This and That No. 5

First with regards to my last essay, note that tomorrow is the "International Women's Day", a holiday started by the socialists 100 years ago. Today's essay, "Moral Sanity and Abortion" was written for the occasion. I'm sure the socialists, progressives, and feminists will all appreciate the sentiment. ;)

With the exception of Richard Weaver who is quoted in the first paragraph, and Pope Paul VI, everyone quoted in the last essay was a Canadian. Dr. Lionel Tiger, a graduate of McGill University, was born and raised in Montreal.

Tomorrow is also Shrove Tuesday, which is the last day before Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday is the first day of the penitential season of Lent in the Christian calendar, leading up to Holy Week. This brings us to the close of the period I have allotted to myself for political essays this year. Alas, I have not run out of essays. I still have an essay on war that I am working on, as well as one on free speech. I also had planned on reviewing Eric Voegelin's The New Science of Politics, Robert Nisbet's The Quest For Community, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn's Liberty or Equality, Leo Strauss's Natural Right and History and Thomas Molnar's Utopia: The Perennial Heresy this year, mostly as an excuse to re-read this conservative classics. I still intend to write and post these essays this year, but my focus will be on theological topics from the beginning of Lent through to Trinity Sunday (June 19th this year). At which point I will switch to cultural and art topics, tentatively beginning with a review of T. S. Eliot's Notes Toward a Definition of Culture.

Early last week I wrote an e-mail to Jason Kenney, our Minister of Immigration and Multiculturalism. At the end of the week before that, Dr. Srdja Trifkovic, the brilliant Serbian-American scholar who is the foreign-affairs editor of Chronicles Magazine, and the author of such books as the excellent and informative The Sword of the Prophet: Islam; Theology, History and Impact on the World and Defeating Jihad: How the War on Terror May Yet Be Won In Spite of Ourselves, was prohibited from entering Canada where he was scheduled to speak at a meeting on the campus of the University of British Columbia. This was not just a case of over-zealous border guards. The decision to ban Dr. Trifkovic from Canada had come down from the Ministry. The same Ministry that continues to uphold the liberal immigration policies set in place in this country by the Pearson and Trudeau administrations in the 1960's, which I have criticized here. These liberal immigration policies, to say nothing of our refugee policies, pose a major security risk to this country. Dr. Trifkovic posed no threat to this country. You can read his account of the incident here, and Diana Johnstone's comments here.

It would appear that the only time Kenney's Ministry is willing to prevent people from entering the country is when they are speakers with controversial views that some group or another objects to. A couple of years ago George Galloway, the British Labour MP, was banned from coming to Canada. I don't particularly care for George Galloway, nor do I agree with much, if anything, of what he has to say. The reasons given by the government were as absurd as the reasons they have given for banning Dr. Trifkovic. Granted, the government of a sovereign country has the right and authority to ban whoever it wants, except its own people. It is an error, however, to use that authority to keep controversial speakers out, while allowing hordes of immigrants in. It should be the other way around.