If you think freedom is dispensable, let’s remove yours. Your convenience is more important than someone else’s, let’s show you what real life is like outside of the bubble of a First World liberal democracy.
If you think freedom is dispensable, let’s remove yours. Your convenience is more important than someone else’s, let’s show you what real life is like outside of the bubble of a First World liberal democracy.
The title of your post took me in the wrong direction, however, it does leave me an opening for this slight aside / OT:
Two men watched the accident from the windows of a psych ward. On the street before them all was in chaos: There had been a 3-car pile-up, and all hell had broken loose.
One couple, the husband dazed and bleeding, were speaking hysterically in Mandarin. Another driver swore at them in Farsi. The EMT’s were unable to get answers from the third injured party, as he was babbling in French and they only spoke Swahili. The Mexican cop was having absolutely NO luck controlling the situation, as none of them spoke Spanish….
The first man turned to the other. “So, what are you in here for?”
“I advocated that new immigrants learn to speak English.”
“Get Away from me, you Racist Bastard!”
I can not leave a comment on the tips thread,
I always get ” internal server error”
that must be why it is still at zero comments at this time of day?…
Friend of USA (me too!), I’ve just made a test at Reader Tips. Yup, Server Error.
I had a thought last night there should be a period in which newcomers to this country should have to live in a soddie and stook wheat by hand.
Strange that you would link to the one blogger in Canada who thinks we need much more Muslim immigration to Canada:
Publius: “I’m 100% in favour of open immigration. Even of Muslims. The more the better frankly…Muslims make excellent immigrants, which is why I think we should have more of them. Let them come…As for inviting muslims, I wouldn’t mind doing that at all.”
godscopybook.blogs.com/gpb/2008/02/assorted-link-1.html#comments
I don’t think the man could be any more clear or enthusiastic about his support of massive Muslim immigration to Canada.
By “moderate” I presume he/she means half-baked, ‘cos that’s the way the post came across to me. Unlike Kate’s fully baked with icing!
Am I the only one getting a bit tired of the “moderate” thingee? Doesn’t it suggest [“mean” would be a bit strong] not quite decided, sitting on a fence, on the one hand this but on the other hand that, nice.
MM: I’d agree with you. The alternative should be a $20,000 bond for each immigrant and no social program eligibility until the immigrant becomes a citizen.
In essence, make it hard for those who don’t want to improve their position in life to come here.
But if we let all those people in how will we ever meet our Kyoto commitments?
Interesting Article.
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/editorial/story.html?id=919eb65e-d650-4517-b53e-3d5190b99214
I view this as the equivalent of Hitler telling the Jews that everything was going to be all right.
Jeff – considering she’s a “human rights” lawyer, that’s exactly what it is. You would think that she would have some modicum of knowledge about how the process works – the use of hearings and tribunals, the levying of fines and punishment – in essence the “court-like” powers that she doesn’t believe that the HRCs have.
Perhaps she can also explain how punishment for an action which hasn’t occured yet, indeed can not be detailed on when or if it will occur, fits into the legal system – considering she’s a lawyer and all, she should be able to answer that, right?
dfsaf … Publius speaks my language too … it is important to put your observation into Publius’ overall context:
“To win the war against Islamism we need only be ourselves and proclaim it loudly. At every turn denounce the violation of liberties and basic humanity. Every author censored, every women beaten, every daughter denied an education, in Karachi, in Tehran and in Mississauga. Speak loudly, speak boldly, have no fear of causing offensive. The truth will set us and them free.
Let them come. Even in our weakened cultural state the most fanatical elements among the Muslim community fear the West. They know that once their daughters and sons understand our freedoms they’ve lost. Their dogmatic style of rhetoric reflects a grave weakeness.
The great advantage of Muslim immigration to a nation such is Canada is the potential feedback effect. If we can create a rational and liberty minded group of Muslism, when they return “home” on vacations and trips they will spread their ideas and attitudes. The power of ideas cuts both ways. This is one of the ways in which the fascist dictatorships of Portugal and Spain were weakened in the 1960s. Immigrants to France, Belgium and Canada returned home with word about how free peoples lived.
I have, as far back as I can remember, opposed the ideas of multiculturalism. The notion that all cultures – and therefore all ideas and values – are equal is appalling. It is at best moral equivalency and at worst plain racism under an “enlightened” guise. I also don’t remember inviting any muslims into Canada, I have invited some Portuguese relatives – any country could always do with more Portuguese people, especially Portugal which seems to have gone all Belgian in the last twenty years.
As for inviting muslims, I wouldn’t mind doing that at all. In doing so I’d just remind them that they are living in Canada now, and if they’d like to stay they must be loyal to ours laws, our values and our Queen. There are over 200 countries in the world, we are objectively one of the best. If you are honest enough to understand and admit this, act accordingly. Like the old British official who promised to hang wife killers, we stand ready to do the same.”
nomdeblog. polyana. we hang no one. there is no such beast as a moderate muslim let alone a loyal one.
Old White Guy … that must be what Old Europe has concluded. Because there are 1.3 billion Muslims and if one believes they are all jihadists then one might as well surrender.
Godscopybook:
There ought to be a law against pettyfogging laws.
Nomdeblog, I agree with you but add that it is also necessary to shoot those that would shoot you.
Sounds like an eleventh commandment.
RW , right! We should not tolerate those that don’t tolerate us.
necessity is the mother of invention,too bad this is a necessity.
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/02/ionatron-new-na.html
Readers Tips isn’t working for some reason. Oh well.
US-Islamic forum endorses Obama – so much for that “crack-pot theory” of him being the Manchurian candidate…
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080218175510.f09w1mad&show_article=1
“considering she’s a lawyer and all, she should be able to answer that, right?”
Ezra Levant has an excellent “treatment” of this pathetic column on his site. She’s not just a human rights lawyer, she has extensive connections with commissions. Nothing like trying to keep your job safe.
Mandatory military service is a brilliant idea. Do people realize that a country the size of Canada, over 30,000,000 people, has difficulty fielding 1,000 fighting soldiers? Think about that – a Brigadier General is supposed to command a brigade, three battalions of almost 1,000 each, but we can barely field 1 battalion on a rotating basis, so what does a brigadier really command? Or a Major General? or lieutenant general? Do you get the idea that our army is VERY top heavy? Mandatory service would give these guys something to do, and maybe more people would stay in once they see the career that is offered. And if nothing else some whiny little children will learn a bit of self-reliance.
Publius keeps digging, presumably for China:
“Radical Islam, or Islamism or Islamo-Fascism, or whatever you wish to call it, is not the danger.”
godscopybook.blogs.com/gpb/2008/02/whos-afraid-of.html
dsfadsafd … again what you say is out of context and Publius is not saying Islamofascims isn’t dangerous … he’s saying it won’t take our civilization down. His immediately following sentence is about what is really the danger to our society and I would call that… the enemy within:
“It’s the multicultural Left, which is now beginning to come under attack – witness the reaction to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s calls for limited Sharia – that constitutes the real danger to western civilization. As so often in the past the problem isn’t the ‘Other’, it’s the pathologies that lurk within our own society”
I would agree totally with Publius’s observation that the Islamists will fail, they are inept; a culture with no ability without reforming itself, to survive in a global economy. But what is scary is the enemy within, as exemplified by Librano$ WMDs of multiculti and the political correctness and censorship of our HRCs. That is what will destroy our civilization … if we let it.
This Publius is pure gold:
“Defense, culturally or militarily, is the worst offense and closing our borders is the cultural equivalent of the Maginot Mentality.”
Beautiful. People who make any criticism of current immigration policies can, according to Publius, reasonably be compared to Surrender Monkeys.
Those who think twenty million illegal immigrants in the USA is a bit much are comparable to an infamous, doomed, and failed military strategy.
The Fraser Institute’s study showing that immigration is a net drag on the Canadian economy is white flag material, rather that well researched analysis, according to Publius.
Is this guy’s blog some form of trendy Toronto Dadaist performance art of which I am unfamiliar, or what? Nobody can possibly be this ridiculous.
He’s not talking about illegal immigrants. Of course we have to select immigratants. But do it on job skills , education , benefit to Canada as opposed to cultural decisions .. .which is what Librano$ mulitculti has been about.
First let’s get rid of HRCs ,multiculturalism and insist on assimilation to what Canada stands for. That’s where the problem has been. Immigration has been for Liberals not for Canada.
Immigration is net drag on our economy? Does that mean if start shipping people out of the country it will raise our GDP? One of the major problems with out immigration policy is the insistence on university graduates. Rather than observing what our economy actually needs – skilled labour at the moment – our immigration bureaucrats assume having a degree guarantees you a well paying job – perhaps it does in the Public Service. Thus we import engineers from fields we don’t need, while there are shortages of electricians. If immigration is today a drag on the economy its because the Ministry of Immigration is playing economic god, trying to tell Canadians what kind of skills and people we need, rather than letting the market and society decide voluntarily.
P.S. I prefer vaudeville to Dada. A more appropriate art form for a Trudeaupian subject.
Interesting article in the Telegraph about defining Britishness and a British Identity:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/02/18/do1801.xml
I couldn’t stick this under tips either but I think it is a good read.
Given the current state of Canadian education, it would seem to me that the surest way to further entrench modern liberalism as the dominant political force in this country would be to restrict immigration from third-world countries. Coming from where they do, they are most often the best placed to appreciate the classic liberal traditions of institutions in the West. If there’s a problem with immigrants, it’s because the institutions have been reformed to resemble the third-world practises to which they had become accustomed. That’s our fault as Canadians, not theirs. Might as well have banned Italian immigration earlier in the century to avoid graft and corruption.
Can we get WK or RW on this case?
Does the UK not have a Human Rights Commission prepared to take on Mr. Fayed? LOL
(from todays Daily Telegraph UK)
“Mohamed Fayed’s fury at ‘Nazi’ Prince Philip
By Nick Allen
Last Updated: 7:33am GMT 19/02/2008
Mohamed Fayed has accused the Duke of Edinburgh of being a “Nazi” and a “racist” who ordered MI6 to assassinate Diana, Princess of Wales because she was pregnant with a Muslim baby.”
Finally,an end to forced french,a total failure.You will notice it was always french immersion for the already successful English,but there was NO English immersion for any of the french school districts.This will not affect the fact that all government jobs will still go to the french,allowing the English migration west to continue.
FREDERICTON – New Brunswick’s education minister is setting the groundwork for a total overhaul of French Second Language education that could include scrapping the early immersion program or injecting more French training in every classroom.
The Commission on French Second Language Education handed in its final report to Education Minister Kelly Lamrock on Monday, who is now promising to take it to cabinet. Within the next two weeks Patricia Lee and Jim Croll, the review’s two commissioners, will make a formal announcement of their findings.
The minister refused to confirm any of the 18 recommendations found in the 89-page report, but he did not shy away from warning the future French Second Language education landscape may look completely different than it does now.
Lamrock used dismal trends to reinforce the need for immediate reform: 75 per cent of immersion students drop out, while 99.6 per cent of Core French students never hit the government’s proficiency requirement.
Lamrock said he wants to act swiftly so parents will know soon what options will be available in September, but he also added that in a situation where a program is altered, the children already enrolled in that program will be able to continue until they finish it.
Walter Lee, president of the Canadian Parents for French in New Brunswick, is an outspoken critic of any proposal that would roll back immersion education. Years of governments squeezing funding away from French immersion is the culprit for its poor results, not the actual program, Lee said.
“There are problems but in my mind the problems are really associated with the failure to really engage the pedagogy that was working, engage the programs that were working,” Lee said.
New Brunswick’s cherished status of being Canada’s only officially bilingual province will help guide Lamrock’s final decision, as will the need to speed up second language proficiency. There have been earlier targets set to have 70 per cent of students bilingual by 2012, but those timeframes have been dismissed as unrealistic.
One area that the minister singled out for attention is the practice of giving parents the choice of what type of French education their children received.
“We have been treating it as if it was a religious option whether or not your kid becomes bilingual rather than a curriculum outcome,” Lamrock said.
“Seventy per cent of kids are supposed to learn math. We don’t say would you like math immersion, where people learn math pretty good. Or would you like late math immersion where you learn some math. Would you like Core math where we don’t actually learn any math at all just in case you don’t want your kid learning any math.”
In 2005-06, while the language proficiency target was achieved by 0.4 per cent of Core French students, it was hit by 93.5 per cent in early immersion and 77.8 per cent in later immersion.
The Core French program is available in all schools from Grade 1 to 12, early French Immersion starts in Grade 1 and late French Immersion begins in Grade 6. Meanwhile, the new intensive French initiative is aimed at Grade 5 students.
Walter Lee, president of the Canadian Parents for French in New Brunswick,paid by the federal government and the private(money)camps set up teach kids their brand of democracy etc,is in a howl.
Sorry Brian,
I cannot agree. It is a gift to speak many lanquages and an embarresment – especially when travelling abroad to be stumbling through a guidebook.
My Son is a proud example of an Immersion program in Alberta (YES Alberta) and even though he had to switch after 1 of many moves – he even today speaks French very well in Paris.
Me – I am a successful graduate of the Government of Canada language school – necessary for just keeping my job. Passed (barely after 6 months of 1 on 1) but today cannot speak nor understand French well due to a hearing disability that was even noted on my inital FSL assessment.
The point of it all is – had we way back poured all resources into language training for kids and not civil servants decades ago – we would not still be discussing the same issues today.
It’s nice you can speak another language but there’s no reason I should pay to make you, or anyone else, more employable. You get the benefit and I get to pay.
Uhhhhhh. ol hoss. Somebody paid to make you more employable. Or else your school (of whatever type) wouldn’t have existed. Every employer has paid to give every employee training.
You receive benefit from all people who have better skill sets, because they are less likely to be unemployed, or under employed.
With all due respect ol hoss, your argument is unfounded and without merit.
The ls from sk,has been working too hard and not getting enough out of her son to be able to sit back and read about the world.While my English only raised son travelled Europe for six years,as a business analyst for a large Canadian company,with no French and no apparent need for it.
I understand,getting a “tickle” from knowing another language,but when it is no benefit, but to use you, to appease the unappeasable,(big dollar bills please)as is quite obvious in the manufactured unattainable make believe bilingual NB, now known, as statistics show , as the failed bilingualism,along with the now most uneducated province in Canada.
It is also the Provence,with the least French,English association,and the most French English hatred.Believe it.
Feel free to battle us to the bottom.
And with 2 kids(grand) in French immersion,it is the saddest sight to see two confused brilliant kids interest in education go to hell.For nothing.
200,000,000 million dollars wages for NB Power to employ the French,sounds a little rich to me,considering they have little to do with you if your English.
On the merits of French Immersion:
I have yet to be shown ANY benefit to Canada from this ideologically motivated program.
I have seen plenty of downside.
And still people choose to argue in favour of it.
Ridiculous!
RE:
dsfsafasf at February 18, 2008 6:02 PM
Publius keeps digging, presumably for China:
*Radical Islam, or Islamism or Islamo-Fascism, or whatever you wish to call it, is not the danger.*
godscopybook.blogs.com/gpb/2008/02/whos-afraid-of.html
===================================
Schools and teachers in Afghanistan are the most promising light for peace and freedom.
That*s why they are targeted for destruction by the Taliban.
Child poverty in Pakistan and Afghanistan feeds the Madrassah and the Taliban *club*. Logical that impoverished kids accept Osama*s daily meal and sleeping blanket with the customary mind-bending.
Education in Pakistan is mainly for the wealthy. A general school system is mostly missing.
Remember the training video of young boys in balaclavas and AK47s?
The more the West provides for these young people, the fewer brain washed AK47 carriers there will be. = TG
The LS from SK
Second languages are always a good thing. Except when they are forced on you against your will.
I’d rather be learning Zulu 15 hours a day than French 15 seconds a year.
I’d rather learn the world’s 15 most useless languages than French just once.
Being forced to take French in school when the rat bastards of Quebec BAN my language has made me resent their very existence. I despise them an their coniving language.