This and That No. 11

To the Second Anonymous Commenter On "This and That No. 10"

For some reason my response to your comment will not go through in the comments section. I will have to check my settings for an explanation. In the meantime it will be easier just to reply to you in this post.

As far as the matter of "imposing ones views on others" goes, every time a law is passed it imposes a particular view of how things should be done on everyone in the country, whether they agree with it or not. To some this is an argument for democracy - if views are to be imposed by law, they should reflect the will of the majority. What if, however, the majority is wrong?

The way things currently stand in Canada, social liberals are imposing their views on me. Now, the social liberal's initial flippant response to that is to say "if you don't like abortions, don't have one". It is not so simple. Canada has a single-payer health care system and the single-payer gets its resources from taxes to which I contribute. Abortions are provided by the health care system. I am therefore forced to pay for something I consider to be murder.

I would never say that couples who are seeking a child through in vitro fertilization are worse than Karla Homolka. It might seem like my reasoning points in that direction, but I don't believe it does. When comparing the relative degree of moral guilt between two actions the number of victims is only one of many factors to be taken into consideration. What I would say is that we as a society need to re-think our approach to ethics and science. Hardin's Law states that "you cannot do just one thing". We need to consider our actions in the light of their entire meaning, ramifications, and consequences.

An argument that would defeat my case that abortion is murder would have to take one of the two following forms. Either it would have to refute my case for the embryo being a human life from the moment of fertilization or it would have to make a legitimate case for abortion falling within the categories of justifiable homicide.

Stephen Harper and Freedom of Speech

In my commentary on the recent election in the last "This and That" I pointed out that Stephen Harper has proven himself to be no friend to the cause of free speech and that there was no reason to think that this would change because he has won a majority. It is less than one week since his majority victory and he has already taken steps that would further threaten freedom of speech.

Harper wishes to pass Bill C-51, an act entitled "Investigative Powers for the 21st Century". He pledged to see it pass as part of his election campaign.

Mark Fournier of FreeDominion has demonstrated the dangers to freedom of speech on the internet posed by this draconian piece of legislation. Clause 5 would make it possible for you to be charged with a hate crime if you post a hyperlink to a website containing material deemed to be hate propaganda.

You can read the full details here: http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1614466#1614466

Here are Mark Fournier's comments on Clause 11 of the same act: http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=143529

Bill C-51 is part of the Crime Omnibus Bill that Harper plans to have passed within the first 100 days of his latest premiership.

Blogs Versus Sites

You may have noticed that my links on the right-hand side of the blog are divided into two sections, one for "blogs" and one for "sites". If you are curious as to how I decided which links should go in which section, the answer is that it is largely but not completely arbitrary. The websites of publications like Chronicles Magazine or Touchstone Magazine go into the Sites section. So do websites of organizations like the Monarchist League of Canada. Blogger and Wordpress sites go into the Blogs section. Otherwise it is arbitrary and based upon whether it subjectively "feels like" a site belongs in one section or another. Thus Lawrence Auster's A View from the Right and Laura Woods' The Thinking Housewife are both in the Sites section. Although they are technically blogs for some reason it felt more right to put them in the Sites section.

Articles of Interest

Taki Theodoracopulos on monarchy: http://takimag.com/article/monarchy_the_fairest_of_them_all

Kevin Michael Grace on the Canadian election: http://www.vdare.com/grace/110504_harper.htm

This and That No. 10 (Post-Election Edition)

The election is over and the results are in. The Conservatives have won a majority government with 167 seats in Parliament. The New Democratic Party won 102 seats, making them Her Majesty’s Loyal (yeah right) Opposition. The Liberal Party has been reduced to 34 seats and the Bloc Quebecois to 4 seats. The Green Party has won its first seat ever, that of party leader Elizabeth May.

Is this good or bad?

It is a mixture of both.

The opposition parties will now be unable to unite to bring down the government so it is unlikely we will see another unwanted, expensive, and tedious pre-mature election. That is a good thing.

Stephen Harper, however, displayed a tendency towards autocratic leadership when governing as a minority PM. This is unlikely to go away now that he has a majority behind him. That is a bad thing.

It is nice to see the separatist party reduced to irrelevancy and the Grits decimated. I am pleased to see that the Green Party has a voice in Parliament now. I am also pleased to see that it is a solo voice.

That the NDP has gained so many seats is disturbing. What this bodes for the future of Canada is a question that merits much thought in the days and years to come.

Reasons to Be Hopeful

With a Conservative majority, there is now no reason why the long-gun registry should not be abolished. Indeed, it almost has to be abolished for the Conservatives to retain credibility with their electorate.

Our country has weathered the economic storms of the last few years fairly well. If we can attribute this to Harper’s leadership then this is a good sign of things to come. The stability of a majority government should in and of itself strengthen our currency. At least we do not need to fear the economic disaster that would have been imminent with a Jack Layton led coalition forming the next government.

Reasons to be Wary

Some of us, including myself, would like to see freedom of speech restored to Canada. Some of us would like a return to the days when a person could freely express their views on political issues, no matter how controversial the issue, no matter how bizarre the views, without having other people attempt to silence him with accusations of “hate speech” or nuisance lawsuits. Stephen Harper has proven himself to be no friend to our cause. There is no good reason to think that will change now that he has a majority.

Some of us, including myself, do not like the fact that murder is legal in Canada. Let me make it absolutely clear. When a sperm fertilizes an egg mitosis begins and a new life is formed. If the sperm and egg are a human sperm and egg the new life is a human life. It has a complete set of human chromosomes. To say that this human life does not deserve the protection of law because it has not reached a certain point of development yet and can therefore be legally killed is monstrously immoral. The deliberate termination of a human life for reasons other than justice (in which case it must be administered as a penalty by the state following the demonstration of guilt for a capital crime) or defense (of self, others, or in the case of soldiers of the country as a whole) is murder. Abortion is murder. Someone who cannot see this is morally insane.

In Canada, not only is this kind of murder completely legal, but we as taxpayers are forced to pay for it. It is available at government expense to whoever wants.

Stephen Harper has consistently refused to try and do anything about this or even to allow Conservative MPs to raise the issue in Parliament.

What good reason do we have to think that this will be any different with a Conservative majority government?

As Connie Fournier of FreeDominion has put it:

How many times to I have to tell people that Harper is NOT going to magically change into a conservative if he gets a majority by acting like a Liberal. He will "govern on the platform he is elected on". (1)

Conservatism and the Conservative Party

As I have made clear from my first post, I am a conservative and this is a conservative blog. A small-c conservative, however, is someone who believes in and supports conservative ideas and not necessarily the Conservative Party. If the Conservative Party no longer stands for conservative ideas then a small-c conservative should not support them.

For some people “conservative ideas” are the ideas that would have been called “liberal” in the 19th Century – free markets, personal liberty, limited government.

Others, such as myself, while not necessarily opposing everything classical liberalism stood for, hold to an older set of conservative ideas, such as the fallen nature of man (and hence the inevitable failure of all attempts to achieve salvation through social and political means), stable, traditional, constitutional government, the organic nature of society, the importance of traditional social institutions such as the family and local community, a preference for simple, rural life over modern, urban, industrial life, and the old fashioned Tory reverence for royalty and the church.

Neither set of “small-c conservatives” has much reason to be wholeheartedly optimistic about Stephen Harper’s majority government.

Nevertheless, congratulations to the Conservative Party and to Stephen Harper on their victory. May you prove my reasons to doubt you to be unfounded in the years to come.





(1) http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1605619#1605619