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Social Politics
Case against Paramount ‘indefensible’
Coquitlam NOW (January 30, 2013)
If teenagers expect adults to take them seriously, they have to make convincing arguments based in reason and logic. These are qualities we parents hope that public education helps them to develop. Somehow this simple pedagogical principle does not appear to apply to the students in Ken Ipe’s “social justice” class at Dr. Charles Best Secondary.... read more

Don Dutton Human Rights Case
Case against UBC professor evidently unsound
Vancouver Courier (March 29, 1998)
Slick Willie or Slick Willey—choose your spelling! After former White House staffer Kathleen Willey told 60 Minutes that President Bill Clinton had groped her, ominous mutterings about “the end of the presidency” again found their way into newspaper and TV headlines. ... read more

Justice the price we pay for human rights tribunals
Vancouver Courier (April 12, 1998)
In this province, our human rights system has bent over so far backward to enhance the rights of the disadvantaged that its head—its seat of reason—has disappeared up its posterior. This is the only conclusion I can reach, given the judicial contortions being performed by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal. ... read more.

Dutton done in by corrupt tribunal
Vancouver Courier (October 31, 1999
By now you will have read, or heard of, the incredible news. The B.C. Human Rights Inquisition found UBC professor Don Dutton guilty of sexual harassment, and fined him in excess of $12,000 in compensation. Of course, he’s appealing. ... read more

‘Human rights’ abuses finally draw action
Vancouver Courier (November 7, 1999)
Justice in this country took a double kick in the goolies over the last couple of weeks, courtesy of this county’s perverse human rights industry. ... read more

Liam Donnelly Human Rights Case
Victim ideology subverts justice in modern Star Chamber
Vancouver Courier (June 15, 1997)
Courts of law, being a human creation run by humans to solve human problems, are necessarily imperfect. Though we may speak of justice and equality as if they were tangible realities, any responsible citizen knows they are only ideals to be approximated. It’s the irresponsible citizen, who subverts justice in the selfish, misbegotten belief that the inefficient can be made efficient and the approximate can be made absolute. ... read more

Sexually Farcical University proves failure of human rights legislation
Vancouver Courier (August 3, 1997)
The scandal at Simon Fraser University is guaranteed to last at least until the end of the year, now that its board of governors voted Thursday not to remove president John Stubbs from office. Instead, the board granted Stubbs’ request for a three-month medical leave to recover from a depression that he says set in after he sacked swimming coach Liam Donnelly. ... read more

Fraud of Multiculturalism
Part I—Referendum casts long shadow over 1996
Vancouver Courier (January 7, 1996)
I have always enjoyed New Year’s Day because, more than any other holiday, it represented pure optimism. However bad the previous year may have been, Jan. 1 is a chance to start over: I make new files for my clipping library, store last year's tax receipts out of sight, at least for a while, and take solace in the fact that Christmas is 51 weeks away (Yikes, is it that close?!) ...read more.

Part II—Trudeau built national unity at expense of English Canada
Vancouver Courier (January 14, 1996)
As defenders of multiculturalism go, perhaps no one is more articulate than Orest Kruhlak, regional executive director for the Department of Canadian Heritage. A civil servant who began his career during the Trudeau years, Kruhlak says that what critics says about multiculturalism and what multiculturalism actually does are two entirely different things. In an interview conducted last November, he said those who condemn multiculturalism do so out of ignorance and misperception. ...read more

Part III—Pluralism the answer to our distemper
Vancouver Courier (January 21,1996)
Canada became a sovereign state on Dec. 11, 1931, when the British parliament passed the Statute of Westminster. It would turn out to be a rather brief fling with unfettered self-determination. Soon after a depression and another world war, Canada again came under the hegemony of a great power, this time the United States. Thus, we have the great existential dilemma of Canadian nationhood: how to pursue an independent domestic and foreign policy, maintain a sense of cultural identity, and present itself as an independent actor on the world stage, all the while remaining dependent upon American economic and military might. ...read more

Other Columns
Human Rights report a good object lesson in propaganda
Vancouver Courier (January 29, 2001)
Earlier this month, the B.C. Human Rights Commission came out with a report about employment injustice in the provincial civil service. Entitled Not Good Enough!, the report berates the government for not meeting employment equity hiring targets. ... read more.

Exploitation of Natives not reserved for Europeans
Vancouver Courier (May 28, 2000)
Few stereotypes are more intractable than that of the impoverished, alcoholic Native. You only have to walk through the Downtown Eastside or drive by a run-down reservation to see people living in Third World conditions in what is ostensibly a First-World country. ... read more.

For the devoted, image is everything
Vancouver Courier (December 12, 1999)
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been engrossed in The Lost Gospel—The Book of Q and Christian Origins by Burton L. Mack. Even though I’ve long known that the authors of the gospels borrowed heavily from other mythologies and traditions, I’ve always wondered what those first influences were. ... read more.

Dishonesty taints compassion fascists’ moralizing
Vancouver Courier (September 19, 1999)
As rust-buckets from China continue to arrive, the “how-dare-we-think-of-turning-them-back” carping that infests certain local and national newspaper columns becomes more sanctimonious and noisome.... read more.

Polite stereotyping the most offensive kind of speech
Vancouver Courier (July 25, 1999)
If someone publishes a blanket condemnatory statement about any definable group he will be pilloried in the media before you can shout “sensitivity training!” More likely, though, the statement would never see the light of day—such is our culture’s tolerance for “offensive speech.” ... read more.

Minorities define what’s right for us all
Vancouver Courier (May 9, 1999)
Women, Natives, francophones, anglophones, homosexuals, immigrants —what do these groups, among others, have in common? They’re all minorities, according to one standard or another. Though a respect for minority rights is necessary if a democracy is to prevent itself from sliding into majoritarian tyranny, one has to wonder if in Canada the matter hasn’t gone to the opposite extreme ... read more.

Playboy makes appeal to women with charming Witt
Vancouver Courier (November 22, 1998)
Do you have your December Playboy—you know, the one featuring seven very tasteful nude photos of gold-medal ice skater Katarina Witt? No? Then you’d better head to a newsstand double quick. Women are said to be buying it like crazy—that’s right, women. ... read more.

Love letter to Mr. Bean haunts Liberals
Vancouver Courier (August 16, 1998)
Can too much honesty in a politician be a bad thing? Such a question probably sounds as inane and self-evident as “can a bank change?”—but think about it. Politicians who indulge in opportunistic moralizing and inflated rhetoric when in Opposition, can suddenly find themselves hamstrung once in office. ... read more

Inclusion delusion embarrasses Langara
Vancouver Courier (February 22, 1998)
Give Langara College president Linda Holmes credit—she has the courage to admit a mistake. (Would that the governors of our political institutions possessed the same trait.) In a letter to the Vancouver Sun Thursday, Holmes said that the decision to take down a Valentine’s Day decoration of a man and a woman was not the correct way to deal with complaints. Mind you, she needed a fair bit of prodding. ... read more

Heritage can’t be reduced to symbols and sentiment
Vancouver Courier (February 23, 1997)
When I was a student in Moscow 18 years ago, Leonid Brezhnev was in his dotage, the Cold War was warmish, and a ruble was worth two Canadian dollars. (Given events since the late 1980s, this seems like ancient history—unreal, somehow.) ... read more.