Cluttering up the legal landscape with God

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms begins by affirming that “Canada is founded upon the principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.” This week’s minor controversy about God’s presence in the preamble–set off, indirectly, by a Quebec ruling upholding a Catholic high school’s right to set its own curriculum — is no threat to our Constitution, but it is instructive. To a certain secularist mindset, any mention of God is a danger to public life, and any legal recognition of religion is but a short step away from theocracy. That’s not the case in Canada, and the “supremacy of God” preamble is something worth understanding– and defending.

The words were written in 1982 — less than 30 years ago. Constitutions, especially in their fundamental aspects, are supposed to endure more than a few decades without revision. By 1982, Canada already enjoyed a long tradition of religious liberty and democratic freedom, so the idea that putting God in the Constitution is a threat to anything, or a limitation on liberty, or an occasion of division among Canadians, is simply false. Indeed, given that several highly contentious decisions by our courts have expanded the language in the Charter beyond its original text, it is odd to argue that language actually in the Charter should be disregarded.

So say the editorial writers in the National Post.

Having dismissed secularists as wingnuts, which they are not, NP goes on to contradict itself. The first Constitution of Canada was proclaimed in 1867 and between then and 1982 contained no reference to the “supremacy of God” -- one hundred and fifteen years in which God was absent from the land, and the country prospered and grew. As Post put it, “Canada enjoyed a long tradition of religious liberty and democratic freedom”, without enshrining the supremacy of God in the Constitution. So, why bother pissing people off by throwing God into the mix?

The national makeup of Canada was very different in 1867 from what one finds today. Religion is less important to a rapidly growing number of people and among those are many people who think the concept of God is simply anachronistic. Moreover, the dominant religion, Christianity, is in a long decline in Canada

The Post tries to finesse this issue by claiming that it’s OK to put God in because it reminds of us our historical roots. I remember my historical roots: we used to sing "God Save the Queen" as our national anthem and Canada’s flag was a Red Ensign with a small Union Jack in the corner. We used to regularly refer to our country as the Dominion of Canada, and Statistics Canada used be called The Dominion Bureau of Statistics. Funny how selective we are about what historical roots are important and which ones are not.

The Post continues:

The Constitution describes not only who we are–matters of history — but also who we ought to be–matters of aspiration. This is likely what those who object to the “supremacy of God” find difficult. They think that such language excludes from the Canadian project those who do not believe in God. Yet even those Canadians should welcome God in the preamble. Something, after all, has to be supreme. And if it is not God, even understood in the broadest possible sense, then what is it?

Fearsome it would be to live in the land where the works of man alone are supreme. The “supremacy of God” is shorthand reminding us that our laws, even if duly passed, must conform to principles of justice, the service of the common good and the truth about the human person. That is an essential principle, otherwise the rule of law can be put in the service of tyranny. Laws which do not correspond to the truth cannot serve justice or advance the common good.

Memo to Post: those who do not believe in God are excluded by this language, it has nothing to do with what they think. Let me put it this way. Suppose instead of God we identified ourselves by sexual orientation and the Constitution said something about the “supremacy of heterosexuals”, which, after all, is also historically defendable. Would homosexuals feel excluded by such language?

“Something, after all, has to be supreme.” Assuming this is self-evident (which I am not conceding), we have the supremacy of Parliament, checked mainly by something called “The Supreme Court of Canada”. I think there is more than enough supremacy to go around in this country without loading up God’s shoulders with the burden.

Then comes this clunker:

Another point should be added. The God of which the Charter speaks remains undescribed — it could be the philosopher’s first cause or the Holy Trinity, or something else altogether. In practice, most Canadians would assume that this is the God of Jews and Christians. The Charter does not say that, but we ought to be grateful that it intuitively points in that direction. The Judeo-Christian tradition is not the only foundation for tolerance between different peoples, or for harmony in a pluralistic society, but surveying the global scene today it is the most secure foundation currently on offer. Certainly the experience of officially atheistic regimes is not encouraging.

The fact that most people would assume that it is the God of Jews and Christians is the whole point why God should not be mentioned in the Charter. Is that what judges will also assume if there is a religious contest with other religions that come before the courts where this language will be referenced? Courts should not be put in the position of picking one religion over another.

And what is an “officially atheistic regime”? This needs some clarification. After all, the new Prime Minister of Australia has declared herself to be an atheist – does that mean Australia qualifies as having an “officially atheistic regime.”

I think if one looks to countries that are “officially religious”, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, as examples, one could make the very same statement. This is why secularism is an important principle that should be upheld and defended.

Fallout from Aqsa Parvez

There have been a couple of columns in the National Post in the last few days that I feel need some rebuttal.

The first was by a member of Canada’s Parliament, Mr. Ujjal Dosanth. His piece lamented the atmosphere of political correctness that seems to prevent Canadians from speaking out about the horror of honour killings. Nowhere, however, does he seem to be aware of the horror of Human Rights tribunals in Canada that are prepared to prosecute anyone who speaks unkindly of other people’s customs.

Furthermore, he states, most curiously, that no religion “condones” honour killing. Au contraire, Mr. Dosanth. An act can be condoned by actual approval or it can be condoned by lack of objection.

In a column in Front Page Magazine, Islamic expert, Robert Spencer, has this to say about Islamic views of honour killings:

… but the problem with honor killing is sanctioned by Islamic law and custom, thus making it very difficult to stamp out in Islamic communities. Hindu dowry-killing is not sanctioned by Hindu teaching. It is against the law in India. In Islam, however, the situation is quite different: Syria recently scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but “the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour ‘provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.’”

That’s right: two years for murder.

And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that “Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values.”

What’s more, a manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that “retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right.” However, “not subject to retaliation” is “a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring.” (‘Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2).

In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

No penalty – that is condonation no matter how you slice it. This is why you never hear Muslim spokespeople do anything but re-direct attention to cultural or ethnic practices whenever anyone raises the issue of honour killings and Islam.

The second column that caught my attention was one by Chris Selley, rattling on about how honour killing is such small potatoes in the great pantheon of murders in Canada (he cites statistics) and we should all just take a pill and settle down and stop calling for an overhaul of our immigration laws to stamp out this non-plague.

This is what I would call a shadow boxing column.

Who is calling for an overhaul of the immigration system to stamp out honour killings: somebody in the mainstream media, any members of Parliament, or any political party that could form the government in Canada? I know of no such movement, so Selley is simply punching aimlessly at the air.

What is missing from his statistical-analytical assessment is the horror that attaches to a crime in which parents kill their children.

Thousands of parents in this country put up with teenage children who shoot themselves up with drugs, break into homes, are involved in acts of violence, driving while drunk, and all sorts of other anti-social behaviour, while they bad-mouth their parents in the process. Such behaviour prematurely puts grey hair on the heads of the parents, but they love their offspring and stick with them until they get through these trying years and mature into productive adults.

The idea that parents would kill a teenage girl just because she wanted to wear jeans and tee-shirts and hang around with her friends at the mall is too terrible to contemplate.

Flipping the bird at the Big Gauleiter

Now here is a newspaper column worth its weight in eco-friendly pulp paper. It is the incomparable George Jonas in the National Post commenting on the asinine Ontario government of Dalton McGuinty and its incremental state nannyisms.

Ontario recently passed a law that made it illegal for anyone to smoke in their motor vehicle if they were transporting a minor. This gets awfully close to passing a law that it is illegal to smoke in your own home if there is minor present. It may be dumb to smoke in your home, at any time, but under 800 years of English common law your home is supposed to be your castle.

But I digress to a dystopian future. Getting back to the cars.

A couple of weeks ago, a policeman pulled over a twenty year-old driver and issued him a ticket for this smoking offense. As they were waiting for the paperwork, the driver’s fifteen year-old passenger climbed out of the car and lit up a cigarette from her own pack. In Ontario, it is illegal to sell cigarettes to anyone under the age of 19, but it is not illegal for a minor to possess or smoke them.

Two paragraphs from Jonas’s column were spot on:

One day, historians may view our society as an anomaly. Canada fought long and sacrificed much for freedom-- then gradually adopted the philosophies and practices of the dismal societies it defeated. Canadians, who used to offer their lives for liberty, now offer their liberty for a modest increase in life expectancy: seven years, on average, for non-smokers.

But being around isn't the most important thing. The important thing is to be around as a free person. It's possible to combine the two, but unless we choose the second whenever a choice needs to be made, we won't enjoy the benefit of the first. Smoking is deadly, but it's not a patch, not even a nicotine patch, on the deadliness of tyranny.

Another reason I like Jonas is that he expands my vocabulary. There were two words he used that I had look up.

One was “gauleiter”, which, according to my Oxford dictionary, means: 1. an official governing a district under Nazi rule; 2. a local or petty tyrant.

The second was “iatrogenic”: (adj) caused by medical examination or treatment.

Atheists, eugenics and Margaret Atwood

Barbara Kay in today's National Post takes a swipe at Margaret Atwood. More specifically she denigrates Atwood's novel, The Handmaid's Tale, as "drivel."

I am not a big fan of Atwood, naturally, since I am a male and she is eunuch-maker supreme, and I don't disagree with Kay on that point. However, Kay, after a promising start, lapses into some rambling thing about eugenics. The context of The Handmaid's Tale is the reverse of eugenics (active breeding rather than active culling and sterilization), so it is a bit head-scratching why this got into her column.

What becomes clear, according to Kay, is that the evil of abortion and eugenics is all the work of atheists married to fascism and "anti-religious pagans." Kay claims that the bulwark against these things is Western conservatives, whether religious or not.

When eugenics arose as a serious scientific philosophy it was in a very religious age. It was first practiced in the United States in 1900, by all accounts one of the most religious countries in the west. In Europe it was supported by such conservatives as Winston Churchill.

Anti-religious pagans is an oxymoron unless you think only religions of the Abrahamic tradition count as religions.

Finally, history's most notorious practitioner of eugenics, Nazi Germany, was a Christian country, even though it flogged some pagan rituals for crowd control. Hitler considered himself to be Catholic and SS belt buckles were engraved with a slogan that would do just to a Yankee greenback. In destroying Europe's Jews this was considered as carrying on a Christian tradition, probably dating back to the commencement of the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century.

The Bull in the china shop

The Prime Minister of Canada has acknowledged that Section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act, unduly limiting free speech, is a problem, particularly in the manner in which public agencies have interpreted it. A parliamentary justice committee currently is examining the issue. Professor Richard Moon, delivering a report commissioned by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, one of the very public agencies that have been castigated for creating a problem with Section 13, has recommended abolishing the Section.

But, back in good old Ontario, Barbara “the Bull” Hall, the Ontario Human Rights Commissioner, has tabled a report to her agency recommending a new government speech body be set up to control all publications, including web content.

The National Post had an excellent editorial on this initiative yesterday. This observation was particularly apt:

"Media has a responsibility to engage in fair and unbiased journalism," Ms. Hall has said previously. But because no one has god-like powers to discern accurately what is "fair" and "unbiased," then no one -- not even the chief commissioner -- is qualified to sit in judgment of which articles and opinions meet those criteria and which do not. Most people's interpretation of fair and unbiased reporting corresponds very closely with their own opinions on the subject at issue, and Barbara Hall is no different. She has been granted no special powers not given to other mortals to divine the truth; therefore, neither she nor any other pompous purveyor of social concern has the ability to judge which speech should be free and which not.

Read the rest here

George Jonas's take on Obama's election and democracy

The ever interesting George Jonas has a thought-provoking column in today's National Post.