recent Canadian Conservative Convention round-up…

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So, up here in Canada, our Conservative-In-Name-Only Party had its policy convention. The Tories voted to maintain the current definition of marriage as between one man and one woman, but IMO, this is a meaningless gesture, as the issue will be decided by vote in Parliament long before the next election – it’s going through the process now – and the Tories recently missed what I thought was a perfect opportunity, to defeat the Liberal minority government over the budget, thereby collapsing it and triggering an election, which I think the Conservatives could have won quite handily if they’d made the central issue about gay marriage – polls have consistently shown that most Canadians, despite their liberalism, are opposed to the idea.

On abortion, they voted to maintain the status quo, [url=http://merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/2005/03/canadas_conserv.html]of having no position whatsoever[/url], the gutless cowards…

In other convention news, Tory leader Stephen Harper won re-election quite handily, by an 84% majority of delegates. IMO, some choice bits from [url=http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2005/03/supporting_stev.html]his victory speech[/url]:

“the size and the diversity and the unity of this convention puts the old Liberal party to shame”

“We have a moderate mainstream program which reflects Canadian values proudly and faithfully”

so, an ode to “diversity” (and a claim that they’re more “diverse” than even Liberals), and an emphasis on “moderate, mainstream”…

We can see where traditionalist conservatives stand in the Conservative Party, quite clearly…

Finally, IMO, [url=http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/index.html]National Post[/url] columnist Andrew Coyne had the best analysis of the convention; see his column, from his blog entry, [url=http://andrewcoyne.com/2005/03/amid-balloons-white-flag.php]here[/url]…

15 thoughts on “recent Canadian Conservative Convention round-up…”

      • Everyone should read that article. It is shocking and sickening.
        Will, words just cannot express how unbelievable that article you linked is. It is a MUST-READ: everyone who can stand it should read it. (I realize not everyone can stand to get all the way through a shocking article like that—I know I often can’t, but must bail out somewhere part-way through, because I simply can’t stand to go on).

        This is one of those articles whose unfailingly high quality throughout makes it hard to pick out a “teaser excerpt.” The following excerpts were chosen almost at random (the whole article reads like these):
        _________

        “Then there’s the term ‘hate.’ If Christians say publicly that they disapprove of homosexual behaviour because the Bible declares it to be immoral, then that is ‘promoting hatred.’ If they quote medical statistics about the HIV infection rates of homosexual men, that is ‘promoting hatred.’ If they object to their children being indoctrinated in kindergarten class with information about homosexuality, they are hateful people. Apparently Canadians can hold religious beliefs, but if they tell anyone else in a public forum, such as a newspaper, they are ‘promoting hatred.’ ”

        “[…I]f you have a moral objection to homosexuality you are ‘mentally ill’ and require re-education. One homosexual activist, John McKellar, who opposes the Gay Pride movement, calls the use of the word homophobia, ‘a contrived slander’ against religiously conservative people. But activists realize that religious people are unlikely to change, which is why they are focusing a tremendous amount of attention on re-educating children in public schools.”

        “Prior to the last election, Revenue Canada officials, the tax department, called in representatives of the Catholic and Evangelical Christian churches to warn them that they could lose their charitable status if they tried to influence their members to vote for parties which oppose same sex marriage.”

        “One of the most offensive incidents of anti-Christian discrimination was when officials from the Prime Minister’s office told two Christian ministers not to make any references to Jesus Christ, the cross, or the New Testament in their memorial prayers during the Swissair memorial in Nova Scotia in September, 1998. At first the Prime Minister’s office denied forcing the two ministers to delete references to Jesus from their prayers, but later admitted they did so because they thought that other religious leaders would be offended. Muslim and Jewish religious leaders were free to say whatever they wished, and were able to quote freely from the Torah and the Koran.”

        “And last month, CBC Radio, the government’s broadcasting company, refused to accept a paid ad from the Maritime Christian College, because it was advertising a lecture that was going to discuss family issues from a Christian perspective. No private broadcaster refused the ad.”

        “Three children on Vancouver Island being home schooled, recently failed to graduate from high school, because their parents refused to teach them a small mandatory course which included sex education, on religious grounds. They regarded the course, called Personal Planning, as an attempt at social engineering and promoting immorality. The mother, Cheryl Howard of Courtenay, took the case to the BC Human Rights Tribunal but lost. Her children had straight A’s in every other course.”
        ________________________

        Long live Flanders!

        • Thanks for that post.

          Thin
          Thanks for that post.

          Think ahead to the endgame. Canada is subsisting on the social capital of traditionalist society. What happens when that is used up, when all the traditionalists are dead, when all traditional institutions (like the churches) have been co-opted, converted, or intimidated (or perhaps just silenced)?

          What is left? What glue holds the society together? What will that society look like?

          • exactly, MD…
            > Canada is subsisting on the social capital of traditionalist society.

            Just so; inertia is all that’s holding Canada together, really…

            > What happens when that is used up, when all the traditionalists are dead, when all traditional institutions (like the churches) have been co-opted, converted, or intimidated (or perhaps just silenced)?

            Good question; I don’t know…

            > What is left? What glue holds the society together? What will that society look like?

            This I can answer – no glue will hold Canada together in the future, except perhaps brute force, should the military be used to prevent regional secession – of course, the military itself may be rent with divisions, too, and have to deal with mutiny…

            What the future society in Canada will look like? It will be like now, but even moreso – a polyglot mix of Asian, Afro/Caribbean, and Middle-Eastern/Islamic… It will be a clash of mostly Asians versus Islam, and both versus queers and social “progressives”… And the decreasing European remnant will be powerless, either way… Aboriginal peoples will have more rights than white people…

            That’s my pessimistic outlook on my country’s future, if Canadians don’t wake up…

          • Canada and U.S. both equally headed for destruction…
            I’ll echo the comments about Canada made by http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/003229.html this correspondent of Laurence Auster at VFR (interestingly enough, only a few days after those of a similarly disillusioned Canadian immigrant to the U.S. who also finds his new home too much like his native land, http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/003240.html here) – I live in a major Canadian city, one which is overrun with immigrants, and looks more like East Asia and the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, than it does like Canada; it sure doesn’t feel like home. I grew up in the country, close to a small town, and I increasingly dislike it here, and am soon moving back to my original home. I have many friends here, and it is with some sadness and reluctance that I leave, but I can’t stand living amongst mostly aliens – there are other reasons for my leaving, too, but this is a major part. There is hope in the smaller towns, perhaps, for the preservation and renaissance of Canadian heritage and identity; not in the big cities, today…

            I’ll also echo Messrs. Perowne and Rayside, regarding the U.S., and note that in my experience of about a year of living in the U.S., four years ago, I also saw a country which, IMO, was as equally headed down the path of cultural and moral depravity, and in danger of being completely swamped with foreigners, as Canada – I was shocked, in upstate N.Y., to see how many Mexicans were living that far north, not only away from the Mexican border, but only four hours’ drive from the Canadian border!

          • out with the Maple Leaf, in with the Inukshuk…
            A Canadian VFR reader http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/003358.html comments…

            And also, a shocking post http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/003357.html here, although, it should be noted, bizarre and insane as Martin’s behaviour is (and in a still-sane world would be recognized as such – this pro-gay-marriage, kowtower-to-Sikhism politician evidently considers himself a “devout Catholic”, though the evidence suggests otherwise, to say the least), the budget deal referred to is no small issue, as Martin’s government is http://news.google.ca/news?num=100&hl=en&lr=&tab=wn&ie=UTF-8&q=%22paul+martin%22+election&btnG=Search+News possibly near collapse due to the http://andrewcoyne.com/2005/04/adscam-in-100-words-or-less.php Adscam scandal – we Canadians may have an election only a year since the last one… (See the forum I previously created which alludes to this, http://antitechnocrat.net:8000/node/1302 here. I realize this seems more about conventional politics than the usual discussion topics at Turnabout, but anyone following what has been going on in Canada with the Gomery inquiry revelations must agree, that the level of political corruption is incredibly shocking, even for us Canadians who are all too used to corruption…)

            But yes, Canada is well on the way to national suicide, without doubt…

          • Regarding Martin performing the kow-tow before the Sikh altar…
            Here, from the century before last, is the true story of an ordinary soldier in the British Army, a certain Private Moyse, who went to his death rather than disgrace his nation and his race by doing what the Canadian Prime Minister just did (and I think Private Moyse’s story speaks for itself regarding the differences between then and now):

            THE PRIVATE OF THE BUFFS

            by Sir Francis Hastings Doyle

            “Some Sikhs, and a private of the Buffs( * ), having remained behind with the grog carts, fell into the hands of the Chinese. On the next day they were brought before the authorities and ordered to perform the kow-tow. The Sikhs obeyed, but Moyse, the English soldier, declared he would not prostrate himself before any Chinaman alive, and was immediately knocked upon the head, and his body thrown upon a dunghill.”—China Correspondent of The London Times.

            Last night, among his fellow roughs,
            He jested, quaffed, and swore;
            A drunken private of the Buffs,
            Who never looked before.
            To-day, beneath the foeman’s frown,
            He stands in Elgin’s place,
            Ambassador from Britain’s crown,
            And type of all her race.

            Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught,
            Bewildered, and alone,
            A heart, with English instinct fraught,
            He yet can call his own.
            Ay, tear his body limb from limb,
            Bring cord or axe or flame,
            He only knows that not through him
            Shall England come to shame.

            Far Kentish hop-fields round him seemed,
            Like dreams, to come and go;
            Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleamed,
            One sheet of living snow;
            The smoke above his father’s door
            In gray soft eddyings hung;
            Must he then watch it rise no more,
            Doomed by himself so young?

            Yes, honor calls!—with strength like steel
            He put the vision by;
            Let dusky Indians whine and kneel,
            An English lad must die.
            And thus, with eyes that would not shrink,
            With knee to man unbent,
            Unfaltering on its dreadful brink,
            To his red grave he went.

            Vain mightiest fleets of iron framed,
            Vain those all-shattering guns,
            Unless proud England keep untamed
            The strong heart of her sons;
            So let his name through Europe ring,—
            A man of mean estate,
            Who died, as firm as Sparta’s king,
            Because his soul was great.

            [( * ) The “Buffs” were the East Kent Regiment.]
            __________________________

            (Prime Minister Martin’s soul, needless to add … is not great.)

            ________________________

            Long live Flanders!

          • now Moyse had true character…
            > (Prime Minister Martin’s soul, needless to add … is not great.)

            No indeed, LOL…

        • André asks a good question: What DO they think?
          Andre, browsing that Ontario-based religious-tolerance site you linked, Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, gives one a distinct feeling of carrying coals to Newcastle, in view of the West’s prevailing anti-religion atmosphere today. (“Carrying coals to Newcastle,” Andre, is an English-language expression meaning “adding yet more to what is already a surfeit.” The English town of Newcastle was formerly a coal-exporting town.) The danger today for people in Ontario (and especially Toronto, one of the most dumbly left-wing places in North America) is certainly NOT lack of religious tolerance, but lack of a moral compass, and too much cutting-loose from all kinds of traditions, inevitably including religion-based ones, that have been society’s sustenance and bedrock since ancient times.

          I agree with you, Andre, that the members of a group that considers the most important task in today’s world the further promotion of religious tolerance, at a time when the absurd excesses of what’s considered “religious tolerance” are in the process of weakening and actually killing certain religions and harming vital aspects of society, must be hypocritical morons. What they are too hypocritical to see (or to admit, if they do see it) is that religious tolerance carried to the extreme becomes not tolerance of all religions but opposition to all religions—all, that is, except the liberal one of “religious tolerance” ( = the religion of opposition to all religions).

          Look at the foolishness they write in their site’s introduction (interspersed are a couple of bracketed comments added by me):

          “This is a large religious web site which promotes religious freedom, tolerance and diversity as positive cultural values. [But when those are the supreme values there are no values, because no actual values other than valuelessness are permitted: the existence of actual values contravenes the liberal notions of extreme “diversity” and “equality.”] It contains over 2,800 essays and menus. But it is very different from almost all other religious sites: We do not promote our own religious beliefs. We can’t because we are a multi-faith group. We try to explain the full range of religious belief in North America, from Asatru to Zoroastrianism, including Christianity, Hinduism, Wicca etc. We try to describe all viewpoints on controversial religious topics objectively and fairly. We cover everything from abortion access to equal rights and protections for homosexuals and bisexuals, including same-sex marriage, and dozens of other ‘hot’ topics. [But how can these topics be “hot” for this bunch, when the outcomes of all discussion of them are known in advance?: “Abortion and same-sex ‘marriage’ can be discussed all you want but can never be opposed, according to our group’s philosophy … well, yes, OK, they can be opposed, but only verbally, purely for argument’s sake: opposition to them can never be made into actual rules society lives by.” Doesn’t foreknowledge of that final outcome take the hotness out of these “hot topics”? How can they still be “hot” for this group? It all sounds pretty luke-warm to me—if not downright cold.]“

          The outlook of the kind of people running a site such as this, the one that says it’s fine to describe religious convictions but ES IST STRENG VERBOTEN! for anyone to actually try to live by them, contributes immensely to the kinds of moral outrages documented in the Kempling article Will linked. Andre is right to rhetorically ask how these people view those outrages which have been inflicted on their fellow Canadians.

          ________________________

          Long live Flanders!

          • Addendum
            In my comment above (9:47 am), where I referred to the “foolishness” in their site’s introduction I was viewing it as foolishness given today’s climate of extreme liberal “tolerance,” “diversity,” and “multiculturalism.” By itself, of course, discussion of the topics that site devotes itself to, sort of the sociology of religion and so forth, is perfectly fine, not “foolishness” at all. But to devote a site to the further advancement of yet more of the liberal perversions of what amount to multiculti, extreme “tolerance,” extreme “diversity,” and the rest, is indeed the height of foolishness in a world such as today’s West where things have gone way too far in those directions, where structures that have always played a crucial role in society’s well-being are crumbling and the West’s life-blood is being sapped to the point where people are talking seriously about its irreversible decline. It’s more than foolishness to devote oneself to pushing even more of the poison that brought about this crisis in the first place: it’s insanity (either insanity or cunning malevolence, one or the other).
            ________________________

            Long live Flanders!

          • Newcastle coal
            Thanks by your explanations,Fred. In Venezuela we said “to taking salt to Coro/a city/” with similar meaning. I imagine the sense,I have read something on England.

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