Category Archives: Canada

Outsourcing Parenting: The Cho Family & The Immigrant Experience

Canada, Education, Family, Government, IMMIGRATION, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, The West

Alex, in the Comments Section appended to my column, “Evil, Not Ill,” makes quite a few assumptions. He also appears to approve of spanking and destroying a child’s toys as disciplinary measures, but not of calling a monster “an idiot,” as Cho’s aunt dared to. Sticks are fine, but not words!? How does our valued contributor know, moreover, so much about Cho’s father? Maybe the family was scared of social services?

When my family and I arrived in North America, my daughter was accustomed to a strong parental presence in her life. However, she was young, and kept on hearing, in her Canadian school, about the things parents can and can’t do. Subject matter was less a topic in the schools than the child’s rights vis-a-vis his or her mouth-breathing parents.
As I am certainly a fire-breathing dragon when it comes to the state’s interference with my child, I fought them all the way, and made sure she understood the logic of the battle. One day, when I laid down the law about some or another thing, the little minx looked at me with those huge doe eyes, and said, “I can call social services; they’ll make you change your mind.” I sat her down and told her what could befall her if the “Sapphic Sisters from Social Services” arrived to take her away from me. That sorted her out; kids are very liberal, they want all the license in the world, but they do not want to be removed from the people who love them. She realized she preferred being raised by mom than a foster family of the state’s choosing.

There were countless other incidents. Many immigrant families from traditional societies are simply intimidated by the customs in their new abode. Or lack the intellectual and financial wherewithal to negate them —believe me, it’s a constant, uphill battle. Vigilance is eternal when it comes to state schools and their staff. As an immigrant from a traditional to a statist society, I can empathize with the Cho family’s putative plight (I have no idea if this is what transpired, but I suspect my hunch is correct). You have to have intellectual and financial resources to be there constantly so as to deprogram the kid. I know; I did it.
The response the Cho family has issued sounded so very sincere and sad. Unlike the American families that have unleashed their brats on the community —never heard the “Sorry” word from the Columbine creeps’ parents —this Korean family humbly begged for forgiveness. It is my hunch, as I said above, that this is a family fragmented by a move to a progressive society, where parenting must be outsourced to state-sanctioned experts-cum-asses —the teletwits you see on TV —or else.

Canada Joins Running of the Jew at U.N. for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Canukistan*

Anti-Semitism, Barack Obama, Canada, Israel, Media, Middle East, UN

I received this from the Canadian Coalition for Democracies. The information is well good, as Ali G. would say, but the title is even better. Big up to the CCD for the title (and also for standing up for justice).” ILANA

CANADA JOINS RUNNING OF THE JEW AT U.N. FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF CANUKISTAN*

Toronto, Thursday, November 30, 2006, The Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD) is disappointed by the voting of the government of Canada in yesterday’s slew of anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations.

“Canada has again legitimized the use of UN resolutions to demonize one nation, while ignoring the truly serious human rights violations of other member states,” said Alastair Gordon, president of CCD. “Until resolutions are applied evenhandedly to all UN members, Canada must express its condemnation by voting ‘no’ on all such resolutions.”

In its first 42 years, the UN tabled 370 resolutions condemning Israel and zero resolutions critical of the PLO or any Arab state. When Syria slaughtered 20,000 of its own citizens at Hama in 1982, or when it sponsored the destruction and occupation of Lebanon, or even when Iraq massacred its Kurdish citizens with poison gas, there were no UN resolutions criticizing the perpetrators. In recent years, a handful of resolutions have targeted other Middle Eastern states, but the lion’s share is still reserved for Israel.

In October 2005, former Prime Minister Paul Martin referred to “the annual ritual of politicized anti-Israel resolutions” at the UN. In November 2004, Canada’s then ambassador to the United Nations, Allan Rock, announced to the General Assembly that “resolutions [against Israel] are often divisive and lack balance.” Yet even with this recognition, both our past and present governments’ anti-Israel voting pattern has barely changed.
The Fourth Committee yesterday tabled nine ritualized resolutions targeting Israel for criticism. Canada voted against Israel on seven, and supported Israel on two. The only change from last year’s voting pattern was the change of one abstention to a ‘no’.
“The Stephen Harper government has taken a number of principled foreign policy positions that Canadians can be proud of. Yet it is choosing to continue the despicable bullying of one nation, a travesty that was identified by our former Prime Minister and UN ambassador,” added Gordon. “Until UN resolutions are an unbiased tool applied equally to all member states, Canada’s response to all ritualized anti-Israel resolutions must be NO.”

* With apologies to Borat
Founded in 2003, the Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD) is a non-partisan, multi-ethnic, multi-denominational organization of concerned Canadians dedicated to national security and the protection and promotion of democracy at home and abroad. CCD focuses on research, education and media publishing to build a greater understanding of the importance of national security and a pro-democracy foreign policy.

Capitulating On Canada (But Only a Bit)

Canada, Democracy, Drug War, Free Speech, Individual Rights

In response to readers’ responses to “Canada: Crap County“:

To be fair, in many aspects, Canada is less regulated than the US. Their SEC, for example, has nothing on our soviet-style apparatus. They do not conduct the kind of war on drugs we prosecute. Writers here are right: subjugation exists on a continuum and we are sliding toward enslavement. Still, as far as regular folks go—people like us who are not likely to come to the SEC’s attention, and care more about keeping our property and guns than toking it up—the US is far and away the better place.
When you go through customs, Canadians will want to tax you; Americans to ensure you aren’t a terrorist. In the US, although heavily circumscribed, the right to self-defense still exists. In Canada one can’t even purchase mace—it’s illegal, as is self defense—practically. As an outspoken writer, I’m safe in the US. So far, at least. In Canada, there’s a “human rights commission.” As in Europe, it prosecutes and can bankrupt those it deems guilty of “hate” speech. I’ll be staying in the US.

Letter of the Week: John Danforth on Canadian Culture

Canada, Individual Rights

I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Ontario, Canada, and I’ve found about the same percentage of rugged individualists there in industry as we have here in the formerly industrial wasteland known as Michigan.

The difference is that the ‘culture’ there really is ‘cultured’ by the government, as when you grow pathogens in a petri dish. So those who have the constitution of individualists are merely incrementally more out of place and out of touch. Their Ministry of Culture sees to it that all (mostly government controlled) media outlets blanket the landscape with nanny state wonder stories, interspersed with nasty ‘artier than thou’ condescending sniffs at vulgar Americanism. The newspapers, especially in Toronto, have raised this to a fine art. The individualist in such an atmosphere must not only get all of his information from the internet, he must also swim in the sea of life completely at odds with the emotional and intellectual environment around him.

We really aren’t that different, though. The disparaging remarks towards Canadians should be tempered with the observation that at least we (mostly) share a language and a custom of politeness, both of which are fading faster in the U.S. than in Canada. But Canada seems to be in a race with the U.S.—trying to stay 10 years ahead in the slide towards welfare state bankruptcy. That race is the unifying glue to their fractious political system. They might squabble, even contemplate secession, but none of them wants to be seen by the others as ‘just another state.’

My years of dealing with customers across the border have yielded a few valuable friendships. When my friends would joke about us gun-totin’ cowboys (they loved to go the shooting range and waste handgun ammunition, a forbidden pleasure for them), I would ask them if they ever saw the Monty Python lumberjack song. Other than those few friends, though, I was left with the overall impression of wonderment—if I hadn’t seen it myself, I might not have believed that a people could love their servitude so.

—John Danforth