Ted Byfield: Being Nice is a Bad Thing

I've always considered Ted Byfield to be a basically unpleasant sort of person. His writing has an irritating tendency to come off as sneering, Alberta Report (and its various spawn) engaged primarily in the politics of spitefulness. His attitudes are echoed by Ezra Levant, Ted Morton and Stephen Harper - not exactly a crowd I hold in high esteem.

In the Sun publications, Ted Byfield's latest column decries the notion of being nice.

Sez Ted:

"Niceness," in other words, is not the same as "goodness."

You could make a point of being "nice" to somebody, while bilking him of every nickel he possessed.

In the classic straw-man argument style that the right-wingnut crowd so often relies upon, Ted puts forward a completely invalid set of suppositions, and then knocks it down with this:

By contrast, the guy who told you that you drank too much last night and made an ass of yourself certainly wasn't being nice to you.

But maybe he was being good to you, by telling you exactly what you needed to hear.

In fact, niceness could be a mask for wickedness.

Coming from a man who has argued for the death penalty, going to war in Iraq and vehemently against civil rights for people, I think Ted needs to re-examine his lexicon.

Someone who creates a facade of being "nice" about something and then does something malicious is _NOT_ being nice - they are being, politely, shysters.

However, Ted Byfield doesn't see this. Instead, he argues that being a generally miserable, unpleasant person towards others is in fact "doing others a favour" - and coming from the conservative side of the spectrum as he does, this shouldn't come as a surprise. It strikes me that as Dana over at The Galloping Beaver observes, there is an underlying nastiness in today's "conservative" world that few have come to fully appreciate.

Ted Byfield railing against "niceness" only serves to underscore that suspicion.

Ted Byfield: Quick! - Into The Time Machine!

Reading Ted Byfield is usually a good way to find out just how thoroughly irrational people can be - and his latest tirade is no exception.

According Byfield, most Canadians are being "disenfranchised" by legal rulings of one sort or another that conflict with their religion:

Therefore our opinions as to what should and should not go into the law will be religiously grounded opinions, because that's the only source of authority we know.
...
Probably 90% of the country is being disfranchised.

There's a couple of points that must be made, and that Byfield clearly fails to understand. Freedom of religion is an individual freedom. The Charter speaks of individual rights and freedoms as part of the contract between the Canadian Government and its individual citizens. Ted has no more right to impose his religion upon me than I do mine upon him. Why should his religious views drive the creation or tone of law in Canada? (and, given the oh-so-lovely things that have been done in the name of Christianity at one time or another, I question the moral authority of that faith to dictate anything to me ... but that's my opinion)

Most of Byfield's argument boils down to "but even laws derive from some moral authority - and for most people that authority is religious".

I'll grant Byfield this much - most of the moral framework that our laws are set in has its roots in Judeo-Christian traditions. What Byfield forgets, or chooses to ignore, is that he is talking about scriptures that range in age between 1500 and 4000 years old, and reflect social and legal attitudes of those eras. (The dramatic differences between the Old Testament and New Testament reflect shifting societal attitudes and values) Surely in the last 1500 years or so we've had enough change to the face of society (and knowledge) that we might recognize that the "moral framework" that was codified so long ago is gradually unravelling, like a much loved, but well-worn rug.

Of course, most of Byfield's real argument is pure assertion, with a healthy dose of distortion thrown in for good measure. (It's almost like he spent his time researching his stories at Lifesite)

A teacher has been fired for daring to criticize -- not in school but in public debate -- certain sexual practices not long ago regarded as criminal.

Oh? Lessee, I'm going guess that Byfield's referring to homosexuality. Which was decriminalized some forty years ago - people born then are reaching their middle years today - real recent. As for the teacher who was fired, I can't even find references to a story like that on Lifesite - one would have to presume that the story has a grain of truth, but since he doesn't cite anything verifiable, it's assertion.

Books have been forced into school libraries over the objections of parents and school boards.

Christian schools have been forbidden to prohibit activity they regard as perverted at school dances.

Newspapers have been prosecuted for running biblical verses denouncing certain sexual practices.

If such despotism does not constitute a prohibition of "the free exercise of religion," it's hard to imagine what would.

More argument by assertion. Byfield fails to cite a single tangible case that can be examined - which leads me to suspect that what he's really beaking off about are relatively minor cases where some bible beater got their knickers in a twist over something small, and went screaming to the media about it.

We believe we should behave fairly, honestly, truthfully because the Bible or the Church or the Qur'an or our pastor or priest tells us so.

Therefore our opinions as to what should and should not go into the law will be religiously grounded opinions, because that's the only source of authority we know.

Finally, we come to the crux of the matter. Byfield simply cannot imagine that we might be able to derive our own sense of "right and wrong" without referring to something that was supposedly, but unverifably divinely inspired. It seems far more probable that scripture was a human construct in the first place, just as the laws of Hammurabi were (in fact big tracts of Old Testament legalisms sound decidedly similar to his laws.)

As much as the fundies like to accuse more secular people of being "amoral" (or worse) because of a lack of explicit tie to some concrete moral framework, they fail to recognize that their own "moral framework" is extremely relativistic as well - but it merely happens to be relative to the era in which the scriptures they believe so fervently in were written. Society ultimately codifies its morality relative to the times in which it exists. There are some universal truths, but then again, some supposed truths turn out to be amazingly false. It wasn't so long ago (using Byfield's rubber ruler of time) that being left-handed meant you were marked by the devil.

[Update 14:00]
Speaking of imposing one's religion upon others, we have some loon trying to censor the public library.

An aside - it also occurs to me that Byfield would be among those who scream the loudest if someone were to demand that he adopt the moral sensibilities of a different faith...
[/Update]

The Problem Is Not With Religion...

It's the most vocal advocates for a religion that become the problem.

I was reading Ted Byfield's columns for June in the Calgary Sun this morning, and I realized that the reason that "religion" becomes problematic is not the religion itself, but rather those who believe that they have some "perfect" understanding what 'it all means'(tm).

In today's column, we find Ted bemoaning the sorry state of things in Canada:

Our governments, businesses and people all "punch below their weight." Comparing us with other developed nations, it noted "too often we trail the pack." We are "unwilling to take risks."
...
In the bad old days, we boasted, Atlantic fishermen, for example, had to toil three or four months at sea, then work desperately for the remaining eight or nine to eke out a living from such land as they possessed. Now they do what fishing they can and bask serenely for the rest of the year on E.I. Such things, we were taught to regard as an astonishing advance in the national character.

Well, maybe what's advancing is our decrepitude and it's by no means confined to Atlantic Canada.
...
Where "unwanted pregnancies" were a fact of life visited upon most couples, we now have easy birth control, and if it fails we have abortion.

Where marriage was once something we had to make work whether we enjoyed it or not, it is now something that can be set aside and tried again with a new partner, often a series of new partners.

Sex, once inhibited by a host of taboos, some of them enforced by the Criminal Code, is now acceptable in almost any variety whatever, and any questioning or criticizing some of the varieties shall be branded "hate," and punished with jail, "intolerance" being the only sin left in our moral code.

...

Where we used to get paid for working, we now expect pay for existing, and where we used to believe in God, we now believe in Tylenol.

Ah - the usual pattern of Byfield's arguments emerges. After all, if we only remained in the god-fearing era that he idealizes (and never actually existed), all in our world would be perfect.

The blind rigidity of this ideal is reflected in one of Ted's earlier columns in the month:

Meanwhile, Calgary Catholics are no doubt becoming aware their own bishop, Fred Henry, was first in Canada to make media waves by calling the attention of his flock to what the church in fact teaches. When he ruled that ex-Prime Minister Joe Clark, who calls himself a Catholic though he favours abortion rights and gay marriage, would no longer be welcome to speak in Calgary's Catholic schools, Bishop Henry was branded as backward, as "living in the past."

It now appears he was actually, if anything, on the leading edge -- living, so to speak, in the future.

Not that Bishop Fred has ever let his decisions be governed by whether they'll be considered behind the times or ahead of them.

He knows God doesn't change, and neither do the essential principles of morality. And in times of alarming impermanence, it is this "eternal changelessness" that attracts people, young and old, to the Christian faith.

Saying the Christianity is "eternal" and "changeless" is possibly among the most ridiculous statement that anyone could ever make. Over the centuries, the face of Christianity has shifted and changed dramatically. From a nascent faith that adopted and absorbed "pagan" rituals as it encountered them, it became the faith which brought us the astoundingly irrational Malleus Maleficarum used to guide the "inquisition" that hunted practitioners of "witchcraft", and in more recent years has become a deeply fractured faith, split by fundamentalists and a plethora of different sects which all interpret scripture differently.

But, when you believe you have achieved perfection, there is little reason to look beyond what you have and know, is there? When someone proposes that perhaps Scripture is more mythological in form than factual, it's easy to reject the proposal, giving us sorry attempts to debunk science with pseudo-science. It becomes easier to reject and ignore new information that contradicts what is now comfortable and familiar.

Intellectual calcification that comes from blind obedience to any one faith gives room for groups like this to arise, out of fear that change will bring about the inevitable collapse of all that is "good" in the world. Of course, it never does - catastrophic collapse of a civilization is rare - even Rome didn't "collapse", so much as it crumbled gradually, and new things arose in its place. The British Empire didn't collapse, it likewise fell apart over a period of time, creating new opportunities and new realities in its place. Such is the nature of change.

Religion has long fought the notion of science, or more particularly, rationalism. Why? Because in its purest form, rationalism is anathema to faith. Rationalists tend to ask "why?" or "why not?" a lot, and religion - at least the Ted Byfield variety of it - doesn't respond well to such questions. Byfield and his ilk seek absolutes, and are all too happy to say "because" as a response to fundamental "why" kind of questions - an answer that makes those who are engaged by, and interested in, the world around them uncomfortable - leading them to go seeking answers elsewhere.

The last couple of centuries have rocked faith at its core. Social prohibitions described in scripture centuries ago have slowly dissolved because they are no longer necessary, or because new understandings have emerged that make those rules irrelevant. People like Ted Byfield live in fear - not fear of the unknown, but fear of the loss of all that they think they know. The unknown becomes the bogeyman - something awful that nobody has every quite seen, and yet change will inevitably result in. Sad, really.

Kinsey was a what???

Sometimes, the attitude of people just plain puzzles me. Normally, I don't bother reading anything by members of the Byfield family - their publication "Alberta Report" did a lovely job of demonstrating that they have little or no interest in real journalism. For the most part, they seem to be interested only in pushing forward their own unique interpretation of the "Christian Reich-Wing Dogma" du jour.

Scanning through the columnist page on Canoe (the Sun Media website), and I found Ted Byfield's latest article. The topic du jour - possibly one of the most incoherent rants I've ever seen unleashed from the Byfields (either Ted or Link), aimed squarely at the recently released movie about Alfred Kinsey.

First of all, I must confess, I had no idea that someone had made a movie about Alfred Kinsey. Second, I'm actually a little baffled as to why someone would do that - the man was an intellectual and an academic - not exactly someone whose life story typically makes for gripping big-screen drama.

However, perhaps more surprising and a little perplexing is the vehemence of Byfield's attack on the movie, and then the man.

Given also that (a) the movie was made before the election, (b) a great phalanx of Hollywood luminaries publicly castigated Bush, and (c) sexual libertinism has been the Hollywood way of life ever since there's been a Hollywood, what's so odd about it?

Ah yes, Hollywood - the land of the debauched (or so some would have us believe); the land whose many minions had the unmitigated gall to speak against GWB during this past US presidential election. The first part of Mr. Byfield's sense of rancor becomes clearer - Kinsey was talking about a taboo subject - sex - or more correctly sexuality.

He then goes on to obliquely attack Kinsey's methods of gathering information as follows:

Thus Hollywood's version of the Scopes case was in fact legendary and we can expect its take on Kinsey will be the same.

Will it disclose, for instance, that Kinsey was not a psychologist, nor a medical doctor, but an entomologist; he studied bugs.

That is, he had no professional background to study sex.

Another prof at the University of Chicago recalls Kinsey's memo, recruiting students to participate in his sex survey.

He passed the memo to his own students, and later asked how many of them had agreed to do this. He found that none had.

So he wondered whose sexual conduct Kinsey had actually surveyed.

He discovered that Kinsey's subjects consisted almost entirely of prison inmates, prostitutes and homosexuals.

No one else would talk to him.

I won't even begin to get into an analysis of Kinsey's methods - I'm not sure I could make any terribly useful observations that others haven't made before me. As for qualifications, Kinsey's first work came out only a few short years (with a war in between) after Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung redefined psychology in the first place - I don't think you could say that there were a plethora of qualified Psychologists/Psychiatrists running around in those days. (There were some, but the discipline as we know it today was quite immature). Besides, as is often the case with inspired people, they are just outside of the area where they make their biggest contributions. (Einstein was a Patent Clerk when he developed the first parts of what became Relativity Theory - what made him qualified to work in the area of Physics???)

So what if Kinsey's subjects were prison inmates, prostitutes and homosexuals? Does that invalidate much of what he found? Not really. The fact is that the Kinsey Institute today continues to engage in valid, and useful research - long after Mr. Kinsey himself has died. (On an aside - I would point out that bugs have sex too - so why would being an entomologist disqualify Kinsey from studying human sexuality is beyond my meagre ability to understand.)

But that gets back to a root point - Kinsey was mucking about in an area that Ted Byfield and his ilk consider to be 'taboo' - sexuality. Just as much of Freud's theoretical models of psychological conditions were long ago dismantled and invalidated (what woman truly suffers from "penis envy"???), that doesn't invalidate the valuable purpose that the study served. Kinsey's work provoked thought, conversation and research in the area of sexuality. Is that a bad thing? Is understanding humanity in its infinite diversity something "evil"? I don't think so.

The vehemence of Byfield's attack on a mere movie about Alfred Kinsey suggests to me that a nerve has been touched - and not one that is truly offended by the problems in Kinsey's early works, but rather one that has yet to figure out that sooner or later the world was going to move beyond the moral strictures of Victorian era thought. Kinsey served a purpose far more valuable than any one of his research findings - he made people talk and think about a subject that is far too often pushed into a corner and ignored.

Ted Byfield Takes a Swing at Reality

Occasionally, Ted Byfield comes astonishingly close to reality, and then veers away from it at breakneck speeds.

This week, we find Ted musing about the "collapse of church" in Canada:

Where Canada was, if anything, more loyal to its churches in the first half of the 20th century, it now lags far behind, and church attendance in the U.S. is considerably more than double the Canadian average.

Ted thinks he's found quite the treasure trove of insight:

Mark A. Noll, the historian of American religion most distinguished for his celebrated book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, (the scandal being too many Evangelicals don't use the gray matter God gave them, and many think it wrong to even try) confesses himself mystified of late by a country called Canada.

"What Happened to Christian Canada?" he asks, and that's the title of his little booklet published this year by Regent College Publishing in Vancouver.

Amusingly, in the criticism applied to Evangelical faith in the United States lies the germ of reality that Ted then does his level best to ignore:

too many Evangelicals don't use the gray matter God gave them

He then goes on to try and lay the blame at the feet of political leaders past (and now dead):

In Quebec, he finds an explanation in the rise of Catholic Action, a movement that gained great momentum after the Second World War and recruited platoons of talented young people -- like Pierre Trudeau, Marc Lalonde and Gerard Pelletier.
...
The United Church, created in the 1920s by the union of the Methodists, Congregationalists and most Presbyterians, sought to combine the socialistic reforms of the social gospel with the spiritual message of evangelicalism. This had much the same result. When the government itself legislated the social gospel, the church was left with no message at all.

But all this is an inadequate summation of a brief but very observant analysis of Canada's religious collapse.

Or, perhaps there is an even simpler explanation. Canadians started looking critically at what had been wrought in the name of "the church"(™). One need look no further than the Quiet Revolution in Quebec - born of the policies of Maurice Duplessis and the unreasonable degree of power the Catholic Church held during that time.

The other point that Byfield misses (or chooses to ignore) is that as Canada's education system flourished, individuals found it less necessary to be outwardly religious. That isn't to say that carrying faith ceased, but rather the need to attend church services diminished.

One can draw discrete parallels between the Reagan administration dismantling public education in the 1980s and the rise of evangelical christianity. This comes as little surprise - evangelical christianity does not encourage critical thought - it demands obedience. In general, the less educated the population, the more willingly they will follow strict edicts from religious leaders.

Intriguingly, the HarperCon$ have also taken a series of moves that devalue and weaken Canada's educational infrastructure.

The Irrational Reich

I think it's time for Ted Byfield and his ilk to go join George "Dubya" Bush in Texas. Perhaps between the two of them, they can turn Texas into some kind of Fundamentalist Nirvana based on their uniquely nasty interpretation of Holy Scripture.

In this Sunday's column, Mr. Byfield goes on a rant about how the whole civil rights business that is behind the "gay rights" movement is some kind of Liberal assault on Christianity.

The only reason that the Religious Reich - in particular the Christian Reich - see the gay rights movement as an assault on them is simply because they are slowly losing their right to marginalize people.

Apparently, someone making a human rights complaint about statements that a religious leader made about homosexuality, and how the government should treat homosexuals, this is some kind of assault on Christianity. Bullfeathers! To assert that clergy cannot step over the line from discussion to promotion of discrimination is like asserting that clergy cannot possibly be pedophiles because of their vows to God.

Let's allow the process to do its job, and see what the outcome is. If the Alberta Human Rights Commission gives the complaint before it due consideration, and finds that the Bishop's letter was reasonable, that's fine with me. Equally, if they find that parts of the letter do overstep the bounds of reasonableness, that's fine too. I've studied the Bishop's letter in some detail, and except for a couple of sentences, I don't have any big problems with it. (I disagree with the substance of what he is arguing, but I do not assert that the letter itself is outright hate literature - except for the demand that legislative coercion be used to suppress homosexuality.

Byfield then goes on in his hysterical manner to further suppose that faith itself might be outlawed in this country. Once again, the Religious Reich - in particular loons like Byfield, lose sight of the underlying constitution that guarantees those freedoms. Religion isn't going to be outlawed in Canada. On the other hand, Religion cannot justifiably be used to argue that people should be marginalized either.

The history of organized religion is that it has been used many times over to subjugate, suppress and marginalize people that society as a whole grossly misunderstands. It is time for the religious bodies of the world to come out of their shells, and acknowledge the diversity of humanity in all its forms. Condemning people because of their sexual or gender identity is every bit as false a condemnation as someone's ethnic origins, religious beliefs or cultural past.

The fury of the Ted Byfields of the world should be directed not at the "gay rights" movement that they seem so afraid of, but instead at the rigid interpretation of 2000+ year old scripture that they have had fed to them for their entire lives. It is not merely homosexuals that are marginalized by church teachings - women are, people of different ethnic origin (remember the Crusades?), etc. Before that, Mr. Byfield's oh-so-righteous Christianity was itself persecuted by the Romans.

Remember, Mr. Byfield, the same constitutional rights that protect people from discrimination, also protect your religious beliefs. There is a middle ground, and it is time that you begin to seek it out.

This is Disgusting!

Last week, this country lost one of its great writers - Pierre Berton. I've only read a handful of his writing - it's good writing, but my personal interests aren't in "recent history".

However, I made the mistake of reading Ted Byfield's column this morning:

Berton's beliefs contradicted his books

At first, I couldn't decide if I should be shocked by what Mr. Byfield had written, or if it was intended to just make me downright furious.

Mr. Byfield writes:

He stood for almost all the hallowed left-wing causes -- the welfare state, medical services under total government control, gay rights, state day care, easy access to abortion, lavish old-age pensions, and taxes as high as they had to be to pay for all this.

We get nothing on the first female MP, the socialist Agnes Macphail, nothing on Angus and Grace MacInnes, while his only article on the sainted Tommy Douglas consisted of a brief reference to Douglas' "heroism" when the man died.

Even the socialist movement as a whole gets no book at all.

So you have to wonder: If Berton was such a thorough-going socialist, why is it that he found no socialist in the entire history of the country worth writing a book about.

Augh! What is it with commentators these days - in particular, right wing commentators? A man dies, and these clowns choose to use his passage from this world as an excuse to get up on their soap boxes and claim their particular viewpoint's "moral and ethical superiority". Good God! A family is grieving the loss of a father and grandfather; a country is mourning the loss of one of its great minds and historians, and these clowns have to criticize his politics????

I'm starting to conclude that the loudest, most obdurate, of right-wing commentators like Mr. Byfield have lost the very moral compass that they claim the "left wing" of lacking. (Oh wait - no the left wing are "moral relativists" according to the likes of Byfield) At least when President Reagan passed away recently, I didn't see left-wing commentators getting on a soapbox and bleating about his politics - no matter how much they disagreed with him.

In his conclusion, Byfield writes:

Berton's reason for not writing about the socialists was he found them so dull and boring nobody would buy books about them.

That is, in the socialist ideal, none must be allowed to tower above the rest, as Berton himself assuredly towered above the rest of us writers.

Perhaps, too, he finally saw that a country without buccaneers and pirates would be likewise dull and boring, offering nothing whatever for a Pierre Berton to make into the fascinating history he has produced.

Beyond the snide, sneering commentary of this moron's writing lies reality. If people like Mr. Byfield held "power", women would not have voting rights in this land; ethnic minorities would be second-class citizens; Native people would still not have voting rights; we would still have homosexuality illegal; freedom of religion would only apply if you happened to belong to their particular brand of christianity; schools would still be using the strap to punish students; Chinese and other immigrants would be the labour forces in our mines and forests doing all of the dangerous work (remember how many Chinese immigrants died building the CPR, Mr. Byfield?).

The buccaneers and pirates that "did such wonderful things", often did so at a horrific, Machievellian, price. I admire their accomplishments, but I also admire the accomplishments of Nellie McClung; Pierre Elliot Trudeau (who did more for equality in our society than any thousand so-called "Conservatives" have done); Tommy Douglas and many others whose accomplishments the "right-wing" of today would have us ignore.

What are words?

So, just what are words? According to my Concise Oxford Dictionary, a word is defined as follows: "a single, distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used to form sentences with others"

A philosopher might characterize a word as a token of language with an assigned meaning. As such, a word bears with it an enormous weight of concepts and notions - some clear and simple; others subtle and shaded in a myriad of ways. Without words, there can be no discourse, and without meaning ascribed to those words, no meaningful discourse can take place.

Are words immutable in their meaning? No. Especially not in English - a language often referred to as the 'Bastard Language of Europe'. Words come and go; their meanings shift and change with the subtleties of time.

The past century has seen numerous words emerge in our lexicon; and still more change their meanings. The computer industry alone has sprouted its own vernacular that is bewildering to behold. The tokens we apply to something have changed - the 'horseless carriage' became the 'automobile'; the 'automobile' morphed yet again and became a 'car' in our day to day conversation. Yet, if someone talked to you today about their 'horseless carriage', you'd wonder if you'd stepped back in time.

Words have a way of changing over time, both the spellings and their meanings.

In the United States, the last 20 years has seen the term 'Liberal' become a rather nasty epithet. Where it once referred to someone of 'centrist' political leanings, various conservative commentators have twisted the term so that it now refers to someone who is indecisive; imprecise or unwilling to take a hard, absolute line.

Similarly, the term conservative is slowly being hijacked by the so-called "social conservatives".

People like Ted Byfield, a columnist whose rantings appear regularly in the Sun Newspapers across Canada.

I was reading his column today with some interest (and surprisingly, I didn't just get downright furious with the man - unusual). It dawned on me as I read his words that this man isn't just a "Conservative" - he doesn't want to "conserve" anything - he wants to go back in time.

Lessee - just a quick review of his column, and he touches on every social whinge button in the last thirty odd years:

• No fault divorce
• Polygamy
• Gay Marriage
• Unelected judiciary

I won't go into some of what Mr. Byfield has written on subjects such as feminism, equality rights etc. Suffice it to say that if Mr. Byfield had his way, we'd be living in some kind of wierd Bush-McArthy utopia. We'd all go to church every Sunday like good little robots; turn in the queer at the end of the block to the police. Oh yes, I imagine wife beating would come back too - after all, a man's got to keep control over his family - otherwise, it might gosh - fall apart into the rack and ruin of divorce.

Mr. Byfield makes a classical error in his logic:

It apparently hasn't yet dawned on him that "demos" means the people, and therefore rule by unelected judges is not a democracy at all.

Last I looked, the Constitution of this country was assembled by the then elected officials of our country - Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Peter Lougheed, Rene Levesque and a cast of others whose names escape me at the moment.

So far, every time the judges of the Supreme Court have ruled in a manner that the "Conservatives" like Mr. Byfield dislike, they howl about an "unelected, activist judiciary". I strongly suggest that Mr. Byfield go back and read - carefully - the clauses and words of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of this nation. Then, perhaps, if their minds don't fog over with the subtle meanings of those tokens of speech, they may begin to achieve a glimmer of understanding as to what the judges derive their interpretation from.

From that point on, the Christian concept of marriage lost the support of Canadian law, and such bizarre asininities as gay marriage became inevitable. So prophesied the doomsayers at the time, and they have proved right.

I hate to point this out, but to assume a relationship between no fault divorce and gay marriage is like assuming that the temperature of spit on a rock in Alberta has something to do with the price of yak's milk in Mongolia. The two topics are unrelated - and I would suggest that you would be hard pressed to find any relationship. Of course, the so-called "social conservatives" (Moral Impositors?) assume that it is all part of society going to rack and ruin because it speaks to deviation from their "Truth"(tm)

Bills can be passed and become laws, it's true, but those same laws can also be repealed.

The corollary to this, is that illegal legislation can also be repealed. Think carefully on this, Mr. Byfield.

However, getting back to my original point about this business - it used to be that the term 'Conservative' referred to someone who would "stay the course" and not change too many things. It referred to politicians whose ideals were moderated by the realities of economics.

Today, people like Byfield and Ezra Levant scream from their soap boxes - hollering about the "injustices" done to their beliefs at the hands of the awful "Liberal" media. (Both being media writers, one can only imagine what they must think of themselves...). The term "Conservative" today has been hijacked by the religious reich, with an eye to returning this world to some state of mythical grace that they think we passed through. (Lately, the fashion du jour seems to be an idealized 1950's "nuclear family" model, with a smattering of Bush "olde tyme religion(tm)" and a healthy dose of McArthy era paranoia (with "commies" replaced by "terrorists"). Add to that a blind assumption that there is some inherent "correctness" to their particular brand of religion, and you have an environment that is really rather nasty. One which would return us to an era where being different gets the tar kicked out of you because someone decides they don't like the way you look/walk/talk whatever. Ugh!

Misunderstanding Freedom of Speech

I find the way that the hard-line right-wing commentators twist things around time and again, often misrepresenting facts to suit their own distorted perceptions about how the world works.

In the Saturday edition of the Calgary Sun, I was treated to 2/3 of a page dedicated to a tirade by American commentator Ann Coulter. Ms. Coulter is notorious for manufacturing facts where convenient, and ignoring reality every bit as much.

Today, I was catching up on some of the columnists that normally write columns for the Sun Newspaper chain in Canada.

An interesting pattern is emerging - not merely misunderstanding, but outright distortion of the facts.

Columnist Link Byfield complains that freedom of speech is being suppressed. Why? Because University of Calgary officials didn't want a campus anti-abortion group to put up posters that tried to draw analogy between abortion and the holocaust. I think anyone with even a half a brain could figure out that the comparison is invalid at best, and offensive in the worst way to the memory of those that perished in those dark days.

His father, Ted Byfield is busy whining because the Conservative party didn't swing far enough to the right to suit his "Social Conservative" sensibilities. His complaint? Apparently the debate over abortion was "suppressed". (Read, the resolution didn't go the way he wanted it to, so he's going to sulk now) Similarly, Columnist Janet L. Jackson is whinging about the abortion issue. According to her, there is some massive conspiracy to start performing late term (9th month) abortions that the Liberal party is propogating. News to me, and nothing I've been able to dig up even hints that such a thing is part of the Liberal party policy agenda. (Oh - wait - they are changing the rules on the "morning-after" pill, aren't they? Of course, RU-486 won't do much good after the first 72 hours - but the rabid pro-life movement seems to view that as a late-term abortion.)

The complaints are consistent - whether the topic is abortion rights, same-gender marriage, divorce law, hate crimes law, or turbans in the RCMP. Basically, these people complain that a policy they dislike is "being shoved down their throats", or that their "freedom of speech" is being curtailed. Why? Usually because the changes in law that are taking place happen to constrain their ability to impose a particular moral code on others are being suppressed.

Omigosh - their right to spew unfounded vitriol against homosexuals is being curtailed - my goodness - they might actually have to found their irrational arguments in actual fact. What a horrifying concept!

Ted Byfield might have to explain, in rational terms, why a woman who has been raped should carry the resulting child to term.

Or - horror of horrors, they might have to actually come up with why allowing a couple to marry is going to cause the irreparable harm to society that they claim it will.

I will point out that none of these geniuses has put their money where their mouth is and actually challenged the laws in question before the courts. Why? Because they know full well that their position is not sustainable in the harsh light of legal scrutiny.

I do not want to take from them the right to express their opinions, I don't think that would be appropriate. I do want them to put their opinions forward with supporting evidence that is verifiable. If you want to assert that the society will crumble because of a marriage, that's fine, but I expect you to back that up with some kind of intelligible evidence.

Similarly, if you believe that a group of people should be marginalized, you darned well better have some pretty solid reasoning. Those that squawked about bill C-250 as an assault on their freedom of religion should step back and ask themselves just how a law that insists that their language not incite violence against people is contrary to their freedom of religion.

While I disagree with many of their suppositions, these people do have a legitimate voice in the discourse of the nation. It would be far more useful if they approached that discourse in the spirit of intelligent debate rather than the shrill, unfounded positions they continue to assert.

Misconceptions and Ignorance - The Underpinnings of Intolerance

Two of the more vocal opponents of same-gender-marriage (SGM) have taken one last swing at the topic just before the last debates and voting on bill C-38 take place. Of whom do I speak? No, not Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney or Rob Anders. I speak of the Sun Newspapers' Bishop Fred Henry, and Ted Byfield.

I'll give Bishop Henry a modicum of credit - he's at least attempting to enumerate the nature of the "harm" that he believes that SGM will do to society. In a nutshell, his argument boils down to the notion that children's rights to a stable, identifiable family will be violated. Of course, the Bishop's reasoning is predicated, as it has always been on the "potential" to have children. In today's diverse world, there are a plethora of ways that a couple may come to have children - whether it is a result of sexual intercourse, adoption or surrogate parents. I won't go into the number of Same Gender couples I know of where one member or the other has offspring as a result of some past relationship.

The tragedy of that past relationship isn't that it failed, but rather that societial pressures are often the reason the homosexual person entered into it in the first place.

Of course, Bishop Henry goes on to argue

"Given that stable and exclusive homosexual coupling is the exception rather than the norm, to connect homosexual coupling with children's welfare or with a stable environment for children is nothing if not dishonest."

I find it sad that the Bishop's own sense of intellectual honesty doesn't allow him to recognize the fact that heterosexual couples can be just as unstable as any other. Affairs happen all the time; abusive couples happen; spouses walk out on their partners for a myriad of reasons. When the statistics show that nearly 50% of all marriages end before the vows of "'til death do us part" expire, it's damnably difficult to argue that heterosexual couples are inherently stable. (and goodness knows, I've seen enough "stable" marriages that were so screwed up that any offspring were going to be seriously troubled as adults - and they have been!)

Sadly, the Bishop goes on to make the following statements:

Even if we concede that the social-science evidence is sometimes ambiguous, we know that two parents are better for children than one.

Families with both mothers and fathers are generally better for children than those with only mothers or only fathers. Biological parents usually protect and provide for their children more effectively than non-biological ones.

I'd love to know where he gets his "facts" from. So far, he's making a lot of very bold assertions, but he has yet to put forth any kind of credible evidence to reinforce them. (Whether there is any clear evidence is debatable - the number of homosexuals raising children is a small fraction of a small population. Making any kind of meaningful population study would be extremely difficult. The evidence I have been able to track down is mostly anecdotal in nature, but suggests that the outcomes for children raised by same-gender couples are little different than those of heterosexual couples.

Of course, while Bishop Henry at least attempts to be reasoned - if sadly underinformed - Ted Byfield continues to show the knuckle-dragging narrow-mindedness of someone whose mind has long ago closed to any new information.

First, he dredges up the saw used repeatedly about how the bill constrains religious freedoms:

Nothing in it will interfere with freedom of speech, they say, or with the rights of churches to refuse to marry gays, or the rights of Christian schools to teach the biblical injunctions against the practice of homosexuality, or the right of churches to read passages from Scripture condemning homosexual activity.

Yes Ted, allowing the gay couple down the street to be legally recognized as a married couple really affects your religion. Uh-huh. I agree that there will no doubt be a number of challenges along these lines that Churches will encounter in the coming years. However, given the fact that the Roman Catholic Church's stance on ordination of women has been left alone by the courts of the land, I would tend to suspect that other teachings of churches would go similarly unchallenged. Of course, there might be some question of the boundaries. Is it legitimate for the clergy to exhort their congregations to "go roll a queer"? Or might that constitute active promotion of hatred, violence and persecution?

In other words, it is no longer a court at all. It is now an unelected legislature, its members specifically chosen to create laws fulfilling an ideological agenda that could not possibly gain the approval of an elected Parliament.

WTF? Where did this bit of illogic come from. Oh waitasec - it's the "Judicial Activism" bogeyman. Congratulations Ted, you've demonstrated yet again that your ability to read something as relatively simple as the Charter of Rights is nonexistant. Go read the document, and think on it for a while. (If necessary, try a simpler read - like "See spot run", first) You might just figure out that the Supreme Court has been doing precisely what they are mandated to do - interpret the laws of the land. I have seen rulings I disagree with, but I can usually figure out the basis from which they are derived - which is better than I can do with your reasoning.

Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary has been twice cited in complaints registered with the Alberta Human Rights Commission for daring to inform the faithful of the church's position on homosexual practices. If the case proceeds, it will undoubtedly wind up in the Supreme Court where the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

The cases involving Bishop Henry's so-called Pastoral Letters (which he has used every other means available to him to broadcast outside of the church) have yet to be considered. You do both the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal and the court system of this nation a disservice by presupposing what the findings will be.

Soon any church caught teaching Christian sexual morality, or urging its members to oppose sodomy-endorsing politicians, will be accused of getting into politics and its tax exemption status will be challenged.

Ah - now the truth comes out. As usual, the problem is the ill-informed notion that homosexual males are out to sodomize anything that moves. A gay man I met once said "I just want to shake your hand, not fuck you". Get real Ted - you can't tell me that your own marriage is based entirely on your sexual relationship with your wife. (Or, if it is, I'm amazed that you're still married - few women I can think of spend their lives focusing on sex)

Meanwhile, lesbian couples will have been allowed to adopt children. Would it not be vicious discrimination to deny them such a right? It certainly would, the court will rule.

And since gay women have that right, surely gay men should be allowed to adopt little boys. How can the court say no?

Uh-huh. Once again, Ted is completely, and irrationally focused on the sexual act. My God, last time I saw someone so obsessed with sex, it was when someone tried to pick me up in the Devonian Gardens back when I was in High School (at least the poor sod had the grace to be as embaressed as I was). Of course, Ted can't possibly leave out a chance to equate homosexuality with pedophilia. (We won't go into the infamous Pedophile Priests, and the complicity of the Church organizations in covering up their activities, will we?)

Yes, Ted. Allowing gays to marry will cause the earth to stop spinning and the sun to stop shining.

If Bill C-38 does anything, it puts one more nail in the coffin of dinosaurs whose sole purpose in life seems to be finding an excuse to persecute someone for being honest with themselves about who they are and who they love. This was a coffin that started being built when King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta - it has already taken a millenium to get to this point - it will take millenia yet to finish the work begun a thousand years ago.

As long as the orphan twins of Misconception and Ignorance continue to roam this planet, there will always be people whose right to full participation in the world need to be protected and fought for.

This Is a Good Sign

Apparently Ted Byfield has decided that he doesn't like Stelmach's reworking of the royalty scheme.

Given Mr. Byfield's illogical arguments on so many other topics, it probably means that Stelmach actually took a step in the right direction.

Sez Ted:

He has turned Albertans against the industry that has made them prosper and has made their province great.

How else can you interpret his new royalty regime, imposed without negotiation on the province's central economic engine?

I've said this before - governing is about a lot more than just money. It's about people, and the interests of the people. The oil patch has had a great deal of say to date in the royalty arrangments in this province, and has slowly and steadily wormed into the minds of people like Mr. Byfield that it would be a "Bad Thing"(™) to touch anything to do with the oil patch.

What has been made clear is that the free lunch of profits at the oil trough is over. Remember, those resources belong to all of us, not the oil companies per se. They may sulk for a while; and a few may well stomp off in a huff and move their focus elsewhere in the world. It's not a bad thing - slowing down Alberta's economy right now would be good from several standpoints - like trying to hire staff for smaller businesses.

If the oil sits in the ground a bit longer, what's the big deal? It stays, and the odds are that the prices will go up on the resource as supplies begin to run out. So, from an investor/taxpayer perspective looking a little more than next quarter down the road, I have to ask myself just what we lose? Not much. Get it out today at today's prices and a higher royalty fee, we win. Leave in the ground for a while and get it out at higher prices due to reduced availability, and we still win.

Unless the world's need for oil drops dramatically in the next few decades, we come out ahead either way.

Somehow, I think I'll put a little more stock in what Peter Lougheed comes up with over what Byfield tries to pass off as wisdom.

Ted Byfield - Getting It All Wrong

It must be hard for Ted Byfield these days, it seems like every time he opens his yap, he gets it wrong. Very wrong:

If a child can have three legal parents, how can we deny that the parents -- all three of them -- can be legally married?

Multiple parenthood will lead logically to multiple marriage.

No, Ted. You have it so wrong, it's painful. You haven't even bothered to read the judgement in question, or really consider the case before the courts, have you?

The "slippery slope" you are claiming we will descend uncontrollably towards as a result of this ruling is simply not even in the picture. Unlike you, most Canadians have awoke to the reality that there are more ways to constitute a family than the idealized model you advocate as being sacrosanct.

No, your "outrage" comes from two things - your horror that a lesbian couple is successfully raising a happy, well adjusted child, and your utter inability to consider the prospect that things have changed while you were busy beating on your bible.

Oh yes, it seems to me that this ruling very specifically was about the best interests of the child...one of your pet arguments against SGM. So much for that argument, Ted.

Look at them weeds!

The first volleys of the Religious Reich (tm, pat. pend) against same-gender marriage come forth - in the form of "Wow! look at them weeds!".

In the Sun Newspaper chain, Ted Byfield has opened his ugly mouth in this article. In it, Mr. Byfield attempts to argue that Religious Freedoms are being suppressed by Bill C-38.

His argument begins with a fundamental assertion that all law is inherently based on moral principles:

The entire Criminal Code, for starters, is an anthology of morality. Thou shalt not steal, though shalt not lie, thou shalt not murder, all these rules are moral principles.

He then goes on to make the following assertion - after a certain amount of ranting:

The basis of the morality of just about everybody in the country is religious.

To wit, ergo, all law must spring forth from religion. Of course, in Mr. Byfield's thinking, not only does religion have a place in the creation of law, it is front and center in defining those laws.

If we seek to make education available to everyone, it's because we think it's "fair," and what we think "fair," whether we realize it or not, comes directly out of the Bible.

Therefore, when Pettigrew says that religion must not be allowed to influence public policy, he disqualifies from participation in government all those whose moral basis lies in religion.

Since our religion is ultimately the only reason we can give for favouring, or opposing, any law, he has in reality called for the disenfranchisement of just about every Canadian.

Mr. Byfield's assertions are flawed - period. First of all, my support or disagreement with any piece of legislation is based on the merits of that legislation. I do not cleave to alleged morality of any particular faith. To argue that morality as expressed in the legal constructs is inherently religious is to assert that all interested peoples are religious. I'm not, and frankly, I am insulted that Mr. Byfield would put such words in my mouth.

You will see this as the first volley in what I fully expect will become a campaign where the religious will focus their arguments on how liberalization in law impinges upon their religious freedoms. What I find exceptionally galling about this is that these same morons will assert that it is their right to marginalize people, even though their own scriptures speak to treating all equally.

Is it "Christian" to marginalize people? Was it Christian to marginalize women by denying them equal rights in our governments? I've seen some of the most godawful things advocated in the name of "Christianity" - in the "moral" certitude that these people know some absolute truth that are not shared by all - or any - Canadians.

The ugly underside of hard-line religion is bigotry and intolerance. I am disappointed to see that the mainstream religions have forgotten the horrors that they experienced at the hands of others in the past. It used to be that being Christian got you thrown to the lions in Rome; being Muslim brought down the wrath of Popes on the Middle East in the Medieval era; Questioning the Popes got you burned at the stake; Arguing against Rome's dogma got Galileo a life under house arrest.

I find it sad that the Religious Reich today has forgotten those lessons, and practices the very same bullying tactics as were once used against them. We live in a country where the Constitution protects the rights of all equally, and religious freedoms are protected as vigorously as any other rights.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BTW - it is now four days since I wrote to Jason Kenney - the silence is deafening. Not even an e-mail acknowledgement has arrived...anyone for starting a betting pool on how long it takes before I see a response?

Leadership Selection Results

This post will be a bit of a mishmash of commentary on both the Liberal leadership and Alberta's PC leadership races.

I'll start off with Ed Stelmach's victory. What kind of government Mr. Stelmach is able to forge remains to be seen, but he seems to have won on the backs of the divisions between Ted Morton and that other guy...er Jim Dinning.

Morton had told his people to back Stelmach as "second choice", but I don't think Morton quite realized that his support had already peaked on the first vote a week ago. As I've said before, I think Morton is a highly polarizing, divisive man. His positions are not formed of consensus, but seem to be much more ideological in formation. Although Morton claims he will continue to remain with the party, I suspect that now that power is no longer in the picture we may well see something of an exodus to the "Alberta Alliance" party or some other isolationist party. (There are several in Alberta).

Over at "Project Alberta", we are already seeing early signs of whining from unhappy Ted Morton supporters:

And if the PC establishment wants to reject me, then they’ll get their wish. Ed Stelmach may be a nice guy, but he’s a part of that red establishment. And Harper’s government along with Morton’s campaign has shown conservatives that it’s possible to elect a truly conservative government in the province of Alberta. I’m not going to support a red tory with that prospect hanging before me.

It's hard to figure why, but Ted wasn't able to capture enough of the disenfranchised folks who either voted Alliance in the last election, or stayed home, to take it over the top. Hopefully the next and third giant in this movement will.

Ted didn't lose the race, the thousands of Liberal and NDPers who bought last minute memberships won it for Stelmach.....They voted for another Liberal Stelmach and Dinning.....

For me this is the final key. If Morton does not receive a significant cabinet position I will need to seriously reconsider my support for this party.

The denial is amazing - "Morton didn't lose the race, it was all those nasty liberals buying memberships", or "Morton better damn well get a cabinet seat", etc. Basically these clowns refuse to believe that their man doesn't represent a majority opinion - even within the constituted membership of the party.

Idiots like Link Byfield will be whining quite loudly about how 1/3 of the party are "Ted Morton conservatives(tm) and must be listened to" (read, should be disproportionately powerful), while failing to recognize that just over 70% of the party isn't "Ted Morton conservative(tm)". (How much of the past few months "instant Tory" membership will hang around remains to be seen...) In some respects, I am relieved to note that even within the PC Party of Alberta, the majority of the party are not "Ted Morton Conservatives(tm)" - in spite of the amount of noise they make.

I hope that Ed Stelmach's low key, polite campaign heralds a change in Alberta's political discourse - one which has come to look all too Americanized lately, with people's personal reputations impugned because they stand for office.

Turning briefly to Stephane Dion's victory last night, I'm personally looking forward to seeing what he can do in the House of Commons, and in more policy oriented terms, looking towards growing a new vision for the Liberal party.

The word on the news is that Mr. Dion is very much an active "team player". This is good, because it is a stark contrast to the abusive micromanagement style of Stephen Harper, where he undermines his own ministers on matters of policy by not even notifying them of his decisions. While Harper may appear to be "in control", it's a facade, and we can be quite sure that as time goes by more and more issues are hurtling out of control. Mr. Dion, if he can forge what people perceive to be a collaborative group, will be a much stronger option for leading this Nation than Mr. Harper.

Just for fun, we find out that the CPoC was trying to manipulate the convention somewhat. When playing "dirty tricks", it's generally a good idea not to brag about it - lest you be tarred with the idea that you are simply dishonest.

At least the House of Commons should move out of "holding pattern" now...Mr. Harper - don't change the channel.

[Update 13:51]
I see that the Morton supporters over at "The Politic" are all upset too. For your amusement, here's some of the more bitter comments posted:

The gap between Stelmach(15%)and the two front runners, Dinning(28.5%) and Morton(26%), was over ten thousand votes(10,000) two Saturdays ago.

I don’t think Stelmach should have been on the ticket this Saturaday at all.

...
You are a REAL CONSERVATIVE as opposed to the Liberals who knew they couldn’t be elected under the Liberal banner so they bought PC party memberships years ago.

I’ve had it with politics in this country. When you send Conservatives to Ottawa they become Liberals. When you try to elect them here you get Liberals.

Albertans let down Conservatives all across Canada last night.
...
If Dinning had been eliminated Stelmach still would have won. It was an “Anyone but Morton” fix by putting Stelmach on the ballot.

But what would have happened if Stelmach, who only had 1/3 of the vote Morton or Dinning got each last week, had never been on the ballot?

If would have been a clear choice between Morton and Dinning. And Ralph Klein’s backroom boys didn’t want that.
...
Morton should be welcomed and taken seriously—fully rewarded for his leadership campaign!!!—or he and real conservatives will go elsewhere to win.

The message is: shutting Morton and conservatives out will seriously compromise PC Party fortunes.

My goodness, we're bitter about it. If you only read this, you'd think that the whole thing was a giant conspiracy to make sure Morton lost. Perhaps, just maybe, it's because Morton's views don't represent a plurality of the membership? (In spite of Morton claiming how "mainstream" he is...)
[/Update]

When You Are Too Crazy For The Sun Media

It's time to seek help.

I've trashed a couple of Rachel Marsden's columns recently - mostly because I wanted a different soda cracker to sandblast rather than the usual insanity of Paul Jackson or Ted Byfield.

Apparently, I'm not the only person north of the 49th to find Marsden more than slightly loopy - as the Toronto Sun has dropped her - and quickly expunged her from the front page of the columnists page on Canoe as well. {Some column history still exists - if you are feeling masochistic enough to read it.

Just to give you a flavour of Marsden's raving insanity, here's a capture of her statement after the Sun obviously dumped her off the back of their turnip truck:



Considering that the Sun keeps providing a stage for the rancid likes of Paul Jackson, Ted Byfield and Ezra Lerant, one can only imagine how utterly insane Marsden really is.

H/T: Canadian Cynic

A "Hidden Agenda" ?

Right now there are a number of pundits (conservative and not) talking about Stephen Harper's "hidden agenda".

I'll agree with Janet L. Jackson for once - there's very little about Harper's Agenda that is hidden.

Now, on the other side of that coin, there's very little about the Conservative Agenda that I like either. The calculus of their economics makes about as much sense as Reaganomics did in the '80s - cut taxes, spend more on the military.

Harper's stated desired to cozy up with George W. Bush doesn't make me feel very good either. Bush is a moral absolutist with his head so firmly embedded in his bible that I don't think he has a clue about the so-called average man on the street.

With Theo-Cons like Ted Byfield running around claiming that Harper owes them some kind of debt, I can only imagine what kind of regressive legislation could come along, all "backed up" by the 'not-withstanding' clause of the Charter.

Just imagine the possibilities:

- Abortion banned because it's immoral.
- Contraceptives only available with a doctor's prescription. (including condoms)
- Abstinence-only sex education.

- Death Penalty revived a la Texas
- Social service delivery handed over to religious groups. (Mandatory Bible study before a welfare cheque is handed over?)
- Discrimination based on biblical scripture not only condoned, but legislated

- Recriminalization of sexuality
- Equality rights provisions of the charter ignored, return to the WASP dominated rules of the pre-1960's era.

- Fund-it-yourself healthcare and education
- Mandatory Bible Study in schools - even if you aren't Christian.

The list goes on and on. Harper hasn't said any of these things per se, but people like Ted Byfield, Bishop Fred Henry, Paul Jackson and others have at one time or another over the last few years. These are the public figures that ostensibly back Stephen Harper's "Conservatives" - do you really want to know what's in the back rooms?

Is Harper the lesser evil to Martin's Liberals? I don't think so - but then again, I'm think about voting for something else entirely these days. I've had enough of the horse manure from both parties. I actually feel somewhat sorry for Martin - he's paying the political price for Jean Chretien's malfeasance, and Martin doesn't strike me as a "corrupt" man the way the Chretien did.

Until the current 'Conservative' party shows some real signs of moving beyond the Reform/Alliance days, this is not a party that I am comfortable supporting. I'm too familiar with the narrow-minded, self-righteous crap that came out of the Reform/Alliance party, and this country desperately needs to move beyond that.

The Ugly, Nasty Underside of Rigid Belief

Lurking under the stiff, starched collar of "conservative" propriety is a truly ugly little collection of beasts. In the english language, these creatures have names - Ignorance, Intolerance and Self-Righteousness.

Lately, the so-called "Social Conservatives" have been demonstrating this in spades, and in a number of dimensions. Let's visit the denizens of the bestiary:

Ignorance

At first, this little creature almost appears cute - sort of like a hamster, until you discover that some mad wizard cross-bred the thing with a Komodo Dragon and a salted slug. I do not mean the ignorance of someone who pushes you out of the queue at the coffee shop, but the ignorance that derives from a lack of knowledge.

Bishop Fred Henry has demonstrated this in spades. In his now infamous "Pastoral Letter" railing against same-gender marriage, the good bishop tried to connect homosexuality with pornography, prostitution and adultery. A more amazing piece of illogic I have never seen. Anyone who has even a modicum of background in psychology will recognize that there is no possible link between homosexuality and these other topics. Bishop Henry has demonstrated an obdurate refusal to acknowledge that there is information that renders his assumptions questionable.

Intolerance

Another nasty little beast, the Intolerant masks itself in the chameleon cloak of belief, and the rightness of a belief. Found in the shadows, these creatures are like the animation of the Dust Dragon you find under your bed. Ugly, gross and more air than substance.

Columnist Ted Byfield, and his spawn, Link Byfield, exemplify these creatures. At no time do facts cross their lips unless it is convenient to support their position. The Byfields and their ilk demonstrate their utter intolerance for those that are different from them time and again. They invoke the constitution of this land only when they believe that their "right" to spew vicious epithets against those that are different in thought and belief from them are "attacked". The rest of the time, they heap scorn upon it, claiming that the document is a part of some "Liberal Conspiracy". (If I hear the term "Liberal Conspiracy" from these nut-balls one more time, I'm going to ask them if it is equivalent to the Zionist Conspiracy of Ernst Zundel.

Self Righteousness

These creatures are particularly vicious. The results of some mad priest cross-breeding a harpy with an oak tree, a compost heap and a rhinocerous, these creatures are loud, irritating and very unpleasant to be around - as well as taking up all available verbal space within a few miles of them.

Rigid in their adopted beliefs, these beings perceive the world through a filter that makes them believe that that there are absolute rights and wrongs. These beliefs are usually codified in their unique interpretation of some musty scriptures that were written 2000 years or more in the past, and written by people long dead.

Usually, these people cloak their rigid thinking and unwillingness to consider new ideas in the language of respectable religious belief. Don't be mistaken, religious belief is not in itself rigid or inflexible, but rather these creatures make it such, and then use it as a club to beat others who think differently than they do over the head with it. As I recall, during the debate over Turbans in the RCMP, these creatures were as vehement in their opposition to the Turban as they are acting now over same-gender marriage.

The claim that the world (or society) as we know it will end should the "cause-celebre" of the week come to pass has inevitably turned up false time and again, whether it is women's rights, abortion, divorce, black rights, equality for the ethnically diverse peoples of this nation.

Usually when I start to see these creatures forming around people making argument for some belief or another, I start digging around for the facts - such as they exist, and ask myself if the awful harms to society that they proclaim are probable at all. Usually they are not, and worse, those claiming that world will end in biblical fire do so by co-opting the honest beliefs of people for whom faith is a means to bring a little joy to those around them and using those beliefs for the purposes of asserting political power.

Bye Bye, Bourque

It's been fairly well known for some time that the news aggregator site Bourque sells headline wording rights to his advertisers.

Recently, he's been "taken over" by the CPoC to the point that his headlines have become more or less a farce. I haven't used Bourque much for a long time mostly because I find his site cumbersome and annoying to navigate (not to mention riddled with dead links ... oh wait - that's annoying!).

According to some, Bourque's "headline twisting service" is a legitimate promotional tool, and perhaps from a marketing standpoint it is. However, it crosses the line for me when I see entire party agendas being played out on screen in a manner that only Ted Byfield could love:



Let's take a look through and map today's snapshot against CPoC agenda and "classical positions":

Headline: CMHC Going to Pot

Agenda: As usual, this would fall under the neo-Rethuglican "smaller government" heading. Anything that would give the government an excuse to meddle in an agency that is otherwise working. (and without which, a lot fewer Canadians would be able to own their own homes - especially in areas like Toronto, Vancouver and now Calgary)

Headline: Flaherty Tax Cuts Coming

Agenda: More from the smaller government file. In this case, because the Conservatives have such a woody for having our troops strut their stuff in a war zone, they will pay for the army first, and starve everything else. (Remember a certain billion or so in "spending cuts" that just mysteriously came out of programs that benefit women and minorities?)

Headline: Tories Shake Up Justice Department

Agenda: Get tough on crime. Sounds good, doesn't it? Sadly, the CPoC's notion of "getting tough" tends to mean breaking fundamental tenets of our legal system to start with (such as the presumption of innocence) - not something I particularly think makes for good law.

Headline: Why Top Libs Are Hitting The French Books

Agenda: Slime the opposition at every turn - implying that the Liberals aren't literate in French while the CPoC is (personally I find Harper's french accent godawful to listen to). This is one of the Rob Anders school of stupidity tactics. Imported from the United States, this is a semi-classic marketing play that is really quite annoying - like the "attack ads" just recently released, it's a blatant smear attempt and really not even worth the public's time.

Headline: McGuinty Goes Green

Agenda: Try to discredit anyone who is "fool enough" to believe those uppity climate scientists who have spent their careers studying this stuff, and declare that humans have something to do with the changes we've been witnessing (and measuring) since the mid-20th century)

Headline: Ont. Libs To Run More Females

Agenda: More Anders-style taunting. This particular headline is button pushing at its finest. First, it implies that the Liberal party is gender biased (and the CPoC isn't?), second it is subtly demeaning to women as well.

Headline: FEDS EYE TANKS FROM GERMANY

Agenda: More "look how great our army is" from the party who thinks that foreign policy involves a six shooter and a swagger out of a bad Clint Eastwood western.

However, if that's how Bourque wants to run his site - that's his business. As far as I'm concerned, he's just relegated himself to the dumpster of Canadian news gathering - the same place that ultimately "The Alberta Report" (and later "Report") magazine landed up.

The nature and tone of the headlines demonstrates to me once again why the CPoC really is an immature bunch of clods. (and probably explains why Harper keeps protecting Anders)

When You Say "Disestablished" ...

Prior to this morning I really had not heard of Father John Neuhaus, and after reading this drivel, I'm not sure I want to hear any more from the man.

Basically, Neuhaus claims that Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms has shoved Christianity out of the public square. A statement which is absolute nonsense, and he knows it. Canada's Charter has not pushed Christianity out of the public square, instead it has forced it to stand among a lot of other equal voices instead of giving it the arbitrary prominence that many of its practitioners blithely assume it should hold simply because Canada was colonized originally by people who were predominantly Christian.

The claim that Christianity has been "pushed out of the public square" in Canada is blindingly false. One only has to look at who was screaming the loudest over the legal recognition of same gender marriages. The lobby groups that were making the biggest noise were all claimants to the label of "Christian". So, please tell me how that's "being pushed out of the public square"? Quite simply, it's not.

The reality is that Canada's legal framework has done two things - it has made it very difficult indeed to encode as law the kinds of brutal discrimination and inequality that is present in Biblical Scripture. It has given an voice to groups that in the past had been suppressed by the preeminent position granted to "Christianity", and caused people to start to think that just maybe there's more to things than what's transcribed in scripture.

People like Ted Byfield and Michael Coren bemoan the fact that they can no longer stone adulterers or criminalize GLBT people. They claim it is in the name of "faith" and all that is "good in the world", yet it is ultimately the same kind of preening superiority that I saw so often in school - where those who "don't fit in" are subjected to the most awful treatment, largely because somebody else decides to inflict it upon them.

If anything has been "pushed out of the public square", it is not Christianity - or any other faith - but rather the use of the claim of "faith" to justify treating some of our country's citizens as second class members of our society.

Thoughts on the Toronto Shootings...

Recently, there has been quite a rise in youth violence - most notably in Toronto, but also in other Canadian cities like Calgary.

At first, it seems almost incomprehensible what is going on, and then little pieces start to emerge - whether it be so-called "street gangs", or someone's sense of honor being impugned by being tossed out of a private party. Adding to the picture is a recent incident in Calgary where a 14 year old girl saved her own life by unloading the pistols her father kept around the house.

While our politicians voice their outrage, we get commentaries like Ted Byfield's on the subject tinged with all kinds of religious overtones.

The flaws in applying one's own religious morality/ethics to these situations are fairly obvious - starting with the painfully clear fact that Canada is no longer even vaguely homogenous in terms of its faith community. We have sizable communities from a huge range of traditions today, and it is unlikely that they agree on much other than to disagree with each other.

No, the problems need to be examined much more dispassionately, and in a reasoned manner.

It has been observed that the kids who are getting into these situations have "no fear or respect for authority". That may well be true. I know far too many cases where teens these days are sheltered from the consequences of their actions by their parents. If they break something, mom and dad pay the damages - and at most the child seems to wind up with a tongue lashing. Our society has been built around the notion of consequences for your actions. Whether the consequences were delivered by your parents or by others (teachers, school principals, the police, whatever), you bore them yourself.

Today, for whatever reason, parents seem a lot more willing to 'turn a blind eye', or worse, actually protect their children from the consequences of their actions on the notion that it's "just a phase", or "they'll grow out of it".

However, I'm not about to take such a simplistic view - it seems unreasonable to me to lay the blame at the feet of parents exclusively, or in the abstract notion of 'the poverty cycle'. The situation that happened on New Year's Eve in Calgary was clearly not one borne out of poverty, yet it bears a certain similarity to the horrors that have afflicted Toronto this past year.

There are more subtle factors at play here. It seems that the most highly publicized cases wind up involving ethnic communities - often the second generation descendents of immigrants who moved to Canada looking for a new life. (Again - I must caution the reader that although I am talking about these groups, I am not prepared to lay the blame at their feet exclusively either, this is an examination of some of issues that may well feed the overall problem)

Consider a couple that moves to Canada seeking a more prosperous life. To be sure, in many cases they find it, or possibly even the relative life of the working poor in Canada is simply that much better than they experienced in their homeland - who knows. Assuming they achieve a reasonable degree of economic success, it seems to me quite reasonable that they may well fall into the 'covering their children's errors' trap quite easily. Often, they may come from countries where their currency in society is defined by their family honor. A few dollars handed to the local judge/constabulary would conveniently cause a 'dishonorable' action to quietly disappear in their home country - so paying their child's fine for vandalism may seem to them a way of preserving their social status.

Of course, this is a gross distortion of Canada's culture as experienced by these people. It is distorted by the lens of their cultural assumptions, and the mismatch with Canada's cultural assumptions - in particular the reflection of some of those assumptions in law.

The next factor that I see bubbling into the picture is the change that any immigrant experiences moving to a new country. Canadian law differs considerably in its foundations from that of a lot of other countries in the world. Consequently, an immigrant parent may well feel that the "disclipinary tools" that they had before have been stripped away from them, and not replaced with anything. Our laws tend to proscribe, for example, corporal punishment. Similarly, many religious sanctions simply don't have the "sticking power" in a multicultural society where the different traditions may not even recognize the sanction as being a 'sanction'. This leaves the parents in a truly awkward space when it comes to disclipline of their children (To some lesser degree, this same problem afflicts "strict" Christian sects as well who may believe in corporal punishments such as "strapping".)

Then, one adds to the whole mess of cultural tools such as "honor killings" (which we nearly had one of in Calgary in November - were it not for a young lady's foresight in unloading her father's pistols). To someone of Western European descent, the whole notion of "honor killings" has become alien. We simply have no moral equivalent to understand the perspective from which such an action would arise. (Nor would I argue that we should) Again, the proscriptions in our laws against such things are not always fully understood by people steeped in other cultural traditions. This potentially means that they are working with a very inappropriate understanding of the social "currency" of family honor and how it plays in today's Canada compared to their own traditions.

When you blend all of these factors into a space where new immigrant families may well have to work two and three jobs just to pay the rent, or if they achieve economic success may not have the "social tools" themselves to cope with it - leaving them wealthy, but somewhat isolated from society by limitations of language and other challenges. Meanwhile, their children are much more able to adapt to the society around them, and may well be able to play their parents off against "external authority" figures such as the police in that cynical way that teenagers often attempt as they start to assert themselves as independant adults.

While zero-tolerance sanctions around guns and gang activity will certainly deal with the immediate crisis (superficially), I'm not so sure that those kind of actions even begin to address the underlying problems of adaptation that I am postulating as significant factors in the picture. (I freely admit that I have no statistical evidence to back up some of the points I am suggesting are issues here - they derive from a series of conversations in the last few days, and my own inferences based on what is in the news)

I think it is a gross mistake to try and "homogenize" our culture - but we do need to examine ways to build "bridges" into the various sub-groups of our society that are running in relative isolation to each other. Bridges that help the sub-groups integrate effectively with the mainstream of Canadian society without necessarily giving up the positive aspects of their own traditions.

[Update]: On CBC's Letter's page we find this letter (reproduced in full because I don't expect it to remain on CBC's website for long):

I now live in Holland but used to live in Toronto and am here for the Christmas and New Years holidays. It saddens me to see Canada's largest city slide towards what is considered average for most US cities.

The causes are the same: poverty and lack of perspective. Most of the perpetrators are young men on the periphery of mainstream society whose future is marred by the lack of their own work ethic combined with no real chance of entering the job market. Include a ready access to guns and you have instant headlines.

If Toronto really intends to change this, it must adopt a multi pronged strategy of sticks and carrots. The carrots should include real jobs and effective societal bonds. The sticks should include stricter gun law enforcement and more responsible parenting.

—Steve Belgraver | The Netherlands

The author is going more after concrete solutions than I am, but underlying his analysis are some similar points to what I have raised.