Thursday, April 14, 2005

EVEN JOKES CAN BE CENSORED IN BRITAIN NOW -- JUST LIKE IN COMMUNIST COUNTRIES (PAST AND PRESENT)

A man who published jokes about the Pope's death on a spoof village website was yesterday threatened with an antisocial behaviour order. Police were asked to investigate after Mitch Hawkin posted a spoof advert for the job of pontiff following the death of John Paul II. Mr Hawkin's website has been involved in a feud with a similarly named website in Lyneham, Wiltshire. The website said: "Fancy a new job? The Vatican is now looking for a new Pope now that the current one has snuffed it." The remarks continued: "Let's hope the next Pope can do a better job. Better still, why not abolish the position of Pope, as religion, at the end of the day, causes more wars than anything else."

Mr Hawkin has been involved in a feud with www.lynehamvillage.com which has a gentler tone, and claims to be the original website for Lyneham. It is run by Andy Humm, who describes his rival as bringing "shame" on Lyneham. Critics of the spoof site fear that people looking for information about the village will read that site first rather than Mr Humm's more sedate version, whose home page has pictures of daffodils and urges people to pick up litter. Mr Humm said: "What Mr Hawkin has said about the Pope is disgusting and outrageous. Mr Hawkin should be charged." Mr Humm and a local councillor have been pressing for an Asbo to be taken out against the alternative site.

Allison Bucknell, a Conservative councillor for Lyneham, said: "An Asbo is being looked at against Mr Hawkin. He's causing a lot of damage to the community." The council's antisocial behaviour officer had tried to mediate, but Mr Hawkin did not show up. A Wiltshire police spokesman said investigations were under way after a series of complaints.

Source



THE FOOLISH THEORIES BEHIND MULTICULTURALISM

Yet all of that having been said, "multiculturalism" is really beginning to scare me --- and not from a fear or dislike of other cultures. It is because multiculturalism is being used as an excuse not to protect minorities, but to oppress majorities. You see, each of the many ethnic and religious groups now living in the West (by which I mean Europe, the Americas, and Australasia) exist as the majorities in their own native regions. These cultures are themselves the result of centuries or even millennia of cultural and religious history. While I am all for their survival, it seems to me that the cultures of the host nations they have come to live among have at least the same right to preservation.

Unfortunately, multiculturalism is often invoked to abolish long-standing customs the majority hold dear. Why must oaths to the Queen be abolished in Canada and Australia? Well, foreigners wouldn't understand. Why did divorce have to be legalized in Ireland and Chile, or crucifixes removed from Belgian schools, or the Catholic Church in Paraguay or the Lutheran Church of Sweden disestablished, or "Merry Christmas" replaced with "Happy Holidays" and B.C. and A.D. with B.C.E. and C.E. in the United States? Because minorities would possibly be offended.

Of course, much of this is generational. Political leaders drawn from the Baby-boomers (or the "Generation of '68," as they are called in Europe) tend to loathe the traditions of the cultures they have inherited. For them, immigration from elsewhere gives a golden opportunity to demolish the customs and manners accepted for generations. They do have a problem; being secular-minded, they find themselves in an odious maze of religiously-based cultural institutions --- Western civilization was produced by Christianity, even as Indian was the creation of Hinduism, and Japanese of Shinto. But because they hate the Faith of their Fathers, they hate what it produced as well. In Catholic countries like Ireland, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium or my family's own Quebec, this is especially true, but it fits the mode in Protestant and Orthodox nations as well.

In the United States, such folk have an advantage, due to the dogma of "Separation of Church and State." Not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, this notion grew up from a governmental expedient created at the drafting of that document in 1789. Since several of the original States had established Churches (Anglican in the South, and Congregational in New England), and others had none, a compromise had to be worked out that would preserve the freedom of the States to settle the relationship between Church and State on their own, while preserving the individual freedoms of all Americans. So it was that the First Amendment forbade Congress to establish a single established Church for the nation, while the right of all Americans to individually choose their own faith and not suffer the loss of civil rights thereby was protected. Nevertheless, since the vast majority of Americans claimed adherence to one form or another of Christianity, it was generally accepted that the common mores and ideals of that majority would determine the tone of public life. This idea was enshrined in the 1892 Supreme Court decision of Trinity Church vs. the United States, which mentioned that

If we pass beyond these [cited legal] matters to a view of American life, as expressed by its laws, its business, its customs, and its society, we find everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth. Among other matters note the following: The form of oath universally prevailing, concluding with an appeal to the Almighty; the custom of opening sessions of all deliberative bodies and most conventions with prayer; the prefatory words of all wills, `In the name of God, amen;' the laws respecting the observance of the Sabbath, with the general cessation of all secular business, and the closing of courts, legislatures, and other similar public assemblies on that day; the churches and church organizations which abound in every city, town, and hamlet; the multitude of charitable organizations existing everywhere under Christian auspices; the gigantic missionary associations, with general support, and aiming to establish Christian missions in every quarter of the globe.

On this basis, the Court declared that "These and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation."

What distinguishes this decision from those of later, 20th and 21st century courts is that is was based, not upon abstract theory, but upon the actual way life is lived by the citizens of these United States --- now as well as then. In a word, it was democratic.

Yet in the past five decades that same Supreme Court and the rest of the Judiciary have been used to push the views and practices of the majority out of public life as far as possible. As everyone knows, the ACLU has been a prime mover in these areas; apart from an a-historical reading of the Constitution, these efforts have often invoked the rights of minorities and, latterly, multiculturalism.

The tacit theory upon which all of this is based in legal, governmental, and academic circles is that the civilization of the West is the creation of White, Christian, Males (most of whom are also Dead), and that it was erected for the purpose of oppressing people of color, non-Christians, women, gays, animals, plants, and the environment generally. Concomitantly, it is assumed by these worthies that a sort of coalition of the oppressed exists, and must be mobilised by the enlightened in positions of power for the express purpose of dismantling this oppressive structure.

The great problem with this view is that - whatever other merits it may possess - it is nonsense. The fact is that outside of Western Civilisation, there is precious little room for dissent from generally accepted societal norms. To be specific, as a Catholic, I am only too aware of how my co-religionists are marginalized (to put it politely) in China, India, Indonesia, Sudan --- indeed, anywhere where we are a minority (and no believing Catholic may expect confirmation for an American Federal judgeship if Senator Boxer is to be believed, but that is another story). Of course, it is not merely Catholics who suffer in this way, to be sure. But in most of this world, being a national minority is not much fun.

Nor is the role of women too wonderful, either. Well do I remember that when the ordination of women was being discussed at the 1992 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops, a Melanesian prelate declared, "Ordain them? We're still trying to get our people not to sell them!"

The environment is none too safe in most places, either. It should be remembered that modern conservation is the invention of the European royals and nobles who prevented the complete disappearance of the local wildlife into the cook pots of the peasantry in order to maintain their favorite sport of hunting. Granted, this created a class hatred of the sport most recently expressed in Tony's Blair's abolition of fox and stag hunting in the U.K. Doubtless poisoning and starvation will be more humane ways of dealing with the beasts than a chase in which they have a chance to escape. Oh, well.

If secularisation on the modern American plan is ridiculous in the country that spawned the "Wall of Separation," it is downright grotesque in Old Europe. While such as Spain's Zapatero, Ireland's Ahearn, and Belgium's Vanhoefstrat do their best to remove all symbols of Christianity (while, in the meantime, encouraging expressions of Islam, Buddhism, etc., as "multicultural"), the refusal of EU authorities to even mention Christianity in the preamble of their constitution, when it is surely THE great fact of European history, is both absurd and wilfully intolerant. It is also self-destructive, given the growth of Islam in Europe. Accepting Belloc's dictum that "the Faith is Europe, and Europe is the Faith," we are presented with the corollary that if Europe will not be the Faith, she will be nothing at all. Partially in response to these developments, Pope John Paul II recently beatified Emperor-King Charles I and IV of Austria-Hungary as an example for modern European politicians. Not merely a saintly man who attempted to apply his religion to his rulership, Blessed Charles was also sovereign of the most truly multicultural polity modern Europe has ever seen.

In any case, the fact remains that condemnation of the white male Christian power structure is only possible in areas dominated even still by white male Christians. The contrast between the place of, say, Muslims in Christian countries and that of Christians in Muslim ones is glaring. Even Benito Mussolini was able to figure that one out: when King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia asked for permission to build a mosque in Rome, the Duce replied that he would be happy to, so soon as His Majesty would allow a cathedral to be erected in Mecca. Mussolini may not have been a good man or a wise one, but in this case he was not a dimwit.

Excerpt from the Cool Ohm

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