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• An apparently typical state-owned CBC fan, on news of the death of a Canadian soldier in Afghanistan:
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(Also see PTBC's CBC reader comments of hate category).

• As taxpayers bail out the auto companies in Canada, the head of the auto workers' union in Canada, Ken Lewenza, blames Canada's "right wing" (that's me) and "corporate agenda" (arguably also me) for the global financial collapse, in what I call (A) an outright lie, (B) yet another declaration of class warfare in Canada by the extreme left, and (C) overall abject stupidity. He also (D) sounds like a communist. Reference.

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PTBC Columnist Team

Columnists -- with bite! We feature conservative-friendly writers from Canada and the U.S. who help clarify the difference between liberals and conservatives. All have personally agreed to be a part of our team here at PTBC.

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Ann Coulter

  posted on Thursday, March 18, 2010
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Liberals keep complaining that Republicans don’t have a plan for reforming health care in America. I have a plan!

It’s a one-page bill creating a free market in health insurance. Let’s all pause here for a moment so liberals can Google the term “free market.”

Nearly every problem with health care in this country—apart from trial lawyers and out-of-date magazines in doctors’ waiting rooms—would be solved by my plan.

In the first sentence, Congress will amend the McCarran-Ferguson Act to allow interstate competition in health insurance.

We can’t have a free market in health insurance until Congress eliminates the antitrust exemption protecting health insurance companies from competition. If Democrats really wanted to punish insurance companies, which they manifestly do not, they’d make insurers compete.

The very next sentence of my bill provides that the exclusive regulator of insurance companies will be the state where the company’s home office is. Every insurance company in the country would incorporate in the state with the fewest government mandates, just as most corporations are based in Delaware today.

That’s the only way to bypass idiotic state mandates, requiring all insurance plans offered in the state to cover, for example, the Zone Diet, sex-change operations, and whatever it is that poor Heidi Montag has done to herself this week.

President Obama says we need national health care because Natoma Canfield of Ohio had to drop her insurance when she couldn’t afford the $6,700 premiums, and now she’s got cancer.

Much as I admire Obama’s use of terminally ill human beings as political props, let me point out here that perhaps Natoma could have afforded insurance had she not been required by Ohio’s state insurance mandates to purchase a plan that covers infertility treatments and unlimited OB/GYN visits, among other things.

It sounds like Natoma could have used a plan that covered only the basics—you know, things like cancer.

The third sentence of my bill would prohibit the federal government from regulating insurance companies, except for normal laws and regulations that apply to all companies.

Freed from onerous state and federal mandates turning insurance companies into public utilities, insurers would be allowed to offer a whole smorgasbord of insurance plans, finally giving consumers a choice.

Instead of Harry Reid deciding whether your insurance plan covers Viagra, this decision would be made by you, the consumer. (I apologize for using the terms “Harry Reid” and “Viagra” in the same sentence. I promise that won’t happen again.)

Instead of insurance companies jumping to the tune of politicians bought by health-care lobbyists, they would jump to tune of hundreds of millions of Americans buying health insurance on the free market.

Hypochondriac liberals could still buy the aromatherapy plan and normal people would be able to buy plans that only cover things such as major illness, accidents and disease. (Again—things like Natoma Canfield’s cancer.)

This would, in effect, transform medical insurance into ... a form of insurance!

My bill will solve nearly every problem allegedly addressed by ObamaCare—and mine entails zero cost to the taxpayer. Indeed, a free market in health insurance would produce major tax savings as layers of government bureaucrats, unnecessary to medical service in America, get fired.

For example, in a free market, the government wouldn’t need to prohibit insurance companies from excluding “pre-existing conditions.”

Of course, an insurance company has to be able to refuse NEW customers with “pre-existing conditions.” Otherwise, everyone would just wait to get sick to buy insurance. It’s the same reason you can’t buy fire insurance on a house that’s already on fire.

That isn’t an “insurance company”; it’s what’s known as a “Christian charity.”

What Democrats are insinuating when they denounce exclusions of “pre-existing conditions” is an insurance company using the “pre-existing condition” ruse to deny coverage to a current policy holder—someone who’s been paying into the plan, year after year.

Any insurance company operating in the free market that pulled that trick wouldn’t stay in business long.

If hotels were as heavily regulated as health insurance is, right now I’d be explaining to you why the government doesn’t need to mandate that hotels offer rooms with beds. If they didn’t, they’d go out of business.

I’m sure people who lived in the old Soviet Union thought it was crazy to leave groceries to the free market. (“But what if they don’t stock the food we want?”)

The market is a more powerful enforcement mechanism than indolent government bureaucrats. If you don’t believe me, ask Toyota about six months from now.

Right now, insurance companies are protected by government regulations from having to honor their contracts. Violating contracts isn’t so easy when competitors are lurking, ready to steal your customers.

In addition to saving taxpayer money and providing better health insurance, my plan also saves trees by being 2,199 pages shorter than the Democrats’ plan.

Feel free to steal it, Republicans!

©2004-09 Ann Coulter.  Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.

Ann Coulter’s column appears here at ProudToBeCanadian.ca by license, weekly.

Buy all SEVEN of Ann Coulter’s best-sellers! Buying them though our web site generates small sales commissions from Amazon that financially supports ProudToBeCanadian.ca.

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Barbara Kay

  posted on Wednesday, March 17, 2010
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In 1968, naive anti-establishment American and Canadian students considered themselves courageous for locking supine university presidents in their offices, throwing computers out of windows and even burning out-of-favour academics’ research work. They knew that in the free, indulgent West, their childish parody of a revolution would result in nothing more than a suspension from their studies.

In the same year truly courageous Moscow academic Yuri Glazov signed the famous “letter of the twelve,” protesting illegal arrests and trials of dissidents, knowing full well that this real act of revolution would result in a suspension of his human rights.

Glazov was predictably fired, meaning he was henceforth unemployable and deemed a “parasite” on the state. Warned by a friend, he narrowly avoided imprisonment on a trumped-up narcotics-dealing charge. Finally, through a stroke of luck, Glazov came with his family to the West, and in 1975 took up residence in Halifax as chair of the Russian Studies department at Dalhousie University, a position he held until shortly before his death in 1998.

An outstanding Canadian, Glazov deserves recognition, and so do many other brave dissidents for whom Canada has been a refuge. Nine million Canadians — that’s almost a third of us according to the 2006 census — came to these shores from communist-ruled countries. Many are now dead or very old. Their descendants deserve to see their sacrifices acknowledged and Canadians exposed to the full panoply of communist atrocities.

Prospects for educating Canadians about the human toll exacted by communism through their stories will brighten when a long-sought Ottawa Memorial to the Victims of Totalitarian Communism is completed, a project singled out for endorsement in the recent Throne Speech.

This memorial isn’t just a good idea, like an also-promised national Holocaust memorial, it is a necessary idea.

The exhaustively researched Holocaust is in no danger of being forgotten. The highest term of opprobrium in Western culture, whether from leftists or rightists (rightly or wrongly) is “Nazi,” not “communist.” That’s not because Nazis and communists have been compared and Nazis found to be worse. It’s because people don’t know how bad communism was and is.

In 2006 the Swedish Ministry of Education initiated programs teaching the crimes of communism because a poll had revealed only 10% of Swedish youth could identify the Gulag. Canadian youth would not fare better. All educated Canadians associate the word “Auschwitz” with “genocide.” The equally horrific “Holodomor” is more likely to draw a blank stare.

Why has communism escaped the moral condemnation Naziism attracts in such exuberant degree? In recent years several scholars have addressed the question and provided a litany of reasons, amongst them:

•  Stalin was a war ally and therefore escaped the postwar censure he deserved;

•  Only since the fall of the Berlin Wall has the most damaging data emerged; by then witnesses were aging and focused on economic priorities;

•  There was no Nuremburg, no Truth and Reconciliation moment for communism as there was for other genocidal regimes;

•  Communist propaganda machines are extremely efficient at positive branding (Trudeau bought in; his fawning patronage of Fidel Castro was beyond contemptible).

But all reasons pale beside the glaring failure of left-wing intellectuals to admit — and to teach — that communism isn’t simply an unfortunate contingency of socialist passion but an ideology as immoral and implacably ruthless and dramatically consequential as Naziism.

Actually it is more than intellectuals’ failure, which suggests passivity; it was, and is, active avoidance. Yuri Glazov was proud to become a Canadian citizen, but was shocked and chagrined at the ignorance and even denial of communism’s crimes he found amongst his fellow academics. As his son Jamie Glazov noted in his 2009 book, United in Hate: the Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror, “[W]hile we were cherishing our newfound freedom, we encountered ... intellectuals in the universities who hated my parents for the story they had to tell ...” Left-wing intellectuals’ laundering of the truth about communism has translated into a vast lacuna in the teaching of 20th century history in our schools — one we can only hope the new memorial will help to fill.

The word “memorial” is somewhat misleading, though, suggesting that communism is a closed historical chapter. The fall of the Berlin Wall notwithstanding, communism in one guise or another still determines the fate of millions of hapless people around the globe. Victims in communist regimes are still starved, imprisoned, tortured and denied the most basic of human rights.

“Centre”? “Testament”? It is not too late to find a word to remind communism’s ongoing victims that right-thinking Canadians know the truth and will not abandon them.

To learn more about Yuri Glazov and the Yuri Glazov memorial fund at Dalhousie University, go here

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

©2005-09 - Barbara Kay is a columnist at Canada’s National Post newspaper.  Her column appears here at ProudToBeCanadian.ca weekly, with Barbara Kay’s express permission. 

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David Warren

  posted on Wednesday, March 17, 2010
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The colour green has curious psychological effects on people. Graphic and product designers have long known, or at least once knew, that it was the most dangerous segment of the colour wheel to play with—the stretch between the cooler yellows and the greenshade blues. Few people spontaneously choose colours in that range. Most naturally favour blues, or reds.

“Hospital green” may have been discarded by our medical institutions, but while it served, it was a constant reminder of the universality of pain. Various other puce greens have been used institutionally over the years, out of a will that I frankly associate with sadism. But these greens, I hasten to add, are nothing like the rich emerald greens we associate with Ireland, and which can acquit themselves well in small doses.

Green is of course the colour of foliage, and nature vegetated is an extraordinary orchestra in that range—the symphonic background for floral solos in distinct contrasting colours. For green in a contrast is often gorgeous. But green against another green in a field of greens is something only God can pull off. I do not recommend it to artists, except the most skilled botanical illustrators.

As a (very) amateur Sunday painter, in the watercolour line, I have found that greens are the surest way to ruin a landscape composition, and that with the possible exception of viridian, there is no green pigment in a paintbox that isn’t offering to unmake my day.

Only mixed greens seem to work (let some capable painter correct me). And the two traditional green “mixers” among the artist’s tubes—“sap green” and “Hooker’s green,” themselves artificially contrived—must never ever be used alone. Indeed, they operate out of a part of the spectrum so ill-served by durable pigments from nature, we must reasonably conclude that God never wanted us to go there.

Green is associated today with two fanatical ideological movements: leftist environmentalism, and Islamism. We thus see it everywhere, making in-your-face propaganda, so that we can almost hope they’ll run out of the dye, as I understand the Maoists once did with red in China. This was during the (anti-) Cultural Revolution, when they turned with a vengeance instead to that grim static blue for the slave workers’ pyjamas. And the cognate mid-range green for the People’s Army—that Paul Hellyer also made our military wear, when the Liberals “unified” our armed forces in the 1960s—a truly inhuman colour.

I mentioned Ireland somewhere above, and I often think had the colour of Saint Patrick been blue—as it once was, before the glib modern mind changed it to coincide with the shamrock—I’d have shown more sympathy to the Irish.

Between my natural chlorophobia, and horror of Danny-Boy sentimentality, Scotch Presbyterian ancestry, British fustian pomp, and the “Orange” heritage of my native Ontario (now there’s a vile colour for you)—I harboured a snooty prejudice against most Irish things. In particular, March 17 seemed a good day to stay off the streets, and as far from pubs as possible. (The idea of beer dyed kelly green still unnerves me.)

It was only when I crossed the Tiber a few years ago, that the whole idea of Irish began growing on me, and I embraced Saint Patrick as a relative of some kind. Indeed I, who have no known Irish forebears more recent than the settlement of Scotland’s Western Isles, now find myself deeply moved by a history both tragic and redemptive—of a people who stuck by their religion through centuries of persecution, preferring poverty to apostasy.

Likewise, I have finally grasped how the dogged qualities of the Irish served them, and served others, in the settlement of this Canadian wilderness—the laying down of civilization in our remote and inhospitable places.

Too, I find myself reading the deeper history of Ireland, with a new appreciation for God’s mysterious ways. There is a sense in which the light of western Christendom began shining in an Hibernian candelabrum, itself lit from afar, out of Egypt. For it was the learned, poetical, charitable spirit of an intensely catholic and evangelical Ireland, that lighted the most savage corners in Europe’s Dark Age.

We are falling back into paganism and barbarity again. It is not that lump of earth called Ireland, but the grace that came to her through men like Patrick, that is worth celebrating. We only grease the slide when we take “Lá Fhéile Pádraig” instead, as a day to cavort with the arse-braying, idiot green leprechauns.

On this level, my chlorophobia survives. For I think we must invoke not the cartoon, but the living Saint Patrick, to help us repair what he once builded; to explain once more the Trinity to us, as once he did by means of the shamrock.

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David Warren is a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen.  Visit his web site at davidwarrenonline.com.

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Theo Caldwell

  posted on Tuesday, March 16, 2010
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The life of Saint Patrick is celebrated the world over on March 17, when everyone is a little bit Irish. Solemnity and sobriety may be in short supply on Patrick’s feast day, but this great man merits serious contemplation.

Born a Roman citizen on the west coast of Scotland around 400 A.D., Patrick was kidnapped from his home at age 16 by kinsmen of Niall of the Nine Hostages, Ireland’s most powerful ruler, and held as a slave for six years. It was a brutal time, but one for which the Saint would eventually thank God. Only through the misery of bondage, and his miraculous escape, did Patrick find his true calling.

He missed the major portion of his formal schooling and this made him insecure his whole life, causing him to write very little. When he did take up his quill in later years, Patrick apologized profusely for the quality of his prose: “Anyone can see from the style of my writing how little training in the use of words I got.”

What an irony that the Patron Saint of Ireland, a nation of outsized authors, was not, in fact, Irish, and lamented his own lack of skill for the written word. But Patrick was a gifted speaker, able to find the natural tone that resonates with listeners, whether they are learned or not. As scholar Donnchadh O’ Flionn opined of Patrick’s oratory, “How his unbookish common sense must have baffled those suave and contriving learned opponents of his!”

And opponents, he certainly had. Both within the Church and without, Patrick was surrounded by those who doubted his credentials, his motives, his character and his message. Despite his lifelong knowledge of Christianity (his father had been a church deacon), Patrick did not appreciate the value of faith until he lost his freedom. After escaping to England on a ship that was transporting dogs, Patrick embarked on a lightning clerical career that saw him elevated to the rank of Bishop. Over the course of years, he had visions and dreams of his former captors in Ireland, calling him back to teach them about Christ. He knew that his mission would be hard and folks would doubt him. Yet Patrick persevered, stating, “I came to the Irish heathens to preach the Good News and to put up with insults from unbelievers.”

Patrick understood that, through him and others, God would embrace a new country. In his Confession, he quoted Romans 9:25: “I shall say to a people that was not mine, ‘You are my people,’ and to a nation I never pitied, ‘I pity you.’” To be sure, Patrick believed he was helping to fulfill this prophesy in Ireland.

But discard any idea that Patrick strode onto the Emerald Isle, plucked up a shamrock (derived from the Irish word seamrog, meaning “summer plant”), explained the Holy Trinity to the pagans using its three leaves, then everyone settled into a chorus of Danny Boy (the non-Irish derivations of that song being another discussion entirely). It was a far harder slog. Patrick was imprisoned and robbed repeatedly, attacked, vilified, and he lived in constant expectation of murder.

Gradually, throughout his eventful life, Patrick became aware of his place, if not in history, in God’s plan. He did not think of himself as special; rather, he took pains to point out that his faith, mission, and even his suffering were gifts from God and, perhaps to prove a point, the Almighty had chosen an unlearned former slave, rather than a brilliant scholar, to spread His message.

It is often observed that Patrick led the only bloodless revolution in the whole troubled history of Ireland. Author and Irish Bishop Joseph Duffy notes, “The later compilers of saints’ lives, who were by no means given to understatement, tell of only one martyr in his entire missionary career.” The pen may be mightier than the sword, but Patrick used neither. Instead, his simple faith and plain speaking changed the course of his adopted country.

Writers largely ignored Patrick for more than 100 years after his death around 480, but he was rediscovered in the 7th Century. It was not until 1681 that we find the first reference to wearing the shamrock on St. Patrick’s Day, and this was the same century wherein “Patrick” became the most common Christian name in Ireland. Like any number of ancient tales, the facts of Patrick’s life are disputable but the larger point remains. To wit, a selfless life is worth living.

Patrick had a special relationship with young people, and some suppose he strove to give them a hope and happiness his own childhood had lacked. But were it not for his early suffering, could Patrick have become such a seminal figure of faith? How many people, afflicted as Patrick was, might decide they deserve a comfortable dotage? What, then, urged him on? As he put it, “Surely it was not without God or for worldly purposes that I came to Ireland. Who compelled me?...I sold my birthright without shame or regret for the benefit of others…Thus I am a servant of Christ in a far-off nation on account of the indescribable glory of eternal life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Theo Caldwell, president of Caldwell Asset Management, Inc., is an investment advisor in the United States and Canada.  His columns regularly appear in the National Post and Sun Media papers.  You can visit his web site at TheoCaldwell.com.

Buy his new book Finn the half-Great—A great kids’ book!

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Mike S. Adams

  posted on Monday, March 15, 2010
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Dear Mitch Stewart (Director, Organizing for America):

I am in receipt of your recent email asking for my help in urging Representative Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.) to vote to “move health reform forward as early as next week.” I am stunned you would choose to end the first paragraph of your email with the following gross misrepresentation:

“Your representative, Rep. Mike McIntyre, stood with the President to create as many as 3.9 million jobs with the Recovery Act, and deserves our thanks. Now, it’s important to make it clear that the voters back home stand with President Obama and want health reform.”

That statement is stunning for two reasons.

First, as we now know, Representative McIntyre supported a bill that did not bring about a net increase in jobs. We were promised that the unemployment rate would not rise above 8% if the bill passed. Instead, it went up to 10%. As you know, 10% is higher than 8%. And, just last month, as a direct result of the spending, we saw a one-month deficit of nearly 225 billion dollars. I think it can be fairly stated that Representative McIntyre’s support of Obama hurt young constituents in the short term and in the long term.

Second, we (the “voters back home”) simply do not stand with the President on health care. We have responded to public opinion polls in ways that make this perfectly clear. But President Obama simply does not support democracy – not in Iraq, nor in America. He is asking Representative McIntyre to be an accessory to legislative rape. And by emailing me today you are asking that I become an accessory to legislative rape, too.

Mitch, your records are correct – I do live in North Carolina’s 7th congressional district. I want to thank you for letting me know I can reach Representative McIntyre at 910.815.4959. I just called to let his people know that he will be ousted from office if he decides to support the president on health care. I also used your link to let BarackObama.com know the President’s defeat is imminent.

I noted with great interest that in the closing lines of your email you spoke of “reining in costs that are bankrupting families and crushing businesses.” But you utterly fail to understand that it is government, not the private sector, that is bankrupting the American family and crushing, not just jobs, but entire businesses and industries.

Nancy Pelosi says that health reform is a moral issue. It is. And I am glad to hear her lecture on moral issues. I haven’t heard a decent moral lecture from Pelosi since the fall of 2006. Then, she lectured my party on its failure to rein in Representative Mark Foley of Florida. She said then that the GOP “just doesn’t get it” and that we are completely “out of touch” for an alleged failure to adopt a zero-tolerance policy on sexual harassment – or in this case hisassment.

But as I turn the channel I see former Representative Eric Massa confessing to groping staffers in a drunken stupor – in public no less. I’m not exactly tickled blue as I recall Nancy Pelosi saying (of Foley) that members of Congress should be held to a higher moral standard. But I must confess that I’m looking forward to Massa’s new book – “The Audacity of Grope” – which, hopefully, will outsell Pelosi’s most recent moral treatise.

It hardly comes as a surprise that just after Massa confessed his homoerotic drunken “tousle” on national television we learn this little gem: Numerous servicemen have accused Massa of groping them while serving in the U.S. Navy.

In all likelihood, Nancy Pelosi has known about Massa’s behavior for quite some time. But she could not comment on such conduct at a time when liberals are trying to convince us there’s nothing wrong with letting gays serve openly in the military. Nancy knows when it’s time to push legislation, regardless of public support - especially when it represents an “important moral issue.”

I found myself flipping through the channels to get away from all the madness after the obviously gay ex-congressman Massa starting suggesting that his political opponent Rahm Emanuel is gay – and somehow guilty of touching people inappropriately in a state of total nudity. But all I found was a rant from an obviously mentally unstable and intoxicated Patrick Kennedy.

Listening to Patrick Kennedy lecture the press on its failure to cover important issues – instead of the Massa groping controversy – does not inspire confidence in the potential of Democrats to pass “moral” health care legislation. But I must admit that Kennedy had a point about Eric Massa. There’s no evidence he drove anyone off a bridge after he finished fondling his staff.

At any rate, the best thing Mike McIntyre can do is to leave the party of slavery, segregation, and affirmative action for a party that offers true moral guidance. The ballgame is over and the Democrats are finished. It’s time to come home and take a long cold shower.

©2005-10 Mike S. Adams - Mike Adams, PhD, is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and is a regular columnist for Townhall.com. His column appears here at PTBC with Mike Adams’ express permission by special arrangement with him. Dr. Adams is available for speaking engagements.  Mike Adams’ new book, Feminists Say The Darndest Things.

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David Warren

  posted on Sunday, March 14, 2010
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It does not matter whether you are a man or a woman: if you oppose feminism, you must expect to be smeared. If one is a man, one will certainly be accused of “misogyny,” or hatred of women—which is another thing entirely from opposition to the feminist ideology.

If one is a woman, it can be much worse, as I’ve learned from many woman friends who have stood in the path of “the sisterhood,” and been treated as traitors to their own sex.

In neither case will there be arguments, or at least, legitimate ones. The accusation of misogyny has long been considered the curtain-dropper behind the ideological barricades; like the accusation of “racism,” or “homophobia,” or “islamophobia,” or any of the other psychologizing terms that are employed in the assembly of an ad hominem.

Nor need we expect evidence for our crime. Consider if you will this smooth, parenthetical insinuation, taken from a column in the Ottawa Citizen:

“Trouble is, there are roadblocks—including noisy obstructionists who (perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of insecurity, perhaps out of some curious zeal for revenge we’ll never know about) think the journey should go in the opposite direction. We ignore such people at our peril.”

I noticed it because I’d been named in the column, along with Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, Glenn Beck—and St. Paul, flatteringly enough—as exemplars of a “rabid misogyny” and “extremist thinking.” Or perhaps I rated only with Scott Brown, the new U.S. senator from Massachusetts, as a “pale, albeit appallingly classless, echo of it.”

The column, by Janice Kennedy, was published last Sunday. It began by offering a game of “Spot the Jerk”—in which all win, and all must have prizes. And rather than try to refute it, I would invite gentle reader to read or reread it, playing the alternative game of “Spot the Argument.”

For beyond the ad hominems, I couldn’t find one.

I could quibble that remarks attributed to me by paraphrase misrepresented what I’d said, but then, what I’d originally said was every bit as politically incorrect, so why bother.

What I found most telling, was another parenthetical assertion, about persons of my ilk. “(Personally, I don’t even know any men like that—not among family, friends or neighbours.)”

That she doesn’t, strikes me as a measure of the bubble in which the “liberal intelligentsia” are living, and with which I am over-familiar from my own dealings within the “mainstream media.” Indeed, it is how Fox came to trounce CNN, MSNBC, and other purveyors of television news; how a specialized business newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, came to have such a large circulation; how “talk radio” got started, along with the whole “vast rightwing conspiracy” in the blogosphere.

Put it this way. Working in the media myself, I know plenty of people with views like Janice Kennedy’s. But she knows no one else with views like mine. This comes of living in the intellectual equivalent of a “gated community.”

One is reminded of a comment attributed to the late Pauline Kael, very liberal movie critic of the New Yorker, after Richard Nixon’s landslide victory over George McGovern in 1972—that she didn’t know how Nixon had won, since she didn’t know anyone who’d voted for him.

The quote may be apocryphal, or perhaps it was real but cutely self-deprecating. (There’s a special place in my heart for ideologues who are capable of self-deprecation; it’s like cracks in the Berlin Wall.)

What Kael did say, for attribution, in a speech to the Modern Language Association in December 1972, was rather more malignant: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theatre I can feel them.”

I am not a populist, and I do not think that if the vast majority of people agree with me, I must therefore be right. Nor vice versa, if they stand against me. The truth is something no one owns. It is something that exists unanswerably in itself, and this includes the truth about men and women, whatever it may be.

That women are “underrepresented” in some domains (political and corporate boardrooms were mentioned), and “overrepresented” in others (one thinks of maternity wards), may be the consequence of a male conspiracy crossing all cultural frontiers, and going back to the beginning of historical time.

Or, it may reflect genuine differences between the sexes, that contribute to a certain division of labour in all known sexually reproductive species—and in the case of humans, even to complementary variations in spiritual outlook.

It could also be that both are necessary to the survival of the species.

The great majority, of men and women alike, passively accept the latter view. We may be wrong, but I do not think it makes us all misogynists.

...

David Warren is a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen.  Visit his web site at davidwarrenonline.com.

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Doug Giles

  posted on Sunday, March 14, 2010
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“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” —Henry David Thoreau

God, I love fishing. I dig fishing almost as much as hunting (almost). I love it so much that I moved to a place that is one of the top angling spots in the world: Miami, Florida. And you know what? I milk these waters as much as a working man can.

My fishing roots extend back to Texas and my rowdy childhood when my dad used to take me and my brother fishing on the many lakes, ponds and rivers the Lone Star state has to offer.

Our stringer was typical of a freshwater 60s and 70s Texas catch: perch, crappie, black bass, white bass, channel cats, carp and gar. It was way cool for this little redneck. Yes indeed, Bob-Dawg, I dug it all.

For example, as a young punk I took insane pleasure in:

• Buying fishing gear. Very cool. • Practicing my casting accuracy in my backyard (which still serves me well to this day) • Reading Outdoor Life and getting pumped on its fishing lies … I mean … stories • Experiencing the inability to sleep the night before getting up and declaring war on the fish • Buying bait at freaky bait shops run by guys I swear worked as extras on the movie Deliverance • Arriving at our strategic and wild location and having the privilege of watching and listening to that which is untamed waking up and beginning its tooth, fang and claw survival of the fittest exchange with Mother Nature. Life and death in its purest form, Nancy boys. • Taking a crash course from my dad and other gents regarding different lures and the various ways to present them • And then, of course, the entre, actually catching a fish and grappling with my gigantic aquatic monster which was, in all reality, a pound-and-a-half bass. (I didn’t care, though, because as far as I was concerned, I was Ernest-Frickin’-Hemingway’s character Santiago, and that little bass was my Marlin.) • And lastly, basking in the great satisfaction later that evening of watching adults eat what this rugrat provided. I am iron man. Dun, dun. Dun na dun dunna dunna dunna dun dunna dun. As a young squab, the whole fishing enchilada, from soup to nuts, represented what Bryan Adams called, “The best days of my life.”

With the busyness of college, getting married, raising little girls, making money, and kicking ass, I got out of the fishing groove until I moved mi familia to Miami where I became a fishing kid again and quickly returned to my angling roots.

After a couple of years of getting settled in, weeding through the rip-off charters and bad captains, I landed on two Capitans who are worth their weight in gold. After the Lord blessed me with those two leads I quickly called my dad to get his butt on a plane to bend some rods South Florida style. And oh my God have we crushed the fish.

Not only has pops been a part of many insane hauls, but my wife and my two infamous daughters have, as well. Matter of fact, my girls grew up catching big game fish on light tackle twice their body length without daddy’s help. That’s how they roll, boys. Grow a pair or go home.

In addition to my familial fishing trips, we have had the pleasure of fishing with folks from all over the world and from every conceivable walk of life: from diplomats, bestselling authors, pundits, big name rock stars, Fox News contributors, missionaries, attorney generals, terminal cancer patients, and good buddies at church, to at risk teens without hope and without a clue. We have always had an amazing time, sharing in our mutual addiction that we seek no cure from (i.e. the screaming reel).

The fish we have caught, of which I have the pictures and videos to prove, include: giant bull sharks, lemon sharks, great hammerheads, black tip sharks, spinner sharks (the most enjoyable shark to hook), dusky sharks, sailfish, dolphin, goliath grouper (and their many cousins), permit, bonefish, giant barracuda, tarpon, snook, speckled trout, jack cravelles, amberjack, ladyfish, blue fish, snapper, tripletails, yellow jacks, kingfish, Spanish mackerel, bonita, tuna, red fish and a couple of things I didn’t know what the hell they were.

We have caught them all: small, medium and large. In the gorgeous ultra marine blue seas of the Atlantic, to the gin-clear flats of Biscayne Bay, down to Key West, to the murky fish-rich waters of Chokoloskee, the Ten Thousand Islands area, and the gorgeous, uninhabited sanctuary of Flamingo.

Yep, I blame fish for a lot of the great times in my life. Check it out: All around the personal pursuit of my finny little friend, my life and my relationships have been greatly enriched via stretched monofilament and high-pitched Diawa drag screams.

Which brings me to the point of my column. As much as I have been there and have done that from a fishing standpoint, as you can guess from my eight-hundred-word gush above, I can’t imagine not fishing for the rest of my life nor my kid’s kids not being able to be anglers should they so desire. Fishing is one of the cherished liberties and activities that keeps me giddy about the great American experiment.

That’s why when I hear crap that Obama and his “progressive” ilk want to ban fishing, it gets me … uh … how shall I put this … um… angry. Yeah, that’s a good word. Not only are they upending this nation on many different economical fronts but now they’re talking about the recreationally and economically disastrous move of banning fishing? What’s next? Are they going to ban apple pie? Blonde-haired girls? Chevrolet? No, they own Chevy now. What about baseball?

For those who say, “Ah, it’ll never happen in America,” that’s probably what some folks in Ontario thought before the World Wildlife Fund and the International Fund for Animal Welfare completed their successful campaign to convince the Ontario government to shut down one of the best managed big-game hunts in North America, which crippled many small businesses and the tourism economy of communities across northern and central Ontario.

My advice to fishermen everywhere is to refuse to be silent and scream now via phone calls, emails and faxes to your reps as loud as your Penn reel would wail with a 50lb kingfish strippin’ off its line.

For more info on what BHO and his tree humping boys plan to do, go here … and here. Lastly, click here to fish with my Captain, Gavet Tuttle, at BackForMore.com.

Doug Giles’ new book “A Time to Clash: Papers from a Provocative Pastor” is now available. Ann Coulter says “Doug Giles’ A Time to Clash is a substantive and funny tour de force for traditional values.” Doug’s award winning talk show and video blog can be seen and heard at http://www.ClashRadio.com.

Doug Giles is the creator and host of “The Clash” radio shows, winners of seven Silver Microphone Awards and two Communicator Awards in the last three years. Recent guests on his weekly one-hour show have included Ann Coulter, Ted Nugent, Cal Thomas, David Limbaugh, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Mona Charen, Michelle Malkin and Brian Kilmeade.  In addition, Doug is a popular columnist, minister, and award-winning writer.

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Salim Mansur

  posted on Saturday, March 13, 2010
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Iraqis again showed how keenly they have taken possession of democracy when they voted on March 7 for their 325-member parliament.

In January 2005, Iraqis had voted with an insurgency raging and with Sunni Arabs, constituting nearly 20% of the population — Iraqi Kurds are Sunni and amount to another 20%, the rest make up the Shiite majority — staging a boycott of the election.

It was nevertheless a remarkable feat of defiance and courage by a people groping forward to take hold of freedom with dignity.

Five years later, for the second time more than 60% of the electorate, defying bombs and missiles, turned out to elect a government of their own.

Only hard-hearted cynics, and those lacking any historical perspective of Iraq and the region, will deride the significance of Iraqis voting together despite sectarian and ethnic differences.

This time around, the Sunni Arabs voted in large number as if to compensate for their folly in staging the 2005 boycott. They watched democracy slowly and painfully take root in the soil of their blood-soaked country for real, and learned they needed to be engaged in the process if they were to demand their share in government.

There will be all sorts of horse-trading in the newly elected parliament to form a government since no one party will likely hold a majority of seats. This means politicians and people will have to learn together the art of compromise to ensure a functioning democracy.

Iraq’s democracy may appear messy to others in the Middle East, and the rulers of the Arab world with their sycophants may ridicule Iraqis as they stumble in making progress.

It is, however, this labour of Iraqis as a free people building a democratic society of their own that starkly exposes the rottenness of politics in the region.

Freedom and democracy tend to be contagious and therefore monarchs, theocrats and dictators in the Middle East are fearful of the Iraqi people setting an example that might not be contained.

They tried to extinguish this example overtly by questioning the legitimacy of Iraqi freedom and covertly by funding the insurgents.

Freedom has opened for Iraqis a new history without any connection to their past. This is the cause for envy and unrest in Iran and across the Arab world.

The theocrats in Iran robbed the people of their choice in the June 2009 election and, fearing their earnest wish for freedom, rule over them repressively. In most Arab countries, elections are made to order by dictators as it was in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

In politics as in life, it is rare seeing gratitude offered by those who have received favour or gift, especially a gift such as freedom paid with blood and treasure by another people.

Yet if Iraqis continue advancing democracy without demeaning their freedom, they will then show in the most practical sense gratitude to George W. Bush, Tony Blair and American and British soldiers who won for them their freedom and stood beside them until democracy took hold in their land.

And supporters of regime change might rightly feel vindicated seeing the making of a democratic Iraq.

©2005-08 - Salim Mansur, BA, MA, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario.  He is also a columnist at Canada’s Sun Media.  His column appears here with Salim Mansur’s express permission by special arrangement with him.

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David Warren

  posted on Saturday, March 13, 2010
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Today’s column, on the lighter side of bottomless debt, or the levity in leveraging, will be flippant. I ask my reader to bear this in mind. I may offer policy prescriptions to sovereign states that cannot be taken seriously. However he (or she!) should also realize that the policies of those sovereign states are light and flippant and should not be taken seriously.

Truth to tell, I started drafting this column more than a week ago and, in that short time, owing to my tardiness in completing it, the sovereign states of Iceland and Greece have been catching up with my ludicrous fantasies, so I must hustle to get back out in front.

The Icelanders take the prize, for what I shall call the “default option.” Their problem—or more precisely, the part of their problem currently in the news—is more than $5 billion owed to British and Dutch governments (themselves teetering on the edge of bankruptcy), which compensated their own nationals for cash lost to an Icelandic online deposit scheme.

Now note two things. These were the “victims” in only two European countries. And, the “Icesave” farce is only one component in little Iceland’s financial meltdown, which resembles the runoff when one of her glorious volcanoes discharges from under one of her magnificent glaciers.

Perhaps we should remember a third thing, that there were only 320,000 people in Iceland at last estimate, and so the per capita charge on “doing the right thing” would be very, very high.

Iceland is a democracy, of course, so while the government was negotiating in dubious faith with frustrated creditors, “the people” had a referendum on whether they should pay. The results were, 93 per cent “no,” two per cent “yes,” and five per cent spoiled (mostly blank) ballots. And we get to that two per cent only by rounding.

Iceland is also a very “liberal” country, or “social democratic” in the European political patois. (What that has to do with running up unpayable debts, only my more jaded conservative readers will guess.)

This was a point brought home to me as I watched a short BBC segment consisting of interview excerpts with cool, sophisticated, expensively-dressed, fluently English-speaking Reykjavik voters, in what looked like art galleries. I was impressed not only with the unhesitant smoothness of each “No,” but with the elegantly sneering and superior attitude towards creditors generally.

They had such “class,” as the progressive types like to call it—those members of what Thomas Sowell has called the “anointed” or “self-congratulatory class.” Such aristocratic bearing! And now that they have found themselves in a bit of a corner, the attitude is, “These are mere tradesmen and why should we pay their bills?”

These are people who, thanks chiefly to the temporary success of a few grand financial scams, have risen a great height above their forebears, who were fishermen, and fishermen’s daughters. They’re all drinking “fair trade” coffee now.

Indeed, why should anyone pay off debts? It’s an old-fashioned concept, and from what I can see, the only reason Icelanders are discussing the question at all, is that the other Europeans are withholding aid and the succour of further loans until the “Icesave” issue is dealt with.

But consider: there’s another one born every minute. The Greeks have extricated themselves from their short-term fiscal emergency, even before their government has delivered on promised austerity measures, simply by floating new bonds to private investors at an exceptionally agreeable interest rate—and even while their civil servants demonstrate violently against the whole idea of fiddling with their extravagant bonuses and early retirement plans. I gather the new issue was over-subscribed.

And that would be an argument against letting Iceland default. The very idiots who lent them money in the first place might well turn around and lend them more. Still, that is the lenders’ problem. Stupidity on that scale has to be punished.

Surely the answer to all our problems of public debt is to default. I think it might even be the just answer, for generations whose parents were fiscally incontinent. In Canada here, where we are endlessly trying to fasten our fiscal belts, we are, after all, still effectively paying the compound interest on Pierre Trudeau’s adventures in “social democracy”—for which my generation voted, and from which we collected. Why should our children pay?

The best argument I can think of is that if they don’t, our various national paper currencies might quickly become worthless.

And think of all the inconvenience that might follow from that.

But then, can my reader suggest a quicker way to get back to the gold standard?

...

David Warren is a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen.  Visit his web site at davidwarrenonline.com.

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Susan Martinuk

  posted on Friday, March 12, 2010
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One year ago, four medical mistakes occurred over 54 days in the same unit at Alberta Children’s Hospital. A four-year-old patient was given a 15-fold overdose of a narcotic; another was given an accidental overdose of a drug to suppress the immune system. A two-year-old received multiple medications through an IV instead of a stomach tube and a nine-day-old baby received the wrong breast milk.

Something is obviously wrong and until parents of little patients know exactly what the problem is, they will likely be sitting beside their children, day and night, questioning doctors and nurses about every medication and every procedure. At least, they should.

It isn’t good enough for the Health Quality Council of Alberta, who investigated the situation, to release a two-page executive summary of its 58-page report. Fortunately, the public outcry over this lack of transparency “encouraged” Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky to do the right thing and direct the agency to release the full report.

But the problem won’t end there. Studies indicate chances are relatively high that hospital patients will experience an adverse event—even one that leads to death.

The Canadian Adverse Event Study, published in 2004, appears to be the most comprehensive evaluation of medical errors and the news isn’t good. Canadian hospitals have a 7.5 per cent rate for adverse effects, meaning that something goes wrong in one of 13 hospital visits. It was determined that about 70,000 of 185,000 errors were preventable and almost 24,000 Canadian patients die every year as a result of preventable adverse effects.

In a 2005 Stats Canada survey, one in five nurses (19 per cent) acknowledged that, during the previous year, medication errors for patients in their care occurred either “occasionally” or “frequently.”

A 2005 international study showed Canada had the second-highest rate of medical mistakes. Approximately 30 per cent of Canadians surveyed experienced some error with their health care. It’s enough to make one wonder if anything goes right in our medical system.

Just ask Licia Corbella, the editor of the Calgary Herald. She was confined to hospital bed rest at 30 weeks gestation of her twin pregnancy. The goal was to keep the twins inside as long as possible. Yet, one day, the same nurse who had cared for her for two weeks and who was supposedly well acquainted with the reason for her hospitalization, attempted to give her an injection to induce labour. Oops.

Years ago, I had an operation to remove cartilage chips in my right knee. I recall waking up with both knees bandaged and double the pain. The doctor was apparently so involved in teaching arthroscopy to his students that he operated on the wrong knee.

In the past, mistakes like those were often dismissed or shoved under a rug. Today, health boards seem willing to institute changes when procedures are faulty or to discipline doctors and nurses. Surgical checklists have reduced the risk of errors by as much as 30 per cent through simple checks—like confirming which body part is to undergo surgery. Transparency may still be lacking, but it’s improving.

Apology protection laws have been a big part of bringing medical errors into the open. This legislation (already in effect in provinces from B.C. to Ontario) allows doctors and nurses to apologize to patients when errors are made without fear of being held liable or voiding their insurance coverage.

Apologies have reportedly been offered to those who experienced errors at ACH. That’s a good first step, since it counteracts the tendencies for health officials to deny responsibility and victims to run to lawyers. Now it’s time to deal with the problem openly and ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Susan Martinuk is a Vancouver-based columnist.  She is a former medical researcher with more than 15 peer-reviewed publications and a world-first medical breakthrough in the study of infertility.

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Ann Coulter

  posted on Thursday, March 11, 2010
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A group of “leading conservative lawyers”—a phrase never confused with “U.S. Marines”—has produced an embarrassingly pompous letter denouncing Liz Cheney for demanding the names of attorneys at the Justice Department who formerly represented Guantanamo detainees.

The letter calls Cheney’s demand “shameful,” before unleashing this steaming pile of idiocy:

“The American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients is at least as old as John Adams’ representation of the British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre.”

Yes, but even John Adams didn’t take a job with the government for another 19 years after defending the British guards—who, in 1770, were “the police.” He also didn’t take a position with the U.S. government that involved processing British murder suspects.

I’d be more interested in hearing about the sacred duty of lawyers to defend “unpopular clients” if we were talking about clients who are unpopular with anyone lawyers know.

Every white shoe law firm in the country has been clamoring to take the cases of Guantanamo detainees, while young associates line up to be put on the case. This is even more fun than defending Ted Bundy!

As The Wall Street Journal put it in a 2007 article, a list of the law firms representing Guantanamo detainees “reads like a who’s who of America’s most prestigious law firms”—which conveniently doubles as Santa’s “naughty” list.

The terrorists’ lawyers have included Shearman and Sterling, Arnold & Porter; Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr; Covington & Burling; Hunton & Williams; Sullivan & Cromwell; Debevoise & Plimpton; King & Spalding; Cleary Gottlieb, Morrison & Foerster; Jenner & Block; O’Melveny & Myers and Sidley Austin.

At least 34 of the 50 largest firms in the United States have performed pro bono work on behalf of Guantanamo detainees.

Years ago, when I nearly died of boredom working for a law firm, I heard whispered rumors about a partner, Michael Tierney, whom none of the female associates wanted to work with because his pro bono work included defending—gasp!—pro-life groups. (There was at least one female associate who wanted to work with him!)

I didn’t hear a peep about the august “American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients” back then.

Like Hollywood actresses, lawyers need to believe they’re noble and courageous to help them forget that they are corporate drones doing soul-destroying work, which mostly consists of making photocopies.

Defending terrorists gives status-conscious attorneys a chance to get standing ovations at the annual ABA convention—much like promoting “global warming” makes climatologists feel like they’re saving the world, rather than studying water vapor.

It took me exactly one Nexis search for “ABA,” “award” and “Guantanamo” to find that the 2006 “Outstanding Scholar Award” at the ABA annual banquet was given to New York University law professor Anthony G. Amsterdam for his “extensive pro bono practice, litigating cases that range from civil rights claims, to death penalty defense, to claims of access to the courts for the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.”

A rule I have is: You’re not defending an unpopular client if you’re getting awards from the ABA, particularly if the award mentions “courage.”

You’ll never see a pompous letter like the one attacking Liz Cheney on behalf of any lawyer defending clients who are unpopular with lawyers, which terrorists are not.

Ken Starr, a signatory to the “Please God, Let This Get Me a Good Obituary in The New York Times” letter, once, totally by mistake, had a case unpopular with the establishment: Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

He’s shown his mettle by saying that if he met Clinton today, he’d say “I’m sorry.” Because isn’t that what Jesus said? Be very concerned with the opinion of the world!

Speaking of which, I also never heard any testimonials to the sacred duty of lawyers to defend unpopular causes when every lawyer working on the Clinton impeachment was being smeared as a “tobacco lawyer.”

Tobacco companies, being wildly unpopular, are in need of a lot of legal services. Scratch any litigator from a big law firm and you’ll find someone who, if necessary, could be slimed as a “tobacco lawyer.”

You will notice a pattern developing: We only hear paeans to the “American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients” when it’s being used to defend causes popular with liberals—serial killers, terrorists and a horny hick who promised to save partial-birth abortion.

Lawyers want to be congratulated for their courage in defending “unpopular” clients, while taking cases that are utterly noncontroversial in their social circles.

They’d be scared to death to take the case of an anti-abortion activist. Defending the guy who killed George Tiller the Baby Killer won’t make them a superstar at the next ABA convention.

Not only do Americans have a right to know the legal backgrounds of lawyers setting detainee policy at the Department of Justice, but I personally demand the right not to have to listen to Eddie Haskell lawyers constantly claiming to be Atticus Finch.

©2004-09 Ann Coulter.  Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.

Ann Coulter’s column appears here at ProudToBeCanadian.ca by license, weekly.

Buy all SEVEN of Ann Coulter’s best-sellers! Buying them though our web site generates small sales commissions from Amazon that financially supports ProudToBeCanadian.ca.

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Barbara Kay

  posted on Wednesday, March 10, 2010
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The bourgeois tyranny of the fully-abled

It was revealed by The Wall Street Journal in late January that at a private strategy session in August, Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s chief of staff, blasted the internally divisive political ploy proposed by some aggressively left-wing Democrats as “f——-g retarded.”

An intense brouhaha, with disability advocacy groups, Special Olympics spokespeople and even Sarah Palin piling on, confirmed that the word “retarded”—though still a bona fide medical term—has almost achieved the same social radioactivity as “the N-word.”

Objectively there’s no viable comparison between the two.

The N-word is an odious racial slur targeting an identifiable group of humans endowed with immutable genetic characteristics. From its inception, the N-word has been identified with real immiseration of blacks by real racists.

By contrast, “retarded” is merely descriptive of an objective condition, and applicable to culturally disparate individuals. The term may even be said to be a euphemism: “delayed,” after all, suggests more hopefulness than is usually warranted for these unfortunates.

But, like its predecessors, “idiot,” “moron” and “feebleminded,” the once-benign “retard” has lost dignity through constant association with juvenile humour, as well as coarsely-couched impatience with normally intelligent people acting stupidly, Emanuel’s peccadillo. Medical and support groups now prefer “intellectually disabled.” (Strangely, the same fate has not befallen “gay,” despite its parallel downward trajectory in popular usage.)

To be fair, although never enslaved or maligned as a group, the disabled, until relatively recently, were overlooked at best, and often shamed, depersonalized and marginalized in all societies. But again to be fair, the West can be proud of its progress on the disability file. Over the centuries our perceptions of the deformed, the diseased and the disabled as ritually unclean or loathsome have evolved into attitudes of compassion, inclusion and frank admiration.

The Paralympics, beginning this Friday, are a testimony to the sensible modern understanding of disability as a modifier, but not a disqualifier, for participation in athletic competition—a far cry from the original Olympics where the slightest physical imperfection (even circumcision) disqualified candidates for inclusion.

None of this happened by magic. Activism amongst the disabled and their sympathizers followed the well-trodden path traversed by blacks, women and homosexuals in their legitimate, rights-claiming phases. Slowly but surely curbs became sloped, elevators were installed and wheelchair-friendly transportation was made available. Much remains to be done, but the principle of equal accessibility to public resources has been firmly established, a principle roundly supported by liberals and conservatives alike.

Until political activism morphed into a field of academic study. Then—as with women’s, queer and African-American studies—disability studies fell prey to the post-modern anti-intellectual credo amongst intellectuals that “studies” means the advancement of “theory” and political activism rather than disinterested free inquiry. Many liberals may like what they see on campus, most conservatives not so much.

On its face, the relatively nascent phenomenon of disability studies is an attractive concept. Disability in literature (fairy tales, mythology, Homer, the Bible, Shakespeare), in the plastic and visual arts, in family dynamics, in sports, in politics: All of these make lush intellectual pickings for real scholarship.

Instead the field has been colonized by leftist ideologues. You’ll find in its academic literature all the buzz words you see in race and gender studies: “progressive,” “oppression,” “bourgeois,” “empowerment.” Riffle through a few conference papers and it’s the same old, same old: “At the heart of disability studies is a recognition that disability is a cultural construction; that is, that ‘disability’ has no inherent meaning”; and “The exciting thing about disability studies is that it is both an academic field of inquiry and an area of political activity ...”; and “Social justice is at the heart of disability theory and changing morality in the Western world.”

In other words, disability studies’ academic stakeholders have co-opted the disabled—for the most part apolitical individuals seeking nothing more than a physical levelling of the playing field in order to pursue their unique personal goals—as eternal Marxist victims of “ableist” oppressors. (The University of Toronto disabilities studies department claims it “aims to examine and deconstruct ableism.”)

That’s where the animus against “retarded” comes from. The word suggests there is a normative IQ against which the -er -“cognitively different” can, and should, be measured. Like feminists who won’t hear of discrepancies between male and female faculties in maths and sciences, disability activists rebel against the bourgeois tyranny of the fully abled. The same denial of reality prevails.

(The deaf “culture” or “linguistic community” who resist integration through lip-reading is the most egregious example of the syndrome. Extreme disability correctness led two deaf lesbians to seek a congenitally deaf sperm donor to ensure a deaf child.)

Disabled individuals are owed all the help society can reasonably provide to live as normal a life as possible. Colour me ableist: I said it -the other N-word-“normal.” For “normal” is what any reasonable disabled person wants to be. If disability studies academics resist this reality, they may be cognitively abled, but they are ethically ... delayed.

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©2005-09 - Barbara Kay is a columnist at Canada’s National Post newspaper.  Her column appears here at ProudToBeCanadian.ca weekly, with Barbara Kay’s express permission. 

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Mike S. Adams

  posted on Tuesday, March 09, 2010
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Justice Stephen Breyer was one of the four dissenting voices in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the landmark Supreme Court case ruling that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is an individual right, rather than a collective right, which merely attaches to service in a state militia. On page 35 of his 44 page dissent, Justice Breyer states the following:

  “The upshot is that the District’s objectives are compelling; its predictive judgments as to the law’s tendency to achieve those objectives are adequately supported [emphasis mine]; the law does impose a burden upon any self-defense interest that the Amendment seeks to secure; and there is no less clear less restrictive alternative.”

Justice Breyer was defending a District of Columbia law that banned handguns altogether as part of a stated objective to reduce violence in the District. The problem with Breyer’s assertion that “predictive judgments as to the law’s tendency to achieve those objectives are adequately supported” is that it’s patently false. Nonetheless, Breyer continues on the final page (p. 44) of his dissent:

  “In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas.” 

The wording of this sentence implies that because crime is high in urban areas the government has an interest in restricting access to handguns. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The Court is often in the position of making a decision by balancing one or more government interests against one or more individual liberty interests. Take, for example, the 1979 case of Delaware v. Prouse, which considered the constitutionality of stopping citizens in roadblocks for brief searches not predicated on probable cause or even individual suspicion.

In the case of the roadblock, the government interest is easily distinguished from the individual liberty interest. The government seeks to advance an interest (reducing highway fatalities associated with drunk driving) by setting these roadblocks. The Court approved the roadblocks by taking into account two individual liberty interests: 1) Demanding that the stops minimize intrusion (by being brief) and 2) Demanding that the stops minimize discretion (by stopping every car, or every other car, or every third, etc.).

In the case of gun bans, distinguishing between the two interests has been more difficult. At first, it was simply assumed that banning handguns would reduce crime. After fifteen years of research and sixteen refereed publications finding a contrary result, it’s time we recognize that high crime in urban areas promotes the individual interest in owning and possessing handguns and in the implementation of “shall issue” concealed carry laws.

Nonetheless, the city of Chicago is defending a law which bans handguns entirely – even for use within one’s home. But the case is being challenged by a plaintiff named Otis McDonald. McDonald is asking the Court to consider the individual right to bear arms affirmed in Heller as binding on all fifty states through the Fourteenth Amendment.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, was a crucial part of the Republican effort to end slavery – even after involuntary servitude had been banned by the Thirteenth Amendment. Back then, Southern Democrats targeted former slaves using vagrancy laws, which made it a crime to “wander without any visible means of support.” After imprisoning the former slave, the Southern Democrat would allow him to work off his fine by picking cotton on a plantation.

These “convict lease systems” were little more than legalized slavery. Thankfully, the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment hastened their extinction.

Today, many African Americans – like plaintiff Otis McDonald – are prisoners in their own homes. Urban violence disproportionately affects them. And any law that makes urban violence worse is a law that denies them Equal Protection.

The year after Justice Breyer lost in his bid to uphold the D.C. gun ban a funny thing happened. The murder rate in D.C. plummeted by 25%. To date, he has not retracted his statement that “predictive judgments as to the law’s tendency to achieve those objectives (reducing violence in D.C.) are adequately supported.”

It is rare to see such a convergence of individual liberty interests and government interests as we have in the McDonald case currently before the Supreme Court. It is rarer still to hear a sanctimonious Justice admitting that his ideas are wrong and that their consequences fall disproportionately on those who dwell in “crime ridden urban areas.”

©2005-10 Mike S. Adams - Mike Adams, PhD, is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and is a regular columnist for Townhall.com. His column appears here at PTBC with Mike Adams’ express permission by special arrangement with him. Dr. Adams is available for speaking engagements.  Mike Adams’ new book, Feminists Say The Darndest Things.

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Mike S. Adams

  posted on Monday, March 08, 2010
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It’s understandable that student newspapers at public universities are left-leaning. The advisors of the papers are usually left-leaning and they often have a left-leaning administration leaning on them. So their coverage of issues like abortion and homosexuality is often skewed. But private religious universities once provided a safe haven for those who wished to express views not approved by the immoral minority. It’s tough to comprehend the extent to which they have fallen prey to political correctness in recent years.

The Observer, the student newspaper at the University of Notre Dame, has shown that our nation’s Catholic universities no longer provide an escape from the politically correct orthodoxy running rampant on our nation’s public campuses. And the paper has shown a remarkable contempt for intellectual honesty – not to mention the Ninth Commandment.

The Observer declined to print a column that defends Church teachings on homosexual activity, which was written by Charles Rice - a Notre Dame Professor of Law. Rice has written a regular column with the Observer for nearly two decades.

At 996 words, Professor Rice’s column is a little long. At first, Observer Editor Matt Gamber used the column’s length as an excuse for non-publication. The excuse sounded credible but, after doing a little research, I’ve concluded that his excuse is an outright lie.

When Barack Obama came to speak at Notre Dame, Professor Rice wrote an 1172-word column, which harshly criticized his appearance as at odds with the school’s principles. Note to Matt Gamber: An 1172-word column is longer than a 996-word column. That much is as clear and obvious as the Bible’s teachings on homosexuality.

But, now, Matt Gamber is saying that the subject matter of homosexuality could best by handled by printing opposing views on the subject. But why must a student newspaper at a Catholic university censor Professor Rice in the absence of some “opposing viewpoint”? And what are the implications of this new policy?

If Professor Rice decides to write a column opposing polygamy, will the Observer withhold its publication until someone submits a pro-polygamy column?

If Professor Rice decides to write a column opposing incest, will the Observer withhold its publication until someone submits a pro-incest column?

If Professor Rice decides to write a column opposing adultery, will the Observer withhold its publication until someone submits a pro-adultery column?

Finally, if Professor Rice decides to write another column opposing abortion, will the Observer withhold its publication until someone submits a pro-abortion column?

The answers to my four hypothetical questions follow: No, no, no, and no.

And the reason for the pattern is simple: The Observer carves out a special “opposing viewpoint” exception for homosexuality because the Observer is intensely homophobic.

And the reason for the intense homophobia manifested by Matt Gamber and the Observer is also simple: Homosexuals are less tolerant of criticism than any other portion of the American population, including feminists and Muslims.

But the consequences of homosexual intolerance are not as simple. They are twofold: 1) Homosexual intolerance tends to result in the suppression of contrary views, and 2) Such intolerance tends to make others fearful of talking to homosexuals. In other words, homosexual intolerance actually promotes homophobia.

The present situation at Notre Dame is damaging to both sides of the debate. The Observer should allow Professor Rice to present his views (as unthinkable as it may seem to present the views of the Catholic Church at a Catholic university). Then, they may decide whether the views of the opposition warrant publication.

I believe the other side should be presented after Professor Rice’s column is printed if someone at Notre Dame actually thinks the Holy Bible is unclear on the issue. If they do, the Notre Dame community will wind up with a greater appreciation of the truth via its juxtaposition with falsity.

But the prior restraint of the views of Professor Rice is not defensible. While not a technical violation of the First Amendment – Notre Dame is a private school - it is an assault on both Catholicism and common sense. And it leaves many Catholics wondering whether there is any safe haven in this land that once placed religious liberty above political correctness.

©2005-10 Mike S. Adams - Mike Adams, PhD, is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and is a regular columnist for Townhall.com. His column appears here at PTBC with Mike Adams’ express permission by special arrangement with him. Dr. Adams is available for speaking engagements.  Mike Adams’ new book, Feminists Say The Darndest Things.

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David Warren

  posted on Sunday, March 07, 2010
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Does freedom matter?

The short answer to that question, when I have asked various acquaintances of what I would call a “mildly liberal,” or middle-of-the-road disposition, is: “Yes, but ...”

This “but” may correspond to any of many suggested qualifications, and that is the first instructive thing. At best it is freedom versus order, or freedom versus equality, or freedom versus social security. Seldom has the position been thought through. Nor is the need for thought acknowledged.

Under cross-examination, most appear to be seeking some kind of balance between freedom and the tyranny of the state. On the moral level, a balance between good and evil; on the esthetic, between beauty and ugliness; on the philosophical, between truth and the socially and legally enforced big lies of political correctness.

“Yes, freedom is important, but it has its place,” said one of the more thoughtful victims of my inquisition, which has been going on for some years now. (For I like to play at Socrates sometimes, the greatest of all Inquisitors, and try to establish what people really believe.)

Or to put it the other way round: “Yes, we should be herded like sheep, but within the limits of common sense.” Granted, this quote is a parody, and inversion; no one would ever say that. Yet it is the corollary of what is often said.

When the victims of my inquisition are in my clutches, I find that they hedge. Under cross-examination, there is hedging within hedging. They are soon on to my game: that I am trying to trap them in a Yes or a No, when they would feel more comfortable with Maybe.

Notice that the original question was not, “Is freedom an absolute value to which all other values must be subordinated?” It was instead more modestly: “Does freedom matter?”

I can think of two possible answers to that question, and neither of them is, “Yes, but ...”

Consider for a moment the phrase, “oriental despotism.” It was one that seems to have come easily to the lips of our ancestors, who, whether or not they had travelled, were under the impression that, beyond the frontiers of their civilization, freedom indeed did not matter. More deeply, perhaps, some grasped that the idea of an “individual moral agent”—of the incomparable value of the unique human soul—was tied into our civilizational identity. Lose that, and we are no longer “Western,” or “Judeo-Christian,” or whatever.

The remarkable achievements of our civilization likewise depended on what we were. They were the products of human enterprise. This is true through all centuries: the Catholic idea of saints and martyrs has nothing to do with public policy. Each is, in his or her own nature, the exact opposite of the Pyramids of Egypt—perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the statist mind.

Each man and woman among the saints is held up as an individual example, different in kind from each of the others. Each has, from a unique point of departure—the peculiar, given circumstances of a life—consciously, and in freedom, bought into the wild notion of personal sanctity. Their faith, and not their compulsion, moved our mountains.

But likewise, in all other areas of human enterprise: in the great achievements of business, of literature and music and art, of sciences and education, there was some understanding that we had nothing without manifestations of the individual human will.

The cathedrals were not built by ants; but by individual architects and masons. Nor could any have been built, had individual patrons not stepped forward. They were local, voluntary acts, writ large. St. Patrick’s Basilica here in Ottawa was built by Irish navvies, employed on works like the Rideau Canal, volunteering their time.

All the great eleemosynary and charitable institutions of this town began as individual efforts, and were staffed from the beginning by volunteers. In every case, some decision was made to rise above the condition of wage slavery.

Freedom can most certainly be abused, but it is the necessary condition for the humane.

“Humanism”—in the word’s original meaning, and not in its appropriated meaning as a euphemism for an atheist cult—is squarely founded on this notion of the humane, involving free acts of will. It further involves moral restraints, chosen not imposed, and therefore often far more exacting than what could be imposed. The ideals of humanism are the very opposite of that kind of compulsion our ancestors attributed to “oriental despotism.”

Which is not to say that parallel freedoms have not existed in other cultures and civilizations, or have not been transmitted to them by western example. There was never anywhere an “absolute freedom,” for even at the extremes of anarchy, nature restrains our possibilities.

Yet what goes on “there” has never really mattered “here,” except insofar as our freedom is threatened.

It is for others to free themselves, if they are not free. For us the challenge, once again, is to free ourselves from the tyranny of, “Yes, but ...”

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David Warren is a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen.  Visit his web site at davidwarrenonline.com.

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