His comments are highly informative to the debate actually.  Some commenters of like mind express their disdain for reproductive outcomes (though they clearly enjoy the process).  It was interesting to read a couple of commenters point out a drawback to pursuing permanent birth control may be an increased likelihood of decreased pleasure - both in the case of the removal of a uterus and in the tying of the vas.

It is common in North American culture to see only the net expense of children, but it shouldn’t be surprising.  Considering only the immediate ramifications of anything is a major downfall of our collective thinking, and is certain to bring about the downfall of our civilization.  Most of the best arguments against the childlessness position are based upon the long term consequences of such decisions.  I will concede that Captain Capitalism’s numbers on the TCO of children are legitimate.  However, there are major rational arguments for childbearing, despite the cost.

Demographics

Steyn makes the point: since we’ve turned to immigration to keep our populations trending upward, we are dealing with higher and higher assimilation costs as the places in the world that have excess populations are more and more foreign to the western style of life.  We are also facing the consequences of cultures and religions that in some cases actively work against the organization of our western free state.  If we don’t have kids, in a few decades our countries will be transformed into states much like where the immigrants are coming from.  It’s not fearmongering - it is just a statement of fact.  We are spending so much time telling people to not change that sooner or later, we will be the ones to change.

A nation is made up of citizens.  If the citizens all (or mostly) opt individually not to reproduce, they sentence themselves to planned obsolescence in 50 or so years.

Services

We live in a socialist state.  We have very expensive social programs that are designed to give everyone the benefits of familial support even if we don’t have any.  Because people don’t need families to help them health-wise, retirement-wise, we aren’t having kids.  We are trusting in government to be there to prop us up and nurse us as we sicken, and we trust government to give us what we need to live out our lives after we cease to be as productive.  Yes, I know most people don’t expect government to literally have the money in the retirement plans once we get old (though if they keep up the immigration and those immigrants don’t change the face and aims of our government there still might be CPP in 40 years), but I have news for even those people: even with a fat RRSP portfolio, you are still trusting in your government to be your sustainer.  The government manages your currency - that which gives value to your RRSP’s.  The government manages your economy - that engine that sustains the value of your RRSP’s.  The government manages the peacefulness of your society - that which keeps you alive and unaccosted by those who would take advantage of you.  If the government fails on any of those fronts (as governments are wont to do), then you have nothing.  All you can hope for is that you can somehow maintain a prescience about impending societal change, and can get out before you lose out.

How likely is the government to let you down?  Well, let’s see.  How many nations in the world have been in existence for more than 50 years?  Now, subtract all those which have faced wars on home soil in the last 50 years.  Now, subtract all those who faced massive natural disasters on a national scale.  Now, subtract all those who have faced massive civil unrest in the last 50 years.  Now subtract all those who have faced massive economic upheaval in the last 50 years.  How many are left?  What are the odds of your country bucking the trend for another 50?  What I am saying is that in the event of any of the above, your investments in paper and banks will avail you next to nothing.  Only human capital will be of any worth in any of those situations.

Genetics

From a strict genetic standpoint, not having kids is stupid.  The lowest rates of reproduction are found in the highest earning, highest educated, highest standard of living brackets.  Therefore the smartest, wealthiest people in society - the ones who contribute most to the society - will not be replaced.  Their children, should they have them, have the greatest statistical chance of success and adding to the value of society.  But they are not.

Increasingly, it is the ones who are least disciplined, the ones who make the most rash choices, or the ones who simply don’t get it are the ones who are reproducing.  Promiscuous sex, young, unwed mothers, young men with no sense of responsibility, dropouts, seem to be the childbearers of today more and more.  I am generalizing - obviously I have a bunch of kids, and I don’t fall into any of the previous, but the percentage of people having kids that do fall into those groups continues to climb societally.  It is a problem that gets worse with each generation - if your mother was an unwed teenager, the odds are much greater that you will be an unwed teenage parent.  Where does that take us societally?  See the Services section above - it will either bankrupt the system or send the country into chaos sooner or later.

Loneliness

Number one on my hit list is still emotional.  It was something my grandfather found out when he moved into a mature living community.  Those gated communities that don’t allow anyone under 65 to live there?  Those ones.  After he moved in, we were over for dinner one night and he told me that despite all the programs and activities organized by senior’s groups and even the residence, the most consistent indicator of happiness in advanced years was kids.  Those with none were sad.  Those with were not.  Those with none had nobody in their lives.  They had fewer visitors.  They had nobody to give to.  They had nobody to receive from.  As society is increasingly mobile, people live farther and farther from siblings - and when you get old they all start dying anyway.  Friends are not as consistent because they move closer to their families and away from you.  In the end, you are alone.  And they uniformly wish they had kids when they were younger.

There are exceptions to the rule, but it is ludicrous to base your future on being the exception.  That’s like taking the financial argument and saying, “well, I don’t need kids because I will win the lottery and I won’t need financial support.”  Yes, you might live out the perfect storm of friendships and retain some into your advanced years.  But the vaast majority won’t.  At the same time, a person with kids may screw them up so bad that they all hate his guts and never want to see him or her again when they are old.  But they most likely won’t.  It takes a lot to alienate family.  A lot.

Ultimately, the way I see it, there’s a lot of things I can’t control.  But one thing I can control is how I raise and treat my kids.  If I love them, they will love me.  Then, no matter what comes, whether new taxes, no taxes, revolution, recession, I’ll have them to count on.  When I focus on giving emotionally to someone else, then I ensure I will have more in the future.  There are only two reasons not to have kids: 1) believing you will fail to raise them properly (and I don’t fault you for thinking that if you come from a rough background, but I would encourage you to believe in yourself - love is really easy to learn); and 2) believing that you will have to give up something for your kids.  It is true - you will.  But if your reason for not having kids is self-interest alone, well, that’s just sad.  A penny clung to does not give you more money.  Emotions wrapped up in yourself never make you happier.  Only investing in others, giving of yourself -  reliably leads to true happiness.  And that’s what kids are really all about.

Days after a major news magazine uncovered a teen pregnancy pact at a Massachusetts high school, parents and school officials struggle to understand the reasons why the girls may have participated in the scheme — and what could have been done to avoid it.

What could be done to avoid it? Well, that depends on who is intervening and when that intervention takes place. From a school nurse’s perspective, I suppose force-feeding contraceptives would probably be the only strategy because clearly these girls wanted to get pregnant.

I have an old-fashioned solution: make girls earn their allowance (cell-phone, movie money, computer privileges, etc.) by baby-sitting their neighbor’s kids. That would be a great preventive measure.

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!

Officials have called the matter to the attention of U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) headquarters in Washington, urging it to prevent any repetition of the incident.

As far as the state is concerned, the main difference solely seems to be administrative:

It is illegal in Virginia for a social worker to sign a parental consent form for an abortion.

The morality of the actions do not seem relevant.

Nobody can possibly know the motives of the people who facilitated this girl’s abortion. All we can do is respond to their actions which, in my opinion, sabotage the Church. I find this whole thing to be demonically appalling and my rage is directed at Catholics. Any and all of the Catholics who knowingly facilitated this horror should be publicly shamed.

I want to re-iterated my recommendation that the Church should stop any partnerships with the state.

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First of all, I do not see sending radiographs to India for an interpretation as a bad thing — particularly when it saves costs. Second, Quebec doctors can do that too. Before selling a final interpretation to a Quebecker, a Quebec doctor can review and certify it no matter who (an Indian technician, for instance) saw it beforehand. Third, maybe Quebec customers want cheap radiographic interpretations from India. Fourth, maybe Quebec customers want cheap radiographs to interpret themselves! They should have those choices.

This Bill 95 entered into the Quebec National Assembly is nothing more than protectionism stifling consumer choice.

As would be expected, people earning $80,000 a year or more are cutting back the least (37 per cent) on daily driving and taking fewest steps (36 per cent) to increase gas mileage in cars.

Conversely, more than two-thirds (69 per cent) of drivers earning less than $20,000 a year said they’re cutting back on daily driving, while 64 per cent were trying to increase gas mileage in their cars.

Meanwhile, two-fifths of drivers in the lower middle income range of $20,000 to $40,000 said they’re more frequently turning to other means of travel than their car - the highest among various income groups.

When they start trying to tell you that high gas prices don’t hurt the poor, remember these statistics.  When they start saying that only the rich will be hurt because they drive hummers, remember this.

Any action by any party to raise gas prices hurts the poor.  Do not let them tell you any different.

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Busy creating a wonderful international family with children in every shade imaginable (an admirable task), I guess she has turned her concern with how to mould her children to looking blindly at the physical signs of genetic variation found in people from different areas of the world.

What - Princess Jasmine not black enough for you?

Believe it or not, it is possible to do this without having Walt Disney’s marketing department involved, Angelina!

I don’t pretend to be perfect as a parent, but I know one thing is for sure - your kids will be as racist as you are, or less. We know black people, Filipino people, Chinese people, Indo-Canadians, etc. When we meet them, we treat them like anyone else. My kids never see us act differently, so they don’t either. I recall just last week, a lady and her two sons came to our church for the first time. They were Indo-Canadians. I wanted to make sure her kids were having a good time, so afterwards I quizzed my 7 year old about the new kid. My son is almost as bad with names as I am so I asked him if he noticed a new boy in his class. I asked him to describe the boy. He told me everything about the boy but no matter what I did I couldn’t get him to volunteer the skin colour even though it was the most obvious difference between himself and the boy. I didn’t teach him that - it just doesn’t register when you have been raised without being told that people are different.

It doesn’t matter if Disney has made a movie about their culture or not. In fact, it is insulting to think that you can’t teach inclusivity without inculcating it into every single media your children interact with.

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.

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…

I say tough luck for the current athletes if they get offended. They may want to think they are separated from the politics — fine — the athletes benefit from state privilege and my taxes go to fund their activities without my choice, mind you. Therefore, their connection to politics is fair game. Without political power, they would not be there and the Olympics may not even exist. If every single Canadian voted to abstain from participating in the Olympics or to even fund the sports, well, sorry! they are out of luck. What the state giveth, the state can taketh away. They should be grateful that they are not competing 25 years ago.

If athletes compete in China, any of them who step on the podium should have the courage to make a real difference like these guys did. Maybe they could just stick their tongues out and take a bow:

TIBETAN SALUTE
In Tibet when one man greets another it goes beyond the mere shaking of hands. A Tibetan bows, extends both hands palms open and sticks out his tongue!

By the way, Matthew was right first.

A few child support orders, all from different ex-wives, enforced by the garnishing of wages.

When you have 4 exes with kids and they all come asking for $1000 a month in child support, you will be destitute.

And it will serve you right for entering into such stupidity.

Ontario already has a program by which people who are on welfare, who are overweight, are given more money for food to support their obesity?

And now they want to give them even more money because and extra $20 isn’t enough?

1.  The treatment fat people need to deal with their fatness because obesity is a health problem, is less food!

2.  Therefore giving them more money to spend on food is like buying heroin for addicts giving a stipend to welfare smokers to support their habit.

3.  If they need more money for food they can work for it.  There are thousands of jobs that people can do that require minimal training and minimal physical activity (thought if they are obese they could probably do with more physical activity, but I am willing to grant that some obese welfare recipients may be obese because of physical problems that inhibit them getting proper exercise).

4.  If someone can’t work and the government is supporting them, then they have agreed to accept that the government will act as their caregiver and steward.  As such, this means that Welfare will act in the interests of the person’s welfare.  Which means they will take such steps as to maintain the person’s optimal health given their situation.  Which means we should not be giving them more money for food when they are already fat!

5.  If a person doesn’t want the government telling them how to eat, then they should quit accepting the government’s money for food and make their own choices about what to, or not to eat!

End rant.  Hat tip to FFoF and Halls of Macadamia.

Their argument: Other letter grades — A, B, C and D — are broken down in increments of 10 from 60 to 100, but there is a 59-point spread between D and F, a gap that can often make it mathematically impossible for some failing students to ever catch up.

“It’s a classic mathematical dilemma: that the students have a six times greater chance of getting an F,” says Douglas Reeves, founder of The Leadership and Learning Center, a Colorado-based educational think tank who has written on the topic. “The statistical tweak of saying the F is now 50 instead of zero is a tiny part of how we can have better grading practices to encourage student performance.”

John Gruber, from Daring Fireball, pretty much sums up my feelings on this topic:

This is so profoundly stupid it’s hard to believe it isn’t from The Onion. That F covers 0-59 doesn’t make it six times more likely that a student will get an F than any other grade, unless test scores are based on random numbers rather than actual performance.

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.

Someone should tell those Asian bankers.

Nobody cares if people are starving as long as we can stave off ferns growing in the Arctic.

Because if the earth were to get warmer, dinosaurs might re-emerge to terrorize the planet, and then we all know what happens then: (besides hungry dinosaurs hunting the polar bear into oblivion faster than ice melt ever could)…

ASTEROIDS AND EXTINCTION!

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?

When this debate first started, I pointed this out to people.  Now, we have the exact case I was thinking of coming before courts in England.  Two sisters, who have lived together for years and years, want to claim same-sex partner rights.

Do they love each other?  Yes.

Are they loyal to each other?  They are blood.  Of course.

Do they share assets?  Yes.

Gee.  They look like a lesbian couple to me.

Oh wait.  They don’t engage in cunnilingus.  They’re out.

This is what I mean.  It is stupid.  Your preferred sex partner or act should not be the basis for governmental rights.  There is something else that should be the criteria.  Most who oppose same-sex marriage and the rights associated with marriage agree that the basis for this should at least be a lifelong agreement that has the potential for progeny.  That these benefits are for the purpose of supporting children.  Yes, technology has changed and improved to the point where good old fashioned coitus isn’t the only way to conceive a child, but it sure is by far the most common.  If you happen to be unfortunate enough that you are infertile, well, most couples I know who are infertile actually do want kids, and would probably adopt or something.  Those that don’t (and there are very very few truly infertile couples who are intent on never raising children)  are no basis for legislation.

It is getting to the point now in society where sex is completely disconnected from marriage.  This is sad, but inevitable in a society which has disconnected sex from procreation.  But here’s the thing: couples who aren’t going to have kids don’t need special benefits!  The benefits are there for people to care for and raise children.  The original impetus behind these benefits and rights are because the government wanted to encourage people to reproduce, and give them the best chance to raise children successfully (ie. as productive, healthy citizens).  At the time, procreation was tied much more tightly to marriage - in thinking about the mores of the people in those days, the fact that someone could have children and not be married, and not receive these benefits was incentive for people to make sure they were married before having kids!  It seems to me it was assumed that the extended family of the parents of that child would have enough interest to influence the parents not to have sex in the first place, or make sure they have united to create the optimal space for raise a child.

Now that those two facts are the case in society (procreation disconnected from marriage, sex disconnected from procreation), the benefits should be strictly limited only to those who are having kids.  And if they are not, then society should not be giving them benefits.  I wonder how much money government would save if they were cut off that way.  I wonder how few debates we would have about marriage then.

My opinion is that the homosexual lobby would never have pursued same sex marriage rights had there not been actual cash and services benefits at stake on the issue.  From the writings I have seen, most homosexuals hate marriage, and have no use for it.  How many marriages have been conducted in Canada for gay couples - that are actually citizens of Canada?  If I recall the news report from last winter, it was a pretty small number.

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?

Just another symptom of a nation that has copped out of caring for its fellow citizens by simply making mental, emotional and psychological problems, a “culture” or a “lifestyle choice“.

Sometimes I despise what Canada has become.

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.

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.

It’s such do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do attitudes that have lead me to find no better term than hypocrite to describe the anything-goes advocates today, and the affair of Tom Lukiwski (Conservative, Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre) is proving to be no different. It doesn’t seem to matter to both the Bloc and the Liberals that the member actually stood up in public and apologized for his comments, said that he strongly believed that they were inappropriate and that an MP like himself had no place in making them, the opposition parties still want blood! I suppose that the Liberals, home to one Andrew Telegdi, one Judy Sgro and one John McCallum and the Bloc, spiritual embodiment of one Rene Levesque, one Jacques Parizeau, one Bernard Landry, and, most recently, one André Boisclair might also take this opportunity then to air out their own Landr…er, laundry? After all, no comment too ancient, no connection too distant should be immune should it, even when the member has a) made reasonable attempts at reconciliation and b) has demonstrated no example of acting upon the controversial sentiments?

If we boil this right down to its essence, I’d say that the hypocrisy among liberals is so great that I would be quite comfortable with any person that wants to punish Tom Lukiwski for his comments in going through with their intentions provided that they have never used the terms “fagot”, “retard”, “nigger”, or any of their derivatives in a derogatory way over the course of their life. The silence on that advert would be so deafening though that we probably would completely forget about why we’re even bothering to dig up bones from the past in the first place. And maybe that’s why liberals so willingly act like hypocrites in the first place!

I am trying to make sense of this.  First, how is this a human rights issue?

Second, does the fact that these safety laws are being fought not point out the futility of safety regulations in the first place?  In a free country, should we be legislating that people protect their health and well-being?  Is this the end of liability law, since apparently Sikhs wish to divest themselves of any requirement to protect their well-being?  How can we hold companies liable for injuries incurred on the job if the workers refuse to take safety measures?

On the one hand, as a small-government conservative, I should be cheering the Sikhs on, as this will result in less bureaucracy and more freedom.

On the other hand, I do believe in a governmental role for public safety.  How do you reconcile the collision of the coercive power of government and religious freedom?  (And before you say it, I know that the turban isn’t actually part of their religion, but it doesn’t matter, because they act like it is.)

I’ve noticed that a lot of youths are jaded and cynical, their hellishly asinine cosmion of meaning offering little by way of hope. It seems to me that a lot of urban youth are lacking the interest, the opportunity, to take on some kind of character forming responsibility or challenge; dismissed by too many adults as just stupid kids.

People tend to blame disinterested, or deranged, parents or even lax young offender laws for vicious youth. And while I suppose they are to blame in part, there’s only so much self-pitying contempt to go around before teenagers accrue the pathologies of perpetual victims.

When you consider the rate of obesity among youth today, the constant “noise” of the angry music iPod, video gaming, cell phoning, and celebrity following tv generation, the teenage years appear to be a bitter dawn of nihilism.

More police, aggressively empowered, and more silly welfare schemes for single parents are not necessarily the answer. Initiatives like Big Brothers Big Sisters and The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award seem like a good antidote to me, providing a path toward adulthood, toward some measure confident self-reliance that isn’t feeling sorry for oneself, then terrorizing others.

Schools should promote these initiatives with more enthusiasm, a respite from their constant barrage of tolerance and sensitivity training.

UPDATE: “Does affirmative action hurt kids?”

It’s no accident that the world’s most heavily taxed industrialized countries also have the lowest fertility rates. When Canadians have to work half the year just to pay the tax man, babies become economically impossible. By the time a couple achieves financial stability, the woman has often passed her best-before-date in terms of fertility.

…

The time is past due for all levels of Canadian government to give birth to a new strategy to increase our population the old-fashioned way. Anything less is slow death to Canada’s way of life.

I was thinking about this the other day.  I was thinking about how we subsidize farmers, farms, farm equipment, how we even have special “purple gas” that is tax-free for “producers”.

Why are these offered?  Because the government, from time immemorial, has considered the production of food to be of benefit to the entire nation.

I think it is time for society to collectively get over the “overpopulation” myth.  All around the world, fertility rates are plummeting, in the first world and the third.   There is no slowdown in sight.  At current rates of decrease, the third world won’t have any surplus population to send us to make up for our own fertility shortfalls, within 20-30 years.  Then the demographic glacier that is already visible on our horizon will overtake us, and the Employment Insurance, the Welfare, the Public Health Care, the Canada Pension Plan, all these products of socialism that relies on perpetual population increase, will collapse.

My thinking is that we should start to consider families (and I mean man-woman-children families, which have already been proven to be the most cost-effective structure to produce balanced, healthy citizens) as producers.  Start giving them the same kind of preferential treatment as farmers get.  Without human resources, this nation will fail.  Having kids contributes to the entire nation’s future.  If you choose not to have kids, fine, that’s your choice, but you are not contributing to the nation’s future.  Enjoying the benefits of society now comes at a cost of supporting that society’s future.  It makes sense, then to have those who are not producers support to a degree the producers.  It makes sense to give financial benefits to producing at the lowest cost with the best results.

I don’t question that singles could have kids, or homosexuals for that matter, with fertility treatments, etc.  However, those means have a greater cost to society than the nuclear family.  Using science to make babies is more expensive than using the reproductive organs the way they were designed.  Plus, the cost of raising productive, healthy citizens is higher when a child lacks a parent of the opposite gender.  If health care costs are higher, if socialization skills are lacking (relating to both genders in a family has a greater instructional effect than only encountering one gender outside the safety of the home), that costs society, hence they should be discouraged - or nuclear families should be preferentially encouraged.  Serious thought should be given to how to encourage couple who have kids to stay together - to repair broken relationships, to live in cooperation, to think of their kids before themselves.  This produces healthier adults and healthier children.  And a healthier society.

Choose ye, liberals.  Start scaling back government now, or start encouraging families.  But get a wiggle on, eh?  I kind of like Canada, and would hate to see it go away.

The Board calls upon the Government of Canada to end programmes, such as the supply of “safer crack kits”, including the mouthpiece and screen components of pipes for smoking “crack”, authorized by the Vancouver Island Health Authority, as they are in contravention of article 13 of the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988. The distribution of drug paraphernalia, including crack pipes, to drug users in Ottawa and Toronto, as well as the presence of drug injection sites is also in violation of the international drug control treaties, to which Canada is a party.

The arguments for and against the United Nations in this matter come from all directions. Some people agree. Some people say that the U.N. is just taking orders from the U.S. war on drugs and that the U.N. has no business telling Canadians how to deal with health issues. It is abhorrent that Canadian bureaucrats are facilitating illicit and dangerous drug use.

I reject “harm reduction” goals because I believe they represent demonic twisted priorities. Worrying about the “harm” of an intravenous drug user spreading disease among other drug users is warped. Here is their rallying cry: “I inject less as I have easier access to pipes” These “harm reduction” advocates even recommend that drug users do not recap their syringes for fear of pricking their fingers. You heard that right. Go figure!

Call me heartless but I do not give a damn about the drug users. My sympathies go out to the hapless innocent people who get stuck with discarded city syringes. I have collected discarded syringes and crack kits that were supplied by my municipality for free to drug users. They were scattered dangerously on side-walks, in play-grounds, around churches, behind apartment buildings and commercial properties.

——

The drug users are usually quite destitute and they certainly need help. Supplying them with fresh paraphenalia is not the help they need.

I think drug pushers are horrible people. I think the bureaucrats who endorse these “harm reduction” programs and supply free syringes are horrible people too. I would not trust any of them.

The logistics of following the money is straight-forward:
from tax-payer to bureaucrat
from bureaucrat to welfare recipient
from welfare recipient to drug pusher

Oh, I forgot one person: the middleman. Somebody is making money by supplying the bureaucrats with the free syringes, crack pipes, lip balm, lubricants and condoms. Sweet gig.

They’ve been prosecuted several times for breaching the incest law that Germany has on the books.

The history of the couple, as the article states, can be summarized: the man is 8 years older than his sister, and was taken from the home at the age of 3, before she was born.  They never met until he was 23 when he was finally re-introduced to his birth mother and met his sister for the first time.  It was not love at first sight - they did not become intimate until after their mother died, and they admit that their relationship happened in part because of the trauma of losing their mother.

Their first child was born when she was 17.

Here are the problems: first, this is a grown man who should have known better, allowing a teenage girl who is obviously in serious grief, make a huge mistake.  Second, the article make mention that the girl is also “a bit slow mentally” according to the article.  So you have someone with some cognitive limitations, in massive grief, not yet 18, getting sexually involved with her brother.  Third, all four of their children have suffered from physical or mental handicaps resulting from their genetic heritage - it is not healthy for the offspring of such a relationship.

My opinion is this: it should still be illegal because:

• This case proves the point that incest, even consensual incest, is the result of severe problems that need to be treated by psychologists.
• This case shows many signs of a person taking advantage of, or failing to act in the best interests of another.  Was it really consensual given all the variables?  Is it healthy for either of them?
• There is the question of public health.  As much as society seems to want to pretend there aren’t, the children’s health belie that idea.  Sanctioning or destigmatizing incest will result in more unhealthy babies, more unhealthy children, and more unhealthy adults.  In a day of socialized medicine, where everyone pays for other people’s unhealthy choices, these things need to be thought about.  If medical care were private, then that would be one more reason, personally, not to get sexually involved with close relatives - you don’t want to get stuck with high medical bills for children resulting from it.  But when it is public, then everyone pays for your bad decisions.  (I know this could be applied to all kinds of unhealthy lifestyle choices - that perhaps is a subject for another post - the reality that in a universal health care state, the state has the right to intervene in its citizens’ lifestyle choices, because if you and I are paying the medical bills, we have the right to expect that the governing body will legislate to minimize health care costs.  Interventionist, yes.  Limiting to personal freedom, yes.  That is the price you pay for taking from the government.)

At first glance, this seems to be a question of personal liberty.  As long as the participants in the “lifestyle” are consenting, the public should have nothing to say about it.  But in reality, in a socialist system, “lifestyle” choices become issues of public concern and legislation.  You can’t have personal freedom in a system where you are beholden to the public teat for benefits mitigating the consequences of your “lifestyle choice”.

Case in point, the story that broke from CTV pulling an ad placed and paid for a year: a spot featuring a man who merely states that few voices ever talk about the fact that some homosexuals don’t want to be.  Some, even, no longer are.

This fella, he characterizes the message of the ad to be “Hi. Are you tired of all the discriminatory nonsense we put you gays through?  Well, turn straight!”  You can watch it yourself here.

Note the mischaracterization of the message: The message to him isn’t “if you don’t want to be gay, there’s help”, it’s “all gays must be cured”.  You hear what you want to hear I guess.

I am not sure why advocates of gay rights like to pretend that it is all the fault of the evil Christians.  The picture is painted that all gays were simply born sexually and emotionally attracted to the same gender.  Of course, this flies in the face of the accounts of many, many victims of physical, emotional and sexual abuse, who themselves point to such trauma as the origin for their attraction.  It is not as cut-and-dried as gay advocates would like to believe, whether or not there is a genetic origin of homosexual desire.

But even if there was, it would not matter.  The whole phraseology of GBLT lumps homosexuals in with transsexuals, for whom the genetic programming they have must be overcome, and also bisexuals, for whom the “gay lifestyle” seems to be a choice.  I am at a loss as to why lobbyists, so intent on protecting their freedom to be “gay”, would begrudge people the opportunity to choose the lifestyle that they desire.

I have met several men and women who used to be gay.  Their stories are both troubling and uplifting.  The rejection and the bigotry that they faced down in their younger years over their homosexuality was mirrored when they left that lifestyle behind.  Now, they face mockers and vile attacks from the homosexual community, for their own pursuit of what makes them happy.

But then again, it isn’t really about choice is it?  All those gays who think they’re not, they just need to shut up and be happy in their gayness, don’t they?

If they aren’t happy being gay, then they need counselling, therapy, perhaps some medications to treat their desire to be straight.

Because not wanting to be gay is just wrong.

More from Lifesitenews.com.

Les étudiants du secondaire privés de classes d’éducation sexuelle
Sweeping Quebec education reforms leaving curious teens without sex ed
Sex education classes abolished from Quebec classrooms

I praise this move because sex education is really simple: penis in vagina, sperm fertilizes egg, nine months pregnancy. Everything else is up to debate. My guess is that students today know enough by the time they reach high school about the non-controversial stuff.

Nevertheless, I would offer a compromise teaching method by assembling all of the students in the gymnasium or theater and have a seminar: one class with everybody in the school. Hell, even let the students discuss it all together.

Did you know that malaria is the most easily preventable disease of all catastrophic diseases in the world?

The use of an insecticide treated mosquito net that surrounds a person’s bed at night while they sleep, will prevent mosquito bites.

So would any one of a half dozen malaria medications.

One million Africans die PER YEAR from Malaria. The number of deaths caused by pregnancy is miniscule in comparison. Yet preventative measures and abortifacients for pregnancy are free for those who could most easily afford it. Malaria treatment and prevention costs, dearly, for those who can least afford it.

Malaria is just one example. Where are our priorities? Why do we consider it more important to prevent babies than prevent frequently terminal brain fever?

It is interesting that they do this at a time when the Human Rights Commissions are doing just that, but the difference being they are going after bigger fish than an aptly named film entitled “Two Young People F**king“.  They are going after members of the media who dare to offend the politically correct.

But back to the subject at hand.  The libertarians amongst us would probably cry, “hands off” right alongside the political liberals, citing freedom of expression.  However, the reason why this is in the public jurisdiction is because it involves the use of public money to support the arts.  The government, as patron of the arts, does and should have some say in what is art.  It has ever been thus.

Historically, artists were dirt poor.  Artists rarely ever got rich off their art in their lifetimes.  It was often once they were dead that people began to realize that they were any good.  The lucky ones who managed to get recognized for their skill did so by finding rich patrons.  It was the rich of society which decided what was “art” and what was not.  If you found someone rich who thought your art was good, then it was.

I am not sure when government decided that there weren’t enough rich people around to patronize the arts, that the public needed to do it.  But when they did that, by that decision, the government began to have a say in what is considered art and what is not.  Overnight, it no longer mattered whether anyone liked it or would pay for it - it only mattered if one could convince the government that it was art, and you would be supported.

When the government spends tax dollars, they need to justify those expenses to the people whose money it is.  You knew that, right?  The government doesn’t have its own money.  It has YOURS.  So, they need to spend it in accordance with what Canadians think is art.  If a given piece of “art” offends Canadians, it should be denied funding.  If a given piece of “art” hurts people physically, socially, emotionally,  then it should also be denied funding.

What is being railed against is this reality.  If a piece of art demonstrably hurts society by encouraging violence or abuse, then it needs to be discouraged, or at least not supported by public tax breaks.  If you’ve got a problem with that, then you should stand up and fight for the ending of ALL governmental support for the arts.  If people think art has value, then it will be supported in the public marketplace.  North America is the wealthiest civilization that has ever existed.  Even if your “art” only appeals to a small percentage of people, you should be able to find a buyer somewhere to support you.  The patrons will again come from people.