I am a pragmatist. I am not a Gordon Campbell-hater. He’s done some things I strongly supported, like crushing a rather frivolous teachers strike and saving money while he did it, and he made some harsh but fiscally necessary decisions in respects to health care. I have parted ways with him, however, over the HST debacle which some people still don’t see gives increased borrowing power to successive provincial governments via the de-facto 7% they will extract from each home sale, and be able to hold and invest for a fiscal year (in some cases a tad more) until they are obligated to turn this GST over to the Feds. “What” you may ask “will be the incentive to reduce PST in BC if they are already doing short term investing with GST from the same transactions?” Well anyway…

I am also not an Olympic hater. Not to say that I like them either. I really do not care about what kind of ball or rubber cookie young people from the lower classes are going to chase about on ice or grass or snow for the amusement of the bored and easily amused Euro-American middle class. I with only one exception I will expound on later, will not watch a single minute of the games, successful or otherwise, because I do not feel them any more relevant than the colors of Elizabeth May’s sweaters. Generally speaking, unless strong moral obligations present themselves, I am a fiscal conservative. So if the Olympics irritate a few Birkenstock-clad dreadlocked hippies, I really don’t care, but if they are going to bleed the province of what is ultimately my money, or infringe on the rights and freedoms of BC residents, then I am going to take serious issue with them. So, unlike the Olympics of 76 or 88, though perhaps because I have not really cared to look into these, I do take issue with the 2010 games.
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The Monkey House

Bored and dipping in the whiskey last night, I decided to engage in a little social investigation. I have long been curious by the human tendency to, once provoked, enter into group-think mentalities and demonize potential outsiders. In civil, civic discourse, this trend is reversed by sophisticated rhetoricians through the disarmament of their opponent, first through finding common ground and then, point for point, countering hostile suggestion with legitimate fact, all the while ignoring the hostile tone of their opponent. Well, sometimes it is nice to return slight for slight, but the skilled debater always returns to the facts that support his or her opinion. Now, in the case of political discussion, there may not be only facts but there are reasons behind the opinion and it is to these which one must turn if one’s position is to be defended.
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The CBC's Rex Murphy.
Photo Credit: National Speakers Bureau

I returned to my favorite blog-site intending to write about the fortunate stupidity of Iranian Mullahs in further undermining their legitimacy this bloody weekend when I found Brian Gordon, yet again railing against the CBC. To recap on Brian’s views, he wishes that media were fact-checked for scientific accuracy and that only scientifically accurate data and historical truths where such truths are held in consensus are reported. Despite our mutual antagonism Brian and I are not, at heart, ideologically opposed. Still, I felt the need to respond to him, again, because the consequences of his “vision” for Canadian media are ultimately totalitarian. There are traditionally two paths to totalitarianism: informed religiosity, and uninformed naivety. The views of Mr. Gordon represent the latter. Regardless, Brian and I both agree that there is an imminent threat to human survival due to global warming and exponential human growth, we both disdain the CBC and Rex Murphy (though for different reasons), and we don’t think much of the supposed intellectual abilities of professing Christians. On the subject of ontology we also agree that there is “truth” and that such truth must be discernible, replicable, and observable. To us it is clear that our species is going to soon run out of space and food, it is clear that gravity is a force, and it is clear that evolution drives all life on this planet. To any thinking and enlightened person truth does not come from the ridiculous and silly texts of sheep-herders, nor does it come from some “expert’s opinion.” There are truths that people don’t like (for example, that generally speaking, men are stronger than women) and truths that they do (for example men generally live shorter lives than women). Truth is held not by people but by evidence.
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Rex in all his controversy...
Photo Credit: National Speakers bureau

As of late anyone reading InformedVote will have noticed the writings of Brian Gordon and his vitriol against Rex Murphy. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are litanies of reasons why I too personally despise the man, but I cannot bring myself as far as Mr. Gordon to demand that he be obligated to report what Brian thinks is the true NEWS.

Before digressing into the whole issue of “what is NEWS”, let us clear up a few things on the topic of Rex Murphy. Like most people from western Canada I find him uncouth, unsophisticated, and possessing of the ranting-ignoramus-fisherman personality us Westerners are often too eager to paint on anyone born east of Riviere de Loop. As unfair as we out West may be at times, the painting of this brush on Rex has, for ontological reasons, been fair. My own problem with Rex is not that he has strong opinions, just that when I look at his analysis it appears that he sets out to take contrarian views (often actually popular minority opinions) simply for the opportunity to intentionally produce a rant that will both offend a predictable opposition, but at the same time not be so extreme as to create any serious blow-back from a unified Canadian front. Let me be clear on this – I believe Rex does this intentionally, calculated, methodically, and simply to be in the spotlight. This is precisely why I, and no one else who takes seriously thought, learning, and writing, can honestly have a soft spot for the man. One cannot purposely be a contrarian; being a contrarian is a burden that one bears BECAUSE one has sought out truth – this is supposed to be an involuntary burden. Now for ontology…
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Fisting Syria

Israel is a vital country. I do not deny this. I am not among the fanatics who call for its abolishment, its destruction, nor do I approve any Islam-inspired pogrom against it. Last week I found myself pouring over the musings of Theodor Herzl. Mr. Herzl is oft misunderstood because, in light of the ethnocentric perspective that he had, that perspective was wholly justifiable in light of his particular slice of the European Zeitgeist. He had it right! Had there been no state of Israel created it was very likely that additional violence be visited upon European Jews after WWII. In fact, the creation of the modern State of Israel gave to Jews a sense of rooted nationhood; connection to land, and this was no small thing indeed.

Allow me to reveal my politics further; I for one am happy that the Jewish State exists in the demarcation set out by the American and British cartographers. I don’t think that the Uganda initiative sought by many, including Herzl, would have worked out – indeed the history of the Ismali (who in some extreme Islamist circles hated even more than Jews) and their flight from Uganda demonstrates clearly that political stability around and within a country is necessary for that nation’s long-term hope and happiness especially for immigrant populations.
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S. 13 that CHRC!

Yesterday the Montreal Gazette ran a great piece on free speech pogroms masquerading as legitimate government tribunals. I don’t deny that they were created by proper legislative authorities and passed through proper channels but I will say that general Canadian ignorance and laziness has allowed them to transmogrify in the horrendous apparatus they now are. The article in the Gazette was outstanding, and sadly it echoes much of what I had intended to say, so to avoid plagiarism, I will refer you all to it and echo only this one key point its author so carefully addressed. Canadians are a tolerant bunch. We are, for the most part, proud of our multiethnic nation and proud to live in a tolerant society. As such, when something is called the “Canadian Human Rights Commission” – it sounds good, we like it, and we are suspicious of persons who would be dragged before it. I mean wouldn’t you have to do something obviously intolerant to be brought before one? You would think (read the article then come back to mine).
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I have been following with much interest the downward spiral and final fizzles of Bishop Raymond Lahey’s ignoble and sadly typical priestly career. The media it would seem, on the surface has done everything in its power to flog this story to death and drag the once unjustly good name of Bishop Lahey through the mud. What has shocked me though, is that while interviews of the victims of this once powerful man abound, the public has been left completely ignorant of the sheer influence Lahey once had in Antigonish County. It is staggering, given the number of boys who have now come forward attesting to the Bishop’s pedophilic tendencies, that the focus has been entirely upon Lahey’s ecclesiastic rank and the awful, yet ironic fact that Lahey was in charge of the settlement soon to be paid to survivors of the same cruel form of Catholic charity he also imbibed in. I have been meditating on the appalling morbidity of this and the fact that it did not compel this new round of victims to come forward earlier. This article, rather than merely reporting and commenting on events, tenders a hypothesis (sadly one that has not been raised thus far): that Bishop Lahey was not confronted because of his tremendous influence in the affairs and daily operations of the community of Antigonish.
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I woke an hour earlier than usual this morning to head off to the west-end of Edmonton to locate what now looks to be the last bastion of free parking in the city of Edmonton – Beulah Alliance Church. At eight blocks north of the West Edmonton Mall it was an easy find but a long drive as Edmontonians were caught, not just with their pants down, but with their all-season-radials in all-winter weather. I sought out this particular church amongst the plethora of other Albertan evangelical options not, however, for salvation or bake sales, but for a free bus that would take me to meet none other than Prime Minister Stephen Harper at, what was at the time, an ominous undisclosed location, where he would be speaking about an unnamed topic. Tantalized, I braved almost an hour in slushy gunk to get to the upper-middle class and mostly white riding of Conservative party member Rona Ambrose.
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