We Day in Toronto: “The entire event was just creepy”

"We Day" a event that indoctrinates children in progressive ideology, aided and abetted by public schools, corporate sponsors and celebrities. This is child abuse.
 
[via]

The "preening silliness" of the left's obsession with "cultural appropriation"

George Will:

... The hysteria du jour, on campuses and elsewhere, against “appropriation” illustrates progressivism’s descent into authoritarianism leavened by philistinism. This “preening silliness” — the phrase is from the Federalist’s David Marcus — is by people oblivious to the fact that, as Marcus says, “culture blending is central to the development of, well, everything.”

... Listening to Radio Luxembourg late one night, teenaged Keith Richards heard “Heartbreak Hotel,” and “when I woke up the next day I was a different guy.” Bob Dylan, a freewheeling cultural appropriator himself, said, “Hearing Elvis for the first time was like busting out of jail.” Those who would wall off cultures from “outsiders” are would-be wardens. 

"Goodbye Sweden, Hello Swedistan" - Sweden's cultural suicide

The Liberal "Islamophobia" motion M103 controversy brought to mind Pat Condell's video of a few years ago on "the cultural suicide of Sweden".  Comparatively speaking we're no where near Swedish levels of progressive insanity, yet, but this seems to be the direction the Trudeau Liberals are pointing the country:

Inside the progressive brain

The autopsy of a progressive brain concludes that death was due to "excessive exposure to logic and human decency":



[h/t sda]

BC school curriculum - an overdose of aboriginal culture

Alongside the article on the "massive shift" in BC school curriculum (previous post) is a related article - Aboriginal perspectives help shape new B.C. school curriculum:

With the new curriculum comes one notable and significant shift ...

Not only will students in B.C. be learning about the history of residential schools, starting in Grade 5, but they will also have aboriginal perspectives embedded into all parts of the curriculum in what the government hopes will be a meaningful and authentic manner.

In the specific lessons about B.C.’s history, topics will include discrimination, inequality, oppression and the impacts of colonialism. The changes are part of the B.C. government’s response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report on the residential school system. [That was fast! Wasn't that report just published?]

Wonderful! A school system that wasted so much time, money and energy on the highly dubious notion that "self esteem" was a paramount consideration in educating students has now shifted in the opposite direction.  Now it is of paramount importance that students (at least the non-aboriginal ones) be indoctrinated with the equally dubious notion that they should feel guilty for their ancestors' supposed sins.  Perhaps for "progressives" that's progress.

I don't know how many aboriginal children attend BC public schools but those who do will be subjected to this curriculum.  What effect will such an unremittingly negative indoctrination on the "history of residential schools" have on their young, immature minds? Will it not reinforce a sense of victimhood?  Will it not make them feel bitter?  How will it affect their relationships with their fellow non-aboriginal students?

Then, how about the children of immigrants who had no role whatsoever in residential schools?  What will this indoctrination do to them?

Indoctrination (not "education") that induces feelings of guilt, victimhood, bitterness and God knows what other negative effects seems not just a little misguided.  This curriculum needs some serious re-thinking.

As for "having aboriginal perspectives embedded into all parts of the curriculum" -  why, other than to demonstrate "sensitivity" and, perhaps, boost aboriginal self-esteem?  Given the limited time available for more valuable learning, it is a massively unproductive exercise to subject everyone to an overdose of aboriginal culture. This stuff should be strictly optional for anyone who might have a "passion" for it.

First Nations Mathematics
Also discussed in the article is how the mathematics curriculum might embed learning about First Nations:

"... difficult to imagine how math ...  could have learning about First Nations embedded into its curriculum  ... building a canoe is a good example of how to think about it. ... Math ability has always been important for First Peoples.   ...There are some fantastic resources out of Haida Gwaii that show how math was embedded in the creation of a canoe ...

  Well, "math" in this sense has no doubt been important for all human beings at all stages of development.  It's not difficult to imagine that all humans, even at their most primitive stage, were capable of thinking logically about how to measure and compare quantities for various purposes.  How societies  throughout history actually thought about and used these capabilities would be part of the disciplines of "Cultural Anthropology" and  perhaps "History of Mathematics".

So the rather esoteric "Haida mathematics" of building a canoe should not be embedded in the "Mathematics" curriculum.  It would be a possibly interesting but probably confusing distraction that interferes with learning the modern mathematics necessary to survive and get ahead in the modern world. And suggesting that it is comparable with or relevant to the study of modern mathematical concepts is delusional.

While "First Nations mathematics" may be of great interest, even importance,  to aboriginals (for self esteem?) or historians or anthropologists, for everyone else it should be strictly optional. 

"A massive shift"in BC school curriculum

Vancouver Sun:

"... it is clear that schools will have to move away from a traditional model where all students read the same book at the same time, answer the same questions and write the same test.

There is a massive shift underway, and as students go back to school next week, a new optional curriculum will be in place for students up to Grade 9. It will be mandatory next year. Grades 10 to 12 are next, with a draft curriculum expected this week. ...

The need for "a massive shift" becoming "clear" seems to be based on an assumption that the internet, iPads, iPhones, etc have suddenly changed how kids learn what schools are responsible for teaching. Sure, the internet is neat and there some nifty new tools for accessing information but it is highly doubtful that kids' brains have evolved measurably since their invention and that what they need to know and how they learn it has radically changed.  But what the heck, an Education Minister has to make his mark, doesn't he?

Then there's this interesting assertion:

The shift will also bring in new methods of assessment that could see traditional report cards and letter grades disappear. A bit further off are new graduation requirements, which could mean the end of every student passing the same basic courses and exams in order to get a diploma.

Haven't teachers' unions been pushing these ideas for some time?  Students learn whatever strikes their fancy at their own rate with no tests and no report cards.  Also, no more measuring student progress and so no more accountability for their success or failure.  What could go wrong?

Then, if nothing else, this should be a huge alarm:

"there are no global examples to follow and this education transformation is untested."

Yikes! But why am I not surprised?  This seems to be the case for so many grand new educational schemes.  While there are no doubt some reasonably decent ideas in it, this "massive shift" appears to be yet another giant social experiment involving every child in the province as a guinea pig.  It's an experiment to test the latest radical progressive "thinking" coming out of academia.  And it'll take a generation before we have any inkling of how big a flop it is.

Evolution, not revolution, should be the rule in bringing about change in large crucial systems like education.

Papal climate folly, progressive hypocrisy

Secular progressives ordinarily have nothing but disdain, even hate, for Catholic (or any other Christian faith's) moral teachings. But when the Pope foolishly expounds on a controversial scientific matter in a way that appears to align with their own beliefs, these same progressives suddenly declare that he's the man we all must carefully heed.

Brian Lilley amplifies:




One has to wonder if the Pope realizes that his climate encyclical has put him in league with Catholicism's enemies.

Religion and climate change

Peter Foster: "The Pope’s eco-mmunist manifesto"

...Pope Francis’ climate Encyclical, Laudato Si’ (Praise Be), could have come from any branch of the UN, any environmental NGO, or the World Economic Forum. This is hardly surprising since they all promote Global Salvationism, which is based on projections of doom to be countered by morally-charged, UN-centric, globally-governed sustainable development and corporate social responsibility.

... The Pope appears to be blinded by a moral vision that he shares not just with Strong and Gorbachev but with Naomi Klein, Al Gore and David Suzuki: capitalism is evil, is destroying the earth, and involves oppression of the poor and a zero-sum struggle for resources that promotes war.

... The Encyclical demonizes wicked, heartless and short-sighted straw men. This unnamed “they” are proponents of “throwaway culture” and “compulsive consumerism,” of “rampant individualism” and the “self-centred culture of instant gratification.” They claim “an unlimited right to trample his creation underfoot.”  ...

George Will (video): "Pope Francis comes from a Latin American, anti-capitalist strand of Catholicism"

Nigel Lawson: "The church of climatism"

... It is a cruel irony that, while it was science which, more than anything else, was able by its great achievements to establish the age of reason, it is all too many climate scientists and their hangers-on who have become the high priests of a new age of unreason.

... But what moves me most is that the policies invoked in its name are grossly immoral.

Global warming orthodoxy is not merely irrational. It is wicked.

Tim Ball: "Is The Catholic Church Burned By The Sun Again?"

Brian Lilley (video): "Progressives find religion in Papal climate change statement"

Pigs have flown in Alberta

Bye, bye Jim Prentice!!

The NDP took the cities.  Guess all those PC's were more progressive than conservative.

Aaacckkk!!

























Ezra Levant reacts: "God help us all!"

Carbon Taxapalooza

Last Monday Terence Corcoran declared Carbon Taxapalooza Week:

We hereby declare this to be Carbon Taxapalooza Week. The objective is to acknowledge and deplore the great stampede of provincial governments to tax the hell out of fossil fuels.

On Tuesday, Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, a self-appointed group of allegedly market-oriented economic policy wonks, will release a report calling for the provinces to adopt “carbon pricing” to help Canada tackle climate change. [Here's the full list Ecofiscal "commissioners".  It includes Preston Manning, Jean Charest, Paul Martin, Bob Rae, Peter Robinson (Suzuki Foundation CEO), etc.  With that rats nest of progressives and eco-illiterates what could possibly go wrong?]

Until now, Ontario hasn’t had much interest in carbon pricing ... But now, having exhausted a range of bad policies, Ontario’s Environment Minister, Glenn Murray, is pushing to adopt another set of allegedly less bad policies.

 Peter Foster: The way backwards on carbon policy:

... On Tuesday Canada’s self-appointed Ecofiscal Commission released a study, The Way Forward, that amounts to a recommendation for policy chaos in pursuit of the ever-more dubious cause of fighting catastrophic man-made climate change. ...

Peter Foster: Chris Ragan, market beautician:

You can always tell a fan of Big Government by the way he or she addresses the Invisible Hand, Adam Smith’s metaphor for free markets. ... This week, McGill economist Christopher Ragan, chairman of the self-appointed Ecofiscal Commission, came up with a more subtle put down - “Sometimes the Invisible Hand needs a manicure, and the way is to improve market signals.”

See also, Dennis Ambler at The SPPI Blog: A nest of carbon vipers

Vast sums of money, influence and power are involved in carbon mitigation schemes, and yet there is never any mention in the media of these massive and lucrative conflicts of interest. They appear quite content swallowing the diversionary tactics pushed by the likes of DeSmog Blog and Greenpeace ExxonSecrets with their claims of “oil- company funded deniers”.  It is doubtful that mainstream journalists ever bother to look behind the scenes at these people, yet it is all available on official websites.

"It is difficult to conceive a more retrograde idea ..."

Rex Murphy:

.... it is with more grief than anger that I caught the story of an Ottawa “vigil” this week, held after a Missouri grand jury said it would not charge police officer Darren Wilson in the death of Ferguson teenager Michael Brown. Organizers of the rally asked “white/non-black allies” to “refrain from taking up space” and “never be the centre of anything.” 

That last phase “never be at the centre of anything” is particularly troubling. It is so defiantly categorical and universally — “anything” — dismissive.

The phrase and the other gibberish attending it should serve as a motto for every meeting and seminar dedicated to diversity as the governing motto for how not to engage with social issues, how not to bridge the real differences that can exist between people. ...

Rex's column is a very thoughtful take on a good example of what our universities are churning out these days.  Humanities faculties at virtually every university, against all logic, embrace  hare-brained, radical, po-mo social theories as if they were established scientific fact.  It has become what most "progressives" accept unquestioningly as mainstream thought.  The damage done to students' brains, society at large and to tax payers' wallets is enormous.

TOP 5 Conservative Principles

Bill Whittle's, that is... contrasted with progressives' ...

The end of "progressive" soft power

A modified version of this column by Kelly McParland appeared in today's Post as an editorial entiled "The end of 'soft power'":

U.S. President Barack Obama’s sudden about-face on the Middle East has exacerbated the difficulty that self-styled progressives face in sorting out how to deal with the world’s many emerging threats. Mr. Obama came to office preaching a highly progressive approach to confronting rogue, terror-supporting states: dialogue, diplomacy, co-operation and brotherhood, along with a pronounced reluctance to commit U.S. military forces on any fresh foreign entanglement. But it didn’t work. Now he’s trying bombs. He has come to realize that the most problematic actors on the world stage don’t share his enthusiasm for reason, negotiation and peace....

Having contributed military advisors to the effort against ISIS, Canada has a direct stake in this battle. The campaign should be of interest to Canadians for another reason, too. With Mr. Obama’s renunciation of his touchy-feely approach to international relations, it makes it difficult to argue that “soft power” and “honest brokerage,” two of our own foreign-policy establishment’s favourite catchphrases during the Liberal years, ever had much value on the world stage.  

Since Stephen Harper came to power, his opponents have crafted the notion that Canada once was a widely respect middle power that now has squandered its reputation thanks to the Conservatives’ renunciation of soft-power shibboleths. ...

... People who cut off aid workers’ heads don’t call out for “honest brokers.” They call out for bombs and bullets.

In the comments behind the Post pay-wall, Stephen Boyling wrote:

 This Editorial, although significantly watered down from what most of us have been saying for years, will do, especially after the immoral mea culpa Obama splashed us with during his UN pirouette.  The prime minister of Israel gave the speech the president of the United States of America should have given.  That, tied to the speech of prime minister Harper and his focus on what it takes, what is needed to suffocate the madness that is born in backwater dictatorships and 5-star sand lots made for a more than compelling argument when it comes to standing up to Islamic madness.

Next year in Canada, God save us from Obama-lite.  A man trying to run a race without first learning how to walk.

Amen.

Brian's green blarney

Peter Foster:

Brian Mulroney’s speech earlier this week to Canada 2020 – a “progressive” group of PR/government advisory types who pretend to chart the country’s future – presumably involved walking a fine pipeline.

...  he leavened his recommendations with an attack on Mr. Harper’s leadership on energy and climate issues.

... shouldn’t the man who dismantled the National Energy Program be a little more skeptical about grand strategies?

...  it was Mr. Mulroney, by his early promotion of climate catastrophe, and his cuddling up to the subversive issue of sustainable development, who in many ways created the bed of policy nails on which Mr. Harper is forced to lie.

... Mr. Mulroney promoted the kinds of toxic policies with whose consequences Mr. Harper has had to struggle, accusing our current PM of lack of vision amounts go to green gall in more ways than one.

Buzz off Brian, you've had your chance.  And, haven't you heard, it's exceedingly bad form to bad-mouth a fellow Prime Minister.

The new three Rs - racism, reproduction and recycling

George Will:

The three R’s — formerly reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic — now are racism, reproduction and recycling. Especially racism. ... “instruction” synonymous with “propaganda,” which in the patois of progressivism is called “consciousness-raising.”

...tens of millions could be diverted from progressive gestures to academic purposes by abolishing on every ... campus every administrative position whose title contains the words “diversity,” “equity,” “race,” “ethnicity,” “sustainability,” “green,” “gender,” “inclusion,” “identity,” “interconnectivity,” “globalization,” “climate,” “campus climate,” “cross-cultural” or “multiculturalism.”

Check out the comment thread to Will's column at the WaPo. It's loaded with nasty reaction from  progressives.

You didn't choose that!!

The Universe made you choose it!  That's what Sam Harris argues in his new book 'Free Will', excerpted in yesterday's National Post.  Harris believes that we don't make choices freely, but that we are compelled by our genetic makeup and our environment to make the choices we do - that free will is an illusion.

It must be a progressive thing.  It sounds an awful lot like Barack Obama's recent declaration to Americans: "You didn't build that!!"

Anyway, I don't buy it.  I like Raymond Smullyan's approach to the problem in "Is God a Taoist?", a dialogue between God and a mortal which opens with:

Mortal:
And therefore, O God, I pray thee, if thou hast one ounce of mercy for this thy suffering creature, absolve me of having to have free will!

God:
You reject the greatest gift I have given thee?

..
..

And concludes with:

Mortal:
You said a short while ago that our whole discussion was based on a monstrous fallacy. You still have not told me what this fallacy is.

God:
Why, the idea that I could possibly have created you without free will! You acted as if this were a genuine possibility, and wondered why I did not choose it! It never occurred to you that a sentient being without free will is no more conceivable than a physical object which exerts no gravitational attraction. (There is, incidentally, more analogy than you realize between a physical object exerting gravitational attraction and a sentient being exerting free will!) Can you honestly even imagine a conscious being without free will? What on earth could it be like? I think that one thing in your life that has so misled you is your having been told that I gave man the gift of free will. As if I first created man, and then as an afterthought endowed him with the extra property of free will. Maybe you think I have some sort of "paint brush" with which I daub some creatures with free will and not others. No, free will is not an "extra"; it is part and parcel of the very essence of consciousness. A conscious being without free will is simply a metaphysical absurdity.
..
..

  See also, Barbara and Jonathan Kay's reponses to Harris.

Insurmountable problems with the progressive view of business and markets

Mark Steyn picks up on an AP "news" "report" that says of Republicans:

They and their ideological leaders argue that the marketplace should dictate what businesses thrive and falter, not Washington.

Commenter, "Lawrence" had this to say:

Implicitly, progressives believe the precise opposite.

Conservatives and progressives both accept that some businesses will succeed and some businesses will fail.

Progressives believe that the government should pick the winners and losers.

Conservatives believe that the free market should pick the winners and losers.

It's not about preventing failed businesses; for progressives it's about control. As Orwell put it describing the totalitarian impulse, they want to "usher in a hierarchical society where the intellectual can at last get his hands on the whip."

Those who believe that the government should have such control ignore several insurmountable problems.

- The problem of morality. Individuals have the right to self-determination and the right to property, and therefore the government has no moral authority to micro-manage their lives or their businesses.

- The problem of information. A cadre of experts may be smarter than any similarly sized group, but NO group can ever obtain the vast amount of distributed information that is processed by the price system, much less act on that information in an intelligent and timely fashion.

- The problem of incentives. The free market rewards businesses that provide goods and services that people actually want, and the greatest success is reserved for those that provide what the public sees as the best combination of high quality and low prices. The government rewards businesses that help the incumbents secure reelection, and it's only a coincidence that this work to maintain political power ever corresponds to meeting the real needs of the general public.

- The problem of the historical record. NO society in human history has ever taxed itself -- or regulated itself -- into prosperity. Even the authoritarian regime of the Chinese Communists have stumbled into modernity by freeing up the market, not through yet another disastrous and murderous Five Year Plan.

The ONLY thing that recommends collusion between Big Government and Big Business is the psychological appeal: it reassures the leftist of the high-mindedness of his oh-so-good intentions while feeding the more reptilian desire for control of other people.

Excellent comment!

A progressive's take on Romney

Jonathan Kay speculates on conservative motives. Lame, partisan "analysis", as usual.

Good news for the Wildrose party

Progessives 3, Conservatives 0:

... Saturday night, after votes had been tallied for the party’s leadership race ... top three contenders — Gary Mar, Doug Horner and Alison Redford ...
... Not a single one of the three front-runners hail from the Conservative side of the Progressive Conservative tent.
... Some ridings pulled in barely a couple hundred leadership votes. If this isn’t a sign of a political organization in decline, it’s hard to imagine what is.

... This can be good news only for the PCs’ rivals, most of all Danielle Smith, leader of the right-wing Wildrose party.

Withering Red Toryism

I don’t think about it much these days but "progressive" conservatism and "Red Toryism" have always struck me as oxymoronic. Those that call themselves "Red Tories" always seem quite sincerely fanatical about their devotion to their cause but I’ve never been able to quite figure out what "cause" that is.

Today Publius’ at The Shotgun enlightens us in a post entitled "Wither Red Toryism". I don’t know if that title was a spelling error or a wish that Red-Toryism would just wither and die.

Anyway, Publius refers to an article in the Toronto Star that waxes nostalgic for has-been dweeb Joe Clark, progressive conservatism and Red Toryism. Apparently having a Blue Tory right wing representing the Canadian right is just too much - a left/lib "right" is needed:

We are all the losers as a result of this victory of the Reform party, its metamorphosis into a new Conservative party, and the new rigidity of the right.

Oh, really?! This is, of course, just one more confirmation that lefties, for all their blathering about the joys of diversity, really detest the diversity of ideas.

Publius nicely sets the record straight and in closing identifies Red Toryism with the "... homelessness of Liberals in Tory clothing".