Give It To Me Right

I usually welcome The Toronto Star's series. For instance I found Shamocracy to be a thrilling read and in the end it actually made a difference, didn't it? Jim Travers really knew how to perservere. So what about the upcoming crew of staff reporters at The Star? Who's going to shine that bright? Will it be one of the three newbies who put together this? Go have a read. Read somemore. Then come back in a few days for my critique. In essence I will ask those three journalists to give it to me right. I'm shocked. I'm moved. Of course I am! But I want more. I want to feel that thrill that tells me journalism will make a difference.

Andrew Coyne ...

His column today: The idea we can’t debate abortion is unworthy of a democratic country.

Like MP Stephen Woodworth, Coyne is patently disingenuous. His seeks to move the abortion debate back into the legislative sphere while pretending that is where policy is best shaped. He even drops the same rhetorical guantlet as Woodworth: 

"But it is dishonest to pretend this means the matter has been settled, now and forever, or that dissenters from the status quo are, by definition, extremists. Any honest defence of the status quo must concede:..."

Contrast to Woodworth yesterday: 

"What would the motion do? Let us be honest and not mislead anybody who is watching today. ...  Why does it matter that such laws are crafted with great care and with utmost honesty? ...  It is sad that it is not obvious why our law defining a human being must absolutely be an honest law ... Members should not concern themselves with fearful imaginings but look solely at the dishonesty of subsection 223(1). "

Of course speakers who project dishonesty onto their opponents in debate never get far. That game seeds incivility and is the refuge of the weak. 

I find it sad that Coyne never betrays his own reasons for desiring a legislative approach to abortion.  Yet while he speaks from a podium instead of his heart it would be helpful if he would at least be factual.  He wrote that Woodworth's motion was an attempt to break through the taboo on debating abortion. In fact Rod Bruinooge already did that successfully with his failed Private Member's bill Roxanne's Law.  A political journalist of Coyne's stature should never sacrifice context to literary cause.  Our federal parliamentarians of all political stripes will not allow themselves to be roped in by extremist abortion politics of the left OR right because the taboo is already dead. Fortunately the Prime Minister made it clear that Woodworth's 'unvotable' motion isn't up to snuff. 


Coyne has been flogging this subject since 2008: "The Abortion Debate Canada is Afraid to Have" - Maclean's.   That was the year Morgentaler was awarded the Order of Canada,  a provocation the left should by now regret. 

Rod Bruinooge Explains Roxanne's Law from Roxanne's Law on Vimeo.

Crunching the Gender Profile of Senate Appointments

Our mainstream media have abandoned reporting the gender profile of government when there are staff changes (including mass reorganizations of the public service). In light of yesterday's staff change to our federal Senate I thought I'd do the work of our professional political journalists for them and post the gender stats for Canada's senate appointments here:

HARPER
Total Senate Appointments: 48
Total Female Senate Appointments: 15

MARTIN
Total Senate Appointments: 17
Total Female Senate Appointments: 6

CHRETIEN
Total Senate Appointments: 75
Total Female Senate Appointments: 33

MULRONEY
Total Senate Appointments: 57
Total Female Senate Appointments: 13

TRUDEAU
Total Senate Appointments: 81
Total Female Senate Appointments: 12


Looking at these numbers according to party stripes, post-Trudeau we see that the two Conservative Prime Ministers appointed 105 senators (28 of whom were women) and the two Liberal Prime Ministers appointed 92 senators (39 of whom were women). It's clear the conservatives are to blame for the ongoing male gender skew of Canada's Upper House.

List of Female Senators

MEN ARE ALREADY BROTHERS by Prince Serge Wolkonsky of Russia

An excerpt from "The World's Parliament of Religions" 1893.

MEN ARE ALREADY BROTHERS

By Prince Serge Wolkonsky, of Russia

CHICAGO, Sept. 15, 1893

     PRINCE SERGE WOLKONSKY, --- DEAR SIR:   There will be a meeting next Monday, Sept. 18, at 4 pm, in Room 23 of the Art Palace, to decide, if possible, upon a formula which may serve as a bond for universal brotherhood.
     One representative of each faith and order will be invited. The invitation is hereby extended to yourself. Yours, respectfully,

THEODORE F. SEWARD.

When I received the above invitation I did not know whether this would be a private gathering for a friendly exchange of ideas or a public session with regular speeches and addresses, but the appeal touched me too profoundly not to try to prepare myself for both.  In the follwoing lines I take the liberty of setting forth the ideas which have been suggested to me by Mr. Seward's invitation.

Much has been spoken of universal brotherhood during these last weeks, and still a kind of doubt prevents us from trusting in any palpable result. For a long time I have been searching for the reason of that doubt, which never ceased trailing clouds upon the pure sky that shined over those brotherly gatherings: and I think I finally have found the reason.

We speak of brotherhood as of a think to be founded.  People seem to say: "we are not brothers, but let us try to become so. Yes, let us try to become brothers, though difficult it may be; let us strive, for we are civilized people, and there is no real civilization without brotherhood.  Brotherhood is the crowning of civilization."

Alas, brotherhood is not the crowning---it is the basis, and if a civilization is not built on that basis, no posterior efforts can remedy the evil.  It is not to become brothers. we must try not to forget that we are brothers.  It is not because we are civilized that we speak of instituting a universal brotherhood on earth.  It is because we are not---or, far more, because we are wrongly civilized that we strain our brains to institute a condition that never ceased to exist.  Not by instituting societies or associations shall we inspire feelings of brotherhood, but in breaking the exclusiveness of those which exist.

We must not forget that associations are not the aim, but only the instrument.  If we regard those "religious clubs" as an aim in themselves, our membership becomes a seclusion from the rest of humanity; an end instead of a beginning; it generates death instead of generating life.  It is not what we do when we go to the meeting, nor the fact of our going that is important, but what we do when we leave the meeting.  When we believe that, we will see that associations and clubs are not the principal thing.  We will not breathe without full lungs until the day we understand tht human brotherhood is not a question of badge, and that, if we really wish to bring brotherhood in life, we have to run our eyes other ways. Where? This is the great question.

Our modern civilization---or rather, let us not use this word, for it supposes a perfection, and hence cannot be applied to anything that exists on earth---no, we will say our ways of teaching and learning, there is the evil we must fight against if we want to deliver the idea of human brotherhood from the dust and smoke and mud which cover it, so that we are able to forget that it exists and speak of it as a new thing to be instituted.  Our ways of teaching are the evil, so I said and so I repeat.  For our ways of teaching are shameful.  From childhood on we are taught that human beings are divided as civilized, enlightened, uncivilized, barbarians, etc.---I do not know the exact definitions used in American school-books, nor do I know the exact group to which I have to belong, as being a Russian---but the fact is that from our childhood on we are trained to divide those whom we call our brothers into diffferent categories, according to their more or less proximity to those summits of civilization, the benefits of which we enjoy, and the more learning we want to show the more we accentuate and underline these divisions of humanity.

And when a few of us get rid of that habit of classifying our similars; when we at last become aware that all nations are composed of men like ourselves, then we consider this conviction our highest personal merit and the greatest proof of our enlightenment and culture.  Is it really to our culture that we owe these feelings of brotherhood? is it not far more to the fact of having succeeded in shaking off from our souls the deposits of a wrong education?

Now, I ask you all: Is that the spirit which ought to animate all education? Just allow me to tell you what happened to a Russian peasant, of course uncivilized.  He one day undertook a journey.  With a bag on his shoulders he started off and walked through Germany, France, a part of Italy and Austria without knowing a word of any other language but his own.  When he came back his land owner, the civilized man, asked him, "How it was possible he could make himself understood in foreign countries among foreign people?"  And the peasant replied in the most genuine way: "Well, why shouldn't they understand me, are they not human beings like myself?"

I leave you to decide which of the two was the more civilized one, and whether I am wrong in affirming that our modern education does just he contrary of what it should do.

We think that the question of universal brotherhood is an educational question--that it ought to be put at the very bottom of the primary school and not at the very top of the university.  And, by the way, do you know what might become a school for teaching human brotherhood?  The Midway Plaisance at the World's Fair.  You hardly believe that, and still it is so, and if I tell you why you will agree with me.

The Midway Plaisance is generally considered as a resort of pleasure.  For me it is the most sad thing I know, because it is human life exposed as a show, human beings deprived of their feelings and reduced to the state of a catalogued exhibit, a moving panorama of human empty forms. And we civilized people who go and buy our entrance to the Cairo street or the Arabian circus, we even do not inquire whether these human brothers of our have a human soul under their interesting and picturesque costumes.  we look at those Arabian riders, at their equestrian exercises, the showy colors of their dresses, their movings, their wavings, their cheering, and we stare at them like animals.  But their language is a beautiful one.  It is a jewel set in filagree.  Their poetry is the finest dream humanity has dreamed.  No, don't say they are barbarians; don't be afraid of them; step closer.  You will see they are men just as we.

Remember, you cannot become a brother of a man if you do not feel that you are his brother.

So, if you really wish that humanity should be united in feelings of universal brotherhood, do not go to the meeting, do not become a member of the associatin, but going home, gather your children and tell them: "Children, let us learn, for we must know what other people are, because other people are our brothers, and we must know our brothers, because if we do not know them we may not recognize them, and it is a crime not to recognize one's brother."

these are my ideas on human brotherhood.  I am glad to have had the opportunity of proclaiming them publicly; for, after having written this paper, I did not go to that meeting, but I want those who asked me and expected me to go, I want them to know why I did not go and why I never will.