Hysterical future fiction?!!

This morning as I was reading the Ottawa Citizen article; “Ontario families launch human rights challenge against sex-ed curriculum rollback” , I thought I was transported to a nasty nightmare future where you could be accused of crimes and  actions that you haven’t yet committed.

Apparently  people feel that the repeal of the 2015 sexualized curriculum of the previous government will create human rights violations in the future and so is contrary to the human rights code today;

Six families plan to file a case with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario in the next week, noting that the old version of the curriculum makes no mention of issues such as gender diversity or the rights of LGBTQ students.

The government’s decision to repeal the modernized curriculum violates the province’s human rights code and should be declared unlawful, their lawyers said.

“That’s going to have a huge impact on, particularly, LGBTQ students,” said Mika Imai, one of the two lawyers shepherding the case through the tribunal process. “We see that as discriminatory and contrary to the code.”

No human rights violations have been committed but the lawyers argue that there will be  so they plan to file a case based on their version of the  future.  I never thought I’d live in a society where lawyers write science fiction and argue on behalf of clients that have yet to have their rights violated.  For a glimpse of where this kind  of human rights science fiction can lead to we only need to go to the movies.

There is a science fiction movie called The Minority Report that deals with a police force in the future that finds and arrests people who they believe will commit crimes in the future.   The futuristic police of the day seek out ‘precrime!’    This plot summary for the science fiction says it all:

In the year 2054 A.D. crime is virtually eliminated from Washington D.C. thanks to an elite law enforcing squad “Precrime”. They use three gifted humans (called “Pre-Cogs”) with special powers to see into the future and predict crimes beforehand. John Anderton heads Precrime and believes the system’s flawlessness steadfastly. However one day the Pre-Cogs predict that Anderton will commit a murder himself in the next 36 hours. Worse, Anderton doesn’t even know the victim. He decides to get to the mystery’s core by finding out the ‘minority report’ which means the prediction of the female Pre-Cog Agatha that “might” tell a different story and prove Anderton innocent.

We do live in interesting times when our government and democratic processes are hijacked by ‘Pre-Cogs’ who know better than the rest of us.  Sadly, some are prone to believe in the science fiction and hysterics.

Hopefully, grown-up reason and common sense will prevail.

What do you think?

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How to silence ‘deep state’ talk

One of the best ways to silence unwanted talk about any subject is to link that topic to fringe elements or anti-social behaviour.  This is how the media is portraying the idea of  the ‘deep state.’  A case in point is the Ottawa Citizen’s article, “‘We are Q’: Who are the shadowy ‘deep state’ conspiracy theorists turning up at Trump rallies?”

While the group’s bizarre beliefs have sparked eye rolls and laughter, there is already worrying evidence of people acting on the messages in real life.

In June, a man armed with an AR-15 rifle drove onto a bridge near the Hoover Dam, stopped traffic and demanded the publication of a government report into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

He later referenced QAnon in letters to the president from prison.

By linking the idea of the ‘deep state’ to people in ‘QAnon’  and conspiracy theorists, the concept of the ‘deep state’ has been effectively tainted and rendered suspect.  Anyone advancing the notion that the ‘deep state’ is interfering with our democratic and political processes are automatically discounted in today’s politically correct public discourse.  This is a stealth form of an ad hominem attack.

Stella Morabito writing for  the Witherspoon Institute on Public Discourse points out;

Victory in the war of ideas often hinges more on the conditions of battle than on the quality of arguments. You know this instinctively if you’ve ever been shouted down, smeared, or ignored when you were simply trying to state a point. Truly civil public discourse becomes much harder when our dialogue is hijacked by thought policing—euphemistically referred to as “political correctness,” or PC.

She goes on to say that the process of suppression is a deliberate manipulation of public opinion to prejudice people against any ideas contrary to politically correct ideas:

We know it as the practice of quashing ideas that compete with the PC message, usually through speech codes, shout-downs, or smears. The process of suppression creates the conditions essential to the survival of the PC message. If we think of PC as bacteria, suppression is like the dark room and the culture required for the bacteria’s growth and replication.

No matter how implausible an idea may seem, it can gain acceptance in the minds of the citizens as the forces of PC relentlessly hype the idea in the public square. Simultaneously, the voices that might challenge and analyze the idea must be suppressed—accusations of bigotry and hatred often do the trick—so that the PC idea has a chance to incubate and then affect public opinion. The twin processes of saturation and suppression, if diligently applied, can produce the illusion of a huge public opinion shift, or a “cascade.”

What can we do about main stream media manipulation and silencing?  As citizens we must practice discerning the ‘politically correct’ message that we are being bombarded with.  We must then identify what ‘politically incorrect’  ideas or arguments are being denigrated by the media (and politicians allied  with  the media).  Finally, expose the techniques of silencing and suppression that are being used.

Sadly, in this age of Facebook memes, few people seem to want to go to such lengths.  It’s too much work and so doesn’t make you feel good, while a meme hits your emotional bucket right away.  Today, it’s all  about feeling not thinking.

For those who still like to think things through try this simple algorithm with an article in the media – use a piece of scrap paper and a pencil –

1. What is the ‘politically correct’ message – the ‘main-stream’ message that ‘everybody’ agrees with.
2.  What is the counter argument being denigrated?
3.  How is this counter argument  being silenced? ie: suppression – linked to fringe groups, kooky groups or anti-social groups.

Leave the shallow world of Facebook memes and enter the harder world of thinking individuals.

You may find thinking for yourself, instead of feeling along with the herd, worth it.

 

Guilty as charged . . .

Rarely will anything stupid on Facebook astound me anymore but the sad story of Sarah Jeong’s comments on twitter gob-smacked me right in the face!

I followed some of the links in the article and indeed found that Sarah has posted that white people are awful;

we should address the data head-on http://t.co/XoaX7vUP4x—
sarah jeong (@sarahjeong) December 24, 2014

and smell bad;

the science is indisputable http://t.co/th39vKR40g—
sarah jeong (@sarahjeong) December 24, 2014

Apparently the New York Times has apologized:

Statement from The New York Times

We hired Sarah Jeong because of the exceptional work she has done covering the internet and technology at a range of respected publications.

Her journalism and the fact that she is a young Asian woman have made her a subject of frequent online harassment. For a period of time she responded to that harassment by imitating the rhetoric of her harassers. She sees now that this approach only served to feed the vitriol that we too often see on social media. She regrets it, and The Times does not condone it.

We had candid conversations with Sarah as part of our thorough vetting process, which included a review of her social media history. She understands that this type of rhetoric is not acceptable at The Times and we are confident that she will be an important voice for the editorial board moving forward.

Sarah Dejong says she’s sorry and explains that she was just fighting back;

pic.twitter.com/4GfD2nGxwD

— sarah jeong (@sarahjeong) August 2, 2018

As a privileged old, white male who is also a Christian I have this to say to Sarah Jeong; ‘I forgive you!  Yes I am awful and sometimes I do smell bad  especially when I get caught in the rain.  Guilty as charged!’

The Holy Bible teaches;  “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.”  (1 Peter 3:9)

Jesus teaches; “But to those of you who will listen, I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” (Luke 6:27,28)

So Sarah, I’m sorry you said what you said about us white people, please think about what the Holy Bible and Jesus teaches.

I’ll try to be less awful and bathe more.

A deep state in Canada?!

When special interest groups and unions align to obstruct a legitimately elected government a ‘deep state’ may be in operation.

What is a ‘deep state?’ Wikipedia defines it as follows;

A state within a state or a deep state is a political situation in a country when an internal organ (“deep state”), such as the armed forces or public authorities(intelligence agencies, police, secret police, administrative agencies, and branches of government bureaucracy), does not respond to the civilian political leadership. Although the state within a state can be conspiratorial in nature, the deep state can also take the form of entrenched unelected career civil servants acting in a non-conspiratorial manner, to further their own interests (e.g. continuity of the state as distinct from the administration, job security, enhanced power and authority, pursuit of ideological goals and objectives, and the general growth of their agency) and in opposition to the policies of elected officials, by obstructing, resisting, and subverting the policies, conditions and directives of elected officials.

Are any entrenched special interests and public bureaucracies working against the agenda of a duly elected government in Canada or Ontario?

Teachers unions are rumbling about stonewalling any legitimate curriculum changes that the duly elected government has promised to bring about.  The Canadian Labour Congress, of which the teachers unions are members, is fully supportive of this kind of social activism.

Unions want to influence our ‘private lives’ and engage in ‘social engineering’;

While the relationship between abortion rights, or the right of a gay high school student to bring his boyfriend to prom, and the everyday bread and butter issues affecting CAW members might not always be clear, the CAW’s adoption of the social unionism model has led it to embrace the view that workplace issues do not begin and end at the factory gates. Our private lives affect our working lives just as much as our wages affect our ability to support ourselves and our communities.

Prominent research out of Queen’s University has revealed that social engineering through activism is a strategy adopted by unions to bolster their power;

. . . despite enormous pressures, the Canadian labour movement has shown remarkable resilience and adaptiveness. Based on a broader approach embodied in its active social unionism strategy, it is felt that unions in Canada are destined to remain dynamic and will therefore continue to diverge from the fate that has befallen American unions.

Researchers out of the  University of Saskatchewan point out;

Canadian social unionism’s idea of union activity as benefitting all of society appears to be a good public relations strategy. Public opinion may be more open to supporting unions when it receives the message that unions work for all of society and not just for union members. As such, social unionism in Canada should not only be seen as an imperative for social justice or a means to renewing the union movement. One of the benefits of Canadian social unionism that has been underappreciated is that it is an effective method for gaining public support for union demands.

Social justice clerics and the liberal church  are broadening their outreach and membership with the same brand of social activism. Some clerics, like Reverend Dr. Cheri DiNovo are urging teachers to rebel against legitimate curriculum changes under the guise of safety for all children;

Our children are the beneficiaries of thousands of hours of work by activists. Teachers, please do not let the premier deny children their rights or their safety.

Ontario’s Public Service Union (OPSEU) is firmly entrenched in social activism that could qualify it as a group of  ‘civil servants acting in a non-conspiratorial manner, to further their own interests . . . . in opposition to the policies of elected officials, by obstructing, resisting, and subverting the policies, conditions and directives of elected officials.”

Ordinary Canadian citizens of Ontario must be vigilant of all these special interests who may now be working against the legitimate governance of our society.  Will Ontario become destabilized by powerful ‘deep state’ special interest groups?

Only if the  citizen allows these trends to go unchecked.

What do you think?

Social Conservatives hallucinate???!!!

One way of  silencing debate about the 2015 sexualized health curriculum  and  obstructing legitimate government is to say that the serious and reasonable concerns held by many people, which prompted a desire for a change in government, are not real.  This tactic is like the child who doesn’t like what he sees, closes his eyes tight and loudly denies what is before him.  It’s amazing that a news outlet will actually feature such immature drivel yet this is exactly what the Ottawa Citizen has done:

 The real problem is that Premier Doug Ford won the Progressive Conservative leadership partly with the help of social conservatives who are angry about the health curriculum’s sex-related material. The subject of their anger is a hallucination and the government can’t help them with that.

DAVID REEVELY July 19, 2018

Reevely goes on to make an ‘argument’ about what the controversial sexualized curriculum didn’t do;

It didn’t teach young children how to consent to sex. It introduced early the importance of respecting boundaries other people set, in numerous ways. It laid groundwork for understanding that no means no when it comes to sex by talking about consent in terms of schoolyard play and bullying behaviour.

It didn’t tell kids to question their own gender identities. It told them that some people in their world do and you can’t make fun of them. Or anybody, in fact, for who they or their parents are.

It didn’t tell them that anal sex is delightful and here’s how you do it, it told them that you can catch diseases from it.

It didn’t urge them to override their own discomforts by “making a sexual plan and sticking to it,” it told them to consider limits when they’re thinking clearly.

Those are just highlights of the lies from people purporting to ground their objections in morality.

Notice how after setting up his strawman arguments, Reevely then  accuses unidentified people of lying? Could Reevely be ‘hallucinating’ a little bit himself?  Many of the those who defend the sexualized 2015 health curriculum have to rely upon old  fallacies like the strawman argument and ad hominem attacks since they have no other reasonable means to defend this failed attempt at social engineering by the teachers unions, their political pawns  and special interest groups.

For the record, as a social conservative, my concerns about the 2015 health curriculum are not ‘hallucinations.’  If you care about the facts, rather than Reevely’s ‘strawmen’   check them out for yourself.  You can find them by clicking on the following links:

• https://scrapbookwithtony.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/our-children-our-future/
• https://scrapbookwithtony.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/opting-out-is-a-fake-option/
• Erikson’s stages of development and Ontario’s new sex-ed curriculum

I would welcome any reasonable discussion on these concerns by way of comments.  This topic is too important to silence any legitimate voices with blunt force  logical fallacies and ad hominem attacks.

When clerics call for rebellion . . .

We live in dangerous times when clerics call on teachers to defy our democratically elected leaders.  Yet this is what Reverend Dr. Cheri DiNovo, advocates in Huff Post’s, The Blog;

Our children are the beneficiaries of thousands of hours of work by activists. Teachers, please do not let the premier deny children their rights or their safety.

She claims that those who don’t share her theological, political and ideological views make a mockery of what it means to be a Christian;

Charles McVety, organizer of the protest and a right-wing Christian, was often my nemesis around the time that I performed the first legalized same-sex marriage in Canada. He and I would be asked to debate the issue in mainstream media. He now has a government indebted to him and to all those who make a mockery of Christ’s love. Our LGBTQ child suicide and homelessness rates are the costs of such actions and opinions. How can anyone call themselves a Christian who would deny children safety?

Clerics like Reverend Dr. Cheri DiNovo, ignore any contrary opinions and research, branding all those who oppose their views as appallingly homo- and transphobic as well as misogynistic.  Safety is a very fluid concept in the mind of such clerics.

What does she think of the American College of Pediatricians who point out:

 Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse. Endorsing gender discordance as normal via public education and legal policies will confuse children and parents, leading more children to present to “gender clinics” where they will be given puberty-blocking drugs. This, in turn, virtually ensures they will “choose” a lifetime of carcinogenic and otherwise toxic cross-sex hormones, and likely consider unnecessary surgical mutilation of their healthy body parts as young adults.

Like all ideologues sporting a clerical collar,  Reverend Dr. Cheri DiNovo refers to the Bible often and cites Jesus but does she actually believe what He  teaches; “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ . . . , ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?” (Matthew 19:4,5)  As an activist Reverend Dr. Cheri DiNovo reserves the right to tell us what the truth is and what it isn’t.  And if we don’t agree she has the credentials to send us to hell.

May the Lord protect us and all the innocent children from the likes of such activists and social justice warriors.

Opposition to legitimate authority

Rick Salutin, a Toronto Star columnist tells us to watch what happens in our public schools to get an idea of where Doug Ford – ‘Premier elect’,  is going to take the province of Ontario;

For an advance hint about what to expect in the age of Doug, I suggest keeping an eye on public schools. Not universities, which are a sideshow. Few people have one of those nearby but there’s a school several blocks from most of us. The sex ed curriculum will be an overt omen but there’s a bigger picture.

Early warning sign No. 1 in the Ford era: education by RICK SALUTIN Star Columnist, June 14, 2018

I agree with Rick Salutin but not for his reasons.  He argues that Doug Ford, like Mike Harris before him will create a mess; “That included grabbing control of funding from local boards, undermining the public system with tax breaks for parents who put their kids in private schools, and bringing in standardized tests, which threatened to crowd out everything else done in classrooms. Teachers and their unions became Harris’s main opposition and everyone got used to frequent, sometimes illegal strikes.” And here Rick Salutin states the real problem. Teachers’ Unions have become ‘social justice warriors‘ and don’t think that respecting the authority of democratically elected leaders and the law matters. The second underlying problem is that every one has ‘gotten used to it!’

The Elementary Teachers of Ontario (ETFO) know as well as every other teachers’ union that they can circumvent, delay and derail any legitimate legislated changes brought about  by our provincial government.  Ontario teachers unions are working with unions in other provinces to alter the direction of educational policy and law to suit their own ideas. This position is stated clearly in the THE EVERY TEACHER PROJECT – ON LGBTQ-INCLUSIVE EDUCATION IN CANADA’S K-12 SCHOOLS , a link to it can be found on ETFO’s website;

However, education policy and law cannot be effective unless the people doing the educating—teachers, school officials and counsellors—are on board.

The impact of union interference in democratic institutions and our duly elected government is de-stabilizing. Rich Salutin knows it; “In my vulgar Marxist phase, I tended to see education as ‘superstructure,’ which depended on more fundamental economic ‘factors.’ Better minds than mine, like John Dewey, saw deeper. He was the U.S.’s finest philosopher and also its leading educational thinker. In his view, it was crucial to learn not just how to read, but how to distinguish between ‘the demagogue and the statesman.’”

As a long time educator and school administrator (retired) I’d like to ask the question; Isn’t it just as crucial  for our children to learn the value of respecting the outcome of democratic elections and the rule of law?  If our school teachers can’t be a good example then how will our society remain democratic and law-abiding?