Bishop Henry smacks ‘em down, kicks ass

If anyone has any doubt whatsoever about the status of religious freedoms in Canada, then it is time to take a good hard look at the recent experience of Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary. Henry made the mistake of speaking out against gay marriage and will now for his indiscretion be hauled before the local kangaroo court known as the provincial human rights commission. The message is clear: Speak out against gay marriage and you will be subjected to abuses by the state.

Bishop Henry held a press conference yesterday to affirm that fact and to deliver a well-deserved sucker punch to the commission:

“My time is pretty valuable and I’m not going to go through a Mickey Mouse procedure with no hope of success.”

Heh, a mickey mouse procedure. Nothing could possibly please me more than the abject mockery of the members of these gestapo-like commissions, who never tire of raining their sanctimony down upon us and backing it up with their unconstitutional coercive power.

Cross-posted to Rempelia Prime

Tony Blair and Religion

Joe Knippenberg has an interesting analysis of Britain’s Tony Blair’s approach to religion and politics. We’ve taken note of this as well. While Blair shares Bush’s (and Clinton’s) use of religion to gain the center of the political landscape, Knippenberg notices a fundamental difference between Blair and especially Bush:

While Bush, for example, speaks frequently about love as the emotion that takes us outside ourselvesâ€???we are enjoined to love one another as we love ourselvesâ€???Blair does not so much enter into the moral psychology of the individual. I am tempted to argue that Bush’s approach to community is “theological,” while Blair’s is “sociological.” And where Bush speaks of the “ownership society,” whose goal is to help individuals become self-reliant (but nonetheless loving), that sort of language seems to be absent from Blair’s lexicon.

Knippenberg also admires the intelligent way that all major British parties handle abortion – they leave it as a conscience decision, so that some Labor MPs have stated that they’d prefer greater restrictions on abortion than what they’d expect from the Tories.

Are our Canadian parties listening?

[Hat tip: No Left Turns]

Canada’s 2rd Best Place to do Business

According to the Economist magazine, Canada is a great place to do business.

Canada drops to second in Economist ranking of best business countries

LONDON (CP) – Economic upstart Denmark has bumped Canada from its lofty perch atop a prestigious European ranking of the best places in the world to do business.

The ranking, conducted every five years, is based on 10 categories, including the political and institutional environment, macroeconomic stability, policy towards private enterprise, foreign investment policy, financing and infrastructure.

Ignoring how silly these rankings actually are, you should make sure to read the full article. At the bottom you’ll see abit of editorializing by the biased Canadian Press (CP) writers.

But there’s still hope for Canada: Denmark’s “xenophobic anti-immigration policies” threaten to create labour shortages in the face of a population that’s growing slowly and is inclined to retire early from the workforce.

Xenophobic anti-immigration policies? Jeez, CP, why don’t you tell us how you really feel about Denmark’s immigration policies.

Ignatieff, Liberals, and The Lesser Evil

James Turner Johnson, one of the preeminent just war theorists of our time, reviews Michael Ignatieff’s book, The Lesser Evil. Recall Ignatieff is being touted as possible leadership material for the Liberal Party of Canada.

Johnson does a masterful job slicing and dicing Ignatieff’s arguments. He focuses on Ignatieff’s deficient category of “lesser evil,” which gets him bogged down in trying to distinguish “lesser” from “greater” evils, and wondering whether liberal democracy itself is one of those evils. The crux of the problem is Ignatieff’s undefended assertion that any and all forms of violence are evil:

But are these two examples of violence�??that inflicted by terrorism on democracy and that used by democracy to fight terrorism�??inherently equivalent? When Ignatieff quickly adds that in a liberal democracy all use of force is a lesser evil, something has, it seems to me, gone wildly astray. Not only is the initial equivalence between the two forms of violence wrong, but Ignatieff’s position wrongly disconnects the use of force and coercion from the pursuit of justice. When used justly�??and in the American system this means at its basis to protect the essential goods of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness at which American democracy aims�??coercive force is not an evil at all but an instrument of good.

…

He elides the distinction between the protection of good political order and the protection of the state against harm, and he makes even the defense of democracy (which he clearly regards as good) a matter of a choice among evils. He nods in the direction of traditional just war criteria, but none of his lists of limiting conditions include all of these indispensable criteria. Most basically, by beginning with the notion that all violence is evil he insures that his major concerns focus on the jus ad bellum choice to use forceful or coercive means, not with what the jus in bello principles of discrimination and proportionality may tell us with regard to right conduct in the war on terror. And despite his effort to nuance and limit the means used in the anti-terrorist struggle, his moral paradigm casts this struggle as doing evil that good may come of it�??a morally problematic idea.

So liberal democracy itself is a kind of necessary evil. Combine that with Ignatieff’s internationalism, which, Jeremy Rabkin observes, undermines the distinction between citizen and foreigner, and you have an argument that makes it impossible for Ignatieff to defend his own land.

Not exactly PM material. Then again, in Canada it probably is.

Homosexuality, Newspeak, and Censorship: Bishop Henry Hit with Human Rights Complaint

Calgary Roman Catholic Bishop Fred Henry has had a human rights complaint waged against him by EGALE for writing these words in a pastoral letter:

Since homosexuality, adultery, prostitution and pornography undermine the foundations of the family, the basis of society, then the State must use its coercive power to proscribe or curtail them in the interests of the common good.

He repeated much of the contents of this pastoral letter in his January 30th Calgary Sun column, which omitted this sentence.

EGALE stated that while Henry is free to state the views of this church:

Henry crossed the line when he talked about governments using their power to curtail homosexuality.

One may dispute Henry’s position and consider it a poor and dangerous use of government power. One might also consider government coercion an infringement of human rights. But is uttering this opinion an infringement of human rights? I don’t think so. Nor do I think it whips up anti-gay sentiment. The only sentiment it does whip up is the desire of legal activists to make names for themselves.

Henry unfortunately failed to specify what forms of coercion should be taken. Worst case scenario: police busting down the doors of the elderly gay couple in the condo down the street. But what about closing down the bathhouse that’s a breeding ground for drugs and prostitution (not to mention people failing to disclose one has HIV – an indictable offense (warning: content)? Henry is also heir to an older tradition of viewing coercion as a form of teaching, which might include wanting the state to persuade the public that homosexuality is a vice.

One can reasonably disagree with any of these propositions. However, does uttering them constitute a human rights violation? EGALE draws a dubious distinction between Henry’s legitimate (in their eyes) representation of his church’s viewpoint, and “crossing the line” to promote coercion. What if his church’s position is identical with that of the Canadian state 35 years ago – that homosexuality is a crime? Does advocating a belief once held by the Canadian government a crime?

I’m afraid this is a much anticipated consequence of the radical left’s constitutionalizing of same-sex marriage. “It’s the Charter, Stupid” means that those who dissent get pounded by a legion of human rights lawyers.

The Alberta Human Rights Commission says only 5% of complaints get heard by the Commission. Let’s hope that Henry’s isn’t one of them.

Update: Bishop Henry responds and here.

Shiavo and Life Worth Living

The left’s urge to see Terry Shiavo starved to death is due, in part, to its Grand Inquisitor-like compassion that seeks to relieve people of their suffering. One of the reasons this is so compelling to so many people is the horror we feel at the thought of being utterly incapacitated (and here). This is certainly not an irrational fear. However, it is not entirely coherent either.

Steyn points out, rightly in my opinion, that we simply don’t know how we’d adapt to being incapacitated. From the perspective of an active adult, such a life would be “a waste.” However, active adults (who more recently act more like old teenagers), are notoriously obtuse toward those more frail, elderly, and vulnerable than they:

As for the worthlessness of Terri Schiavo’s existence, some years back I was discussing the death of a distinguished songwriter with one of his old colleagues. My then girlfriend, in her mid-20s, was getting twitchy to head for dinner and said airily, ”Oh, well, he had a good life. He was 87.” ”That’s easy for you to say,” said his old pal. ”I’m 86.” To say nobody would want to live in an iron lung or a wheelchair or a neck brace or with third-degree burns over 80 percent of your body is likewise easy for you to say.

We all have friends who are passionate about some activity — They say, ”I live to ski,” or dance, or play the cello. Then something happens and they can’t. The ones I’ve known fall into two broad camps: There are those who give up and consider what’s left of their lives a waste of time; and there are those who say they’ve learned to appreciate simple pleasures, like the morning sun through the spring blossom dappling their room each morning. Most of us roll our eyes and think, ”What a loser, mooning on about the blossom. He used to be a Hollywood vice president, for Pete’s sake.”

But that’s easy for us to say. We can’t know which camp we’d fall into until it happens to us. And it behooves us to maintain a certain modesty about presuming to speak for others — even those we know well. Example: ”Driving down there, I remember distinctly thinking that Chris would rather not live than be in this condition.” That’s Barbara Johnson recalling the 1995 accident of her son Christopher Reeve. Her instinct was to pull the plug; his was to live.

Keep at it, Mr. Steyn.

[Hat tip: Peak Talk]

Secular Courts and the New Medievalism

Todays’ NY Times has an intriguing story about a Colorado jury’s decision to impose the death penalty on a murderer that the courts overturned. The higher courts overturned the conviction because the jury relied on the Bible to draw its conclusion. A straightforward application of the First Amendment’s prohibition of establishment?

Not so fast.

The judge instructed the jury that, in applying state law that allows but does not mandate the death penalty, the jury members should:

must make an “individual moral assessment,” in deciding whether Mr. Harlan should live.

This was not a matter of jurors deciding to replace state law with the Bible. Rather, they were using the Bible to help them to apply state law. Apparently, they decided that Old Testament instructions to take an eye for an eye more compelling than New Testament instructions to turn the other cheek. The article points out that in so doing, and in following the judge’s instructions, they were simply practicing the well-established common law principle of relying on moral codes to determine the meaning of laws:

Other legal experts say the Colorado decision touches on an issue that courts do not like to talk about: that jurors, under traditions dating to the days of English common law, can consider higher authority all they want, and can convict or acquit using whatever internal thoughts and discussions they consider appropriate.

This case is remarkable because the US Supreme Court itself recently relied on a separate moral and legal code to throw out capital punishment for minors. Instead of relying on their own Constitution or on precedent, not to mention the Bible, the USSC instead relied on European high court decisions to reject capital punishment.

The meaning of this transformation of the “higher law tradition” of American constitutionalism is this. In times past “higher law” referred to natural law. In the older British common law it might have referred to ancient customs or even principles found in canon law. However, whereas ancient judges and church canon lawyers articulated the “higher law” in medieval times, today it’s the cosmopolitan elite of jurists, media, and academics who dictate the rules. Like the clerics of old, these new clerics might have an institutional base, but lack a territorial constituency that can keep it responsible. This international court party wields power irresponsibly, having no allegiance to nation state and checked by few powers. They produce only an ultra-moralistic tone for politics that does no one any good (and see here).

More at Claremont, including a link to the court’s judgment. Plus a good critique of the majority decision over at Mirror of Justice.

UPDATE: Peter Berkowitz reviews several books about international law that are supportive of this new medievalism.

More Liberal Bias in Universities

Evidence for the One Liberal Party Campus continues. Stanley Rothman, Neil Nevitte, and Robert Lichter have produced a study, using data from the 1999 data from the North American Academic Study Survey, demonstrate not only liberal dominance, but more dominance now than 20 years ago:

Rothman, Lichter and Nevitte find a leftward shift on campus over the past two decades. In the last major survey of college faculty, by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1984, 39 percent identified themselves as liberal.

In contrast with the finding that nearly three-quarters of college faculty are liberal, a Harris Poll of the general public last year found that 33 percent describe themselves as conservative and 18 percent as liberal.

This study found greater liberal bias in disciplines than found by previous studies:

The most left-leaning departments are English literature, philosophy, political science and religious studies, where at least 80 percent of the faculty say they are liberal and no more than 5 percent call themselves conservative, the study says.

You can read the study here.

The Legitimacy of Numbers

Stories recently published in The Red Deer Advocate and the Alberta CBC web site have placed significant emphasis on the low number of votes in the last Alberta senatorial election. The Advocate, through one of their interviewees, tries to paint a scenario in which Senate reform is primarily a right wing issue:

In terms of the far right in the province, it [senate reform] is pivotal. [...] But the far right make up a very small percentage of the Alberta electorate, of the Alberta population.

In equating the vote with the desire for reform, and then the wishes for reform with a right-wing agenda, they seek to make reform seekers seem extreme. The immediate message is that moderates are pleased with the status quo. And moderates are the majority, as the media often tells us. Moderate is, of course, code for Liberal in some circles –as one reader has pointed out. Those who seek reform can then easily be dismissed as a small gang of right-wing cranks –even though one third of voters is hardly “a very small percentage.”

Similarly, the CBC ushers the end of their piece by focusing on numbers as well. That both the Advocate and the CBC would place such remarks toward or at the end of their reports is significant. There is no room for retort or balance at that point, and what is at the end of a piece is what has the greater staying power in the mind of the reader :

The November senator vote [sic] cost about $3 million, and about one-third of eligible voters cast a ballot, compared to 46 per cent in the general election.

The implication involves some interesting intellectual gymnastics. From both sources, the message is that last Fall’s election of four Alberta senators-in-waiting is illegitimate because the number of votes was small. The purpose is to justify the latest Liberal snub of Albertans when Paul Martin chose three different individuals than those Albertans chose for themselves.

In short, the spin is that Paul Martin has not snubbed Alberta or Albertans in general but the right-wing extremists (a mere third of Albertans). So Martin’s appointments, if we extend the intimations, would appear to be supported by two thirds of Albertans, and therefore his personal choice of three senators seem more legitimate than that of hundreds of thousands of Alberta voters. Martin’s voice is more legitimate than just a third of all of us.

Ideally, we should grant, it would be better if more Albertans had voted then. But some votes are better than just one! And if we are going to call into question the legitimacy of votes on account of voter ratio, what would the effect be elsewhere? Most municipal governments in the country would have to be counted as illegitimate. Calgary’s Mayor Bronconnier would now be in office illegitimately because less that 20% of eligible Calgarians voted, a ratio far smaller than the one third of the senatorial race in question. The same can be said for just about every mayor in Canada. In addition, all student government commanding hundreds of millions of dollars, pretty much across the country’s universities, receive less than 25% (in some cases less than 10%) support from their constituents. They would clearly be illegitimate too.

Let us not forget that the Advocate-CBC spin is designed to elevate a decision by a minority government. In the last federal election, Martin’s Liberals received a little over one third of the aggregated vote (36.7%) of Canadians (but only 22% in Alberta); it was an election with the poorest voter turn out in nearly a century.

Finally, if numbers are the central issue, let us look even closer and compare the two sources of authority for the senate choices: 279, 219 Albertans voted for the Liberals in the last federal election. Individually, on the other hand, senators-in-waiting Betty Unger (308, 014) and Bert Brown (307, 444) each received more votes in the Alberta senate election than did all of Paul Martin’s Liberals in Alberta combined. Neither the Advocate nor the CBC are quick to point that out.

Cross posted from Civitatensis.

Two points on Terri Schiavo

It looks like Terri’s saga will soon be drawing to a close, as her parents have now given up hope. There are, however, two points in this story that I feel need closer attention.

The first came to my attention from Licia Corbella of the Calgary Sun. Corbella notes:

Technically, [Michael Schiavo] is still married to the severely brain-injured Florida woman who is at the centre of a political, judicial, moral and public storm in the U.S., if not around the world.

And yet, Michael is currently living with another woman — his common-law wife and their child…

So which is it? Do we recognize common-law marriages or not?

Indeed, this is a worthy question. Michael Schiavo is legally married to both his ‘girlfriend’ and Terri Schiavo. Does this not make him legally a bigamist, which is currently a crime? Furthermore, if the state can pronounce a couple married by dint of their having lived together for a time, it also follows that they should pronounce them divorced if that arrangement ends – in which case, Michael would no longer be spouse to Terri and would no longer have a say in her care. Whichever way this is seen, there is a serious contradiction in the law.

The second point I wish to make is that from all I have read of this case, the only ‘evidence’ that Terri ever expressed a wish to be euthanised in her current circumstances was an off-hand and unwitnessed comment made after watching a movie. The court ruling in this case makes such off-hand comments now legally binding, in lieu of living wills. An unwitnessed and unnotarised statement has literally become a death warrant. Not only can I see a plethora of greedy and inhumane people volunteering such ‘information’ about their spouses in order to collect life insurance, but what sort of precedent has been set for criminal confessions, the waiving of rights, breach of contract, wills and inheritance, and so forth? If this does not actually create the possibility, does it not at least germinate the idea that, for example, a police officer might claim in court that a defendant waived his Miranda rights in an off-hand and unwitnessed verbal comment (that, I probably need not add, might be pure fiction)?

The legacy of the Schiavo case may be a legal situation as seen in the USSR and other tyrannical regimes, where citizens have a whole host of rights on paper that are never exercised in practice because the onus of proof is placed upon the defendant, not the prosecutor, as in the Schiavo case where Michael Schiavos total lack of evidence was deemed insufficient to stop him taking a life that others would have seen preserved, and it may furthermore undermine the presumption of innocence rather than of guilt. The legacy of Terri Schiavo stands to affect a great deal more than just euthanasia.

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