If I Vote For Him, It Will Kill A Part of Me

Leave it to the Republican party to give us a candidate like John McCain at this pivotal point in the history of our country. The Democrats are running LBJ without the commitment to national security and conservatives have been saddled with a candidate who abhors both conservatism and conservatives. He's Nixon without the paranoia at a time when our side needs to be pretty damn paranoid.

The only person who could ever convince me to vote for John McCain is Barack Obama, and every time I think he's done it, McCain has to open his mouth and remind me why, on principle, I can't vote for him. Take his attack on big business yesterday. There is really nothing wrong with shareholders approving CEO pay and severance packages, but I'd like to remind Mr. McCain that its NONE OF HIS DAMN BUSINESS HOW MUCH CORPORATIONS CHOOSE TO REWARD THEIR CEOS. Corporations, like individuals, should be allowed to sink or swim on their own. If they want to pay 40 million to a guy who's run the company into the ground, its their problem. This is public information, and the public can dump their stock in inept company A and buy stock in well run company B. That's how the free market works Senator. Reagan conservative, my ass. Further more, if say, Exxon Mobile wants to send off a CEO with a golden parachute, who is John McCain to say it isn't right? Can he run a multi billion dollar oil company? Does he know what it entails and how someone who can do it should be compensated? If McCain is elected, why don't we just follow the lead of Maxine Waters and nationalize the oil companies. Then we'll see how well McCain and the economic dunces in Washington can supply a commodity that is vital to American prosperity. I'm curious to see who they'll blame when prices skyrocket.

You're losing me Senator, and its not just Eric and his little blog you're losing. There are millions like me who aren't going to vote for this progressive B.S., no matter how you label yourself.

Give it the Ol' Prussian Try

NBC's Brian Williams to graduates in Columbus Ohio:

"...I come here today with a request for the Class of '08: We need you to fix the country -- and I'm sorry to ask this of you. And I'm deadly serious and we really do. I am 49 and on behalf of my generation, I'm so sorry, the Internet is so cool we got sidetracked. I can burn an hour on Perez Hilton like that. And I know I speak for a lot of you: WebMD, very cool, except anything I've ever punched in comes back “thyroid cancer."

This on its own is fine, well, not fine, but no more than typical liberal drivel about fixing the country that conservatives have supposedly run into the ground. However, when you combine it with what he says later, something emerges:

"Dial in and pay attention, and I say that as part of a group we all have to start thinking and acting as one. There are, as of this week, 117 million blogs in the United States. One more time: 117 million blogs. And I stand here today as one of them. And what do most of us bloggers talk about? Us. And the problem is we need to start talking about us, all of us. We need to start thinking of us as the collective, the United States that we used to know. It's going to require a lot of work."

This is fascist. I'm not calling Brian Williams a racist or an anti-Semite. Most people don't realize that fascism doesn't require racism. I don't think Brian Williams is evil, I don't even think he knows he's extolling fascism, but the fascist undertones are clear. When Williams asks us all to start thinking and acting as one, he's unwittingly using a fascist talking point. Subvert the individual, emphasize the collective will. Don't worry about yourself, worry about the Nation. Combine this with what he said earlier about fixing the country, and you have an appeal to fascism. Rejecting partisanship in order to come together as one body politic, one nation, to correct whatever "wrong turn" society has made with one collective will is a call to action right out of a Mussolini speech.

People don't realize how much political discourse in this country and around the world is rooted in a fascist line of thought. I'm sure Mr. Williams was just trying to give an inspiring speech and as far as I know he's a decent human being, but I think its important to point out the totalitarian instincts that lurk below the surface in our supposedly free, liberal, western society.

The Irony Is Lost On Him

McCain is absolutely right to point out that Barack Obama will be Jimmy Carter's second term. Its too bad that John McCain is running for Gerald Ford's second term.

I Wonder Why They Need Those?

A National Fingerprint Registry has been thrown into a housing bill.

Do American's care that the State is slowly tightening its grip on us? Do we even notice? One day we'll all just wake up in a Huxley novel and think "Huh, I wonder when that happened."

Tell Us What You Really Think

Khurrum Awan can't seem to figure out that he lives in Canada, not Zimbabwe. At a forum on free speech and the curtailment thereof at the Canadian Arab conference he called on Canadian muslims to demand a right to participate in the media. The problem is that Mr. Awan lives in a liberal western democracy. You don't just get to demand things, especially not of private companies or individuals. I guess Mr. Awan "demanded" a sick day when they taught that at law school. But it gets better, or rather, worse:

"And we have to tell them, you know what, if you're not going to allow us to do that, there will be consequences. You will be taken to the human rights commission, you will be taken to the press council, and you know what? If you manage to get rid of the human rights code provisions [on hate speech], we will then take you to the civil courts system. And you know what? Some judge out there might just think that perhaps it's time to have a tort of group defamation, and you might be liable for a few million dollars," (Awan) said.

Does Richard Warman know this kid is cutting into his racket? For a supposed lawyer, Awan is being pretty candid about shopping around for an activist judge. Then again, Awan doesn't strike me as worried about that whole "gross miscarriage of justice" thing western legal systems have been trying to avoid since the Magna Carta. I hope wider Canada is fully awake to this now. I hope America too is paying attention to recent happenings in the Great White North (oops, did I just commit a hate crime?). Our courts have a troubling habit of citing foreign cases as precedent. Thank goodness our tort system isn't prone to giving out obscene judgments on ridiculous decisions. I'm sure John Edwards wouldn't jump at the chance to represent a minority group in a class action against the rest of society for not liking them.

Thankfully - for me at least - this nonsense is still confined to the Canadian half of North America. However, if Mr. Awan and his islamist ally Mr. Elmasry succeed in revising the list of Canadian rights then Canada will have proven itself to have a European style spine and the list of potential American allies in a fight gets that much smaller. The friendly, easygoing neighbor we've taken for granted is starting to fade away. In the updated version of "Canadian Bacon" Dan Akroyd doesn't make you write all the obscenities on your truck in French, he hauls you off to Barbara Hall for summary judgment.

I make light of this and have a chuckle where one is due, but some of what Mr. Awan says is truly terrifying.

He said that the argument for limitless free speech "is really a far-right Republican argument that is being imported into this country."

So freedom of speech is just a scheme cooked up by the evil Republicans and George Bush over in the States? For what end? Just to defame muslims? I guess we'll just disregard the last thousand years or so of western history. Its unimportant that the ideals like freedom of speech that America was founded on weren't conceived on our continent. The American "experiment" was the best opportunity yet to put into action ideas that Europe had been mulling over for a few centuries. Mr. Awan doesn't seem to understand that America is a product of the enlightenment, as is the rest of the west, Canada included. He doesn't understand that the concepts of liberal democracy and freedom of speech were developed at the same moment in history, that they go hand in hand and cannot exist separately. Worse though, Mr. Awan doesn't see the need to understand this. As far as he's concerned it never happened. Its all a recent, really "far-right Republican argument". I pray that I don't live to see the day that freedom of speech is only advocated on the extreme right wing.

Its cliche to call this Orwellian, but its a perfect example. Mr. Awan is just making up the past as he goes to fit the situation. Soon Common Law will be a recent GOP invention. The whole HRC process is already an affront to western legal tradition. "Of course we can have a separate sharia law for the Umma, one law for everyone is an intolerant American notion". What will be next? Freedom of Assembly? Representative Democracy itself? I may be spouting extreme worst case scenarios, but once you throw out one supposedly universal human right, aren't the others up for debate?

What Mr. Awan truly needs to understand is why we fear him and his ilk. Its not his religion that gives me pause, its his secular views on the role and power of the State in society. Totalitarianism is totalitarianism, regardless of who you pray to. What he's really doing is hiding behind Islam and his minority status so he can claim any vitriol directed toward him is actually directed at his religion. I don't believe Mr. Awan is an islamist, terror supporter, or an anti Semite like his pal Elmasry, but I do believe he's a Statist, and to me that's just as damning.

Pay No Attention to that Trial Behind the Curtain

A particularly sinister quality of the Steynian inquisition in British Columbia this week has been the Tribunal's seeming desire not to record the proceedings for posterity. As Deborah Gyapong points out, the Maclean's defense team is having trouble getting access to recordings of testimony because of "equipment difficulty". If the defense team has trouble accessing court proceedings, how difficult will it be for the public? Most of Steyn's supporters (myself included) have been referring to this sham as a show trial, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that these Human Rights Tribunals don't want to be showy at all. They shrink from the light of day. As crass and totalitarian as a show trial is, a secret trial is far worse. Granted, the press and public have been granted access, but it seems to me that the BCHRT wishes they weren't. I think they can't wait for this to be over and forgotten in the minds of the public and press so they can go back to railroading citizens without the fame or fortune of Steyn and Maclean's. Make no mistake, they would love to rule in Elmasry's favor and firmly establish their right to regulate speech and the press, but I think I tend to agree with Blazingcatfur's assessment that self preservation will lead the BCHRT to find in Maclean's favor. The Human Rights Commissions aren't quite ready for prime time. Maybe after another 30 years of tinkering and public apathy, but not now. Quite frankly, this is terrible for Canadian free speech. Both Steyn and Maclean's know that what's at stake here goes far beyond a columnist and a news magazine. They wanted to lose. They wanted to appeal up the line to the Supreme Court. They wanted to overturn Taylor. They wanted to end this fascist institution before it does another 30 years of quiet damage. Winning this battle may cause the public at large to lose sight of the war.

In British Columbia, This is a Crime

I hope he's not fired for this.

Dear Moslem Association,

As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest. I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey ), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called "whores" in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France.

This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many of my colleagues. I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile "protests. If you do not like the values of the West - see the 1st Amendment - you are free to leave.

I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option.

Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

Cordially,

I. S. Wichman, Professor of Mechanical Engineering