The Walrus cover story, “Stephen Harper and the Theo-cons”, is the latest in a rash of articles and books, both here and in the US, warning that The Handmaid’s Tale is about to become “real life” any second now — warnings that started around 1980, and I’m still waiting for my headscarf or whatever it was.
This column attempts to explain what “theocon” fearmongers are so afraid of. Made sense to me, but then, it would.
Who was “Canada’s next Prime Minister”?
The same Librano$ who is now Canada’s ex-PM, P. Martin, Jr., he of the SSM/CSL/AdScam Wall of Shame.
All brought to youse by Marci.
Strong and Martin: Traitors and Crooks. …-
How much do we really know about Canada’s next Prime Minister?
by Marci McDonald [Walrus Magazine]
On the third floor of a faceless commercial tower in Vienna, Virginia, a landlocked suburb of Washington, D.C., sits the unlikely nerve centre of the Liberian International Ship and Corporate Registry, one of the offshore conveniences that allows the world’s maritime moguls to fudge their ownership, hide their profits, and keep their fleets afloat with discount maintenance standards and cut-rate Third World crews. The fifty-five-year-old registry sells a ship’s rights to fly the Liberian flag an eye-catching riff on the U.S. Stars and Stripes with a single white star on blue in the upper left corner. All that’s required is a basic ten-cents-a-tonne fee and an annual flat rate of $3,800 per ship, plus an inspection with assorted costs. No need to visit Virginia, let alone bloodied, benighted Monrovia, in ruins from its decade-long civil war. Once the paperwork is complete, a fleet owner can stroll into any port and buy the flag at a store.
In the shadowy world of international shipping, Liberia is just one of more than two dozen countries that offer their national colours for sale. But for the outcast regime of Charles Taylor, the Liberian registry proved a particular boon. With a roster of 1,900 ships, it is second in size only to Panama’s, funneling $18 million a year into Monrovia’s coffers more than a quarter of the total foreign revenues of a nation isolated by United Nations sanctions.
Two years ago, a UN report traced some of the government’s funds from the registry to offshore accounts used to buy arms for Taylor-backed rebels in Sierra Leone, in flagrant defiance of those sanctions. Around the world, members of the International Transport Workers’ Federation and the human rights group, Global Witness, exhorted fleet proprietors to stop subsidizing the bloodshed and abandon the Liberian flag. No less than Lloyd’s List, the bulletin of the British maritime insurers, observed, “Never has the proposition that shipowners bear no moral responsibility for what flag states get up to looked so flimsy.” Which is why it seems noteworthy that Canada’s most celebrated shipowner, Paul Martin as of August still the official proprietor of the Canada Steamship Lines group continued to list five ships on the website of his company’s international division that were flagged to Liberia.
At the Canada Steamship Lines’ Montreal headquarters, where senior vice-president Pierre PrĂ©fontaine rhymes off the vessels in Martin’s international fleet, he doesn’t mention those Liberian-flagged ships or seven others sailing under the flag of Vanuatu, a tiny South Pacific tax haven first made trendy by the money-laundering set. One reason for that lapse may be the dissonance between the company’s iconic national image and its somewhat less patriotic reality. On the masts of all twenty-one cargo carriers owned or operated by CSL International as part of partnership agreements, there is nary a Canadian maple leaf in sight nor, on board, a Canadian crew.
As it turns out, for tax-paying purposes, CSL International isn’t a Canadian corporation at all. Unlike its sister company, Canada Steamship Lines, Inc., a historic presence on the Great Lakes since 1913, CSL’s international division is based in a cinderblock low-rise in Beverly, Massachusetts, on the outskirts of Boston, but registered as an International Business Corporation (IBC) in the Caribbean tax shelter of Barbados. The Barbadian corporation, in turn, is owned by a holding company in Bermuda, another offshore fiscal paradise. Over the past seven years, that labyrinthine set-up has managed to save CSL International and its Montreal-based parent, the CSL Group, millions in Canadian taxes. In some industries, such offshore fiscal chutzpah might raise eyebrows, but not in the rough and tumble waters of what’s known as the ocean trade. “You can’t operate with Canadian ownership and Canadian crews it’s too competitive,” says Jack Leitch, the majority owner of Toronto-based Upper Lakes Group. “Even God couldn’t make a go of it under those conditions.”
But Paul Martin’s company, which dove into the ocean trade in 1982, has never looked back. …-
http://canadiancoalition.com/forum/messages/6612.shtml
Harper is a fake Christian. Seriously, he is a Star Trek geek; how many guys like that do you know who are simultaneously Trekkies and devout Christians? It doesn’t fit the rest of his personality and I don’t buy it.
When all else fails haul out the religion card to try to make a story.
Wasn’t much religion involved in all the corruption that went down under the Liberals though most operatives would describe themselves as “Christian”. How “fake” is that?
The Lefties who have a problem with Christianity may want to remember one of their Icons Billy Clinton.
At the height of the Lewinsky affair he was photographed entering his church Bible in hand, blatantly using religion to buffer scandal.How “fake” is that?
One word fits the Left in this Country, “BANKRUPT”, in all applications of the word.
Why are attacks on religion supposed to be from the left? I’m an atheist, think all religions are stupid and Islam in particular dangerous, vote Tory and know a lot of other people who do the same. As far as I know the religious right are a small minority in Canada but get far too much publicity given the poverty of their views.
Why are attacks on religion supposed to be from the left? I’m an atheist, think all religions are stupid and Islam in particular dangerous, vote Tory and know a lot of other people who do the same. As far as I know the religious right are a small minority in Canada but get far too much publicity given the poverty of their views.
Harper is not a fake Christian. Harper is a wise Christian. If he were to flount his beliefs, he would be lambasted even more than he is right now. But he’s a Christian, no doubt about it.
He’s going to be most effective as a Christian, though, if he’s quiet and steady about it and just follows through with what he knows is right, one step at a time. And he knows that, too.
I was glad that Walrus article was there. I’ve been trying to explain to my 9 and 11 year old daughters how anti-Christian Canada is, and they don’t get it. They’re used to praying for persectued Christians in Nepal or Iran or Saudi Arabia, so they think everyone here is just lovely. When I saw that article, I could show them that no, lots of people don’t like Christians at all here.
But I’d still rather live here as a Christian than on any other country on earth (with the possible exception of Australia).
My take – people like Bob on the left over there pass judgement on those on the right – called “far right neocon christans” by those on the left,- because that is how people like Bob and others on the left justify their “anything goes – do what feels good at the moment” lifestyles. It makes them feel superior to denigrate those who actually have a moral compass in this world.
It’s just an observation, Jim. The left seem to always rant on about the “Religious Right” when they are bankrupt of legitimate criticism. It happens all the time. It’s happening now with Harper because he’s looking too good for their liking.
chill . . someone is trying to hype a book sale.
Doing a good job too.
DO NOT buy the book 🙂
bob
you cannot buy it.
you’re too broke.
get into begging.
The left has a lot of phobias, doesn’t it?
And they still have the gall to practice “projection” and accuse conservatives of all kinds of “phobias”?
Hypocrites, the leftists are.
The fear of the Walrus is well founded. Because reformed Judeo-Christians cause the perfect environment for the growth of capitalism. Even before the Reformation, the Romans could see that the tolerant Christian religion that accepted all peoples and did not force conversions would help Rome foster their growth economies based on sophisticated urban populations living amongst diverse ethnic cultures. The Walrus should make trip to capitalist China where Christianity is growing rapidly. The Walrus is simply frightened that their utopian mantra continues to collapse around the Globe. Marx didn’t want to compete with the faith and hope offered by Christianity, he called religion the opium of the masses; Marx and The Walrus rely on negative thinking and class warfare.
The secular extremism that has nearly destroyed the soul of Europe is being addressed by the new Pope. Our utopian MSM and academia have copied the cultural relativist intellectuals in Europe. These transnationals worship the high priests of Moe Strong and the corrupt Koffi at the Temple of the UN. Tranzis also have their EU icons and un-elected apparatchiks in Brussels who promote the collective and denounce the individualism that true democracy and the choices of capitalism are causing to permeate the globe.
Transnational utopians have also partnered with Islamofascists because both are socio-political ways of life. They do not believe in the concept of “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s”. Instead they want their utopian blueprint for life and central planners in government to be one and the same.
Marxists and Islamofascists will end up on the dustbin of history, the only question is: how much damage will they cause before they collapse?
The Left are bogged down with Hang-ups.
Who would ever have imagined a whole industry created on poverty? Child poverty, the homeless,the druggies and on and on.
A stunning example of their work is providing clean needles and sites to druggies while diabetics have to pay for their own needles.
We all know it’s a lucrative social money grab by the loud cries when anyone tries to improve the situation and get the “homeless” off the streets.
For a group of people like Shaidle who complain so much and so often about what a pathetic “victim culture” we live in today… there sure does seem to be a lot of complaining here about Christians being victims here and at relapesedcatholic.
Atheisim is a religion,socialism is a religion and communism is a religion and dont try to fool yourselves that they are not! Each has a set of beliefs that to impose them other religions have to be eliminated as their beliefs cannot coexist with the belief that there may be a judgement day.
Muslim based terrorism isn’t SCARY not withstanding 9/11;
Sikh based terrorism isn’t SCARY; notwithstanding Air India;
Communist terrorism isn’t SCARY, even though the system managed to kill 100 million people.
LIEberals funding Hamas, Hezbollah, who want to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ isn’t SCARY.
Iranian Mahmound Ahmadinejad isn’t SCARY, because we have a NUANCED foreign policy approach to civilizations that recommend Holocaust Part Deux.
Al Qaeda isn’t SCARY; even though they want to behead the Pope and Stephen Harper. We should sit down and negotiate with people who find it agreeable to plant an axe in the back of your head.
But JEWS are SCARY!!
CHRISTIANS are SCARY!!
But worst of all, Judeo-Christians are homo-phobic.
The Judeo-Christian Stephen Harper is SCARY; oh and while we are at it, NOT FIT FOR OFFICE!!
Yep, Stephen Harper is SCARY, because he is running around saying he wants to wipe countries off the map, wants to help create Holocaust Part II, and regularly calls for the beheading of his opponents.
Oh and the worst sin of all, having a Christian in the Environment Ministry. Heavens, those fascists might get the animals marching two by two, just like Noah.
Even worse, the cardinal sin: the dove of peace might be set free, which would mean no Oil for Food scandal.
Ted–
Don’t confuse claiming to be a victim with the victim culture. The victim culture says I can’t be held accountable for anything because other people are out to get me. Christians aren’t saying we’re not to blame for the plight we’re in. We’re simply saying we’re not being treated fairly. We’re not asking for special treatment. We’re not asking for government handouts. We’re simply asking to be treated with respect. That’s it. You don’t even have to agree with us. Just respect us. Gays, on the other hand, want not just acceptance but approval. It’s comparing apples to oranges.
As for the thesis of this column, I think Medved missed something. It isn’t that “he doth protest too much” because he’s afraid on judgment day he’ll get a rude awakening–the Pascal scenario–I think it’s deeper than that. I think it’s because if Christianity is right, then we have to make value judgments. And those value judgments would predominantly say that the things you have built your life around (casual sex, pursuit of wealth at all costs, leisure, divorce, etc.) are either wrong or empty. And deep inside, that’s what they fear. They fear they’re wrong and that their lives are meaningless, not just that they’ll have to face God on judgment day. That’s the urge for approval (there’s that victim culture again) rather than just live and let live. And when Christians don’t approve, it threatens them.
Ted–
Don’t confuse claiming to be a victim with the victim culture. The victim culture says I can’t be held accountable for anything because other people are out to get me. Christians aren’t saying we’re not to blame for the plight we’re in. We’re simply saying we’re not being treated fairly. We’re not asking for special treatment. We’re not asking for government handouts. We’re simply asking to be treated with respect. That’s it. You don’t even have to agree with us. Just respect us. The homosexual community, on the other hand, wants not just acceptance but approval. It’s comparing apples to oranges.
As for the thesis of this column, I think Medved missed something. It isn’t that “he doth protest too much” because he’s afraid on judgment day he’ll get a rude awakening–the Pascal scenario–I think it’s deeper than that. I think it’s because if Christianity is right, then we have to make value judgments. And those value judgments would predominantly say that the things you have built your life around (casual relationships, pursuit of wealth at all costs, leisure, divorce, etc.) are either wrong or empty. And deep inside, that’s what they fear. They fear they’re wrong and that their lives are meaningless, not just that they’ll have to face God on judgment day. That’s the urge for approval (there’s that victim culture again) rather than just live and let live. And when Christians don’t approve, it threatens them.
spike 1 – I don’t agree with you that atheism is a religion. Your definition of religion must be so vague that it has been reduced to merely a ‘set of beliefs’, which could apply to anything, including fly-fishing.
I define religion as a belief in a transcendental or metaphysical Pure Truth. I’m an atheist; I don’t believe in that. I’d agree that utopian social ideologies are based around that notion, because they posit an eventual state of purity among existential beings. This is absolutely impossible. A formal model, which is Pure, can never be articulated exactly, in an individual existence. Basic Godel’s Law and basic Aristotle.
But I do believe that our universe is organized rather than random; I believe that this is an evolving complexity of organization, and I call this organization, the laws of Reason. Or Mind. Others might call it god, but for me, Reason is not transcendental but embedded. Aristotle vs Plato.
At any rate, the utopians, whether they be Islamic fascists, NDP socialists, Liberal Big Government, or other religious fundamentalists, will always be with us. But this utopian ideology is not the same a ‘regular religion’, in my view.
I may be against the reality of a transcendental Pure Truth (since I’m Aristotelian rather than Platonic) but, what’s wrong with a communal ideology of ethics and morality? And, in contrast to the cultural relativists, shouldn’t this ethical ideology operate within a universal law rather than a cultural law?
Should the definition of what is moral be contextual according to the culture? Or according to universal Reason? That’s what Benedict was talking about – and I applaud him for that.
And isn’t Harper’s mode of governance based on this idea of Reason rather than cultural relativism? We’ve had the Liberal government’s mode of ‘divide and conquer’, of setting special interest groups against each other, of establishing tactics that lock people into voting blocs, and then reward them for such isolation.
So, the Christian right want to:
Bring God back into the public square.
Limit marriage to a man and a woman.
End the late term slaughter of living children.
In other words, conserve and build.
The leftoid Marxists want to:
Make marriage meaningless and obsolete.
Create a bigoted and undemocratic public square, limited to their own ideology.
Continue to redefine murder and justify late term abortion as a one-sided ‘right.’
In other words, destroy.
The real victims will be all of humanity if we allow the kind of human filth that aspires to perverted leftist ‘values’ to have any sort of power.
No Ted, this is about a concept that counters the utopians’ belief that everybody is equal or that cultures are all equal. Instead this is about the notion that good and evil exist and that people are responsible for their choices in life. That pleading victimization for making bad personal choices won’t work with a Conservative government.
The utopians at the Walrus fear that the days are ending where the Liberals have could rely on multiculturalism to divide and conquer. Also the multicultis have used the weapon of political correctness to shut down dissent and now Harper is saying things like he did in Lebanon …that innocent Israelis suffered too; that Liberals simply backing the “underdogs” to foist cultural relativism upon us won’t work anymore.
Christians believe in the separation of Church and State and they believe that values should be arrived at by “truthful” debate by elected representatives based on “reason” as the Pope recently put it.
Scaremongering by The Walrus that tries to equate Christians with the Mullahs in a Theocracy is simply absurd. It shows how bankrupt Liberals have become in the battle of ideas about what’s right and wrong for a society and they fear the end of their Natural Governing status is nigh.
So, the Christian right want to:
Bring God back into the public square.
Limit marriage to a man and a woman.
End the late term slaughter of living children.
In other words, conserve and build.
The leftoid Marxists want to:
Make marriage meaningless and obsolete.
Create a bigoted and undemocratic public square, limited to their own ideology.
Continue to redefine murder and justify late term abortion as a one-sided ‘right.’
In other words, destroy.
The real victims will be all of humanity if we allow the kind of human filth that aspires to perverted leftist ‘values’ to have any sort of power.
The Medvid article makes sense to me, too. I just became aware of the Jesus Camp controversy. To those casting stones, what, or Who, do you really fear?
Religion is a mans/womans own damned business!
Anyone who tries to make their religion MY business is going to be on my shitlist for a long time!
As are people who try to make MY religion their business.
That being said ..I don’t believe that anyone without religion is especially trustworthy. If you cannot aspire to a higher purpose than your own existence you are flawed and weak. Course that’s just an OPINION!
Right ON Irwin!!!
jimmy swaggart trolls for hookers.
jim bakker gives a locker room laugh about having sex with jessica hahn.
oral roberts pleads for million ’cause he’s afeard da Lawrd gonna ‘call him home’.
pat robertson advocates assassination of foreign leaders at odds with american interests and agenda.
peter popoff caught committing fraud with a wireless miniature earphone. (#3 on goggle ‘faith healer fraud’ search string)
benny hinn. uugghffffff eeeeewwwww.
you *really* want these sorts running things? time for the religionists to do some serious housecleaning.
and my bias? I get told by an elder of my *former* baptist church that ‘you can’t sit there Schmuck, those seats are saaaaaaaaved’. oh really. you can’t all shift 1/8 of a chair width and make room for me to join you? hmmmm….. shoulda paid more attention to that scripture passage I read a total of 11 times about not being presumptuous and plopping down at the head table at the ‘wedding’ banquet.
f&^%$^in ‘christians’. BULSHYT.
Funny: I don’t recall using phrases like “victim” or “picked on” in my post. I don’t really feel picked on. Victory is assured. As one Christian writer put it, we are merely being asked to run out the clock with style…
I simply stated that despite 2.5 decades of dire warnings from the cultural elites in the form of op eds, award winning novels, HBO movies, phd theses, panic-striken blog posts, satirical tv sketches and a whole subgenre of punk music, that dreaded American Theocracy aka Jesusland has yet to materialize.
So there is clearly a flaw in some liberals’/leftists’/progressives ability to make accurate predictions about the future based on the evidence before their eyes.
Again.
And I just wonder what’s wrong with their analytical and perceptual abilities.
Over to you, Ted.
I often find it annoying when devout Christians attempt to force some of their more peculiar morals on others who don’t share their faith, but I wouldn’t say I’m afraid of Christians.
Sure Christians will lump together and mobilize to get out the vote, but non-believers do that too. This is all part and parcel of living in a democracy. Democracy may have a pimply ass, but it’s better living in an actual theocracy (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, etc.). I’ll take a pimply ass over stage four cancer.
The important question to ask here is, “what are you prepared to do to spread your faith?” Without exception, every Christian I have ever met has wanted to sit down and talk with me and convince me that they have the better idea. There’s really nothing wrong with this.
Spreading ideas through dialog? Participating in a democracy? Yeah, Christians are scary alright. (Not.) This agnostic doofus would rather live in a Christian neighborhood in North America where I can leave my doors unlocked at night than in a Moslem one in the Middle East where I have to keep my wife and daughter locked inside at all hours.
The New York Times needs an education on what is truly scary, and it’s not the Jehovah’s Witness ringing your doorbell on a Saturday morning.
benny hinn
peter popoff
oral roberts (o massa, please doonnnn calls me ‘ome!!!)
pat robertson (shoot zem!!! shoot zem hall!!! assassinate dose dat diszhaggree mit hus hamericans!!!)
jim bakker
jimmy swaggart trolling for hookers
sigh……
you *really* want these dudes in charge?
Kathy,
Good post, thanks.
Again, another example of how Islamic terrorism has burst the Utopian Bubble of the left. It (and most of reality) doesn’t fit into their world view so they create a “monster” they deep down know will not devour them–the “Christian Right” (whatever that means). Kind of like a child that lives in fear of the bogey-man in the closet but could never actually deal with a real threat–a hostile adult. So leave it to the real adults in the world–the Stephen Harpers and George Bushes and John Howards–to deal with the real threats.
I just wish the childish Leftists would STFU for a change and let the adults do their work. The Left is in need of a major Bitch Slap.
Thank God the Jesus Camp has been exposed; imagine, hordes of kids praying, learning to live life more fully and loving others. What a threat, compared to the threats of the Islamists.
Seriously, I agree with the notion that the anti-right, having lost in US, are very uncomfortable with the notion that the neo-cons will win a majority in Canada. Watch for these types of attacks to increase in intensity as we approach the next election. I don’t think they will work.
Look at the various views and beliefs held by those who comment on this site. Athiests, Christians and everything in between – all Conservatives.
Facts, common sense and reason are respected. Stupidity is not.
Based on Bill Graham’s outburst yesterday at the appointment of the deputy minister of the environment – Liberals continue to attack and reject Christians based on their beliefs.
Jack Layton’s socialists? If you don’t agree, you’re kicked out of the party – like the NDP MP who voted her conscience against SSM, for example. There is no room for conscience in the NDP.
Ironically, both parties like to describe themselves as being more tolerant and caring than Conservatives. However, the reality is that both parties are proven bigoted and intolerant.
“but it’s better living in an actual theocracy”
Meant to say “better THAN”. Damn. Gotta stop posting comments before I have my morning coffee.
I think the need to attack the Christian Right (not the Christian left, however) is due to the need to create a Christian scarercrow.:
Even for the demented left, it is slowly becoming difficult to ignore the raging religion of peace and how dangerous it is. I have seen lefties admit that, possibly, Islamofascism is dangerous.
However, they are wedded to multi-culturalism and moral relativism. Therefore, in order to justify, or balance, their criticism of islamo-fascism, they need to invent a “Christo-fascism”, as I have heard it called.
In the same sentence, then, these addled brain sophisticates can criticise intolernat, religion-based terrorism, of both muslims and christiaqns.
I think the last paragraph in Michael Medved’s column says it all, and then some!
If you on the left want something to worry about, it should be the Muslim extremists, not the Christian evangelicals here in North America. Obviously you think we on Christian religious right are worse, because you don’t take the terrorist threat seriously and believe in appeasing these guys.
Did any one hear the reporter on Adler yesterday he told of how the prisoners have unlimited access to bottled water, fine, but that the us flag which comes on the bottle has to be individually cut out before giving to the detainees, also that end of evening playing of the “Star Spangled” had to be turned down so low that that it could not be heard over the whole camp.Chip away, chip away anywhere you can just chip away.Western way of life is being eroded.
I am not religious but was brought up “Western” I do not want my great great grand daughters to be stoned to death for any reason!
Are there any televangelists currently running for public office in North America? Wasn’t aware of it.
Weird how obsessed the Left still is with a handful of clownish, universally condemned “Christian” con men from the 80s and 90s. That would be like me worrying that the Chicago Seven are still trying to sneak LSD into the water supply. At least learn a few more names from _this century_ to fret about, hmm?
Pat Robertson currently has a television audience of just under 900,000 people a day. In a nation of 300 million.
Think about it mentally…
God! I know! This is so friggin’ stupid.
I can remember the hyperbole surrounding Anita Bryant back in the late 70s.
All the hippie queers saw her as the harbring, the precursor of an immanent Christain theocracy who had to be stop at any cost.
But Anita, in the end, was merely the precursor to Tammy Fae.
And the hipie queers never lived long enough to find out.
Mmm….think I’ll have some orange juice…
Think about it mentally…
How about think about it mathematically:
900,000 divide 300 million is 0.3 % of the entire population of the US.
Yep, sure is SCARY…
That is probably less than the total of diagnosed mental patients across the US who also may vote…
On the other hand the total number of deaths in the US due to the combined effects of:
Tobacco 435,000
Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity 365,000
Alcohol 85,000
Microbial Agents 75,000
Toxic Agents 55,000
Motor Vehicle Crashes 26,347
Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs 32,000
Suicide 30,622
Incidents Involving Firearms 29,000
Homicide 20,308
Sexual Behaviors 20,000
All Illicit Drug Use, Direct and Indirect17,000
Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Such As Aspirin 7,600
Total Approximately 1.176 million
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/causes.htm
Thus we conclude that Pat Robertson’s audience is less than the total number of US deaths per annum.
If the left wanted to make the argument that his audience was ‘brain dead’ this would be insufficient to posit a ‘theo con’ takeover anytime soon.
It looks like Pat Robertson has a ready audience to ‘reform’.
Cheers
They’ve offended Christianity…let the riots and public beheadings begin!
Oh sorry, wrong religion.
The Medved article is pretty good, until the end. Attributing the left’s rejection of the Christian right as protection against self-doubt is simply not credible. Only a theist would find Pascal’s wager interesting, just as nine-year olds do a Pascal’s wager about Santa Claus.
I read with agreement the post above on atheism not being a religion and, behold, it was ET. Good stuff ET. I would add a reference to Lee Smolin’s recent article in New Scientist in favour of recognizing that the laws of nature themselves evolve, similar to how species and complex adaptive systems evolve. The presupposition of fixed laws of nature is metaphysics, albeit a good rule of thumb in human-scale time-space. I would put in the same category all people who worship ideals that are presumed to be complete and unchanging, which would include communism for sure. Religion I would define, following Nietzsche, to be a set of pragmatic practices and rituals to nurture and maintain psychic hygiene. One adopts what Nietzsche termed “brief habits” to “believe in” heuristics as though they were immutablwe truths, only to shed them as you mature. We see this with respect to many things when people say they “believe in” a basketball system, “believe in” a diet or “believe in” a god. Deep down, they know its not really an immutable truth but just heuristics. (That is, I have the opposite view as Medved, as most Christians say they “believe in” their god.) That said, the set of Christian heuristics has demonstrably outperformed most others (especially those from the left).
Since I only have time for one quick observation,
it’s quite rude when the first lengthy post in this thread has nothing to do with the topic at all.
John, you mentioned Anita Bryant and a million cans of Billy Beer flashed before my eyes! God yes remember how we were all supposed to boycott orange juice or something?
Speaking of gay pronoucements of doom: remember the queer culture rallying cry against “Cruising”? “People will die because of this film”.
Well, people died, but not because of gay bashing. They died because they lived out the promiscuous drug fuelled bar scene behaviours portrayed in the film…
Oh and the worst sin of all, having a Christian in the Environment Ministry. Heavens, those fascists might get the animals marching two by two, just like Noah.
Posted by: Hans Rupprecht at October 4, 2006 10:20 AM
I assume you’re referring to the appointment of one Darrel Reid to Ambrose’s staff, he a defeated Tory candidate in Richmond, BC and a former President of Focus on the Fags, … er, I mean Family. This matter is covered extensively by Publiceyeonline:
(http://www.publiceyeonline.com/archives/001843.html)
Can you tell us what environmental credentials Reid has? If none, then I assume he’s just doing the political side, not the policy side, so can you assure us that’s the case?
So, the Christian right want to:
Bring God back into the public square.
…
The real victims will be all of humanity if we allow the kind of human filth that aspires to perverted leftist ‘values’ to have any sort of power.
Posted by: Irwin Daisy at October 4, 2006
Jeeesus Cheeerist, Irwin. I kind of had you figured for a somewhat unbalanced type but this is several orders of magnitude past anything I had suspected.
Incidentally, the term “human filth” was often used in Nazi propaganda, so you might want to avoid it, lest you become a little bit too obvious.
ET;I am not concerned with your definition of religion.A religion is a belief taken on faith and it doesnt matter what you call it.On the other hand,you descrbe your belief as a religion better than I could.
When I cross at an intersection with the “walk” light I act on a belief taken on faith that the cars will obey the red light. Is this a religion? I think a more restrictive definition is required to be useful.
spike 1- if you aren’t concerned with my definition of religion, then don’t comment on it. If you aren’t concerned with someone else’s definition of religion, then, you have moved yourself out of the realm of reason and exploratory analysis and into the cave of irrationality.
Your definition of religion, as only a belief based on faith, is insufficient, in my view. According to your criteria, if I believe that the light will turn on when I flip the switch, based on my ‘faith’ on both the robustness of our engineering and electrial technology and the empirical observations of past experience, then – according to you, I am ‘being religious’. Nonsense.
Your criteria of religion as only an emotional act of belief (faith) and a rejection of empirical observation and reason also means that a dog’s faith in their owner’s nurturance is a ‘religious act’ by the dog.
The question you are ignoring is ‘belief in what’? And religion, in my view, requires a belief in a metaphysical agent or power. Your ‘faith-based’ criterion focuses solely on the emotion of attachment and ignores ‘to what is this emotion attached’??? And why is it attached?
Hey Budd:
How about this story:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20051205/duceppe_elexn_update_051205?s_name=election2006&no_ads=
Duceppe backs off comment on Liberal defeat
Updated Mon. Dec. 5 2005 9:51 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Blaming an abundance of enthusiasm, Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe apologized for a comment he made yesterday about wanting the federal Liberals to disappear from Quebec.
In a fiery speech near Montreal on Sunday, Duceppe said the sovereigntist Bloc will win all of Quebec’s 75 ridings, effectively making the Liberals disappear from the political landscape — a comment which a Liberal cabinet minister said was Nazi-like in tone.
Duceppe said Monday he only meant that he wanted his party to win every riding in Quebec in the Jan. 23 election.
Meeting with different cultural communities in an attempt to court the ethnic vote, Duceppe stressed that a multiplicity of parties is beneficial for democracy, and condemned the Liberals for comparing the Holocaust to an election campaign.
Duceppe added that he wanted Liberal Quebec lieutenant Jean Lapierre to apologize for making the Nazi reference.
The Liberals, however, continued to pounce on Duceppe’s comment Monday.
Liberal foreign minister Pierre Pettigrew said Duceppe’s remarks are an indication of his intolerance attitudes.
“He cannot tolerate people who think differently. He’s been trying to shut up the strong Quebec voices in Ottawa in order to promote his separation plans,” Pettigrew told CTV Montreal from the UN conference for climate change.
So it looks like Bloc leaders and Liberal Transport Ministers also raise the level of debate by hurling around loosely the ‘wiped out’ and “Nazi-like” labels, at least according to the last election. See, they are all “Huns” at heart?
On Dud, er, I mean Budd:
Another empty space comment with added invective, but no added argument or reason, written as usual by a socialist.
Nazi? Oh, you mean your fellow travellers, the National Socialist Party?
Funny, I had you figured for an empty headed moron. And still do.
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God is dead.
– Nietzsche, 1886
Nietzsche is dead.
– God, 1901