Category Archives: The fall of the West

Burglars Welcome!

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Protect the Burglars of Bromsgrove! From Theodore Dalrymple at City Journal

A British town puts thieves’ safety first.

In Britain, there is a long and honorable tradition of local councils’ leasing small plots of land, called allotments, to people without gardens of their own who may grow fruit, vegetables, and flowers upon them. The tenants also receive small sheds on their plots for storing tools, fertilizers, garden furniture, and so forth. Unfortunately, another, less honorable, tradition has recently developed: stealing from allotments. Seventeen of the 50 allotments in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire have been robbed recently, for example, and the shed of one tenant, Bill Malcolm, has been broken into three times.

So Malcolm put a barbed-wire fence around his patch of land to discourage further depredations. The fence, however, did not meet with the approval of the local council, which worried about the risk of injury—to future burglars. Injured burglars might then sue the council. Another council, in Bristol, told allotment holders not to lock their sheds, in case burglars damaged them while breaking into them.

Needless to say, I am replacing the glass in the windows of my house with tissue paper, so that burglars—poor lambs—will not cut themselves while breaking and entering.

The Island of Doctor Moreau

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The prescience of H. G. Wells. From the Telegraph

Human tissue could be taken from the infirm without their consent and used for research

On Wednesday MPs will vote on a bill which would allow the creation of human/animal hybrid embryos to be used for stem cell research, change the conditions for granting IVF, and possibly liberalise the abortion laws.

The passage through Parliament of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill has been dogged by controversy. Failed attempts to outlaw late abortion have dominated the debate, while scientists, medical ethics experts and religious leaders have clashed over the hybrid embryo issue.

Defenders of the bill have repeatedly stressed the importance of gaining consent from anyone whose tissue is taken for the creation of human/animal hybrid embryos.

We are about to enter the age of the Chimera. Lord have mercy.

The right to indoctrinate

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From the National Post:

Rights complaint filed in B. C. over cancelled course.

VANCOUVER – Two men responsible for creating a new social justice course for a B. C. high school have filed a human-rights complaint against the Abbotsford school district for its refusal to offer the course this year.

Murray and Peter Corren filed the complaint with the B. C. Human Rights Tribunal, alleging that the decision not to offer Social Justice 12 in W. J. Mouat Secondary School amounts to discrimination against students — especially those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered.

In a statement released yesterday, the Correns say the district refused to offer the course, even though more than 90 students had signed up, because some parents had complained about content dealing with sexual orientation, gender identity, homophobia and heterosexism.

The Correns, one of the first gay couples in Canada to marry, almost single-handedly forced the topics of sexual orientation, gender identity and same-sex families into schools when they launched a B. C. Human Rights Tribunal complaint against the provincial government.

You may agree or not with the teaching of this course on ‘social justice’; but how could a school district’s decision not to teach it possibly be a violation of anyone’s human rights? No-one is advocating censoring the material in the course; there is no frenzied mob gathering to burn copies of it; it is even available on the Internet for perusal by incurable insomniacs who may be looking for an untried soporific.

It appears to me to be a pile of tendentious tripe, but that’s just me. Here is an excerpt:

Students should be able to identify and define a range of concepts and terms of social justice:

e.g., ableism, ageism, anthropocentrism, colonization, conservative, consumerism, cultural imperialism, democratization, dignity, discrimination, diversity, economic imperialism, economic liberalization, empowerment, equality, equity, extremism, fairness, feminism, fundamentalism, genocide, globalization, hate crime, hegemony, heterosexism, homophobia, human rights, humanism, humility, inclusion, marginalization, misogyny, oppression, peace, persecution, power, prejudice, privilege, racism, radical, sexism, speciesism, stereotyping, systemic, transformational leadership, truth, value, worth

These words alone convey a cornucopia of codswallop; read the whole thing to judge for yourself.

Shakespeare understood it, why can't we?

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From Hamlet:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

The delightful Theodore Dalrymple also knows why we are in this financial mess; read it all Here

This anecdotal extract mirrors my experience with bankers exactly:

Shortly after I opened an account there, forty years ago, I received a letter from the manager drawing my attention with some asperity to the fact that my account was almost $5 dollars overdrawn, and that he trusted that I would soon rectify the situation by the end of the week. Forty years later, when I was again overdrawn, I received a telephone call from the manager – the bank’s motto being ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you’ – asking to see me. Indeed, the manager said he would come to my house.

Gosh, I thought, now I’m in trouble. When he arrived, I told him that I was about to pay the amount by which I was overdrawn into my account. He looked extremely crestfallen.
‘You mean you don’t want to borrow more?’ he said. ‘I’ve come here to offer you more.’ A wasted journey, obviously.

A short time later, I went to my bank to borrow money to buy a house while I sold another. Within five minutes I was offered a sum the like of which I had never previously handled, and in excess of anything I needed. While it was smaller than my total nominal assets, as I enumerated them, the bank made absolutely no effort to verify that I was indeed the owner of these assets.

With a large loan outstanding, I continued to receive, about every month or so, offers of a further loan of $50,000, no questions asked and mine for the borrowing by mere telephone call, just in case there were any little extras or extravagances I happened to feel like treating myself to (but apply now, before next month’s offer of precisely the same thing!). The principal example given of the little extras or extravagances to which I might want to treat myself was the holiday of a lifetime.

The indiscretion of Rev Dr Peter Mullen

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Clearly, the Rev Dr Peter Mullen is not politically correct. Not only that, he has done something that the bishop of London, Rev Richard Chartres, finds highly offensive; that makes him OK in my book.

Sadly, he has caved in to the likes of Peter Tatchell and his blog is no more. All is not lost, however; it lives on in the dark and cobweb infested depths of Google cache! For your amusement here is the offending poem:

Gay wedding at St Bartholomew’s EC1
The Bishop of London is in a high huff
Because Dr Dudley has married a puff;
And not just one puff – he’s married another:
Two priests, two puffs and either to other.
“It isn’t a wedding, for that’s not allowed;
They’ve just come together and promised and vowed
To shack up and snug up, to have and to hold:
Ooh aren’t we radical! Ooh aren’t we bold!”
Now here’s a most queer and most wonderful thing:
He’s given his hand, he’s offered his ring;
And each to the other forever will bend,
After their troll in the coach up West End.
Not a flash wedding, no pics in Hello!
Just a honeymoon cottage, convenient so.
Of such Dr Dudley a goldmine has found,
From shaven-head puftas the nuptial pink pound.
The new Church of England embraces diversity,
A fresh modulation on ancient perversity:
“I’m C of E and PC so don’t think it odd of me
To offer a licence and blessing for sodomy.”

And more from the Telegraph

The Rev Dr Peter Mullen, who is rector of St Michael’s Cornhill and St Sepulchre without Newgate in the City, said in an internet blog that homosexuality was “clearly unnatural, a perversion and corruption of natural instincts and affections, and because it is a cause of fatal disease”.

He wrote: “Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS.”

The Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, said the posting, which has since been taken down, was “highly offensive”. The Rev Mullen, 66, was told on Friday that he could face disciplinary action.

Peter Tatchell of gay rights group OutRage! said he should resign.

The shrieks of OutRage! that this has engendered demonstrates that we have at last become a humourless society; roll down the curtain, it’s as good as over.

Rowan cosies up to Karl

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I suppose it is only fitting that Rowan, who is almost entirely wrong about Christianity, should think Marx is partly right about capitalism. Why not find something positive to say about a man whose ideology has been the inspiration for the most murderous, oppressive and evil regimes in human history. Rowan and Karl even look a bit alike – well Rowan needs to work on the beard. From the Spectator

Face it: Marx was partly right about capitalism
Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, says that the financial world needs fresh scrutiny and regulation. In our attitude to the market, we run the risk of idolatry

[…..]

Fundamentalism is a religious word, not inappropriate to the nature of the problem. Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves; he was right about that, if about little else. And ascribing independent reality to what you have in fact made yourself is a perfect definition of what the Jewish and Christian Scriptures call idolatry. What the present anxieties and disasters should be teaching us is to ‘keep ourselves from idols’, in the biblical phrase. The mythologies and abstractions, the pseudo-objects of much modern financial culture, are in urgent need of their own Dawkins or Hitchens. We need to be reacquainted with our own capacity to choose — which means acquiring some skills in discerning true faith from false, and re-learning some of the inescapable face-to-face dimensions of human trust.

The story of an abortion survivor

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If this doesn’t move you, nothing will. Gianna Jessen:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Here is the ad featuring her from BornAliveTruth followed by an interview on Hannity and Colmes:

Here is her medical record, birth certificate and a 1978 newspaper clipping.

And here is Gianna’s testimony before the Constitution Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee on April 22, 1996:

My name is Gianna Jessen. I am 19 years of age. I am originally from California, but now reside in Franklin, Tennessee. I am adopted. I have cerebral palsy. My biological mother was 17 years old and seven and one-half months pregnant when she made the decision to have a saline abortion. I am the person she aborted. I lived instead of died.

Fortunately for me the abortionist was not in the clinic when I arrived alive, instead of dead, at 6:00 a.m. on the morning of April 6, 1977. I was early, my death was not expected to be seen until about 9 a.m., when he would probably be arriving for his office hours. I am sure I would not be here today if the abortionist would have been in the clinic as his job is to take life, not sustain it. Some have said I am a “botched abortion”, a result of a job not well done.

There were many witnesses to my entry into this world. My biological mother and other young girls in the clinic, who also awaited the death of their babies, were the first to greet me. I am told this was a hysterical moment. Next was a staff nurse who apparently called emergency medical services and had me transferred to a hospital.

I remained in the hospital for almost three months. There was not much hope for me in the beginning. I weighed only two pounds. Today, babies smaller than I was have survived.

A doctor once said I had a great will to live and that I fought for my life. I eventually was able to leave the hospital and be placed in foster care. I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy as a result of the abortion.

My foster mother was told that it was doubtful that I would ever crawl or walk. I could not sit up independently. Through the prayers and dedication of my foster mother, and later many other people, I eventually learned to sit up, crawl, then stand. I walked with leg braces and a walker shortly before I turned age four. I was legally adopted by my foster mother’s daughter, Diana De Paul, a few months after I began to walk. The Department of Social Services would not release me any earlier for adoption.

I have continued in physical therapy for my disability, and after a total of four surgeries, I can now walk without assistance. It is not always easy. Sometimes I fall, but I have learned how to fall gracefully after falling 19 years.

I am happy to be alive. I almost died. Every day I thank God for life. I do not consider myself a by-product of conception, a clump of tissue, or any other of the titles given to a child in the womb. I do not consider any person conceived to be any of those things.

I have met other survivors of abortion. They are all thankful for life. Only a few months ago I met another saline abortion survivor. Her name is Sarah. She is two years old. Sarah also has cerebral palsy, but her diagnosis is not good. She is blind and has severe seizures. The abortionist, besides injecting the mother with saline, also injects the baby victims. Sarah was injected in the head. I saw the place on her head where this was done. When I speak, I speak not only for myself, but for the other survivors, like Sarah, and also for those who cannot yet speak …

Today, a baby is a baby when convenient. It is tissue or otherwise when the time is not right. A baby is a baby when miscarriage takes place at two, three, four months. A baby is called a tissue or clumps of cells when an abortion takes place at two, three, four months. Why is that? I see no difference. What are you seeing? Many close there eyes…

The best thing I can show you to defend life is my life. It has been a great gift. Killing is not the answer to any question or situation. Show me how it is the answer.

There is a quote which is etched into the high ceilings of one of our state’s capitol buildings. The quote says, “Whatever is morally wrong, is not politically correct.” Abortion is morally wrong. Our country is shedding the blood of the innocent. America is killing its future.

All life is valuable. All life is a gift from our Creator. We must receive and cherish the gifts we are given. We must honor the right to life.

Rule Britannia

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From the Telegraph.

We knew that sharia courts were operating in Britain even before Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave the lecture  in February which caused such a stir.

It was said that these courts arbitrated on marriages, as Jewish courts or Catholic marriage tribunals do. Everything was to be done with the consent of both parties. More surprisingly, it seems that sharia courts are giving judgement in criminal cases. In six cases of domestic violence, according to Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.

Can you imagine what kind of consent wives involved in such cases have given to the sharia court’s jurisdiction?

Often, Muslim women marry in an Islamic ceremony without the ratification of a marriage in English law. This gives them no rights under the law of the land in the case of divorce. Nor would they have any claim to inherit under English law.

So we see the growth of sharia as a parallel jurisdiction to the law of the land, imposed on a sector of society that cannot resist it.

It’s fitting that this is being publicised at the same time as this piece of anti-Christian claptrap from the BBC:

A successful Christian children’s author says he was refused appearances on the BBC because it couldn’t be “seen to be promoting Jesus”.

G P Taylor’s first novel, Shadowmancer, spent 15 weeks at the top of the British book charts in 2003. His second book, Wormwood, sold 22,000 copies in one day.

Yet the author claims that invitations for appearances on the BBC stopped once producers found out he was a Christian.

“I had good relations with them until they realised that there were religious allegories in my stories,” he told The Sunday Telegraph.

“Once they had decided that I was promoting Christianity in my books I found the door firmly shut.”

Mr Taylor said his faith meant that he was not welcome on children’s programmes like Blue Peter.

He said: “A BBC producer told me ‘off the record’ that it was a matter of my faith and the fact that I was an Anglican priest. ‘We can’t be seen to be promoting Jesus’, he said with a laugh.”

A spokesman for the BBC denied the allegations. “Programme makers make their own editorial decisions about which guests to have on their shows. There is no truth in the claim that there is a BBC ban on G P Taylor.”

However, Mr Taylor said: “They weren’t turning me down because I was a bad guest, but because of who I am.

“I’m an Anglican priest and sadly while it’s OK to be the next Philip Pullman, it’s not all right to be a Christian writer.”

And, one imagines, the Arch-twit of Canterbury, Rowan Williams – having explained to us why sharia law in the UK is such a good idea – will have absolutely nothing to say about this blatant discrimination against the religion he is supposed to be defending.

Evangelism CofE style. Hic!

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From the Telegraph

The first “director of hospitality and welcome” at an English cathedral has unveiled far-reaching plans to make its operations more business-like.
Mark Hope-Urwin, a former executive with the John Lewis deparment stores chain, has been recruited by Birmingham Cathedral to oversee a radical change to its image and branding.
His plans, revealed today, include a chain of city-centre wine bars and “loyalty cards” for regular worshippers to obtain discounts at the cathedral’s shops.
The new approach to attracting and retaining worshippers could become a blueprint for dioceses across the country
The wine bars would feature stained-glass windows, pictures on a religious theme and be decorated in “episcopal purple”.
They would be intended to raise the cathedral’s profile around the city, and would represent a significant departure from current practice, which is limited to bookshops and cafes in some cathedrals and churches.
The plan comes after the Association of English Cathedrals accused the Government of having a secular agenda – as it fails to provide “proper” financial support to cathedrals, despite providing large grants to museums.

In vino veritas.

It’s good to see the Church of England getting down to its core business at last. Forget all the nonsense about heaven, hell, sin, atonement, resurrection and redemption. It’s really all about the wine – after all Jesus turned water into wine – and the good old CofE, after 500 benighted years, has seen the light.

The Idiot

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Stéphane Dion is a 21st Century Canadian version of Dostoyevsky’s Idiot, Myshkin in his novel, The Idiot. Admittedly, Dion only exhibits one side of Myshkin’s personality: a naivety that renders him incapable of dealing with or understanding the world, particularly a fallen world. An unusual quality for a politician. Regrettably, Myshkin’s finer qualities – his saintliness – are absent in Stéphane. In fact, his ignorance of worldly matters seems to be exceeded only by his nescience – perhaps in a rather charming way – with things of the spirit. He was recently interviewed by Michael Coren; here are some observations on the interview from the National Post:

He was, for example, anxious to “reconcile people with God’s environment” and was committed to the planet “given to us by God.” Which is somewhat surprising. The deity is not a popular debating point for Liberal leaders. Actually, the Supreme Being is mentioned by ambitious Liberal politicians about as often as Brian Mulroney’s good points. So I was rude enough to ask Mr. Dion if he was doing this — sounding religious — because he had been told that the station on which my show appears each night, CTS, was faith-based. Frankly, I expected him to deny, obfuscate or simply lie. It says a great deal about the man’s integrity as well as his innocence that he replied on air with a simple, “This is true.” A pause, then, “I have been told that this is important to the people who watch this show.”

His words seemed so naive, so vulnerable to critique, so — forgive me Mr. Dion — callow and such a product of inexperience. Goodness it’s hard not to like him but it’s equally hard to imagine him being tough with our enemies and careful with our friends. He listens to well-meaning but weak advice and then admits that he’s been moulded for the moment. Canadians generally expect more from their political masters and that God chap expects more — even from Liberals.

I can’t see how someone like this could run a country – even one like Canada.