I’ve linked to the image above because I’m getting the impression that many Canadian readers aren’t aware of what it is. Most of you would say that it’s a map of what, at any given time in its 1000 year history, was part of the massive Roman Empire of old. I wouldn’t blame you if you thought that because the resemblance is uncanny. Here’s what the Roman Empire actually held at any given time in its history:

Chop off a bit of modern-day Iraq, add on some of the Baltic and Nordic states and you’ve basically got the same thing.

So enough mystery; what you’re actually looking at in the top picture is the, as of this Sunday past, the new “Union of the Mediterranean”, a political entity which was born of such ridiculous circumstances, only the Eurocrats could’ve come up with it. This new union, which includes every current EU state, along with all but one country which borders the otherwise unimportant body of water is the baby of French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who was inspired to create the otherwise-pointless entity because the Europeans couldn’t decide whether they wanted to let Turkey into their cucumber-counting club or not. The official mandate that Sarkozy sees for the new UM (or MU?) is to promote trade, environmental protection and, eventually, European-type administration over the new conquered territo–err, members of this body that come from north Africa and the Middle East. One might suggest that the Europeans are trying to *civilize* Rome’s long-abandoned off-continent holdings again!

What strikes me as particularly amazing, although not all that surprising in retrospect, is that we now have a political entity that can in actuality become the reincarnation of the Roman Empire again not only in its ability to let western Europe influence and even dictate the domestic policy of other countries, but also in its ability to do so in a sphere of influence almost perfectly mirroring history’s most influential empire. I’m also obligated to point out that, as much as it’ll probably make Atheist dogmatics scream in agony to the contrary, it’s pretty hard to see how this new body couldn’t be capable of becoming the reincarnation of the sixth empire that the Bible says will come about again in the last days to serve as the political vehicle through which the antichrist will rule the world. To put this in perspective, what were the chances that an empire so geographically difficult to conquer on the first go and culturally diverse (see Mid-East Conflict) would become the mold through which a modern-day, diplomatic political territory be created, and in such a perfectly symmetrical way?

Speaking too of the Middle East, it is curious to see how the first meeting of the UM was so focused on reconciling the Palestinians and the Israelis; the National Post’s cover yesterday plastered the proud father-French President smiling as he hugged the Israeli PM and P.A.’s Chairman. I suppose this isn’t the time to bring up the fact that the whole tribulation is started with a peace treaty between Israel and it’s new best friend, antichrist?

I digress on the MU for the time being though. It’s still in its infancy and has yet to make any waves significant enough to reach this side of the Atlantic. It also doesn’t concern me if the usual suspects show up here to say how wrong I can be, no backing evidence or proof in hand as always! This post was more for the crowd that was expecting it sooner or later anyway, but just didn’t know when. It’s a public service message to those people because the MU was so quietly born that hardly any editor took notice…one might even say that it came “like a thief in the night!” Now I just await that talk of inking peace treaty…

1)The Garth — Got the reception that he deserved for the “Screw the West, We’ll Take the Rest” redux. I hope he doesn’t come back to tell us he’s inclusive the next time a homosexual agenda issue comes up, but if he does, it won’t be the first time he’ll be caught directly lying to Canadians. That last note makes his quote from today all the more amusing (emphasis added):

For writing and acting in defence of my country, for opposing those who put self interests before Canada, for the decisions I have made, and the consequences they have yielded, I regret nothing.

Who knew Turner had such self-hatred?

2) Regarding the most recent evolution post, “Tom” has actually posted alleged proof for macroevolution (the effort is appreciated). Two problems though; First, after being told repeatedly by PZ Myers’ fanboys that we’ve had proof for years, this opening statement from Tom’s article doesn’t sound too compatible (emphasis really added!):

A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers’ eyes. It’s the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

So, before June 9th of this year, would Darwinists have happened to have been acting on some level of faith or is the article, written by a well-respected science publication, just wrong and in need of serious correction? Secondly, I’m happy that the bacteria have discovered some new munchies, but as was brushed upon in the definition of a species argument, can we indicate if these lemon-sucking bacteria are in fact a completely different species from their brethren and not just hungrier?

3) I cannot sit by any longer when it comes to Harris-Decima. The Toronto Star’s resident polling firm (that should tell you a lot about their credibility right there!) has been doing weekly polls recently that indicate a trend in which the Harper Government is now on par with dog food in popularity questions they ask. However, their latest butcher job shows over 60% of Canadians preferring massive carbon taxes if

the rising price of fossil fuels is a reason we must move even more aggressively to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels

.

That’s a big if to be assuming there, and one that even I would agree with, were I actually polled. However, I thought the article the quote appears in was called Canadians want climate action now, poll suggests, not (oh, I don’t know), Canadians want action now to end addiction to high gas prices, addiction to oil, poll suggests. Oh, The Star…

4)Finally, it’s always cute to see the NDP attempt to orchestrate some sort of public backlash via the government. Of course, what will really happen is that NDP will fail but consumers will take care of themselves by canceling phone plans and the sort. The phone carriers might think that their government-mandated cartel creates a highway robbery scenario, but there are still millions of us non-mobile Canadians who make do just fine without cells, and it’ll stay that way until someone approaches us with a reasonable cell phone plan!

SEE ALSO: Joanne indicates she’ll be first blood if the new texting fees come in; looks like you got a winner here guys! Right From Alberta also noticed an interesting point about the NDP’s petition to stop these fees.

As for the latter though, wouldn’t it be interesting if we, for one moment, got truly investigative and turned the tables on the all too comfortable Darwinians who have become yet another group to hijack our education system for their own self-preservation and motives? After all, in the noise of bitter reviews, intimidating threats and exhaustive and bewildered requests to anti-Darwinists to just shut up, I think the evolution debate has failed to examine a key component: whether the theory of Charles Darwin is truly something worth wasting time on in the science class to begin with. After all, a physicist who learns anything from F=MA to the hydrogen fusion reaction that is continually taking place at the centre of our sun to even string theory is able to take that knowledge and apply it to the benefit of mankind in a strictly physical sense. Even if the highly controversial string theory proves to be a dead end, what it would tell us about how elementary particles don’t interact would help us to zone in on other understandings and ultimately give us a better way to understand the very microscopic. In turn, that would allow us to apply our knowledge one day to advancements that might, for example, allow for microscopic computers that write data onto quarks, just as F=MA gave us the first building blocks we needed to put a man on the moon. Chemistry need only need mention of companies like DOW or Pfizer to prove its contribution to our modern society and even a late-comer to quantitative analysis, biology, will soon prove invaluable to an entire generation of baby-boomers who are in the midst of retiring from the workforce currently. In fact, the driving force behind science is not just getting to have a better understanding of the world around us, from the very small to the very large, but also being able to apply that knowledge in some fashion.

When it comes to the necessity to teach Darwinian evolution in a grade 7 classroom, or high school, or even university, what is the purpose? I mean, we can keep clubing each other over the head about how detrimental it is to society for the other side to get a voice in on the debate, but as I noted above, the debate always ends up in the realm of the meta-physical; things pertaining to the existence, or lack thereof, of God! Has evolution allowed us to come up with any great invention or advancement? Is it so essential to our understanding of biology or chemistry that twelve year-olds need to understand it if they are going to pass their high school biology or chemistry courses? Or are we all fooling ourselves here, using findings that more properly belong in the hit-or-miss fields of archeology and social science to indoctrinate young minds with what is practically nothing more than a contemporary, social statement?

The fact is that evolution is still very much stuck in in the past, and will continue to be until it can offer actual testifiable evidence of one species giving way to another over the course of two or more generations. It’s all about the findings in the dirt, the rock layers and the pretty pastel pictures that appear in text books. The funny thing about history is that as it becomes more remote, the possibilities of the imagination grow exponentially. It’s also the truth that if evolution was so essential for our children to learn, I should have never graduated from university, nor anyone else who currently walks to Earth and believes that evolution deserves a more skeptical analysis, since the understanding of that knowledge should have been essential in understanding everything from RNA-DNA reactions to the immune system. Evolution should have to be to biology what F=MA is to physics if the official story is to be believed, wherein a student that fails to acknowledge the very foundations cannot comprehend or excel while studying the more advanced topics.

So as Expelled comes out this weekend in a fraction of the theatres it did in the US back in April, you’ll probably see a few fireworks fly as the Darwinians campaign to remain the only kid on the block. What the movie will continue to do though is extend a debate that has lasted for over 150 years and certainly isn’t going away; a debate where a lot of questions could be and should be asked. Ultimately, the most dangerous of those question for Darwinians isn’t “Can you prove it?”, although they certainly hate that one. Rather, if they want to spend valuable class time teaching my son or daughter about their great theory about nothing, the worst thing they could hear back from my kid is “So what?” The runner up might sound something like “Why are you so concerned about us hearing from the competition?”

Witness:  Venezuela

Witness: South Africa
The Death of Johannesburg picture blogs. Note the before and after photos especially. 1980’s: Joubert Park

Today: Joubert Park

There are places that are getting more civilized and technological. I should be grateful for those. But it is the loss of civilization that really gets me down.

I’m talking of course (see title) about libertarians, or specifically about what libertarians are considered today. While the term could apply to many distinct schools of political thought, including the one that I subscribe to, the libertarian moniker in 2008 refers to one who is adamant about reducing government spending and intervention in the economy, while also subscribing to the secularist interpretation of human rights. I say this, instead of saying that they are “socially liberal” like libertarians like to describe themselves, because I’ve found that description to be a simple matter of opinion and not a quantifiable statement like one’s opinion on government spending levels can be.

As I said above, I consider myself a libertarian, but one of the Lord Acton (a 19th century Catholic and noble) brand, not of the modern rendition. Therefore, it’s fairly safe to say that I typically agree with most modern (secular) libertarians and find their reasoning to be typically sound on fiscal matters. I’ve spoken and debated with many over the years and have observed their frustration at many on The Left who like to believe that the economy is a macro-sized golden goose which you can feed government dollars and have it produce a “just society”. Many have lamented just how emotionally-based liberal arguments are and how they don’t hold up to the real world realities or mathematical proofs that we now know.

As such, it might come as a shock, but I find that libertarians too easily fall into the irrational and overtly emotional impulses of their liberal friends when it comes to the topics of drugs, abortion, marriage and the family’s role in society. In essence, I believe that modern libertarians have to answer a very difficult question which is why they tend to be onside with the likes of the NDP when it comes to issues like this, despite their dramatic opposition to that party’s attitudes in almost every other policy arena. Put another way, if it that if government endorsement of “gay marriage”, aborting fetus lives and marijuana for all is liberty, how did the NDP arrive at these conclusions and for the same reasons expressed at libertarians. Granted, a broken clock is right twice a day, but simple analogies don’t do justice to over a century of political philosophy development; either socialists and liberals are capable of spearheading liberty as they use national kangaroo courts to squash our speech freedoms, or modern libertarianism has gone astray.

After debating many libertarians, I have come to the conclusion that it is it the latter: when it comes to such issues, libertarians have let their angst for authority cloud their judgment and sense of natural order with emotional impulses, thus letting them arrive at the conclusions they do. Otherwise, why is it so well known that a great majority of self-described libertarians are pro-abortion, instead of pro-life? As I inferred above, if libertarians were naturally and neutrally socially liberal, shouldn’t a sizable minority (at the least) arrive at the conclusion that an unborn fetus’ right to life outweighed a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy that she played a pretty intimate part in creating? It’s too lopsided to be a simple matter of rights since both sides of the debate have a well-defended right they’re trying to argue in favour of. I hope that one day the libertarians in Canada see this as well, and begin to connect liberalism’s attack on free society with our destructive social policy and not in spite of it!

What we have after all those caveats is a shift that won’t do an iota to change the habits of Canadians, if the goal is still, in fact, to save ourselves from the sixth element of the periodic table. The fact that Dion is trying to convince us that life will go on normally also demonstrates that the professor didn’t take much chemistry in his undergrad as even the only item that doesn’t require carbon for production, computer software, still requires a bunch of energy that comes from carbon just to run the computers that make the programs. How is this not going to affect us?

Then, of course, we must consider what corporations are going to do. Being nobody’s fool, any industry that pollutes like the steel factories in Hamilton, the auto plants in the GTA or the oil refineries in Alberta, will just find a way to slip their sites south of the border where the environmental lunacy currently hasn’t hit the same heights. Under Stephane Dion’s loophole-ridden Canada, we sell our oil assets to the States, sacrifice jobs that would’ve been created to refine the black gold, then buy it back at a loss for our vehicles that aren’t going anywhere because of said lack of jobs.

So, with that all considered, can we really count on the Liberals to actually follow through with anything? Well, they’re still proposing a tax aren’t they? And since I just spent three paragraphs explaining the glories of this plan, and that your average Canadian voter stops reading after “insiders”, I’d say that Stephane Dion will successfully reduce our carbon pollution by putting the massive CO2 emitters currently in the Liberal caucus out on the street, and ensuring that their successors won’t be blowing so much hot air about a plan too gentle for environmentalists, too harmful for conservatives and too complex for a national party to win voters over on!

Crash! Five years ago today, gay marriage became the law of the province – and, I note, no sky has fallen yet, has it? Nope. The Dominion remains strong. Nice piece by Martha here – but it would have been nicer if she had mentioned our mutual former home that largely financed the litigation: McMillan BInch

,

but he obviously didn’t look too hard since the very debate on the issue was enough for a government institution to convict a preacher of thought crimes. Alas, there is that small polygamy matter that Kinsella’s buddy Dalton is letting slide under the rug despite the law as well — and guess what precedent the Muslims are using? (first one to post the answer in the comments wins a prize!*) But ya Warren, if you mean that Church Street hasn’t transformed into Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, then I guess you could say that calling the marriage apple just a plain old fruit (thus, making it less offensive and restrictive) did nothing to our poor old Dominion. Unfortunately for Warren though, life isn’t a political campaign, so he can’t attack ad his opinion into reality.

*-like Warren’s definition of “Catholic”, or “Christian”, terms are subject to change. See store for details.

Get real people. The previous $500 per game contract was a colossal rip-off and never should have happened. The artist is just trying to milk the tax-payer further. With this contest, the CBC is telling how much they are willing to pay the artist of the current theme. No more and no less. Have no fear. I like to call this whole thing a game of poker or chicken. My guess is that we will get the old theme back. My bet is that the CBC is this artist’s biggest source of income.

I recommend that the owners of the current Hockey Night In Canada theme submit their old theme to this contest and take the prize money. Since the winner will be chosen by the listeners, I figure it would be a shoe-in. Anything the CBC offers is a cash cow.

Some of the artists have provided a ray of clever insight:

Une solution semblait faire consensus chez la plupart des participants : la souveraineté.

I agree with that and thus, I have a suggestion to all of the Montreal-Quebeckers who are worried about losing their culture and their language: promote sovereignty or forever hold your peace.

I would also recommend that Quebeckers keep their children in school. Their high drop-out rates seem related specifically to French language studies.

Burma is a heterogeneous population. The vast majority of the Burmese population is ethnically Burmese but about a quarter of the population is ethnic minorities — some of which have fought for autonomy. The cyclone hit the region of an ethnic minority that was previously targeted by the Burmese military. A little more political history of the Karen region tells me that these poor people are hopelessly doomed.

The article actually started out kind of interesting and plausible. He talked about Mussolini:

A fourth British blunder, which Neville Chamberlain called the “very midsummer of madness,” was the 1935 decision to sanction Italy for a colonial war in Ethiopia. London destroyed the Stresa Front of Britain, France and Italy that Mussolini had forged to contain Germany, and drove Mussolini straight into the arms of a Nazi dictator he loathed.

Now, I don’t know much about the pre-WWII politics of Italy, but I always thought Mussolini was a Fascist from the beginning. But I suppose it is possible that he may not have aligned with Hitler had Britain not opposed his Ethiopian invasion.

But the fatal blunder was not Munich.

It was the decision of March 31, 1939, to hand a war guarantee to a neo-fascist regime of Polish colonels who had joined Hitler in the rape of Czechoslovakia.

Britain gave Warsaw a blank check to take her to war over a town, Danzig, the British themselves thought should be restored to Germany. Result: a Hitler-Stalin Pact and a six-year war that left scores of millions dead, Europe in ruins, the British empire bankrupt and breaking, 10 European nations under the barbaric rule of Joseph Stalin and half a century of Cold War. Had there been no war guarantee to Poland, there might have been no war, no Nazi invasion of Western Europe and no Holocaust.

Now, hold on a minute, chum. You’re honestly trying to tell me that if England had not opposed the invasion of Poland by the Germans, Hitler would have been pleased as punch never to invade France or Belgium?

Sorry, I do not buy that at all. His was the “Third Reich” - called so because he saw his government as the successor to Rome, then to the Holy Roman Empire (founded by Charlemagne), and finally himself. All of these empires included France.

Besides, wasn’t Chamberlain still in charge, making that call?

He makes some thought provoking points about where the West began a “moral decline”, but doesn’t do a very good job of speculating where the West would have ended up if it had sued for peace with the likes of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.  It’s questions like these that make me doubt the validity of the whole argument.

Quebeckers are not better than anybody but they are individuals. Demanding patriotism is not my style but I enjoy seeing people celebrate their origins and their community. This Bouchard-Taylor recommendation would lead to the demise of an exciting aspect of North American culture.

It seems like Falardeau-Poulin were able to see this coming more than twenty-five years ago:

ELVIS GRATTON : Moi je suis un Canadien québécois, un Français canadien-français… Un Américain du Nord français, un francophone québécois canadien… Un Québécois d’expression canadienne –française française. On est des Canadiens américains francophones d’Amérique du Nord… Des Franco-québécois…

I hope Quebeckers do not get sucked into the trap of political correctness.

I’m glad to see the Liberals are going to the fringes again with their plans (Ontario Health Minister and notoriously dogmatic homosexual activist George Smitherman bragged about how this would only affect about a dozen people per year) since it will allow us Conservatives the opportunity to point out the folly to a health care system which on paper is completely financed by the government but in reality is only as good as the government decides to make it. On the provincial level, it would be hard for Dalton McGuinty to justify how he can allow thousands in the province to go through life with debilitating back pains or limited eye sight but hey, at least Fred is happy with that new figure we bought him when we dressed him up and called him Sally! Well, at least it would be if there was actually an opponent out there who wasn’t a complete pushover or leading a party with even less hope of winning the top prize than the Leafs.

All of which makes one happy to see our national government contains MPs who are willing to go to bat for us average Ontarians whose self-esteem issues are generally limited to the names our parents gave us and foregoing extremely expensive cosmetic surgeries for a shopping trip on the weekend. It’s nice to know that somebody out there still get the notion that “public” health care is supposed to cover more than one out of every one million people in this province!

It’s not the concept of rights that conservatives like myself hate; in fact, the United States — a country many of us neo-cons look to favorably — had natural rights embedded in its system far earlier in that country’s history. Rather, what bothers us the most with our rights is that they are so ambiguous and mailable; so much to the point that the courts could actually use the wording of the Charter’s introduction to justify locking up all Italian-Canadians…or rule just about any other reality into being just by a pronouncement. What good are rights if you can’t be certain that they won’t be written out of the Constitution 20 years from now when social culture shifts a tad, or, as today’s ruling demonstrates, the justice system we all depend on for stability is no longer in vogue over on the real estate west of Parliament Hill?

The credibility of today’s ruling isn’t also helped by the strong dissenting opinion of four of the court’s nine sovereigns. Strong language was used by Justice Rothstein in writing on the dissenting opinion, giving hope that this ruling could be overturned with a modest change in the line-up of court judges. Again, even the most partisan individual has to acknowledge that possibility and by extension, that rights are only as good as the ideologues in high courts who defend them!

Unfortunately, any change that may come down the road won’t come soon enough for the victims of violent crimes, or their families, who go on to see their perpetrators go on to receive a Happy Meal sentence, even when the crimes they commit are anything but a “diminished moral blameworthiness” act, as the court would have you believe!

As a Christian, I won’t ever own the game and highly doubt whether I’ll ever play a friend’s copy, although GTA IV did strike up some curiosity last week when speaking to one of my gaming friends who holds no allegiances to God but is pretty observant. He mentioned that the game, with fancy next-gen graphics and a deeper, longer story was different than its predecessors since, in this new, more detailed version, the wounds you inflicted were actually graphic and not fuzzy, pixilated renditions; the game code was more realistic so that people didn’t just keel over and die but actually begged for their lives, cried out in agony and added a sense of victimhood that never existed before; and the game was more open-box (a challenge given the freedom this game gave you before) where as the anti-hero, you are now charged with making moral decisions as you go about your life of crime and immorality.

Yesterday, while visiting another friend, I got a chance to see the game in action by watching a mission through which the hero, Neco, was sent to kill the biker-boyfriend of the mob boss’s daughter. The mob boss, my other friend observed while we were chatting, was messed up — there was a strong correlation between his drug habits and the deteriorating relationships he had with friends, family and *business colleagues*. Later on, during online mode, the game spit out “player 1 2nd amendmented player 2″ after the former shot and killed the latter in an airport. It seemed to me like the rumours of hidden messages in this game were true, even to the point where I now wouldn’t be surprised if I was told that Nico could get STDs from some of his dating activities that take place in the game (and which caused the infamous “Hot Coffee” affair in the last GTA game). Could it be that publisher Rockstar games is actually trying to explain to young and impressionable gamers that bad choices in life have consequences?

While it’s still a little premature to say, it might also be suggested that just by striving to give gamers that more realistic experience — right down to going to a bar to play pool — Rockstar is inadvertently making its games so life-like that the ugly side of crime, promiscuity and general ungodliness are all seeping out of the woodwork. If it is this intense, the publisher of GTA IV might have also found a way to reach out to a demographic law enforcement, governments and churches have struggled decades to make contact with. Ironically, Rockstar’s realism might just have the unintended consequences of making the acronym GTA a cultural fossil, given enough upgrades to gaming hardware.

Rae was angered by the generalization for which he says he sees no basis in fact.

-Toronto Star, Saturday May 10, 2008

That quote, and that link, refer to a story by Toronto Star reporter Tonda MacCharles today that suggests that Prime Minister Harper is wrongfully smearing the opposition with an anti-semitic brush. Rae’s charge is quite simply not true, which isn’t shocking to Ontarians who remember his expert opinions on the affairs of government nearly 20 years ago. However, Tonda MacCharles, a journalist, is not presenting a full picture of the situation in her write up and all it takes is a quick Google search to prove it. That’s right! Three MPs, including Bloc MP Giles Duceppe and Montreal Liberal Dennis Coderre marched alongside Hezbollah flags in downtown Montreal back in the summer of 2006 when the Israeli-Lebanon strike was going on those two years ago. The three MPs never publicly denounced their actions and as public representatives, ignored the due diligence that they are expected to practice as such office holders.

That is because Hezbollah is a radical and dangerous group that wants nothing more than they physical obliteration of Israel and all Jews in the world. That’s the sort of allies that the three MPs above-mentioned had on that summer day two years ago and that is why the Prime Minister is accurate in asserting

Canada, under this government, is never going to cater to that kind of opinion. You know, I am disturbed that there are some elements in our political system; there are even some members of Parliament – we saw during a confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah a couple of years back – some that were willing to cater to that kind of opinion.*

So in other words, the Montreal rally was exactly what the Prime Minister was referring to, lest the opposition now suggest that his “blanket statement” could imply other anti-semitic occasions that opposition members indulged in (a Freudian slip, if it comes?). It will come too though as the Montreal event was pretty cut and dry, something that even the most hardened partisan should see if they simply put the shoe on the other foot and tried to imagine Conservatives marching alongside someone holding a “God hates fags” sign…hey, even having an MP holding hands with somebody down the street would even be fair game I guess!

So are the Liberal and Bloc caucuses full of raving “drive ‘em into the sea” anti-semites? Hardly. Are their numbers, however, including those who give legitimacy to an organization that deserves to be destroyed and at the same time associating themselves with a toxic philosophy that the civilized world should not entertain? Absolutely!

*-emphasis added

So why is everybody focusing on what Hilary will do right now? Well, the cultural side of me likes to think that she’s America’s version of “nobody’s baby”, Shelia Copps; the woman who was able to turn some of the cogs behind the scenes for a while but got shafted when she went for the brass ring herself. In other words, it’s just melodrama right now. Don’t expect Barack Obama to draw too much attention to himself though; doing so will only expediate those tough questions that will eventually come to the eventual Democratic nominee and the man who built his entire campaign around “Yes, we can!” doesn’t come across as much of a policy wonk.

Clinton, for her part, is now just like the NDP; incapable of winning the top prize, guaranteed third place, but still naive enough to think there’s still a shot that she’ll drag down her closest neighbour. How the media doesn’t know or, if they do know, act on this is no longer in the realm of good journalism. It’s Barrack, not Hillary, whose opinions will be debated in the fall; she’s just a sad sideshow now.

Of course, the respectful thing for Clinton to do right now would be to drop out of the race, sparing the world from more of her sob story. She won’t do that though, since she was in it for blood from the get-go, trying to finally establish her decades-long goal of becoming the first three-term president since FDR. If she can’t have the cake, no one in the Democratic Party can, and from here until August, she will be a loadstone around Obama’s neck, dragging him down long enough and far enough to secure a McCain victory in November. If she pulls it off gracefully, something as doubtful as her becoming the 44th President, she gets another chance in 2012; if she fails to make a difference and Obama wins, she won’t have her next shot till 2016. The choice is pretty obvious when you consider the ego of the Senator from New York.

It’s Obama’s story that is really the more important issue right now though. Surely his advisors must be drafting up who his running mate will be already. They can’t and won’t go with Clinton; she’s not a very good second fiddle as I just mentioned. The race has been very divisive though and this is a major problem for Obama. He’ll have to secure a major Clinton supporter whose personality and record would naturally add to the ticket but also symbolize an olive branch to the Clinton faction. The real story also is that while Obama will win the nod, and has performed well over the past year, he is still only running a demographic campaign that is tailored to the Democratic Party — and even at that, he’s only winning within 10% in most of his victories. Break down the numbers further and you begin to see that he’ll definately lock down the black vote come the fall, but then, when hasn’t the Democrat?

Furthermore, his message of hope is only a one-trick pony, good enough to get like-minded people to give him an initial consideration. What happens when he tries to appeal to independents and soft Republicans? What happens as well when his message isn’t reinforced by a primary adversary who practically parrots every left-wing note he sings, but is challenged and attacked by an ideological opposite like McCain? While the Obama campaign has won the battle against Clinton, it really hasn’t demonstrated that it is capable of delivering the war, and that’s why there is such uneasiness in the many quarters of the Democratic Party about his candidacy.

This week’s results aren’t important because of what the Democrats are doing, but what the Republicans aren’t. If the Dems want to follow through on that desire to retake the White House after eight years of GOP control — something history gives them the advantage for — then they’re going to have to smarten up and soon. Personally, as a political observer, I know that Clinton would be a more formidable foe than Obama. Yes, she’s polarizing, screechy, and egocentric, but she can also stand her ground in a debate. Obama? He’s just riding the outsider’s wave right now and when he moves onto the next round, the fact that nothing’s really happened now will come back to haunt him. That’s because the silence you hear is really the GOP, watching, waiting, and taking notes; they’re effective under pressure and the Democrats have been kind enough to spare them three extra months they didn’t need but will aptly use. As soon as the convention ends, if not sooner, the tanks’ll roll out. And that’s why Obama might be better off shifting attention from Clinton after all!

In California the Salvation Army was forced to close down several inner city missions because officials refused to sign a document approving of homosexuality. The destitute suffered terribly as a consequence. In Britain the Roman Catholic church similarly was obliged to shut the doors of its adoption agency.

Aside from also speaking about our government-imposed unhealthy relationship between employees and employers, Coren got me thinking by phrasing the incident that sparked this whole thing in the way he did:

One employee announced to colleagues that she was a lesbian and began discussing her sexuality. Eventually she was let go. She complained to the Human Rights Commission, which fined Christian Horizons and demanded the change. Demanded, in fact, that they not be Christian.

I hadn’t considered it until reading Coren’s column, but what if we flipped this around and an employee started sharing their Christian faith with colleagues? I doubt it would end up before a HRC. And even if we buy into the secularist axiom that homosexuals are born wired to be homophilic (one that, like all such axioms on fetal tissue, the origins of life and the universe, and climate change conveniently lacks that indisputable proof that axioms usually come with), can the state successfully argue that a believing Christian isn’t just as equally inseparable from their faith and what it makes him or her? Think of the parallels: some people in churches leave to join other religions, and some homosexuals realize they just aren’t homosexuals any longer; both groups claim that their respective affiliations colour everything they do; and both groups have their affiliations protected under the current legal community’s consensus.

It’s an interesting situation: one where a group tasked with going out into all the world to spread their Good News has their constitutionally recognized right to do so repressed, while another had beneficial rights literally penciled into the highest document of the land is allowed to ignore the acronym every employee should know: NSFW (Not Safe For Work). It wasn’t the lesbian woman’s decision to become a lesbian that got her fired, it was her insistence on preaching the news to the rest of her co-workers that did. Curious that, when any Christian who pulled a similar stunt would be out by 3pm, box of belongings in hand. To use Coren’s wording, a sane nation would actually follow it’s own laws and both groups would be able to share away but that would also presume that groups like HRCs would be under the law too, now wouldn’t it?

Oh, and just regarding the actual laws surrounding this whole issue, Andrew had it covered last week.

So when it comes to the case of Waterloo region’s Christian Horizons, the first thing that we should keep in mind is that the government came to them first, not the other way around. If the government didn’t like the way that the outwardly Christian organization did business, or specifically how it hired it’s employees, it shouldn’t have agreed to whatever contracts were set up with CH — after all, with a name like Christian Horizons, it’s not like they were hiding a secret agenda or anything! Now we can debate on whether the government has any business funding any philosophically or ethically-biased group (it’s certainly hard not to, and even liberal atheism has certainly gotten its share through causes like the Court Challenges Programme), but we have to start here with the understanding that the government of the day entered into a deal with CH knowing, or responsible for knowing full well that the organization was guided by divine principles; in the private sector, if you partner up with another company and then expect a change, not only do you become a laughing stalk but chances are you’ll also see your business deteriorate soon afterwards. What the crowd who cites CH’s government funding are trying to do is bad business and bad manners, period.

Next, as far as employment laws are concerned, I have to admit that it’s no surprise that John Tory has once again demonstrated that his lust to win seats in Toronto trumps all common sense and principle, not to mention the desire to hang onto that rural rump that his party currently possesses in the legislature. If a company decides to abide under Charter-protected freedoms of religion as it conducts its business, what right does the state have to come in and impose its own morality. If what the company does is bad practice, won’t its reputation get around and the court of public opinion weed out any unwarranted behaviours? Who would want to buy from a reseller who refuses to hire women when they know full-well that a boycott could be right around the corner? Likewise, we expect Christian organizations, Muslim centres and urbane companies to all hire and work according to what their respective entities stand for. If the public tolerates it through their business practices, so what? Or are we actually, finally brave enough to admit that this is just an attempt to impose state-sanctioned atheist secularism into every aspect of society? I didn’t think so.

Much of this will matter very little though as we will once again see a rip-roaring battle ensue where the God-haters and religiophobes of our society once again rise us to defend a separation of church and state concept they barely understand and always reinvent to suite the flavour of the day. Nowhere will be hear of the 500+ years of jurisprudence that has allowed Christian organizations to serve the public good over that period of time and gave Canada, in particular, such bedrock foundations as the Sisters of St. Joseph, the YMCA or Christian Horizions — all of which have, by a desire to serve a higher calling, given us cheaper, wholesome and quality social services than we would’ve had if we just had the state do it all itself from the beginning. Certainly there will not be a mention of that. Of course, once the crusading secularists have weeded out every vestige of Christian presence in our society, who will be left to do all the things that government is too incompetent to do properly and the rest of us are too selfish to do willingly?

While the reasons for the union, essentially a private organization unaccountable to voters, to reject such a honey of deal remains unclear at this time, it might be time to eulogize this sort of hostage-victim relationship that the transit workers have enjoyed with the city over the last few decades since it’ll never be sweeter than this again. Combined with an illegal strike in 2006, today’s sudden cancellation of service will likely mark a turn in already sour public temperament after the aforementioned week of learning from the media just how much they had to empty the cupboard this time to appease the already well-compensated workers. As a general rule, you don’t come back to the kid you just stole lunch money again for another sucker punch indulgence. That’s exactly what the TTC has done here, prompting both Comrade Miller and a formerly reluctant Dalton McGuinty to reach a deal legislating back-to-work orders, on top of considering a further provision making the TTC essential service. If that last part is successful (and it should be since paying our taxes to public unions is also an essential service), the TTC will have lost most of the ridiculous bargaining powers it used to hold the 2 million-plus city at bay. The threats of literally shutting down the city will evaporate over night and Toronto might actually be able to keep new contract raises under the rate of inflation.

If, on the other hand, the TTC fights back and takes a page from the teachers unions’ during the Bill Davis years in the 1970s, we’ll enter into an ugly, painful, but necessary stage where the public’s outrage with an out of control union will flare up so quickly that we might actually begin to see private transportation grow to a significant level of business. Fleets of shuttle cars, taxis and other creative means of moving people would remove any necessity for the TTC, which would be relegated to a poor cousin dependent on government honey for survival, and much akin to the CBC today. We might see a Mike Harris-type Premier come along and ask why the TTC’s subway service just couldn’t be privatized like the 407 was nine years ago, since commuters already pay for the TTC as it is.

In short, the TTC is about to be de-clawed, and if it shows any teeth because of the procedure, it might find itself further surgically altered. The TTC’s literally putting all it’s stakes on the line today though. Enjoy the nice Saturday weather and smugness today though, for tomorrow you find out that you’ll get more than you bargained for!

UPDATE: Views from Joanne and Tony, with more to follow I’m sure!

Today’s events have given me that something, as a couple of friends and I hopped in my car and spent the day (fittingly “Earth Day”) traveling 2.5 hours to Buffalo to see the movie because the powers that be here in Canada feel us Canucks are too fragile to be introduced to dangerous, untested ideas that aren’t directly from former Democratic VPs or Michael Moore. It was a fine day with pristine weather, and as much as Buffalo isn’t exactly the Emerald City, it also has a certain charm for me dating back to frequent trips with my grandparents during the Reagan/Bush Sr. eras. Plus, entering the States, you feel that while people aren’t as polished, but they (be they Democrats or Republicans) are more sincere and rooted in their national values.

Regarding the Expelled movie, I start off with what I was going to suggest earlier this week had a post actually emerged: it is not about destroying evolution nor was that the purpose (see the video clip for more verification). Instead, the Darwinists, who are so scared about what this movie could do in the court of public opinion that they even attack a small-fry blogger in Ontario for merely showing interest in this movie, have failed to address the question this movie raise on why scientists (those with PhDs and impressive resumes) who discuss Intelligent Design are ostracized. Science is man’s study of nature and being a human construct is prone to faulty theories and conclusions; just as the ancients observed the universe revolving around the Earth, or the enlightenment folks developed sophisticated alchemy charts to explain compounds, so too have many scientists throughout many centuries observed, but come to the wrong conclusions because of their perspectives. Even Einstein’s speed of light barrier is now being treated as a special case these days and that mathematically-postulated equation was only invented within the last century. From a political perspective, I have to warn the Darwinian forces that continuing to ignore the argument that Expelled makes only risks their side’s own peril. Doing so only reinforces the statement Ben Stein has made that Darwinian scientists are not interested in the continuous defence of their conclusions that has been and should be inherent to the work of science.

Next, on the appearances in the movie, I noticed a striking difference between PZ Myers and his buddy, Richard Dawkins. Myers, who in the movie gushes about the day when God is marginalized in our society despite the recognition of North America’s founding fathers (not to mention even the UN’s approval…) of the freedom of religious beliefs (and not just on the weekend PZ!) was far more confident in his opinions, whereas Dawkins, who wrote “The God Delusion” was surprisingly stuttery and uncertain as he spoke. Being a political animal who specializes in electronic media, I did pay careful attention to see when cuts were made in the scene (which could suggest editing and misleading question-answer sets) and at the end of the movie when Dawkins was being interviewed with Stein one-on-one, these cuts did not exist in a way that could’ve edited the detailed answer that Dawkins gave — namely that he could see the possibility of aliens seeding the Earth via some sort of ID that they developed. In other words, Dawkins agreed on camera that ID could have merit…but as long as we’re not including God in the equation. A rather meta-physical assessment for a biology professor to make, yes, but he also failed to explain how the A* I discussed a few weeks ago came into being (remember, nothing + nothing != something!). I would also note that nothing that any of the Darwinists said in the movie, when taken at face value, could be taken out of context; one guy actually suggested that molecules attached themselves to crystals and *poof*, we had life on Earth — you just can’t splice that kind of stuff!

The movie also did deal with the Hitler-Darwin connection, admitting that not every Darwinist will become a Nazi, but suggesting that Darwinism does lend itself nicely to eugenics and the bloodbath that has been many atheistic regimes throughout the 20th century (see current news on China for more details…). Could the Darwinists counter this claim? I don’t know, but that’s only because they haven’t seriously tried yet except to collectively say “nuh-uh”!

Ultimately though, the movie sets up a dangerous potential for those who follow the status quo. If the movie does well and becomes as recognized as Bowling for Columbine did years ago, it will either force the Darwinists to adapt to a new environment wherein they actually offer a credible rebuttal to ID or, poetically, are cast off into the great waste-bin of historical movements no longer among us. This will include a healthy debate with the scientists who openly challenge the doctrine of Darwinian evolution. It will also mean contending with the large number of scientists, teachers and faculty who, though afraid for their careers now, will down the road get the protection of tenure and management, thus bringing a delayed, but more potent threat to Darwinian group-think. Who’ll win in the end? Well, it’s all about the survival of the fittest, right?

With that said though, I think that the Harper government, keen to keep itself from acting too rational on matters dealing with our southern neighbours, lest our nation’s favourite case of racism bloom along with the other spring offerings, might have come to the right conclusion on this one, even if they still don’t have a good reason for why they did it in the first place. Consider, if you will, the wider context of this sale. Yes this was a sale between two willing organizations that was perfectly legal within the context of business and contract law and in appearances it appeared very free-trade and amicable for all parties. However, the aerospace industry and its derivatives, including satellites, is notoriously regulated the western governments involved. For MDA, this means that it cannot compete for U.S. business because U.S. law requires that contracts are rewarded exclusively to U.S. firms. In fact, if you look at why MDA wanted this deal so badly, it’s precisely because of this law — it would’ve allowed the company to compete in the massively larger, and far more lucrative U.S. ocean instead of being concealed within its present Canadian fishbowl. Not that we’re much better, screaming how any foreign interaction would be an immediate compromise to our sovereignty and national security.

At the end of the day though, if we’re going to play nice and laissez-faire, the least we owe to ourselves is to expect the same attitudes in return. NAFTA would’ve never worked for Canada if it was all give and no take. It’s also why North America’s flirtation with China is ultimately doomed in the long run as well. As soon as they actually get an economy over there, do you think the Chinese government’ll actually welcome the free flow of wealth out of its country, given the way it handles every other non-expedient situation it encounters right now? This sort of vigilance might have also given our local auto industries a fighting chance, if the union python wasn’t helping Japanese protectionism to choke it to death!

So in retrospect, I think that even conservatives will look back on the Prentice decision as one that was beneficial for a Canadian firm. Not that the man actually deserves any credit, given his willingness to invent guilt-by-association taxes to appease record labels and other blunders that indicate that Jim Prentice clearly doesn’t *get* how economies work! Of course, lost in the translation during this whole situation was the question of how MDA got into its mess in the first place; if Prentice were wise, he’d be spending the upcoming weeks with his American counterpart on that one…

But at the same time, Christianity - what it means, what it claims, and how it affects those who follow Jesus - is big news too.  Many people who discuss religious extremism like to compare radical Islam to fundamental Christianity.  But is this a fair comparison?  Is it appropriate for TV shows like Law and Order to product episodes that paint an extremist Christian group stoning people as a conceivable reality?  These types of questions cannot be answered without an understanding of what religions teach and how they differ.

Sadly, religious literacy is becoming rarer and rarer in the 21st Century.  Unless you are an active follower of this or that religion, you may have no idea what they actually believe and how that affects them.  It used to be that Universities, as part of their goal of a “well-rounded” education, would make mandatory comparative religion courses.  Few now do.  Even the options are scarce.  It also used to be that the average citizen knew what the Bible said.  They knew the content, they had memorized passages, they knew the stories, they knew the characters, their virtues and their failings.  They may not have been followers of Christianity, but they knew what it was about.  I am a part of the generation that came after.  I didn’t even know that King Solomon was a Biblical character until I was 16 years old.  I knew the name Jesus, but I couldn’t have named any of his 12 followers.  I had heard the names, Hezekiah, Ezekiel, and Jehosaphat, but I thought they came from tales of the Old West, not from the Kingdom of Israel ca. 1200 BC.

People think they know what Christianity is and stands for, but they know it second, or third hand.  It is something their parents, or grandparents believe, and that’s because they’re old and stuck in their ways.  They’ve probably never even asked them what their faith means to them or why they believe it.  However, now more than ever, a knowledge of what people believe and why they believe it is critical.  What makes today’s situation so concerning for many is that the public thinks they know what Christianity is about, and so makes judgements (incidentally, the exact same judgements they rail against from “Christians” who are thought to be “judgemental”) based on erroneous information or simple ignorance.  If people acknowledged their ignorance, the problem wouldn’t be so bad.  It’s the fact that people think they know but don’t that can and will lead to bigger and bigger problems and conflicts between those who are religious and those who are not.

The reality is, for those many who are religious - whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist, their faith doesn’t just play a part in their life, it defines their life.  Their religion informs not only their daily decisions but also governs what issues in the public sphere are important to them.  At first glance, this could look extreme, but take a step back.  What do you believe?  Everyone believes in something.  If you don’t believe in a God or Gods, then you are your own god.  Everything you do, everything you consider important stems from your belief in yourself as the primary purpose and priority in your life.  This is not extremism.  This is internal consistency.  To condemn another for having consistency with their faith is to condemn yourself and your own consistency with what you believe in to be important.

This is a very important concept.  People who are religious have every right both to express their faith informed convictions in public and to hold public office.  To deny them such is to discriminate against people by religion, which is expressly forbidden by the very tenets of freedom this nation was founded upon.  Yet, we have seen in the ridicule of Stockwell Day’s leadership campaign and the more subtle statements made against many politicians of faith in recent elections, that there is an undercurrent of opposition and censorship against those who exercise these fundamental freedoms.   An opinion is an opinion, and it should be irrelevant whether the opinion was arrived at via reading the Bible or via reading Rene Descartes.

Which leads me to my last point.  Debate surrounding abortion, and also surrounding the gay marriage issue has often been framed by leftist writers and speakers as being about the “religious” trying to impose “their morality” on “the rest of us”.  This is a false assertion because there is no such thing as a faith-neutral political position.  We are all informed by our beliefs, and so our political positions all have equal weight.  There are many people who do not believe in the God of the Jews or the God of the Christians or the God of Islam, who were and are opposed to gay marriage, or abortion for that matter.  It is ludicrous to suggest that all arguments against those two issues, or any other issue for that matter, are only founded upon the principle of “imposing your religious belief” on people.

This is not to say that there aren’t people who are Christians, or Jews, or Muslims (I should have said earlier, these are not meant to be taken as an exhaustive list, but just as examples) who seek to impose their morality on everyone.  Sadly it is true that there are traditions in Christianity who have in the past sought to implement “Christendom” (and most Muslims today still appear to ascribe to the belief that Islamic Law or Sharia Law should be the law of all lands).  I believe that this has no place in politics myself.  However, there is a big difference between believing that certain political positions are in fact quantifiably the best for society, and believing it is “God’s Will” to impose certain political positions on everyone regardless of their religion.  The religious have every right to state what they think is best, and vote for what they think is best, regardless of the reason - that is what democracy is all about.

It should also be noted that much of what we here in Canada considers leftist, socialist style government has its foundations not in Marxism but in the social gospel movement of the early 20th Century, where many churches began to support governmental advocacy and service to the poor and the ill.  Previous to this, churches did this work apart from government.  During that period, for the sake of efficiency, advocacy was made to centralize such social programs to prevent redundancy and make it easier on everyone.  Because at the time, church and country were much more synonymous than now, nobody minded giving more in taxes if they didn’t need to give to support the program offered through a church.  The best illustration of this trend is the fact that Tommy Douglas was a baptist preacher.  They believed at that time, that making the government more Christian would make society more Christian - the Christendom idea mentioned above.   The ideals they held of charity and mercy are admirable, but the question about the best means to go about them are political.  Hence, they need to be discussed.

So, what I am trying to say is that while this site is called “The Politic”, I do believe that religion has a place and should have a voice in the political discussion.  We need to make clear for people what is at stake, and also communicate what beliefs are and mean so that the dialogue can be with understanding instead of ignorance.  Discussion is about understanding the other side and finding common ground.  Ruling the other side out of hand simply because your faith is different from theirs only results in alienation, xenophobia and fracturing of the body politic.

It’s the same when it comes to politics. Certain ideas and concepts get repeated over and over, until they become the conventional wisdom. Some of these things can be disproved simply by looking a little, but no matter how untruthful it is, the facts will always be mismangled into an unruly juxtaposition of figures that morphs reality to fit into the “conventional wisdom”.

One of these such fairy tales is thus: The Republicans cannot win in ‘08.

The facts say otherwise. All you have to do is glimpse at a recent Gallup Poll to see that McCain, the Republican nominee-in-waiting, holds a marginal lead over either of the two remaining Dems. While this could very possibly fade once one wins the nomination and memories of the bitter primary battle fades, the fact remains that the decision is far from set in stone. And yet, talk about it in conversation and most people will tell you that George W. ruined any chance the Republicans had at the White House.

Another is that Conservatives have only a slight chance of forming the government here in Canada at any given time. That the left wing is far more powerful, and holds a strangle hold on Canadian politics. While I would have to agree that the left (NDP) and the centre (Liberals) tend to be more powerful combined against the right (Conservatives, PC, Reform, SoCred, etc), you have only to look at history to see that the Liberals are not so dominant when facing a united right. In recent history, they haven’t bested one since Wayne Gretzky’s rookie season.

You can’t just accept the overplayed, conventional wisdom. Even the media can see through it, when they choose to do so.

Elizabeth Eckford, a shy fifteen year old, was the first black woman through the doors of Little Rock Central High School in 1957, one of nine students who represented an early victory in the civil rights movement. Until that day, all of the students in the most prestigious high school in the city were white. Her story is breathtaking and sobering. Read it all.

How sad that the school has reverted today to segregation in the name of progress:

Central High School looks as imposing as ever, but over the past 50 years, its innards have changed unimaginably: the school is now more than half black. It’s all misleading, of course, because Central is really two different schools, separate and unequal, under one roof. The blacks go to different classes, sit on separate sides of the cafeteria, have different, and far lower, levels of performance and expectations.

And it echoes all the way into Toronto of 2007.

It’s amazing what you read when you follow unrelated links over at Kathy’s blog.