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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.

Doug Giles

Doug Giles

  posted on Saturday, December 31, 2005
Bio/Email | Doug Giles Archives | Printer-Friendly Version

The Criticism of Poodles

If you have decided that you’re going to be a bulldog and actually do something with your life—BEWARE!  You’ll be attacked by rabid human poodles that are envious of your newfound determination.

Poodles don’t like it when their buddies leave them in order to become accomplished bulldogs.  Whiny, two-legged poodles hate it when you cease to be the coddled, frilly lap pooch and actually want to get out in the wild, test your skills, catch a bull or do something besides cry, whine, yap and have your hair teased at the salon.  Your soon-to-be ex-poodle buddies will freak when they realize you’ve left them in their pink, air-conditioned dog houses to launch out on your own and conquer your dream, get in the game and test your skills.

Therefore, Mr. and Ms. Bully, you should expect the shriveled-testes, over-coifed, painted toenail Tinkerbells to whiz on your dream.  They do this because you shame them.  By your going for it and actually living out your passion, you remind them of what mediocre, rut-addled poodles they have become.  And you can bet they’ll try to force their fears and opinions on you regarding why you should be like them . . .  why you should stay with them in their comfy, boring and safe, Lysol disinfected doghouses.

Thus, my Bulldog compadres, don’t listen to the opinions and criticisms of the Poodles.  Why should you subject your goals to some pale-skinned, bad-perm housedog?  I’m talking about some unqualified blowhard who has convinced himself that his uninformed Poodle opinion is somehow relevant to Bulldog issues concerning your life and desires.

Do not listen to them, or you will become like them. 

Have this Bulldog attitude: “If you can’t even run your own life, Ms. Poodle, I’ll be damned if you’ll run mine.” 

Let the Poodle’s derision and lack of encouragement motivate you.  Your success will be your greatest revenge.  Be radical for your vision and dream to such an extent that you leave the Poodles behind, choking in your dust. 

Hey, Poodle—eat my dust!

Look, at the end of the day, your life is between you and God.  Not you and an anemic Poodle.  So live by the convictions you have in your heart.

Why should you—a great Bulldog—be bothered by the slings and arrows of Poodles whom you should not give one-tenth of a flip about?  Why should you give some Poodle the power over whether or not you feel good about yourself and your unique purpose in life? 

Here are five quotes that describe why you must beware of critics with Poodle attitudes:

1. Brendan Behan:  “Critics are like eunuchs in a harem.  They’re there every night.  They see it done every night.  They see how it should be done every night.  But they can’t do it themselves.”
2. C. Garbett:  “Any fool can criticize, and most of them do.”
3. Samuel Goldwyn:  “Don’t pay attention to critics—don’t even ignore them.”
4. John Osborne:  “Critics are a dissembling, contemptible race of men.  Asking a player what he feels about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.” 
5. Elbert Hubbard:  “To escape criticism—do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”

I know I’ve been hard on the little Sally Poodles who criticize Bulldogs.  But you know what?  I can honestly say I love my enemies who give me a hard time.  I really do.  I love every bone in their heads.

Remember this, Bulldogs:  The most important critic is time. 

And time is on the Bulldog’s side . . . yes it is.

“Its name is Public Opinion.  It is held in reverence.  It settles everything.  Some think it is the voice of God.  Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.”  Mark Twain.




Giles’ new book, The Bulldog Attitude: Get It or Get Left Behind, has just been released!  It is guaranteed to take the poo out of poodles and give them the Bulldog Attitude.  It is a great read for individuals, families, churches and corporations who wish to excel.  Also, logon to www.ClashRadio.com and check out Doug’s new interview with Tom Bethell, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science.

Nice line, eh

Doug Giles's graphic

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 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.


Posted on 12/31/05 at 05:18 PM
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Salim Mansur

Salim Mansur

  posted on Saturday, December 31, 2005
Bio/Email | Salim Mansur Archives | Printer-Friendly Version

Iran and the bomb

Earlier this month, at a gathering of Islamic countries in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cast doubt on the Jewish holocaust and declared his country would not be stopped in acquiring capabilities to produce nuclear fuel.

Two months before, Ahmadinejad had called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”—a sentiment widely shared, if not publicly broadcast, by those attending the meeting in Mecca.

The quest for nuclear weapons in the Middle East can barely be contained by the clerical regime in Tehran. The reason is obvious.

The Iranian clerics learned from regime change in Baghdad that their survival depends on possessing nuclear weapons. Hence, they will go any distance in repudiating the International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguards to enrich uranium and maintain domestic control of the entire nuclear fuel cycle.

Iran unquestionably is bound to be the most troubling problem for the UN Security Council in 2006 and beyond, as Iraq had been for the decade after Saddam Hussein’s army invaded and occupied Kuwait in August 1990.

The record of the Security Council and the IAEA to enforce their resolutions on member states in violation of international agreements is bleak.

The credibility of these organizations—their functioning depends on member-states—in securing international peace and disarming rogue regimes was exposed in the UN Oil-for-Food program in Iraq.

Paul Volcker’s inquiry into that program and the scandal surrounding it found some permanent members of the Security Council responsible for the integrity of the United Nations were not above being bribed by a tyrannical regime.

Russia was the largest recipient of Saddam’s bribes. It is an open question if Moscow can be trusted to monitor Iran’s fuel cycle, an idea being explored within the IAEA, since Russians are now building a nuclear plant for the oil-rich country.

As Iran enjoys ever-increasing oil revenues, Tehran has become an attractive customer for Chinese and Euro-Russian arms merchants ready to replace its rusting weaponry to meet its regional ambition. The rising oil income also makes Tehran an expansive paymaster for Islamist terrorism.

Clerics emboldened

The divisions within the U.S. and among NATO allies over the Iraq war have also greatly emboldened Iran’s ruling clerics.

Ahmadinejad is the new face of the ultra-conservative Islamist regime, and his brazenly provocative rhetoric indicates a belief that Iran can can outmanoeuvre the West in a confrontation—based on the assumption that the U.S. will be reluctant to enter another military engagement.

But confrontation is unavoidable should Iran heedlessly proceed with its nuclear ambitions. For Ahmadinejad and his supporters, if a poverty-stricken Pakistan can become a nuclear state, then there is no reason Iran cannot do the same.

The world must ask, can it risk a religiously autocratic Iran, which stifles democracy at home and promotes terrorism abroad, acquiring nuclear capability? If the world fails to stop Iran, nuclear proliferation will receive a boost, and countries such as Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela will be next to push forward with their nuclear ambitions.

It is inevitable that another “coalition of the willing” will have to dispatch Iran’s nuclear ambition (just as Saddam’s was eliminated by Israel in 1981), unless the Security Council acquires new resolve to hold Tehran accountable to IAEA safeguards.

The world seems to be similarly situated as it was in the 1930s. Then Hitler, like Ahmadinejad today, made public his views of what he intended to do, and European powers took him to be a clown—only to discover the clown was lethal.

Nice line, eh

©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.


Posted on 12/31/05 at 09:20 AM
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Charles Adler

Charles Adler

  posted on Saturday, December 31, 2005
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Rotten is the only verdict for Paul

Breaking News: We have before us a political murder-suicide story, the likes of which we have never witnessed in Canada.

Paul Martin is murdering the Liberal government of which he is the boss, while at the same time killing his chances of becoming anything more than a footnote in Canadian history. He is now only weeks away from becoming another John Turner, a man who barely had time to run a series of downs before the final gun sounded.

While it may be impolite to put a person on trial before the victim has expired, this ain’t court. It’s a column.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the name of the accused is Paul Martin. We used to call him Paul Martin Junior, in the days when his dad, a generation ago, was a senior cabinet minister with elegance and eloquence. The accused is an apple that has fallen very far from the tree. At this moment, he cannot even see the tree without accessing nuclear-powered binoculars.

Permit yourself to think of his graceful, respected late father as Apple Tree and the accused as Rotten Apple.

Apple Tree surrounded himself by staffers who had great taste and dignity. They knew that the senior minister who always aspired to the highest standards of public service, demanded the same of the people closest to him.

But Rotten Apple had different preferences. For nearly a decade, he played on a team led by the linguistically rancid Jean Chretien. But nobody close to Chretien would ever make the mistake of calling Rotten Apple a team player. They were aware that Rotten was frequently using his worms to crawl into the computers and cellphones and, most recently, the Blackberries of key media soldiers.

For years the soldiers, on the assumption that some day Rotten would be king, accommodated his proclivities and fetishes. They were prepared to be treated like toadies in return for access to the secrets of power once Rotten replaced Rancid.

But who would have thunk that by the time the changing of the guard had taken place there would be so much sewer gas in the house called Liberal, that all Rotten could do was distance himself from Rancid? He invited one of the good old Gomers of the Quebec bench to run interference for him. Gomer hired a crony of former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s to prosecute the Chretien crowd.

Gomer was the dutiful gopher that Rotten wanted him to be. He tied a noose around Rancid and then being the dutiful gopher that he was born to be, delivered unto Rotten the Holy Grail of legal innocence—personal exoneration.

Having been personally exonerated, Rotten’s gang decided that they now had what they needed to scorch the immoral earth that their opponent Stephen Harper walked on. Of great assistance to the artificially enthusiastic Rotten was the contrast of an opponent, Harper, whose personality temperature was colder than that of the average cadaver. Rotten was preparing to smite Cadaver with a series of TV ads crafted to convey the impression to innocent citizens that if Cadaver ever ruled the dominion, Canada would morph into Alabama.

But Rotten’s Christmas of 2005 ended abruptly with a Boxing Day Bang when a certain headline became quickly seared into the minds of the innocents: RCMP criminal investigation.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: On Jan. 23, you are being asked to return a verdict of Rotten in the First Degree.

Nice line, eh

Charles Adler is the host of Adler on Line, heard across Canada on the Corus Radio Network. Tune in weekdays 4-6 p.m. pacific time (but varies with radio stations across Canada). 


Posted on 12/31/05 at 09:10 AM
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Mike S. Adams

Mike S. Adams

  posted on Friday, December 30, 2005
Bio/Email | Mike Adams Archives | Printer-Friendly Version

Hate Mails of the Year: 2005

Several readers of my last column asked why I’ve never run a full column of my favorite liberal love letters, which are more commonly referred to as “hate mail.” Given that I a) did run such a column in 2004 and, b) regularly post such e-mails on www.DrAdams.org I was deeply offended by the suggestion. But, nonetheless, I offer this year’s highlights (and my responses) for your reading pleasure.

I’ve emjoyed [sic] some of your columns but this is the second time I heard [sic] use the term “illegitimate” baby. As a single mother, I think that is insulting. Each person has a right to choose her own morality. Please respect others.  - Kathy

Kathy, what would you say if I told you that you could avoid having more illegitimate babies by having sex with animals?  - Mike Adams

I would sy [sic] you are sick. What is your point? - Kathy

My point is that we agree on something. Bestiality is immoral. Do you think that it will become moral once Kathy and Mike are dead? I hope you will give me a direct answer. - Mike Adams

No, it won’t suddenly become moral when we die. That is a stupid thing to say. - Kathy

Thank you for admitting that some truths are transcendent and timeless. That means they are not contingent on our feelings and subjective choices. Please, do not teach your child that “each person has a right to choose her own morality.” I don’t believe that. And neither do you. - Mike Adams

Sent by: Anthony Brown: Admit it, your [sic] a closet homo yourself. Usually people that go this far to degrade gays are gay themselves. I equate Republicans with hate groups. Have a nice day. ps. Its [sic] ok to be gay!

Hi Anthony! The article also took a shot at the Arab Student Association. Does that mean I’m a closet Arab? Dear God, does it mean I’m a closet Arab homo? I need to know, Anthony! If the Arabs find out, what do you think they’ll do? I sure hope the Arabs are more tolerant than the Republicans! Have a nice day.  Ps. it’s ok to run the spell-checker! - Mike Adams

Very clever. It was very clever how you pretended to be offended by comments on a women’s group web page. How amusing that the comments of your readers prompted them to remove the comments.

But sexual harassment isn’t amusing. I’ve known several women who had been sexually harassed, and it isn’t amusing at all. It’s usually the weak that get harassed. Their weakness not only attracts bullies but makes it difficult for them to stand up. Some might think that perhaps they should live a life of misery just because they’re weak.

Candelaria is a weak person. Uneducated, once an illegal immigrant (now legal), the single mother of several kids none of whom she is capable of caring for financially or emotionally. She was harassed at her job. She was miserable yet did not take action fearing retribution. After the encouragement of a caring friend and prayers (yeah, I believe in that stuff), she was able to stand up for herself.

She contacted the headquarters of the restaurant she worked for. She was afraid to name names but did mention that the cooks were the perpetrators. The next day the cooks were called to a meeting and told to STOP!! The harassment stopped. Another waitress said to Candelaria, “May God bless whoever spoke up.” Other women had been harassed also.

Thanks to a caring friend and fervent prayers, she overcame her weakness.

Imagine what would have taken place if her concerns were merely ridiculed like you did.  - Chubby Dave

Dear Chubby Dave,

The fundamental difference that you fail to grasp is that I ridiculed a bunch of sexists who were engaging in harassment (according to their own definition), not the victims of harassment. Nonetheless, I cried when I read your story. I really mean that Chubby. Or is it Dave?

Please note: I would never have sexually harassed Candelaria. I would have tossed her undocumented ass out of the country. - Mike Adams

Dear Dr. Adams: It is not liberals’ fault that your father wouldn’t play ball with you when you were little, you secretly love men, and you have a four-inch penis. Grow up! - Susan

Dear Susan: Sorry I missed your email. I was talking baseball on the phone with my dad. It’s no secret that I love all men and women (spiritually, of course) but, please, stop telling half-truths about my hoo-hoo-dilly. In return, I promise not to talk about your cha cha. - Mike Adams

So now I read that you think homosexuality is a choice. Figures. Only homosexuals in denial can possibly think it’s a choice. Think about it. I couldn’t choose to be gay any more than I can choose to like broccoli. I find both totally against my constitution. If one can “choose” to be gay, then you must be “choosing” to be straight. Translation: you’re gay. I shoulda known…how many times must it happen before people get the picture? You rant and rant about gay issues…and the next thing you know you’re busted giving promises to gay men on the web. LOL   Go on, keep hating gays. Maybe you’ll stop hating yourself one day… - jmr   P.S. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. You can be gay and I’ll still be on your side on the fight against liberalism in America. Just don’t be a hater.

Dear JMR: I was deeply offended by your disparaging remarks about broccoli. Face it, JMR, deep down inside, you are really a piece of broccoli. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. Most liberals are vegetables. I hope my comments don’t get you steamed. They were only in jest. - Mike S. Adams

May 2005: Dear Dr. Adams: I read with great interest your recent article “Red Headed Woodpeckers.” Tell me Dr., how come you kill deer and watch birds? Why don’t you put down your rifle and watch them both? - Raymond

Hi Raymond. That’s a good question, with a simple answer. I like the taste of roasted venison, but not roasted woodpecker. Let me know if I can be of further assistance, Ray. - Mike Adams

Funny guy. Tell me this, Dr. Smartass, have you EVER given money to a panhandler? -Raymond

No, Raymond, I haven’t. What’s your point? - Mike Adams

My point is that if you feed birds and not the homeless, you are (sic) pompous, hypocritical ass. Obviously, you value the birds more than the homeless. - Raymond


I don’t have a problem with that, Raymond. The birds don’t steal my hubcaps and crack dealers don’t accept seeds. - Mike Adams

Dr. Adams: If you do not stop using so much sarcasm in your columns, I will have to stop reading. Stop trying to be Ann Coulter. - Richard

Hi Richard. Most people like the sarcasm. I’m sorry you don’t. For some reason, though, you seem to have superior insight. I’ve never received an email from you before but, somehow, you seem to have better judgment than anyone else. I am going to stop using sarcasm right now. I mean that. I really mean that. - Mike Adams

It’s so very sad to see those beautiful creatures (on your website) lying lifeless because of so-called “sport.” I hope you had a wonderful time with your killing. - Diane Kuszyk

Not nearly as much fun as I had eating them. The BBQ deer ribs we had on Friday night were delicious. I do regret that my second shot (to the lung) destroyed some of those tasty morsels. The tenderloin kabobs we had on Saturday night were even better. Would you be interested in a recipe? - Mike Adams

Dr. Adams, I recently read your diatribe against trans-gendered baqthrooma (sic). You are such a pompous as*. You stand at the urinal of righteous indignation. Just go ahead and dive in. And movew (sic) over Rush Limbaugh. - Jackie

Dear Jackie, Pardon me for assuming that “baqthrooma” refers to “bathroom.” I only speak English. Otherwise, I appreciate urinalysis of the situation. Movew over Albert Einstein! - Mike Adams

Nice line, eh

Mike S. Adams's graphic

©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.


Posted on 12/30/05 at 10:16 AM
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Steven Milloy

Steven Milloy

  posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005
Bio/Email | Steven Milloy Archives | Printer-Friendly Version

The Top 10 Junk Science Claims of 2005

It’s that time of year again when we at JunkScience.com reflect on all the dubious achievements and irresponsible claims made by the junk science community throughout the year.

These “lowlights” have a lot in common — namely exaggeration and hidden agendas — but they cover a diverse range of scientific themes, from child development to embryonic stem cell research to everyday radiation exposure to trying to lay blame for hurricanes.

Although virtually the entire “Top 10” could easily consist of global warming items — climate hysteria being the most important junk science issue of our time — in the interest of diversity, JunkScience.com’s Top 10 for 2005 are:

1. Obese Statistics Get Liposuction. After years of alarming the American public with ever-scarier estimates of obesity-related deaths, the Centers for Disease Control finally backed away from its exaggerated 2004 claim of 400,000 deaths annually and made a 93 percent downward adjustment to just 25,814 deaths. It’s not clear that even that number can stand up to scrutiny. Read more...

2. Cruelty to Students. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was permitted to incorporate its radical animal rights school curriculum throughout America via its “education” arm known as TeachKind. PETA’s “learning materials” claim that such innocuous behavior as drinking milk is an example of “animal cruelty,” which their Web site repeatedly claims is an unmistakable predictor of future adult psychopathy. Read more…

3. U.N.-natural disasters? In a bid to blame alleged global warming for hurricanes and tsunamis and, ultimately, to force the deep-pocket U.S. government, businesses and taxpayers to pick up the tab for damages from such climatic phenomena, the United Nations conspicuously dropped the word “natural” from the title of its annual conference on natural disasters. Read more…

4. Burger Baloney. Researchers from the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society, looking into whether beef consumption could be linked to increased risk of colon cancer, published a study in January with apparently alarming conclusions. Closer examination, however, revealed more creative slicing and dicing of data by a few researchers at the NCI who seem to have a history of publishing anti-meat research. Read more…

5. Franken-movie, not Franken-food. An anti-biotech “crockumentary” entitled “The Future of Food” opened in small movie theaters around the country, resuscitating environmentalists’ long-discredited claims about the “dangers” of biotech crops, one of the most thoroughly tested and regulated technologies ever developed.

Tragically, the Green’s anti-biotech mania continues to doom millions in the Third World to blindness caused by nutritional deficiency. Read more…

6. Afraid-iation? In July, a National Academy of Sciences research panel ominously announced that there is no safe exposure to radiation. While this may sound intuitively plausible, the panel ignored a host of facts, including that 82 percent of the average person’s exposure to ionizing radiation is natural and unavoidable — coming at low levels from the universe and the ground ?— and that, other than slightly higher cancer rates among the Japanese atomic bomb survivors, there are no data to support the idea that typical exposures are dangerous. Read more…

7. Warning: This Label Based on Junk Science. In July, the Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the FDA to require warning labels on soft drinks. It seems the “food police,” who have no credible scientific data on which to base their petition, are out to demonize just about every food other than soy milk and bulgar wheat. Read more…

8. Stem Cell Fast-One. August headlines touted the latest breakthrough in stem cell research — Harvard researchers announced they had discovered a way to fuse adult skin cells with embryonic stem cells, effectively bypassing the ethical concerns surrounding stem cell research by not having to produce or destroy human embryos.

In reality, the hype was not only premature — since the new cells were still contaminated with embryonic genetic material — it appears to have been an exercise in political science as the Senate neared consideration of a bill that would circumvent President Bush’s funding limitations for embryonic stem cell research. Read more…

9. The Lone-Tree Theory. It nearly took an act of Congress to get the researcher behind the notorious “hockey stick” graph, which purports to show a steep rise in global temperature in the 20th century following a millennium of stable temperatures, to release his publicly funded data and computer code. Among other dubious presumptions, the graph is derived from data that bases climate estimates for the entire 15th century on the tree ring measurements of a single tree. Read more…

10. Baby Bottle Battle. In introducing a bill to ban toys and child care articles made with the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA), California State Assemblywoman Wilma Chan fell prey to an environmentalist-perpetuated myth that had long ago been debunked. The “endocrine disruptor” scare has been perpetuated by the unsubstantiated and irreproducible scientific claims of an activist-researcher long-determined to frighten the public away from perfectly safe products. Read more…

So fasten your safety belts for 2006. No doubt the future holds many more not-so-great “junk science” moments for us all.

Nice line, eh

Steven Milloy's graphic

©2005-08 STEVEN J. MILLOY. Posted at ProudToBeCanadian.ca with the express permission of Steven Milloy.  Steven Milloy is a biostatistician, lawyer, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and publisher of JunkScience.com  where the motto is: “All the junk that’s fit to debunk”, as well as CSRWatch.com.  Steven Milloy is an advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Milloy holds a B.A. in Natural Sciences from the Johns Hopkins University, a Master of Health Sciences in Biostatistics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, a Juris Doctorate from the University of Baltimore,  and a Master of Laws from the Georgetown University Law Center.  He’s also an investment adviser at an investment fund called Free Enterprise Action Fund.

  Buy Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Ruin Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.


Posted on 12/29/05 at 07:29 PM
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Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter

  posted on Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Bio/Email | Ann Coulter Archives | Printer-Friendly Version

Kwanzaa: A Holiday From the FBI

President Bush’s 2005 Kwanzaa message began with the patently absurd statement: “African-Americans and people around the world reflect on African heritage during Kwanzaa.”

I believe more African-Americans spent this season reflecting on the birth of Christ than some phony non-Christian holiday invented a few decades ago by an FBI stooge. Kwanzaa is a holiday for white liberals, not blacks.

It is a fact that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI stooge, Ron Karenga, aka Dr. Maulana Karenga. Karenga was a founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers and a dupe of the FBI.

In what was probably ultimately a foolish gamble, during the madness of the ‘60s the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the organization, the better. Karenga’s United Slaves was perfect. In the annals of the American ‘60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police.

Despite modern perceptions that blend all the black activists of the ‘60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites. They did not seek armed revolution. Those were the precepts of Karenga’s United Slaves. United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented “African” names. (That was a big help to the black community: How many boys named “Jamal” currently sit on death row?)

Whether Karenga was a willing dupe, or just a dupe, remains unclear. Curiously, in a 1995 interview with Ethnic NewsWatch, Karenga matter-of-factly explained that the forces out to get O.J. Simpson for the “framed” murder of two whites included: “the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Interpol, the Chicago Police Department” and so on. Karenga should know about FBI infiltration. (He further noted that the evidence against O.J. “was not strong enough to prohibit or eliminate unreasonable doubt”—an interesting standard of proof.)

In the category of the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much, back in the ‘70s, Karenga was quick to criticize rumors that black radicals were government-supported. When Nigerian newspapers claimed that some American black radicals were CIA operatives, Karenga publicly denounced the idea, saying, “Africans must stop generalizing about the loyalties and motives of Afro-Americans, including the widespread suspicion of black Americans being CIA agents.”

Now we know that the FBI fueled the bloody rivalry between the Panthers and United Slaves. In one barbarous outburst, Karenga’s United Slaves shot to death Black Panthers Al “Bunchy” Carter and Deputy Minister John Huggins on the UCLA campus. Karenga himself served time, a useful stepping-stone for his current position as a black studies professor at California State University at Long Beach.

Kwanzaa itself is a lunatic blend of schmaltzy ‘60s rhetoric, black racism and Marxism. Indeed, the seven “principles” of Kwanzaa praise collectivism in every possible arena of life—economics, work, personality, even litter removal. (“Kuumba: Everyone should strive to improve the community and make it more beautiful.”) It takes a village to raise a police snitch.

When Karenga was asked to distinguish Kawaida, the philosophy underlying Kwanzaa, from “classical Marxism,” he essentially explained that under Kawaida, we also hate whites. While taking the “best of early Chinese and Cuban socialism”—which one assumes would exclude the forced abortions, imprisonment for homosexuals and forced labor—Kawaida practitioners believe one’s racial identity “determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding.” There’s an inclusive philosophy for you.

(Sing to “Jingle Bells”)

Kwanzaa bells, dashikis sell
Whitey has to pay;
Burning, shooting, oh what fun
On this made-up holiday!

Coincidentally, the seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another charming invention of the Least-Great Generation. In 1974, Patricia Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snake head stood for one of the SLA’s revolutionary principles: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani—the same seven “principles” of Kwanzaa.

With his Kwanzaa greetings, President Bush is saluting the intellectual sibling of the Symbionese Liberation Army, killer of housewives and police. He is saluting the founder of United Slaves, who were such lunatics that they shot Panthers for not being sufficiently insane—all with the FBI as their covert ally.

It’s as if David Duke invented a holiday called “Anglika,” and the president of the United States issued a presidential proclamation honoring the synthetic holiday. People might well stand up and take notice if that happened.

Kwanzaa was the result of a ‘60s psychosis grafted onto the black community. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural nonsense that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga’s United Slaves—the violence, the Marxism, the insanity. Most absurdly, for leftists anyway, is that they have forgotten the FBI’s tacit encouragement of this murderous black nationalist cult founded by the father of Kwanzaa.

Now the “holiday” concocted by an FBI dupe is honored in a presidential proclamation and public schools across the nation. Bush called Kwanzaa a holiday that promotes “unity” and “faith.” Faith in what? Liberals’ unbounded capacity to respect any faith but Christianity?

A movement that started approximately 2,000 years before Kwanzaa leaps well beyond merely “unity” and “faith” to proclaim that we are all equal before God. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). It was practitioners of that faith who were at the forefront of the abolitionist and civil rights movements. But that’s all been washed down the memory hole, along with the true origins of Kwanzaa.

Nice line, eh

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Posted on 12/28/05 at 04:06 PM
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Andrew Coyne

Andrew Coyne

  posted on Wednesday, December 28, 2005
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The party that lost its way

There is a Liberal party, and a Liberal leader, that could win this election. But today’s Liberal party is not that party, and Paul Martin is not that leader.

Or rather, this Paul Martin is not. There is another Paul Martin who could win: the Paul Martin who slew the deficit, the Paul Martin who came to office vowing to slay the democratic deficit as well. But this is not that Paul Martin.

There is a Liberal party that could play to traditional Liberal strengths. It could attack the separatists for the destructive force that they are. It could defend the federal prerogative against the parochial demands of the provinces, and denounce the Tories for their readiness to take in the premiers’ washing. It could insist on the primacy of the Charter, and the vital necessity of preserving a single-payer health care system.

There is an “ideal form” of Liberal party that could do this: the Liberal party that once was, the Liberal party that might be. But the Liberal party that is cannot, nor certainly can its present leader. Mr. Martin cannot attack separatism as illegitimate—not after appointing one of the founders of the Bloc Quebecois, Jean Lapierre, as his lieutenant. Nor can he present himself as the man to stare down an attempted separatist coup, having done so much to undermine the Clarity Act—from his initial refusal to endorse it, to bumping Stephane Dion from Cabinet, to Mr. Lapierre’s comments, never repudiated, that the Act was “useless.”

Mr. Martin cannot denounce the Conservatives for making parley with the Bloc, having done so himself whenever it suited him. Nor can he paint the Tories as the party that would give away the store to the provinces in general, or Quebec in particular, when his whole record is the same: from the debacle of the health care deal—$41-billion in exchange for six magic beans—to the “asymmetric federalism” fiasco to the McGuinty cave-in to the incoherent mess that was once the equalization program.

Mr. Martin might have some room to attack the Conservative leader, Stephen Harper, for his readiness to override the Charter—were it not Mr. Harper who has in fact vowed “never” to invoke the notwithstanding clause, and Mr. Martin who once mused that he might. And Mr. Martin can say nothing about any alleged Tory threat to medicare, when it is on his watch that private medical clinics charging fat fees for access—not just private provision, but private finance—have proliferated across the country. He cannot so much as mention the Canada Health Act, the second Charter of Rights, when it is he who made it a dead letter.

It is the same for those more recent additions to the Liberal creed. Mr. Martin can hardly pose as the champion of Kyoto, when his own misgivings about the accord—the usual unnamed Martin aide even mused about reneging at one point—are well-known. Not to say the rank hypocrisy of upbraiding the Americans for their failure to ratify, when we lag behind not only them but virtually every other signatory nation with respect to our own commitments.

Mr. Martin likes to remind people of Mr. Harper’s earlier readiness to support the American-led invasion of Iraq (not that this should be counted as a fault, but never mind). But Mr. Martin was no less gung-ho at one time, in principle if not in explicit commitments. He paints Mr. Harper as too pro-American, but it was his own declared mission as a candidate for leader of his party to forge a more “mature” relationship with the Yanks, after the infantile taunts of the Chretien era. He might make hay of the Conservative leader’s opposition to gay marriage, had he ever once expressed support for the idea himself—not as something imposed upon us by the Charter, but as a positive good.

On all these issues, the Paul Martin who would be Prime Minister distanced himself from the government of which he was once a part, portraying himself as a centrist alternative to his left-leaning predecessor. That’s his right—but having jumped off that train, he cannot ride it now. Or if he wishes to credit himself with that government’s achievements, he cannot avoid association with its misdeeds.

Indeed, so completely has Mr. Martin turned himself inside out that he cannot even campaign on his own record. The Paul Martin of 1997 or even 2000 might legitimately boast of his success in curbing spending. The Paul Martin of 2005, after the runaway growth in spending since then—nearly 50% over five years, much of it unbudgeted—cannot. As for the “democratic deficit,” supposedly the raison d’etre of his premiership, the less said about that the better.

It’s sad. After all his tacking about, his endless opportunism, his shameless hypocrisy, Mr. Martin cannot credibly campaign as either an old Liberal or a new one. The traditional Liberal coalition has been abandoned, without another having been assembled in its place. The party is now as hollow as the man.


This article originally appeared at the National Post on December 28 2005, and is reprinted here with the express permission of its author, Andrew Coyne.

Nice line, eh

Andrew Coyne is one of Canada’s preeminent political columnists, and his column appears regularly at the National Post.   You can also visit his blog, AndrewCoyne.com.


Posted on 12/28/05 at 01:27 PM
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Barbara Kay

Barbara Kay

  posted on Wednesday, December 28, 2005
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Redefining perversion

Christmas Eve I had a dream. In it, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) struck down the role of Santa Claus as discriminatory because of his twice-checked lists of “bad or good” and “naughty or nice” children, noting such distinctions were offensive and prejudicial to Canadian children with minority or alternate naughty “lifestyles.” You don’t have to be Freud to understand the dream’s inspiration.

In their Dec. 21 ruling legalizing most sex clubs, the SCC pronounced community standards of decency irrelevant to the for-profit facilitation of group sex for kinky risk-takers and voyeurs.

The ruling comes as the culmination of a seven-year legal battle by Jean-Paul Labaye, owner of the Montreal sex club L’Orage. A news story on Monday cited two of L’Orage’s customers, Michel Delbecchi and his wife Chantal, who used to fear being arrested in a “bawdy house” for public indecency. The Delbecchis are setting up a new household with a young woman they met at L’Orage, whom both enjoy as a mutual lover, but that doesn’t mean they will stop giving their custom to the club. The article did not indicate whether or not the Delbecchis and their lover will be regular attendees at L’Orage’s featured Tuesday afternoon “gang bangs.”

Decades ago Pierre Trudeau said, “The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.” What he meant was that in the privacy of their homes, adults had the right to indulge their sexual tastes or fantasies, including group sex, without fear of state punishment. And reasonable Canadians agree with him.

Ideologically liberal judges are not always reasonable, however. Instead of imagining their own minor children being prepped for future guilt-free experiences at sex clubs by online marketing and reinforcement from teachers and the media that respect for gang bangs is a mainstream Canadian value, they consult Close Personal Relationship Theory (or some such) for its take on public group sex.

Such theories dictate that society should not make social or moral distinctions between sexual “arrangements” (the monogamous marriage of two people simply being one arbitrary sexual arrangement of many, no better or worse), because any sexual behaviour freely chosen by adults can (theoretically) be neither “dysfunctional” nor “harmful.” The judicial application of this theory dumbs deviancy down, levelling formerly high moral standards in order to foster the popular illusion that our nation is making social progress rather than losing our way.

Not so long ago, indecency was easily identifiable by everyone: If an activity that you normally thought about or did only in private caused not just embarrassment, but also shame when done in public, it was indecent. The individual’s sense of shame has always been a community’s essential aid in corralling amoral desires within socially constructive sexual boundaries.

Once deviancy is dumbed down far enough, though, shame-based distinctions aren’t honoured as evidence of a moral compass, but are simply labelled “prejudice,” the pejorative word used in this SCC ruling.

Historically, feeling shame has deterred indecent behaviour. But what restrains the sexual mainstream is paradoxically an aphrodisiac for sexual risk-takers. Sexual extremists thrive on transgressing a community’s limits of tolerance. Protected community standards of decency drive such sexual outliers, appropriately, to private remedies. The Delbecchis should find their own fellow sex-obsessed hobbyists, in other words.

When protections against extreme public behaviours are abandoned, and indecency is adjudged shame-free, extremists will inevitably seek their aphrodisiac in ever more transgressive experiments. Expect far worse indecency with seven of nine Supremes decreeing—a “supreme” irony—non-judgmentalism toward sexual degradation as the preferred Canadian value.

Two commonsensical SCC judges understand this disturbing corollary. To their credit, Justices Michel Bastarache and Louis LeBel warned of more transgressive “rights”—polygamy, bestiality—waiting their turn for special pleading with now-justifiable hope. This dissenting minority wrote: “We are convinced that this new approach strips of all relevance the social values that the Canadian community as a whole believes should be protected”, and “introduces a concept of tolerance that does not seem to be justifiable according to any principle whatsoever.”

Last night, I had another dream with Biblical narrative overtones: And it came to pass that those who loved Santa rose up in their numbers and called the SCC a false counsellor for setting aside the wisdom of the generations.

But the SCC harnessed its reign-dear cliches to its law-full Charter-ed sleigh - “Tolerance,” “Equality,” “Not-America,” all led by red-nosed “Minority Rights,” and drove Santa’s followers to retreat down Ottawa’s slippery slopes.

And lo, it came to pass in 2006 that those who believed in sexual modesty and public decency and the power of shame to keep decency’s flame alive were condemned by the SCC henceforth to be regarded as Canada’s new sexual perverts.

Did I wake or am I dreaming still?

Nice line, eh

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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. 


Posted on 12/28/05 at 09:06 AM
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Mike S. Adams

Mike S. Adams

  posted on Wednesday, December 28, 2005
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Of Mice and Minutemen

It must have been close to midnight when we saw the fight breaking out in the crowded parking lot. Scott and I were hurrying to get back into my 1970 GTO, so we could speed home and beat the twelve o’clock curfew. Although it was July, it was a school night for me. I was in summer school for flunking English again. The year was 1982.

Bubba wasn’t your typical Bubba from Texas. He was a surfer and all the girls said he was a good-looking fellow. He must have been. Every one of his girlfriends was a knockout.

And for a surfer he packed a pretty mean punch himself. He won almost every time he fought. But, this time, he was breaking up a fight between two people he didn’t know. He was playing the Good Samaritan, and it almost cost him his life. He had only been out of high school for a few weeks.

Right after he stepped in between the two men, we saw him hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. It didn’t look like he had been hit by a punch. That’s when Kevin ran over and saw the blood coming out of his jugular tube. It was spurting out with every heartbeat. “He’s been cut,” he screamed. He screamed it several times.

Donnie was lightning fast getting the truck over to the spot where Bubba lay bleeding. Steve threw his body in the back and then he hopped in with him. I remember the sound of blood gurgling as he tried to hold on. But his life was slipping away. He was only eighteen.

Donnie drove the truck through a fence marking the boundaries of the drive-in movie theater in southeast Houston, Texas. Then he cut across a field to take Highway 3 to the hospital in Clear Lake.

Before we got into our car, Darrin flew into a rage. Although I considered him a friend, he was the most dangerous guy in our school. He mastered the art of biting off chunks of flesh in fights long before Mike Tyson did it to Evander Holyfield.

On this particular night, he knocked the switchblade out of the young Mexican’s hand and started dragging him to the nearest car. He bashed out four headlights with his skull before he left him laying on the ground bleeding. Then he followed us to the hospital.

Later that night, around the crack of dawn, the nurse came out to the parking lot to tell us the good news. It was touch-and-go all night, but our friend was strong. He was going to pull through.

Later that day, I found out that the man who tried to murder Bubba for making peace was an undocumented worker. Back then, we called them illegal aliens.

Since that night, I haven’t discussed the issue of illegal immigration very much. In fact, I didn’t discuss the gruesome stabbing in public for over twenty years. But in May of this year it came up during a conversation about the controversial Minuteman Project launched near our nation’s border in Arizona.

The conversation was taking place in the lobby of a hotel in Asheville, North Carolina. A fellow delegate to the North Carolina Republican convention praised the Minuteman Project. That’s when we were interrupted by a Democrat sitting (and eavesdropping) at the next table. The conversation went something like this:

Democrat: I’m sorry to interrupt, but could you just tell me one bad thing a so-called illegal alien has done to justify your opposition to opening our borders to them? Could you just name one thing?
Adams: (recounts the 1982 stabbing incident).

Democrat: (rolls his eyes and shrugs his shoulders).
Adams: Wait a second. I just described to you a horrific act of violence committed against an innocent 18 year old — one that almost cost him his life — and all you can do is shrug your shoulders? Do you mean to say you don’t care? What if the act of violence was rape? What if the victim was your daughter? Would you care then?

Democrat: But all illegal aliens aren’t criminals.
Adams: Yes they are.

Democrat: How so?
Adams: Do you have a dictionary handy?

Democrat: No, do you?
Adams: Do you need a dictionary to understand the meaning of the term “illegal”?

Democrat: Yes, I see your point. You are right, technically speaking.
Adams: Well, how about morally speaking? Do I stand on strong moral ground? Have I merely won by a technicality?

Democrat: I’m sorry to have interrupted you. Never mind.

In case you didn’t notice, the most important aspect of that argument was not verbal; it was non-verbal. The rolling of the eyes and the shrugging of the shoulders provided an on-the-spot, concise summary of Democratic foreign policy toward Mexico. That said it all. They just don’t care.

But the more interesting question — and the one I did not ask the eavesdropping Democrat - is why? Why do so many Democrats not care if our borders are left open — even at the expense of national security and a rising crime rate? Surely, there must be more to the equation than pure apathy?

Of course, there is more to the equation. Put simply, they need the votes.

Democrats have lost control of the House, the Senate, and the White House. And those who have been watching the tactics of the Democratic Party over the past few years know that divisive racial politics are the last desperate hope of an increasingly powerless and irrelevant party. The Democrats know that the success of racial politics is related to the racial distribution of the American population.

That is why they need open borders. And that is why it is open season on the Minuteman Project, a group of concerned citizens who, in 2005, patrolled the Mexican border in hopes of curtailing illegal immigration. For accepting responsibility when government refused to, the Minutemen are one of Townhall.com’s finalists for Citizen of the Year. 

Some people have called the Minutemen racists. But not many have pressed that issue, because they know that the Minuteman Project requires personal interviews of each volunteer to ensure that he is motivated to serve by national security concerns, and not by racism. A racist can become a college professor (e.g., Cornel West) or a United States Senator (e.g., Robert Byrd), but he cannot become a member of the Minuteman Project.

So, out of desperation, the critics more often levy a charge of vigilantism.

But, just like the eavesdropping Democrat, those crying “vigilantism” are jumping into the argument without defining the basic terminology. And they secretly hope that no one within earshot is carrying a pocket dictionary.

I thought about those charges last week when I heard two young teenage boys across the street talking about unloading some merchandise at a local pawn shop. After I listened to them boast for a few moments, I realized they had just committed a felony. I went into the front bedroom, got out my Leupold binoculars and got a good physical description of the boys (and one of the vehicle, too).

A few days later, I spoke to the deputy as he hauled my young neighbor off to jail to be booked on charges of second degree burglary. As I shook the officer’s hand and thanked him, I offered to give sworn testimony at any proceedings against my 18-year-old neighbor.

Reflecting upon that scene raises a couple of questions: Am I a vigilante? And, more importantly, have I done anything different than what the Minutemen have done — and continue to do under much more dangerous circumstances?

If you want to read about vigilantism, go back and read the first part of this editorial about my friend Darrin. His actions were vigilantism — specifically, they constituted aggravated battery. And, needless to say, they represent an immoral way to combat illegal immigration.

But if you would rather read about true heroes, go to http://www.minutemanhg.com. Or, better yet, join the fight by doing the job our cowardly politicians are unwilling to do themselves.

 

Nice line, eh

Mike S. Adams's graphic

©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.


Posted on 12/28/05 at 12:01 AM
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Herman Goodden

Herman Goodden

  posted on Tuesday, December 27, 2005
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Legal swinging - isn’t it just Canadian?

The Supreme Court of Canada gave the green light this week to commercially operated “swingers’ clubs” that provide facilities for members seeking group sex, one-on-one mate swapping and voyeurism.

In a seven-to-two decision that came just in time to clear the way for any Canadians planning festive orgies over the Christmas holidays, the ruling, written by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, declared that personal harm, rather than community standards, should be the operative criterion in defining indecency.

While it is still illegal in Canada to run a brothel or bawdy house where human beings can rent other human beings for sexual pleasure, clubs such as l’Orage and Auberge 102 in Montreal or the Wicked Club in Toronto have found a way to dodge that little obstacle. Patrons supposedly pay only for membership in such clubs and if two or several patrons spontaneously decide once they’re inside that they’d like to have their way with each other in one of these conveniently appointed chambers, they now are legally free to do so.

So—you either pay to belong to a club where consensual sex can take place if two or more people feel like it, and that’s OK; or you pay at the door to get into a place for consensual sex and that’s not OK. As sex seems to be the only reason you’d set foot in either joint, and as you won’t get past the door in either place without coughing up some money, the distinction borders on invisible.

Rev. Thomas Dowd, a Roman Catholic priest in Montreal, says the distinction is a sham. Posting on Mark Shea’s website, he wrote: “Really they are houses of prostitution. More men than women show up at these clubs (how surprising) so the club owners pay prostitutes to become part of the club clientele, to keep things, shall we say, entertaining.”

It is anticipated that this Supreme Court decision will have a liberalizing impact on what sorts of behaviour will now be allowed in bathhouses, massage parlours, strip clubs, escort services and other depressing outposts of what we are euphemistically encouraged nowadays to call the “sex industry.”

Asked what sort of behaviour he thought might spur a recovery of the concept of community standards and perhaps even a reversal of this decision by the court, Osgoode Hall Law School professor Alan Young opined to the Globe and Mail, “Something even more fringe, people defecating on one another.”

Granted, community standards of decency and indecency, and also of right and wrong, are trickier for many of us to discern in the sort of polyglot society Canadians know today. And I would also insist that no small part of the current confusion in some of these matters can be laid at the feet of recent Supreme Court rulings that have helped turn traditional understandings of some pretty fundamental matters upside down. But I really am . . . I was going to say “shocked,” but perhaps the truer word is “heartsick” . . . that the top court doesn’t recognize the kind of coarsening, soul-shrivelling harm that establishments of this kind pose to society at large.

No, I’m not trying to tell moral libertarians all jacked up on “free love” and “no inhibitions” how to conduct their creepy sex lives. I was thinking more of young people growing up in a society where places of this kind are allowed to operate freely. What does the Wicked Club tell a young person about love and honour and fidelity?

That they’re options. That you don’t even have to try to uphold them if you don’t feel like it. That sex is something you can buy like a takeout hamburger and eat at the side of the road. And we won’t judge you because this is Canada where tolerance at all costs, regardless of all harm, is the only value we cherish.

Nice line, eh

Herman Goodden is a London freelance writer. His column appears in Monday’s and Thursday’s Opinion pages of the London Free Press.


Posted on 12/27/05 at 08:59 AM
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Salim Mansur

Salim Mansur

  posted on Tuesday, December 27, 2005
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Iraq’s brilliant example

‘Purple-finger revolution’ is a vindication of U.S. policy

For the third time in a year, Iraqis confounded the world as they went to the polls Dec. 15 to electing a new 275-member parliament under the constitution they voted for in October.

Here are a few remarkable facts jubilantly reported soon after polling closed by the widely read Iraqi blogger based in Baghdad, “Mohammed of Iraq The Model”:

- Security provided by the new Iraqi army and police was much improved since the last two elections, in January and October;

- The registered voters listwas increased, adding a million new Iraqi citizens who turned 18 this year;

- The estimated turnout of voters exceeded 15 million.

The credit for such an election—the first of its kind not only in Iraq’s history but across the Arab-Muslim world—belongs to the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, which is responsible for the functioning of the country’s new democracy.

Skeptics and cynics will insist Iraqi democracy is a cup half-empty, pointing to the persistence of terrorist violence. But as Mohammed notes, “All the assassinations and intimidation that preceded the election could not stop the process.”

It was not going to be easy to help the cause of freedom in a part of the world that has been most resistant to its meaning and practice. And the dragon of tyranny does not die without thrashing around destructively in its death throes.

On the eve of the vote, U.S. President George Bush said, “We are living through a watershed moment in the story of freedom.” The idea of freedom being infectious, Iraqi Sunnis joined their compatriots, Shiites and Kurds, to vote.

John Burns, Baghdad correspondent for the New York Times, observed Sunnis displaying “new willingness to distance themselves from the insurgency, an absence of hostility for Americans, a casual contempt for Saddam Hussein, a yearning…to find a place for themselves in the post-Hussein Iraq.”

Moreover, Iraq’s purple-finger revolution—the right to vote freely and elect government accountable to the people (voters’ fingers are stained purple after they cast their ballot)—is being watched across the Middle East as the question looms ever larger: If Iraq can be free and democratic, why not then Syria, or Egypt, or any other of the Arab League’s 22 member states?

Recently Fouad Ajami, an Arab-American professor at Johns Hopkins, wrote after a tour of the Middle East, “To venture into the Arab world is to travel into Bush Country.”

The march of Iraqi democracy vindicates Bush. It says how wrong the Democrats are in their shrill opposition to his administration—joining forces with the lunatic left, and abandoning any responsible understanding of history except for clinging to the mistaken lesson of Vietnam, when defeat in Indo-China was engineered by a most self-indulgent generation of Americans at home.

Iraqis have proven how cynical remains the politics of old Europe, the extent to which France will indulge dictators in pursuit of imaginary grandeur, and how corrupt the United Nations is in accepting bribes (as the oil-for-food scandal revealed) while remaining oblivious to yet another African genocide in Darfur.

The Iraqi vote also exposes the empty platitudes of our own Paul Martin and the lib-left, and the widening disconnect between Canada’s sense of purpose and its increasingly inconsequential foreign policy of appeasing rogue regimes gathered at the UN.

Iraqis have a distance to go in consolidating their freedom.

They know best, however, what failure would mean, and this knowledge is their guarantee for securing Iraq’s democracy while honoring the memory of American, British and coalition soldiers who died for their freedom.

 

Nice line, eh

©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.


Posted on 12/27/05 at 07:34 AM
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Paul Jackson

Paul Jackson

  posted on Tuesday, December 27, 2005
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Flagging hopes

Martin’s pseudo-patriotism will backfire on Liberals


Shipping tycoon Paul Martin’s scurrilous assaults on Conservative leader Stephen Harper have brought Canadian politics to a low the likes of John Diefenbaker, Lester Pearson and Brian Mulroney could never have imagined.

You can even add to that list Pierre Trudeau, for Trudeau tried to belittle his opponents with his supposedly superior intellect, rather than dishonest attacks on an individual’s personality or legitimate and above-board philosophy.

But then we are seeing, in Trudeau’s own words, that style really is the essence of a man. And the style of Martin is very, very worrying and unappealing.

Martin who spent a decade yearning to be prime minister after losing to Jean Chretien in the 1990 Liberal leadership race, knows if he doesn’t win a majority government on Jan. 23, his political career is finished.

Well, he’s not going to win anything like a majority government come election day, so that’s perhaps why he appears to be panicking and throwing all kinds of mud at Harper.

Mud that isn’t going to stick with any intelligent voter.

I can’t say I see Harper as changing the world in an historic sense—as did Sir Winston Churchill when he refused to capitulate to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s hordes, or President Ronald Reagan in toppling Soviet Communism and freeing hundreds of millions in the Soviet empire from enslavement—but I do know Harper is a decent family man with honourable values.

Objectively, he may well come close to having a legacy of the type of Mulroney’s free trade pact with the U.S., and as a man who, on the domestic side, turns our nation right-side-up again.

Martin suggests Harper has a hidden agenda—the rusted-out Liberal ruse—in that he somehow intends to take rights of millions of Canadians as set out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms away from them.

This is purely fictitious and Martin knows it.

No one can take away any right enshrined in the Charter.

Yet, why, if it is not a legitimate process, is an opting-out clause also enshrined in that constitution?

A Constitution, and an opting-out clause, given this country by one of Martin’s Liberal predecessors, Trudeau himself.

That said, taking away the rights of Canadians is something Martin knows about very well, for did he not do that to his cabinet ministers when he forced them to hold their noses and vote for his same-sex marriage bill?

In no other nation with a British parliamentary system is a cabinet minister—or individual MPs—forced to vote for a government bill unless its loss would mean the government’s own defeat.

Harper is actually going to give Canadians—and all MPs—more rights by allowing free votes in the Commons.

Gone will be the dictatorial stance of the PMO.

Martin must have learned his hit-and-run smear attacks from his direct predecessor, Chretien, who seemed to get his morning jollies from slurring Reform party leader Preston Manning and Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day with the most outrageous and wild accusations.

Chretien’s frightening hyperbole worked against Manning and Day, but let’s hope voters are a little more attuned to what Martin is up to.

Take the hypocrisy of Martin wrapping himself in the Maple Leaf flag and telling everyone how he ardently loves Canada, while suggesting Harper doesn’t really love this nation.

What a laugh that slur is.

Here’s why:

A while back, in a speech to an American audience, I drew a scenario in which a U.S. presidential contender owned a shipping line.

Then I asked what would happen if that politician and shipping line owner took down the Stars and Stripes flag on some of his vessels and raised foreign flags to avoid paying American taxes.

The audience looked perplexed. This would never happen. That presidential contender would be finished within a day.

When I explained the prime minister of our nation did just that, they found it hard to believe we would elect someone to the highest office of our land who was so unpatriotic he put personal wealth ahead of the good of the nation and its principles.

Surely if any party leader is entitled to wrap themselves in the Maple Leaf flag, it is Stephen Harper and not Paul Martin.

Nice line, eh


©2005-06 Paul Conrad Jackson
Paul Jackson is one of Canada’s most distinguished and thought-provoking journalists.  He is currently senior political commentator for the Calgary Sun and other related newspapers, after being both Editor and Associate Editor for a number of years. Mr. Jackson has interviewed such world famous political figures as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, John Diefenbaker, Brian Mulroney, Pierre Trudeau, Yitshak Rabin and Benjamin Netanyahu.


Posted on 12/27/05 at 07:12 AM
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Mike S. Adams

Mike S. Adams

  posted on Monday, December 26, 2005
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Two letters on Christmas morning

Since it is Christmas, I only have about fifteen minutes to write this note. I probably don’t have time to run the spell-checker either. So forgive me if this reads a lot like liberal hate mail.

This morning I opened my inbox to find two letters — one from a detractor, the other from a supporter. I can’t really quote much from the former. It was just the usual liberal love mail. “I hate you.” “You are irrelevant.” “I make more money than you.” “So just #$%& #@! and die.” And a really good postscript followed: “I want to douse your children in gasoline and light them with one of your Cuban cigars.”

When I read that last line, I laughed so hard I almost dropped my .44 magnum. And since I don’t have children, I calmly lit another cigar as I opened another letter.

The second letter was more positive. It was from a friend in Charlotte. His daughter, Laura, a student at Auburn, was recently involved in a fight to have the “Holiday tree” re-named a “Christmas tree” in an effort to turn the tables on political correctness.

What he reported to me was good news. Auburn University has reversed itself and will return to the tradition of calling the Christmas tree what it is — a Christmas tree, not a Holiday tree — again next year.

It wasn’t just the result that surprised me; it was the reason behind it. According to Laura, the Auburn SGA received over 20,000 emails in support of the Christmas tree resolution after the SGA email address was hyper-linked in a single Town Hall column. It also helped that Sean Hannity read portions of the article on his nationally syndicated radio show while Neal Boortz — himself a Town Hall columnist and nationally syndicated radio host - posted the article on his webpage.

The response got me thinking about an article I wrote last year exposing a Texas professor who said we had already lost the war in Iraq — and was pleased at the alleged military defeat. After I hyperlinked his email address in a column, he complained to me that he got 271 mostly nasty emails that “filled up his box.”

So, what difference does a year make? It sounds to me like I gained about 19,729 letter-writing allies this year.

I just wanted to thank them all before I head to the in-laws for Christmas dinner. Man, I can hardly wait until this time next year. Much to the chagrin of my friends at Alabama, I might even spend Christmas at Auburn.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Nice line, eh

Mike S. Adams's graphic

©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.


Posted on 12/26/05 at 10:17 AM
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Jennifer Roback Morse

Jennifer Roback Morse

  posted on Monday, December 26, 2005
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Holidays without homes

Here in California, the divorce culture is further along and more deeply entrenched than in most places. It isn’t unusual for children to grow up not only with divorced parents, but also with divorced grandparents. Holiday times can be particularly stressful for these families.

I am looking at an article entitled, “Forget the holiday fantasy; focus on flexibility.”  The article gives step-families pointers on how to “package step-family gatherings with care.” But right at the beginning of the article, without comment, is the fact that parents have holiday schedules dictated by courts. Allow me to quote:

“Next Sunday, Sandy and Steve will spend their first Christmas together as a married couple… But something big will be missing: their children. Both their sons will spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with their other parent. At noon, as stipulated in a legal document, Steve will pick up 10-year-old Oskar. At 2 P.M. Also per a legal agreement, Sandy will get 5-year-old Ethan.” 

Court-ordered, or at least court-regulated, visitation has become such a common feature of our social landscape that we don’t even notice it anymore. It is tucked into this article, in between tips on handling presents for step-mothers and managing multiple family traditions. When cooperation between parents breaks down, they implicitly or explicitly invite the state to become involved in the most intimate details of their lives.

The divorce culture appears in a different form for married couples with divorced parents.  I am acquainted with young couples whose own parents are divorced. These young families are trying to keep their parents happy. And their own marriages are extremely important to them, precisely because of the trauma they experienced through their parents’ divorces. What are the holidays like for these families?  Well, let’s just say they spend a lot of time in the car.

Since both of them have divorced parents, we’re talking about four different households who want to see the young couple and the grandkids. So Mom, Dad and the little kids go see Grandma Number 1 (Dad’s mom) and her new husband on Christmas Eve and then drive over and see Grandpa Number 1 (Dad’s dad) on Christmas day. Then they somehow have to work in Grandma No. 2 (Mom’s mom). She wants to come over on Christmas morning and watch the little ones open their gifts. But she can’t drive, so someone has to drive to her house and bring her over. There isn’t really room for everyone to descend upon Grandpa Number 2 (Mom’s dad) in his little barren apartment, so they try to include him in a group get-together with some of the brothers and sisters later in the week.

It gets even more complicated if some of the adult siblings are taking sides in one of the never-ending quarrels. Grandma Number 1 takes offense at anyone who sees Grandpa Number 1 before her, or perhaps, anyone who sees Grandpa at all. Maybe the young parents have made themselves clear that they intend to keep up relationships with both parents. But then Aunt Susie is offended, because she takes Grandpa’s side entirely and doesn’t want to see the people he considers disloyal. So our intrepid couple has to plan their visit to Grandpa’s, so that it doesn’t coincide with Aunt Susie’s, because she will make a real stink.

The end-result often is that these young parents, who are doing their best to try to please their parents and meet their children’s needs, are caught in the middle. By the end of the ordeal, they are exhausted, frazzled and just want to be alone. Too much drama, not enough joy.

Obviously, I don’t accuse every divorced person of this sort of self-centeredness. And also obviously, many intact families torment each other during the holidays. But, I would say this: take a good look at yourself, whatever your family situation. If the shoe fits, wear it. Almost everyone can do something constructive to improve their family life.

When No-Fault Divorce was first introduced, it seemed like a good idea. People thought that easing divorce rules would lower the cost of divorce for people who had already decided to divorce anyway. No one fully anticipated how many more divorces would occur. We were assured that children would be better off living with parents who were happy, rather than living in a high-conflict environment with miserable parents.  No one anticipated how many divorces would take place among couples who were not roiled in violence, but rather in marriages with an undercurrent of discontent. We thought that whether to get married or stay married was a matter of our own personal privacy.  Little did we know that a government institution, the Family Courts, would morph into something that regulates private lives with the most minute detail, including who gets to spend Christmas with the kids.

But there is hope. The younger generation is sick of the divorce culture. I hear it from them every day, whether on talk radio, or after a speech I’ve given, or in response to a column like this one. They are hungry for information on how to keep their marriages vibrant and their love alive. With some help from older people, these young married couples may just change the world. Or at least their own little corner of the world.

Nice line, eh

Jennifer Roback Morse's graphic

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©Copyright 2005-06 Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D., is the founder and chief visionary of Your Coach for the Culture Wars, a business devoted to supporting organizations that want to preserve their core values and achieve prosperity by taking a stand in the Culture Wars.  She is also the author of Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn’t Work.


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Posted on 12/26/05 at 10:16 AM
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Doug Giles

Doug Giles

  posted on Sunday, December 25, 2005
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The Church and Contextualization Frustration

As a minister, the “mission field” with which I’m primarily concerned is that difficult-to-understand and freakishly lost people group commonly referred to as “America’s youth.”  This extraordinarily confused demographic is the tribe that I feel particularly called to reach.

American young adults, though living in a nation inundated with Christianity and founded upon Christian principles, have become (through parental neglect and ecclesiastical nonchalance combined with a heavy dose of liberal acrimony) completely secularized.

This demographic seems more disinterested in Christianity than PDiddy is in driving a Corolla.  Face it, Church, generally speaking, young adults do not attend, en masse, our worship services—unless they’re forced to.  Nor do they listen to or care about Christian radio, and the majority of them think Christian TV is weird (and they’re right).  American youth live in a world that is foreign to the American Christian, and it’s hard for the well meaning saint to understand why they don’t “get it.”  The gospel is completely plain to us, yet confusingly strange to them.

I believe the culpability flow chart regarding this generation’s indifference and ignorance lies partly on the shoulders of the youth and to a degree upon the churches that refuse to contextualize the gospel message.  Certain ill-bred sectors of evangelicalism blame the youth for their obstinacy and the devil for his constancy—but never condemn itself for its belligerency towards contextualization. 

We have failed as American missionaries to appreciate and bridge the Grand Canyon-sized ideological and communication chasms that exist between this secularized age group and their believing, biblical predecessors. And I hate to put responsibility upon the lazy believers, but the initial onus to adjust falls to us and not to them.

In order to reach out to young adults effectively, we’ve got to seek first to understand them instead of attempting to make ourselves understood by them. Therefore, brailing their culture is a must.  And here’s where the Christian’s commitment to duty hits the floor.  Shallow as it might sound, not keeping up with modern society can be a real detriment to communication.  The society that we’re living in here in the U.S. is undergoing more changes than a PMSing Emily Rose, and it’s incumbent upon the Christian to understand each cultural shift and adjust his means accordingly. We can’t afford to be monkish in our avoidance of the multi-faceted influences that affect our culture—the culture in which we have been sovereignly placed to reform. 

This means keeping up with what’s going on in the young people’s world, paying attention to what’s on TV, in the theatres, on their iPOD’s and in their CD players.  I’m not advocating spending endless and mindless amounts of time watching and listening to every hip-hop-Hollywood-come-lately diphthong; rather, listening as an evangelist and an apologist attempting to get the gist of where they’re coming from and where they intend to take your kids.  As cultural analysts, we must dissect the beliefs and values of our youth’s gurus and their temporary icons, paying attention to the particular effects upon them and the Christian worldview. 

Therefore, as we watch an estimated 50 hours a week of TV, between the giggles, our eleventh bag of Lay’s and our fifth Foster’s, we should pause to listen and maybe even scratch down some casual observations made while viewing an episode of SouthPark, a Green Day video or Napoleon Dynamite.

Simply increasing our sensitivity to what we are actually seeing and hearing will serve tremendously in making the gospel come alive to the youth by using current illustrations couched in a gospel context.  The epoxying of the abovementioned will form a lethal bond of understanding with our audience, which when backed up by eternal wisdom from on high, will build a communicative platform that will help God get their attention.

“Our business is to present that which is timeless in the particular language of our own age.  The bad preacher does exactly the opposite: he takes the ideas of our own age and tricks them out in the traditional language of Christianity.  Your teaching must be timeless at its heart and wear a modern dress.”
-C. S. Lewis

 

Nice line, eh

Doug Giles's graphic

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 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.


Posted on 12/25/05 at 09:31 AM
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