The Real Morgentaler Scandal

Four national newspaper chains, a bunch of chatty heads and literally hundreds of blogs and still, we seem to have all missed the boat on this one. Regardless of whether you see the new Order of Canada recipient as a mass-murderer or human rights crusader, the history doesn’t lie: Dr. Henry Morgentaler broke the law of the land, and was charged for it twice (in 1970 and in 1983). While he was acquitted the first time, it took a Supreme Court ruling to spare him from serving his full sentence. Now, before all of you pro-abortionists go ahead and disregard this as an evolution in our sensibilities, the law, or just the abortion lobby’s face-saving abilities, I should remind you to think about what you are endorsing. While the 1980s saw the social pendulum swing your way, the pandora’s box of contextual laws and rights can just as easily favour, say, a “crusader” like James Kopp who trashes our murder laws, but does so in order to stop other murders, or with rogue doctors who ignore the Canada Health Act and charge patients for their services, or companies who have strict hiring practices against gays. Yes, these ideas seem remote right now, but that’s the funny thing about trends — they change. At least if we still had a respect for the rule of law in this land, good intentions would not be an excuse that could be held up in the face of a blatant disrespect and disregard for the tools through which our society keeps its stability. I’m not even saying that Morgentaler is necessarily morally wrong just for breaking the law (although I personally believe he is), but rather that it’s a pretty sad day when the government rewards one of its citizens for so publicly snubbing it. Buller?

Dion to Saskatchewan: Down Boy!

Let’s see.  For the first time in decades, Saskatchewan elects a non-leftist government.

Then they win a Grey Cup for the first time in decades.

Strangely coincidentally, their economy begins to ride a wave of prosperity started in Alberta.  For the first time in decades, Saskatchewan experiences positive population growth.

…and then came Stephane Dion.

Telling Libertarians By the Company They Keep in Social Policy Circles

After last week’s stunning juxtaposition of the Prime Minister apologizing to Indian children who were sent to denomination-assisted government education facilities in which their human rights were terribly abused while a “human rights tribunal” essentially made a 2000 year-old religion illegal, and with this week’s news that the senate has now approved a bill which would take a way the God-given rights of parents to discipline their children, it could be quite easy to write on how these latest attempts by secularists to conform all of us in their image will only lead to disaster and the demolition of the free state of Canada that we all knew and loved. However, I think tonight it would be more constructive to examine a group that has helped to make this possible and which still has the power to reverse the trends if they were to reanalyze their thinking.

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!

Stephane Dion’s Much Ado About Carbon

If the quote-unquote party insiders that have been talking to the Globe and Mail are to be believed, then tomorrow’s announcement by Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion will almost certainly confirm that the NDP is going to rival its 1984 record seat count and the Conservatives are heading for a nice, cushy majority government soon. Think of it this way, the carbon “shift” won’t tax gas users, tax low-income Canadians or tax Canadians who depend on fuel for their livelihood (something Big Oil TM can argue a strong case about, by the way!). Consider as well that Dion is going out of his way to assure us that the tax cuts (a measly 10%, max, when you consider how this is going to hurt our economy) that he is proposing to offset the carbon tax are going to monitored for their parity day and night.

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!

BC NDP Fighting the Carbon Tax

This is one of those moments where I can’t decide whether I am witnessing principled opposition or crass opportunism.

Carole James is launching an “Axe the Tax” campaign, attempting to mobilize strong grassroots opposition to the gas tax portion of Gordon Campbell’s greenhouse fighting initiatives.  Initially, it will result in a 2.4 cent per liter gas tax, which is going to rise over time.

Of course, the clarion call of any government introducing a new tax is “it is revenue neutral!”  Of course.  This year.  But in a couple of years, when you need the revenues, that will end.  Because, as always in Canada, there is no legal enforcement mechanism that requires revenues from certain taxes to be dedicated to specific expenditures.  Thus, there is never a guarantee that taxes will stay dedicated to what their proponents say they will be.

But I digress.  The NDP leader is fighting like crazy to keep the Green Party from becoming a legitimate force in provincial politics.  As the strength of the unions begin to wane from the rise of oil and gas (which pays so much in general, they hardly ever have unions) and the descent of the forestry industry, the NDP are seeking to find a new foothold.  They had it in the environmentalist left, but with the Green Party beginning to gain momentum, that is slipping.

Then came Campbell’s green package a few months ago.  In finest political tradition, a ruling party steals the platform right out from under their opponents.  If they take the green path, the Green Party and the NDP have no stick to beat them with.  They were right.  It has forced Carole James to do the unthinkable - engage in a populist ground war against the very people she was courting to buttress NDP support - the uncommitted Green people.  How is she going to at once maintain her party’s environmental policies while fighting against a “carbon tax”?

I agree it must be done.  As opposition leader, this is what she is getting paid to do.  This is a potentially very divisive issue and could very well help her party’s fortunes if played right.  In the vast wilderness that encompasses 9/10ths of this province, there is no greener option than the gas guzzling pickups that ride the gravel roads of rural BC.  Have you seen the axles on the “green” 4×4s?  They are made of pipecleaners!  They may be fine for city slickers who need them to go berry picking in the summer a couple of times, but when you face the winter, the potholes, the ploughs, the washouts, etc. that interior residents face much more routinely, you need something with meat - and that burns gas.

Needless to say, higher gas prices don’t sell well where there isn’t a regular bus route.  And rural citizens generally don’t vote NDP (with the exception of unionized millworkers, who are probably pretty ticked right now as they are all laid off with mill closures).  But if they were told that the NDP were standing up for the gas they have to pour into their tanks, well they may indeed change their tune.

My question is how much the NDP will lose to the Green Party or the Liberals in urban BC to gain the rural gas tax haters?

It’s Just Getting Too Easy To Call Warren Kinsella On His Errors

I’m not sure what sort of scope Warren took when he made these comments,

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.

What Does Flaherty have to do with GM’s Factory Closure?

Apparently,

Citing Flaherty’s remark in February that companies would not want to invest in Ontario because of provincial business taxes, Dion demanded Prime Minister Stephen Harper put someone else in that portfolio.

I had to read down through 2/3 of the article to find that offhand reference as to the basis for firing the Minister of Finance.

Clearly he’s driven the country’s economy into the toilet, daring to speak the truth about high business taxes in Ontario.

Meanwhile, the man who so clearly deserves to be fired is busy pointing out a massive $250 million dollar fund available to encourage GM to redevelop the assembly plant to produce vehicles other than the increasingly shunned large SUV’s that they produced before.

I don’t even get why this is even a Federal issue.  Isn’t it more of a Provincial responsibility?  I don’t recall anyone going to bat federally when all the Skeena Cellulose mills on the Central Coast of BC were going belly up.  I don’t seem to remember any federal leader standing up for other shutdowns of lumber mills, and then shipping the raw timber south of the border for processing.

But somehow Ontario is special.  Ontario deserves to have industries propped up for employment with federal subsidies.

Talk about pandering for votes: Dion for demanding heads to roll on account of economic conditions beyond the control of any level of Canadian government, and Flaherty for scrambling to prop up said car factory, when he doesn’t have anything to say about manufacturing in other provinces.

The J Peterman Catalogue Of Liberals

Reading Garth Turner’s seven verbose paragraphs this week, I can’t help but reminded of the good old run that Seinfeld had with the infamous magazine. The Halton MP gives a good stab at trying to sell Stephane Dion as a tactical and principled man while directly confusing the Liberal leader’s cowardly display last night that a $800,000 bill that is still being passed around the table explains nicely with that of an opposition leader. Maybe Turner has his next career made for him after the voters deliver a nice firm message to him and his Liberal buddies for not showing up for work but still laying claim to their paychecks!

When Rights Aren’t Rights Anymore…

On the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean this past week the world was introduced to two different debates over the role that human rights play in our society. Over in Europe, the European Court of Human Rights has agreed to hear the case of a British woman who wants to adopt a 26-year old chimp and would require the homonid to legally be declared a human being in order to do so. In essence, this is the latest volley fired off in Europe by a movement that wants to extend human rights to other species. More locally, the York University Federation of Students (YFS) passed a motion that would ban all non-religious clubs from holding pro-life views on campus. When asked to justify her decision, motion sponsor Gilary Massa responded by saying that every group against abortion was “sexist” and should be suppressed for going against our long-held norm (leave it to a 20-year old to think that a decision made in 1988 is long held…). The two might not seem very related, but they are, and are in fact the latest example of how the secularist, anti-family agenda that Western nations have been engaging in over the past 50 years is starting to chew itself up.

First, to understand the blatant hypocrasy and moral inconsistency (or “intellectual dishonesty”, as our seculatarian friends like to say) of the YFS, you need not read the pages of the National Post, Michael Coren’s column, or the Blogging Tories; just head on over to the Federation’s website, where a big red button titled “Denial of Free Speech at McMaster” which links to this — a letter attacking McMaster for banning “Israel Apartheid Week”. That’s right, the YFS which is making national headlines this month for trying to oppress diverse views on its campus, was the same group that was also making headlines back in March for vigorously defending a campaign that wasn’t just about free speech but was also known for a history of violence and harassment of an prominent ethnic group on campus.

This inconsistency might go a long way to explain why, in the months and years ahead, when Canada starts to examine whether a primitive primate can “argue” for human rights, the YFS will probably be there, strongly backing the cause and at the same time oppressing groups which speak out for unborn humans which can also not speak in a court of law but can, unlike chimps, meet the biological argument for species validation in that all non-genetically defective fetuses have the capability of breeding with humans and producing sustainable, fruitful offspring. Save the primates, scourge the people, as it were. Don’t expect facts to get in the way of York’s student leaders or their cheerleaders on The Left as the entire abortion argument for them has long been one about passion and emotion, but not much beyond the principle that guilt-free sexual incidents should be an absolute right that trumps all others.

Their argument, founded around the reality that men can walk away from affairs without the risk of pregnancy while women cannot, betrays this in that their natural conclusion is that women should have the freedoms that men do in this regard, instead of examining whether men should have the responsibilities that women do for a pregnancy instead. Nor does the rights and realities of the growing child become a discussion point during this whole debate either. Wouldn’t you expect more from scholars, charged with examining all aspects of the issue at hand?

Update:Steyn’s insight into the future of abortion, and a small tip ‘o’ hat to the York affair…

Global Warming and Vaclav Klaus - Blue Planet in Green Shackles

Here is a snippet of Vaclav Klaus’s presentation of the book “Blue Planet in Green Shackles”, at the National Press Club, in Washington D.C.:

It is in the hands of climatologists and other related scientists who are highly motivated to look in one direction only because a large number of academic careers has evolved around the idea of man-made global warming. It is, further, in the hands of politicians who maximize the number of votes they seek to get from the electorate. It is also - as a consequence of political decisions - in the hands of bureaucrats of national and more often of international institutions who try to maximize their budgets and years of careers as well regardless the costs, truth and rationality. It is in the hands of rent-seeking businesspeople who are - given the existing policies - interested in the amount of subsidies they are receiving and look for all possible ways to escape the for them often merciless, but for the rest of us very positive, general welfare enhancing functioning of free markets. An entire industry has developed around the funds the firms are getting from the government. [Emphasis mine]

Via: http://gayandright.blogspot.com

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