When six British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on Tuesday, British Prime Minister David Cameron called it a “desperately sad day” for Britain. Look: I support the troops and yield to no one in my desire to see whoever planted that roadside bomb hunted down. But this was a scarily “teddy bear on the sidewalk” comment. Surely Britons are resolute, not crushed, when soldiers die on active duty. Click here to read the rest.
In politics you're never sure who to despise. David Cameron seemed a thoroughly safe bet and now look what he's done. Mr. Cameron, in case you don't follow the disintegration of the public sector in Britain as closely as here at home, took over the British Conservative party in December 2005 and, like a classic Canadian Tory, proudly declared himself centrist while articulating uniformly left-wing policies.
Uh, until this week. Speaking in a Glasgow constituency his party wouldn't win if hell did freeze over, he suddenly unleashed a withering blast against political correctness. For instance he told fat people to eat less and exercise more.
Please don't file a hate speech complaint against me because I'm just reporting the facts. (Wait a minute. That's not a defence before our Star Chambers, is it? Oh well. The truth shall make us free. Aaaaaah I just quoted the Bible. I'm in trouble now.)
Before they lock me up, to assure you I am not exaggerating Mr. Cameron's clarity, let me quote him: "Refusing to use these words -- right and wrong -- means a denial of personal responsibility and the concept of a moral choice. We talk about people being 'at risk of obesity' instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise."
Ouch. The fat's in the fire now. And sizzling, as he continued: "We talk about people being at risk of poverty, or social exclusion: it's as if these things -- obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction -- are purely external events like a plague or bad weather. Of course, circumstances -- where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school, and the choices your parents make -- have a huge impact. But social problems are often the consequence of the choices that people make."
Now try to imagine a major Canadian politician making such a statement. I'm sorry. Did you hurt yourself laughing? Sure, a backbencher occasionally says something similar, generally flubbing the delivery, but they are quickly repudiated by their more reputable colleagues. However, before denouncing our politicians as a sorry mix of conformists and crackpots, remember that there is a filter in Canadian politics that determines who gets to be a politician. The electorate. Us. And look what we let Dalton McGuinty do to John Tory over faith-based schools, while sending his own kids to one.
The Daily Telegraph claimed: "It is a sign of the political confidence that Mr. Cameron now has -- backed by consistent opinion poll leads of around 18 points -- that he feels able to make such strong comments." And I grant that in Britain, as here, politicians trailing in the polls are peculiarly adverse to bold efforts to gain ground. But those ahead in the polls generally seem even more afraid of blunt talk. I say Mr. Cameron made a moral choice to speak out.
Others could usefully imitate him, and not just politicians. Wednesday's Citizen quoted the supposedly Roman Catholic premier of Ontario praising the induction of Dr. Henry Morgentaler into the Order of Canada because "I know Dr. Morgentaler is seen as a controversial figure, but I believe in a woman's right to make a very difficult decision and if she makes that difficult decision and chooses to have an abortion, I want her to be able to do that in a way that is safe and a way that's publicly funded." If the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Canada takes church teachings more seriously than Mr. McGuinty, they ought pointedly to deny him communion. While we await their decision, let me share with you, and them, a bit more of Mr. Cameron's amazing outburst.
"We as a society have been far too sensitive. In order to avoid injury to people's feelings, in order to avoid appearing judgmental, we have failed to say what needs to be said... we prefer moral neutrality... Bad. Good. Right. Wrong. These are words that our political system and our public sector scarcely dare use any more." He admitted politicians are far from perfect: "Our relationships crack up, our marriages break down, we fail as parents and as citizens just like everyone else. But if the result of this is a stultifying silence about things that really matter, we redouble the failure."
Wow. He finished: "There is a danger of becoming quite literally a de-moralized society, where nobody will tell the truth anymore about what is good and bad, right and wrong. That is why children are growing up without boundaries... The values we need to repair our broken society... should be taught in the home, in the family.'"
I would love to hear a politician in this country seize a microphone and deliver equally blunt remarks. Even if it means I have to stop despising him.
[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]
Rowan Williams should be fired as Archbishop of Canterbury for calling the arrival of aspects of Shariah law in Britain “inevitable” and desirable. But for once this silly man has actually done us a favour. Consider the harrumphing he provoked from the British government. According to the Daily Telegraph, the chairman of the ominously-named Equality and Human Rights Commission said, “Raising this idea in this way will give fuel to anti-Muslim extremism” while Home Secretary Jacqui Smith babbled, “‘I think there is one law in this country and it’s the democratically determined law. That’s the law that I will uphold and that’s the law that is at the heart actually of the values that we share across all communities in this country.”
It is babble, or worse, because just five days earlier the same newspaper revealed that “Husbands with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits following a year-long Government review. ... Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by ministers means that polygamous marriages can now be recognised formally by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal. The outcome will chiefly benefit Muslim men with more than one wife. ... Ministers estimate that up to a thousand polygamous partnerships exist in Britain, although they admit there is no exact record.”
If that’s not an aspect of Shariah law, it will do until one comes along.
As for the tidbit that “Income support for all of the wives may be paid directly into the husband’s bank account, if the family so chooses,” I trust feminists will remind us how a power imbalance makes true consent impossible.
They can do it from here, since newspapers this week also reported claims by the president of the Canadian Society of Muslims that hundreds of Toronto-area Muslims draw welfare and social benefits for multiple wives. “Polygamy is a regular part of life for many Muslims,” he was quoted as saying. “Ontario recognizes religious marriages for Muslims and others.”
The Ontario minister of community and social services predictably huffed and puffed that, “Not knowing the law is not an excuse. They should know that in Canada there is no polygamy and that only one wife is covered.” And possibly the extra wives are claiming welfare not as spouses but as individuals who just happen to live in the same house as him, her and her, and his kids by all three. But the preamble to the Ontario Family Law Act explicitly says: “In the definition of ‘spouse,’ a reference to marriage includes a marriage that is actually or potentially polygamous, if it was celebrated in a jurisdiction whose system of law recognizes it as valid.”
It’s certainly a Shariah-like object. Why weren’t we told? And how dare you now deny it?
To be sure, the law in question mostly concerns divorce. But the B.C. government has long feared a Charter challenge from polygamous breakaway Mormon sects. Surely a man could now plausibly argue in an Ontario court that if the law imposes many of the obligations of marriage on him with respect to more than one wife, fairness requires that it also grant him the benefits and, as advocates of gay marriage successfully argued, validate the quality of his love into the bargain. As I warned in the Western Standard three years ago, “Guess who’s coming to dinner? Looks like Bob and Carol and Alice, but not Ted.”
I do not say that it is easy to avoid these consequences. Leaving aside any religious or Charter considerations, if a man lives with more than one woman and has children with them, and things go wrong, could any court award support only to the children of the woman who was first to move in or, alternatively, the first to get pregnant? Yet who among us today would dare argue for a legal ban on fornication or cohabitation?
In this respect there is a curious alliance between those who think anything goes and those who think only one thing goes. Both stand in opposition to the western tradition of ordered liberty, the first because they oppose order and the second because they oppose liberty. How can we stand up for our traditions if we dare not name them?
Don’t ask Rowan Williams, a self-described “hairy lefty” who donned a druid suit after being chosen archbishop and recently told the Daily Telegraph’s Rachel Sylvester that Britain is a “secular state” despite being a very senior cleric in its established church. But on Shariah he blurted out a truth politicians deny in vain.
Stick a thank-you note in with his pink slip.
[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]