Off the radar

I know that media types run stories like this only to make people laugh and shake their heads. I don't usually waste my time with them. But today I fell for it. Somebody out there wants the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to do away with their traditional winter hats. You see, the hats are lined with Muskrat fur. To which I can only say: it's a rat, it's a rat, its a rat. It's a rat, get it? It's not rare, it's not endangered, it's not even great to look at. I'm not saying it deserves to die horribly, but on the world scale of things to think about... it's really not on my radar. ***** Speaking of not on my radar, how about that MacLean's Magazine, ever the hot source for breaking news in Canada, from sea to sea? That useless bit of trash written for and consumed by the over 50 crowd in central Canada (probably same ones that can't get enough of the Globe and Mail) is warning us that, *gasp* Fox News is coming to Canadian Digital cable, and we had better brace ourselves for it. The horror! It's a threat to our namby pampy Liberal nature! Not to mention that it's happening during the same year as Sheila Copps leaving the House of Commons and the NHL strike, which is really dirty and unfair. It's all a conspiracy anyway. This is a magazine that I will never forget. A full decade after the Rave scene started, it put an expose on the "New and Dangerous World of Raves" on its cover and confirmed all of my worst suspicions about it. How come they don't seem to care about AlJezeera being a hairs breath from coming onto our cable networks?

Re-united?

It seems that Americans are breaking for Bush in the presidential vote. The closer it comes and the more they tune in and see John Kerry up close, the less they like him. That seems to be especially so for Christian voters, who see right through Kerry's thin veneer of "Catholicism." I tell you, there is nothing thin about it; it's a shockingly intimate religion if you get familiar with it. But Catholics have not traditionally voted Republican, so what is happening here? Kerry's insincere aura and flip flops surely have something to do with it. But there might also be a realization that Catholics and Evangelical Protestants have much more in common than is usually admitted. In a majority Christian culture, Christians could legitimately split over all kinds of issues. We don't all agree on how things should be done, even if we can be close on what our goals are. Christianity is not left or right and this can lead Christians all over the political map. We might be reaching a period in which Christians have to put the that kind of disarray behind them. They are faced with a very real and growing threats from without and within. The threat from Muslim jihadis is obvious to anyone who is awake. Less obvious are aggressive secularists who will take advantage of a foolishly split Christian vote to continue ripping Christian heritage from all of our laws and institutions if we let them. Secularists will continue to threaten the weak, the old, and the young because they are a hassle to their groovy freedom, man. We can't let it happen. We can't let it happen because there is no reason to think that the threats will stop there. As Mark Shea points out:

we have coasted along on custom in continuing to talk as though our culture still is founded on that mystical Christian faith in human equality. I fear, however, that sooner or later, it will occur to somebody to get rid of this mystical Christian belief in equality as they have gotten rid of so much of the rest of the Christian tradition.

When that happens there will be nothing to stop the label of "non person" from being applied to anyone who is unpopular and vulnerable. I'm not saying it's around the corner, but every inch is an inch too much for my liking. Anyone born after Roe should probably be aware that they could easily not be here, if that had been the will of their mothers. And in Canada, where we have no laws restricting abortion at all (the supreme court struck down the existing law and our government is too gutless to even mention the issue to the public), kids can be aborted at any time for any reason. That would include just seconds before natural birth, if you want to be a stickler about it. That would be a baby that could easily live outside the mother. But, no matter. If she wants to kill it, she can have it killed on taxpayer dime and there is nothing that can be done about it under the present regime. It might be objected that this is rare, to which I say that is a cold response to someone struck by lighting. Liberals and secularists like to say that they do not force people to do anything, and that they want to be fair and impartial to all, regardless of their religion. They like to say that Christians can't be trusted in government because they will "force" everyone to follow their beliefs. To which I say, stop it already. Christians have in the past been reasonable stewards of the rights of nonbelievers in America and they can do so still. I don't claim they made no mistakes. Of course they did. One of the reasons Christianity has been whittled down politically in recent times is that it has allowed religious tolerance and plurality to flourish; hence the divided faith you see today. At this point the Liberal likes to bring up some knuckle dragging stereotype of a fundamentalist as a kind of boogey man. That brand of Christianity has never been in a majority and it is a severe insult to describe Catholics and mainstream evangelicals in those terms. Our positions and our arguments are solid and often science can be used to buttress our claims. On the issue of abortion, for example, we now know that the child has a unique DNA from the moment of conception. If that's not a unique person, I don't know what is. Kind of blows up the "it's my body" argument, doesn't it? So I hope that Americans do rally around president Bush. I hope it is one of many steps Christians can take in reasserting their common bonds and the reasonableness of what they profess. If you've visited my wife's blog, you may know this already. But if you haven't, I'll repeat it here. She was born after abortion was legalized in Canada (I was born before) and as her Mom was older and alone, she was asked if she wanted to carry "it" to term. Thank God she said yes. Rebecca and I will celebrate our third anniversary tomorrow, and our fifth year together.

1,000+

North Western Winds passed 1,000 hits sometime this morning. I have no idea if I'm justified in this or not, but I'm quite happy with that number of visits in one month. The blog was created roughly August 25 but not really promoted until I had a few posts under my belt. You can't invite people over without having snacks in the fridge, right? And I'm still trying to figure this blog promotion thing out. I'll let you know how that goes, ok? Big thanks to everyone who linked or bookmarked this site, especially the guys at Castle Argghhh! (did I spell it right?), Ben at The Tiger In Winter, Kate at The Last Amazon, John Depoe at Fides Quarerens Intellectum (I have no clue what that means). Thanks for your time and encouragement. Thanks also to Flea, who's Red Enisgn Brigade introduced me to most of the people above and lots more. I also have to thank Mark Shea at Catholic and Enjoying it! - his link to my fledgling site gave me my highest single day to date, and by a large margin - 130 hits in a day. I've never been close to that since. And thanks also go to The Maverick Philosopher, for a great blog and more than a few visitors.

Ireland declares war on France

Good joke on Wicked Thoughts. Check it out.

Eternity Road

Over at Eternity Road, there is a small debate over one of my posts the other day.

Yoda?

A venerated sage with vast power and knowledge, you gently guide forces around you while serving as a champion of the light.

Judge me by my size, do you? And well you should not - for my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life greets it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us, and binds us. Luminescent beings are we, not this crude matter! You must feel the Force around you, everywhere.

I was surprised by this. I expected to be Sam Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings.

Absolut Leviticus

I have a bookmark for an article by Eugene Volokh, published by Slate, and I'm not sure where it came from, although I think it was one of Ben's links over at The Tiger In Winter. If it's not, well, there's a free link for you. ;-) In it, Volokh talks about some of the criticisms that conservative people have about those who are more liberal. I'd like to comment on some of his observations, which seem to be those of a secular conservative befuddled by some of the "inside baseball" stuff that Christians say. 1) Moral absolutes Leviticus is terribly misunderstood. It is frequently invoked to argue that Christians are arbitrary, hypocritical and inconsistent. Well, make that charge if you must, but leave poor Leviticus out of it because it won't help your case. Volokh is not really attacking Christians here, but he does seem to make what is a common error:

Leviticus condemns male homosexuality as an abomination, but it also condemns eating shellfish as an abomination (11:10). Most Christians don’t follow the dietary rules in Leviticus -- and they may have good reason to do so, reasons based on interpretations of other parts of the Bible, or on tradition, or on their reasoning about what God must care about. But this just means that they, like those who follow a secular moral code, must make hard moral judgments that may often lack clear textual authority.

Non religious and non practicing Christians are often unaware that Leviticus is from the Old Testament, and the rules it contains were among the many things that were dropped after Christ's coming. So it's irrelevant. I didn't know it until recently either. My Study Bible's reading guide to Leviticus says:

... Since many of the actions in the first half of Leviticus are tied to priestly roles in the Temple, the book has become a negative symbol for Christians who emphasize the so called "freedom from the law" that Paul speaks of in his letters in the New Testament. Even the current name of the book means basically "That which pertains to the levitical priests."

There might be strains of Christianity that adhere to Leviticus, but they are to the best of my knowledge minor groups, likely with a very literal take on the Bible. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong. Leviticus is also part of the Jewish Torah. Having a fuzzy idea of how mainstream Christian morality is anchored leads Volokh to draw a weak parallel:

many nonreligious people do operate using what they see as moral absolutes, such as the need to maximize human happiness, or the need to promote human flourishing, or respect for individual freedom, or what have you. Now naturally these foundational moral principles are pretty general and abstract, and thus ambiguous in application.

It IS true that "many nonreligious people do operate using what they see as moral absolutes." And it IS true that mainstream Christians have to find ways to apply their moral principles, just like non religious people do. The difference is that a non religious person could drop a moral absolute for any reason at all ("I was wrong," "I changed my mind," "it's too hard"), and a religious person cannot. He can't change them because they are not his to do with as he sees fit. I think that's a pretty important difference and advances in medical science are making it more important, not less, everyday. One stance is absolute and one is "what I think or feel right now." 2) The means justify the ends Volokh writes:

Some ends do justify some means, in the sense that some of our moral principles (don’t kill, don’t let people trespass on others’ property) operate differently depending on whether there’s a pressing social need to do something (fight a war, enforce the law). We can surely criticize others for their moral errors in deciding which ends justify which means. But I don’t think we can criticize liberals on the grounds that they are more likely to say the ends justify the means, or on the grounds that “the ends justify the means” is inherently an immoral position.

This is a credo that utopians of all stripes use to justify acts that range from annoying to murderous. It IS true that there is such a thing as a religious utopian - jihadis come to mind - but violent theocrats are not very common in the west today. On the other hand, we do see things like ecoterrorism and other forms of violence advocated more often by the left than the right. Disrupting the Republican Convention comes to mind too. How many Republicans tried to mess up the Democratic convention? How many advocated it? Practically none, as far as I know. I would argue that this is because the right is better tethered to our religious heritage and that heritage rejects this argument in all aspects. Now, wait a minute, somebody is going to bring up the Iraq war as an example of the right using the ends to justify the means. But war is not forbidden to Christians. The Catholic Church allows a war if it can be proven to be just, and it gives criteria to evaluate a potential conflict. Whether Iraq meets that criteria or not is a matter of much debate, and is beside the point I want to make. Catholics see the world and everyone in it as fallen. As a result, it is inevitable that we will be put upon by others acting out of ignorance or malice. We can respond in many ways. "Turn the other cheek" is often used to invoke a very strict pacifism, a pacifism that I reject. The Bible also says that to enter heaven we must "hate our parents" and no one takes that literally. It means we must put God first, even if it puts us at odds with our parents. God is the higher good. I read "turn the other cheek" in a similar way. Turing away might be the ideal response, but it may not be practical - it's a fallen world, remember? By turning the other cheek we might allow great harm to be done, and this is also sinful. So we will sin no matter what we do. The choice is really to figure out what is the lesser sin and to do that with as little sin as we can. And when the fighting is done, we are to fogive our opponent and seek the same from God. I'll end with a quote from an editorial from one of the the Vatican newspapers, Avvenire, dated Sunday, September 26, 2004:

Even the European countries that opposed the American decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime with a unilateral war know well that an Iraq in the hands of the worst terrorists and criminals goes against the interests of all: of the West as of the Arab-Islamic world. Thinking that the withdrawal of American troops would of itself permit the improvement of the situation, or even the reduction of concern, is pure naiveté. Moreover, the only condition that can bring about a reduction in the American presence in Iraq is the multilateralization of the crisis: including, and especially, from the military point of view.

** Ben tells me I got the name of the writer I'm refering to wrong. The post has been corrected to reflect that.

How to name a bar

This post from the Lazy Logician made me laugh. *sigh* I'm never that funny. At least, not intentionally.

It ain't easy

Nice post by Flea. Go check it out! Not everybody's a history buff so this is a valuable link if you are in that category or know someone who is (and who doesn't?). He shows how our "unique" historical situation in Iraq is not so unique, and we therefore have much to learn from how such conflicts were handled in the past. Flea also addresses the impact of new media technologies on war coverage, and how they impact people with no context in which to evaluate what they are being shown. I'll just add that the Nazis did try to create an underground terrorist network called "Operation Werewolf," which was supposed to do the kind of things we are seeing in Iraq. It never really took off. Germany was reeling from the bombing and five years of war. People just wanted normalcy to return as quickly as possible. Even terrorists have to eat. There was also no precedent in German culture to draw on for such a thing. The only thing close was the Nazis themselves and they were discredited by the war. In Iraq the jihadis have yet to be discredited. I'm not sure how that is to be done, but I am sure it needs to be done if the West is to succeed in its aims.

The power of stupid thinking

The Maverick Philosopher has an interesting look at the later George Orwell, as seen by Linoel Trilling:

he [Orwell] began to fear that the commitment to abstract ideas could be far more maleficent than the commitment to the gross materiality of property had ever been. The very stupidity of things has something human about it, something meliorative, something even liberating. Together with the stupidity of the old unthinking virtues it stands against the ultimate and absolute power which the unconditioned idea can develop.

Curt's shorthand: Top down ideologies suck. Don't be afraid to be "stupid."

Naturalism and Reason

For most of my life I considered myself to be a agnostic. I was never an atheist; it was clear to me at a very young age that atheism was a dogmatic view, as dogmatic as an religion could be. I never expected to find an argument that would get me off of that fence. It seemed to me that it could never be answered because our minds were limited by what we saw and heard. If God could not be seen by any sense, how could we know the least thing about him? Then, after leaving university no closer to any answers, and with a diminished view of what a university is and does, I began to read. Libertarian books, such as Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and books on evolution, such as Dawkins' The Selfish Gene and Matt Ridley's The Red Queen. I was still plagued by what I call the "yes, but" syndrome. These theories sounded fine, but... I was always finding people who read them in ways that to me were too much (or too little, depending on your approach). How could I explain my resistance to things like abortion, euthanasia, promiscuity and so on? How could I say that yes, the state has no right to force you to do (or not do) that, but that you ought to find the reasons yourself. My first attempts involved arguments from utility and from biology. These things seemed destructive to me, in the long term. Couldn't people see that? They certainly told me that they didn't. Reason this and reason that, people came up with the darndest and most clever reasons for the most horrible things. Very interestingly to me, none of these people I was reading had positions that other people rallied around in large numbers. The results they were getting almost began to appear to be the result of how they defined things. The definition lead to the conclusion, but it began to seem that it could just as easily be the other way around. The more evolution I read, the less impressed I was with human reason, and the ethics people were putting forward on the basis of evolution reinforced it. So what was this thing, reason, and why did we put such faith in it, if evolution said we shouldn't? And wasn't evolutionary theory itself a product of reason? Yet there had to be something to evolution. Microbes, which have a much faster evolutionary speed than humans do, were clearly mutating and causing doctors to worry about finding new ways to combat the newly evolved "superbugs." So our minds are not completely shot after all. And yet, if our minds are the product of evolution, why is this so? Why should we have a hazy grip on ontological reality? Evolutionary utility did not seem to be enough to account for it. Here is the best answer I have seen. I think it is good enough to say that Monotheism is true, and that atheism and the naturalism it often springs from, are wrong. I have seen it in a few places, but I'll use C.S. Lewis since he is so approachable:

All possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning. If the feeling of certainty which we express by words like must be and therefore and since is a real perception of how things outside our minds really 'must' be, well and good. But if this certainty is merely a feeling in our own minds and not a genuine insight into realities beyond them - if it merely represents the way our minds work - then we can have no knowledge. Unless human reasoning is valid, no science can be true. ... A theory that explained everything else in the whole universe but which made ut impossible to believe our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory itself would have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be itself demolished. It would have destroyed its own credentials. It would be an argument that no argument was sound - proof that there are no such things as proofs - which is nonsense. ... Naturalism... discredits our process of reasoning... to such a humble level that it can no longer support naturalism itself.

From C.S. Lewis, Miracles. Obviously, this argument does not prove that any particular monotheistic religion is true. It did make agnosticism untenable. Evolution is true and despite this we are capable of knowing about evolution and a lot more. This suggests to me that God is at a minimum somewhat kind, because we could have had minds that were merely the result of what Lewis calls the "interlocking system of nature," which would be cruel or indifferent. From my point of view a religion that denied evolution (fundamentalism) or our ability to know (naturalism) would be fatally flawed; it would be too self enclosed to pass as reasonable. The best fit that I know if is Catholicism, which 1) has a doctrine of grace, that allows us to know through God's grace, 2) the doctrine of original sin, which explains why mankind has such difficulty knowing things, including our own nature, and 3) does not not deny that evolution could be true, and is not threatened if it is true. After doing this work, I have very little time or respect for university folk who argue for the following 1) naturalism, 2) athiesm 3) decontruction. All of them cut the floor out from under themselves and it's not that hard to see once you familiarize yourself with this particular delimma. Why this problem underlies so much of modern thought and study is a whole other subject.

More Chesterton

The philosophy of the tree, 1909 In a letter from 1909, Chesterton defended traditionalism by comparing it to a tree:

I mean that a tree goes on growing, and therefore goes on changing; but always in the fringes surrounding something unchangeable. The innermost rings of the tree are still the same as when it was a sapling; they have ceased to be seen, but they have not ceased to be central. When the tree grows a branch at the top, it does not break away from the roots at the bottom; on the contrary it needs to hold more strongly by its roots the higher it rises with its branches. That is the true image of the vigorous and healthy progress of a man, a city, or a whole species.

Taken from Tolkien: Man and Myth, by Joseph Pearce.

What herb are you?

YOU ARE MOLY What herb are you? brought to you by Quizilla

Logistics and axioms

Before I turned in last night I agreed with Ben's post on Heather Mallick but drew attention to two things that I saw as watering his points down a tad. Ben overlooked my sleepy English and came back with a comment and new post. Rather than swamp poor Ben's comment section, I'm copying his post here so that I can respond without overlooking anything. Ben said:

Here's my take. Till recently, I have been among those who would, like those writers, describe ideas and people I didn't like as being "scary." Scary isn't that. When I have the luxury to sit around and get drunk with my friends and talk about books and horrible politicians (when that's everything, I mean; even in the middle of a world war, I'll find some time for it), I'm not scared. I'm part of a very lucky social class -- those who have not had to work for a living. (Not because I'm wealthy. Quite the contrary. It's because I've been a spoilt only child of middle-class parents.) But are we really that lucky? When we have the luxury to sit around in our little cocoons from the world, we tend to forget what actually matters and what is merely a fashionable pose for the season.

I think the best thing I can do here is just groan and smile. It is a bit sheltered and thankfully most of us get past it. Sadly, quite a few of those who remain on campus do not. In fact, campus culture can be really odd, with students looking to their profs for leadership (as they should) but many of the profs unfortunately looking to the students for affirmation that they are still "with it." The result is a leadership vacuum that seems to me to fuel the zealotry and demonization ("scary") you describe. Jonah Goldberg says that the trouble the liberal profs have is that for them,

youth has a moral authority independent of the substance of its arguments. Youth politics is a variant of identity politics which imbues in young people an authority they did not purchase with work or with insight — just as liberalism does with gender, race, infirmity, etc.

Goldberg, by the way, is a pretty good writer if you're not already familiar with him. Ben continues:

I'm not going to go all Bolshevik and rhapsodize about the working class. Far from it. There are informed and ill-informed opinions, and we've been stuck with those of both types since time immemorial. But I wonder whether the intellectual class of the West hasn't taken a wrong turn somewhere -- whether we mightn't have a death wish of some sort. And so it lies with the rest of the country -- the parts that do a lot of work* -- to pull us back into reality. [*Yes, I work hard too. I spent a lot of time at the library last year, and the year before, my thesis was a really hard slog. I work. But it's a different sort of work.] Education is a funny sort of thing. Someone like Mark Steyn, for instance, has little more than a high school diploma, yet he can run intellectual circles around people with doctorates. And he'll sound an awful lot more informed than they will. (Because he is. Well, when he's not talking about residential schools. He got that one awfully wrong. Well, the rest of that essay, "The Slyer Virus," is awesome, anyway.) There was a time when writers and artists took pleasure in shattering the little orthodoxies that bourgeois society held dear. Now, it is the rest of society (for that bourgeois society is at one with Nineveh and Tyre) that is beginning to shatter the orthodoxies of those who write and "create" for a living.

I think you're on to something here. The way I see it, we need to find a way to "keep it real." The danger that occurs when you do a lot of work that is mental - not just scholarship but also jobs like writing or marketing - is that you tend to overlook or oversimplify logistics. My wife works with a sales crew and has to remind them from time to time that they can't promise things in an effort to close a sale, that she can't get for them. Students of history and things military know that a good grasp of logistics can make the difference in any battle. But how do you teach it? To some degree it's a school of hard knocks kind of thing. So upper class or lower class, we all have to respect people who have the experience in the subject at hand. The dentist might have ideas about the stock market, but I don't give them more weight than the ones I get from anyone else. If he tells me I need work on my teeth, though, I get the work done. The opinions of an English professor on Bush's economic record are no better than anyone else who lacks real world experience in understanding the data. And my plumber knows best about my plumbing, no matter what the professor says. Things that are said to be axiomatic on the campus are not beyond question and kudos for recognizing that. Sometimes I see left /right disputes as a struggle over what it will take to get a job done. We all want peace and we all want the truly unfortunate to be cared for. The question is how - how do we do it and how much is even possible?

I'm not about to give up the prospects of the academy for a life of "honest toil." For one thing, I wouldn't be good at it; I haven't been brought up for it. For another, I wouldn't enjoy it -- I wouldn't see the point (though there's always pleasure in a job well done). But the least I can do is not sneer at those who do live it, and to take their thoughts seriously. I might actually learn something new. Isn't truth the highest goal, in the life of ideas?

Nor should you. Follow your talents while keeping a strong heart and an open mind. The academy needs people like that. Finally, I mentioned finding problems with Libertarianism. The problem as I see it is that liberty is not the highest good, even if it is a very good thing. People need love more than they need liberty. Liberty exists so that people can give themselves in love. They are free to start families if they wish and they are free to study or to work, or to some combination. But they are not free to do things that hinder others (obviously, although this has more impact that is first apparent) and they are not free to undermine the concepts or the high value of love or freedom themselves. I'll conclude with Goldberg again:

Personal liberty is vitally important. But it isn't everything. If you emphasize personal liberty over all else, you undermine the development of character and citizenship — a point Hayek certainly understood. Kids are born barbarians, as Hannah Arendt noted. Without character-forming institutions which softly coerce (persuade) kids — and remind adults — to revere our open, free, and tolerant culture over others, we run the risk of having them embrace any old creed or ideology that they find most rewarding or exciting, including some value systems which take it on blind faith that America is evil and, say, Cuba or Osama bin Laden is wonderful. That's precisely why campuses today are infested with so many silly radicals, and why libertarians in their own way encourage the dismantling of the soapboxes they stand on.

The Medium is the Message

"Be in the world, but not of the world." Johnny Dee makes the point in two posts, here and here, that Christians cannot simply adopt pop media styles and change the words in the hope of finding an easy way to get their message out. He's right about this. Most people I know, including me, find Christian pop music to be quite boring and not in the least inspirational. John's table is a quick look at how the medium alters the message. Anyone familiar with the work of Marshall McLuhan will recognize this theme and its truth right away. Christians must be willing to stand for their faith, both in its words and in its forms. When people tire of the pop experience, they will look for a truer, deeper, safer mental space, and we can and must be willing to provide it, although this is not an easy thing to do. We need to critique the pop world and stand tall in the face of the flak this will inevitably bring. The Catholic faith has a nice phrase for this - it says we need to be "in the world, but not of the world." We must be willing to stand apart, to resist the crowd and to speak the truth as best we can. That would be a powerful message, coherent in both content and form. The Christian pop approach is only a pale reflection (not pop, not Christian) and people seem to instinctively know it.

Four out of ten isn't bad?

Media gets 44% approval rating overall in new poll According to this story in Editor and Publisher, 39% of Americans say they have say "not much" confidence in the media's ability to report the news fairly, and and 16% say they have "none at all." Joe average isn't so average it seems. The crap war coverage might have something to do with that. The only ones in a "quagmire" are the 60's retreads in the media. Mark Steyn observes about the media's reaction to the Iraqi presidents visit this week:

They're six feet from Iraq's head of government and they've got not a question for him. They've got no interest in Iraq except insofar as they can use the issue to depress sufficient numbers of swing voters in Florida and Ohio. Who's living in the fantasyland here? Huge forces are at play in a world of rapid change. As the prime minister said, ''We Iraqis will stand by you, America, in a war larger than either of our nations.'' But the gentlemen of the press can barely stifle their ennui. Say what you like about the old left, but at least they were outward-looking and internationalist. This new crowd -- Democrats and media alike -- are stunted and parochial, their horizons shriveling more every day.

Of course they are

Paul Martin (PM the PM) says that despite the evidence, other Liberals are not organizing leadership bids in the expectation that he will lose his job when the minority Liberal government is defeated. Which means, of course, that that is exactly what is happening.

The Red Ensign

Ben over at The Tiger in Winter did a nice round up of what's been happening at the Red Ensign blogs lately. I don't envy him this job, as there are a good number of blogs on the roll and the numbers seem to be growing. Taylor and Co. are to do the next one October 7. How does this work guys? You just ask to give up a night or two of your life and the honour is yours?

Ditch the U.N.

After Paul Martin's (PM the PM) regrettable speech to the UN the other day, it seems like a good time to think about what the UN is and who runs it. Fortunately we have Victor Davis Hanson writing about just that in the Wall Street Journal today:

the U.N. is not the idealistic postwar organization of our collective Unicef and Unesco nostalgia, the old perpetual force for good that we once associated with hunger relief and peacekeeping. Its membership is instead rife with tyrannies, theocracies and Stalinist regimes. Many of them, like Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Vietnam and Zimbabwe, have served on the U.N.'s 53-member Commission on Human Rights. The Libyan lunocracy--infamous for its dirty war with Chad and cash bounties to mass murderers--chaired the 2003 session. For Mr. Bush to talk to such folk about the need to spread liberty means removing from power, or indeed jailing, many of the oppressors sitting in his audience. ... the present secretary-general, Kofi Annan, is himself a symbol of all that is wrong with the U.N. ... he enjoys the freedom, affluence and security of a New York, but never stops to ask why that is so or how it might be extended to others less fortunate.

After September 11, 2001, Hanson concludes:

Deeds, not rhetoric, are all that matter, as the once unthinkable is now the possible. There is no intrinsic reason why the U.N. should be based in New York rather than in its more logical utopian home in Brussels or Geneva. There is no law chiseled in stone that says any fascist or dictatorial state deserves authorized membership by virtue of its hijacking of a government. There is no logic to why a France is on the Security Council, but a Japan or India is not. And there is no reason why a group of democratic nations, unapologetic about their values and resolute to protect freedom, cannot act collectively for the common good, entirely indifferent to Syria's censure or a Chinese veto.

PM the PM thinks the UN ought to be entitled to to take arms against states that harm their own people. He has things like Sudan in mind. He forgets who he is talking to. He does not see that this group would quickly find a pretext for destroying Israel (using the so called "real terrorist" crap they love so much), and having done that, who knows what might be next. Maybe they'll "liberate" Quebec. Tyrannies, theocracies and Stalinist regimes don't respond nicely when you give them something. They see it only as weakness. If you give them a finger they will rip off your arm and beat you to death with it, if they don't enslave you first. PM the PM. God help us all. A real statesman would see that now is the time to look for partnerships with like minded people. An Anglo Alliance would go a long ways - the US, England, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, these are our natural allies. Lets stop pretending that most of the things we love about Canada don't come from those cultures, from those people. There is nothing wrong with newcomers to Canada, my own family included, but the newcomers come here because they see something they think is valuable. They don't come here, for heaven's sake, so that they can endure a trial under Sharia law. It's about time we valued the things that bring people here ourselves. Read more at Taylor and Co.

Many, Many Mapes

Mapes an ideologue, says former co worker Dan Rather's producer, Mary Mapes, set up Memo gate because she was ideologically driven, says a former Mapes co worker. John Carlson, a former commentator at KIRO-TV in Seattle says:

Mapes was "quite liberal" and disliked the current President Bush's father.

"She definitely was someone who was motivated by what she cared about and definitely went into journalism ," Carlson said. "She's not the sort of person who went into journalism to report the news and offer an array of commentary."

Carlson spoke with Mapes about the National Guard story a week ago, and said that he believes she "put so much time into it that she wanted something to come of it."

"This was a woman with a good reputation," he said. "The mistakes she made were so obvious. This was a story that was rushed because they clearly believed it was true. They wanted it to be true."

One wonders how it is Mapes could be considered a "good journalist." Unless journalists have thrown out the idea the journalists should try to be "objective." Oh! Wait! They have... I know it because the model of "objective journalism" is considered to be an outdated laughingstock by every journalist I have ever met, and every Media Professor I ever had derided it. So, we the public, ought to know about the changes in the trade, eh? I mean acting as a hack for one political party under the guise of objectivity might be considered unethical by some. If you ran a big donkey under the CBS logo, at least that might be honest. But no. You can trust journalists -even though there are some good ones still out there- about as much as a used car salesman. Ethics? Honesty? Objectivity? How Passe. Journalism today is about "making a difference." In plain language this means foisting your politics on everyone, while lying about doing it: ie. cherry picking stories, using dubious sources, all the while claiming that it is nothing more than "honest reporting." There is probably nothing special about Mapes other than that she got caught. This ought to remind us to treat journalists like the British do, as ink stained wretches who thrive on scandal and titillation, not news. The root cause of this problem, I believe, is that for most of the intellectual class, politics has replaced religion. They see everything - EVERYTHING - through the lens of left and right and are almost incapable of knowing that they are doing it. There is nothing wrong with wanting to make a difference, but journalism is not the career for it. Be a teacher or get involved with a charity or a church. If you must be a typographic ideologue, find work with a political party. Or just be up front about your bias.

This is no surprise

Which British Literary Period are you? Restoration 1660-1785--Pope, Swift, Johnson. Times they are a changing. You're very cynical and you like looking out for the little guys. You have a sense of humor a lot of people just don't get.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Let's see- French Revolution was 1789 - this sounds about right. Except I don't think I'm cynical. I like to think I'm a realist rather than an ideologue. Maybe that's what they're saying. Thanks to Flea for the link.

Another day for progress

Rascal Flatts have a song out called Mayberry, about a longing for the world that television show represented. It has a couplet that has always struck home with me:

Sunday used to be a day of rest, Now it's one more day for progress.

As someone who is new to thinking about himself in Christian terms, the whole concept of a Sabbath was one I have had to reflect on. I certainly don't spend all of my Sundays refraining from work and studying the Bible, but I have to come to respect the idea of a family and communal day. How often do we complain that we have no time for the people we love? For things we love to do? Who has not rued not speaking to an old friend because "I haven't had time." Who hasn't sighed that the gardening or some other favorite hobby is coming along poorly because "I haven't had time." Who hasn't wondered why their family isn't closer, or that they don't know who their neighbors are? How much could we improve these things by making better use of Sundays? If we all settle on one day for such things, we would have a lot less hassle scheduling time to spend with one another. The Sabbath and what we've done to it were brought to my mind by the first passage in this Sunday's reading, from Amos, a rather scary figure from the old Testament:

"When will the new moon be over," you ask, "that we may sell our grain, and the Sabbath, that we may display the wheat? We will diminish the ephah, add to the shekel, and fix our scales for cheating! We will buy the lowly man for silver, and the poor man for a pair of sandals; even the refuse of the wheat we will sell!"

Gutting Sunday shopping laws was passed as a way of increasing freedom, but freedom for who?And for what? If you have money you can go shopping on Sunday. That's a minor perk. But what about all the clerks and other people who now work Sundays, who are robbed of that time? They will have more money than before, it's true, but they've lost something as well. I would never seek to have Sunday shopping banned again. I don't oppose it on church and state grounds because everyone would be free to spend Sunday as they wished. You don't have to go to church. I would oppose it because I think it goes too far in terms of having morality legislated. People have to want to do the things that are good for them if they are to really appreciate them. Christians might get a better reception from the world if they were less quick to try and use government as a lever to produce the society they want. Social change is tougher than that. You have to convince people by argument and by example. But make no mistake, Sunday shopping favours those with the cash. They still have their leisure. Those without loose a day of rest and have their family life diminished. And we all have less of a community to share, in exchange for trinkets. I'm not above criticism on this count.

Reuters joins CNN on the bench

Makes room for CanWest to join the majors Kudos to CanWest for calling a terrorist a terrorist. Many, including The Last Amazon, will be happy to hear it. Reuters is among the worst of the major western news services, where I would also place the BBC and the CBC. Unsurprisingly, Reuters is not happy about the changes CanWest made to Reuters wire stories:

Our editorial policy is that we don't use emotive words when labeling someone," said David A. Schlesinger, Reuters' global managing editor. "Any paper can change copy and do whatever they want. But if a paper wants to change our copy that way, we would be more comfortable if they remove the byline."

Mr. Schlesinger said he was concerned that changes like those made at CanWest could lead to "confusion" about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations.

"My goal is to protect our reporters and protect our editorial integrity," he said.

Reuters has long claimed, delusionally, that by dropping the word "terrorist," they are somehow adding to the "objectivity" of their reporting. I say that by dropping the word they are whitewashing what major actors around the world are doing. Look, a terrorist is someone who 1) does not distinguish between a combatant and a civilian and usually prefers a softer civilian victim. A terrorist 2) claims that the ends justify the means. Terrorism has nothing whatsoever to do with economics. That is a smear we hear from terrorists and their apologizers, one that is designed to confuse and paralyze any response. It is rooted in Marxist writing and thought and by now we ought to know what a pile that stuff has been. When you hear a terrorist ask about "who the real terrorists are" he is babbling pseudo Marxist garbage and should be called on it by any reporter worth the name. Reuters claims that by whitewashing their reports, they are protecting reporters. I say, groups that harass reporters should be cut off. Don't air their videos either. Eventually they will beg for some means to get their word out, probably by a temporary ceasefire - and that's better than no ceasefire. I don't see blogs changing this. Bodies like the CRTC have to help by keeping things like Al Jezeera out of Canada. It is an act that would help to justify the existence of a governmental body like that. CNN was even more blunt last year. They said they had to be in Iraq, even if it meant spoon feeding Ba'athist garbage to the world, because if they were not, then others would be and CNN would be getting scooped. This is short term thinking. When those news sources are revealed to have caved in to totalitarian lies they will be discredited. How can it be "objective" to cover for people who would remove your freedom to report the news in a way that you feel is "objective?" How can it be "objective" to watch terrorists place a bomb in the road and not warn people that it is there? How can that not be collaboration? If you agree with these sentiments, you can help by canceling any subscription you have when that publication whitewashes terror. And don't forget to tell them why you're doing it. That would get the attention of people like David A. Schlesinger real fast.

You're not paranoid

when they really are out to get you Why is the coverage of Nigerian yellowcake uranium so low key now? I almost missed this update and to my eyes this is a story with the potential for legs:

The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France. ... Italian diplomats have claimed that, by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade "yellowcake" uranium from Niger, France was trying to "set up" Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent.

Why is it that when this guy's story can be used against Bush, it's all we hear about. Now that story takes a turn somewhat in favour of the Republicans - it's not all gravy because the fake should still have been caught before was trotted out in favour of going to war - now it's kinda quiet. In most cases I'd put the limited coverage up to simple things. Many editors feel the public is tired of the story, which they might be, and that it is getting confusing who said what to whom. Who can tell who is reliable? And the editors themselves just don't like the story. It goes against their personal political hopes and beliefs, objectivity be darned. Memogate just might indict the media even farther, as it appears, circumstantially, that CBS and the Democrats might (might) have colluded to smear Bush. As we learn here, CBS begins the story September 8 and the Democrats start their "Fortunate Son" ad campaign September 9. The Dems just happened to have everything ready to go and the story happened to break the day before? What are the odds? About the same that a 70's era typewriter would create column returns that match MS Word? It's all kind of smelly.

Geeks in Love

Have I mentioned that I have a wedding anniversary coming up? I was just digging through my old pictures and thought I'd share one. Weren't we cute? We really did meet on the web you know.

If dogs could blog...

What browser would bowser use? Ach. My inner journalist got carried away with the headline. If you're a pet owner, you'll probably love this cartoon (click to enlarge). If you're not, you'll probably just shake your head. I think they'd use Firefox, which just released a new version, PR1 (preview release number one). It looks like they're getting ready for the release of 1.0. I don't normally rush out and try beta ware but I have found Firefox to be a real joy to use, for too many reasons to list. Its smart layout and uncluttered layout would be at the top though. More and more in the software I use, I appreciate programs that show maturity. They're well thought out and stable. They do not take the swiss army knife or kitchen sink approach that Microsoft is infamous for. I have not yet tried PR1 and am leary to make the jump because at this point it appears that my extensions might not work or carry over (I'm sure that'll be temporary). I am looking forward to 1.0, however. Here is a story on one of the guys making it happen.

The Lord of Rings re-casted

This recasting of The Lord of the Rings with present day politicians is amusing.

A "little" Chesterton

1874- 1936 It's a very rainy day on the wet coast of Canada today; a good day for blogging. Sadly, our summer ended quite early and abruptly this year -about mid August. I wanted to put up a quote from G.K. Chesterton's book, Orthodoxy, about the virtues of being married (my anniversary is coming up quickly; see #5). But as usual with this book, I could not put it down. It's probably one of the best books I think I've ever read. So instead of one, you can have twelve. Quotes from "Orthodoxy": 1) The modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but also the doctrine by which he denounces it 2) It is easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in a village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad. 3) Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be alive. 4) Tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father. 5) Keeping to one woman is a small price to pay for so much as seeing one woman. 6) What is the evil of the man commonly called an optimist? ... The optimist, wishing to defend the world, will defend the indefensible. He is the jingo of the universe... He will not wash the world, but whitewash the world. 7) The moment we have a fixed heart we have a free hand. 8) That Jones shall worship the god within him means only that Jones shall worship Jones... Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards... The only fun of being Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but defiantly recognized an outer light, fair as the sun... 9) It is easy to be a modernist; as easy as it is to be a snob... It is always easy to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. 10) Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but not a single sane one... That you and the tiger are one may be a reason for being tender to a tiger. Or it may be a reason for being as cruel as a tiger. 11) ... only with original sin can we at once pity the beggar and distrust the king. 12) I want to adore the world not as one likes a looking glass, because it is one's self, but as one loves a woman, because she is entirely different.

Fifty Memogate Cartoons

Also, Bush looks like a chimp and is a bad man Ratherbiased has 50 cartoons on memogate. Some of them are great. If you can't read it here, the full sized version is at Ratherbiased.

Communists for Kerry

Warning: Sarcasm and Irony ahead There's some funny stuff at Communists for Kerry.com. Love the .com at the end of that. Kind of a giveaway. Shoulda been .org ;-)