I have invited people in the past to write a post for this blog with great result. Each brought a unique point of view and sometimes certain poignancy to a topic that made each post well worth reading. I’ve invited a well-respected man to provide posthumously today’s post because I think what he said and wrote encapsulated the entire conversation in every area in which we are all participating.
It's a very short post but then he was a very thoughtful writer who was able to say in only a few words what most of us struggle to say in many. Ronald Regan referred to these 10 points as 'The American Charter' but I think of them more as simply a Charter of Common Sense.
I got up about 4:30 this morning. I wasn’t all that happy about it because I like lying in bed but lately, I’ve been haulin’ butt out of bed at ridiculous hours in the early morning. Sometimes I wonder if it is a function of getting older. Your body needs more sleep but damned if it doesn’t sense the time clock ticking down to eternity and try to rouse you not to waste any more time than necessary.
Anyway, up I got and dragged my butt downstairs to make lunches for Keina and the Maggmeister. This is one of my jobs. I make their lunches and then trundle them off to school and work later in the morning. I don’t actually mind doing it, I do most of the cooking here and Maggie does most of…ok….all of the baking.
I don’t like to bake, it’s way too finicky. Everything has to be measured and it reminds me of filling out a tax return. No estimates, no approximations, you have to follow the rules precisely. I’d rather cook, you don’t measure anything and if you make a mistake, you can just toss in something or other to correct it. Try doing that on your tax return and see how far it gets you.
So I finished the lunches, made myself a fresh Tassimo and went into the living room to catch some news. It was the usual reportage and I sometimes think I could be on Mars for a few weeks and when I returned, the news would be pretty much the same as it was the day before I left. Nothing much changes or if it does, the mainstream media are keeping it to themselves.
I was about to switch channels to the Olympics when a story about license plate theft in Edmonton, Canada caught my attention.
"The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it."
"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
"It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed."
Consider these three political quotes. Each speaks to the idea of government by fear both of its external enemies and of its own people. Who spoke these words is revealed at the end of the post.
There was a time when the United States was the strongest and freest democracy in the world. It was criticized, mocked and even accused but nobody doubted its commitment to freedom and the triumph of the rights of the individual over the power of government. Even its critics gave grudging admiration for the fierce independence of individual Americans and how quick they were to resist attempts by government to undermine their rights and freedoms. Perhaps no nation on earth held its constitution in such high regard as the United States.
It is, quite frankly, what set it apart from other nations, including most other democracies. As a result, it was the first and only choice of millions fleeing oppressive regimes and impoverished nations around the world.
A few days ago, a young man in South Africa was attacked and killed by a Great White Shark. His name was David Lilienfeld and he was a champion body surfer with his life stretched out before him. He was only 20 years old and his death was the unnecessary result of the carelessness of others who crossed the line.
There is an old saying about crossing the line which refers to having gone too far in doing something. It means that a person has gone beyond what is acceptable and done something wrong. Robbery, for example, crosses the line from legal to illegal behaviour.
Let me clarify that a bit. There is always anger in Canada these days, usually directed at the Conservative government. We have evolved from being the nice guys in the world to being like everyone else; loud and brash with hair-triggers on our angry and too often, ill-informed opinions. Much of the recent anger has been directed at the government and more specifically, Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
But the anger in much of Canada is focused on something else today. Graham James was convicted and sentenced to two years.
For my non-Canadian readers and friends, let me provide a little background. Graham James is a former hockey coach who is a convicted pedophile. He is our version of Penn State’s accused child molester, former football coach Jerry Sandusky with the only difference being that Mr. Sandusky has yet to be convicted of anything.
Mr. Graham is not only a convicted child molester, he is a convicted serial child molester and yesterday he received a two-year sentence for his second conviction.
Canadians are angry.
Editorials have been written. People have called online radio programs to voice their outrage. There are criticisms of the judge in the case for exercising too much discretion in passing sentence, for not understanding the true nature of the case or for just being an idiot. There are demands that the government do something to protect children and to limit the discretionary authority of judges when it comes to sentencing.
Canadians are justifiably concerned and they are angry. They were also angry when the current government introduced its comprehensive crime bill which dealt with two main areas; violent crime and the crime of sexual child abuse. The new bill moves to limit the discretionary authority of the courts when it comes to sentencing.
At the time it was introduced, many Canadians criticized the legislation as draconian, it was oppressive and just one more example of the totalitarian fascist state that Prime Minister Harper was introducing into Canada. He was accused of being obsessive about crime and for trying to impose regressive punishment on convicted criminals instead of introducing new measures to combat the causes of crime. The criticism against the bill was based more on dislike of the Prime Minister than anything even closely resembling common sense.
Until this morning.
This morning the same media and many of the same Canadians who failed to recognize that the government had, perhaps, correctly identified the problem with our courts and had introduced the needed legislation to try to correct that problem are now demanding the government they criticized do something.
It is national schizophrenia fueled by blind ideology and ill-informed thinking or more likely, just a complete lack of common sense. Perhaps it is all three. Take your pick.
Canadians are angry because a convicted serial child molester has once again received a light, inappropriate sentence. They are right to be angry. In this country, a bank robber receives a stiffer sentence than Mr. James received for his second child sexual assault conviction. There is something wrong with a justice system that has such inverted values.
There is also something wrong with a society when too many within it fail to recognize until after the fact, when a government they have decided to hate actually gets it right. As Christie Blatchford of the National Post wrote, the Graham James sentence is "par for the course| and that is neither a surprise to the government nor should it have come as a surprise to Canadians. The travesty is that too many Canadians refused to acknowledge that in their blind opposition to the Conservative government's crime bill because they were simply opposed to the Conservatives under Stephen Harper.
It doesn’t matter whether you support one political ideology or another. What matters is when you allow ideology to make you so blind to common sense, you actually end up opposing the very thing you want and need simply because the political party or leader you hate is introducing it.
If this bill had been passed two years ago when it was first introduced by the Conservative minority government Mr. James might well be serving a much longer sentence today. But it wasn't. It died on the order paper, just one more victim of politics and ideology undermining common sense.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Canadians are right to be angry today. They should be angry with Mr. James and with the courts. What has happened is not justice nor is it moral.
But many Canadians should also be angry with themselves for the hypocrisy of allowing ideology and delusions to cloud their judgment. The one person they have no right to be angry with is the prime minister. He saw these problems with our courts years before and moved to do something about it. For that he was ridiculed and called a fascist.
Perhaps if Canadians had listened and actually thought for a moment instead of giving in to hysterical and unfounded fears, Mr. James would not be now serving a sentence that will see him released after having served only six months.
And that, my friends, is just one more price a society pays when people recklessly abandon common sense to emotional knee-jerk reactions based on nothing more substantial than a dislike for someone. As the former victim of not one but two sexual predators when I was a child, I'm tired of this rampant and willful blindness interfering with finding consensus on resolving the most serious issues we face.
The Ontario Government in Canada is overhauling its casino operations. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) is planning to close some casinos and open others with a view to expanding the games offered in its casinos.
This, in and of itself, isn’t really big news. Governments in democracies around the world are involved in gambling although they prefer to call it 'gaming'. Some own and operate casinos, most operate lotteries and it isn’t really all that surprising that they would revise their services from time to time. They have to in order to achieve the revenues they need to combat the deficits they’ve incurred.
A few days ago, I posted a tongue-in cheek satire about how government over-regulates just about everything it touches. The piece was called “The Real Problem With Legalizing Marijuana” and it attracted almost ten times as much readership as anything else I’ve written. I’d like to think it was because people are interested in government but that wouldn’t be true.
It attracted more attention because many people thought it was about marijuana and judging from the response I received, there is apparently a very large constituency that is heavily invested in the issue of marijuana legalization.
There is a growing movement in most democratic countries to legalize, or at the very least, decriminalize marijuana use. It is being pushed by the progressive left and this is why I think it is a bad idea.
Progressives tend to cite things like the fact that marijuana is a reasonably benign drug, not much different from alcohol or nicotine. Others talk about its medicinal properties in dealing with chronic pain and diseases like glaucoma. Still others dismiss the idea of charging people with a crime for the recreational use of marijuana as just one more absurd and failed part of the war on drugs.
“C’mon boys. The sum a bitch is guilty. Let’s string ‘im up.”
“But he hasn’t had a trial yet and …”
“We don’t need no trial. We know he done it. No need ta waste money on a trial where some slick willy lawyer will only get ‘im off.
We need to see justice done and string the sum a bitch from a tree.”
Sound familiar? It should, it’s pretty much the kind of discussion that you see across social media just about every day. This powerful and potentially connecting medium that could be used to inform and promote understanding is degenerating into little more than a lynch mob mentality by too many who scream for justice while ignoring the very principles on which justice is founded.
There are days when I become so confused by the confused logic employed by so many that I sometimes wish my head actually would explode.
The ongoing hysteria over proposed government legislation on the Internet is one of those illogical knee-jerk reactions that I can’t reconcile with reality. I try, honestly I do, but no matter how hard I try, I just can’t make the facts fit the assertions being made by the righteous defenders of liberty and democracy feverishly screaming across social media networks. I've even been accused of fear mongering for pointing out general issues about cyber crime.
I just bought a new computer and have been busy going about the business of setting it up. One of the first things I did, as most of us do, was install anti-spyware, anti-malware and anti-tracking software. There is just so much malevolence out there that without this software, your computer is like a bank vault left open all night.
My father used to say that a lock only keeps out an honest man and he was right.
Consider hackers like Anonymous who break into systems and computers to disrupt and steal data. Sometimes that data is highly sensitive, sometimes it’s financial. Sometimes, hackers break-in just to damage your system.
In Canada, we elect more lawyers to parliament than from any other profession. As a result, we have some of the most illogical laws going. Legislators have created laws to deal with one issue or another without much consideration for how some situations link to others. Too often, they create new laws to replace old ones but forget to take the old ones off the books. In the end, the code of law ends up being a mish mash of the serious and the not so serious. This a short list of those that don’t even qualify as not so serious. They’re just plain incomprehensible.
Prostitution is legal in Canada. Soliciting a prostitute for the purposes of availing yourself of his or her legal services is illegal. Advertising prostitution is not illegal as long as it is referred to as "an escort service"` (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)
The possession and sale of heroin is illegal in Canada, opening a site to allow for safe-injection of heroin is legal as is using your illegal heroin in that safe-injection site, according to the Supreme Court. Many cities also provide free needle exchanges for illegal heroin users and convenient drop boxes for used needles while continuing to ban smoking indoors.
The age of sexual consent is 14. The age at which you can obtain a driver’s license is 16. The age at which you can join the military is 18. The age at which you can vote is 18. The age at which you can drink is 19 in some jurisdictions. (Conclusion: drinking requires more maturity than sexual consent, driving, voting and learning to fight in war.)
It is illegal to publicly remove a bandage in public. It is legal for the bandage to fall off accidentally.Coincidentally t is legal in some parts of Canada for women to remove their upper clothing and go topless in public. (Conclusion: the government thinks it is more arousing to watch someone take off a bandage than a bra - some of those guys need to get out more)
All business signs posted in the province of Quebec must have French displayed at no less than twice the size of English or any other language. French must appear above the second language in all signs. Companies are not permitted to use the English form of their name. Joe's Convenience Store must be shown as Depanneur du Joe but Xerox is permitted in both languages.
30% of a radio station’s content must be Canadian. (This means the country is subjected to endless repeats of Neil Young songs, small wonder clinical depression is on the increase nation wide)
It is illegal to challenge someone to a duel and it is illegal to participate in a duel, which is punishable by up to two years in prison (but only if you survive the duel)
It is illegal to allow your horse, mule or llama to graze in a national park, punishable by a $300 fine. (this is to prevent the country from being overrun buy llamas, a growing problem in certain parts of the world apparently)
It is illegal for clear soft drinks to contain caffeine.(they can contain enough sugar to give you diabetes in an afternoon however)
It is illegal to pretend to practise witchcraft but not illegal to be a witch. (much the same straight-ahead thinking that went into Canadian prostitution laws) Laws against wizards, warlocks and socerers have yet to be considered.
It is legal to smoke. It is legal to buy cigarettes. It is not legal to smoke marijuana or crack. Guess which one has safe, indoor smoking facilities funded in part by the government.
It is illegal to purchase tax-free cigarettes sold legally on native reserves, unless you are a member of one of the first nations living on the reserve. It is legal to purchase everything else, including bead work and moccasins.
It is illegal to pay for any item that costs more than 25 cents with only pennies. (This is never enforced. Instead, many retailers refuse to take $100 bills which are not illegal for any purchase.)
It is illegal to own and operate a casino unless you are a provincial government or an aboriginal enterprise. Online gaming is banned although the government hasn't figured out how to prevent it.
Some of these laws are no longer enforced but they remain on the books with thousands of others that are hopelessly out of date. The law states that ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it but when the law itself is ignorant of what era we live in, it becomes impossible for most of us to know what laws we’re actually breaking.
