SpankyMcFarland

Children in the later years of grade school are starting puberty. That’s too late to introduce the topic of sex to them in school. They’re going to learn some highly unreliable stuff from their peers and the Internet as well which needs to be balanced by responsible content. The notion that parents can control completely what kids see just doesn’t work. The fact is they don’t. The kids we want to counsel most are often those with the poorest parental supervision.

In fairness, I’m a long way (in every way) from some of the specifics of what they’re up to in these parades. There should be some common sense shown on what is reasonable in a public place.

Indeed. I understand that this is an emotive subject for some parents but if you behave like a yob the rest of what you say is going to be dismissed.

I’m not going to defend the detail involved in every case but I don’t see why introducing the topic of gayness to kids in elementary school is inherently wrong if done in a careful way. Some of these kids know they are different already and many older grade school kids are entering puberty. In addition, we live in a sexualised culture. Any kid with a cell phone has a world of explicit images at their fingertips.. Providing them with an alternative narrative to what they’ll be exposed to on the Internet seems sensible.

Many, many years ago, I was taught about Islam, Buddhism etc. in high school. AFAIK it didn’t harm me irreparably. By the same token, why wouldn’t we teach kids about their peers who are gay? It seems like the prudent thing to do.

The Dutch are sensible. They’re not all out in Amsterdam’s red light district every night. It isn’t compulsory to do that. Ditto being gay. People from developing countries have a lot of misconceptions about homosexuality which is not surprising given what they have been told about it. The gay lifestyle isn’t contagious and we don’t foist it on every immigrant.

Trampling on a flag already sounds a bit unhinged. The thing is that every country has gay people but many force them to hide who they are. As a civilized state Canada doesn’t do that and if you can’t accept such tolerance of difference this may not be the right place for you. Perhaps a short video might help? https://www.foxnews.com/story/dutch-immigrants-must-watch-racy-film

Old God’s Time, Sebastian Barry, Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan, Independent People, Halldor Laxness, Moby Dick, Herman Melville, The Gathering, Anne Enright.

What was extraordinary was the initial lack of response from the Russian authorities as Prigozhin advanced on Moscow. His own force was tiny but there seemed to be no resistance to it. The cheering crowds in Rostov-on-Don saying goodbye to him must also concern Putin and his regime.

David Brooks laments the changes in American conservatism: and has this to say about Trump: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/brooks-true-conservatism-dead-fox-news-voter-suppression/620853/

Won’t anyone speak up for criterion? One criterion, many criteria.

It’s sad to see a wonderful public servant like David Johnston end up in this mess. He shouldn’t have taken such a poisoned chalice.

He is seriously deluded and his comparisons with Nazis are in appallingly bad taste. The anti-vaccine cult has spread from the left to affect the right as well.

The key allies in this conflict are in Europe - Germany, UK, Scandinavia, the Baltic states, Poland - because it’s a European war.

I have a side and it’s Ukraine because I’m also on the side of liberty and civilization.

Smoke from Quebec has put Newfoundland in a dusky haze for a few days now. The sunsets are pretty, other consequences less so. After being outside for an hour I noticed my iPad was covered in soot.

Such a relationship showed poor judgement. Cabinet ministers should have left their wild days long behind them. I once spent an afternoon sailing with a Quebecer called Couillard. His wife was a Bernier.

I think the Brits are less wound up about this issue. As I pointed out in another thread, I was playing Eve as a young teenager in my boys’ school - somebody had to do it and I don’t think it made me any weirder. One of the greatest Monty Python sketches involves the lads in female attire: https://montycasinos.com/montypython/scripts/premise.php.html Did Edna Everage corrupt the youth of England?

Imagine one of Romney’s guys talking like that! There is a definite shift going on with Republicans and Democrats on economic policy and it’s not hard to understand why. When your customers change, you either adapt your sales message or disappear. Both parties deliver a mixed message these days. The GOP have become much more, well, ‘nuanced’ on slashing entitlements. They saw what happened when they tried to axe Obamacare. With the Dems too one can see multiple shifts both in what they say and what they do. A generation ago a person who described themselves as a democratic socialist would have gotten nowhere in the presidential race. However, many Dems own pricey homes in the elite cities - thus Democratic politicians go gently on the nimby issue. The baleful effects of this are all too clear in places like California.

I have never read news on Facebook. Who would trust that stuff? Like everything else on the site it’s not reliable.

You should have explained what you were alleging. It doesn’t sound like a big deal.

That’s not the point. Britain was a country with limited suffrage that had just forced Ireland into an Anschluss-style union where the vast majority of the population had very few rights of any sort, but, yes, it was a constitutional monarchy. However, it saw fit to ally itself with absolute monarchies like Russia that were far more oppressive than Napoleon. Austria, Russia and Prussia feared revolution; Britain, on the other hand, wanted a weak Europe that would not threaten its global empire. Thus British scheming led to Europe being under these tyrants until 1914. Your picture of Napoleon comes from British/Canadian history textbooks that don’t give a full account of the man at all. No, no, no, not just the result of blight. Read about British governmental callousness and incompetence before posting any more about that. I’d say megalomania was involved too. It showed once and for all that the British were completely unfit to govern Ireland.

Canadian byelections aren’t delivering a lot of big upsets of late. Contrast that with the UK where the government dreads these things. No news is good news for the Liberals or at least not as bad news as they might have expected.

Without a stable state the gains of the French Revolution would not have lasted. Napoleon solidified those gains and spread them to other parts of Western Europe. His system of laws lives to this day. The serfs of Russia would have been far better off under Napoloeon than the Tsar. Ditto the people of Ireland and many others who had to wait another century for liberation from oppressive empires. The other comparison, with Putin, is even more absurd, an ignorant thug who ran his country into the ground. Imagine what Napoleon would make of Russian performance in the current war.

Yes, his record was mixed and the wars were terrible, although in Britain and the European monarchies he had enemies as anxious as him for war. In a country filled with places and streets called Waterloo and Wellington he’s unlikely to get a fair hearing. However, we should still try to do it. He transformed France for the better. This side of his legacy is not well known enough in the English-speaking world and for obvious reasons. Remember also that French was his third language which he started speaking as a teenager! https://www.napoleon-series.org/ins/weider/c_jews.html It is reasonable to ask whether he paved the way for other authoritarian leaders in Europe like Hitler. However, on many issues, particular the Jewish people, they could not have been more different.