Several discussions of the Passion online at websites of varying degrees of credibility have framed their concerns in terms of Gibson's "responsibility not to create bigotry with his work." Well, yes, in a perfect world nobody would make movies that would stir up racial hatred. (Gibson in fact has stated that he is not doing this, and credible critics who have seen the movie insist he has not done this.) Could we also share this particular ethic with Spike Lee? What about musicians -- do they not also have a responsibility to refrain from writing songs that glorify blacks who hate, or kill, whites? When a basketball player tries to invoke racial tension to shrug aside a rape investigation, does he not have some responsibility not to promote hatred?
And what about all the other personal catastrophes elevated in the popular culture by widely acclaimed musicians, actors, directors and celebrities-in-general? Is there no responsibility to avoid promoting battery, drug use and drug dealing, promiscuity, single motherhood or adultery? Should these people not ensure that their movies, television shows and music not promote activities that destroy people, families and communities? Do these problems not, in reality, cause much more suffering than any theological point of conflict about what precisely happened in the events of the Passion?
If any of the tenured classes showed similar anxiety about Eminem's songs about killing his wife, about the creation of "pimp chic" amongst rap musicians, about the serial marriages on display each week in Hollywood, about the actresses who have babies without fathers and then celebrate their independence for doing so, I might be inclined to take more seriously their concerns about Gibson's social responsibility and his filmmaking. Until then, it is very hard to escape the conclusion that violence, drug abuse, promiscuity and vulgarity are infinitely more acceptable in these circles than piety, monogamy and continence.
The Chronicle Magazine essay is a valuable one. The author hints at something in the closing paragraph that should be stressed more strongly, though. While many Jews of Eastern European extraction remember (with good cause) the Easter pogroms that continued until the 1950s, today, in North America, believing Christians are probably just about the least likely group to be antisemites. Jew-hating seems, to the contrary, to have become the preserve of rabid leftists, atheists, Islamists and anarchists as well as a few deluded Members of the Tribe like Noam Chomsky. These people profess an equally ardent hatred of Christian morality (which shouldn't be surprising; compared to the ethos of secular humanism, communism or Islam the values of Judaism and Christianity are almost identical). Those who hate Jews, nowadays, almost certainly hate Christians just as much; those who hate Israel and wish for its destruction bear the same sentiment toward America. Fortunately, most observant Jews and Christians are refusing to be drawn into mutual hostilities by rabble-rousers at the ADL, the Ivy League or the mass media. Many have recognized for years that they are on the same side in the culture wars, and this is becoming obvious to many more with each passing month.
This speaks for itself. Well worth reading.
Ernie Eves is apparently also not happy with proposed "gay marriage" legislation. He attributes his peculiar conception of marriage - a man and a woman - to his upbringing in a staunchly Anglican community. It is very refreshing to hear of an Anglican who draws this lessons from his religion, instead of concluding that clergy and heads of the church can shack up with whomever they please, but this misses the wider and more important point: all religions envisage marriage as between men and women (and by far most commonly, between one man and one woman). Those few societies that have in human history not made homosexual activity taboo nor criminalized it have also never remotely approached legitimizing it by according status of any sort to these pairings.
It is certainly significant that normative Anglicanism, as well as Catholicism, Lutheranism, Mormonism, Judaism et cetera believe homosexual activity to be at least as prohibited as any other non-marital sexual activity, and that they adamantly oppose elevating non-marital unions to a higher social and legal level. More significant, though, is the fact that every culture and religion of note in human history holds similar beliefs. If the gay lobby would at least admit that what they propose is the reversal of an institution so fundamental as to be nearly universal, perhaps we could finally have a meaningful discussion of the issue.
While bickering Canadian and American Anglicans continue their ugly slide into irrelevance and extinction, there is a revival of a sort going on amongst their brethren in England. Recent surveys show that (in the words of The Telegraph) evangelicals are poised to take over the church.
To the horror of theological liberals, pollsters predict that in a decade evangelicals will make up more than half of all Sunday worshippers, up from about a third now. Their financial contribution to the church is already considerable and is out of proportion to their numbers.
Their enemies, who see nothing but bad things coming out of this manifestation of religious and social conservatism, blame the growth on the baleful influence of money and marketing. The credit actually belongs to George Carey, the previous Archbishop of Canterbury, who was an evangelical who believed in evangelism. He nurtured the wildly successful Alpha Program, a friendly introduction to basic Christianity which has now spread to most denominations, and brought theologian Michael Green back from Canada to lead efforts to re-convert the average Englishman. The result has been a new wave of church attenders who are there for serious spiritual growth and a new generation of young conservative clergy.
In the long run this will be a good thing for the Anglican Church (and England too). The last time evangelicals controlled the C of E they managed to lead the fight to abolish slavery and massively reformed national morality and charity -- the Victorian Age was the result. In 2003 they face, as they did in the eighteenth century, an entrenched and spiritually moribund set of bishops. Until the current grey and gay incumbents are overcome the evangelical impulse will not be felt at its fullest.
A similar situation exists in Canada but prospects are not so bright. Here too the Anglicans are run by a senior clergy far to the left of the folk in the pews and here too the new priests tend to be evangelicals. But the decline in Canadian Anglican numbers is so steep and the homosexual question so vexed that it seems likely the church will parish of mere inanition before the youthful conservatives take over.
Every day is improved by a little Mozart or a taste of Dr Samuel Johnson. Since we do not offer audio on this site I mean to oblige my readers by occasionally offering them the words of the wisest man of the eighteenth century. Here the Great Cham offers his opinion on that wretched philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
BOSWELL. “My dear Sir, you don’t call Rousseau bad company. Do you really think him a bad man?...” JOHNSON. “... I think him one of the worst of men; a rascal who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been....” BOSWELL. “I don’t deny, Sir, but that his novel may, perhaps, do harm; but I cannot think his intention was bad.” JOHNSON. “Sir, that will not do. We cannot prove any man’s intention to be bad. You may shoot a man through the head, and say you intended to miss him; but the Judge will order you to be hanged.”
In conversation with a number of friends who are electrical engineers, a few points about the recent East Coast blackout have emerged. Sadly it appears that the fault lies to the south of the 49th parallel, meaning that we have not yet given the USA sufficient excuse to invade us and give us a modern economy. The same problem that led to the colossal failure, though, exist everywhere throughout North America.
The largest factor in the magnitude of the power outage was the lack of small, independently functioning power grids. Ideally things would be set up so that every large city, or collection of towns, would have an autonomous power generation plant of some sort, whether hydro, nuclear, fossil fuel burning or anything else moderately reliable. This would mean that any lightning strike, plant disaster, act of terrorism or simple bungling could only shut down one region. In turn this would not only minimize the scope of any problem but would also mean that emergency supplies could be shipped into the afflicted area, or the population evacuated out of it, in a fairly straightforward manner.
The reality is that for the past 50 years the environmental movement, bolstered by junk science and Naderite activists, has been extremely successful in preventing the construction of new plants almost everywhere. Demand for electricity has of course risen exponentially, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. The result has been to leave governments in a dreadful situation of being required to provide power while being unable to build new power plants, and of course they've resorted to overloading existing plants as well as building mega-centres through which power for areas of land greater than a European country and for tens of millions of people must pass. This overloading and unnecessary complexity makes a failure more likely, and the lack of evenly distributed small plants means that any failure will affect a large chunk of the continent, as was in fact the case.
The solution is twofold. First, properly understood conservation is always a good idea. This doesn't mean recycling materials that are cheaper to produce new than they are to reclaim or recycle, as is currently the practice; nor does it mean voluntarily living as if we were in a Third World country, as so many Green types advocate. It does mean promoting, through tax rebates if necessary, the development and use of more efficient household appliances, which do the job as well or better using less electricity; encouraging hybrid cars and mass transit, which reduce our unfortunate reliance on OPEC while freeing up fossil fuels for power generation; and persuading people not to use televisions for background noise nor central heating in September. The market will and does encourage these changes on its own, as people realize that fuel efficient cars are cheaper to operate and newer fridges can often pay for themselves in utility savings quite soon. The government could still do its part to push this forward, especially given its ill-advised embrace of Kyoto Science. Most importantly, though, new, reliable and more self-contained power plants must be built throughout the continent. It is impossible to prevent a power outage in the future, but it is quite possible to ensure that never again are so many people without power for so long.
This NP article summarizes some interesting research on causes of suicide in northern aboriginal communities. There seems to be a case to be made that broken relationships at young ages are corelated with suicide. The work isn't perfect, or at least the article represents its findings in an imperfect manner; for instance, although there is a corelation between multiple early failed relationships and suicides, an excellent study would find a way of controlling for dependent personalities. (The sort of person most prone to multiple turbulent love affairs, for instance, might well be more prone to suicide, whether or not they ended up having their hearts broken repeatedly. This would redefine the relevant risk factor as being one of attitudes, beliefs and personalities rather than behaviours, which would in turn suggest a very different response.) But it is nonetheless interesting.
The wider implications are important for all of North American society. The increase in early sexual relationships, and premarital activity in general, has coincided neatly not only with booming rates of teen pregnancy, abortion and venereal disease but also with increased mental illness, suicide attempts and completed suicides (as well as violent crimes) among teenagers, thought in earlier generations to be largely exempt from such problems. Clearly many other factors are at work here, especially the disintegration of the family largely caused by the promiscuity of their elders, but it would be hard to argue that exclusive and sexually active dating has in any way improved the lives and mental health of high school age children.
The Medveds and other writers on society and childhood have pointed this out. The Medveds in particular are advocates of more or less stopping teenage dating as we understand it, not, as they say, because they want children to think love and romance are unimportant but precisely because they recognize how important and vital to human happiness they are. Partially formed people are very poorly equipped to deal with either the selection of a long term partner or the breakup of a relationship, and seem much more likely than their more mature counterparts to respond at worst with violence and self-destruction, and at best (if we can call it that) by minimizing the significance of relationships and sex. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead in her many articles on marriage, sex and popular culture has also speculated that one reason for rising divorce levels is precisely the fact that by adulthood most of us have been conditioned to believe that the breakup of a relationship is minor, the cause of a week or two's unhappiness at most, and that a new sexual and romantic partner is only a trip to the bar away. This willingness to discard relationships, and the emotional calluses built up by years of this behaviour, she suggests, contribute greatly to the lack of effort which many boomers and Gen Xers put into maintaining or resuscitating their marriages and to the seeming ease with which they walk away from not only spouses but often children, parents, jobs and friendships -- the things that our culture until recently considered the most worthy of sustained commitment and sacrifice.
It is hard to say what needs to change, or rather what could plausibly be changed. Many teenagers recognize that it is foolish to commit to a career path too rigidly while still in high school; perhaps if they were encouraged to think more seriously about the possible consequences, they might conclude that it is equally foolish to commit too rigidly to a boyfriend or girlfriend at this stage, even a potential spouse. Of course, this will only improve behaviour if some link is forged between sexual activity and marriage (or even the much wimpier commitment), and given that this link has recently been broken, melted down and cast into a gay pride button, this seems in the short term, in the public sphere, to be most unlikely. But conservatives shouldn't be afraid to take the long view, and a few teenagers who behave sanely and cautiously are better than having no teenagers who behave in this way. More importantly, just as the damage from a broken marriage, neglected child, or act of violence ripples outward, causing pain to those several degrees removed from the person in question, so can a single intact family help to spread stability, virtue and sanity much further than is immediately obvious.
Even in his grave Pierre Trudeau can cause the blood pressure of his fellow citizens to sky-rocket. Plans to name Dorval Airport after the former Prime Minister have caused screams of outrage in Quebec.
Normally Dexter would applaud any move that encouraged apoplexy among Quebec separatists but, in this instance, he feels the poutine-fanciers have a point. It was Trudeau, after all, who tried to kill off Dorval by building the money-sucking Mirabel airport. Perhaps some other public facility would be a more fitting recipient for the honour.
To mark Trudeau's refusal of military service in World War II, the new Holocaust museum in Winnipeg might stick his name on the wing devoted to those who did absolutely nothing to bring down Hitler.
His addiction to deficit budgeting might warrant applying his name to the National Bankruptcy Court.
His legalization of homosexual activity, abortion, gambling and easy divorce cries out for commemoration on bath-houses, Morgenthaler clinics, casinos and domestic shelters across the nation.
His infatuation with left-wing despots such as Castro, Nyerere and Mugabe suggests that the Trudeau moniker be stuck on a suitable political prison in the Third World.
I suggest that we do for Trudeau what North Dakota did for Dave Barry, when he poked fun at that state -- they named a sewage pumping station in his honour.
"In the beginning, there was nothing. Then God said 'Let there be light', and there was still nothing, but you could see it. "
- Dave Thomas, SCTV
The Spectator on the human side of Idi Amin.
A Montreal airport is to be named after P. E. Trudeau. What better time that in a year in which judicial advocacy is reaching unprecedented highs? Note especially that the article says that both Trudeau and King Jean, who is behind the move, are "polarizing figure(s) in Quebec". Only in Quebec?
Here is Michael Coren's recent editorial on Mel Gibson's biopic/docudrama. Coren is certainly correct in that it is inappropriate to form a strong opinion before seeing the movie. He also points out some of the issues that have been raised in connection with it. There are two important aspects of this, though, that are also worth considering.
The first is that this should be seen as a religiously inspired work of art rather than as a polemic or a work of history. Gibson doesn't claim to be presenting a definitive, academic reenaction, and to insist that the work is terminally flawed because of factual inaccuracies is silly. At the same time, the assertion that something is art does not automatically negate charges of promoting bigotry, as Leni Riefenstahl should have taught us -- film is perhaps uniquely suited to creating beautiful, powerful and sinister images and messages. Nonetheless, Gibson seems with this movie to be attempting to make a movie that articulates something he finds of crucial importance to his faith. Many Catholics have miniature shrines or portraits of saints that facilitate their worship, many Hindus have household altars, and if others find them to be in poor taste we usually keep those thoughts to ourselves. Gibson, being a multimillionaire, has chosen the rather more public forum of a full length movie, but this doesn't change the basic purpose (and likely limited appeal) of the work.
A look at Mel Gibson's other works will also help concerned Jews, Christians and others, in particular those who find early reports about The Passion to indicate a troublingly ahistoric attitude, to maintain their perspective. Braveheart may have been entertaining, stirring, violent and (despite winning Oscars) often boring, but nobody has attempted to describe it as a documentary, or as having any educational value at all beyond demonstrating some good technical uses of crowds in filming. The Patriot went so far as to lift German atrocities from the Second World War and to ascribe them to the British two centuries earlier. (This commercially successful movie has not triggered waves of anti-British sentiment or led to Anglo-hating pogroms.) The Patriot was an action movie set in the Revolution that borrowed the names of a handful of historic figures. Braveheart was an action movie set in medieval Scotland loosely constructed around some events in the life of William Wallace. The Passion will likely be a pseudo-action vanity project loosely based on the life of Jesus. (Gibson has stated that a key source was the account of a medieval nun's dreams about the crucifixion. Even postmodernists might hesitate to call this history.) It may be moving and significant for Christians, both Catholic and Evangelical, and if so it will have accomplished what all art seeks to do. If it causes people to reevaluate their faith and deepen their commitment to it, then it will have accomplished something wonderful and very difficult. There seems little reason for Jews, Christians or historians to become overly preoccupied with The Passion, unless it is with the prospect of seeing Gibson accept another Academy Award in period costume.
"Although the wombat is real and the dragon is not, nobody knows what a wombat looks like and everyone knows what a dragon looks like."
- Avram Davidson, twentieth-century American science fiction writer
Life is mostly froth and bubble;
Two things stand like stone:
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own.
- Adam Lindsay Gordon, nineteenth-century Australian poet who, depressed over his financial condition, committed suicide at age 36.
At the recent Liberal caucus meeting some MPs opposed the Prime Minister's stand on gay marriages while others supported him. No one went farther in loyalty to Chretien than Toronto MP Charles Caccia. Referring to the theory that the Prime Minister's position was endangering his immortal soul, Caccia vowed "I will go to hell with you".
Pity the poor American liberators and their allies. Having decisively conquered their enemies they find that the territory they occupy still isn't safe. They have to cope with:
• calls by followers of the deposed dictator to continue the struggle
• looting and vandalism of the national museum
• sniping, ambushes and guerilla attacks on their troops
• murder of collaborators and locals officials
• vandalism of the economic and social infrastructure
• psychological warfare waged in clandestine media
A description of the "quagmire" in Iraq? Nope. This was the situation faced by the allies in Nazi Germany in 1945. The so-called Werewolf movement was organized in the dying days of the Third Reich to keep Hitler's vision alive and to spark an uprising against the occupation forces. Terrorist attacks on Allied troops and those Germans who cooperated with them were designed to provoke harsh military responses that would alienate the population. These attacks continued through 1945, slowed in 1946 but were still being reported in 1947, two years after V-E Day.
American soldiers in Iraq today are in some respects not so lucky as their counterparts following World War II. Germans in 1945 were living in rubble and too desperate for food and survival to really support any movement that sought further ruin of their economy, disruption of the water supply and or more civil mayhem. Millions of their men were kept in prison camps for years after the cessation of hostilities. No neighbouring countries were in sympathy with the Werewolves or provided fighters and supplies to their cause.
The Americans and their friends will persevere in 2003 because there is no alternative. Events in Beirut, Mogadishu and Nairobi proved that running away doesn't make your enemy cease hating you or bring an end to terrorism. Terrorists who think that U.S. war-weariness will lead to the electoral defeat of George Bush may be right -- but they should remember that any succeeding administration cannot afford to be seen as soft. American involvement in World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam all began under Democratic presidents.
VDH also misses the fact that in Canada (as in some Olde European countries) the attitudes of the governing elites do not reflect the views of the public. Slightly more than half of Canadians in fact supported sending troops to participate in the US action in Iraq (whether or not we are at this point capable of a more than token contribution is another question); a few days into the war, this support was higher. If we controlled for Quebec and our sizeable population of fifth columnists from the region in question, the percentages would no doubt be substantially higher, as is borne out by numbers showing that support in Alberta was higher than in Quebec and southern Ontario.
The army itself is also on a much higher plane than our leadership. Many of our leading generals have campaigned loudly and usually to no effect both for a stronger, better equipped military and for the chance to use it to good effect in some of the nastiest and saddest parts of the world. Unfortunately our generally excellent soldiers and officers (who still routinely beat US teams in joint war games) are less and less likely to be deployed for anything but forest fires or ice storms at home, as our outgoing Prime Minister seems determined to trash our relationship to the US as much as possible, and as our equipment becomes increasingly dangerous and pricey to operate, when it's not outright obsolete.
Also, not only is principled neutrality impossible for political and financial reasons in Canada, it isn't even necessary. The ugly (for the US) or handy (for us) reality is that no matter how obnoxious, seditious and downright dangerous our government becomes to the US, the Americans would never allow a serious threat against Canadian territory because it would by definition threaten them. For the foreseeable future, given the choice between fortifying, defending and patrolling a vast border or bankrolling an army big enough to protect us as well as them, the Americans will choose to tolerate Liberal rudeness and inanities. The two economies are too closely linked (although obviously we are the more heavily dependent party), the cultural ties are too strong and the political and fiscal costs of any other course of action are simply too high to allow for any other response. King Jean and his heirs can be counted on to abuse this situation for as long as they remain in power, which in the grand tradition of tin pot Commonwealth countries that used to have potential could well be measured in the decades. This isn't pacifism, neutrality or any other position reflecting deliberation or principle; it's parasitism, and weaselly to boot.
Victor Davis Hanson argues for a clean slate in U.S. foreign policy -- a new assessment of where military bases should be established, who are America's friends and enemies and who can be counted on. He states:
We should also accept the notion that neutrals are not allies, and thus should not pillory them for their triangulation. We are angry at France only because it is a duplicitous ally; once we cease seeing it as a close friend, we will be no more angry with it than we are with Sweden or New Zealand — which both have at times expressed their anti-Americanism, and expect nothing from us should they find themselves in crises. Germany's behavior now grates on us, but only because we expect it to be a Britain — rather than a Belgium, to which it is far more closely attuned. We should never be angry with Canada, simply because we should never expect anything from it — inasmuch as it has long ago decided to emulate the European Union model. Let us respect its status as a neutral and pacifistic state that neither wishes nor deserves cooperation with the United States in defense matters.
That's a painful view of Canada but it's not quite accurate. It both underestimates our contribution and overstates our commitment to a principle.
Hanson ignores much that we've done recently marching beside the Americans -- we've lost good men fighting in Bosnia, Kossovo and Afghanistan and we should be given credit for that. On the other hand, we should not be given credit for a principled neutrality and pacifism -- our foreign policy is simply a mess, pulled between various wings of the Liberal clique and hamstrung by underfunding of the military. Our true guiding principle is that whatever we do shouldn't cost us much. In that famous Manley metaphor we dine out with our friends and when the bill comes we head for the washroom.
True neutrality, as Sweden and Switzerland will attest, comes with a heavy price. It means military conscription, a commitment to investing in our own arms industry and a much bigger defence budget. All of those are repugnant to Liberal sensibilities and so we have disgraced ourselves for decades by running a foreign policy on the cheap, expecting the Americans to do most of the dirty work while we show up in tiny numbers, with outdated equipment, the wrong uniforms and an inflated sense of our own importance.
This will not change when King Paul assumes the throne; if he possesses a genuine principle it has yet to be seen. In the meantime we shall have to put up with American sneers and a memory of the time when our contribution meant something noble.
Ever on the lookout for more ways to annoy our largest trading partner and defense guarantor, Chretien wasted no time this afternoon asserting that the blackout was caused by a fire on the New York side of the border. Later he decided it was caused by a problem with a nuclear reactor, on the New York side of the border. While I tend to believe reports that the problem was on the Canadian side, (although several things must have gone wrong for the problem to become so widespread so fast) it is far too soon for anyone to know what actually happened. Regardless of who turns out to be at fault, Chretien's behaviour was as tasteless and politically careless as any of the Great Muddler's recent bumblings. The sooner this clown is no longer representing Canada to the rest of the world, the better off we will be.
In a fit of post-victory revenge the US government is fining a human shield for entering Iraq and violating sanctions against the Saddamite regime. 63-year-old retired school-teacher and volunteer busybody Faith Fippinger faces a $10,000 penalty and 12 years in the slammer for interposing her frail self between the helpless Iraqi dictator and the ruthless American invaders. Naturally she is refusing to pay as the money would only go to fuel her country's military arsenal. Dexter would feel a little more comfortable about this prosecution if it were visited upon someone with a higher profile such as Sean Penn or Hans Blix.
An interesting look at the economics of spam e-mail.
An editorial in the National Post (now on its way to becoming a tool of the Liberal Party, complete with Maureen Dowd editorials) that is no longer viewable online directs scorn at those who oppose "gay marriage" on the grounds that it is the first step down a slippery slope to, well, just about every form of sexual deviance there is. Elevating relationships between two men and two women could not possibly lead to tolerance for, then court-mandated and government enforced celebration of, incestuous unions and bestiality. The reason? Since neither children nor animals can meaningfully consent to these actions, no sane person would advocate them. This is, for many many reasons, a weaselly dodge.
Let us set aside for the moment, for the sake of brevity, the fact that a substantial segment of the gay lobby does in fact actively promote pedophilia through organizations such as NAMBLA, or through the service with which the Bishop Gene Robinson is affiliated, that hooks up "questioning" minors with adult gay mentors. (Isn't this usually called a dating service?) Let us also set aside the fact that with an obscenely low age of consent, Canada is not going to be a country in which confused teenagers are protected from adult predation by either social or legal boundaries. Let us further neglect the question of whether informed consent to homosexuality is even possible in a society in which educating people about the substantial health risks of the gay lifestyle is a hate crime. Even without reference to these issues, the argument that incest and bestiality are wrong and homosexuality is not because of consent is fairly fatuous.
If consent is considered the only issue, what possible objection can our society have to the sexual union (or even "marriage") of an adult pair of siblings? An adult child and parent? If they are over 18 and otherwise sane, why is this choice any less valid than the choice to have sex with a non-related member of the same sex? Why should society not extend the full social and legal privileges of marriage to two siblings? Near universal revulsion at the thought of this isn't a compelling argument; 50 years ago the great majority of adults felt a similar revulsion at gay behaviour, and we are now informed that such revulsion is mere homophobia, a symptom of our own psychological problems and limitations. Perhaps those of us who shudder at the thought of incest pride parades are merely suffering from another mental handicap, which can be overcome by sufficient exposure to children's books, witty sitcoms, festivals of nude and lewd siblings holding hands and kissing, and a few celebrities brave enough to come out with their lifestyle. And if the revulsion of sane people isn't sufficient to prohibit homosexuality, why then bestiality? Here, too, the notion of consent is a red herring. We don't require the consent of chickens to have their eggs taken or to be served as dinner; it seems odd then to think of requiring animal consent for anything else.
The arguments in favour of legalizing, celebrating and promoting homosexuality are generally as follows: it is wrong to expect others to conform to one's own moral, religious, aesthetic or scientific ideas about desirable behaviour; families are defined exclusively by emotions, however transient, rather than by biology, legality, permanence or ties of reciprocity and obligation, and must be recognized on those terms; and any preference for normative reproductive and mating behaviour as understood by all religions and almost all societies for all of history is mere bigotry. These arguments do not in any way distinguish between homosexuality and other "lifestyles", including swinging, polyamory, incest, or any other perversion not involving prepubescent children. To pretend that homosexuality has any claim on our acceptance that these activities do not is at best disingenuous and at worst propaganda in the service of destroying the notion of marriage and family.
In 1899 Rudyard Kipling offered a famous piece of poetic advice to the United States of America which was just beginning its career of foreign military adventures. As the Americans smacked down the moribund Spanish empire and took control of the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico, Kipling spoke of the moral imperative of Western imperialism but also its dangers. It is instructive to read Kipling's poem in light of the current events in Iraq.
The White Man's Burden
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captive's need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another's profit
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden,
And reap his old reward--
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of those ye humor
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.
Take up the White Man's burden!
Have done with childish days--
The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.
Gay Marriage and the Decline of Democracy in Canada
By Ted Morton
The first casualty of the Ontario gay-marriage ruling is truth. The second is Canadian democracy. Let us begin with the deceptions being spun out to justify the decision to beleaguered Canadians:
* "The judges are just enforcing what the Charter requires." This is the mother of all whoppers. Sexual orientation/gay rights is not in the Charter. Attempts to place it in the Charter were rejected by those who framed the Charter. Sexual orientation was not in the 1987 Meech Lake Accord nor the 1992 Charlottetown Accord. The idea of constitutionally enforceable gay rights is judge-made law from start to finish.
* "The judges are just adapting the meaning of the Charter to changing public opinion towards homosexuality." Sensing the vulnerability of Lie Number One, this is a popular fall-back position. It is just as false as the first. The courts are actively trying to change public opinion, not reflect it.
* "Judges must decide issues like this to fill the legislative void created by timid politicians who avoid political controversies." In none of the examples used by 'Court Party' apologists -- abortion, gay rights, marijuana legalization -- is there a legislative void. In each case there is a law. These laws are often the rather untidy compromises typical of divided public opinion that legislatures reflect. It is not the "legislative void" that prompts judicial intervention. It is the judges' impatience with the refusal of legislatures to accept the "rights claims" of advocacy groups.
* "The courts make legal decisions, not political decisions." This is a variation on the whopper and was trotted out in a timely manner by the current Chief Justice of Canada in the midst of the court-ordered gay-marriage circus in Toronto. The Chief Justice's defense that Charter interpretation is "high level, specialized, intellectual work" cannot hide the fact that Charter litigation has become a standard interest-group tactic and that rights-advocacy groups expend considerable resources to influence how judges "interpret" the Charter.
* "When courts strike down a law, they are not dictating public policy to legislatures but rather engaging in dialogue between judges and legislatures." Presumably, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruling will mean the end of this defense. Unlike the other appeal courts that suspended their rulings to give Parliament time to consider an appeal or a legislative response, the Toronto Troika ordered their newly fabricated gay-marriage law to take effect immediately. This unprecedented act of judicial imperialism was clearly intended to pre-empt any meaningful legislative response. Its scorn for parliamentary input is only heightened by the fact that it came just as the House of Commons Justice Committee was preparing its report on same-sex marriage after months of public consultation. Who could possibly resurrect the "dialogue" defense after this high-handed display of judicial contempt for Parliament's (and by extension, the public's) views on this issue?
Even admitting that politics is the art of the half-truth, these misrepresentations are stunning in their breadth and scope, and present a sorry commentary on the state of democracy in this country. Canada may be the third country in the world to adopt gay marriage, but we are the only one to do so because of the decisions of unelected judges. There are four principal culprits in this attack on Canadian democracy.
Culprit number one is the judges and their apologists in the academy and the legal profession. Intoxicated by the power and status of their new self-made roles as Platonic philosopher-kings and social reformers, our judicial elites have abandoned any pretense of neutrality between competing social interests in Canadian society. Our appeal court judges have turned a citizens' constitution into a victims' constitution, under which equality trumps liberty and the ends always justify the means.
Culprit number two is the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien, which appoints all appeal court judges, forks over millions of taxpayer dollars to groups like EGALE and LEAF to pay their litigation costs, and then rolls over and plays dead every time a court strikes down a federal policy. It was bad enough when the PM and his various justice ministers copped the "Charter-made-us-do-it" excuse every time the Supreme Court struck down a law. Now they abdicate their responsibilities for "responsible government" when three judicial nobodies on a provincial court of appeal crack the Charter whip.
So why is the tail wagging the dog? Because the dog wants it that way. The Chrétien government enjoys being ordered around by the judges. It allows the Liberals to make policy-side payments to the Trudeau wing on the Party ( NDs with more ambition than principle) without having to take responsibility for it at the next election. So Canadians must submit to a growing list of new public policies -- gay marriage, marijuana legalization, prisoner voting, and on and on -- without anyone being accountable.
Culprit number three are the wimpy provincial premiers who, like beaten dogs, just keep taking it. Don't they realize that they are the protectors of the long and honourable Canadian tradition of community self-government that federalism was intended to protect and promote? The judicial policy-vetoes issuing from the Supreme Court's today are no different than the edicts of disallowance that the federal cabinet used to try to impose on provinces. Indeed, the new Charter-based power of the Supreme Court is little more than "disallowance in disguise" -- thinly veiled as a legal rather than a political act.
The successful battle against federal disallowance was led by Ontario Premier Oliver Mowat. He pointed out that if a dissatisfied provincial minority can run off to their political allies in Ottawa every time they lose a policy vote in the provincial legislature and have it reversed, "responsible government is at an end."
"Who shall govern the province," Mowat thundered, "the majority or the minority?" Why are today's provincial premiers afraid to defend their own people's right to self-government?
The fourth and final culprits in democracy's demise are the identity-politics groups, the new breed of political activists who define politics based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on. Their answer to Oliver Mowat's rhetorical question is unequivocal: the minority. This is what makes gay and feminist politics more dangerous than their policies. Their commitment to democracy is conditional. The majority may govern so long as they adopt the "right" policy. But if they don't, forget it.
The constant escalation of policy demands into rights claims is driven by a politics of moral imperatives that demonizes any opposition. Normal policy disagreements are turned into pitched battles between good and evil. To oppose any of their policy claims is deemed to be proof that you hate the members of the group. If you oppose a gay claim, you are homophobic. If you oppose an aboriginal claim, you are racist. If you oppose a feminist claim, you are sexist. Despite the patent absurdity of such accusations, they have been used successfully to stigmatize and silence opposition.
Liberal democracy cannot long survive under these conditions. A conditional commitment to democracy is no commitment in the long run. Rather than have governments that are accountable to their citizens, we are moving towards a new political regime in which the citizens are accountable to their governments. This is not a uniquely Canadian disease. The post-Marxist Left -- the new Egalitarians -- are busy in all Western democracies trying to shift political power to non-accountable institutions: publicly funded "stakeholder" groups, courts, administrative tribunals and international bodies.
But it is our misfortune in Canada to be further along this path than any other Western democracy. The Ontario gay-marriage ruling and the Liberals' acquiescence in it is the most recent marker in the decline of democracy in this country.
Ted Morton is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary. He is the co-author of the award-winning book, The Charter Revolution and the Court Party (Broadview, 2000).
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