Some Canadians are rather touchy about criticism from Americans regarding freedom of speech in Canada. The irony of this touchiness is that the Canadian Supreme Court has based its free-speech jurisprudence, at least in the context of antidiscrimination concerns, in large part on the theories of left-wing American academics such as University of Michigan professor Catharine MacKinnon. The Canadian left has a penchant for importing left-wing ideas from the U.S. and elsewhere, adopting them as public policy, and then accusing anyone who objects of being "anti-Canadian" because these policies somehow define Canadian identity. I like Canada a lot myself, but I should hope that there is more to Canadian identity than national health insurance, gun control, and aggressive hate speech laws.
David Bernstein, “Touchy Canadians”, The Volokh Conspiracy, 2003-12-05
October 24, 2009
October 21, 2009
QotD: England of bye-gone days
[I]t is worth noting a minor English trait which is extremely well marked though not often commented on, and that is a love of flowers. This is one of the first things that one notices when one reaches England from abroad, especially if one is coming from southern Europe. Does it not contradict the English indifference to the arts? Not really, because it is found in people who have no aesthetic feelings whatever. What it does link up with, however, is another English characteristic which is so much a part of us that we barely notice it, and that is the addiction to hobbies and spare-time occupations, the privateness of English life. We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans. All the culture that is most truly native centres round things which even when they are communal are not official — the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fireside and the ‘nice cup of tea’. The liberty of the individual is still believed in, almost as in the nineteenth century. But this has nothing to do with economic liberty, the right to exploit others for profit. It is the liberty to have a home of your own, to do what you like in your spare time, to choose your own amusements instead of having them chosen for you from above. The most hateful of all names in an English ear is Nosey Parker. It is obvious, of course, that even this purely private liberty is a lost cause. Like all other modern people, the English are in process of being numbered, labelled, conscripted, ‘co-ordinated’. But the pull of their impulses is in the other direction, and the kind of regimentation that can be imposed on them will be modified in consequence. No party rallies, no Youth Movements, no coloured shirts, no Jew-baiting or ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations. No Gestapo either, in all probability.
George Orwell, “England, Your England”, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, 1941-02-19.
October 20, 2009
QotD: Craftsmanship
I’m not sure if the word "condo" is from the Latin translation "poor workmanship", or from the French "to work without pride".
John Schubarth, letter to Canadian Home Workshop, March 2000
October 19, 2009
QotD: Freedom is slavery
One of the most remarkable features of our age is the propensity toward changing the meaning of political terms. A semantic revolution converts the sense traditionally attached to words into its opposite. George Orwell has ingeniously described this tendency in his 1984. The second of the three slogans of Oceania’s party says, “Freedom Is Slavery.”In the opinion of the “progressive” intellectuals, Orwell’s dictum is the talk of a hysteric; nobody, they shout, has ever ventured to utter such a nonsensical proposition.
Unfortunately the facts belie their denial. There prevails in the writings of many contemporary authors the disposition to represent every extension of governmental power and every restriction of the individual’s discretion as a measure of liberation, as a step forward on the road to liberty. Carried to its ultimate logical conclusion, this mode of reasoning leads to the inference that socialism, the complete abolition of the individual’s faculty to plan his own life and conduct, brings perfect freedom. It was this reasoning that suggested to socialists and Communists the idea of arrogating to themselves the appellation liberal.
Ludwig von Mises, “Freedom Is Slavery”, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1953-03-09
October 16, 2009
QotD: Maturity, fading
Maturity as a general virtue, however, declined in the Sixties when indiscriminate sexual liberty, detached from responsibility and emotional engagement, became a human right from puberty forward. With no need to defer the gratification of appetite, there was no further need for patience, maturity’s hallmark.
And yet what stage of life could be worse for indefinite prolongation? Adolescence is a period marked by extreme intellectual callowness, thrall to raging hormones, obsession with appearance and social caste, contempt for authority, fascination with the transgression of rules, immoderate self-righteousness and intense sensitivity to perceived offence.
For the negative physical consequences of adolescence as a cultural norm, consider the body-sculpting, porn and plastic surgery industries. Our culture’s obsession with youthful appearance and limitless, Dionysiac sexuality is pandemic.
For the more pernicious negative intellectual and political consequences, consider the universities. In academia one finds a ruling cadre of grey-haired, jeans-clad university teachers pickled in Woodstock-nostalgic revolutionary amber, still rebelling against their parents’ conformity and hypocrisy, still contemptuous of their parents’ institutions and values, even those that stabilized family life and nourished communitarianism.
The political correctness these ideologues embody, Epstein shrewdly notes, is a peculiarly adolescent phenomenon: “Political correctness . . — from academic feminism to cultural studies to queer theory — could only be perpetrated on adolescent minds: . . . Only an adolescent would find it worthwhile to devote his or her attention chiefly to the hunting of offenses [and] the possibility of slights, real and imagined.”
Barbara Kay, “The decline of maturity”, National Post, 2009-10-16
October 14, 2009
QotD: Our expanding Nanny state
How can Americans be expected to wrestle with the myriad dangers that confront them each day? Insalubrious cereal? Unregulated garage sales? Pools of death? Sometimes it’s too much to process.
You know what we desperately are crying out for? An army of crusading federal regulatory agents with unfettered power. Who else has the fortitude and foresight to keep us all safe?
Mercifully, as The Washington Post recently reported, many of President Barack Obama’s appointees “have been quietly exercising their power over the trappings of daily life … awakening a vast regulatory apparatus with authority over nearly every U.S. workplace, 15,000 consumer products, and most items found in kitchen pantries and medicine cabinets.”
If there’s anything Americans are hankering for in their everyday lives, it’s a vast regulatory apparatus. Hey, it’s dangerous out there.
David Harsanyi, “They’re Tragically Delicious: Confronting Big Cereal, unregulated garage sales, and other evils”, Reason.com, 2009-10-14
October 12, 2009
October 11, 2009
QotD: Silvio Berlusconi
As Silvio Berlusconi yesterday tried to shore up his position by declaring himself irreplaceable as Italy’s head of government, a court in Milan was told it had been “amply demonstrated” that he was guilty of bribery.
“I am, and not only in my own opinion, the best prime minister who could be found today,” he told a press conference. “I believe there is no one in history to whom I should feel inferior. Quite the opposite.”
The problem, he explained, was that “In absolute terms, I am the most legally persecuted man of all times, in the whole history of mankind, worldwide, because I have been subjected to more than 2,500 court hearings and I have the good luck — having worked well in the past and having accumulated an important wealth — to have been able to spend more than €200m in consultants and judges . . . I mean in consultants and lawyers.“
John Hooper, “Silvio Berlusconi: I am inferior to no one in history”, The Guardian, 2009-10-10
October 8, 2009
QotD: Toronto as the centre of the universe
In the words of former Ontario Premier David Peterson, who hailed from London, Canadian unity work this way:
The thing that keeps this great country together is that everyone hates Ontario; and the thing that keeps Ontario together is that everyone hates Toronto; and the thing that keeps Toronto together is that everyone hates Bay Street.
Toronto hating is an established Canadian tradition. Even back in the day when Montreal was Canada’s commercial capital, it could never prudence Hogtown level bile. Montrealers were just too much fun. That unique Toronto combination of smugness and earnestness — we’re better than you, just watch us be better than you — only exacerbated the envy of Toronto’s astonishing economic pre-eminence. If you can’t see the CN Tower on a good day, well buddy, you’re nowhere that matters.
Publius, “Love Thy Torontonian As Thy Self”, Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2009-10-07
October 7, 2009
QotD: The essence of religion
The fuel of every religion, one way or another, is guilt. Properly indoctrinated — generally from birth — a religious individual cannot eat, sleep, work, make love, or do much of anything else, either as a living organism in general, or a human being in particular, without automatically accumulating a burden of guilt that has to be discharged somehow from time to time, preferably (that is, preferably to those in the guilt-discharging industry) through the heavenly apparatus, sacred plumbing, and holy mechanics of whatever religion controls the territory.
Throw a nickel on the drum, save another drunken bum.
Churches are generally in the business of peddling forgiveness — for having done things nobody can avoid doing if they’re a living, physical creature. They’re middlemen between God and sinner (this means you). They may only want you to come to church on a regular basis, sing the songs, say the prayers, drop a quarter in the plate. Or they may want something else, your witness, your testimony, your speaking in “tongues”. In this hemisphere, once upon a time, climbing to the top of a pyramid and having your heart chopped out was highly encouraged.
L. Neil Smith, “Time for Another Another Reformation”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2009-10-04
September 29, 2009
QotD: Confessions
Whew, I’m pooped. Jimmy Carter has got me run ragged with all the hating I’m supposed to do. Jimmy says I’m a racist because I oppose President Obama’s health care reform program. Even Jimmy Carter can’t be wrong all the time. And since Jimmy Carter has been wrong about every single thing for the past 44 years, maybe — just as a matter of statistical probability — he’s right this time.
I hadn’t noticed I was a racist, but that was no doubt because I was too busy being a homophobe. Nancy Pelosi says the angry opposition to health care reform is like the angry opposition to gay rights that led to Harvey Milk being shot. Since I do not want America to suffer another Sean Penn movie, I will accept that I’m a homophobe, too. And I’m a male chauvinist due to the fact that I think Nancy Pelosi is blowing smoke — excuse me, carbon neutral, biodegradable airborne particulate matter — out her pantsuit.
Also, I’m pretty sure Rahm Emanuel is Jewish, and you can’t be against (or even for) President Obama without the involvement of Rahm Emanuel, so I’m an anti-Semite. Furthermore, although I personally happen to be a libertarian on immigration issues, I do agree with Joe Wilson that you can’t say you’re expanding health care to the poor and then pretend you’re going to turn those poor away if their driver’s licenses look a little Xeroxy and what’s on their Social Security cards turns out to be a toll-free number for a La Raza hotline. Thus I’m prejudiced against Hispanics as well.
P.J. O’Rourke, “Outsourcing Hate: The burdens of conservatism in the Obama age”, The Weekly Standard, 2009-10-05
September 28, 2009
QotD: Gambling on CO2 reduction
There is a real and growing prospect of an all-out trade war being waged in the name of climate change.
The struggle to generate international agreement on a carbon deal has created a desire to punish “free riders” who do not sign on to stringent carbon emission reduction targets. But the greater goals seem to be to barricade imports from China and India, to tax companies that outsource, and to go for short-term political benefits, destroying free trade.
This is a massive mistake. Economic models show that the global benefits of even slightly freer trade are in the order of $50 trillion — 50 times more than we could achieve, in the best of circumstances, with carbon cuts. If trade becomes less free, we could easily lose $50 trillion — or much more if we really bungle things. Poor nations — the very countries that will experience the worst of climate damage — would suffer most.
In other words: In our eagerness to avoid about $1 trillion worth of climate damage, we are being asked to spend at least 50 times as much — and, if we hinder free trade, we are likely to heap at least an additional $50 trillion loss on the global economy.
Bjorn Lomborg, “Costly Carbon Cuts: Proposed Strategies Would Hurt the Most Vulnerable”, The Washington Post, 2009-09-28
September 25, 2009
QotD: CanLit
Canadian literature (or CanLit, as some insist) has gradually become a genre of its own- one of books that are bleak, desperate, *meaningful*, and above all, dull.
Jesse Brown, “You and the Pirates”, Boing Boing, 2009-09-25
September 24, 2009
QotD: Return of the revenge of the subprime mortgage apocalypse
Put it all together, and throw in mainstream media outlets that as recently as June were calling for mortgage haircuts specifically to allow people to keep borrowing against their houses, and you’ve got the mother of all perfect storms mixed with the crack cocaine of third rails on steroids. The foreclosure wave may seem all tired and 2008, but it’s hotter than ever.
Update: Because commenter hmm brings up the Coming Commercial Real Estate Hyperpocalypse, which is the elephant in the room of all swords of Damocles spreading like wildfire; and also because like a golem I screwed up Jim the Realtor’s title in my latest print column, I urge you to run, don’t walk, to give two thumbs up to this tour of ghost malls by Jim the Realtor®.
Tim Cavanaugh, “Corpse of a Thousand Houses”, Hit and Run, 2009-09-23
September 23, 2009
QotD: King’s Ransom
I didn’t want to go into detailed technical criticisms of a VERY rough cut of the documentary, but the footage of Gretzky playing is somewhat disappointing. Which is fine; it’s always a little disappointing. I feel like filmmakers should just let us follow him for a whole shift instead of depicting him scoring nifty goals. C’mon, like Gretzky scoring on a breakaway is an appropriate symbol of his gifts? Gretzky sucked on breakaways! That’s right, I put it on the record! We all knew it! Attica! Attica!
Colby Cosh, “Footnotes to today’s Gretzky/ESPN column”, ColbyCosh.com, 2009-09-18
