Your body, your health, your choice - government butt out!

Xanthippa highlights Thomas Sowell’s excellent four-part series on the hazards and deceit underlying Obama’s plans for socializing American healthcare - part of the debate Canadians never had.

The snotty, inbred Canlit establishment

Today’s installment of the Post’s series on the state of Canadian literature has one of my favourite crime/mystery novelists, William Deverell, taking some good shots at the cultural establishment:

... a common notion: A properly brought up Canadian is expected to feel guilty about reading a book that claims no pretension but to entertain.

This priggish attitude toward popular fiction is deeply imbedded within our cultural establishment.

... "Popular fiction" has become a term of vulgar connotation, but it reeks of ironic paradox: obviously we sobersided Canadians ought to be reading unpopular fiction.

... I gave a workshop in popular fiction ... during which I was instructed by a Canada Council spokeswoman, in severe tones, that it does not support writers of crime fiction.

... It is to Canada's utter shame that William Gibson, with his vast trophy case of awards, has not been honoured in this country with a Giller or a G.-G. Meanwhile, Margaret Atwood is acclaimed for her speculative fiction.

... Douglas Coupland's scathing critique of Canadian literary pretentiousness: "There is a grimness about CanLit," he wrote, in which typically authors are supported by the government "to write about small towns and/or the immigrant experience." Coupland refuses to accept Canada Council money.

... the Brits knight their genre writers, the Yanks lionize them, but the Canucks (or at least our persons of letters) continue to treat them like unwashed in-laws tracking mud into the parlour. So sad.

And earlier in the series Barbara Kay observed:

... a numbingly familiar pattern of CanLit fiction: "Me, me, me and my
extraordinary capacity for sadness. Welcome to the unrelenting self-regard of
CanLit, where it's all about nobly suffering women or feminized men."

For this to persist in a country of 32 million suggests a good deal of intellectual inbreeding among the cultural establishment. Sad indeed.

DC Tea Party in time lapse

Wow! See also Climbing Out Of The Dark.

[via sda]

ABC news anchor John Stossel on media AGW hype

WUWT reports that John Stossel, former co-anchor on ABC News "20/20" and global warming realist, is moving to Fox News. Via the comments here’s Stossel speaking at the New York International Conference on Climate Change, March 2008, about the mainstream media's AGW hype:

"... really we’re not all evil. We just are dumb ..."


Also in the comments is this interesting note from former Victoria Times Colonist columnist Paul MacRae (12:09:08):

The editor of the Victoria, BC, Times Colonist has laid down an explicit policy that she will not allow skeptical climate stories to appear–they cause too much fuss with green readers and consensus climatologists. I also know this is true from personal experience. For eight years I wrote editorials and columns for the TC (I now teach), so obviously I am a professional writer by journalistic standards, but my last four skeptical freelance opeds on climate change were rejected, as are anyone else’s. ...

On the other hand, for every claim (no matter how lame) from AGW fanatics the TC seeks out commentary from local alarmist Andrew Weaver.

Because they’re putzes?

A 'symposium' at Commentary’ has six prominent Jews taking a stab at answering the question posed in Norman Podhoretz’s new book "Why are Jews Liberals?":

Since 1928, the average Jewish vote for the Democrat in presidential elections has been an amazing 75%—far higher than that of any other ethno-religious group.

It all looks like an interesting read and may help answer the more general question: Why is anyone a liberal? The short answer, of course, is: Because they’re putzes! But it could be deeper than that.

[via BCF and CZ]

Segregating Canada - the first Africentric school

Enrollment is up at Canada’s only "Africentric" school (from 85 to 115):

... west African drummers were warming up for the opening assembly, where children sang O Canada as well as the Black National Anthem ...

"West African drummers"? "Black National Anthem"?

The Black National Anthem is of African-American origin and, along with expressions of hope and faith, recalls the harsh experience of black American slaves:

[...]
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us; ...
[...]
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past ...

...Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
[...]
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
[...]

That song may be relevant in American schools. It may even be a worthwhile element of Canadian school courses covering the history of American slavery. But it makes no sense at all to sing it in Canadian school opening ceremonies on an equal footing with the Canadian national anthem.

Also:

Today's opening assembly began with a traditional African "libation" ceremony, where children watched water poured in memory of their ancestors. They also learned to respond to statements with the Yoruba word "Ashe!" (Amen!)

I shudder to think what the school curriculum looks like.

How are these kids supposed to develop a cohesive Canadian identity? How much Canadian history will they get?

And what’s next, [your ethno/racial identity here]-centric schools? How about a whites-only school for those who feel their whiteness is under-appreciated?

If people of whatever ethnic origin want to study "their people’s" history and culture, fine. If it’s important enough to parents and/or their "community" they should provide it at home or in community sponsored courses and activities. It happens all the time in other ethnic communities. But setting up segregated schools pandering to specific ethnic identities will just further Balkanize the country.

Let’s face it, the segregated school concept is just nuts - it's asking for trouble.

Repudiating "the false god of money”

An Adbusters magazine article ‘Confessions of a Radical Economics Prof’, by Wellesley College tenured full-time economics professor, Julie Matthaei, discusses the content of her courses:

... My classes on radical economics presented the neo-Marxist view that large corporations dominated the economic landscape: oppressing workers, brainwashing consumers through advertising to keep them enslaved ...

... I teach them ... to repudiate the false god of money and the prevailing economic religion of the market.

And in 2007 the top 10 liberal arts colleges in Average Salary for Full Professor were?

1. Wellesley College $130,800
2. Pomona College $127,200
3. Amherst College $125,900
[...]

Repudiate that professor!

Victor Davis Hanson has some fitting words:

What is strange about all this chic-radicalism is how would-be revolutionaries that wish to dismantle America as we know it and/or emulate failed systems abroad, always do so from comfort, security, affluence, and freedom of choice unique to America and Europe, suggesting that radical politics and those who agitate for them are sort of a fashion statement, aimed to resonate among particular elite leftist audiences and to bring dividends from them, but not to be taken too seriously as guides in their own lives.