North Western Winds

They say that you can boil a frog alive if you increase the temperature of the water slowly. He won't notice the danger until it is too late. Our freedom as citizens is like that, I think. And make no mistake, the temperature in Canada is not only rising, but the rate of increase is increasing. A courageous Calgary Bishop is facing scrutiny from Revenue Canada after pointing out that Paul Martin's voting record and his spoken beliefs cannot be reconciled with his claims to the Catholic faith. The Calgary Herald's Mark Milke (via Canada Free Press ) reports that: Canadian Bishop Fred Henry had his pastoral letter criticized by an editor outside of the diocese. "The tax bureaucrat asked if the Bishop would delete the letter from the church’s website, to which he replied no ." [reporter] Milke asks, "Is it normal for tax auditors to contact spiritual leaders on matters of sacred practice and morality, something normally between them and voluntary a...

Canada's Federal Liberal party hires a Japanese ad firm in an effort to sell the Speech from the Throne to the opposition parties. No word on results yet. Paul Martin is reportedly so pleased with the ad he wants to replace the Liberals' Red book with it. Just kidding. The image is a sample of what you can find at Engrish.com , a site in love with the mangled syntax non English speakers can create. This is about laughing with, not at, just in case anybody wonders. Found via Lexography.com , a new blog found via Eternity Road .

C.S. Lewis As a follow up to yesterday's post about Epicurean lack of passion, here is a link to an article about C.S. Lewis' great book, The Problem of Pain . A snippet: God's idea of goodness is almost certainly unlike ours; yet, God's moral judgment must differ from ours "not as white from black but as a perfect circle from a child's first attempt to draw a wheel" — or we could mean nothing by calling him good. Thus, where God means Love, we only mean Kindness, "the desire to see others than self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy". We want "not so much a Father but a grandfather in heaven", a God "who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?'" (Let us note in passing how much this confusion between Love and Kindness is akin to our modern thinking: it sheds light on many present controversies, from assisted suicide to abortion t...

Liberals and Suffering One of the criticisms leveled at the Liberal West is that is hedonistic. There's no doubt that there are hedonistic people around, but is it fair to say that hedonism is a defining characteristic of modern liberalism? I think that while it might be tempting to say yes, in the end the charge does not stick. The hedonism we see is mostly media fantasy, designed to make us look! look! look! at what we are selling here. There is still a solid resistance to the drug culture from the top of our cultural food chain, even from those who want to loosen drug laws. Their motives, right or wrong, are that it is a personal issue. They are tired of the fight. And there is a strong resurgence of puritanical towards food these days. So hedonism is what the media pitches, but there is strong resistance too. My search through Amazon was prompted by curiosity about books that are critical of Darwinism. I've read lots of book about Darwinism, almost all of them from p...

The Tiger in Winter is tackling The Globe and Mail's Heather Mallick again and it reminds me that I almost chocked on my coffee when reading The National Post's Elizabeth Nickson on Saturday morning. Nickson is a columnist that I usually like - despite her petulant, whinny rich girl voice, she's often on the right side of an argument. Not this week. Her topic is the perennial hit, "why aren't there more women in Canadian politics?" The one's we have are minor yes men. Ok, that's probably got some truth to it. Then she bemoans the fact that Christy Clark, of the BC Liberal party, is stepping down from her job as the vice premier of this province. I knew Christy way back when. We both attended Simon Fraser University at the same time and she was a prominent person on student council even then. I like Christy Clark. She bravely attempted to whittle away some of the power teacher's unions have in this province and was ultimately undercut by her own...

And new divisions David Warren makes the same point I was trying to make a few days ago : The swing vote here is Catholic, almost one-quarter of the U.S. population and traditionally strongly Democrat. In the last several months, polls have shown the Catholic vote swinging dramatically from Kerry to Bush, who now leads it in the proportion 3:2. Most sudden changes are tenuous: the Democrats might still prevail by winning that back. But don't ask me how. Surprisingly, the much smaller, traditionally Democrat, Jewish vote has not yet fled from Kerry to Bush, though the Muslim vote is shifting modestly from Bush to Kerry. But no anomalies here: regular synagogue or mosque attendance is, in both cases, an indicator for Bush; secularity an indicator for Kerry. The reader would be right to read into this grand seismic events. The U.S. public is splitting along religious lines, not between one confession and another, but more vastly between the religious faithful, and the re...

U.S. News reports that the news business had a rough summer : In truth, the news business had a disastrous summer. In July, a Senate intelligence committee and an official British investigation both concluded that President Bush had been on firm ground when he spoke the famous 16 words in his 2003 State of the Union message (that the British had learned Saddam Hussein had sought to acquire uranium in Africa). When the 16 words appeared to be untrue, the press endlessly trumpeted them, often on the front page, but when Bush drew heavy support from the two investigations, you could hardly find the news with a magnifying glass . In the New York Times, the British report was carried way inside the paper and read like a muddled translation from classical Urdu. This seems to happen a lot when the Times is forced to report news it doesn't like. (Emphasis mine) I'm not tired of this story yet. In fact, I'm still hoping mad about it. How about you?

from A Heartland Cultural Warrior Mark Shea provided an interesting link on his blog on Friday. This story breaks down the American electorate into twelve groups and attempts to analyze how they might approach the presidential election. For the record, I would regard myself as a 'Heartland Culture Warrior.' As I was looking this over, I kept wondering to myself how it might apply to Canadian politics. 1) We don't have much of a 'Religious Right' here, outside of Alberta and perhaps a few of the small towns and cities in Saskatchewan and central / northern British Columbia. 2) The huge chunk of Canada that falls in the densely populated triangle around the great lakes and Toronto seems to me (I've never been there) to fall into what we might call the 'religious left,' 'secularists,' and 'spiritualists.' That last group can also be found in large numbers in Vancouver and in great swaths of Vancouver Island. Eastern Tories oft...

Excerpt from a letter written in the early 1930's Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth; a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened : and one must be content to accept in the same way, remembering that it is God's myth where the others are men's myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as he found there, while Christianity is God expressing himself through 'real things.' Therefore it is true , not in the sense of being a 'description' of God (that no finite mind could take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculties. The 'doctrines' we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrecti...

NBC's Tom Brokaw takes aim at bloggers : "What I think is highly inappropriate is what going on across the Internet, a kind of political jihad ... that is quite outrageous," the NBC anchor said. Do ya think? Smearing a sitting president during an election in wartime? With documents held together by coffee stains and cat puke? People should just sit back and let their bettors deal with the whole Rather incident? Is Browkaw one those media types that calls suicide bombers and child murderers "militants"? If he is, it's kind of funny that does not hold back in his description of bloggers as "jihadis." Maybe you should just go now, Tom. Your audience finally has a way of talking back and if you don't like it you need to leave the kitchen. Thank goodness for sites like Little Green Footballs and the Belmont Club . I have not taken anything in the mainstream press very seriously for some time. They have squandered my trust and it'll tak...

In the North West, not surprisingly North Western Winds is on the Map! The Red Ensign Bloggers have been taking the Politopia Quiz this week and comparing notes on the results (and thereby flooding each others mailboxes!). Who was on the right flank, anyway? I could not (and actually will not) read 40+ e-mails... ever. Still, it was unexpected and fun. I would consider George Bush and Drew Carrey good company and have not thought the world of Ayn Rand for some time. I took a similar quiz a few years ago on another site and got similar results. Can't remember the name or the link at the moment. Sorry.

I've been chatting with Mathew over at Philosophusion about the value of human life and when we can be said to have any rights. Mathew and I are coming at the problem from very different angles but the discussion is civil. Anyone else care to share their ideas? Here or there , I'm watching the thread as it develops. I also want to point out a beautiful post that my wife found on the net the other day. It casts a nice light on motherhood and sacrifice .

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 Digi...

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...

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 ...

Good joke on Wicked Thoughts . Check it out.

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

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.

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 s...

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