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Name: Dennis
Country: Canada
Birthday: 3/8/1984
Gender: Male
Interests: Improvisational comedy!
Expertise: Improvisational comedy!
Occupation: Student
Industry: Entertainment
Message: message me
Member Since:
12/6/2002
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| Which humans deserve to live and which deserve to die? It is your right to choose.Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of abortion is the legal trick that allows it to be practised in this country.
Of course in Canada, you cannot kill someone because it is illegal to kill another person. But you can kill someone if that someone is not a person. Unbelievably, the unborn are considered to not be persons.
This is unbelievable because there is no scientific argument on the simple fact that the unborn are humans. At the moment of conception an original organism, a new being--a human being--is created. And yet, somehow, this human is not a person.
This is the abhorrent reality of abortion in Canada. Canadians collectively shudder when reminded of our past as a country where women and aboriginals were at one time not considered persons. We find it impossible to fathom that any government could deny the legal status of 'person' to any human. Yet shockingly, we still deny that most basic legal status to a great number of humans: the unborn.
We do not need to look far back into history to remind ourselves what happens when certain humans are considered as less than persons. And we do not even need to go outside our own borders, or fall back on the over-used example of the Holocaust, to find many horrifying examples of humans being treated inhumanely under the justification that they were not persons. The example of government-run residential schools for native children, the internment of Japanese during WWII, or the wanton loss of Chinese life during the construction of the CPR all stand as testimonies of what horrors people are capable of when they decide that a certain group of others are not 'persons'.
This is the philosophy that stands behind the practise of abortion in Canada. These unborn humans are not persons, and therefore we can dispose of them as we please.
In Canada, the leading proponent of this discriminatory and hateful philosphy is a man who wears many hats. He is a polish-born medical doctor, media starlet, pro-abortion advocate, honorary doctor of laws, and convicted-and-later-acquitted criminal with a crooked face and a maniacal following. There is no need to recount his notorious history here except briefly: Dr. Henry Morgentaler opened abortion clinics in Toronto and Montréal at a time when abortion was illegal in Canada. Despite criminal convictions and time spent in jail, Dr. Morgentaler refused to discontinue doing abortions, and his public advocacy - which included blackmailing Prime Minister Trudeau - eventually led to the situation where abortion is now completely legal and unrestricted in Canada.
Thanks to this man, there are now two classes of citizens in Canada: persons, and non-persons. Remember, there is no scientific debate over the fact that an unborn child is a living human. But this particular class of living humans are not considered 'persons'. Much like natives at the beginning of Confederation, or women until the Famous Five, Canada still plays home to a group of people who, according to the law, are not really people. And this discriminatory situation is due largely to the work of one man, Dr. Henry Morgentaler.
Given all this, is is completely amazing that I could even ask this next question, yet in 2008 it is somehow being asked: should this destroyer of life and promoter of discrimination be giving Canada's highest civilian honour? When Dr. Morgentaler receives the Order of Canada tomorrow (as he will, if early media reports are to be believed), his mere presence on the list as a recipient will devalue this civic award greatly. Despite his long and diverse career, Dr. Morgentaler is associated with only one thing in the minds of Canadians: the crusade for legalised abortion. Starting tomorrow, the Order of Canada will be seen as endorsing a practise that is not just murderous and unjust, but discriminatory and inhumane as well.
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| Green Shift! Extreme Eco-Change!
The reviews, so far, are mixed over Stephane Dion's carbon tax plan, which he has decided to call the "Green Shift". Some commentators think it is brilliant, others think it is the right thing but doesn't go far enough, while others think it costs Canadians too much in new taxes that they won't necessarily be able to get back through Dion's proposed reductions in tax rates elsewhere.
The debate about the actual merits of the plan is really quite fascinating, but nevertheless moot. Electorially speaking, the Dion Green Shift will fail for exactly the same reason that the Liberals succeeded during the past 13 years. The Green Shift is too extreme. Extreme, not in the sense that it is bad policy or bad economics (it may or may not be both), but in the sense that it tries to change too much too quickly. You would think that Stephane Dion would have known this, since he was part of the government that spent nearly 15 years diriding, with much success, the right-of-centre opposition parties as extreme and dangerous, while the Liberal Party was moderate and safe. This strategy worked, and history now looks back at the Reform and Canadian Alliance as parties that failed to form government because they tried to change too much too quickly - in other words, they were too extreme. While on the other hand, the Liberals succeeded by positioning themselves as the bastion of stability. So while Reform wanted to overhaul the Senate (an extreme change) the Liberals contented themselves with appointed elected Senator Stan Waters (a moderate step). Reform was 'extreme', and failed to make ground; the Liberals were 'moderate', and succeeded. The Liberals successfully branded Reform initiatives like Recall and citizen's Intiatives as extreme, and the branding stuck because these policies called for major changes in a short period of time. The Liberals succeeded by positioning themselves as the temperate, middle-of-the-road defenders of the beloved status quo. They were prepared to make changes, but not too many or too quickly. In the 2004 election, the Liberals once again made hay with this strategy and narrowly staved off defeat by launching a last minute attack which accused Stephen Harper of holding an 'extreme' hidden agenda. Actually, it was only after branding himself as a moderate leader in his own right that Stephen Harper was able to form government following the 2006 election. In recent history, electoral victories have always been on the side of whoever appeared 'moderate' and defeat was always on the side of whoever appeared 'extreme'. (In fact, it is an interesting quirk in that Canada is probably the only country in the world where it is more important to be moderate than to be correct.) Any proposed suite of vast and swift changes has always been derided as being 'extreme'. This was the case in British Columbia, and later in Ontario, when eminently sensible electoral reform was put to a plebiscite, and in both cases defeated - largely thanks to the fact that Canadian voters shy away from radical change. Another great example is the defeat of John Tory in the 2007 provincial election in Ontario, where his robust public policy idea (an idea that is already in place in 5 other provinces) was rejected because it was too 'extreme'. So Mr. Dion will face the same fate when he takes his Green Shift on the hustings in October 2009. His plan - which may or may not be fantastic public policy - will simply be viewed by the cautious Canadian public as a change that is too substantial, too rapid, and yes, too extreme. | | |
| The forecast calls for heavy thought showers
I love the British - heck, I'm one of them. But the British do have away of being overly pedantic and officious.
As someone who lives in Ottawa, a bureaucratic city, even I find the British version of Bureau-speak to be beyond ridiculous.
From CNN.com:
"The body that represents [Britain's] local authorities has told its
members to stop using management buzzwords, saying they confuse people
and prevent residents from understanding what local governments do.
The association sent its letter after reports that one town council had
told staff to use the term "thought showers" instead of "brainstorming.""
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| I seriously wonder Every time I see Charlize Theron in one of those WSPA commercials . . . Is Ms. Theron little more than the American, 21st Century version of Brigitte Bardot? 
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| Does it interest everyone? Really?
People get really pumped up about women in slutty dresses, eh? I mean, it's all they are talking about lately.
Julie Couillard now claims that she was pressured into wearing that dress to Rideau Hall by the Minister himself, so that he would end up on the front of newspapers and raise his political profile.
If that is true, it is a cheap way to do politics. But given where Mme. Couillard is coming from, I am going to take everything she says with a grain of salt.
The real issue now is not what most people are talking about. Most people are still talking about Jules, Max, and Steve. Was the Prime Minister right to appoint M. Bernier to cabinet to begin with? Was the Honourable Member for Beauce positioning himself to take over as leader of the party? Was the ex-wife of a gangster trying to get sensitive security information from her boyfriend?
That is all very interesting, but from a politics perspective, that is not the real issue. The real issue is what will happen now when the cabinet next gets shuffled. With Bernier out, Prime Minister Harper needs a new Minister from Quebec. Since all other media outlets have been too busy taking about Couillard's neckline, I have not yet heard anyone suggest who that new Minister might be. So I am going to go out on a limb here and be the first* to predict that we will soon be seeing M. Denis Lebel in the federal cabinet.
* (I may not be the first to predict this - I'm not exactly widely read, so other pundits may have beaten me to it.)
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