Toronto is Great by Our Own Efforts

Allan Levine claims that Toronto "does not quite measure up to the truly great cities of the world like London, Paris and Rome." (Hogtown's badass side, National Post October 2, 2012).

Each of these cities was once the capital of an empire. They had colonies to exploit. The magnificent vistas, monuments, galleries and museums we see today in many European cities were paid for by their colonies, one of which was Canada.

Toronto, in contrast to the "truly great cities of the world" has always paid its own way. Everything we see and enjoy in our city today we bought and paid for by our own efforts.

Translating Tapestries -- Something Like That

"Translation from one language to another is like looking at a tapestry from the wrong side." When Miguel de Cervantes put these words into the mouth of his protagonist, Don Quixote, he was speaking for me and countless others.

I first read Death in Venice by Thomas Mann in 1973, in English. As is my habit, I made margin notes which I transcribed to the inside back cover. About ten years later, I read a later English translation of this German masterpiece.

During this second reading, I kept waiting for remembered turns of phrase and certain metaphors to make their appearance. In vain. What I was searching for was the work of the translator. A 1952 translation reads, "His steps followed the promptings of the demon who delights in treading human reason and dignity underfoot." In 1954, this became, ""His footsteps guided the demonic power whose pastime it is to trample on human reason and dignity." I prefer the earlier rendering.

At best, we hope for a translation to convey the thought or idea of the author into our language. Witness the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Among the English translations of Omar's insights, the best known being that of Edward Fitzgerald. It's a magical blending of the poet's thought and the translator's formidable command of the English language.

One of my English professors was critical of the only (I believe) English translation of the French gem The Little Prince by the lamented Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Much meaning has been missed. He urged us to read the original. I did, and noted significant differences.

The English dedication says that the author's friend needs "cheering up". The French states that he "a besoin d'être consolée." Not the same at all. More than merely cheering up, the dedicatee needs to be made more comfortable. After all, it's the dark days of the Second World War. The friend is cold and hungry in German-occupied France. The author is warm and well fed in New York.

All this comes to mind as I consolidate, as it were, two translations of Baldesare Castiglione's Renaissance work of sheer delight, The Book of the Courtier. Comparing two editions, "a salutary craft" becomes "a healthy deception", "a grossness of dull wits" reads "obtuse insensitivity" and "subtleties" is "sophistries". Unless we check the front of the tapestry, we will never know which translation approaches closest to the author's intent.

Each new translation conveys a variation from earlier translations. This perhaps illustrates the awesome growth and changes in the English language. Even staying within our beautiful language, we have problems.

The various editions of the works of William Shakespeare present problems. We can accept "tainted" in one edition becoming "diseased" in another. But can be see "the all-binding law" as "the all-building law"? In Measure for Measure, Angelo has been transformed from "precise" to "prenzie". What is the difference between "headstrong jades" and "headstrong weeds" when they both mean rogue horses?

Given all this, perhaps Cervantes did not write the opening observation of this essay. I may simply have quoted one of his many translators.

Media Hysteria

A  2012 survey by The Environics Institute revealed that Canadian trust of the mass media to be at an all-time low of six per cent.

Comes to mind last month's much ado about nothing involving a Toronto Blue Jays shortstop, Yunel Escobar, who wrote in ungrammatical Spanish on his adhesive facial patches Tu ere maricon.  According to José Latour, a Cuban-Canadian author writing in The Globe and Mail of Oct 3, this common expression in Cuba means a number of things: You are a homosexual, fool, coward, cheapskate, wife-abuser, deceitful, and despicable.

No one in the media asked the accused which meaning he attached to the word. Lack of research did not hamper knee-jerk reactions, and presentation of the event as would best create an issue and attract readership. Newspapers used gallons of ink to condemn this multi-meaning word, choosing of course that meaning which created the greatest media stir, the homosexual angle.

Editorials and opinion pieces proliferated, along with reports, think-pieces, the usual word peddling, and letters, some verging on the hysterical. Long after the story was no longer newsworthy, the Toronto Star kept stirring the ashes of a superficial issue gone cold.

Escobar was vilified, condemned and everything but crucified at the goading of the media. A normally calm CBC morning radio sports reporter raged that he be "fired". He seemed unaware that the Blue Jays organization cannot fire Escobar with multi-million-dollar contract. He can only traded to a club with equally deep pockets. [Along with five other Jays, in a purely business deal, he was later traded to Miami.]

Will readers, viewers or listeners trust the media when they report something truly and not fictively offensive? Or will believers remain limited to that six per cent?

Society versus the Child

Our secular society believes that children exist for the parents. The reverse is true.

A year or so back, the Toronto Star featured a report of a pregnant woman living in Canada and of Indian heritage. Amniocentesis indicated the mother was carrying a girl. The woman wanted the girl, but her parents wanted to send her to India for an abortion. There was not a peep from pro-choice feminists defending the prospective mother's choice. Pro-choice is secondary to pro-abortion.

Our values have become so warped that some people now speak of "gender disappointment" and "gender grief" in the birth of a child whose sex is not of the parents' choosing. They claim there's even a "stigma" about it.

The Toronto Globe and Mail (Sept 21, 2012) describes this "disappointment" as "a private feeling of shock and dejection [that] washes over some parents when they envision the life with a boy or a girl, only to give birth to a child of the opposite sex". This misguided feeling has spawned in the U.S. a business where doctors promise "family balancing", that is, abort until you get what you want.

A University of Alberta law professor, Timothy Caulfield, is quoted," If someone has three boys and they want a girl, is the harm such that the state should ban choice?"  We wonder to what other mischief the professor exposes his students.

Education Must Return to Basics

A Hamilton-area father is suing his local school board for refusing to exempt his children from classes dealing with sexually sensitive topics. The media vilified him with editorials and cartoons. Letters both for and against the father have been printed. 

I see the issue as one of social engineering by the government. My unpublished September 12,2012 email to the Toronto Star.

Families are the primary source of children's education. This editorial makes the error of giving education authority solely to bureaucrats and politicians, some of whom don't even have children. 

The editorial speaks as if any objection to an imposed curriculum challenges the entire system. Those who object are also taxpayers. They too have the right to speak out when they believe the system has gone awry. Democracy works, not by ignoring objections, as you advocate, but by listening and trying to accommodate. It is unfair to characterize objectors as wanting "to impose their agenda". Are they not entitled to challenge the imposition of another's agenda?

When the state imposes its agenda without consulting the people, dissent follows. In some European countries homeschooling is illegal. Parents have gone to jail and parents relieved of all rights to see their children again. The presumption over there, and in your editorial, is that Big Brother knows best. Does diversity extend to everyone? Or is it limited to those with whom we agree? 

Our education system went wrong when it began teaching matters beyond it authority. It must return exclusively to the basics of literature, language, history, the sciences and other core subjects. Anything beyond that is an unwarranted intrusion into family rights.

In reaction to many letters in the Toronto Star of September 15, 2012, I sent this letter, also unpublished.

Most of the disputants in this matter have missed two vital issues. The first is that parents are the primary and essential teachers of their children. To describe teachers as "co-parents" is an attack on family rights. 

Secondly, this is not a dispute about acceptance, as some writers claim and as the Star editorialized (Pulling kids from class, Sept 12). 

Underlying the original request to remove students from certain classes is a plea for a return of our educational system to the exclusive teaching of core subjects, a return to basics. That is what most parents want and expect. 

Politicians and the education bureaucracy have arrogated to themselves sole authority in such matters. That's a touch of arrogance that  must be reversed by instituting compulsory consultation with parents before such programs are introduced into the system.

"It's just a book"

Pornographers claim that you cannot judge a book unless you have read it. By that standard, we would spend our entire lives reading pornography. No, we are entitled to judge a book from reviews, other opinion, and authors' earlier work.  On August 19, 2012, a Toronto Star reader defended the latest porn offering by stating, "It is just a book." My unpublished response to the Star:

In defending the Shades of Grey trilogy, Paula Berry makes two errors. The first is the implication that books have little or no influence for good or ill.

Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said that Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe caused the Civil War. Slight exaggeration, but it did fire up Northern antagonism against the South. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair brought about a revolution in the U.S. meatpacking industry, and lead Theodore Roosevelt to create the Food and Drug Administration. Yes, a book, even fiction, can have great influence.

Ms. Berry's other error is to equate the New York Times bestseller list with quality, along with the belief that "smut, prejudice or whatever" would keep a low-grade book off such lists. Bestseller lists are not endorsements. They merely indicate sales, and not literary, social or any other value.

* * *

To the list of highly influential books we might add the fiction of Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre. The anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque was so influential that Adolf Hitler ordered it burned. A hot topic in the current U.S. election campaign is the door-stopper novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Other significant works of fiction appear in any history of Western thought, such as European Intellectual History since 1789 by Roland N. Stromberg.

And in the The Globe and Mail of September 22, 2012, scholar, author and broadcaster Kenan Malik commented on the fatwa placed on Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses. Malik wrote, "Rushdie was in effect sentenced to death for writing a story. Many were to be killed for translating and publishing that story. Bookshops were bombed for stocking it. It is a measure of the strangeness of the world in which we live that storytelling can be such a hazardous craft."  Even Rushdie himself, just before the novel's publication, said,"It would be absurd to think that books can cause riots."

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code slithered into best-sellerdom. This work of fiction defied logic and history, yet became truth to the unwary and to those unfavourably disposed toward the Catholic Church.

On the death of Pole Pius XII in 1958, the secular media accorded him great tribute. This ended with the 1963 appearance of the fictional work The Deputy. In it, Communist playwright Rolf Hochhuth portrayed the pope as having done nothing to save Jews from the Holocaust.. This has gained such currency that today many accept it as truth.

What's strange is the surprise some of us have at the power of the written word.

Church and State -- Both Necessary

Email to the National Post, August 4, 2012, in reply to an earlier letter. Unpublished.

Roy Haina writes "it really bothers me" when the church talks politics (Would you like some church with your state? Aug.3).  He seems unaware that Christianity existed long before any state in the world today, and Judaism long before that.

It was the Christian church that got western civilization through the turmoil following the collapse of the Roman Empire by creating universities, libraries, hospitals, and much more. It was Judeo-Christian teaching that created the rights we enjoy today. Until relatively recently, education was the exclusive domain of religious institutions, whether Christian, Jewish or Islamic. Would Mr. Haina oppose putting that experience in education and government to profitable use?

Every great civilization in history has religion at its base. Compared to religion, the state today is shallow and lacks moral depth.

Mr. Haina should know that those who believe in nothing will believe in anything. Those with no religious belief today follow every ephemeral cult that pops up, inevitably to great frustration. The current popularity of cult films and certain television programs and best-seller books tells us that those with no belief are searching for a spiritual anchor. Unfortunately, they are groping in the dark.

Mr. Haina describes the expression of church opinion as sticking "its nose into politics". Thou shall not kill was a Jewish injunction long before the existence of any state. Similarly, thou shall not steal, or bear false witness. Emerging states realized the benefit of these and other religious commands, and turned them into crimes. There remains much the state, any state, could learn from religion.

From Catholic Canon Law, our courts have adopted or adapted such rules as: You must not condemn an absent person who may possess lawful means of proving innocence; the judge cannot be a witness; a single disposition, no matter from whom, is not sufficient for a conviction.

The state should welcome religious comment on state affairs, as it welcomes comment from secular sources. It's the message that counts, not the messenger.

The absence of a religious basis explains the disintegration, unrest and longing for something better that pervades our world today. The remedy is at hand. Everyone, including Mr. Haina should explore it.

Corporations: Invest or Pay Back

Email to the Toronto Star, August 3 2012. Unpublished

In his Opinion Piece, Reid Rusonik raised many significant points (Where bullets won't fly this summer, Aug. 2). I was particularly distressed to learn that corporations which were given tax concessions are merely sitting on the extra income. These corporations now have cash holdings equal to our national debt.

It was these same corporations that once begged and pleaded that lower taxes would motivate them to invest. Canadians are waiting for those investments. This money must be invested or returned to taxpayers for whom such concessions amount to subsidies, that is, corporate welfare. This money can be recouped by a 100 per cent claw back on the amount of the lowered tax. 

In the hands of citizens, this same money would immediately circulate through the economy, resulting in expansion and lower unemployment.

Revloution Coming

The current policy of bailing out troubled banks worldwide is not sustainable.

In Ireland, the government used  a European bailout of $64 billion to save their banks. The hook in the arrangement meant austerity for the population -- a lower minimum wage, cuts to health care and pensions, and rising fees and taxes. The result has been higher unemployment and a stagnant economy.

This is precisely the type of economy the banks convinced the government would happen if they were not bailed out. The cash infusion made no difference to the economy. Bankers are richer.

The net result -- bankers survive, likely awarding themselves fat bonuses for their brazen salesmanship. As the chill descends on the people, bankers are laughing all the way to the bank, as it were, and all the way to their yachts in the sunny Mediterranean.

Contrast this with Iceland where the government allowed its three major banks to fail. The economy is improving, unemployment is down, and some bankers will be charged criminally.

It won't belong before citizens on the Continent see the folly of their politicians supporting the rich by burdening the poor. It cannot last. They will revolt. It will not be nice.

Toronto Reduced to Begging

Toronto City Council intends to increase the number of billboards on municipal property. The Toronto Transit Commission has signed away naming rights to our subway stations. Under consideration is the plastering of advertising on our historic ferries to the islands. The Toronto Public Library is considering commercial advertising on and in its buildings.

These agencies of government admit they are forced into a sell-out of principles because of budget restraints in these difficult times. (When were economic times easy?) I suggest council, commission and board members rent out their bodies by toting sandwich boards extolling the virtues of commercial enterprise, such as a developer.

Fortunately for humankind, the Library has principles. It will not accept advertising for tobacco or alcohol products, religious beliefs, or politics. Permitted is advertising for gambling, oleoresinous fast food and sugar-saturated soft drinks.

Another principle is that the advertising does not "intrude on people's educational space." The MacDonald  clown will be barred from the stacks. Yet another principle is that ads do not "adversely or negatively impact the library's image" and that they should "maintain the welcoming and functioning elements of the library environment and the integrity of its spaces."

Golden arches over a library entrance no doubt will qualify. They welcome millions every year to hamburger joints worldwide. The degree of acceptable intrusion is directly  related to the degree of financial stress. Under such stress, principles tend to bend.

As authorities become addicted to the income, wedgy principles have a way of becoming breaches of principle.  Witness the obscene relationship between the Ontario Government and its Frankenstein the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, relentlessly expanding operations across the province.

Groucho Marx summed it up: "I've got principles. If you don't like them, I have others."

Political Correctness on Steroids

The legal process sometimes permits itself to be a tool of political correctness. This week, a farce was played out in a British courtroom. The villain? A soccer player. The crime? He used the word "black" in a heated confrontation with an opposing player during a match.

The prosecution wasted taxpayers' money attempting to prove that the use of this word constituted the crime of abuse as well as a racially aggravated offence to public order. Yes, there is such a law in the land of the mother of parliaments, the source of common law, and the birthplace of freedom of expression.

The agents provocateurs in this plot are hyper-sensitive do-gooders who goaded politicians into enacting such mischief.

To top off this nonsense, the accusation was not made by the opposing player, but by an off-duty constable who saw the game on television. Obviously, the good officer was rooting for the other team.

The Chief Magistrate prolonged this boring spectacle by searching for evidence that the accused was a racist. Having found none, he exonerated the soccer player.

The only good thing about this event is that it took place in an open courtroom where innocence is presumed. Whereas, in the shadows of a human rights tribunal, the accused would have needed prove his innocence -- a near impossibility, given tribunals' high conviction rates.

Class-Action Lawsuits

A report in the July 11, 2012 National Post (Lawyers get best seats in Ticketmaster class-action) gives the impression that lawyers in class-action suits operate out of altruism. Yes, the plaintiffs pay no legal fees. Yes, the action may fail and the lawyers assessed costs which they will pass onto their clients. The report does not mention that lawyers may insure against such loss.

If it's all that risky, why do lawyers swarm all over accident and disaster sites, nudging each other to instigate lawsuits and sign up plaintiffs? The pot of gold at the end of the class-action rainbow is a big one.

Another report tells us that the Merchant Law Group of Regina, Saskatchewan, reaped $25-million from the $1.9-billion Indian Residential Schools settlement. In unusual candour, lawyer Tony Merchant said, "I hate to lead myself into doing things that aren't profitable, and I hope to be pleasantly surprised [by his latest class-action suit]. I'd be shocked if this turns into anything but profitable."

(In April 2013, it seems Tony Merchant has $1.7-million in a secret account in in the South Pacific Cook Islands. This, according to the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which also claims that Merchant has money in Bermuda with which he bought mutual funds in the tax haven of Luxembourg. The investigation continues.)

In the lawsuits following the 2010 G20 meeting in Toronto, shameless, publicity-seeking lawyers make sure the media are there when they present their claim at police headquarters, dragging their clients along to add to the spectacle. It is unnecessary for clients to be present on such occasions.

In another widely reported case, the plaintiff had no intention of a law suit until convinced otherwise by lawyers trolling the Internet for business. The public calls this fee-sniffing, ambulance chasing, and other less charitable terms. The Law Society of Upper Canada, the lawyers trade association in Ontario, approves of such behaviour. Inciting legal action was once considered unethical, if not illegal. How the winds of profit have changed.

"Democratic Deficit"?

"Few visible minorities on the bench, judicial study finds" read a headline in the Toronto Star of June 28, 2012. Immigration Reporter Nicholas Keung stated that "visible minorities are grossly under-represented in Canada's judiciary."

This observation was based on a report from Ryerson University's Diversity Institute whose founder, Wendy Cukier, described this situation as a "democratic deficit."

The report continues, "The problem with the federal appointment system is its concentration of decision-making in the hands of politicians."  Does this imply that politicians are anti-visible minority? Do we really care if the judge, or other appointee, is a polka-dotted Houyhnhnm, as long as he/she is competent and fair?

This same questionable argument permeates much of contemporary discourse. Minority groups demand that their distinguishing characteristic be represented in government services to the extent they are part of society.  But what if a certain minority group is the best in a certain field of endeavour? Should such a policy cap their participation?

The Toronto Raptors basketball team is overwhelmingly black. Does that constitute racism against non-blacks?

This demand for ethnic representation is a recent phenomenon. Before 1960, immigrants kept a low profile as they went about their business of turning virgin territory into productive farm land, of digging ditches so their sons and daughters could one day build condominiums, and operate rooming houses, so their children might attend university, get elected to political office and enjoy a better life. They would have considered "democratic deficit" as so much politically-correct jargon.

Competitive Eating Disgust

There are few public events more repugnant than an eating contest.

The U.S. Independence Day hot-dog competitive eating contest at New York's Coney Island is such an occasion. In what one report described as "a sweaty, gag-inducing spectacle", a California man this July 4 scarfed down 68 hotdogs in 10 minutes to take home the $10,000 prize. He said it would take several days for his body to recover from the ordeal.

For downing 46 dogs in the allotted time, a Virginia women won $10,000. Yes, someone offers money for such demeaning spectacles.

I hope news of this mischief does not reach central Africa where 15 million people (UN estimate)are currently suffering an acute food shortage.

Human Rights Tribunal Trashes Reasonableness (Again)

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal recently abrogated centuries of legal jurisprudence. In a case before her, Tribunal Adjudicator Leslie Reaume, a lawyer, wrote in her judgement, "The question before me is not whether the [police] respondents acted reasonably in these difficult circumstances, but whether [the complainant's] race was a factor."

One of the definitions of "reasonable" in The Canadian Law Dictionary is: "That which is fit and appropriate to the end in view." That does not apply to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Toronto police were investigating a gun call. The suspect was a black male driving a black car, and likely armed. Yes, the suspect's skin colour was a factor as was the colour of his car. The police were not searching for a black man in a blue car or a white man in a black car. A police officer decided that the complainant's person and vehicle fit the general description of someone he spotted.

According to a newspaper report, the complainant was uncooperative in refusing to answer the officer's inquiries.and "the conversation escalated". In such a situation, reasonable police procedure would be draw their weapons, force an alleged suspect to his knees then put him in the cruiser. At that moment, the police radio reported the suspect had been spotted elsewhere. The complainant was released.

Human Rights Adjudicator Reaume speculated, "I do not believe that if the suspect had been a Caucasian man in the same circumstances, with no other defining characteristics, particularly age ...[that the officer] ... would have chosen to investigate the first Caucasian man he saw driving the same car at the same intersection." On the basis of this speculative non-belief of non-proof, she determined discrimination.

She said that the complainant has been "stereotyped as a person with some probability of being involved in a gun-related incident" because he was a black man. By what stretch of the imagination can reasonable suspicion be deemed stereotyping?

The bizarre language of her judgement continues, "It is consistent with a finding of racial profiling that all black men, or all black men of a certain age, driving along in the area in a black car were possible suspects at the moment [the Police officer] decided to commence his investigation of [the complainant]."

Yes, the police investigate all situations matching a certain description.

For having acted reasonably, officer and Police Department were ordered to pay the complainant $40,000 in damages.  In the usual gobbledegook of this feel-good tribunal, she described the event as "harrowing" and injurious "to dignity, feelings, and self-respect". That hoary language is right out of the utopian playbook and is used to justify pre-determined decisions, and without a whiff of due process. One wonders if Adjudicator Reaume considers it "harrowing" for an individual police officer to approach a possibly armed man.

How do these people come up with such awards? Had the suspect been a Caucasian in a white car, and someone fitting that description was similarly investigated, would lawyer Reaume endorse a payout of $40,000? Would there be any payout at all?

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal merits its public perception as a cash cow for the easily offended.

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal contorts logic in it worship of political correctness. When referring to the complainant's race, the Tribunal's news release capitalized the word Black, yet not in the judgement.

A copy of this post was sent to the drafter of said news release, Afroze Edwards, OHRC Senior Communications Officer (afrozre.edwards@ohrc.on.ca).

On July 20, 2012, I received a letter from Paul Richards, Correspondence Coordinator, Communications & Issues Management. (Yes, that's his title.) His verbatim reply: "Thank you for your interest in the work of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC); the OHRC was involved in the case and support the decision of the Human Rights Tribunal. Thank you for contacting the OHRC."

"Page turner" is not a compliment

Publishers and book reviewers believe that describing a book as a "page turner" is to compliment the author. It may be intended as such. In fact, it is the opposite. The term implies reader dissatisfaction with the page currently in focus. It implies the reader wants to get to the last page as quickly as possible. Book reviewers too often describe a book as "a quick read." The author would hardly be flattered.

 "Yet how many people there are who read as though some prize awaited them when they turned the last page! They do not wish to read a book; they want to have read it -- no matter how. The prize they seek is to have done with the book at hand." -- Robertson Davies in A Voice from the Attic.

One of the publishers in a writer's market guides suggests works in which 10,000 words might be read in forty minutes. I doubt anyone reading a (good) book at that pace will get the message, feel the style or revel in the vocabulary and sentence structure of the work. Needless to say, few best-sellers are blessed with these characteristics. They are the page turners.

Are good books designed to be read as quickly as possible? Or intended by the author to offer ideas, thoughts and observations worth mulling over? The page should be turned only in the hope of continuing the intellectual adventure. A book should be read with the same care with which the author wrote it.

Woody Allen described the results of a speed-reading course. "They taught us to read down the centre of the page. I read War and Peace in an hour. It was about Russia."

Regardless of the subject matter, a good book deserves attention, an honest perusal, and a mind-stretching thought. Such a book can be read only with pencil in hand. The readily erasable marks indicate important passages, excellent turns of phrase, or valuable insights. After the last page is turned, these markings are reviewed, and the noteworthy ones indexed on the inside back cover, or on a separate sheet of paper.

One finishes A Voice from the Attic with unbounded desire to preserve such incisive turns of phrase as: a strongly developed sense of grievance; a victim of an unresolved mental quirk; injustice collectors; creeps like a stain through the fabric of their lives; filled with undigested anger; gnawing on the bone of contentment. Each idea to be relished, no page turner, this book.

François, Duc de la Rochefoucauld, composer of maxims and epigrams wrote, "I am fond of all kinds of reading, especially where there is something to train the mind and toughen the soul. Above all, I find very great enjoyment  in sharing my reading with an intelligent person. In doing so one can continually reflect upon what is being read, and such reflections form the basis of the most delightful and profitable conversation."

Rochefoucauld and Davies would have had great conversations. Perhaps they are.

Bureaucracy vs Family

Email to The National Post, May 29, 2012. Unpublished.

Re Teachers oppose parents taking kids from sex ed, May 29:

This report illustrates once again what's wrong with our school system.  The bureaucrats and teachers increasingly want to intrude in other people's business, in this case, the family's business of sex education. 

Teaching must return to the basics of reading, language, writing, arithmetic, history and other core subjects. If a teacher is no good, or the principal unable to maintain discipline, parents should be able to demand better or pull their children from that school.

In this particular report, the teachers' union of Manitoba wants the government to make it a crime for parents to take their children from classes, regardless of subject or quality of teaching. They Nazi-tinged demand is motivated, not for concern of their students, but for their personal good -- the need to maintain a certain level of attendance to protect their pay. So they demand forced attendance, regardless of how or what they are pushing down young throats.

The next step in this bureaucratization of education is to criminalize homeschooling. It's already happened in Sweden, Norway and Germany where it was introduced by the Nazis. 

Parents must have more say in the education of their children, the bureaucrats less.

Weightless in Britain

As youngsters, we referred to the comedy duo of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as Fat and Skinny. Of the team of Bud Abbot and Lou Costello, everyone described the latter as the Fat One. Of the Dean Martin and Gerry Lewis twosome, Lewis was known as the goofy-looking guy. All these performers capitalized handsomely on their physical features.

For the latest example of a legitimate concern on the verge of going wrong, we have a report of the British Parliament, Reflections on Body Image. Some honourable members want it declared  a hate crime to describe a person as "obese" or even to draw attention to a person's weight. An All Party Parliamentary Group on Body Image has recommended criminalization of "appearance-based discrimination".

Much of the report was based on the fact that more than 50 per cent of the population have a negative body image. That statistic from the U.K. Centre for Appearance Research. The Centre also states that 20 per cent have been victimized because of their weight.

A key person involved with the report suggested that doctors should refrain from telling patients they have excess weight. "If they don't feel overweight, and there are no health indications, what's the problem?" she asked. Studies have consistently shown that overweight people underestimate how fat they really are.

It is to be hoped that, before any legislation is enacted, a more realistic view of body image will prevail.

Historical "racism"

 
An email to Toronto Star. Published on line May 14, 2012.

Re Refugee bill returns to the bad old days, May 7:

This report speaks of "legally-sanctioned racism" and of Canada returning "to the days when racism and xenophobia were part of our official immigration policy".  This opinion is an example of presentism, that is, judging former times by today's supposedly superior standards. 

At one time, majority feeling, as reflected in government policy, was that English-speaking immigrants were favoured because of their easier and less expensive assimilation into Canadian life. At another time, only farmers were admitted, because that's what the young nation then needed.

This feeling and policy continued well into the 1960s. Today, it is hyperbole to speak of "toxins that are poisoning our country".  The word racism trips off the tongue too lightly in contemporary discourse.

Our immigration policy exists for the sole benefit of Canada. That said, we are obliged to show some leniency towards the downtrodden, the refugees and others rendered desolate by events beyond their control. Such leniency must be tempered by economic conditions and our ability to absorb more newcomers.


This report also leaves the impression that only Japanese were confined to internment camps during the Second World War. Two immigrants on our street in downtown Toronto were whisked away by the police. They joined other Germans and Italians placed in internment camps for the duration of the war. Little has been said about the economic hardship caused to their families. To my knowledge, they have not even asked for an apology.

Women Exploited

Tired of all that advice about losing weight?  In the mid-1990s, Sassy magazine gave 13 reasons not to diet.  The magazine for young women stated boldly: Starving yourself is complete and total lunacy.  Dieting makes you boring.  You'll gain it back, anyway. 

The "evil diet industry" is unregulated and has no legal obligation to prove its products work, the magazine pointed out.  The promise of liberation through weight loss is false.  Today's barbie-doll worship does much harm to girls and young women. 

Unnatural mannequins, computer-altered photographs, anorexic models, all create a false ideal.  Marilyn Monroe, sex goddess of the 1960s, would today be considered too large by the fashion industry.  It wants us to believe the ideal shapes are thin, thinner and thinest.

Unfortunately, too many young women believe this nonsense.  They look into the mirror, imagine their bodies much larger than they really are, and lose their self-confidence.  Naomi Wolf alerted us to this mischief in her book The Beauty Myth.  She tells how the industry's creation of a mythical, perfect body has taught young women and girls to hate their bodies.  This self-loathing leads to eating disorders and depression.

As a first line of defence, every woman should read Gloria Steinem's Revolution from Within.  The book's argument is that too many of our systems of authority undermine women's opinion of themselves.  People in this condition are ready victims for unproven products and services.  As Steinem says it: "Liberation begins with the nurturing of self-esteem."