Barrel Strength

Roger Scruton’s speech to Vlaams Belang  has touched upon the essential beliefs of the ruling sectors of the liberal intelligentsia, whose ideas still govern us even if conservatives are in power.

(If you doubt their ideas still rule, then why are there still human rights commissions and mass immigration of people unqualified to become Canadians and who will forever be a source of dissension, social dysfunction and underachievement?. Why the policing of thought to prevent accurate discussion of immigration and race?)

It is worth reading the whole speech that Scruton gave. I have extracted key points for the sake of brevity.

“For a long time now the European political class has been in denial about the problems posed by the large-scale immigration of people who do not enter into our European way of life. It has turned angrily on those who have warned against the disruption that might follow, or who have affirmed the right of indigenous communities to refuse admission to people who cannot or will not assimilate. And one of the weapons that the élite has used, in order to ensure that it is never troubled by the truths that it denies, is to accuse those who wish to discuss the problem of ‘racism and xenophobia’. People of my generation have been brought up in fear of this charge, just as the people of Salem were brought up in the fear of being denounced as witches….

“Every society depends on an experience of membership: a sense of who ‘we’ are, why we belong together, and what we share. This experience is pre-political: it precedes all political institutions, and provides our reason for accepting them. It unites left and right, blue-collar and white-collar, man and woman, parent and child. To threaten this ‘first-person plural’ is to open the way to atomisation, as people cease to recognize any general duty to their neighbours, and set out to pillage the accumulated resources while they can. Without membership we risk a new ‘tragedy of the commons’, as our inherited social assets are seized for present use….

“Members of our liberal élite may be immune to xenophobia, but there is an equal fault which they exhibit in abundance, which is the repudiation of, and aversion to, home. Each country exhibits this vice in its own domestic version….

“This repudiation of the national idea is the result of a peculiar frame of mind that has arisen throughout the Western world since the Second World War, and which is particularly prevalent among the intellectual and political elites….

“I call the attitude oikophobia– the aversion to home – by way of emphasizing its deep relation to xenophobia, of which it is the mirror image. Oikophobia is a stage through which the adolescent mind normally passes. But it is a stage in which intellectuals tend to become arrested….

“The domination of our national Parliaments and the EU machinery by oikophobes is partly responsible for the acceptance of subsidised immigration, and for the attacks on customs and institutions associated with traditional and native forms of life. The oikophobe repudiates national loyalties and defines his goals and ideals againstthe nation, promoting transnational institutions over national governments, accepting and endorsing laws that are imposed from on high by the EU or the UN, and defining his political vision in terms of cosmopolitan values that have been purified of all reference to the particular attachments of a real historical community. The oikophobe is, in his own eyes, a defender of enlightened universalism against local chauvinism. And it is the rise of oikophobia that has led to the growing crisis of legitimacy in the nation states of Europe. For we are seeing a massive expansion of the legislative burden on the people of Europe, and a relentless assault on the only loyalties that would enable them voluntarily to bear it….

“It is in the light of these double standards that the charge of ‘racism and xenophobia’ should be assessed. It is a charge almost invariably levelled at members of the indigenous communities of Europe, and in particular against those at the bottom of the social scale, for whom mass immigration is a cost that they have not been schooled (and through no fault of their own) to bear. It is levelled too at political parties that attempt to represent those people, and who promise them some relief from a problem that no other party seems willing to address. Those who level the charge are almost invariably in the grip of oikophobia….

“It is vital that the European states achieve an effective integration of their immigrant communities; but if the liberal élite will not discuss the matter, and continue to put all blame for the growing anxiety on the xenophobia of the indigenous population while ignoring the oikophobia which is an equal contributory cause, then the likely long-term effect will be a popular explosion, and one from which no-one will benefit, least of all the immigrant communities.”

When you use the Internet, you do not need prior government permission. When you broadcast, you do, and you become subject to myriad rules regarding Canadian content. Also vast fines for broadcasting without a licence. So it is essential that the Courts not classify the activities of Internet service providers, as well as you and me, as “broadasting”.

The CRTC referred the issue to the Federal Court of Appeal for a decision. The answer came back from Mr. Justice Noel:

The answer to the reference question is as follows: Retail Internet service providers  (ISPs) do not carry on, in whole or in part, “broadcasting undertakings” subject to the Broadcasting Act, S.C. 1991, c. 11 when, in their role as ISPs, they provide access through the Internet to “broadcasting” requested by end-users.

The importance of this decision is that it makes it much more difficult for some future set of commissioners at the CRTC to decide that the Internet is “broadcasting” and thereby subject it and you, dear reader, to a vast expansion of government licencing of speech. Thank you, Mr. Justice Noel and colleagues Nadon and Dawson on the Federal Court of Appeal.

In the past week the British papers I have perused have reported:

• A town councillor gets a visit from two policemen for putting a sign in his window in red and blue letters, on a white background, saying: “Get the lot out”. The police suggested that a red, white and blue sign had “racist” connotations. “They said the Union Jack-coloured lettering on a white background could be considered ‘racist’.”
  He was told there had been a single complaint and he was ordered to remove it or change it otherwise he would end up in court.”

“And the furious pensioner , chairman of his local history society and a former Samaritan , slammed police for wasting their time.

“He said : ‘Three years ago vandals put a brick through my window and when I called the police all they offered me was a crime reference number.

No police visit was required for a physical crime, but the possibility of thought crime deserved their special attention.

• A black Christian evangelical counsellor was fired from his job, without recourse, for failing to provide sexual advice to a gay couple on how to improve their love-life, on the grounds that his christian faith required such conduct it. Regardless of his interpretation of Christianity, he failed in his lawsuit because religious belief was not a suitable ground of refusal. The same appeal court judge (Lord Laws)  who ruled this way had also ruled in a previous case that a man fired for excessive adherence to global warming doctrines was entitled to a religious defence.

“Lord Justice Laws condemned any attempt to protect believers who take a stand on matters of conscience under the law as “irrational” and “capricious”.

“In comments likely to set the church on a collision course with the courts, he claimed that doing so could set Britain on the road to a “theocracy”, or religious rule.

“While acknowledging the profound influence of Judeo-Christian traditions over many centuries, he insisted that no religious belief itself could be protected under the law “however long its tradition, however rich its culture”.

“The promulgation of law for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds cannot therefore be justified,” he said.

“It is irrational, as preferring the subjective over the objective. But it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary.”

He added: “If they did … our constitution would be on the road to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic.”

But Darren Sherborne, a partner at the law form Rickerbys, said that Lord Justice Laws’s judgment “wrong” open to challenge at the Supreme Court because it placed sexual practices over religious beliefs.

“For him to say a subjective idea isn’t capable of protection completely undermines the 2006 Equality Act which was intended to protect people from discrimination on the grounds of their beliefs,” he said.

“The law has developed to the point where even a belief in the environment is held to be protected.

“There is scope for a challenge to the Supreme Court and I would expect it to be.

“If he doesn’t (challenge it), in my opinion this is one more straw in the camel’s back which is heading for the encouragement … of more extreme religious beliefs.

• A Christian street preacher was arrested and locked in a cell for telling a passer-by that homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God.

“Dale McAlpine was charged with causing “harassment, alarm or distress” after a homosexual police community support officer (PCSO) overheard him reciting a number of “sins” referred to in the Bible, including blasphemy, drunkenness and same sex relationships.

“The 42-year-old Baptist, who has preached Christianity in Workington, Cumbria for years, said he did not mention homosexuality while delivering a sermon from the top of a stepladder, but admitted telling a passing shopper that he believed it went against the word of God.”

• Atheists seek to ban Christian prayer before town council meetings on the grounds that it offends the human rights of non-believers.
• A Muslim defaces a war memorial with a slogan saying “Islam shall prevail over all” , among others, but his prosecution fails to prosecute this as a “religious” or “racially motivated” act.

“A file was sent to lawyers at the Counter Terrorism Division of the CPS in London to see if there was a racially or religiously motivated connotation.

“However when Shah appeared before magistrates this week, prosecutor Andrew Bodger said: ‘It was decided there was not enough evidence to prove this, and they decided it was politically motivated.’

“Defending, Mumtaz Chaudry said Shah did not hold extremist views. ‘This is nothing to do with his religious beliefs, his family’s beliefs or his cultural beliefs,’ he said. ‘He is just an ordinary guy. ”

“Khadim Thathall, a former president of a mosque in the town, said: ‘This young man has clearly been radicalised by groups which are looking to cause trouble and it’s a pity that the court hasn’t been able to deal with him more strictly.’

(Good for you, Khadim Thathall!  You are cleaer on the concept than the Director of Public Prosecutions.)

 

• The strange thing is, David Cameron has resolutely refused to take up any of  these issuea in the British general election. Thinking minds ask: why not?

I am bored stiff with Canadian politics and I suspect you are too. Indeed I am bored with US politics. The global warming scare is fizzling out. The outcomes on several fronts are predictable and they work,  in general, towards conservative aims and outcomes. The only uncertain issue, in the grand strategic sense, is whether we will be forcibly Islamized in 25 years, or not.

Glorious Leader Harper moves the jello which makes up this country to the right, and any change he can make below the level of public discussion he makes, and any change requiring public discussion he does not make. Thus immigration and refugee policy can get fixed by administrative action, but the Human Rights Commissions march onward until they meet their deserved fate: ignominy and dismantlement. But not now.

Obama continues to screw up at his own pace, stiffing his allies and appeasing our enemies.  He will be punished at the mid-terms in spectacular fashion, and the issue is whether he will be considered worse than Jimmy Carter, or slightly better. I already have several bets out that he is a one-term President and I see no sign that my money is at risk.

Free-speech issues, which are really substitutes for the Islamic issue, are now being engaged, and they will play out over years. Sensible people  are not always winning them, but we are engaging a larger segment of society in the necessary discussions of race, class, religion, intelligence distribution, and why they cannot be discussed in frank terms.   The free-speech issues are important because they mark the boundaries that leftists want to put on freedom of discussion in the West, which is to say: they want to end it entirely for everyone, possibly including themselves. And, just as they did in the days of Communism, there is always a large contingent of leftists who hate liberal constitutional democracy and their own culture more than they fear the outside threat.

Only in the case of Islam, the threat is now inside the house, because of senseless immigration policies.

The Muslim issue is the new Communism. The same issues ae being asked. What is communism?Are there  really such people as communists? What do they intend towards us? Have they infiltrated our governments?

Islam is resuming  a thousand three hundred year long battle with everyone else, after a pause when their political arrangements (the Ottoman Empire and the Barbary pirates) were crushed.

The same sorts of naivety, enthusiasm, folly, intimidation, appeasement, infiltration and refusal to discuss the matter are occurring in relation to Islam as occurred in relation Communism.

The collapse of Christianity is leaving a vast spiritual vacuum in the West, and the Muslims are merely filling it.

Thus it was with great pleasure I turned this past Easter weekend from secular concerns to Jesus’ really bad day upon the cross, and to a brilliant, deeply learned, and well thought out book by the San Francisco philosopher and historian of religion, Jacob Needleman, whose What is God? counts among the 30 most important books I have read.

I thought it would be one of those duty-books that I occasionally read because, like broccoli, they are good for me, though dry and distasteful. Nothing of the sort. It caught me from the opening pages of childhood recollection, and continued straight through to the end, opening larger and deeper vistas. (His description of his boundless loathing, as a young Jewish man, for Saint Augustine aroused in me nothing but sympathy, and outright laughter, as he burns every page of The City of God one evening in outrage).

Needleman’s book leads through a painless and engaged  discussion of western philosophy and religious thinking to spiritual pratices and thence to an exposition of the thought of George Gurdjieff and his followers.

I have bought two copies of “What is God?” to lend to my children and friends, and I have just ordered a dozen books on Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, John Sinclair (Lord Pentland), Jeanne de Salzman and the other disciples.

Jacob Needleman’s “What is God?” is a tonic for your soul. You have one, you know, and it needs exercise and refreshment. It is a good guide to begin thinking about the question because, as he says, the answer to “who is God?” is entirely bound up with the question “who are you?”. And I am  more concerned with those two questions than I am with any other at this time.

_______________________

An engaging on-line resource of writing by Gurdjieff’s disciples can be found at http://books.google.ca/books?id=oyZ14dBwIZMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=gurdjieff&source=bl&ots=D0EsZqpKq6&sig=NqoXKG0W5l_DWFI-vw4gCghG7HE&hl=en&ei=ZlG_S42JFMH78Aai0az8CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=17&ved=0CDUQ6AEwEA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Robert Fowler’s address to the Liberal Party suggests that something has profoundly changed for the better in Canadian politics. The Conservatives are in charge of foreign policy, and we aren’t playing even-handedly between Muslims and Jews in the Middle East. To Robert Fowler, this is a disaster. To the rest of us, it is another example of how Canada is shifting fundamentally for the better, away from moral equivalence between good and evil.

Fowler said both major parties have been enticed by the allure of political gains within the Jewish community. He said it is a strategy that leads to an unproductive support for Israel and undermines Canada’s reputation as a trusted mediator in the Middle East.

 ”The scramble to lock up the Jewish vote in Canada meant selling out our widely admired and long-established reputation for fairness and justice,” Fowler said.

 ”As the globe has become smaller and meaner, Canadian governments have turned inward and adopted me-first stances across the international agenda,” he said.

 ”Canada’s reputation and proud international traditions have been diminished as a result.”

“A proud international tradition” of standing impartial as between Israel and Muslim aggression. That reminds me of George Jonas’ comment about how the cops now stand impartial between mobs trying to shut down conservatives and the conservative speakers, like they would stand impartial between a robbery in progress and the victim.

“The only group exhibiting Canadian-style restraint was the police. They cast a calm eye on the pandemonium, took a balanced view and chose no sides between people trying to exercise their rights and bullies trying to prevent them. Resisting any temptation to enforce the law, Ottawa’s finest exemplified Canada’s definition of moral leadership by observing neutrality between lawful and lawless.”

The news this past week has been replete with evidence of every form of spiritual rot in academe: Coulter at the University of Ottawa, and the 16 profs at the University of Saskabush who protested the scholarships for the children of those servicemen killed in the course of duty. But the rot in the Liberal party goes unnoticed, because it has been with us for so long. Robert Fowler is one of those Liberal top civil servants whose services we are now living without, and may it continue.

Please vote.

Update:   From Macleans, “We came together because we’re angry about the fact that Ann Coulter’s views risked being exposed on our campus,” said University of Ottawa student Mike Fancie.  Who gave this clown and a wannabe Goebbels the authorization to act on behalf of others?

March 22, 2010

M. François Houle
Vice-recteur aux études / Vice-President Academic and Provost
Université d’Ottawa / University of Ottawa
550, rue Cumberland Street
Ottawa (ON) K1N 6N5

Dear Sir:

I have just finished reading your letter to Ann Coulter. I am sure you thought you were writing something genuinely helpful to the maintenance of public peace.

 I am just as sure Ann Coulter will weigh her words precisely, when she rips you to shreds, for the assumption you make about her intelligence, for your mistaken notion about the nature of public discourse, and for the smug condescending tone.

 Your letter certainly lends support to the notion that the modern university has become the central agency in the suppression of freedom throughout society.

 Truths must not be uttered aloud lest dreadful legal consequences ensue: that appears the substance of your warning. Have you allowed yourself to consider that political discourse may require saying unpleasant truths in public, loud and clear, about race, sex, class, nation, religion and every other category and distinction?

 Many think we are living in the age of freedom; we are in fact living in an age terrified of clear thought and plain speech. Pick a topic: Islam, male-female sex differences, the bell curve of the distribution of intelligence and its significance, the heritability of almost anything, and there you will find the academy pleading for the suppression of speech, thought, and research in the name of one cause or another. It is a vast institutional failure.

 Politically Ann Coulter is not my kind of girl, on every count, but she has guts, wit and conviction. Though she is part of the political entertainment industry, she says more truth in fifteen minutes than the academy can muster in a two-day symposium.

 Yours sincerely

 Dalwhinnie

Conducted by Bruce Bawer, author of “While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within“:

http://www.rights.no/publisher/publisher.asp?id=59&tekstid=3259

Pay attention people. This is vitally important. Imagine the leader of a rising political party in Canada being put on trial by the government for anti-Islamic statements.

Geert Wilders is the Dutch politician who is saying Islam is violent. He is on trial in the Netherlands right now. Read all about it.

My recent conversations with European lefties in various forums have convinced me that Europe is far gone into cultural dissolution.

2009 has been considered a bad year for many; for me it was a year of triumphs. The forces of evil have been turned back internationally and domestically on two decisive fronts: free speech, vigorous nationalism, and climate change.

Free speech

The campaign waged by Ezra Levant in Canada against the speech control fanatics at Human Rights Commissions has been successful. The blogosphere rose in defence of Ezra but he made it work, by patiently devoting himself to de-legitiizing them. Later, the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench joined in the de-legitimization by roundly castigating the idiotic decision of Lori Andreachuk, the Alberta Human Rights Commissioner in the Stephen Boisson case.

Vigorous Nationalism

The nationalist cultural policy first came to light in the Herouxville Declaration, a statement made in 2007 by a small Quebec town’s aldermen and mayor that this is a Christian country, we eat pigs and we don’t treat our women like slaves. If you read it, you will find it surprizingly liberal in tone, but it appeared at a time when it was considered dangerous and provocative to herald Canadian social values, so uptight had everyone become with Muslim cultural intimidation.

Read the rest…

The issue is: why is there a law available by which these people could be prosecuted? Why is a domestic spat in a hotel the source of criminal prosecution?

“Explaiing his reasons for dismissing the case, he said Mrs Tazi’s claim that she was verbally attacked by the couple for up to an hour had not been borne out by other prosecution witnesses, who suggested that any discussions lasted around seven minutes.”

George Jonas is Canada’s premier political intellectual. He is old and has a weak voice, so his speech (above) is being read by another. His distinctions between  ambitions and rights should be embedded in the mind of every responsible citizen. His battle with statism is never-ending.

His analysis is entirely consistent with that of Brian Lee Crowley’s Fearful Symmetry: The Fall and Rise of Canada’s Founding Values. I suspect that Crowley may offer a more hopeful view of the future.

As reported in the Brussels Journal.

The EU is intent upon enacting legislation in the style of the Canadian Human Rights Act and its provincial counterparts. An offensive environment is created when I think your comment is offensive.

“Harassment, as vaguely defined in the directive, allows an individual to accuse someone of discrimination merely for expressing something the individual allegedly perceives as creating an “offensive environment.” The definition is so broad that anyone who feels intimidated or offended can easily bring legal action against those whom he feels are responsible. Moreover, the directive shifts the burden of proof onto the accused, who has to prove the negative, i.e. demonstrate that he or she did not create an environment which intimidated or offended the complainant. If the accused fails to do so, he or she can be sentenced to paying an unlimited amount of compensation for “harassment.” ”

Fortunately, it will need the approval of all 27 member states to pass.The article was first reported here at the Hudson Institute website.

http://ezralevant.com/2009/09/chrc-investigates-richard-warm.html

Ishtar 17, 4395 of the 12th year of the  Glorious Reign of Gruppenfuhrer Louis XVI

Memo to the Supreme Council

For decision

from Department of Subversion, Supreme Council, Galactic Racially Aryan Supremacy Party (GRASP)

My Lords:

Agent 117 has been exposed, as you are no doubt aware . His usefulness is nearly over, but as a matter of policy I think the Council sould promote him to the rank of Unteroffizier and give him a medal (I suggest the Silver Swastika with Oak Leaf Clusters)  before he is disgraced and fined by the local emanation of the Dark Side.  When he has returned to us, he can get his back pay from the date of his condemnation.

Such measures may seem generous. Some other Bureaus of the Supreme Council (Treasury and Public Works) consider that Agent 117 has not completely succeeded yet. However most department heads agree with this recommendation. Staff considers that his mission has been wildly successful, and recommends promotion, medal and back pay.

Director BuSub

A major blow was struck at the basis of Canadian hate speech controls by this judgment of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

In the Human Rights Tribunal decision of Athansios Hadjis, the Tribunal has ruled that the constitutionality of section 13(1) of the Human Rights Act is in grave doubt, and refused to find Lemire guilty on that basis. The specific extension of the hate-speech prohibition to the Internet was contained in section 13(2), adopted by Parliament in 2001.

The Commissioner found that the measure (suppression of free speech in the way section 13 envisages) was disproportionate, in that it was not a minimal impairment of the Charter right of free speech.

Read the rest…