What this trend hides, however, is our apparently innate desire to be governed, as this ban proposed by the Christian/Conservative government illustrates. There's a disease in our culture, and it's not the myriads of intrusive and counterproductive laws, small and large, but our acceptance of them. Public debate in Norway, as perfected by tabloid and non-tabloid media, takes the form of two steps: A) Point out the problem. B) Demand that the government solves it. No other solution can be imagined.
We have adopted democracy in a debased form. When regulations are the accepted method of solving problems, and government is unchecked by any real concept of individual rights, power is shifted from the individual to the interest group and the pundit. With seemingly unlimited oil wealth at the governments disposal, we have acquired the habit of voting away the symptoms, while the real problems remain.
From a historical perspective, European anti-Americanism is pretty hilarious. There is, after all, no criticism a haughty "European" could level at the United States which could not be returned tenfold at the authors of the Inquisition, the Hundred Years' War, the Holocaust, and the Council of Trent (why the Council of Trent? I don't know, it just seems to belong). Mass murder? Hah! Racism? Hah-hah! Religious intolerance? Bah-hah-hah! Class conflict? Bahhh-hahh-hahaha! Imperialism? Okay, dude. Snort, chortle — seriously — chortle, guffaw… Stop it, you're killing me.
POWAY, Calif. (AP) — A California female vice principal has raised a storm of controversy by allegedly lifting girls' skirts — in front of male students and adults — to make sure they weren't wearing thong underwear at a dance.
"Everyone saw everything," said Kim Teal, whose 15-year-old daughter attended the dance but was not checked. "It was a big peep show."
Via the Corner, we have a NY Post story about how the Girl Guides refused to allow Miss Belkin to march in support of Israel and have it count towards her badges. Apparently that would be "political"and thus wouldn't count.
Miss Belkin intends to march anyway, see the quote above. Good for her.
I can see the Guides' point that the march is political. Miss Belkin brings up the credit that the Girl Guides give to Guides who march in Irish or Catholic pride parades. Marching for another country is an explicitly political act, while the former two are ethnic and religious.
If they can march in parades for Irish pride and Catholic pride, why can't we march in a parade for Jewish pride?" asked Erica, who lives in Croton-on-Hudson.
If it were an explictly jewish parade, I'd agree with her completely. I'd be in favour of nailing the Guides right to the wall for hypocrisy. It's not. It's a "Salute to Israel". Let's not forget that while Israel has an explicitly jewish character, it also has muslims, christians and atheists as citizens.
So, this also offers me an appropriate point to get into the whole "is being anti-Israel the same as being anti-semetic?" debate. Let's just say there seems to be a remarkable correlation between the two. Take the Al-Star for example. On it's Sunday front page it reported the attacks on the Israeli settlement by Palestinians dressed as Israeli soldiers. The headline was "Jewish settlement attacked, 4 dead". Not "Israeli settlement", but "jewish settlement".
n the past two weeks, from April 13 to April 26, only two Israelis have been killed. One was a soldier, the other a member of the border police. Not a single civilian has been killed. The barrage of murder has been stopped, for now.
Through war, Ariel Sharon has achieved what he could not even get as a show of good faith from Palestinian negotiators: seven days of quiet. He bought this respite the only way anyone can ever buy peace from terrorism: by killing the terrorists, seizing their stocks of explosives, taking away their guns and imprisoning (or at least "isolating") their leaders.
Bear this in mind the next time you hear someone say that the only path to peace is a "political settlement" to be reached by negotiating with terrorists. Remember it every time you hear that ludicrous phrase "the peace process," referring to the talks that brought Israel nothing but bloodshed.
Think about it when you hear the people who have spent the last four weeks condemning Israel's war of self-defense. Would they rather see 17-year-old girls still being blown to bits in Israeli shopping malls? Judge for yourself.
No, this one military operation will not buy peace forever; more military action will be needed after the terrorists regroup. But this does "chart a path for peace," as diplomats are fond of saying. It is a reminder that the only way to end terrorism is to attack it ruthlessly.
Quoting the Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology
"Canada ranks 21st of 28 OECD countries in the availability of CT scanners, 19th of 22 in availability of lithotriptors, and 19th of 27 in availability of MRIs," states the report. Perhaps more troubling, still, "Data also showed that this technology gap is widening. For example, Canada's deficit in the availability of MRIs worsened between 1986 and 1995 relative to other leading OECD countries."
These are the cold observations of a group of Senators, led by a prominent Liberal party organizer. No Fraser Institute types here.
The report also observes the cruelty of waiting lists. Indeed, the committee recounts an all too familiar story of a man waiting for surgery. The patient had originally been diagnosed by MRI with two herniated discs on April 19, 2001. On May 24, he was placed on a waiting list for surgery. Because his condition was classified as "elective but urgent" (a category that includes most of the hospital's cancer surgery) he was still on the waiting list a full eight months later. Notes the report: "It appeared that the only way for the patient in question to move to the top of the list was for his condition to deteriorate. It was not enough for him to be in constant pain and unable to work."
Again, only three nations in the world have completely public health care systems. Canada is one, the other two are Cuba and North Korea.
