Instead of hounding preachers who criticize the gay-rights agenda and publishers who speak out against the Great White Jihad, why don't Canada's human-rights tribunalsattend to some real violations of inalienable rights?
We're talking As Bad as It Gets, here.
FOR INSTANCE,this unspeakable horror perpetrated against the elderly, as reported by Reuters:
Beer maker Molson is turning off the tap and cutting off the supply of free suds to its retirees, the Toronto Star reported on Tuesday.
Molson, a division of Molson Coors, said it was looking to "standardize" its complimentary beer policy.
There are 2,400 Molson retirees in Canada and their free beer costs the company about C$1 million ($900,000) a year, the Star said.
Molson retirees in the province of Newfoundland will see their monthly allotment of beer fall from six dozen a month to zero over the next five years.
IF THIS ISN'T awful enough on its own merit -- in my opinion, far worse than anything right-winger Mark Steyn may have had to say about the booze-hating Mahometans in Maclean's newsweekly -- let me add this in hopes of prodding the Canadians into action.
Read carefully:Molson Coors is half-owned by Americans, who no doubt have, with imperial malice, exerted malign influence over their Dominion partners.
We used to think marriage -- matrimony -- was "the union of man and woman as husband and wife."
We used to think this marriage thing existed as a sacrament, a "covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring."
Idiots that we are, we used to think this was so self-evident that no one had to spell it out in the law. We thought it was holy, created by God at the beginning, more or less, and that you just didn't mess with holy things.
ABOVE ALL, we thought this conception of marriage was so blatantly logical as to be unassailable by anyone of sound mind or serious intent.
We were wrong.
Soon enough, the dominoes began falling. Divorce. Artificial contraception. Abortion. No-fault divorce. "Open" marriage. Single-parent chic.
The Iowa Supreme Court legalized gay marriage Friday in a unanimous and emphatic decision that makes Iowa the third state — and the first in the nation's heartland — to allow same-sex couples to wed.
In its decision, the high court upheld a lower court's ruling that found a state law restricting marriage to between a man and woman violated Iowa's constitution.
"We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective," the Supreme Court wrote in its decision. "The Legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification."
The ruling set off celebration among the state's gay-marriage proponents.
"Iowa is about justice, and that's what happened here today," said Laura Fefchak, who was hosting a verdict party in the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale with partner of 13 years, Nancy Robinson.
Robinson added: "To tell the truth, I didn't think I'd see this day."
Richard Socarides, an attorney and former senior adviser on gay rights to President Clinton, said the ruling carries extra significance coming from Iowa.
"It's a big win because, coming from Iowa, it represents the mainstreaming of gay marriage. And it shows that despite attempts stop gay marriage through right-wing ballot initiatives, like in California, the courts will continue to support the case for equal rights for gays," he said.
IT IS THE MAINSTREAMING of gay marriage.
Up is down, black is white, right is left and the epitome of pointlessness has been turned into a civil right. It's not enough to have civil arrangements so that gay partners might have the same legal rights afforded family members. No, our postmodern world will not be sated until meaning has been evacuated from all things once seen as holy.
The new gods of our existence will not be happy until we believe -- and do -- three impossible things every day. You know, achieve endless economic growth without producing anything of value, fight successful loser-bankrolled foreign wars of conquest . . . and give Heather two mommies.
Or two daddies, as the case may be.
FRANKLY, if it's unconstitutional for two guys (or two gals) to be denied the right to "marry" one another, I don't know what we now say to the Muslim who wants four wives or the fundamentalist Mormon who wants 44. Personally, I've found one wife for the past quarter century to be almost more than I can handle -- but I guess that's just me.
But as long as we're committing ourselves as a society to the worship of the pointlessly implausible, I'm sure polygamy will be embraced shortly. Then we'll move on to a brave new world where "men are men, and sheep are nervous."
Yes, sheep are backwards, but I'm sure they'll "see the light" soon enough. (Baa the way, would it be murder to make your wife into mutton?)
Now we truly live in a world of endless possibilities, where the old TV sitcom My Mother the Car has just become a lot less ridiculous. As has this. (Contains some vulgar language, not to mention the general creepiness of the subject matter. But what do I know? I'm not very open-minded.)
GOD HELP US ALL. But, under the circumstances, I somehow doubt He will be so disposed.
Can we swap our current American president -- and the two aspirants to the star-spangled throne -- for a former Soviet leader?
WE'RE IN NEED of someone with a little common sense around here.
In an op-ed piece for The New York Times, Mikhail Gorbachev tries to explain to Americans the cold, hard facts of life about realpolitik . . . and about basic human nature as it collectively applies to great nations:
The problems of the Caucasus region cannot be solved by force. That has been tried more than once in the past two decades, and it has always boomeranged.
What is needed is a legally binding agreement not to use force. Mr. Saakashvili has repeatedly refused to sign such an agreement, for reasons that have now become abundantly clear.
The West would be wise to help achieve such an agreement now. If, instead, it chooses to blame Russia and re-arm Georgia, as American officials are suggesting, a new crisis will be inevitable. In that case, expect the worst.
In recent days, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Bush have been promising to isolate Russia. Some American politicians have threatened to expel it from the Group of 8 industrialized nations, to abolish the NATO-Russia Council and to keep Russia out of the World Trade Organization.
These are empty threats. For some time now, Russians have been wondering: If our opinion counts for nothing in those institutions, do we really need them? Just to sit at the nicely set dinner table and listen to lectures?
Indeed, Russia has long been told to simply accept the facts. Here’s the independence of Kosovo for you. Here’s the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, and the American decision to place missile defenses in neighboring countries. Here’s the unending expansion of NATO. All of these moves have been set against the backdrop of sweet talk about partnership. Why would anyone put up with such a charade?
There is much talk now in the United States about rethinking relations with Russia. One thing that should definitely be rethought: the habit of talking to Russia in a condescending way, without regard for its positions and interests.
Our two countries could develop a serious agenda for genuine, rather than token, cooperation. Many Americans, as well as Russians, understand the need for this. But is the same true of the political leaders?
THE PROBLEM FACING the Soviet Union's final leader in his effort to persuade Americans is as simple as it is tragic . . . as in America's tragic flaw.
See, the problem here -- and the thing that threatens to lead us to an unwanted superpower conflict -- is that the United States is an empire led by revolutionary narcissists and populated by a navel-gazing people uninterested in foreign affairs. This ignorance isn't just embarrassing, it's dangerous.
Basically, Americans are too ignorant to know when their leaders are acting like bulls amok in the gift shop of the Thermonuclear Hotel. And the Polish Missile Crisis -- or the Ukraine Crisis . . . or the Georgian Crisis -- will catch them completely by surprise.
The United States has spent the last 17 years poking a stick into the Russian bear's eye, and now Georgie, and Dickie and Condi are shocked, shocked that it's done gone and ate somebody.
The Russian Bear is back, and the United States doesn't seem to be able to do much about it.
The United States saw trouble coming between Russia and Georgia, a former Soviet republic turned nemesis, but didn't have enough leverage, focus or resolve to intervene. Even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a specialist on the old Soviet Union, may have misjudged the combustible combination of Russian grievance and ambition.
The Bush administration's assurances of solidarity with a young democracy also may have given Georgia's silver-tongued, U.S.-educated leader a little too much swagger as he picked a playground fight he never could win on his own.
(snip)
In talking points on the conflict obtained by The Associated Press, the Bush administration claims it had no specific advance warning that Georgia would try to retake control of a breakaway border region largely loyal to Russia.
That doesn't mean diplomats, intelligence analysts and others weren't worried about worsening Russian relations with Georgia over the past two years and in particular about the shoving match over ethnic conflicts left over from the Cold War.
Rice went to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi to try to calm things down in July, but infuriated Russia with a public endorsement of Georgia's "territorial integrity." Saakashvili used the visit to display his close relationship with Washington, the organizing principle for an imperfectly democratic government that has collected millions of dollars in U.S. aid.
U.S. officials say they gave Saakashvili a strong warning not to put a match to the ethnic tinderboxes in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, even as Rice and others took Georgia's side in public. Bush backed the Georgian claim when he visited Tbilisi in 2005.
"The path of freedom you have chosen is not easy, but you will not travel it alone," Bush said then.
I THINK THE PART about a secretary of state who goes to the tinder box to "calm things down" but instead starts throwing around lit matches is rich, indeed.
The problem with the neocon cabal in Washington, as it wreaks havoc at home and abroad, is it's the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Without Lieutenant Dan.
The vestal virgins at the temple of the elephant god (a.k.a. National Review Online) have a problem with GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee because he worships the Christian God.
I HAVE A PROBLEM with Mike Huckabee because his fealty to the Christian God has not led him to sufficiently "radical" positions to cause the denizens of The Corner to stroke out. Thus far, preacher Mike can manage only to elicit snide remarks about those who have a deity that is not laissez-faire capitalism.
What do you think God's standard is on anchor babies and birthright citizenship? (Manger!) Does Huckabee's God believe in borders? What is God's monetary policy? Is Jesus a capitalist? How much economic disparity will he tolerate? Wouldn't God want us all to have health care? Nice shoes?
What about rendering unto Ceaser [sic] that which is Ceaser's [sic], and unto God that which is God's? Mike Huckabee is going to force those of us who have wanted more religion in the town square to reexamine the merits of strict separation of church and state.
Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth century prophets left their little villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Graeco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.
You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being. I am sure that each of you would want to go beyond the superficial social analyst who looks merely at effects, and does not grapple with underlying causes. I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative.
(snip)
You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: There are just and there are unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that "An unjust law is no law at all."
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority, and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. To use the words of Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, segregation substitutes and "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship, and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. So segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Isn't segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, an expression of his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? So I can urge men to disobey segregation ordinances because they are morally wrong.
(snip)
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks, before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman empire. To a degree academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience.
We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws. I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
After all, what do you think God's standard is on granting full citizenship rights to Caucasians but not Negroes? What about rendering unto "Ceaser" that which is "Ceaser's," and unto God that which is God's?
From the New York Times, which the usual suspects will trash as being partisan and unreliable, somehow working the name Jason Blair into the rant no more than three sentences in:
At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.
The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.
Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.
It was previously reported that some administration officials had advised against destroying the tapes, but the emerging picture of White House involvement is more complex. In interviews, several administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes should be destroyed.
One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Some other officials assert that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes. Those officials acknowledged, however, that no White House lawyer gave a direct order to preserve the tapes or advised that destroying them would be illegal.
The destruction of the tapes is being investigated by the Justice Department, and the officials would not agree to be quoted by name while that inquiry is under way.
Spokesmen for the White House, the vice president’s office and the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article, also citing the inquiry.
The new information came to light as a federal judge on Tuesday ordered a hearing into whether the tapes’ destruction violated an order to preserve evidence in a lawsuit brought on behalf of 16 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The tapes documented harsh interrogation methods used in 2002 on Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, two Qaeda suspects in C.I.A. custody.
Instead of hounding preachers who criticize the gay-rights agenda and publishers who speak out against the Great White Jihad, why don't Canada's human-rights tribunals attend to some real violations of inalienable rights?
