending it. Now you may
not understand why you need a savior, but if God says I’m sending you a Savior,
he’s not going to waste the effort if you don’t need one. And so what is He
saving me from? Well, He saves me from my past guilt, He saves me from my
present stress, He saves me from my future fears, He saves me from the
expectations of others, the Truth will set you free. And in a nutshell, the
Bible says this. Heaven is a perfect place and I’m not. I stopped batting a
thousand about day three, you know, as a baby, and I don’t even measure up to my
own standards, much less God’s. So…and Heaven’s a perfect place, and if God let
imperfect people get into Heaven, it wouldn’t be perfect anymore, and everybody
there would be bragging on how they got there. Well, I gave to the United Way
and I did this, and it would be just another Earth. So God had to come up with a
Plan B, and He said here’s what I’ll do. I will go myself, and I will sacrifice
myself. I will come to Earth in the form of a man, I will be Jesus Christ, and I
will grow up and I will not only teach people how to love, and teach people how
to live, I’m going to model it, and then I am going to sacrifice myself to pay
for all of the bad things that have been done in the world. And if you accept
that, of course, that is the turning point, and that’s what this whole weekend’s
all about. It’s about changed lives. The most amazing thing is this, Hugh. God
created the entire universe because he wanted a family. The Bible tells us that
God wanted a family. God is love. It says…it doesn’t say He has love, it says He
is love. It is the essence of His character, it is His nature. God is love. Now
that means God, everything you see in creation, and what you can’t see, exists
because God created it to love it. He loves the stars, He loves the Beatles,
John, Paul, George and Ringo, He loves grass, He loves the beauty, all of these
different things. And the Bible says that you were created as an object of God’s
love. And what I’m going to be talking about this weekend is that you were made
by God, but you were also made for God, not just by Him. Everybody know well, I
was made by God. You were made for God, and until you understand that, life
isn’t going to make sense.

Trying the pirate in the USA?

The decision to create Gitmo is going to look brilliant after the Somali pirate gets tried on American soil.

American Thinker is absolutely right:

I remain concerned that the captured terrorist will be treated as a criminal defendant, with all the rights of discovery and other secret-busting apparatus that make criminal action inappropriate for terror groups. We know that he will not be subjected to any interrogation techniques that make him seriously uncomfortable.

I also suppose he will be provided a Koran, halaal meals, and (naturally) access to both left wing lawyers and Islamic clergy, whose conversations with him will be held beyond the reach of the good guys.

Phil Aver in an email raises the question of whether or not the captured Somali had his Miranda Rights read to him in a language he understands. If not, he probably walks.

Some of these transnationalists want to jump the gun and treat every person in the world as if they are citizens of the United States or Canada (where I live) with all the attendant rights and privileges. The insanity of this pirate having the reincarnation of Johnnie Cochrane's dream team representing him, all at taxpayers' expense, covered on Court TV, CNN and Fox like the OJ trial is going to make us yearn for the days of Gitmo.

The problem is, terrorism, Islamic Jihad, whatever is not simply a criminal matter that requires a law enforcement approach. And it seems like international law on the high seas is hamstringing merchant vessels from being able to defend themselves. No wonder piracy is growing around the world.

I dunno, but it seems to me that international law lacks a crucial Second Amendment.

Binks is absolutely right

Binks, I wish you could come worship with us at the Cathedral of the Annunciation. Nothing happy clappy.

He writes:

The modern alternative to the new life and transformation bursting from the broken tomb and shining from the risen Jesus Christ is not another religion, but the unfaith of a utopia, with Glorious Leader, the holy message, and the war on the infidels– or a watered-down version of the same, built of fragments of what went before. Barbara Hall and Nancy Pelosi and Tony Blair and Al Qaeda leaders all dream of a better world, just within reach if only their agenda can go uber alles enough.

The choice has been pretty clear for the last 100 years in particular, if anyone was still enamoured of revolution and heaven on earth. History keeps repeating itself because we have to put to death our hope for a heaven without God, and a salvation without death and rising to a new way. The Communists and Nazis at least were clear on the matter: after capturing schools, youth, the military & police, they knew the only serious remaining competition to their regimes and claims were serious Christians: witness the clergy and believers in prison in North Korea, and China; the 100 000 slain clergy of the Soviet Era; the special clergy-concentration camp; and don’t forget the carefully planned Second Hitlerite ‘Final Solution’, for the churches, clergy, and uppity parishioners in the new German Empire.

The history of the modern world– even the HRC wars– are all about the longing for utopia versus the true, higher, and abiding kingdom that transforms the earth. In that choice hands our civilizational and individual future.

Freethinking Film Society offers two must-see films

But Gay and Right reports the local left-wing rags don't like the films:

I gave copies of the two films to Express in Ottawa, and of course, they have trashed both films.

Now, rest assured that the last thing Free Thinking is offering (as per usual) is a well-rounded set of films. Free Thinking is actually dedicated only to one strain of thought and that is the predictable agenda of the middle right, speckled, as is any mediocre political love-in worth its salt, with kernels of a more hard-line philosophy.

Gee, what hard-line philosophy???

Actually, the Free Thinking Film Society is dedicated to a conservative/libertarian agenda. We have shown films on left-wing indoctrination at Universities, the problems of environmentalism, radical Islam, the real Che Guevara, the power of the unions in Quebec, and a look at myths within the black community in the US.

Is that hard-line? Obviously, it must be to the left-wingers at Express. Please read the reviews...and then come to our movies next Monday:

April 13, 2009
6:30 PM
The Monster Among Us
The Case for Israel
$10.00
National Archives/Library of Canada
395 Wellington, Ottawa

I plan to be there.

Mark Steyn on the Somali pirates

Think about it. Gitmo is a humane alternative to forcing pirates, terrorists, unlawful combatants or whatever to walk the plank or face summary execution or else gain all the benefits of taxpayer funded dream teams within the American justice system. Mark Steyn lays out the ludicrous alternative to how civilized nations used to deal with piracy:

Obviously, if the United States Navy hanged some eye-patched, peg-legged blackguard from the yardarm or made him walk the plank, pious senators would rise to denounce an America that no longer lived up to its highest ideals, and the network talking-heads would argue that Plankgate was recruiting more and more young men to the pirates' cause, and judges would rule that pirates were entitled to the protections of the U.S. Constitution and that their peg legs had to be replaced by high-tech prosthetic limbs at taxpayer expense.

Meanwhile, the Royal Navy, which over the centuries did more than anyone to rid the civilized world of the menace of piracy, now declines even to risk capturing their Somali successors, having been advised by Her Majesty's Government that, under the European Human Rights Act, any pirate taken into custody would be entitled to claim refugee status in the United Kingdom and live on welfare for the rest of his life. I doubt "Pirates of the Caribbean" would have cleaned up at the box office if the big finale had shown Geoffrey Rush and his crew of scurvy sea dogs settling down in council flats in Manchester and going down to the pub for a couple of jiggers of rum washed down to cries of "Aaaaargh, shiver me benefits check, lad." From "Avast, me hearties!" to a vast welfare scam is not progress.

Meanwhile, I wonder what the folks in the Obama administration are smoking? First President Obama himself laughs giddily on 60 Minutes about the financial crisis that has become much worse under his watch.

And now Hillary Clinton is laughing about piracy. Must be some good Cuban weed. Here's what Gateway Pundit has to say:

This must be more of that smart foreign policy.
Hillary Clinton gets a good belly laugh over the Somali pirate standoff:


The four Somali pirates, who are demanding a ransom, threatened to kill Capt. Richard Phillips today if they are attacked. Phillips jumped into the water during the night and tried to swim towards the USS Bainbridge, but pirates jumped in and recaptured him.
So what makes this so funny, Hillary?

Sometimes Leonard Stern writes revoltingly stupid columns

Leonard Stern is the editorial page editor of the Ottawa Citizen, which from time to time is a great paper, in spite of him.

I have never met the man, but from his columns, he strikes me as a moral relativist in that way that thoughtless, ill-educated libertarians of a certain young age can be when they confuse license with freedom.

In today's column he uses his stupid ideology to argue himself out of innate moral instincts that are proof that the natural law, a transcendent moral law, is written on the heart. But Stern argues against his heart for . . . the legalization incest. Not that he really wants to legalize it, mind you, but he just can't think of any good arguments against it, so thus a free society is helpless against it.

And furthermore, he argues that a free society is helpless against polygamy or whatever consenting adults want to get up to in the privacy of their own homes.

In sum: the state has no business pronouncing on what consenting adults do in their bedrooms. The key concepts were always “consenting” and “adult.”

And that brings us back to incest.

The gay rights movement, during the fight for same-sex marriage, shut down talk about slippery slopes.

As Mark Steyn observed back in 2004, “Gay marriage, they assure us, is the merest amendment to traditional marriage, and once we’ve done that we’ll pull up the drawbridge.”

Steyn and other skeptics were on to something. That doesn’t mean same-sex marriage was a mistake, any more than decriminalizing sodomy 40 years ago was a mistake. If in a free society the private behaviour of adults is no business of the state, then laws discriminating against gays are untenable.

But we need to be honest about the implications of living in a free society, in which we choose not to regulate sexual behaviour.

Polygamous relationships, even marriages, seem all but inevitable. If two women and one man want to unite in a sexual arrangement, can the state say no on the grounds that, to some of us, the relationship is bizarre or immoral?

It's interesting that Stern does explore the potential harm to children born to incestuous relationships, but he only talks about genetic abnormalities and muses that if that is the reason for stopping incestuous relationships than all relationships that might bring a disabled child into the world need the same regulation.

Only problem is: does this mean we have to criminalize all sexual relationships — incestuous or not — in which there’s a known risk of passing on disabilities?

Tough questions, and I don’t have answers. It’s not easy living in a free society.

Yeah, Leonard, especially when you try to reason without any reference to natural law or a transcendent moral order, but take some Enlightenment concept such as equality and reason from it until you have crippled yourself from taking a moral stance against anything, no matter how much your conscience revolts against where you're detached intellect is taking you.

I can see Leonard's train of thought taking us to forced amniocentesis and forced abortions to prevent harm to children with potential disabilities to level the playing field so incestuous couples won't have the state placing a moral judgment on them.

Duh, Leonard, the state makes moral judgments all the time. The fact that we have a Criminal Code is a moral judment on such things as theft, fraud, murder, assault, rape and the like.

And harm to children is not only that they might be physically harmed by the options of their legal guardians or their incestuous parents. Study after study shows that children do best when they are brought up by their biological parents who are married to each other (and parents who are not biologically related to each other.) But thinking like Leonard's has robbed the state of discriminating in favor of the best institution for raising children; it has "divorced" procreation from marriage (see Divorcing Marriage: Unveiling the Dangers in Canada's New Social Experiment ) and made the key building block of a stable society into a matter of adult preferences.

When freedom is looked upon as merely individual choices to pursue the animal appetite of the moment, it ignores the higher freedoms and levels of happiness that come from being a virtuous man or woman. It is a higher freedom to be able to abstain from rutting like an animal so as to be able to be a committed husband and father who has the fortitude to stay for the long haul in loving and providing for his wife and children.

But people like Stern want to rob society (and governments) of the ability to favor one institution over another, i.e. to favor heterosexual, biologically-based marriage that is procreative.

Another thing Stern is stupid about is the fact that a free society is not just a bunch of atomized individuals doing as they please. Individuals need intervening institutions like the biological family and churches and other groups to protect them from the overweening state.

Many of us who warned against same-sex marriage were more worried about the dangers to religious freedom and freedom of speech represented by the government's redefinition of marriage than we were about same-sex relationships per se. And what we feared is coming to pass.

Stupid thought like Stern's is undercutting the ability of society at large to promote heterosexual marriage. With human rights commissions its dangerous to advocate for it in the public square.
Homosexual marriage sends the message that fathers are not necessary to the raising of children. Nor mothers for that matter. Anyone will do.

Why should men stick around if that's the case? Why should they be socialized into anything but following their sexual appetities du jour?

Stern ought to read G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy and see whether he has Hanwell stamped on his forehead.

He would be much better off if he followed his heart like a poet than betrayed his conscience with his stupid ideology and its ridiculous rationalism.

Yes, we need reason. But it needs to be moored in transcendent notions of justice and truth.

Good Friday Way of the Cross

Here are some pictures of the Way of the Cross walked by about a thousand people in Ottawa to mark Jesus' journey through Jerusalem to the Cross.

The walk, sponsored by Communion and Liberation, began at St. Patrick's Basilica and ended at Notre Dame Cathedral Basilica.

I can identify with this story

I wonder how many of us who are now conservatives will be able to identify with this story of Bill Whittle's.

There was a time, in my twenties, when I was very poor. I have sat silent in an apartment, shades drawn, silently waiting for the loud knocking of the landlord to go away. I have borrowed enough money to have to decide whether or not to restore the electricity, or the telephone. (And by the way, that decision is a no-brainer.) I have been that broke long enough to realize something about myself.

I was living off of the charity of friends. The charity of friends – do I make myself clear? I never applied for welfare or food stamps because – silly me – I thought that was for people who really needed it.

After a year or two being constantly bailed out by my friends – “Wheel-less Whittle” they called me, far more kindly than I deserved – after several years of their largesse, and because my delicate artistic nature prevented me from getting any number of the actual paying jobs I could have landed in a half-hour – I began to get angry with them, especially my best friend, Fritz. Yes, he bought me lunch and dinner and drove me everywhere. Yes, he helped cover my electric bills and rent. But he was making out like a bandit: he was a successful commercial actor in Miami, making over a hundred grand a year.

And so I stopped looking at what he did for me, and started looking at what he could do, but didn’t. I went to him with a plan for him to pay my entire rent and expenses. He refused, the miserable selfish bastard. Not because he couldn’t afford it, mind you, but because he was getting really worried about me and thought it would – get this, Mr. Berg! – do me harm.

And I was furious. Furious. For two weeks I hated him with a white-hot rage.

Read the whole thing . . .and find out whether he went after his friend with a pitchfork or whether he got the message.

I had a rude awakening from my radical leftist politics. That's when I had a profound realization that resentment is a sin and that no matter how justified I thought I was in resenting someone or something, it was a destructive emotion that included judging and a sense of moral superiority over whatever I resented.

Yeah, and blame is its cousin.

So, when I started nipping resentment in the bud, I discovered I was sitting on a mother lode of resentment, like some kind of sulpherous fire from hell. I had to start forgiving the people I resented instead of resenting them. And interestingly, as I gave up my resentment towards individuals and family members who had hurt me or angered me, my politics started changing. I discovered my feminism was totally based on resentment and so were my ideas about foreign policy, the whole shebang.

Alas, the politics of resentment has triumphed in Washington after a Trudeaupian trial run in Canada. Resentment and blame are such easy emotions to manipulate and they enslave anyone who nurses those corrosive emotions.

They trap people into thinking that something or someone has got to change before their lives will improve for the better.

We can look around and see whole sectors of society who are wallowing in blame and resentment. And sometimes they have every reason to feel that way. But it's their response to the evils done to them that ruins them more than the evil deeds themselves. Sad but true. But this is a message that most people find almost impossible to hear.

Try it. Try telling someone who is nursing resentment and playing the blame game that they are hurting themselves by feeling that way. They will launch into a litany of why they have a right to feel that way. I dunno. I guess you have to hit bottom or something.

Kalb: "Man becomes the artifact of whoever is in power"

Rod Dreher has made me a James Kalb fan. He reviews Kalb's latest book here (my bolds).

Conservatives find it hard to articulate a case for traditional marriage in
terms acceptable in liberal rights discourse, as well as in the shallow rhetoric
of contemporary debate. Defending traditional marriage requires burrowing deep
into the meaning of the human person, sex, gender, society and law - and that's
just for starters. Life in community is a mysterious and complex thing that
cannot be radically remade to suit a preferred outcome.
"If you can redefine [marriage] so that the sex of the parties has nothing to do with it, then you can redefine anything in human life any way you want," Kalb told me in an interview. "Man becomes the artifact of whoever is in power."

Dr. Sanity echoes the pope

Dr. Sanity, my favorite blogging psychiatrist, echoes Pope Benedict XVI today when she writes:

The moral case for capitalism is not taught at our universities; nor is it argued much in our culture; and certainly not in our churches. In fact it has been more or less universally accepted that systems such as communism and socialism are morally superior to capitalism--even though in practice such systems have led to the death and enslavement of millions; and to those unlucky enough not to die from them, those systems have led to the most horrible shrinking and wasting of the human soul. Not to mention the shrinking of opportunity and wealth and the pathetic economic conditions of the people unfortunate enought to live in those countries have to deal with.

The truth is that socialism, communism, or any kind of religious fundamentalism--any kind of totalitarian system, in fact-- are not compatible with moral behavior.

If one's actions are coerced by the state or by religion (on pain of death) or both; if human activity and behavior is legislated and regulated or ordained down to the last minute detail--particularly to the degree we see in other countries of the world (e.g., Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia, etc.),then how can it be argued that one's actions are moral? They are not voluntary, but coerced.

Morality, however, is a matter of choice, not mandate. One cannot hold a person responsible for actions that are coerced or forced from him. Morality can only exist when freedom of action exists. Moral actions in any field of human endeavor require freedom. [That's why our postmodern President, for whom uttering contradictions are similar to breathing, can propose a "mandatory volunteer corps"].

Conduct or behavior may only be thought of as moral or immoral when it is freely chosen by the individual. It is only then that the moral significance of the action can be assessed. It is only when we are free to act that we can exercise moral judgement.

Which brings us to a capitalist system. Only in a free economic system within a free political system is it possible to be moral, since true benevolence toward others, compassion, charity, and generosity cannot exist without freedom. Benevolence, generosity, charity, and compassion that are mandated by the state; or by a religion--on pain of death or other consequence; or by any regulations on behavior; or by force--are meaningless insofar as individual morality is concerned.

She is echoing the Pope who said in his encyclical Saving Hope (Spe Salvi):

Free assent to the good never exists simply by itself. If there were structures which could irrevocably guarantee a determined—good—state of the world, man's freedom would be denied, and hence they would not be good structures at all.

Of course, the pope has also argued for virtue and a moral order to guide economic behavior. Capitalism or any other "ism" or system is horrible when its run by a cast of characters who are immoral and rapacious.

We are not to blame--Scruton

I don't agree with everything Roger Scruton says in this essay, but it is certainly worth reading and pondering:

The illusion that we are to blame, that we must confess our faults and join our cause to that of our enemies, only exposes us to a more determined hatred. The truth is that we are not to blame; that our enemies’ hatred of us is entirely unjustified; and that their implacable enmity cannot be defused by our breast-beating.

I wish he'd send a memo to President Obama.

Acting out on the world stage---and the bow

Dr. Sanity sums up Obama's dissing of America in Europe, and quotes Jeff. G. who can't get over his bow to the Saudi King.

He bowed to religious intolerance.

He bowed to misogyny.

He bowed to anti-semitism.

He bowed to homophobia.

Yup, that's pretty disturbing.


She says he's "acting out" on the world stage. She's a psychiatrist. What do you think?

Bill O'Reilly on Letterman

This is great. Enjoy!

Obama's popularity is not gaining results

It seems the "unilateral" George W. Bush had more success in getting Europeans to ante up on Afghanistan than Barack H. Obama has. Via the Huffington Post:

"We'll need more resources and a sustained effort to achieve our ultimate goals," he said.

But the allies rebuked Obama's push for Europe to share the burden of the anti-terror fight in Afghanistan with more combat troops. That leaves the heavy lifting in U.S. hands. As he escalates U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama also is seeking to broaden the multinational commitment to preventing new terrorist attacks that he has repeatedly told Europeans are just as likely on their continent as in America.

Time to step up prayers for Obama

I noticed while President Obama was talking endlessly on the TV screens in the National Press Gallery Hot Room yesterday that his hair is turning gray, literally overnight.


The charitable part of me wants to overlook the hug and the bow as rookie mistakes, as evidence the Obamas have not yet hired a protocol officer, that basically the Obamas are winging it and revealing their basic ignorance--which is bad enough.

As Mark Steyn describes it:

So let me see if I understand American protocol in the age of Obama: The First Lady hugs Queen Elizabeth as if she's some granny at a seniors' center photo-op, but the President of this republic prostrates himself before King Abdullah as if he's a subject of the Saudi pseudo-Crown.

This is a very weird presidency

I am also taking to heart David Horowitz' warning to avoid the trap of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

It is true that Obama has shown surprising ineptitude in his first months in office, but he's not a zero with no accomplishments as many conservatives seem to think – unless you regard beating the Clinton machine and winning the presidency as nothing. But in doing this you fall into the “Bush-is-an-idiot” bag of liberal miasmas.

It is also true Obama has ceded his domestic economic agenda to the House Democrats and spent a lot of money in the process. But what’s the surprise in this? After all, Bush and McCain both proposed (and in Bush's case pushed through) massive government giveaways (which amount to government takeovers as well). This is bad, but it doesn't make Obama a closet Mussolini, however deplorable the conservatives among us may regard it.

But American Thinker has some sobering thoughts about the bow's symbolism.

There is no question that an unreciprocated bow is a gesture of subservience. Bowing is a very serious matter in many cultures. I have counseled hundreds of Western executives on the intricacies of bowing when dealing with Japanese business executives, stressing that an unreciprocated bow is a rude gesture of dominance. The body language is clear and unmistakable in all cultures.

Abe Greenwald of Commentary understands the symbolism:

Among Muslim democrats and human rights advocates, utter dejection that the "leader of the Free World" has offered himself as a "subject" of the Saudi monarch; among Islamists, bliss over America's seeming prostration before Salafist Islam; among international bad actors, assurance that America poses no threat; and among our allies, depression about the new systemic instability of the most dependable superpower in history.

The old saying that one picture is worth a thousand words is actually amplified when it comes to cross-cultural communication. I have little doubt that the Muslim world's media will not be as circumspect as their American mainstream colleagues in displaying demi-prostration of the American leader carrying the name Hussein.

Until evidence is produced that Barack Obama habitually bows and bends his knew before others, I will have to assume that he meant this gesture to carry meaning. It is simply amazing to me that our media will not even present this image to the American public.

I'm still not sure what to make of the bow. Maybe all of a sudden Obama was just being a big, goofy kid and forgot himself when he bowed to the Saudi King. But the contrast between his treatment of the British Royals is so strikingly different. Is it that 20 years in Jeremiah Wright's church and the hatred towards whites, towards colonization etc. etc. kicked in? And what about his remarks to the Brazilian president who blamed the economic crisis on blue-eyed white people and their greed?

I dunno....it's Passiontide, and Holy Week is coming up. Time for sackcloth and ashes. Repentance. Prayer for our leaders, prayer for the United States of America. Prayer for the Obamas, because God knows they need it.

One thing I think is clear: Americans will slowly begin to realize the man they elected in hopes of having a president who would transcend the bitter partisan divisions of left and right and heal the racial wounds of America is not Barack Obama.

Gee, this guy James Kalb is really good

In this essay, he explains the dangers of liberalism to Christians. My bolds.

In fact, advanced liberalism stands for a system of comprehensive social administration, and favors irresponsible central power as long as that power is its own. The system rules by pretending not to command, but only to protect principles like equality and tolerance that are accepted by all and precede all legitimate public discussion. The need to keep up the pretence gives liberal rule its specific quality–its tendency, for example, to rely on judges and functionaries who wrap their decisions in claims of legal principle and expert knowledge that no one understands but everyone must give in to.

It also means that opposing views, which would radically undermine the legitimacy of liberal rule by forcing it to exert power in visible and controversial ways, must somehow be kept out of public sight. Comprehensive indoctrination, “Political Correctness” and “hate speech” rules, which set strict limits on what can legitimately be said in public, are thus essential parts of advanced liberalism. To bring the matter home for Christians, liberalism must try to eliminate the social relevance of all religion that is understood as more than a poetic representation of purely human aspirations.

The point is unavoidable. A liberal government recognizes no ultimate principle of authority higher than what people want. Its principles thus require it to base its legitimacy on the consent of those recognized as legitimate members of society, and in the end – since liberalism is inclusive and believes in equality and individual rights – on the consent of all human beings. It can’t be satisfied if even in the minds of a minority there exists a principle of authority independent of its own and potentially at odds with it. The mere existence of such a thing strikes at the root of the claim that liberalism uniquely reconciles government and the individual autonomy that it recognizes as ultimately authoritative.

In other words, if you are a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, or a person with common sense of no particular religion but have a sense there is an objective natural law and a transcendent reality beyond the here and now, i.e. a God who might demand allegiance, then liberalism is at odds with you. But it comes to a "does not compute, does not compute" system crash when liberalism comes up against conscience rights and an autonomous individual who disagrees with the liberal program. The Ontario Human Rights Commission wants to strip doctors of this right when it comes to abortion. If individual autonomy is respected, why should the woman's "right" to an abortion trump the doctor's right to refuse to do one? Should a meat-eater force a vegetarian to eat meat?

Funny how the conscience rights of abortionist Henry Morgentaler, who got an Order of Canada for paving the way to abortion on demand by breaking Canada's laws against abortion gets applauded. But the conscience rights of those doctors who refuse to kill an unborn child or refer someone to a doctor who will kill that child are likely to be prosecuted by some friendly human rights commissar.

Very interesting essay by James Kalb on liberalism

I used to think liberalism was a good thing. And I still think classical liberalism is a good thing. But liberalism has morphed into illiberalism and only a few people seem to get it. James Kalb is one of them. (h/t Crunchy Con)

Since modern governments claim to base themselves on consent, the public must be brought to accept it. Managing opinion and keeping perspectives that oppose fundamental public policies out of mainstream discussion have therefore become basic to statecraft.

Genuine opposition comes not from the left but from reactionary and restorationist groups that exclude themselves from respectable politics by rejecting liberalism and the left. Today's dissidents are particularist -- traditionalist, fundamentalist, populist, or nationalist. Beyond that, they are antisecularist and antihedonist. They reject a system of politics that bases social order on human desire, because they reject the view that lies behind it, that men make morality for their own purposes.

Today all things are justified on the grounds that they help men get what they want. Those who recognize an authority superior to human purposes are seen as dangerous bigots who want to oppress others in the name of some sect or arbitrary principle. As a consequence, fundamental political discussion no longer exists. Politics today is divided between an outlook that presents itself as rational and this-worldly, and absolutely dominates public discussion, and a variety of dissident views that speak for goods higher than human desire but are unable to make effective their substantial underlying support. The conflict is never discussed seriously since it is considered resolved; the ruling liberal view is accepted as indisputable, while dissent is considered confused or worse.

The dominant outlook believes itself peculiarly tolerant and all-inclusive. It is not.

Interestingly, the fact that I think there are good higher than human desire, and that there is an authority higher than the state or anything in this temporal realm, means I have a lot more in common with religious believers of other faiths. And it is also interesting that while theological beliefs differ greatly, most religions share similar moral codes, though different ideas of how the law is worked out on the temporal realm, i.e. not everything that is immoral needs to be illegal.

What we have in the new illiberal mindset masquerading as liberalism is a new religion where there is no separation between church and state and thus no appeal against its inquistitional powers.

Terry Glavin on the real meaning of the Galloway story

Read, mark and digest this one. Most interesting. And true. It's interesting that the same group that Christopher Hitchens blames for beating him up in Lebanon, the SSNP appears in Glavin's article, too. What a coincidence.

The bigger story in which l'affaire Galloway is a kind of defining moment involves a phenomenon that is playing out on the same tectonic scale as the emergence of a distinctly Canadian democratic socialism in the 1930s, the Quiet Revolution in Quebec in the 1960s, and the rise of libertarian prairie populism in the 1990s. As is often the case in such upheavals, journalists are the last to notice.

Something wholly new is emerging in Canada, in all the spaces where the Left used to be, in its activist constituencies, its traditional institutions, and its lexicon. Whatever name you want to give the thing, its noticeable features include a betrayal of progressive internationalism, a pathetic weakness for conspiracy theories, and a routine apologetics for antisemitism and terror. Its outlook is generally parochial, but its global engagements tend to align with fascism’s contemporary Islamist variants, even to the point of objective support for the Taliban.

To read most Canadian newspapers, you probably wouldn't have a clue that any of this was going on.

When Galloway visited Ottawa two years ago, he was every bit as famous as he is now. He was the guest of honour at a publicly-advertised 74th birthday party for the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. The SSNP is an unambiguously fascist movement with shiny boots and uniforms, its own distinctive swastika, and an anthem sung to the tune of Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles.

The Hitchen's account we've been waiting for

As Arab thoroughfares go, Hamra Street in the center of Beirut is probably the most chic of them all. International in flavor, cosmopolitan in character, it boasts the sort of smart little café where a Lebanese sophisticate can pause between water-skiing in the Mediterranean in the morning and snow-skiing in the mountains just above the city in the afternoon. “The Paris of the Middle East” used to be the cliché about Beirut: by that exacting standard, I suppose, Hamra Street would be the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

Not at all the sort of place you would expect to find a spinning red swastika on prominent display. Yet, as I strolled in company along Hamra on a sunny Valentine’s Day last February, in search of a trinket for the beloved and perhaps some stout shoes for myself, a swastika was just what I ran into. I recognized it as the logo of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, a Fascist organization (it would be more honest if it called itself “National Socialist”) that yells for a “Greater Syria” comprising all of Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Cyprus, Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq, and swaths of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt. It’s one of the suicide-bomber front organizations—the other one being Hezbollah, or “the party of god”—through which Syria’s Ba’thist dictatorship exerts overt and covert influence on Lebanese affairs.

Well, call me old-fashioned if you will, but I have always taken the view that swastika symbols exist for one purpose only—to be defaced. Telling my two companions to hold on for a second, I flourish my trusty felt-tip and begin to write some offensive words on the offending poster. I say “begin” because I have barely gotten to the letter k in a well-known transitive verb when I am grabbed by my shirt collar by a venomous little thug, his face glittering with hysterical malice.