Chavez: more proof that the Cold War isn't over

Any competent observer of Venezuela's demagogue and populist leader Hugo Chavez can predict Hugo Boss's eventual move toward a socialist (possibly totalitarian) state. The signs are so painfully clear. The January legislation which allows Chavez to rule by decree is not unprecedented in Latin American politics, and is a first step toward perpetuating such sweeping powers indefinitely. Not only is he pushing toward his own egomaniac ambitions, he is using Venezuelan's oil money to prop up other socialist leaders in the region. Daniel Ortega, the Marxist Sandinista leader who was ousted in 1990 is back in power. Without the help of Chavez's money machine there is no doubt Ortega would have not lost the election this summer (which he won with 35% of the popular vote). I was in Nicaragua this summer during the "election campaigns", any one could have sworn Ortega was the only candidate running. No other candidates could have dreamed to match the Chavez funded Western style Sandinista campaign (his theme song was "give peace a chance" by the Beatles in Spanish, I wanted to puke).
Yesterday, Chavez once again blatantly exposed his dream of creating another Cuba in Latin America. He warned all political "allies" to dissolve and join his part or they will have to leave government.
This is simply the historical pattern that socialist dictators have taken in Latin America. I'm just amazed that after all the examples of dismal socialist states Chavez somehow thinks he will be the one to pull it off. Chavez can also rely on the full support of spoiled North American University nit wits. I guarantee is approval rating among Canadian leftist liberals ranges in the 90th percentile.
This also reinforces the misconception that we won the Cold War. The West defeated Fascism but we let Socialism sneak by. The Cold War is not over. The audacity of Socialist maggots like Chavez is proof of the resilience of this persistent disease.

PC: the revenge of Marx

This is my latest article on the Brock Press Opinion section dealing with outrageous signs of the growth of PC in Canada. It is sure to recieve some nasty comments from next weeks letters to the editor


PC gone inexcusably wrong.

Political Correctness and Freedom of Expression

A couple of recent incidents have highlighted for me the huge problem that political correctness (PC) is posing in our society. PC is plaguing our schools, offices and even soccer fields to a point where we are slowly being driven to a vocabulary of Orwellian-style double-speak and meaningless, circular phrases. An example is the term “undocumented workers” as a substitute for illegal aliens. Why is the worker undocumented one may ask? Did he lose his papers?

The most recent and absurd occasion of PC gone mad is the UN’s condemnation of Canada as being racist. Never mind ethnic cleansing in Darfur, the slaughtering of Buddhist monks in Thailand or religious persecution across the Middle East, instead, the object of their reprehension is our use of the term “visible minority”. The brilliant minds at the UN have condemned Canada’s blatantly racist slur, “visible minority”, as an explicit denigrating assault on the enslaved non-whites of this bigoted apartheid state. Using their enlightened logic, ethnic minorities should be indistinguishable and beyond categorization even for practical purposes. It isn’t hard to see how this pseudo-Marxist backwards thinking would make it even harder for us to protect the minorities who need protecting.

The other recent event that got my head throbbing with disbelief was the apparent outrage over the “racist” expulsion of a Muslim soccer player for wearing a hijab during a soccer game. We even received a stern letter of denunciation from Egypt, a model of universal tolerance and peace. Egyptian officials, who are experts in Canadian human rights issues, stated that this incident was proof of the "mounting signs of racism and intolerance in Canada". For an inexplicable reason, the fact that the referee who expelled the young soccer player was himself a Muslim does not find its way into the conversation of this international crisis. The referee was following the international rules of soccer, a truly universal game, as well as a convention of team sports called ‘uniform’. The decision had absolutely nothing to do with religion or ethnicity but rather with the safety of the girl. If she wanted to keep on playing, she simply had to remove the hijab from her head (I’m sure surgery wouldn’t be required) and put it back on after the game.

This impractical over-sensitivity to minorities or “vulnerable groups” for the sake of political correctness has been equally balanced with an assault on the majority. This is where the Orwellian double-speak takes place and where an assault on freedom of speech is transparent. Why is it so difficult to criticize questionable practices of minorities for the sake of reason? It is because it’s racist or prejudiced. The newly coined phrase “Islamophobia” is all the rage among advocates and users of PC. Saturday Night Live actually has a running joke about media outlets that are charged with creating “Islamophobia” through their portrayal of Muslims. The skits always end by suggesting that terrorism also might have something to do with it.

“Homophobia” is also a powerful weapon in the arsenal of the PC thought-police. This term is not only a moral judgment and condemnation, but it also suggests a mental disorder in those who object to certain sexual practices. Verbal weapons such as these are clearly aimed at curving speech and thought. They are dangerous as they dissuade individuals from constructive critical thinking by humiliation and condemnation. The very practices that were championed by questioning society are now setting limits to the questions that new generations are allowed to ask.

PC is dangerous and harmful. It is not conducive to liberty and suppresses the rights of the majority to the slightest sensibilities of the minority. Last Christmas, a judge decided to remove a Christmas tree from a court house in Ontario, not because it presented any danger, but rather because she saw it as a sign of exclusion. Even after appeals from Christian, Muslim and Hindu communities to allow the Christmas tree to stay for the duration of the holiday, the ludicrous ruling remained. This compelled the premier, Dalton McGuinty, to ask the question, "How does a menorah offend anyone? How does a Christmas tree offend anyone? How does a celebration of Eid offend anyone?” Simple, a Christmas tree offends judges and deluded people because it’s a sign of the majority and a Canadian tradition. The celebration of Eid will not offend people, but if someone were to offend a symbol of diversity, then you would hear the international outcry.

Why have we been taught to hate ourselves?

As I proudly enter the final lap of my four year history degree at Brock, I am confronted with a bleak yet inescapable reality of our post-secondary education: In the department of humanities and social sciences, we are not merely taught to be critical of our society and history, we are, in a sense, taught to hate ourselves.

It has become evident to me that in the name of "impartiality" when studying and analyzing important contemporary and historical issues we have lost any sense of objectivity. We have lost our capability to acknowledge the fact that Canada and Western nations treat individual life with higher value than any other civilization in the world and in history.

In my seminars, I find that negative statements about the "West" are given an easy pass while positive statements have to be laboriously defended. In our universities, we are socialized to believe that capitalism, Christianity and industrialization are dirty words. Yet these are some of the greatest accomplishments of the Western world because they have shaped, and have been shaped by, our ideas of self-determination, individual worth and progress.

Yet, as students, we are taught to hate Western influence on the world, which has been given terms such as "Westernization", "Cultural Imperialism" and my favourite, "McDonaldization". Meanwhile, we enjoy the benefits provided by these derogatory terms every living moment.We are taught that when we intervene in an oppressive war-torn country, it is for imperialistic purposes. We are taught that when we do not intervene in an oppressive war-torn country, it is because we are racists and so self-involved that if something does not benefit us directly, we will not partake in it - humanitarian purposes are clearly not enough (even though we have invented and coined this term).

When we use our military to attack an enemy nation, we are war-mongers. When a nation attacks us, it is because we 'had it coming'. We are taught that our societies are fundamentally segragationalist and prejudiced, and yet myriads of immigrants still flood our gates (can it be possible that this is because we treat them better than their own countries do?). We are embarrassed of our Christian heritage while we defend the integrity of radical and violent religious beliefs.

We have become socialized in a way that self-hate and anti-Western sentiments have become a badge of honour and self-righteousness. I am constantly astounded by students' anti-Western convictions. We are so easily swayed by figures like Michael Moore, who omit truths, twist realities and invent falsities about the Western condition and our moral sincerity. Easily they push their movies onto the big screen as naive eyes bulge in awe.

We are convinced that capitalism makes us into drone-like consumers led by our corporate masters while unwittingly we becoming drone-like consumers of 'Chomskyesque' mantras. We forget that war, poverty, slavery and imperialism are not Western innovations, and that liberalism, democracy and human rights are very much so.

Che Guevara T-shirts have reached such a high level of "cool" that it is only matched by generic anti-Bush or anti-flag paraphernalia. We scorn American flag-waving and do not realize that under Che's flag we would not enjoy this very freedom of expression.

I fear that students are taught a twisted truth about the world and inevitably grow to not appreciate our own country. Our country and its allies are not perfect. But if we were only presented with a true depiction of the rest of the worlds' regimes we would fall in admiration of nations accomplishments and standards.The evil in this world is not a by-product of so-called Western imperialism. Evil is innate and has always existed. Why is Bush-hate so popular while we give Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the genocidal Sudanese government a free pass? Our self-righteous enlightenment of "moral-relativity" has misconstrued our ability to discriminate between good and evil. Canada and Western society have shown us a model that allows for the greatest possible individual prosperity and social justice yet we are taught to hate it.



(printed in the Brock Press 10/31/06; written by myself)

Solving AIDS easy as ABC

Like Harper's recent warming up to Global Warming, I am afraid that the new spending on the AIDS effort and the renewed collaboration efforts with the Gates Foundation may be but a symptom of the minority governments' need to appease the opposition and the sentimental Canadian public. The amount of money the West has spent on funding HIV projects in Africa has amounted to several Marshal Plans and yet the problem is still growing. The truth is that solving the AIDS pandemic is quite simple and borders on common-sense. What the West is really fighting for is for the protection of an ideology that puts science over morality. Condoms and testing will never match the effects of monogamy and faithfulness with regards to solving the AIDS pandemic or creating a healthy society. Yet big donors and politicians refuse to acknowledge this and it is killing millions every year.

This is my latest article in the opinion section of the Brock Press regarding this issue.