What a devastating portrait

But it seems to be an accurate description of President Obama.  

This latest volte-face by the president is evidence of a man who is completely overmatched by events, weak and confused, and deeply ambivalent about using force. Yet he’s also desperate to get out of the corner he painted himself into by declaring that the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime would constitute a “red line.” As a result he’s gone all Hamlet on us. Not surprisingly, Obama’s actions are being mocked by America’s enemies and sowing doubt among our allies. 

And here's Victor Davis Hanson on Obama indicts Obama:

Dr. Barack and Mr. Hyde

So why is there such a disconnect between what Obama once declared and what he subsequently professed? There are four explanations, none of them mutually exclusive:

A. Candidate Obama had no experience in foreign policy and has always winged it, now and then recklessly sounding off when he thought he could score cheap points against George Bush. As president, he still has no idea of how foreign policy is conducted, and thus continues to make things up as he goes along, often boxing himself into a corner with serial contradictions. Trying to discern any consistency or pattern in such an undisciplined mind is a futile exercise: what Obama says or does at any given moment usually is antithetical to what he said or did on a prior occasion. He is simply lost and out of his league.B. Candidate Obama has always been an adroit demagogue. He knew how to score political points against George Bush, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain, without any intention of abiding by his own sweeping declarations. The consistency in Obama’s foreign policy is his own carefully calibrated self-interest. Bombing or not bombing, shutting down or keeping open Guantanamo Bay, going or not going to the UN or the U.S. Congress — these choices are all predicated not on principle, but only on what a canny and unprincipled Obama feels best suits his own political interests and self-image at any given moment. In a self-created jam, he flipped and now goes to Congress in hopes of pinning responsibility on them, whether we go or not, whether successful or unsuccessful if we do.  He is a quite clever demagogue.C. Obama is a well-meaning and sincere naïf, but a naïf nonetheless. He really believed the world prior to 2009 worked on the premises of the Harvard Law School lounge, Chicago organizing, and Rev. Wright’s Church — or least should have worked on such assumptions. Then when Obama took office, saw intelligence reports, and assumed the responsibilities of our highest office, he was shocked at the dangerous nature of the world! There was no more opportunity for demagoguery or buck-passing, and he had to become serious. In short, it is easy to criticize without power, hard with it to make tough decisions and bad/worse choices.  He is slowly learning.D. Obama is the first president who genuinely feels U.S. exceptionalism and power were not ethically earned and should be in an ethical sense ended. As a candidate, he consistently undermined current U.S. foreign policy at a time of two critical wars; as president, he has systematically forfeited U.S. authority and prestige. There is no inconsistency: whatever makes the traditional idea of the U.S as a superpower weaker, Obama promotes; whatever enhances our profile, he opposes. He is often quite angry at what could be called traditional America — seen often as a downright mean country here and abroad.

I would say A,B, and D.   I do not think he is slowly learning.  

Victor Davis Hanson on Miley Cyrus

VDH is one of my favorite columnists.

In the first part of the 20th century modernist contrarians  established a counter-music, an antithesis to classical genres. Populist dancers announced, “Who needs ballroom formality?” But again, how do you oppose that opposition, without a reactionary, full-circle return to formalism?

The advisers of Miley Cyrus should have a problem in that the 20-year-old ignoramus is not a Paris showgirl in the Folies Trévise of the 1870s, not an Impressionist artist in 1890, not a Ziegfeld Girl circa 1910, not a poet of the Great War, not a Depression-era novelist, and most surely not a blues singer in 1940 — all defiant in arguing that in turbulent times genres, rules, protocols in the arts, literature, and popular expression were confining, hypocritical, and fossilized (as if it is more difficult and challenging to write a poem without iambic pentameter, rhyme, or poetic diction).

Miley Cyrus, to the extent she was intent on anything other than making more money and headlines, seemed to be trying to rebel against the rebellion, most likely Madonna and her own knockoff insurgent, Lady Gaga. But given that both of them have appeared on stage nine-tenths nude, routinely simulated sex in front of millions, and adopted symbols and sets designed to gross out Middle America, how do you go beyond their uncouthness? Higher platform shoes? More videos of public nudity? Two foam fingers?

For going “beyond” — not singing more mellifluously, dancing more adroitly, or energizing the crowd more enthusiastically — is now the point. In Petronius Arbiter’s first-century novel, The Satyricon, the fatter and more repugnant is Trimalchio, and the more loudly he passes wind, burps, mangles mythology, and invokes scatology, the more he thinks that he appeals to his bored dinner guests. In terms of repugnance, Miley Cyrus was the anorexic and mobile version of Jabba the Hutt.

She has neither the training nor the discipline to go formal retro. She surely was not going to appear in her vinyl bikini, put on ballet shoes, and do a bit from Swan Lake(now that would be shocking). Nor was she going to offer “O mio babbino caro” from Puccini’s opera Gianni Schicchi, waving her huge foam finger in Mitch Miller sing-along fashion. That too these days would be shocking.

It used to be that artists --whatever the medium---underwent training and a kind of apprenticeship that acquainted them with the techniques and forms of their predecessors.   They became engaged in an ongoing cultural conversation that not only guaranteed familiarity with the contributions of past artists, but very likely training in their techniques even if they improvised, varied or abandoned them in furthering their own style.

I do think the ultimate rebellion will be a return to formalism, to training, to expertise, to accomplishment rather than nihilistic, naked and disgustingly formless rebellion.

In a parallel fashion,  I think we are going to see continued growing interest among young people in traditional liturgy and difficult, demanding forms of Christianity.  I see it in the young people who attend our Anglican Use Catholic services.  Young men in their 20s who wear ties and vests to church; one wears a fedora and a trenchcoat, the other has a long frockcoat and do they ever look handsome and trendy.  They love the classical Christian writers, the deep philosophical questions and real literature.

In case you did not know the origins and the end game of the gay rights movement

Hilary White has a good analysis over at LifeSiteNews.com:

A few days ago in The Guardian, Peter Tatchell wrote a pretty good description not only of that ideology’s goals but its origins. This political ideology, often called “queer theory” by its proponents in academia, is what is being pushed, quite openly these days, by the “gay rights” movement. Despite what we are told all day by their collaborators in the mainstream media, from the six o’clock news to your favourite sit-com, this movement is not about “equal rights”. It is about re-writing the foundational concepts of our entire society. I predict that it will not be much longer before the pretense of “equality” is dropped, having done its work. 

-snip-

Others have pointed out the Marxist origins of the Sexual Revolution as a whole, and it is clear that the sudden explosion of homosexualism is merely the next logical step in a systematic programme. A close cousin to radical feminism and grandchild of Marxism, homosexualism was developed out of the politico-academic pseudo-field of “gender studies” and has, for 30 or 40 years, been pushed on a mostly unwilling public, through “anti-discrimination” and “equalities” legislation by a coalition of lobbyists, NGOs and politicians on the extreme left, and in increasingly powerful international circles. 

Be sure to read Peter Tatchell's piece in the Guardian that she links to.  The agenda is hiding in plain sight as it were.

But the manifesto went much further. It was an eye-opener: expanding my civil rights perspective into a more radical critique of heterosexism, male privilege and the tyranny of traditional gender roles. It woke me up to the fact that queer liberation involved both social and personal change; that we could, within the bounds of existing society, begin to create an alternative culture that would liberate everyone, regardless of gender, sexuality or gender identity.
The manifesto aligned GLF with other liberation movements, such as the movements for women's, black, Irish and working-class freedom. Although critical of the misogyny and homophobia of the "straight left", it positioned the LGBT struggle as part of the broader anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist movement, striving for the emancipation of all humankind.

Great article on the culture of poverty

At the American Spectator, Christopher Orlet writes.

Besides, as I have written before, too many of the underclass enjoy the culture of poverty. They would feel horribly out of place in a tony subdivision where they would have to work to make a house and car payment, instead of drinking beer all day on the stoop ― they don’t even have stoops in the suburbs. They would have to cut their lawns and keep the trash and noise to a minimum. What fun is that? In the inner-city you can do whatever the hell you want. You can even shoot somebody, and chances are no one will rat you out, because that is the code of the inner-city streets, and people there hate the cops more than they hate the drug dealers.

H/T FiveFeetofFury 

I can relate to Melanie Phillips' awakening to the reality of the ideological left. The first paragraph describing her time at The Guardian reminds me a bit of my early days at the CBC.  She writes:

Those of us who worked there had a fixed belief in our own superiority and righteousness. We saw ourselves as clever and civilised champions of liberal thought. 
I felt loved and cherished, the favoured child of a wonderful and impressive family.
To my colleagues, there was virtually no question that the poor were the victims of circumstances rather than being accountable for their own behaviour and that the state was a wholly benign actor in the lives of individuals.It never occurred to us that there could be another way of looking at the world. 
Above all, we knew we were on the side of the angels, while across the barricades hatchet-faced Right-wingers represented the dark forces of human nature and society that we were all so proud to be against. But then Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979; and although at The Guardian it was a given that she was a heartless, narrow-minded, suburban nightmare, I found myself listening, despite myself, to a point of view I had not heard before. 
Iconic: Although Melanie Phillips generally toed the standard Leftist line, when Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, she found herself listening, despite herself, to a point of view she had not heard before
These Thatcherites were not the usual upper-class squires, but people whose backgrounds were similar to my own. 

They were promoting the values with which I had been brought up in my Labour-supporting family — all about opportunities for social betterment, hard work, taking responsibility for oneself. 

I always believed a good journalist should uphold truth over lies and follow the evidence where it led.

Trudging round godforsaken estates as the paper’s special reporter on social affairs, I could see the stark reality of what our supposedly enlightened liberal society was becoming.

The scales began to fall from my eyes. I came to realise that the Left was not on the side of truth, reason and justice. 

Instead, it promoted ideology, malice and oppression. Rather than fighting abuse of power, it embodied it.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2319192/Why-Left-hates-families-MELANIE-PHIILLIPS-reveals-selfish-sneers-Guardianistas-Left-actively-fosters--revels--family-breakdown-.html#ixzz2SQ2x7uIL
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Read the whole thing. It is most interesting.  H/t FFoF

Rod Drehrer on the impact of gay marriage on the culture

This is a sobering essay.  An excerpt:

In fact, Paul’s teachings on sexual purity and marriage were adopted as liberating in the pornographic, sexually exploitive Greco-Roman culture of the time—exploitive especially of slaves and women, whose value to pagan males lay chiefly in their ability to produce children and provide sexual pleasure. Christianity, as articulated by Paul, worked a cultural revolution, restraining and channeling male eros, elevating the status of both women and of the human body, and infusing marriage—and marital sexuality—with love.

Christian marriage, Ruden writes, was “as different from anything before or since as the command to turn the other cheek.” The point is not that Christianity was only, or primarily, about redefining and revaluing sexuality, but that within a Christian anthropology sex takes on a new and different meaning, one that mandated a radical change of behavior and cultural norms. In Christianity, what people do with their sexuality cannot be separated from what the human person is.

-snip-

Rather, in the modern era, we have inverted the role of culture. Instead of teaching us what we must deprive ourselves of to be civilized, we have a society that tells us we find meaning and purpose in releasing ourselves from the old prohibitions.

Wise words on the Boston Marathon bombers from Victor Davis Hanson

He writes:

Like it or not, two  half-educated and young killers, at the expense of a few hundred dollars and one dead, with very little capital, shut down an entire city, committed mass mayhem, ruined the lives of hundreds, destroyed the Boston Marathon, and cost the city billions of dollars. But for the chance scans of video cameras, the Tsarnaevs might well have let off more bombs and turned their terror of a day into far greater mayhem of a week. That lesson is not lost on jihadists. To the degree they can enthuse another Tamerlan Tsarnaev in Chechnya or reach a Major Hasan at a mosque or on the Internet, they will continue. I expect more al-Qaedism.

Drones, fairly or not, are now branded as a convenient way to kill a few hundred terrorist suspects without bothering the American people, but they also put us to sleep about radical Islam by making it out of sight, out of mind. The next phases of the war will probably be fought on American soil, waged by al-Qaedists rather than al-Qaeda. Video cameras and good police work may prevent some terrorism. But ultimately we need to change the landscape of the American mind, and try honesty instead of therapy about the nature of the danger.

I would also look very carefully at immigration policy. Is America so short of manpower that we need a Tamerlan Tsarnaev, his brother, his mother, or his father in the United States?
Would not more frequent denial into the U.S. prompt more respect for America than does near pro forma entry? Would not the free use of words like “terrorism” and “Islamist” again convey better the image of a confident society that cares not what jihadists or their supporters think than does worry over offending those who hate us?

Aha! so this is what I am, a fusionist!

A few years ago, I gave a talk to a small group of libertarians about what socially conservative Christians need to learn from libertarians and what libertarians need to learn from Christian socons.

Sadly, my "viral" YouTube video (it had more than 400 hits!) got taken down for some reason, but here's a post at National Review that gives a name for the kind of mixture of social conservatism and libertarianism: fusionism.

Here's an excerpt of Jonah Goldberg's post:

An ex-Communist Christian libertarian, Meyer argued that freedom was a prerequisite for virtue and therefore a virtuous society must be a free society. (If I force you to do the right thing against your will, you cannot claim to have acted virtuously.)

Philosophically, the idea took fire from all sides. But as a uniting principle, fusionism worked well. It provided a rationale for most libertarians and most social conservatives to fight side by side against Communism abroad and big government at home.

What often gets left out in discussions of the American Right is that fusionism isn’t merely an alliance, it is an alloy. Fusionism runs through the conservative heart. William F. Buckley, the founder of the conservative movement, often called himself a “libertarian journalist.” Asked about that in a 1993 interview, he told C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb that the question “Does this augment or diminish human liberty?” informed most of what he wrote.

Most pure libertarians and the tiny number of truly statist social conservatives live along the outer edge of the Venn diagram that is the American Right. Most self-identified conservatives reside in the vast overlapping terrain between the two sides.

Just look at where libertarianism has had its greatest impact: economics. There simply isn’t a conservative economics that is distinct from a libertarian one. Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Henry Hazlitt, Ludwig von Mises, James M. Buchanan & Co. are gods of the libertarian and conservative pantheons alike. 

The future Pope Francis smiled at me back in 2008

I had no idea I had this on my laptop. This is from the 2008 International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec City. And of course, there's my favorite Cardinal Marc Ouellet.

Victor Davis Hanson on ways to destroy the American economy

Perceptive column, as usual for VDH:

It is not easy to ruin the American economy; doing nothing usually means it repairs itself and soon is healthier than before a recession.
But don’t despair: there are plenty of ways to slow down even an inherently strong economy. History offers plenty of examples. But as more contemporary models, take your pick of successfully ruined economies — the Venezuelan, the Cuban, the North Korean, the Greek, the Italian, the Portuguese, or pretty much any from Mediterranean Africa to the Cape of Good Hope. There are certain commonalities about why and how they fail. Let’s review some of them.

GovernmentThe state can never be too big. Ensure that it is unaccountable and intrusive, in constant need of more money and more targets to regulate. The more government, the more people are shielded from the capital-creating, free-market system. Think the DMV or TSA, not Apple. The point is for an employee to spend each labor hour with less oversight, while regulating or hampering profit-making, rather than competing with like kind to create material wealth. Regulatory bodies are a two-fer: the more federal, union employees, the more regulations to hamper the private sector.  

Lots more at the link. 

More on the Whatcott decision and the fact that truth is no defense

Truth, freedom of speech go hand in hand says The Sun's Alan Shanoff:

Civil defamation laws, which protect harm to reputation, allow a defence of truth. Criminal charges involving publication also allow truth as a defence. Truth is a defence to a criminal charge of willfully promoting hatred against any group distinguished by colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation. An essential element of the criminal charge of defamatory libel requires an accused to publish a statement “he knows to be false”.

But in the recent William Whatcott decision, the Supreme Court of Canada has declared that truth is not a viable defence to a hate speech charge under human rights legislation. It’s a ruling that has many puzzled. After all, freedom of expression is a constitutionally protected right in Canada and should only be restricted as minimally as possible to meet a pressing and substantial concern.

So how can we justify prohibiting a defence of truth?

Why does the court fear the truth?

The Supreme Court’s justification for allowing this remarkable bit of state censorship is simply put that “even truthful statements may be expressed in language or context that exposes a vulnerable group to hatred.” Thus we have elevated the right of a vulnerable group to be free from expressions of hatred to be paramount to the ability to speak the truth.
Our highest court has affirmed Canada as a country where accurate statements of fact may result in human rights complaints, expensive and lengthy hearings and imposition of significant financial penalties whenever a vulnerable group has been or is likely to have been exposed to hatred. All this, with no legal or financial exposure to the person or persons filing the human rights complaint.

Mark Steyn on those pesky drones

Another prophetic column from Mark Steyn:

For all its advantages to this administration – no awkward prisoners to be housed at Gitmo, no military casualties for the evening news – the unheard, unseen, unmanned drone raining down death from the skies confirms for those on the receiving end al-Qaida's critique of its enemies: as they see it, we have the best technology and the worst will; we choose aerial assassination and its attendant collateral damage because we are risk-averse, and so remote, antiseptic, long-distance, computer-programmed warfare is all that we can bear. Our technological strength betrays our psychological weakness.

-snip-

The guys with drones are losing to the guys with fertilizer – because they mean it, and we don't. The drone thus has come to symbolize the central defect of America's "war on terror," which is that it's all means and no end: We're fighting the symptoms rather than the cause.
-snip-

Do you remember the way it was before the "war on terror"? Back in the Nineties, everyone was worried about militias and survivalists, who lived in what were invariably described as "compounds," and not in the Kennedys-at-Hyannis sense. And, every so often, one of these compound-dwellers would find himself besieged by a great tide of federal alphabet soup, agents from the DEA, ATF, FBI and maybe even RRB. There was a guy named Randy Weaver, who lost his wife, son and dog to the guns of federal agents, was charged and acquitted in the murder of a deputy marshal and wound up getting a multimillion dollar settlement from the Department of Justice. Before he zipped his lips on grounds of self-incrimination, the man who wounded Weaver and killed his wife, an FBI agent named Lon Horiuchi, testified that he opened fire because he thought the Weavers were about to fire on a surveillance helicopter. When you consider the resources brought to bear against a nobody like Randy Weaver for no rational purpose, is it really so "far-fetched" to foresee the Department of Justice deploying drones to the Ruby Ridges and Wacos of the 2020s?

Of course, as the state becomes more and more rabidly secularist---though with a strange bye for the radical Islamists with whom lefttists share an antipathy to the Judeo-Christian foundations of Western Civilization--it will be those Christian believers who insist on obeying God rather than kowtowing to the statist gods who will have these drones hovering over their homes and churches.  It is sobering to realize that pro-life groups, for example, are listed among dangers to national security, and many seem to think Christian "fundamentalists" are as much a threat to America as radical Islam.  Mark Steyn has been right all along that our real problem is civilizational suicide not any external threat.  

H/t  Kathy Shaidle

Can we have human rights without God?

Can we have human rights without God, and a faith in a particular God?   There is one true God, who revealed Himself to the Jews, then became Incarnate in Jesus Christ.   Our whole Western Civilization and its understanding of human dignity and human rights is posited on the idea that man is created in the image of God, male and female, and thus our rights are inherent because we are God's creation, not a creature of the state.  No, these rights did not start with the Enlightenment, but the Enlightenment borrowed the notion and tried to strip these inalienable rights from the God-content.  (Supreme Court of Canada, please pay attention!)

But we are losing this notion that even Christian atheists like the late, great Oriana Fallaci realized was important for the proper functioning of the social order in the West.  Without this grounding, upon what basis do you assign rights?  The state defines them?  Watch out.  Real rights, God-given rights, limit state power.  They draw a line on where the state can go in interfering with them.   Sadly, we are shifting to a definition of rights as whatever the state deigns to grant us.  This is dangerous to human freedom, especially when the truth is no longer valued and is no longer a defence for freedom of expression. The whole reason why there is religious freedom and freedom of expression is in defence of Truth with a capital T.  Ever wonder why, in totalitarian countries, the Bible is the first book to be confiscated?

Well, here's a link to an article I wrote about one of Canada's prophetic voices on real human rights:

Farrow spoke of the way the understanding of objective reality and the truth of our dimorphic identity as male and female in the image of God has been damaged by the redefinition of marriage. He noted how Benedict XVI, now Pope Emeritus, last December had spoken about the trend towards replacing God’s gift of our biological sexual identity with the notion that sexual identity is merely a social construct. 
Those on the cutting edge of the social constructionist movement “are not interested in natures or essences,” Farrow said. “They are opposed to everything that smacks of essentialism.” 
“Man is not male and female,” in their view, he said. “The end game is the abolition of man’s nature.”
When calling man’s nature into question, social constructionists are also calling into question the “dignity that comes from God.”

It is vital Christians “order their thoughts and order them aright” concerning authentic freedom, which is grounded in the understanding God’s creating man, male and female, in His image and oriented towards expressing man’s identity through the good and the true, he said.
“Only the freedom that submits to the truth leads the human person to his true good,” Farrow said, quoting Pope John Paul II. There is a need to help our culture “understand the essential bond between freedom, truth and the good.”
Christians must also “stiffen our resolve to live according to the truth,” he said. He urged Catholics to read John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth) on this its 20th anniversary in order to recover an understanding of the integral relationship of freedom and truth. “Right action ordinarily depends on right thinking,” he said.
Veritatis Splendor warned the “denial of God as the source of truth” could “lead to a democratic form of totalitarianism,” Farrow said, noting the present climate of threats and intimidation to force support for same-sex ‘marriage,’ abortion and euthanasia.

National Post editorial on why human rights commissions must be abolished

Great editorial in today's National Post by Jonathan Kay.

Would any Canadian government, even at the provincial level, ever have the courage to eliminate the human rights commissions (HRCs) whose judgments have become such a national joke in recent years?

If you think the answer is no, consider a precedent: the federal Court Challenges Program (CCP) of Canada.

Go on over and read why Kay sees human rights commissions as similar outfits to the CCP that basically funded social engineering.  

And an undermining of our fundamental human rights, in my opinion.

Kathy Shaidle's latest Taki's Magazine piece

She has something to say about AA and the Whatcott decision.   Enjoy.

If you’ve never been to an old-school AA meeting, imagine Vince Lombardi’s locker room if he’d been coaching Pilgrims with Tourette’s: a spartan, Quaker-meeting setup, all bootstrapping, no bullshit. A newcomer dumb enough to whine about their “feelings” gets ordered to scrub out the coffee urn by a gruff “old timer.”

That’s not what I slunk into in 1992, by which time then-faddish PBS fixture John “Finding Your Inner Child” Bradshaw had accidentally turned Alcoholics Anonymous into a New Age unicorn-and-rainbows therapeutic weep-fest that would’ve disgusted Greatest Generation founders Bill W. and Dr. Bob, who probably kept their fedoras on in the gutter.

Some meetings even served decaf. 

-SNIP-

Brace yourself for “otherkin-phobia” and the fines and firings that will come with it.
“There’s a fair dollop of therapeutic chatter,” one notes, in last week’s ruling by Canada’s Supreme Court declaring that mass homosexual “self-fulfillment” trumps one crazy Christian’s freedom of speech, even when he’s just quoting the Bible. (Especially then.)

Who’s to say some “cripple” is cheating the insurance company just because you saw him shooting baskets in Bermuda? He’s really transabled, you bigot.
If you don’t want your life ruined by the powers that be, you’ll cultivate the cowardice to know the difference and keep your mouth shut.

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Okay, it's time to rev up the blog in favor of freedom of speech

My head is still spinning from the Supreme Court of Canada's Whatcott decision.  When it comes to human rights commissions and their vague "likely to" thought crimes provision, truth is no defense, neither is motive.  In other words, you don't actually have to be guilty of hateful feelings of detestation in order to be found guilty of villification.  Equality trumps foundational rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion.  It was sickening, frankly.

Our hope now rests with pushing for legislative change.  That means that all the free speech bloggers and pundits needs to rev up the old public opinion engines and make sure our politicians know these laws must be taken off the books.   The next big battle-ground is the Senate on Bill C-304 to eliminate the Section 13 "likely" clause of the Canadian Human Rights Act. While there is a Conservative majority there, some Senators have spoken against the bill.   And the Liberals, led by former Parliament Hill journalist Jim Munson are revving up all the tired arguments that seemed to make their way into Justice Rothstein's decision.

Did anyone else get a sense that the decision was so old hat, so obviously disproven, so discredited that it was astonishing to see them re-iterated by the highest court?  As if all the justices do is watch the CBC all the time and don't even realize contrary views and even facts that support them exist.  Sigh.  I mean, really, the arguments about Germany and the Jews and the Rwandan genocide making it necessary to have human rights commissions are ridiculous.  Those genocides were government-sponsored; government entities were promoting the hate speech and used systematic, planned, government-sponsored methods to eradicate Jews or Tutsis in both genocides   It was not the result of some guy handing out pamphlets who got the population all riled up.

In fact, reading the Whatcott decision seemed like the ingredients for a hate-tract against believing Christians like myself and the menu for state persecution of those who refuse to bow down and worship the state.


Here's a link to a recent story I wrote about the progress of the bill now before the Senate.

OTTAWA - Senator Douglas Finley warns the passage of Bill C-304 to eliminate the anti-free speech Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act is “not a done deal.”
Conservative MP Brian Storseth’s private member’s bill to eliminate the vaguely worded Section 13 clause that deems communication “likely” to expose a protected group to hatred or contempt discrimination under the act passed the House of Commons last June. Finley, the Conservative senator who is shepherding the bill’s passage through the Senate, said many pundits assumed the fight had been won then, leaving “a false impression.”
“This will receive opposition in the Senate, although we have a pretty large majority,” Finley said, noting that even some Conservative senators have spoken against it.
Bill C-304 is expected to go to a vote on second reading soon. Finley expects the bill to pass and go on to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee, which will receive witnesses.
“How long this will take is very largely a matter of the interest shown by outside witnesses to attend the hearings,” he said.
“The process can take anywhere from a matter of days to several months. It’s difficult to predict,” but the “issue provokes passion on both sides of the argument.”

I would advise anyone who is concerned about this issue to contact Senator Finley's office or the committee named in the article.  Plan to make an appearance before the committee.

Meanwhile, Mark Steyn had this to say about the decision over at The Corner:

Jay, re last week’s Canadian Supreme Court decision, there’s no doubt (after some partial victories by us northern free-speechers in recent years) that it’s a serious setback for freedom of expression. The defendant, Bill Whatcott, is not partial to those of a homosexual bent. If one feels otherwise on these matters, it’s reasonable to be offended by his observations. But it’s entirely unreasonable to criminalize them. Bruce Bawer, who falls into the protected class on whose behalf the Canadian jurists claimed to act, says take your finely balanced, reasoned, nuanced judgment, and shove it:

"Don’t do me any favors. I feel far less threatened by the likes of Whatcott than I do by courts that consider it their prerogative to limit the liberties of a free people in such an arrogant fashion. The justices seem not to recognize – or to care – that if you want to live in a truly free society, you’ve got to be willing to share that society with people who consider you an abomination and who feel compelled to shout their views from the rooftops."

He’s right. Bill Whatcott is far less of a threat to liberty than those six judges. What’s weird about all this is that, around the world, supposedly free peoples are happy to accord the bench (even a bench whose arguments are as incoherent as the Ottawa guys’) a monopoly power on all the great questions of the age. Even as every other societal institution in the West — church, monarchy — has lost authority, blokes in black robes have accrued more and more.

The biggest danger to a legislative repeal of the insidious faux human rights regime is the deference most Canadians and politicians have for the Supreme Court of Canada. 

The Whatcott decision ---truth is no defense

I thought my head was going to explode when the Whatcott decision came out yesterday.  Equality trumps both religious freedom and freedom of speech.  Truth, speech based on objective facts, is not defense.

Here's a link to my piece and an excerpt:

Constitutional lawyer Iain Benson, who also argued for Whatcott, said the decision does "not recognize that 'hatred' is too vague a term if it is disconnected from incitement to cause imminent violence or physical harm."

"There is a real need for new thinking on the terms that it uses: 'discrimination' and 'vulnerable groups,' where what is really at issue is not 'attacks on the vulnerable' but strong feelings about what is and what isn't permissible sexual conduct," said Benson. "The court seems unable to make these distinctions with any convincing logic."

Though the court struck down a portion of the code by striking out part of the section that refers to expression that "ridicules, belittles, or otherwise affronts the dignity" of identifiable groups, it left in place the "troublesome" words "tends to expose to hatred," said CCRL executive director Joanne McGarry.

It also leaves in place a system where people can be prosecuted for hate speech without the rules of evidence, right to counsel, and presumption of innocence found in a real court of law, McGarry said.

This means people continue to be vulnerable to complaints about religious expression like those faced by Calgary Bishop Fred Henry for a 2005 pastoral letter and newspaper column defending traditional marriage.

"The league will continue to stand for the principle that if there is any intrusion on charter-protected freedoms, it should be left at the criminal level, which has its own internal processes before a charge can be laid, and a standard of proof of an intention to provoke hatred as part of the charge," said CCRL president Phil Horgan.

He said the code is likely to continue to be used to prosecute people who argue for Christian morality.

"It's not much help to publishers or clergy wondering, 'Can I say this?' or 'Can I say that?'" McGarry said, noting the whole category of hate speech "is subjective."

"I find it troubling that statements that are true or based on fact are not considered a defence," McGarry added.

Persecuted church conference Feb. 2

February 2 is shaping up to be a busy day for me.

It's Candlemas Day, so I'll be looking for a Mass to attend.  Our new priest will be away so we won't have our usual "blessing of the candles" that day.  

Then this conference at the Metropolitan Bible Church which I encourage all Christians in Ottawa to attend.



Then in the evening, the Maryvale Gala, which is the social event of the winter for Catholics.