Although there is an alleged purpose to the Human Rights Commissions in this once great country of ours, I believe the process, and the people and alleged sins being targeted by the Commissions are leaving in their wake tsunami like damage to the lives of those becoming the real victims, the Defendant, and his/her family and those who the defendant had responsibility for in their workplace, congregation, or through their creative efforts.
The damage is financial as the Defendants unlike the Claimants have to absorb all the costs of their own defence. The costs is also emotional, which proves to be most damaging, as the Defendant almost to a one was doing what he/she thought was right (even if misguided), and was protected by their freedom of speech rights in our Charter of Rights or was within their normal reasonable day to day activities of work. These then have combined in many cases to exact a physical cost, and have resulted in early retirements, sick leaves, leaves of absence, quitting, and relationship issues.
Our Canadian Families and society as a whole bear the cost of these losses, and I am trying to document this in this blog.
I am prepared to be wrong and if you know of a case good or bad, I would like to hear about it, so I can document it in this blog.
I am more interested in the truth than in being right.
Advent is a lovely time of the year. The readings and hymns of Sunday Mass focus on hope and waiting, though seasonally it is the time to wait and hope for Christmas, the day we celebrate the arrival of the Messiah, Jesus Christ into our midst. Of course, in truth, we know that Messiah has come and died and been resurrected, so we are actually celebrating the story of his coming, and are hoping for his return.
The mass is a little shorter because the Gloria is omitted in this season, since the Gloria gives Glory to God in all three persons, and this season is about awaiting the Messiah.
As well, we are preparing for giving to others in this lead up to Christmas. The Giving tree is up now with cards you can pick to buy gifts for young members of the parish family, and extended family who have little to nothing right now. As well, we could sign up to provide Christmas for an entire family or food baskets and vouchers for a family. All in all a great time in the Church. The food basket component of the gifts for families comes with a shopping list, and we are looking forward to completing it as part of our personal Advent celebrations this year.
Mass today opened with a traditional hymn O Come Divine Messiah. Here is a version of it.
DL Adams over at SIOA wrote a solid piece on Moral Relativism. Though it is American at its heart, it is also about us here in Canada. What is happening in our two formerly great lands is tragic, but it is reversible, if we have the courage to stand up against it. The piece was too good to just link, so I have reproduced it here:
In the dark halls of denial and confusion once known as the learning and planning centers of great public and private institutions across this great land, it is believed—altogether incorrectly—that Moral Relativism has no victims, only beneficiaries.
We have recently seen a jihadist in the US military commit heinous unspeakable crimes of murder and treason at Fort Hood, Texas. He was allowed to commit treason and murder because those in positions of authority allowed him to do it preferring to avoid the appearance of a negative opinion and concern about jihad (and necessarily the “religion of peace/Islam” from which jihad comes) and treason to protecting the lives and security of American service men and women. This is a disastrous failure on the part of many Americans in positions of grave responsibility. This horror must be laid entirely at the feet of the failed philosophy of Moral Relativism and its ugly sibling multiculturalism. Most horrific of all is the fact that this appalling crime at Fort Hood was so readily preventable.
Equivalence is the essence of Moral Relativism; Hasan at Fort Hood was allowed to do his evil business because his expressions of jihad intent and murderous feelings towards non-Muslims were simply “his opinion”, and nothing more. Even expressions of outright treason by Hasan evinced no definitive reaction from military authorities.
If we have no standards of belief, no accepted concepts of truth and value, then any new ideology that reaches our shores is considered by moral relativists to be as valid as the host culture and perhaps even superior simply because it is “different”. Moral relativists have no basis upon which to make moral or ethical judgments and certainly cannot/must not express any opinions that might denigrate or criticize another’s ideology or belief system regardless of the moral or ethical quality of that system. Moral relativists, multiculturalists, and the politically correct are all “birds of a feather” deluding themselves and others that their openness and radical tolerance, even for those with outright offensive ideas, makes for a happier world. They are wrong; Hasan at Fort Hood is one of many proofs.
When all fundamental concepts of “value” and importance, and even the idea of the dichotomy that results from better/worse, good/rotten, intelligent/stupid, enlightened/ignorant are utterly abandoned, denied, and scorned what is left is moral and ethical equivalence. A society that has no idea what it stands for, what it believes in, what it means for citizens to be part of the society itself—is doomed. A society without core ideas is a society destined to failure.
Such a society of radical tolerance has no moral core, no ethical foundation and is bereft of intellectual honesty even to the extreme of forgiving a traitor his treason as if such ideas are merely opinion and completely victimless. We know that this is not so. Moral relativism creates victims not co-prosperity. Our failure to acknowledge good/evil, loyalty/treason, right/wrong, best/rotten, allowed Hasan to commit his reprehensible crimes at Fort Hood.
We are a society adrift, it is clear, because we have disavowed the foundations upon which our society was built. The preventable mass murder at Fort Hood is but one illustration of the victim-creating debacle that is Moral Relativism. Of course, this obvious negation of the value of Moral Relativism hasn’t prevented us from adopting this failed concept as the basis upon which we interact with others, at home and abroad. Fort Hood is the culmination of Moral Relativism in our culture; it is a failed and repellent philosophy that must be abandoned.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines Moral Relativism as something that one accuses another of, rather than something to which one proudly admits. This alone identifies Moral Relativism as an inherent negative, and not something that most reasonable people admit to proudly or at all. Reasonable people know that some cultures are better than others, but haven’t the courage to say. Political correctness is the strong arm of the intellectual failure that is Moral Relativism and Multiculturalism. And what if someone who speaks the truth is described in unfavorable terms? Who cares? The truth supersedes all of this hokum fake Utopian philosophy bunk. The truth requires no defense but itself.
Most often it is associated with an empirical thesis that there are deep and widespread moral disagreements and a metaethical thesis that the truth or justification of moral judgments is not absolute, but relative to some group of persons. Sometimes ‘Moral Relativism’ is connected with a normative position about how we ought to think about or act towards those with whom we morally disagree, most commonly that we should tolerate them. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the titan of moral clarity and Soviet prisoner of conscience and author of Gulag Archipelago, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, was a prescient man. He warned us about the coming failure of our society back in 1978 in an address at Harvard University (oh, how that institution has failed in its mission!).
The theme of Solzhenitsyn’s address was a warning to the West that a rejection of definitive truths is the foundation of a society’s decline and eventual destruction. He identified the abandonment of the concept of evil and the rise of “humanism” that today is Moral Relativism and post-modernism as the ugly egg from which failed cultures are born.
Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually but it was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature; the world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems which must be corrected. Strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still is criminality and there even is considerably more of it than in the pauper and lawless Soviet society. (Solzhenitsyn, address at Harvard, 1978, see citation below.)
Without a firm concept of societal identity and a definitive understanding of and belief in right and wrong, good and evil and similar dichotomies the West cannot succeed over time and will fall to more absolutist ideas due to a lack of moral willpower.
And yet — no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal. (Solzhenitsyn, Harvard address, 1978)
We saw with great pride a rush of enlistments after the jihad attacks of 9/11. We know that our heroes still reside in our country, but they are not the standard, they are not the main—they are standard bearers of the idea of self-sacrifice and service that requires a firm understanding of right and wrong and the courage to identify both and take requisite actions. The society from which these brave soldiers sprang has gone in a different direction than they. Our soldiers are our guide, not our politically correct leaders in broken institutions that refuse to defend themselves and us for fear of causing offense to someone real or imagined. Certainly, we have lost our moral willpower.
Facing such a danger, with such historical values in your past, at such a high level of realization of freedom and apparently of devotion to freedom, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself? (Solzhenitsyn, Harvard address, 1978)
Solzhenitsyn believed that moral growth was imperative for any society and that its citizens must move forward morally and ethically. The existence of and adherence to a legal system was insufficient; meaning and value could never come from law alone but only from moral growth and understanding.
Societies require laws because of humanity’s inherent flaws; if we were perfect there would be no laws. We are not perfect, but adherence to law alone is insufficient to sustain a society and is no foundation upon which societal health and growth can be constructed. Materialism and legality is not enough.
We must have a firm foundation in morality and ethics—which we have abandoned here in this great land. We cannot say that we were not warned. Solzhenitsyn was very clear back in 1978 we just didn’t listen.
It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth; so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding.
A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man’s noblest impulses.
The rise of post-modernism and Moral Relativism whereby equivalence and mediocrity (or outright evil) trumps value and quality (Pirsig, where are you?) continues to be the grim reaper of our cultural and societal life. It will soon eat us whole.
We are now in a great economic collapse, the worst since the great depression. After trillions of dollars have been spent on recovery efforts our national unemployment rate hovers at almost 11% with the “real” unemployment rate considered by some to be much higher. As of this writing there is no recovery but for Wall Street firms enjoying immense infusions of capital because they are simply “too important to fail”. However, the American street (not as important to some as the Arab/Muslim “street”) has felt little benefit and little stimulus and continues to suffer intensely. One would think that in this crisis environment companies and governments would show a clear bias for the growth of American business and therefore support of their fellow Americans; it is not so.
On November 24th it was reported in mainly foreign outlets (China) that a Chinese company was granted a $100 million contract to do subway work on the New York subway system in Manhattan. The only American “news” outlet to cover this contract was the Wall Street Journal, and they literally only ran a two sentence “story”. According to the Journal, the Chinese contract was
…to build subway ventilation facilities in Manhattan.
China Daily quoted one analyst as saying that, “…the order came as no surprise as the US government is spending massively on infrastructure projects.”
How is it possible that the US government and likely the government of the city of New York in this case, are granting massive infrastructure contracts to foreign firms? Certainly there are American firms to do this work? The answer is Moral Relativism.
The article from China Daily was first reviewed several days ago. At that time there were 8 comments from Americans all criticizing the awarding of this contract to a foreign firm and wondering how a foreign company could get such a contract when American companies would be glad to get it. The commenters on this article all wondered how there could be an economic resurgence and recovery here in the United States if foreign firms were being granted large contracts from municipalities and by the federal government itself. These are all important questions to any American. In reviewing the article on China Daily this evening all the comments are gone. Communist states do not have neither freedom of speech nor freedom of the press, remember?
Moral relativism is an insidious thing; Solzhenitsyn warned us about it back in 1978. When we have no loyalty to our own people during the greatest economic collapse in almost a century can we be in anything but a national decline?
China, Switzerland, Rhodesia, Indonesia, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, etc.—every country and culture are all the same to Moral Relativists who have no moral core, no concept of what it means to be an American and why it is important to defend America and the concepts of freedom and tolerance and liberty upon which it was founded.
The horror at Fort Hood occurred for the same reason that infrastructure contracts for improvement of American cities are granted to foreign firms amidst a great economic disaster—because , as a culture, we do not value ourselves above others. This relativism is what “Moral Relativism,” and “Multiculturalism” are all about.
We do not see our value in comparison to other cultures because to make such a comparison is considered wrong, intolerant, and bigoted. Such comparisons are not allowed due to our embrace of multiculturalism and Moral Relativism.
We no longer can identify right/wrong, good/evil, etc. We can only embrace the concept of total inclusiveness; though this is an extraordinarily counter-historical radical concept. We are inclusive to the point where traitors, lunatics, killers, and haters are tolerated because they are simply “different” rather than wrong or dangerous or evil.
Our culture appears to have accepted the false premise that if we are but radically inclusive and uber-tolerant than all of our adversaries will love us for our inclusiveness and tolerance. This idea is a negation of the history of humanity, and the nature of humanity itself.
We live in a Utopian fantasy based upon the denial of the nature of humanity.
Our legitimization of ridiculous multiculturalism and Moral Relativism has disastrous results – most particularly the death of innocents at places like Fort Hood (and on 9/11), and the ongoing decline of the greatest country ever seen on this planet, the United States of America.
If we are to recover from this economic nightmare from which we suffer, and persevere against absolutist and totalitarian ideologies such as Islam and the corruption we see in high and low places in our leadership, we must return to the foundations of our democracy. We must accept that loyalty to our fellow Americans is the first and foremost obligation for us all and that the myth of surpranationalism and global unity is just that - a myth.
There is evil in the world, and humanity is not perfect. We must aspire to greater things than the adherence to only our laws alone (this is the core of Solzhenitsyn’s warning); American power and greatness has always rested upon the concept that our shores are the last safe haven in a difficult and often savage world; our society is open to all who want to assimilate and become American. We must not become like the herd; and remain steadfast as the leader and the safe haven for those innocents who, cruelly abused by their own corrupt societies seek a place to reside in safety and freedom.
Certainly, there must always be a place to go for succor and life for those who flee the horrors of the world – a place of decency, opportunity, and justice. We have the privilege to live in this place.
Benjamin Franklin said upon leaving the Constitutional Convention after ratification that we now have a “Republic, if we can keep it.” We must support our Republic and acknowledge its exceptionalism and value and make good the promise of Lincoln at Gettysburg that this nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal shall not perish from the earth.
If you want a prophetic answer in song to Moral Relativism, try this one from Carman, 'Our Turn Now."
This will be the most unique music you ever hear. It will calm your soul, and soothe you. Tomorrow this album will be released to the public. Here is an Associated Press article that was picked up earlier in the month.
Pope Benedict XVI sings and prays along to a mix of modern music and ancient church chants in a new album presented Tuesday before its release at the end of the month.
The album, entitled "Alma Mater _ Music from the Vatican," includes eight original pieces of contemporary music, interwoven with Gregorian chants and the pope's voice.
Benedict sings a hymn and recites prayers to the Virgin Mary in various languages, including Italian, French and Latin.
Part of the proceeds will go to fund music education for underprivileged children throughout the world, Colin Barlow, president of Geffen Records in Britain, said at a presentation of the album at Rome's city hall on Capitol hill.
The pope's voice was not recorded specifically for the project. The soundbites were given to record label Geffen/Universal by Vatican Radio, which owns the rights, said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman and head of the radio station.
"The pope is open to new ways of evangelization ... to experiment with new ways to transmit a spiritual message that the world greatly needs," he said.
There are nearly 10 minutes of the pope's voice in the 49-minute album.
The composers involved came from different cultural and religious backgrounds. Simon Boswell, who said he is agnostic, said the album was "a fantastic inspiration that had a profound effect on me."
Benedict is accompanied by the Choir of the Philharmonic Academy of Rome, recorded in St. Peter's Basilica and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, which recorded in London at the Abbey Road studios. The three tracks were then mixed in a studio outside Rome to produce the album.
The German-born Benedict comes from a music-loving family and plays the piano. Mozart and Bach are among his favorite composers.
Benedict is not the first pope to have his creative efforts captured on record.
Some of the composers and producers on the project had worked on a similar 1999 album entitled "Abba Pater" (the word "Father" in Hebrew and Latin), which featured the voice of Benedict's predecessor, Pope John Paul II.
Last year tenor Placido Domingo recorded an album of poems by the late John Paul. Entitled 'Infinite Love,' it put to music composed by the tenor's son some of the late pope's literary efforts during his years as a priest and then as a bishop in Poland, as well as during his 26 years as pope.
The "Alma Mater" album is not a Vatican initiative but was arranged by Multimedia San Paolo, an Italian Catholic media group.
It is due for release worldwide Nov. 30, in time for Christmas.
This is an excellent posting by John Pacheco at Socon or Bust. It requires no further comment:
The great and noble effort by Canadians during the past couple of years to remove the shackles of the Canadian Human Rights Commissions cannot end in a simple legal fiction which treats freedom as an end itself. Freedom – true freedom – is not an end but a means. It is a valid instrument exercised by a free people for the pursuit of the truth. But, as with all instruments, it can be abused to such an extent that its abuse can become the precursor towards enslavement in almost every area of human existence – spiritual, psychological, moral, and material.
For those of us who have fought the thuggery of the HRCs, we must be wary that any mere legal victory will not keep the totalitarians at bay unless we all recognize that freedom without the truth is a cheap, legal fiction. It will not survive unless it is at the service, and not the master, of the truth.
Genuine freedom is found in truth. And truth is only found in God. That’s why Jesus says, “the truthwill set you free“. No human government or even human philosophy sets us free. Only God can truly set us free because He is the author of authentic freedom.
True freedom always has a moral component, while the false freedom that the world offers can only bound us to a moral tyranny. It seeks to enslave us, first, in substance and then later “on paper”. Our ultimate goal is to be set free from the corruption within so that this genuine freedom then becomes reflected in the culture at large. It’s inside-out, not outside-in.
Having followed some animus from Socon or Bust about Father Michael Prieur, and Save a Family Plan, both the priest and organisation being part of St. Peter's Seminary in London, Ontario, I was struck by the eternal question of the importance of substance over form, or form over substance.
I ask that not naively, but as a life long Catholic, with a sabbatical leave for about 10 years, earlier in my life to ponder the meaning of my navel. I returned to the Church that I love before resolving that meaning, but have continued with a certain amount of navel gazing thrown into my daily life processes.
Here's what I mean about the substance/form debate if you will.
Fr. Michael Prieur has a long history of dedicated service to the Catholic Church. He is faithful to His bishop, having served under some of the finest our Diocese has had to offer, from Cardinal Carter to Bishop Sherlock, and on to Bichop Fabbro. He has been called on to make tough choices over the years, because of his work as an ethicist. From time to time, he has been criticized by some wag or another, who has skimmed over the top of some of his work, failing to ask about or to attempt to understand the depth. And it happened again recently over at Socon and at Catholic Dialogue. As Father Michael explained to me the other day, many of the issues he is asked to opine on are not simple black and white issues. There is a depth to them, and a lot of study has gone into a decision, which then is, of course, able to be scrutinized. Those who have written in condemnation of some of his work, do so from their own limited knowledge, and therefor are limited to reviewing form, since they do not know enough to examine the substance of his body of work.
The same can be said about the issue that was raised recently n Socon or Bust about Save a Family Plan. I happen to know more about the evolution of that charitable organisation than I do of the theological questions that Father Prieur has been called on to deal with. I met Father, later Monsignor Augustine Kandathil many years ago, not too many years after he had founded Save a Family Plan. Father Gus was a rare gem. He was a product of his roots in India, but was knowledgeable about the needs there, and the desire of many faithful Catholics in North America to address those needs. So, he started a charity that operated on a shoe string, and it came to rest at St. Peter's Seminary in London, Ontario, where the diocese of London provided free office space, and willing volunteers from among the London faithful and the seminarians to help in the administration of and growth of this charity.
Father Gus, though somewhat enfeabled from his personal health perspective, was tireless. He had a great heart for the poor, and did without to help them. Save a Family Plan by and large supports families of the poorest of the poor, and villages and communities of these poor in various parts of India. Like some other charities, Father Gus linked donors with poor folks to meet the needs of both, quite frankly. Father was as tight with a buck as you could possibly imagine. He squeezed each one of those suckers until they bled. He believed in giving the poor a leg up, not a hand out. Tens of thousands of families have been helped by SAFP over the years. Long ago, he was able to tap into money from CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency, on a matching programme, which enabled him to expand the reach of SAFP, such that they could take on projects to make the lives of more of the poor better.
The funds generated in North America for SAFP are administered in India under the direction of Bishop Sebastian Adayanthrath, the President of its Board of Trustees in India. Bishop Sebastian is every bit as holy a man as Father Gus, since deceased was. He has a wonderful heart for the poor.
The substance of SAFP is that they bring aid to the poorest of the poor, and they manage, because of cost containment in their administration costs, to send 100% of every dollar that you give to the poor. Yes, they have been able to leverage money from CIDA in their work, but they are also well aware of the call of Christ to them.
John Pacheco, over at Socon or Bust, is trying to bust them over some interpretation of his about Form. Yes, he has never spent time with them or Father Michael Prieur for that matter. it is far easier to criticize someone without attempting to step into their shoes first. I know how easy it is. I have done it myself too many times to count, and might do it again.
Is it fair? I think not. If you want to look at someone look at the body of their work, the Substance before you go bust their chops over your interpretation of Form.
Mark Steyn wrote a fine article about the problems the real world gets itself into when it adopts political correctness.
He starts off with quoting the Queen of Censors herself:
Ever since this magazine attracted the attention of Canada’s “human rights” regime, defenders of the system have clung to a familiar argument. In a letter to Maclean’s, Jennifer Lynch, Q.C., Canada’s chief censor, put it this way: “Steyn would have us believe that words, however hateful, should be given free rein. History has shown us that hateful words sometimes lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes. That is why Canada and most other democracies have enacted legislation to place reasonable limits on the expression of hatred.”
“Hateful words” can lead to “unspeakable crimes.” The problem with this line is that it’s ahistorical twaddle, as I’ve pointed out. Yet still it comes up.
As if what J Ly said was not sufficient, it was mirrored when Messrs Steyn and Levant tag teamed the House of Commons Committee on truth justice and the Canadian way:
It did last month, during my testimony to the House of Commons justice committee, when an opposition MP mused on whether it wouldn’t have been better to prohibit the publication of Mein Kampf.
“That analysis sounds as if it ought to be right,” I replied. “But the problem with it is that the Weimar Republic—Germany for the 12 years before the Nazi party came to power—had its own version of Section 13 and equivalent laws. It was very much a kind of proto-Canada in its hate speech laws. The Nazi party had 200 prosecutions brought against it for anti-Semitic speech. At one point the state of Bavaria issued an order banning Hitler from giving public speeches.”
And a fat lot of good it all did.
But still the old refrain echoes through the corridors of power: vigorous honest free speech will lead to mass murder unless we subject it to “reasonable limits.”
The problem with political twaddle of any sort, but particularly that which demands to be correct, is that is sounds good coming off the tongue, as long as those in earshot are similarly inclined to receive said twaddle. It withers when confronted by someone who is more inclined to the truth, a la Steyn.
As Steyn points out political correctness has finally come home to roost, though most are still trying not to see it that way:
Actually, the opposite is true: a constrained and regulated culture policed by politically correct enforcers leads to slaughter. I’m not being speculative here, as Commissar Lynch is about my murderous prose style. It’s already happened, just a couple of weeks back. Thirteen men and women plus an unborn baby were gunned down at Fort Hood by a major in the U.S. Army. Nidal Hasan was the perpetrator, but political correctness was his enabler, every step of the way.
As Steyn goes on to point out in detail, Major Hasan is what happens when people who know try to hide themselves behind political correctness. The people did not have to die. Someone, one someone had to speak up, and shut Hasan down.
Read the rest of the article, please. Help stamp out political correctness. Engage your brain.
