Canadian Cincinnatus

What If Only Liberals Want to Be Multicultural?

The prefered assumption of liberals and the left is that all new Canadians want to embrace multiculturalism and only aging, racist white men are standing in the way of utopian harmony.  I've always been suspicious of this assumption, mostly because I've met racists all over the world, from Pakistan to Romania, from Japan to St. Petersberg, so I find it hard to believe that everyone who immigrates to Canada is ready to embrace everyone else's culture with tolerance and respect.

But this article in the Toronto Sun about Muslims protesting on Remebrance Day raised even my eyebrows.  I have no argument with them protesting the war in Afghanistan, although I'd like to remind them of who helped them during the decade the Soviets occupied the country, and while burning a poppy is culturally insensitive and shows they have no knowledge of Canadian history or where that symbol came from, that kind of drama is the stock and trade of protests, an art perfected by the left.

What struck me dumb was their chant: "Islam will dominate!" and "Our dead are in paradise.  Your dead are in hell."

Now I traveled briefy with the mujahideen in Afghanistan in 1988, just as the Soviets were getting ready to make their escape from that disasterous war, so it doesn't surprise me that they believe we're going to hell or that Islam (and by extension the protesters) will "dominate" in the end.  What amazed me was that they were utterly shameles and open about it.

White males who chant similar intolerant rubbish publicly usually belong to neo-Nazi skinhead clubs, and the thought-police of human rights tribunals would be all over them in seconds for such an outburst.  Stiffer hate crime legislation would be dusted off and enacted, and existing hate crime laws would be prosecuted with extreme prejudice.

With Muslims, of course, the human rights groups fear to tread.  These Islamists are serious, and if you try and charge one of them with a hate crime then you'd better have the RCMP open your mail with a bomb squad robot, let alone brace yourself for a barrage of bad press from the MSM.

The Irish, the Chinese, the Italians, all the Europeans after WWII, the Vietnamese, the Hindu Indians--all these ethic groups and many others came to Canada and for the most part lived and let lived.  They may have felt superior to established Canadians, and some may have even thought they had superior religions or morals, but they were relatively quiet about it.  In the long run, they became Canadians.

But there is a branch of radical Islam that wants to conquer and convert Canada. They shout "Islam wil dominiate!"  Dominate.  Rule.

Jack Layton thinks he can win these people over to the NDP cause by sending them Ramadan greetings, but he'd better be ready to toss away the NDP stand on equal rights for women, homosexuals and anyone whose religion isn't Islam.  There has already been a rise in anti-semetic attacks on everything from synagoges to grave yards, and no one is pointing the finger at skin heads anymore.  Sadly, no one is brave enough to point a finger at all.

If multiculturalism dies in Canada, it won't be white males who killed it.  Indeed, it was Pierre Trudeau and his cronies who pushed the idea in the first place.  It just didn't occur to them that some people would come here and not agree with them that we should all live shoulder to shoulder and respect one another's culture.

It was a nice idea.  So is banning war.  Try that and see how long you last as a country when things go bad.  These ideas fail because there are always some radical groups out there like fundamentalist Muslims who will see it as weakness and exploit it to the max.

Get ready Canada.  The wolves are in the sheep pen.

Mike Downtown

Mayor Bloomberg’s defence of the Ground Zero mosque illustrates how the liberal version of civil rights is the worst of both worlds for ordinary people.

The Mayor of New York defended the ground zero mosque by appealing to the principles of religious freedom and the right of Americans to do with their private property as they wish – both rights that conservatives hold dear.

Let’s take the property rights argument first. As Charles Krauthammer points out, Disney Corporation was not allowed to build an amusement park near the Manassas Battlefield and a commercial viewing tower was not allowed to be built on private land adjacent to Gettysburg. A broad coalition stopped both projects on the grounds that they would vulgarize the hallowed ground of great Civil War battlefield sites. Why didn’t liberals like Bloomberg defend the property rights of private citizens then? In fact, given the fact that the Ground Zero mosque could have been stopped with garden-variety zoning laws, does Michael Bloomberg’s principled defence of the mosque owner’s property rights mean that the mayor believes that municipal zoning laws are an unconstitutional infringement on property rights? Of course not. Don’t get cute. The only property rights he is interested in defending are those of the radical Imams who want to thumb their nose at America. If you are a patriotic, hard working New Yorker, he couldn’t care less about your property rights. So you’d better toe the lines on those municipal ordnances buddy, or Mayor Bloomberg will come down on you like a ton of bricks. He's a law-and-order guy you know.

Let’s move on to the religious argument. Mayor Bloomberg contends that stopping the ground zero mosque would violate of the freedom of religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment. But what about the southern courthouse that has the 10 Commandments inscribed on the wall? Scrub it clean, and fast. Never mind that 95% of the residents of that county are practicing Christians. And the volunteer fire department in Texas that wants to put up a Nativity scene at Christmas? Faggettaboutit. Separation of church and state pal. And don’t even mention state’s rights, that’s raaaacist! It seems that when Christianity is concerned, freedom of religion means freedom from religion. But when Islam is concerned, then freedom of religion is a requirement for the state to go along with it. When President Obama has a Ramadan dinner, no problem. Haven’t you heard? we got separation of Church and State not separation of Mosque and State (to borrow a phrase from Ezra Levant).

It’s the same with the US constitution in general. Any fair reading of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution limits the power of Congress to write laws on 18 enumerated topics and only those topics, but hey that isn’t a problem because the Supreme Court can distort the Interstate Commerce Clause to the point where it would be virtually unrecognizable by the men who actually wrote it in order to allow Congress to do darn near everything it wants to, 9^th and 10 Amendments be damned. Those amendments aren’t to be mentioned in polite company anyway. The religious rights of detainees in Guantanamo require that they get access to the Koran and be given the opportunity to pray towards Mecca every day, never mind that they are not US citizens, nor residents of the US, not on US soil nor even lawful combatants (as defined by the Geneva Convention). On the other hand, it’s no problem at all to infringe upon an American citizen’s right to freedom of political speech through the yoke of McCain-Feingold, net neutrality or the fairness doctrine. 

The end result of all this is the worst of both worlds for the hard-working American. His rights are trampled and hemmed in at every turn, but when he needs the government to fulfill its basic functions - functions such as, say, border security - the government’s actions are hemmed in by an interpretation of civil rights so expansive that it is checked only when those rights begin to actually benefit him.

Bottom line: the liberal interpretation of civil rights screws patriotic Americans at every turn.

The London Times: “Tolerate Sharia yes, but never respect it”

here.

I think it is a good thing that somebody influential is making the distinction between legal tolerance and respect. As the Times correctly pointed out, “Tolerance, however, is not the same as respect.” Just because something becomes legal, it doesn’t mean that the citizenry are now obligated to like it. This piece of sophistry is a major prop of the various Human Rights Commissions in Canada to stifle criticism of the identity groups the left wants to protect.

For instance, the fact that it is legal to practice Islam in Canada is no reason, or rather, shouldn’t be a reason to require non-Islamic Canadians to respect that religion. In a free society, not only should we be free from such an obligation, we should be entirely free to criticize and condemn anything we don’t like.

Just like Moslems should not be obligated to respect the cross of St. George, or the whole of Christianity for that matter.

The gay lobby has been very effective in utilizing this logical error to legally squash all vocalized criticism of their lifestyle.

Enough is enough. Lets return to being a free society, before it’s too late.