Zeitgeist

If the self-preserving Liberal-Dem government continues to stonewall, and the appointed rapporteur continues to stonewall, maybe the Government General can dissolve Parliament. Oh wait, she was appointed by Trudeau too. Also, I think she’s busy finding the highest price catering and clothes lines for her play monarchy. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-if-parliament-has-no-confidence-in-johnston-how-long-can-it-have/

We’re witnessing concept creep where language that is not violence is being called violence. Being offended is now grounds for censorship. Speech is not a form of violence. Being offended is not a reason to censor speech, because as we’ve established, people have very different thresholds for what is offensive and we don’t have a constitutional right not to be offended. We are supposed to have free speech. Lose free speech and you lose democracy. Canada is becoming a second rate democracy because of the increasing totalitarian control over speech. Courts in Canada are compelling speech. Experimental gender expression has been declared a human right worthy of trouncing on fundamental longstanding rights such as women’s rights, religious rights, and free speech. Basically language in Canada is being forced to conform with a narrow political perspective on the left, so much so that now all organizations, government institutions, and businesses in Canada are self-censoring for fear of cancellation. We have no First Amendment in Canada and we’re paying the price. Canada is no longer a free-thinking society of healthy debate and pluralism. It is a de facto one party system where certain ways of thinking that have no scientific basis are being treated as Truth.

People have no right to destroy private property like that.

You can’t define for everyone what might be objectionable in the flag, nor can you assume that such objections are bad. You’re entitled to your opinion. There are reasonable grounds for questioning. Writing off everyone who doesn’t agree with your opinion as bigoted or morally suspect will only invite the same assessment of your opinion.

Again, assumptions. Also, do you think DeSantis is bad for leaving sex education out of early elementary grades? You assume that you’re talking to an audience that agrees with all your personal assumptions. Some people love DeSantis and it’s likely that the next president will be Republican, so either Trump or DeSantis. Are half of Americans bigots? A lot is packed into that flag and not everyone agrees that advertising a selection of identities and orientations aligns with their values. Messaging of acceptance and support without regard to sexual orientation and identity can be conveyed in many ways without a flag. The reality is that if you push people to support more than what their consciences or faiths or values can accept, then you will get a pushback that could actually erode or remove rights if it’s arguable that the exercising of certain rights tramples other rights. Legislation is created by elected legislators. Public opinion can shift. My opinion has shifted since I began to see the fallout of transition surgeries for kids, the ensuing mental health problems, the psychogenic epidemic of female transitions resulting in sterilizations, mastectomies, etc. I won’t even get into questions of whether there are 90 genders or 150. This change is benefiting and being pushed by health and pharmaceutical corporations, which creates a moral hazard. Already progressive Sweden has banned transition surgeries for kids and Britain has closed a clinic due to lawsuits and fallout. Reasonable people have reasons to question what is being taught and advertised, especially in public education, especially for young children.

So not hanging a Pride flag makes one a bigot? Your position is radical and illustrates why many reasonable people are questioning stances like yours.

No, you’re making assumptions and not respecting the range of perspectives on a symbol that people have defensible reasons not to want front and centre on public schools that their children are required to attend.

You miss it completely by assuming that not having a Pride flag means you don’t understand or respect that some people have different sexual preferences and identities. Not displaying a particular Indigenous group’s flag doesn’t make someone anti-Indigenous. You’re rehashing a pitch that doesn’t ring true to many people.

You have a narrow interpretation of the significance of the “rainbow flag”, which can only be explained in terms of alternative sexual lifestyles/attractions and alternative genders to biological ones. Is this appropriate subject matter for young students to discuss? Your leap to “dogwhistle for pedophila” illustrates how politically charged this symbol is and how radical your interpretation is of anyone who doesn’t accept all of the assumptions of the symbol. Questioning gender expression as opposed to biological gender, questioning the risks of transition surgeries and hormone blockers for children, and the notion of affirming whatever a child feels today doesn’t automatically make someone homophobic or uncaring. It’s this refusal to question assumptions and consider implications that has made many people, especially parents, question the raising of pride flags or other 2SLGBT+ symbols in schools. For many Catholics, who are now seeing these images elevated to the level of the crucifix or beyond, it is hard to reconcile. Their Faith already recognizes all people as created in the image of God and worthy of love. Having a select group of identities represented sends a strange message. The flag doesn’t represent everyone and it puts groups together that don’t necessarily have the same concerns, such as gay and trans. It’s emblematic of an ideological bandwagon. People are seeing that, including within the 2SLGBTQ+ community, which isn’t really a single community where everyone has the same views. Isn’t it better to speak of all people and their uniqueness? In any event, the symbol has become divisive.

Evidence?

Biden is a weak president who overcompensates for his unwillingness to take a reasonable centrist position against the radical left extreme of his party by “going toe to toe with Putin” and pouring billions into the Ukrainian bloodbath with no clear realistic goal. He couldn’t even attempt diplomacy because he can’t forge a working relationship with Putin that could end the war. His family appears to be in the pay of foreign governments, and like many in the swamp, he has been bought by the companies that fund party campaigns. Apart from more borrowing to spend on unaffordable programs, especially military, what has this government accomplished? Don’t worry, if Biden is pushed through as leader by the Democrat Party, Trump will probably be president.

No, I think you’re accepting political leadership that has been bought off and is entrenched. If you wish to dismiss legitimate criticism of government as conspiracy theory or “anti-vaxer” or fringe, that game is wearing very thin.

DeSantis is rational and rolling back the radical left that is destroying America, at least in Florida. Biden is a reckless warmonger who has turned over all authority to the radical left. He is the big pharma establishment. He represents the unaccountable union of government and corporate power. RFK is honest and pushing back against narratives that are destroying the West. He sees the hypocrisy and destruction in Ukraine. It’s pitiful for US democracy that Biden is being sealed off from debate within his own party because his own party doesn’t think he’s mentally fit to debate. Is this who you want as your president? If RFK is left out of the running and Biden is handed the Democrat leadership, Trump will win the presidential election. Given the current state of the union, he probably should.

Halton Catholic District School Board, Niagara Catholic, Ottawa Catholic, and Toronto Catholic District School Board are openly defying Catholic teachings on gender ideology and sexuality. Some of these boards are having Pride flag raising days and requiring all schools to be festooned in Pride symbols. Some “Catholic” boards have elevated the representation of lifestyles and identities that are sins according to the Catholic Church. They have made Pride flags mandatory in all schools. Should a separate school board continue to exist that no longer promotes the faith that is the reason for a separate Catholic system to exist? Should families be forced to accept symbols in their schools that violate their beliefs and rights such as women’s rights? Are children’s rights being protected by ideology that “affirms” gender expression over biological reality? Should schools be in the business of promoting choices that may result in mutilation that is regretted later on? Families are beginning to question the indoctrination underway. Some families are no longer accepting attacks on their values.

Perhaps Canada is a failed experiment that’s now committing assisted suicide. The big mistake was failing to see that the country must be more important than the identity of any one group. The PM has emphasized Quebec’s or First Nations or “racialized” identities over the Canadian identity. The American Melting Pot is a better model, and now we’re watching Canada get cut down to placate identity groups. I didn’t imagine Canada would fall this way, but when governments sell out the country to score points with some groups and say that Canada is bad because it wasn’t perfect by today’s standards, we know we’re in trouble as a country. Canada was more generous, more harmonious, and more understanding of less dominant groups than just about any other country since its beginnings, but you would never know it. Canada, a country without slavery since its official beginning, has been redefined as a racist genocidal state. The Northwest Coast Indigenous kept slaves before the Europeans arrived and the Chinese oppressed their own citizens for thousands of years. It doesn’t matter. Canadians have been taught recently that their country is bad and now they believe it, so the only value there is now in being here is to make money and give it to your own identity group.

Imaginary victims are getting real people cancelled for questioning dominant narratives that are radically left-wing.

Yes, the urban and coastal elites are usually liberal, but the people fleeing blue states are generally red or purple. Also, the Democrats have banked on immigrant votes, but immigrants actually tend to be more conservative and entrepreneurial.

Florida and Texas are thriving. Some of the last vestiges of sane America.

Florida. We have a place, just need citizenship, but if need be we’ll come back to Canuckistan for 6 months a year. Apparently rather than having a decent healthcare system, Canadian lefties want to euthanize homeless people and the mentally ill.

Climate change is the best scam going. A theoretical problem with theoretical solutions that cause real poverty. Canadians pay through the nose to fight “climate change” while the Yanks don’t and China builds a coal plant every week. So dumb.

Alberta Also Sucks Now I used to think that Alberta was the last sane province in Canada, but it too has fallen to the radical left and has achieved loser status: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/dont-blame-indigenous-people-for-calgary-cancelling-july-1st-fireworks/wcm/e5cbf5c6-83e9-44b2-819b-fe4d73840856/amp/

Well we know from the Freedom Convoy that this government will toss out our rights and introduce martial law if the opposition gets too vocal. Canada is riding on the coattails of the past generations who built this country and its democratic institutions, while also denigrating these ancestors and tearing down their statues. Even the greatest unifying achievements like Vimy are being erased by the cultural revolutionaries. A weak-minded wannabe actor and supply teacher is dividing Canadians against each other and claiming to rescue Canada from a shameful past. The truth is that Canada has gone downhill since the Trudeau Liberals came to power, really downhill.

Yes what’s amazing to watch is the Canadian Liberal-NDP government’s clear contempt for Canadians, who are treated like children who can’t make decisions for themselves, yet almost half of Canadians seem to embrace this abdication of personal responsibility. This isn’t the Canada of Mulroney, Chrétien, or Harper. Government programs and narratives now dominate our lives. It’s basically the lie that Canada was bad until now (though in reality it was better here than in most countries for most people). We’re told that the only way to redeem ourselves is to empower certain identity groups above others and to water down our rights because the state knows how we should live and what we deserve. Tax our fuel and regulate our energy into submission. Permit and encourage self-destruction. The American way is better.

I lived in the UK. It’s more expensive there because their system is even more tax and spend. Fuel is heavily taxed. I don’t want to live in Britain.

Lower dollar. Gas is highly taxed, causing it to cost about 60% more than in the US. Those are big reasons. Why is our dollar lower? Low productivity, over-regulation, lower value add in manufacturing, expensive programs, French language stuff, etc. More can be said and much is arguable. Distance and smaller economies of scale are also factors.