Reader Tips

Reader Tips 44 Comments

We open tonight’s Tips with a look at the surprising findings of a study recently conducted by a group of researchers at the National Institute of Health.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

44 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  2. The PPG folks and other lamestream media tards are going ape about a new poll showing the NDP leading in Quebec. Not sure what to make of an NDP surge in Quebec yet.

  4. Hurray there’s an Onion News oasis on Youtube! Thank you EBD! This is even better than vodka-swilling hypothermic Scandis (not that I don’t love the skifeet).
    (The comments are great; a lot of people are upset because they think they’re real news stories.)

  6. max, good caption.
    I’ll suggest another:
    “Forget residential schools because we want your kids this time.”

  8. The city of Saskatoon is turning into ONE BIG SHIT HOLE under Don Atchison and this LEFT LEANING CITY COUNCIL. Look around as you travel the city and I’m sure you will arrive at the same conclusion. Where are the street sweepers? Where is the street maintenance crews? 90 million dollars spent on River Landing and not one private developer paying taxes on that site. Don Atchison is a fool. The voters in Saskatoon are stupid. BTW, a 15% pay increase for Murray Totland, the guy running the city, we should pay him to leave before it’s too late.

  9. I know this is the reader tips thread, but I can’t resist commenting on what is probably the most useless piece of “research” I’ve ever encountered.
    Perhaps the investigators should have done some historical investigations first and they might have been struck by the huge number of stabbing and slashing implements created by primitive cultures. They would have run into innumerable examples of individuals being stabbed with subsequent decreased lifespan. In general I support animal research but I don’t support studies which give PETA and animal rights groups ammunition for their campaigns.

  10. EBD – he’s normally so good – erase the 10:59 comment and this one, just Trotsky them right away down the memory hole. We’re all entitled to the odd mistake…

  11. From CBC TV- CROP poll shows NDP leading the Bloc in support in Quebec. Implications if true…who knows?

  12. Thanks for your support, I’ll come down of the ledge now. The fame and fortune from having a blog comment reach the top has gone to my head, and now I spend every waking moment trying to get that rush back. Now I should get back to finding a 1-800 support number…

  16. Some of you in Ontario may be interested in this clip from the Michael Coren Show where guests David Menzies and Dave Shuttleworth hijack the opening and take fellow guest John Clarke, leader of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, to task for his and his group’s methods throughout the years.
    Menzies starts off reminiscing about OCAP members throwing marbles under police horses’ hooves at a riot in front of the Ontario legislature, and it just gets better. This is the first honest criticism of this OCAP jerk that I’ve ever seen.

  17. More from Michael Ignatieff’s The Rights Revolution. The topic now is international affairs; the alleged expert gets tangled up in knots.
    By way of introduction, this: “[from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights onward], the history of the past half-century has been the struggle of colonial peoples for their freedom.” (3)
    Freedom is an individual right. It would likely be better for colonized areas to be governed locally, and studies have shown they were not economically successful for the colonizing power. But many former colonial subjects were worse off under the new rulers, at least at first; millions were murdered in Asia and Africa by “progressive” rulers educated in western Marxism. Not to mention the possibility of a pernicious Marxist influence on the Muslim Brotherhood (the early 20th-century influence on this movement by the Nazis, who share the same philosophical roots as Marxism, is widely known).
    And: “… in many countries in the Islamic world, in Africa and Asia, human rights movements are seen as an alien attempt to impose European standards on cultures and norms that have their own legitimacy.” (44)
    A culture that violates individual rights does not have legitimacy insofar as it does so. Culture has a broad scope, comprised of many facets, the majority of which may be defensible while a few are not, and each must be judged individually. The multicultural, “politically correct” view that all cultures are equal is nonsense.
    Ignatieff: “What entitles Westerners to enforce human rights on other cultures? Nothing does.” (44-45)
    Is mere freedom from colonialism more beneficial than freedom from violent oppression by one’s own tribe? Certainly not.
    The paragraph continues: “If rights are about protecting human agency, then they require us to respect the way other human beings use their agency.” (44-45)
    What if other governments don’t respect their citizens’ “agency”? What if a despot uses his personal agency to destroy his citizens’ agency?
    Further: “The argument that people in other cultures would adopt human-rights standards if they only knew what we know – and that therefore we can intervene, whether or not they want us to – is wrong. The idea that some people are unable to discern their own real interests is an invariable alibi of paternalism or tyranny. Victims are victims only if they say they are. The corollary is also true: we’re mandated to intervene on their behalf only if other peoples and cultures ask for help.” (44-45)
    Does this mean Canadians could use their collective “agency” to discard our alleged “national identity as a progressive people”? Or would doing so show an inability to discern our own real interests?
    Ignatieff: “With each passing year, we get closer to a new dispensation in which the sovereign rights of states are conditional upon there being adequate protections for the basic human rights of citizens. Where states consistently abuse human rights, where all peaceful remedies have been exhausted, the UN may authorize intervention, from sanctions all the way up to a full-scale military campaign. From the world of the 1930s, where the violations of the German Reich were viewed as a strictly internal matter, to the world of the 1990s, where violations in a province of Serbia end up justifying military intervention, we have traveled a long way.” (49)
    What if the UN is in the hands of the rights violators (which it is)? Observe that this paragraph completely contradicts the previous three excerpts, which claim nothing can justify imposing Western human rights standards on other cultures.
    More: “The obligation to protect strangers outside our own borders is indeterminate and unclear – and it could also be dangerous. It may be a warrant for imperialism, and imperialism contradicts one of the basic rights we have: to rule ourselves free of outside interference.” (50)
    And: “What some will see as a mission of humanitarian rescue, others will see as an imperialist violation of the sovereignty of a people” (52).
    “Others” as in “Marxists”, and they can be discounted, because they’ve shown themselves to be the most violent and the worst imperialists and anti-humanitarians of all. Ignatieff has said that he’s no Marxist (which I believe), but frequently uses their term “imperialism”. A gang of thugs seizing power should not be considered an example of a nation “ruling itself”. We all have the right to a properly functioning government that respects individual rights, but that is not the same thing as self-government.
    Further: “We have no business intervening in other people’s lives unless they explicitly ask for help.” (50)
    What if they can’t ask very well, like in North Korea? Cubans have asked for help for decades, and little has come; meanwhile Hondurans in 2009 didn’t ask for help, but got plenty of unwanted attention anyway, despite running their country their way, according to their constitution.
    Compare: “Those who criticize interventions in the name of human rights on the grounds that we must always respect the sovereignty of a state need to remember that the victims of that state are usually imploring us to intervene. That’s the first condition that must be met if interventions are justified: victims must be demanding our help. Other conditions follow: the abuses must be gross and systematic; they must be spilling over into other countries, causing refugee flows and instability in nearby states; and intervention must stand a genuine chance of stopping the abuses.” (50-51)
    Whether abuses spill over into other countries is irrelevant when a government attacks its citizens. The last point about having a chance at success has some validity, but this is more to protect the resources of the taxpayers of the potential intervening countries than anything else. Again we read statements that contradict previous ones. “Those who criticize interventions in the name of human rights” include himself, a few pages earlier.
    Ignatieff: “… problem of reconciling human-rights standards with local values … Should human-rights codes, drafted as they are by a bunch of international lawyers who are elected by nobody, have precedence over national laws passed by representatives of the people?” (45)
    What if “local values” violate rights?
    Here’s the US narcissism comment again, as a comparison: “The US Congress has repeatedly refused to ratify international human-rights documents, from the genocide convention to the Geneva convention’s additional protocols and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Congress construes these documents as either inconsistent with American law or an intrusion on the sovereignty of Congress and the American people. Behind this attitude lies what might be called rights narcissism, the idea that the land of the free and home of the brave has nothing to learn from anybody else.” (46)
    Maybe this is a case of American “local values”? Such values can and do change (witness pre-war versus post-war Japan). Let’s hope he’s not saying that Western societies should be held to higher standards than non-Western ones.
    And: “[The] Nuremberg laws, which abrogated the rights of citizens who happened to be Jewish, were enforced by judges and lawyers raised in the best traditions of European law. One terrifying aspect of Nazi Germany is how gross and immoral injustice was given the semblance of legality, and how these injustices basked in popular support.” (47)
    True of course, but might not these have been the “local values” of the majority of Germans at the time? Obviously that cannot make it right, but the point is that “local values” that violate human rights deserve no respect.
    Finally, with regard to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, Ignatieff says: “Many people feel that any such override by an international body interferes with the rights of national cultures to define their own laws.” (44)
    This could also apply to the United Nations, the Kyoto treaty, NAFTA and the WTO, and other international agreements.

  18. Posted by: DJ at April 20, 2011 10:54 PM
    Apparently you keep pasting this. I strongly disagree. Atch has done more for this city in 5 years than the previous councils did in 20. Letter to the editor this week actually blamed him for snow melting. Kid you not. Yeah, the streets are bad. Bad winter.

  20. RT: If you’re a female SDA commenter and you’re trying to figure out what to get your hardworking husband for his birthday, you should definitely go with a multi-pack of floral or patchouli-scented mini-candles. Men love scented candles.

  21. More from Michael Ignatieff, The Rights Revolution. His thoughts on issues relating to the family.
    Ignatieff: “During the past 40 years, the rights revolution has penetrated the most intimate spheres of private life.” (86)
    Private life mainly concerns the right to freedom of association, plus the right not to suffer spousal abuse, and the like.
    Ignatieff: “Women still do not earn equal pay for equal work and the burdens of unpaid child care still fall disproportionately upon them.” (86)
    Child care paid by whom? Parents are responsible for raising their children. These burdens are a topic for spouses to work out between themselves. And “equal pay for equal work” is between employer and employee. On general principles of fairness, people should be paid roughly the same for performing approximately the same work with about the same degree of competence. But this is not a place where state coercion should be invoked.
    Ignatieff: “Much of the complaint about family life focuses not on sacrifice per se, but on inequality of sacrifice. In Canada, statistics show that even now, after a generation of feminist progress, 70 per cent of the burden of caring for children, the aged, the disabled and the sick falls on women, most of whom receive no pay for these essential tasks. (97-98)
    These issues must also be resolved within the individual family. He comments elsewhere, “divorced moms get 86% of the custody, and 40% of dads see kids once a month” (page 104); might this help explain the 70% burden?
    More: “Yet even though the rights revolution in private life remains unfinished, it is hard to imagine that it will not run its full course.” (86)
    If the finished “rights revolution in private life” means coercive state interference with individual rights such as by kangaroo court “human rights” commissions invading family decisions, then let’s hope not. We would all be finished.
    Ignatieff: “By modern, I mean any society based on markets and individual rights … [since 1700,] social critics have contended that market life endangers stabilizing institutions such as the family.” (91)
    Conservatives have argued that social activists pushing the pill, easy divorce, etc., do the same. More importantly, the “political correctness” agenda specifies direct attacks on the family as an institution.
    And: “Capitalism’s chronic instability used to be chiefly blamed for harming family life. But newer critiques emphasize the destabilizing effects of abundance. Abundance changes the moral economy of a society, by favouring values of consumption over saving, self-assertion over self-restraint, present-mindedness over future-orientation.” (91-92)
    Progress that sweeps away outdated products or businesses is not the same thing as “instability”, which is an anti-concept in this context. Abundance doesn’t favour consumption, it just makes it more of an option – in an increasingly productive economy, most people can both consume more and save more. However, abundance certainly causes politicians to favour consumption – they are present-minded (or next-election-minded), wasting billions of tax dollars in an effort to buy votes. Successful businessmen, on the other hand, are usually future-oriented; they attempt to produce and sell more or cheaper or better goods and services, which brings them profits while raising the masses’ standard of living – a win-win situation. Finally, critics of capitalism are always trying to come up with new angles, none the least bit convincing. Their only real complaint is that it does not satisfy their every whim on demand – for which only infants should be indulged. Capitalism is for adults.
    From the same paragraph: “Abundance has other moral effects as well. Societies of scarcity are obsessed with distribution and therefore with equality; societies of abundance care less about distribution once poverty ceases to manifest itself as absolute deprivation. Paradoxically, abundant societies that could actually solve the problem of poverty seem to care less than societies of scarcity that can’t. This paradox may help to explain why the rights revolution of the past forty years has made inequalities of gender, race and sexual orientation visible while the older inequalities of class and income have dropped from the registers of indignation.” (92)
    If it isn’t “absolute deprivation”, it’s only a problem to the equality ideologues. If the welfare state – which remains in full force – cannot solve this alleged problem, then nothing can. The real issue is differences in abilities, intelligence and ambition. Isn’t it interesting how the leftists flog differences of race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on, but completely evade those in the economic sphere?
    The kicker: “Families that work need help to survive – help that includes decent public education, publicly funded daycare, universal health care free at point of need, and unemployment insurance. Families also need respite from the devouring impact of work and stress on intimate life. We need to change the employment laws so that family life is not squeezed between the millstones of two precarious incomes. The key goal of our social policy should be to give families the time they need to be together.” (110)
    Name one instance of “help” for the family that isn’t paid for by its own taxes in the first place – and not before a sizable percentage is squandered. Meanwhile, abundance is the best way to reduce the incidence of “precarious” incomes, but it is under siege due to an excess of government interference in the productive economy through taxation, regulation and bureaucracy.
    Again: “Much as deficit-reducing conservatives may lament the fact, the test of serious moral commitment to the family is a willingness to spend public money. Effective child protection, universal access to health care, affordable child care, first-rate primary and secondary education … ” (111)
    Lower taxes! Child protection is part of the justice system. Child care should be up to parents, but it might not be such a big issue if both parents didn’t need to work because of the wastage of public money. And when does government ever provide high-quality anything? We’re still waiting for the “first-rate” education system after 200 years, many observers say it has been declining for decades, and concerned parents are deserting it in droves for private schools and home schooling. People can look after themselves and their families far better than government can.
    Ignatieff: “The conservative critique of permissiveness has its points, but it is reactionary … It wants to turn the clock back, and to do so by means of coercive legislation – such as making divorce more difficult and penalizing single parents – which would violate conservatism’s own commitments to the freedom of the individual.” (101)
    “Penalizing” how? Failing to provide handouts for single parents is not coercive; taxation and “redistribution of wealth” are. This may be another example of the leftist tactic of blurring the distinction between voluntary and coerced. A commitment to freedom of the individual precludes welfare state handouts and favours voluntary charities. The welfare state should eventually be scrapped – with a few years’ grace before starting the demolition, and with the understanding that public pension commitments and the like must be honoured.
    More: “So-called family values, as propagated in the rhetoric of North American popular entertainment, pulpit sermonizing and political homily, are a downright tyranny. They make people feel inadequate, ashamed or guilty about their inability to conform to what is in fact a recent post-war suburban norm of family domesticity.” (102-103)
    Tyranny? Is there something wrong with family domesticity? Is it not also a form of progress?
    Finally, this interesting comment: “If pregnant mothers so abuse themselves with drugs and alcohol that they damage their children, they should feel the penalties of the law.” (102)
    He may not be aware of it, but in the D. F. G. decision in 1997 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the opposite way (though only by a 5-4 majority).

  22. A British thug in Canada, on display. I find it interesting that the most despicable militant Leftists in Canada often have a British accent. I sense that these thugs left the UK during the Thatcher years and are now doing their best to wreck our country. 🙁

  23. Speech on Capitol Hill
    Last week I was in Washington meeting with lawmakers about recent events in the Middle East. Among other things, I gave brief remarks at the Center for Security Policy national security luncheon on the hill. Speaking with me were Cong. Allen West, an extraordinary man and great American patriot and friend of Israel, and Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy under President George W. Bush.
    Video’s
    http://www.carolineglick.com/e/

  24. Here are some excerpts from Michael Ignatieff’s The Rights Revolution on the subject of equality rights.
    Ignatieff: “In one sense, the rights revolution is a story of inclusion, of how previously excluded groups obtained rights of equality. In this regard, the extension of rights has widened and deepened our democracy. In a second sense, however, the rights revolution has been about protecting certain groups from the effects of democracy.” (page 1)
    Rights mean individuals are “protected from the effects of democracy”, because a legislature should not to be able to vote to violate someone’s rights. The question of the limits of democratic government action versus the rights of the individual is the central one in a free society. But the “right to equality” does not mean the same thing as “equal rights”. Only the latter is legitimate.
    “Inclusion” is another anti-concept, a touchy-feely term from the political correctness arena to recruit minorities and “victim” groups as a substitute working class for the purposes of overthrowing Western civilization and capitalism. And “wide” and “deep” are not adjectives that properly modify the noun “democracy”. Democracy is about electing representatives into government; either you have it or you don’t.
    Ignatieff: “Reconciling group and individual rights is not easy. Canadians want both their equality recognized and their differences respected.” (ix)
    Also: “How can we create a society where everyone has rights without flattening out the differences that give us our identity as individuals and as peoples?” (57)
    This is a false dichotomy. Equal rights and difference are unrelated concepts. A person does not obtain special rights from being “different”. One’s universal individual rights hold without regard to differences.
    Ignatieff: “If the supreme value that rights seek to protect is human agency, then the chief expression of human agency is difference, the ceaseless affirmation of disguises, identities, and claims, at once individually and collectively. To believe in rights is to believe in defending difference.” (53)
    Here again is the anti-concept “agency” rather than “freedom”. The supreme value that rights seek to protect is human life. Difference is not an expression; it contrasts one expression to another.
    Ignatieff: “… the trouble with equality is that no one actually wants to be treated just like everybody else. … Each of us wants to be treated equally and to be recognized as different. We want other people to acknowledge us as individuals, and as members of groups, to recognize the status that goes with being somebody different. In private life, we usually get this recognition. But we also want our distinctiveness recognized in public. As citizens, we want public officials to pay attention to us as individuals with particular needs.” (55)
    Public officials are not supposed to pay attention to our “needs” unless we have a complaint that someone has used force or fraud to violate our rights. Otherwise we are responsible for our own needs.
    Ignatieff: “The equality project fits well with the Newtonian image of political space as unified green baize. The difference project implies a political space that looks more like a patchwork quilt.” (57-58)
    Who formulates and defines these “projects”? The elite that worries about unruliness? The one that looks after our “national identity as a progressive people” despite there being is “no stable consensus in favour” of it? The use of business language in this context sounds rather cynical. Also, a “civic equality project” shows up on page 65, and a “Quebec sovereignty project” on another page.
    Ignatieff: “Recognition is a very Canadian idea, since it was a Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor, who first put it into parlance among political philosophers. … Groups … want the majority to recognize them … to acknowledge that they are equal, not only in law, but in moral consideration.” (86)
    The groups will have to settle for individual rights equal in law, because individual moral judgments are protected by freedom of conscience. Recognition in this context has nothing to do with the state.
    More: “Beyond legal equality, groups seek acknowledgement of the value of their culture, heritage, and distinctive point of view.” (87)
    What if one thinks a group’s culture has little or no value? What if it has a point of view that is ludicrous? Are socialists considered a group for this? Their point of view is evil and destructive. Not every group has a point of view, and not every person within a group shares the same point of view.
    And: “The whole difficulty about recognition turns on the question of whether it means acquiescence, acceptance or approval. When a majority grants a minority rights, is it required to acquiesce to, accept or actively approve the practices of this group? … does equality of rights necessarily require equality of approval? The majority has conceded equality of rights to homosexuals, but this seems not to imply approval, merely reluctant tolerance.” (87)
    We have the right to smoke, but that does not imply “approval” by a governmental authority. The same would hold should the drug laws be abolished. One need not approve of gays’ sexual activities but one must respect their right to engage in them insofar as they are non-coercive – the same right that we have regarding our own. This is what equal rights means. Finally, the comment about a majority granting a minority rights contradicts his other comments about rights being inherent (or more likely is just sloppy writing).
    More: “… it might even be claimed that anything less than full approval denies the excluded individual (or group) recognition of his or her status as an equal. But there is a problem here – and it is colloquially called political correctness. One fundamental criticism of the rights revolution is that it engenders a coercive culture of ritualized, insincere approval.” (87-88)
    If it’s coerced, it’s a violation of rights. Elsewhere he claimed the “rights revolution” led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Those who advocate a “coercive culture of ritualized insincere approval” are blood brothers of the totalitarian thugs who put the Wall up in the first place.
    Further: “So political correctness becomes a code word for a new form of moral tyranny: the tyranny of the minority over the majority. You can’t speak of sexual promiscuity among gay people, lest you appear to be demeaning gays in general. You can’t speak against affirmative-action programs that favour women, lest you seem to be denying women full recognition and respect. And so on” (88).
    Here are the most totalitarian comments in Ignatieff’s book: “Whether these constraints on public speech are actually a form of tyranny is another matter. … coarse, offensive and demeaning remarks about women and gays were commonplace in the male culture of recent times. Creating a culture where groups are freed from the dismal drizzle of these remarks cannot be regarded as a serious constraint on the free speech of those attached to these stereotypes. So on balance, the idea that the rights revolution ends in coercive political correctness seems obviously misconceived. Yet closing down a culture of casual and ill-considered abuse is quite different from moving a culture towards full-hearted approval of same-sex activity and positive discrimination in favour of women.” (88-89)
    So he does want to “close down a culture” – that is, violate freedom of speech – in the name of political correctness and insincere approval. Apparently this “culture” is not as equal as others. Apparently, in the views of Michael Ignatieff, one cannot express of disapproval towards affirmative action or gay marriage without the state shutting you up. Here is “group rights” destroying legitimate individual rights, in contradiction to his previous comments about restraining government power and that individual rights should prevail.
    It is an exceedingly serious constraint on freedom of speech to punish remarks that are merely offensive (as opposed to threatening) – and the examples he uses here are not even offensive. Recall that defending the rights of those you disagree with is the hallmark of a principled position.
    This demonstrates conclusively that the so-called “rights revolution”, in which proper rights like free speech can be sacrificed to a phony one like the right not to be offended, ends in coercion and thus is illegitimate. If there is any passage in The Rights Revolution that demonstrates Michael Ignatieff is unfit to become prime minister of Canada, it is this one.
    There’s even more in the paragraph: “Rights equality changes moral culture because groups demand recognition. As they do so, they force sexual majorities beyond toleration toward recognition and approval. So long as this process is negotiated, so long as it is not presented as a unilateral demand for surrender, rights equality can be followed by full recognition. But if the majority feels coerced into according approval, rather than just toleration, the result is likely to be a backlash. Once the relationships between rights and moral change is understood as a protracted process of intercultural negotiation between majority and minority, it becomes clear that rights are a necessary precondition for recognition, but not a sufficient one.” (88-89)
    “Negotiated”? By whom? And for whom? The “dismal drizzle” remark sounds like a unilateral demand for surrender. Once again, “recognition” of difference is no concern of the state.
    There’s nothing to negotiate. Rights are not a precondition for “recognition”, only for a life lived free from coercion – including coercion by government. The right to freedom of conscience includes that of dissent, which includes the right not to “recognize” or “approve”. The most that can be said is that in some instances, offending remarks may come close to harassment or to a threat of violence, which we do have a right to be free from. Anyone may state his case in favour of his point of view or his practices, and criticize others – that’s the benefit of freedom of speech.
    On the same topic: “… the rights revolution sometimes seems to have fragmented the political community into aggrieved victims’ groups, each seeking its rights at the expense of others.” (17)
    When its modus operandi is to dish out phony rights that infringe on the genuine rights of others, what else would one expect? But the Marxists brought that on, affirmative action (or employment equity) derives from it, and no doubt it’s part of their political correctness agenda. Genuine rights do not come at the expense of others.
    At end of a paragraph on aboriginal rights, Ignatieff says, “The overall objective for all concerned is to find a way to recognize group rights while maintaining the unity of Canadian citizenship, so that we do not have either second-class citizens or privileged ones, and we can maintain equal moral consideration for all Canadians.” (121-122)
    Group rights lead directly to second-class citizenship, as we will soon see.
    The next paragraph begins: “This goes beyond balancing rights. It also means balancing acts of recognition.” (122)
    This goes beyond rational argument, it’s just babbling incoherently.
    Re affirmative action, Ignatieff writes, “American rights culture is intransigently individualistic, so much so that affirmative action programs that were designed to overcome the historical disadvantages of particular groups – especially blacks and women – have run up against the belief that favouring groups in this way discriminates against individuals in other groups.” (11)
    This belief is absolutely correct. However, Americans are not as individualistic as one might think; otherwise they would probably not have elected Barack Obama as president.
    Ignatieff: “In Canada, by contrast, affirmative action and aboriginal rights form an accepted part of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” (12)
    Accepted by whom? Section 15(2) of the Charter is a travesty of justice, a significant mistake among dozens in that document that should be fixed.
    Ignatieff: “Whether someone is male or female, black or white, straight or gay, may be central to their identity, but these differences should be strictly irrelevant to the way we treat them as persons.” (14)
    True, it should be irrelevant, but “how we treat them” individually as private citizens is not the same as rights. And none of these characteristics should be central to identity, which is mainly individual.
    More: “It is character, not skin colour, and conduct, not identity, that matters when we size people up.” (15)
    True again, the view of Martin Luther King, but it contradicts the enthusiasm for affirmative action.
    Ignatieff: “If rights aren’t equal, they wouldn’t be rights, just a set of privileges for separate groups of individuals. The essential purpose of any political community based on rights is to protect that equality on behalf of everyone. What holds a nation together, then, is this commitment we each make to treat all individuals the same.” (55)
    Government must treat everyone the same, but if private individuals don’t, it’s not a matter that threatens the nation. A person’s rights are not violated by a private individual’s refusal to deal with him, as Ayn Rand stated; this falls under freedom of association (such refusal will usually be immoral, however).
    Here’s Ignatieff’s defense of affirmative action: “Privileges are possible, within a rights system, when they are temporary, when they are designed to correct past injustices. The affirmative-action programs accorded women and disadvantaged minorities are privileges in the strict sense that not all citizens have access to them. Yet these exceptions are justified, since their purpose is not to frustrate equality but to make equality a reality for all.” (73-74)
    The exceptions are not justified. One problem is that the people favoured by affirmative action are not the ones disadvantaged in the past, and may not even be descendants of them. Any privilege, whether affirmative action or robbing Peter to pay Paul generally, is divisive (the same holds true for equalization payments and so-called regional adjustment with respect to national unity). Peter becomes the second-class citizen.
    Trying to bring about equal rights through unequal rights, i.e. special privileges, like fighting for peace in the old adage, is like “f***ing for virginity”.
    More: “… once the injustice has been corrected, should the privilege become permanent?” (74)
    They never get corrected because the activists claim the injustices are “systemic”, which is an attempt to preclude analysis.

  25. EBD – It’s a rip-off experiment. I did a very similar one using a 22 and gophers … many, many years ago. I got paid zip!!!
    Unless I get lots of money … and I mean right now … bunnies … then kittens.

  27. All Hail The Kinquering Cong*.
    >>> Aux Armes, socialists. Le Taliban Jack LaytoNDP is Numero Un/Top Dog/Mr. Clean in La Grande Coalition Separatist.
    Jack has won his war against poverty and his MuGShot will now grace the wall of the CCF/NDP Museum/PET Cemetery in Regina, Saskatchewan, to the right of Tommy Douglas.
    Jack will retire ASAP: Le New Chef? M. Mulcair.
    You heard it first on BLY.
    Stay tuned for Liberal Count Ignatieff’s concession Tweet on MSM this morning following Jack Le Chef’s victory speech.
    …-
    “De son côté, Jack Layton se trouve à Toronto, où il doit rencontrer les médias en matinée.”
    “Sondages – Le NPD a la préférence des Québécois”
    http://www.ruefrontenac.com/nouvelles-generales/politiquefederale/36627-sondage-npd
    http://www.bluelikeyou.com/2011/04/20/game-changer/#comment-72860
    *H/T Dr. Spoonerism

  28. Nova, on PBS last evening, was an incredible Climate Change piece, complete with starring roles by Stephen Chu, John Holdren, Al Gore, experts from Berkeley…
    Funded by… the usual cast of leftie ‘foundations’, and NASA.
    180 degree change on nuclear energy by the environmentalists… China was featured as having the modular safe nuclear energy solution…
    Not a single voice in opposition. How scientific.
    A one hour propaganda piece, most likely lashed up (i.e. produced) after Fukushima.
    China good. USA bad. China the model.

  29. Count Ignatieff was in Yarmouth, N.S. last night promising the return of the Portland to Yarmouth ferry, which our first (and last we hope) NDipper government removed as soon as they gained power.
    See Yarmouthian Lynn A. Hemeon’s tribute “Coalition Blues” on: Yarmouth The Real Truth.
    Warning: Moderator may not approve…

  31. Da Big Game Changer: Da Big Gum Registry Registrar*.
    “*Le petit gars. The big gun comes out next week for the Liberals. Jean Chrétien, the former prime minister of three majority governments, is to campaign with Michael Ignatieff in the Toronto area, likely next Wednesday.” (Tabolo)
    …-
    “The gun a man brandished at a Buckingham elementary school – where he allegedly briefly held a teacher and students hostage – was legally purchased by the man and legally registered. Does this say something about the Long Gun Registry?
    Yes. It shows the Registry is a waste of money and all about gun control “optics”
    87.2%
    No. It’s immaterial. The Registry is a valuable tool for investigators and police response units
    11.3%
    Other
    1.36%”
    (CFRA)
    …-
    *Da Big Gum Changer:
    http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,17286761
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/price-was-right-for-liberals-to-advertise-on-sun-news-debut/article1990943/

  32. Help!
    Did i see Michael Iffy saying last nite on the National That he did not say what he said to Mansbridge the other day about a Confidence in the Govt after the election That he denied he will go to the GG, And did i not hear him say Its only Stephen Harper fear mongoring.
    thanks

  33. I just watched the clip Of course not a headline now, But its there CTV.ca with Fife
    Ignatieff says, No No I repeat NO, I was only talking about constitution, He is trying to deflect the mistake he made. They you have Layton Adamatly saying No to a deal with Harper he wants him gone.
    So the Fix is in folks The liberals will bring a Non-Confidence if the Conservatives win a minority & with the help of the NDP, BQ party? they will Overthrow the will of the People and looking at the New Nanos i would say that Interview with Mansbridge is reonating with the people a drop in polls down in Dion territory.
    Ignatieff won’t take lessons in Democracy from Harper
    http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20110420/main-election-110420/20110420?s_name=election2011

  35. “Did i see Michael Iffy saying last nite on the National That he did not say what he said to Mansbridge the other day about a Confidence in the Govt after the election That he denied he will go to the GG, And did i not hear him say Its only Stephen Harper fear mongoring”
    Don’t you just love video tapes!:)

  37. @globejunius is twittering an interview with Atwood. About the only non-catty thing I can say about her unhinged rambling is that it makes “Rise up, rise up” look like the work of a genius.

  38. Here is one gem “Answer: “there is a hidden agenda, and it’s a religious one. Elect a majority, and all will be revealed.” Says @MargaretAtwood”
    Sure, like the Handmaid’s Tale. I think the poor woman has completely given up on objective reality and replaced it with her works of fiction.

  42. Our federal government is apparently going to appeal the OSC ruling that ended pot prohibition. My decision to vote Liberal is pre-emptively vindicated.

  44. Liberal Count Ignatieff’s Bang-Bang Theory of Socialism’s Brotherhood.
    The death-struggle of the socialist brothers.
    Jack LaytoNDP: “*My head exploded that year.”
    …-
    “Yet Thursday, Mr. Ignatieff linked the Montreal Massacre and the fact that NDP Leader Jack Layton did not force his MPs to vote in favour of the federal gun registry. The registry is largely inspired by the 1989 shootings, which saw a gunman kill 14 women at Montreal’s École Polytechnique.
    “Who’s going to stand up and defend the firearms registry? Jack Layton wasn’t there on the firearms registry, just ask the victims of the Polytechnique,” he said.”
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/to-counter-ndps-quebec-gains-ignatieff-touts-real-political-experience/article1994618/?from=sec368
    *Jack:
    http://www.gendercide.org/case_montreal.html

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation