Category Archives: Christianity

Update II: Canadian Anti-Coulter Cretins Crave ‘Positive Space’

Ann Coulter, Canada, Christianity, Fascism, Free Speech, Individual Rights, Judaism & Jews, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Liberty, Political Philosophy

I’m so very pleased that Ann Coulter has, by necessity, turned her wrath on one of the most oppressive instruments in the Canadian state, the Human Rights apparatus. The Human Rights Commission, a Kangaroo court, operates outside the Canadian courts, affording its victims none of the defenses or due process the courts afford. For example, mens rea, or criminal intention: the absence of the intent to harm is no defense in this “court.” Neither is truth.

The apparatchiks of this machine have designated certain groups as protected species. Thus, the bedrock of western law, the rights of the individual, is turned on its head. Based on your membership in a group, you get to claim protected species rights—and acquire a lien on the property of other groups, who become prime potential offenders. The quasi-judicial Tribunal then acts on these definitions in the substance of its decisions. It’s all great for social cohesion.

And the designations keep growing. Last I covered the quasi-courts, it was deliberating as to whether to extend protection against discrimination on the grounds of “social conditions.” In other words, much like in the US, you do not posses absolute rights to your property. However, over and above the infraction against freedom of association and property that is American Civil Rights law, the Canadian kangaroo code would make it an offense to refuse to rent your apartment, for example, to a welfare recipient.

Devastating complaints have been launched against individuals whose speech the protected species dislike, often bankrupting and destroying innocent individuals guilty of exercising property rights or expressing politically incorrect thoughts.

In a truly free society, the kind we once enjoyed, one honors the right of the individual to associate and disassociate, invest and disinvest, speak and misspeak at will. Simple. So long as your mitts stop at my mug, you ought to be free to do as you wish. (Including ingesting drugs and ending one’s life, for vices are not crimes. “If for harming himself a man forfeits his liberty, then it can’t be said that he has dominion over his body. It implies that someone else—government—owns him.”) People ought to be arrested only for crimes they perpetrate against another’s person or property.

Particularly apt is Ann’s swipe, in “Oh Canada,” at the mob mentality and congenital stupidity issuing from the free-thinking Millennials (whom I’ve described at length in “Your Kids: Dumb, Difficult And Dispensable”):

the Ottawa University Student Federation met for seven and a half hours to hammer out a series of resolutions denouncing me. The resolutions included:

“Whereas Ann Coulter is a hateful woman;

“Whereas she has made hateful comments against GLBTQ, Muslims, Jews and women;

“Whereas she violates an unwritten code of ‘positive-space’;

“Be it resolved that the SFUO express its disapproval of having Ann Coulter speak at the University of Ottawa.”

At least the students didn’t waste seven and a half hours on something silly, like their studies.

Update I (March 25): Where do you think “The Silly Sex?” would land this writer were she to return to Canada? Or “Women Who Wed the Wrong Wahhabi”? Or “‘Obsession’ By Muhammad”?

Update II: Coulter has never called for the conversion of Jews, as Myron (and lefties) contends. I’ve long since “Disentangled [That] Coulter/Deutsch Dust-Up”:

Although some Christian denominations have watered it down, a general filament of the Christian faith is the belief that salvation is predicated on accepting Christ. If Coulter were more than a brash, bonny (if bony) babe, she’d have explained that doctrine: To get past the Pearly Gates, Christians believe one has to accept Christ.

“But is belief in ‘perfection’ or ‘completion’ through Jesus tantamount to hostility to Jews?” asked Gabriel Sanders of the Jewish daily “Forward.” And he replied, quoting Yaakov Ariel, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a specialist in Jewish-Evangelical ties: “A conservative, Jesus-oriented faith doesn’t mean, in and of itself, that people are anti-Jewish. Some of the more favorable attitudes toward Jews have developed in Evangelical circles.”

Update III: ‘Jerusalem Is Not A Settlement; It's Our Capital’ (Forthcoming)

Bush, Christianity, Democrats, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: (Who else?) “The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It’s our capital.” (PBS NewsHour)

So said Mr. Netanyahu during a visit to the United States Capitol, following a “two-week old” tiff between his administration and Obama’s over ongoing construction in East Jerusalem. (Refresher is here.)

The WaPo ventures that “Netanyahu believes that a halt to construction represents political suicide for his coalition, so no amount of U.S. pressure will lead him to impose a freeze — at least until he is in the final throes of peace talks.”

For Israeli’s sake, let’s hope there’s more to Bibi’s stand than political expediency.

Update I (March 24): “…in Israel—foibles and frailties notwithstanding—the West has reclaimed a small spot of sanity in a sea of savagery, where enlightened western law prevails, and where Christians and Jews and their holy places are safe. (Muslims are always secure in western societies, Arab-Israelis too.)” [From “Paleos Must Defend the West…And That Means Israel Too.”]

A reminder to relapsed Republicans; Condi Rice was as good a friend to Israel as is Barack Obama.

Update II: Watch this space. Forthcoming on Barely a Blog this weekend “Impressions From Jerusalem,” written by a special young woman who went to Israel with the expected perspectives imbibed in insulated North America—and shared by paleos and liberals alike—but had a transformative experience.

Most individuals who write about Israel, pro and con, should not be doing so, as they have never experienced the place or the people. This young woman had the heart and the head to ditch tinny ideology (she is not your average Millennial, described in “Your Kids: Dumb, Difficult And Dispensable”) her own included, when confronted by something far more powerful and persuasive.

Be sure not to miss BAB’s upcoming weekend feature.

Update III: You’re in luck. I’ve decided to post the promised evocative piece of writing tomorrow. The mystery young woman has real talent for spare, strong writing.

Updated: Missionaries Cleared (Despite Anderson Cooper's Asininity)

Christianity, Colonialism, Criminal Injustice, Free Will Vs. Determinism, History, Ilana Mercer, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Multiculturalism, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The West

The extracts are from “Anderson Cooper’s Asininity,” the latest WND.COM column:

“The tough tenor toward the missionaries from Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, was set by CNN alpha female Anderson Cooper. The activist anchor and his houseboys in Haiti had been exceedingly hard on the hapless group, whose aim it was to, first, whisk the children to the Dominican Republic and, next, help ‘each child find healing, hope, joy and new life in Christ,” as well as “opportunities for adoption into a loving Christian family.’ …

Thankfully—and contrary to CNN’s self-styled newsman-cum-humanitarian—one Haitian justice was not as eager to see ‘The Americans’ go down for their goodness.

As Reuters reported, the (eminently reasonable) investigating Haitian judge looked for criminal intent in his investigation. He found none. So the Haitian justice concluded that the incarcerated missionaries acted with no malice aforethought.

Mens rea : now that’s a difficult concept for Cooper to comprehend. …

Whatever were [the missionaries’] plans for the children, these were far and away better than what’s in store for them if they remain at home.

Mind you, [now that they’re staying in Haiti], the kids can hope to be caught on camera—Anderson Cooper’s—as they chase him and his crew begging for tasty morsels, while Cooper flexes his muscles, furrows his forehead, and shows just how much he feels their pain.” …

The complete column is “Anderson Cooper’s Asininity,” now on WND.COM.

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

Before purchasing the Second Edition, which features bonus material, ask yourself this: how many column volumes would withstand the test of time with respect to truth and predictability as Broad Sides has? “Chuckie” Krauthammer’s?

Get your copy (or copies) now!

Update (Feb. 13): Robert has verified my contention in the latest column—now on my site and better titled “Anderson Cooper’s Mission Against The Missionaries”—when he asserts: “I have never met a parent that didn’t want their children to have a better future than they did.”

Americans are insular and insulated. They truly think, contra Russell Kirk’s warning, “that all men are brothers, and that all men are equal.”

In some cultures, parents drown their newborn girls before breakfast. And no, this is not reducible to the state’s policies alone. “For the sins of man, hard leftists blame society, and hard-core libertarians saddle the state. The State made me do it’ is how such social determinism can be summed-up.”

To believe that these individuals are acting out of hopelessness or despair alone, rather than acting on their values, is to fall into the Cooper, Robinson, McCain mistake.

No, some people don’t blink before giving ownership of their girls to slave masters and mistresses. Sorry to shatter the Pollyanna perception held in the west that we are all the same under the skin.

I was just reading about an orphanage in Kerala, India, founded by … good whites, for children with cerebral palsy, down syndrome and autism, “who would normally have been killed at birth or rented out to beggars.” I guess, Robert would say that the parent who did the latter wanted more for his kid than the one who chose to off his offspring.

Americans are unable to get into their mushy skulls that indeed these discarded kids I spoke of in the last column, are not “orphanage” in the way we define an orphan. Thei parents have discarded them.

Like the Coopers, Robinsons and McCains of this world, westerners can’t conceive of a reality so removed from their internal world.

Update III: Haiti: Trade In Voodoo For Values (Senegal Does It Right)

America, Celebrity, Christianity, Ethics, Foreign Aid, Hollywood, Human Accomplishment, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Media, Morality, Political Economy, The West, UN

The excerpt is from my new, WND.COM column: “Haiti: Trade In Voodoo For Values”:

“… in all its self-serving displays, humanitarianism is, overwhelmingly, a Western affair; a Judeo-Christian thing. It’s as simple as all that. Liberals like Angelina Jolie will trace Western generosity to the founding of the United Nations, to the League of Nations, or to some other supra-national structure.

I suspect that what is at play in Haiti, and in countless locales around the undeveloped world, began with the revolutionary, universal, elaborate moral and legal injunctions encoded first in Exodus, Deuteronomy and Leviticus – and, thereafter, throughout the Hebrew Bible – to protect and do justice by the poor, the weak, the defenseless, the widow and the stranger. The people of Israel were enjoined to practice what Christians later perfected.

That stuff stuck.

A different set of beliefs animates Haitian society, and helps explain its helplessness and hopelessness. ‘Haiti is not a Catholic country, Haiti is a Voodoo country,’ Erol Josue told National Public Radio. Josue is a Voodoo priest in a country whose former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, officially recognized Voodoo as a state religion.” …

The complete column is “Haiti: Trade In Voodoo For Values.”

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!

Update I (Jan. 22): Martin’s comment hereunder reminded me what I clean forgot: the Obamas’ very public giving. I’m also grateful to Martin for bringing to our attention the DIRECT injunction in the New Testament against showy charity. Martin quotes the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 6: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them.” How has this country forgotten something as foundational as that?

Self-righteousness has replaced righteousness and self-aggrandizement has supplanted simple goodness.

Update II (Jan. 23): CHILD SLAVERY still thrives in Haiti in the form of the “Restavec system.” Children are kept in grinding poverty and worked to the bone. In the West this would be considered perverse in the extreme; in Haiti owning a Restavek is a status symbol. CNN has done stories on Restavec children, but has never connected the dots, as the favorite phrase goes. The angle is, invariably one of, “Look how good I am [Dr. Gupta here]; I’m crying.” Coupled with, “This happens in the US too.

No it doesn’t. When a slave is discovered, usually in the home of immigrants who imported their bad habit, American society shames and punishes the offenders.

Update III (Jan. 24): SENEGAL DOES IT RIGHT. Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade has offered Haitian refugees a “parcels of land – even an entire region. It all depends on how many Haitians come. If it’s just a few individuals, then we will likely offer them housing or small pieces of land. If they come en masse we are ready to give them a region,’ he said.”

Wade “insisted that if a region is handed over it should be in a fertile area – not in the country’s parched deserts.”

Wade’s got the right idea, or at least the righteous one. He is offering Haitians a most generous chance at self-sufficiency; at working the land.

“Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish philosopher and codifier of Jewish law, holds that the most praiseworthy and effective means of fulfilling the commandment of Tzedakah [charity] is through offering an impoverished person a business partnership, a business loan or a job. … the Prime Minister and [former Finance Minister] of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, apparently understood this well. Speaking on the benefits of workfare reform in Israel, Netanyahu was once quoted in the press as saying that it is not enough to be a Thatcherite, a Jew should go even further and become a Maimonidite. [Excerpted from the monograph titled Judaism, Markets, and Capitalism: Separating Myth from Reality, by Corinne and Robert Sauer of the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, with which I am affiliated.]

[SNIP]

Will Haitians be tempted by a chance at an honest living when hand-outs abound?