RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/no-canada-redux-an-election-autopsy/

The results of the October 21, 2019 election have served to confirm that Canada is a lost cause. Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau, a very silly person who likes bobbing around in Indian costumes, praying in mosques robed in a white thawb, and uttering idiocies like “We don’t say mankind, we say peoplekind,” who pranced about in blackface and flaunting a genital banana, and who is guilty of two ethics violations which he wears like a badge of honor, has been re-elected, albeit with a minority government. With 157 seats the Liberals fell 13 short of majority status.

The New Democratic Party continues its course as a socialist aberration that will never die, even if it remains on mental life support; the press tells us it has surged in the polls though, in reality, it lost 15 seats from its previous total of 39. But it remains a player.

The Conservatives topped the Liberals in the popular vote, 34.4 to 33.06, but its 121 seats is testimony to a party that has run out of feet to shoot, owing to a lackluster campaign, a war room with the collective intelligence of a zucchini and a gelatinous leader who should be immediately cashiered, surely a plus for the party, though he has vowed to stay on. Who would replace him is another question entirely.

A major surprise was the performance of the Bloc Québécois, the formerly separatist party that was effectively wiped out in the previous two elections, which crossed the finish line with 32 seats. What its role will be in the new parliament is unclear. The Green Party, a mosh pit of vocal nonentities, managed 3 seats, a historic high, but the environment is still safe from its frenetic meddling. Judy Wilson-Raybould, former Liberal Justice Minister and pro-aboriginal advocate, won re-election as an Independent.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/10/the-flag-of-hong-kon

“Every day, we have to hear about revolution this or revolution that. Where is the Russian Revolution? What about the Chinese or the Cuban? They all failed and societies pay for them to this day. The American Revolution is the one that was founded on individual rights over that of the collective and, rather surprisingly, that is the reason it persists for groups such as those people fighting for their own liberty in Hong Kong.”

Given the political climate, any expression of patriotism—even of the softer varieties—is given the same weight of judgment as was once reserved for bigotry and prejudice. But we had it once. We did have the flag-waving, and the expressions of pride in ones culture, among other things.

I, for example, don’t mind if a quiet but confident culture chooses to forego the outward expressions of passion and belief that come with some of the more dignified forms of patriotism. What I don’t like, however, is what we currently have. What does a society that was once proud of itself look like? A person living in Britain (or most other Western countries) decades ago might’ve struggled to picture such a world. For us it is much easier. We are living it.

As Christopher Hitchens once remarked, ‘There’s nothing more dispiriting than a drooping and neglected flag and nothing more lame than the sudden realization that the number of them so proudly flourished has somehow diminished.’ It is not about the physical act of owning a flag and waving it about, it is what the flag signifies. In Britain,  for those who don’t hate it, it is one of the ways of displaying an appreciation for a country that did more than any other to propel democracy into the furthest parts of the globe.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15051/france-headscarf-hijab-debate

The headscarf is, of course, just a symptom of a deeper problem: many perceive it as an invasion by an outside culture into the public sphere.

This behavior seems to worry many French people, who see it as a direct attack on their culture and identity, and a desire to live separately from the rest of society and according to other values.

Behind those claims, they see the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood or religious ideologies, whose ultimate goal seems to be to propagate these values and impose them on the rest of society.

In the end, however, the commotion created by the growing presence of the Islamic headscarf hides the more fundamental issues of how to deal with the rapidly increasing presence of a foreign culture that seems to keep demanding an ever-larger space in its host society.

France’s Minister of National Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, has reopened the heated debate on the headscarf.

Since 2004, it is unlawful in France to wear “conspicuously” religious signs or clothing in public schools. The interpretation of the law, as applied by the Ministry of National Education, specifies “the Islamic veil, whatever the name given to it, the [Jewish] kippah or a [Christian] cross of manifestly excessive size” as items that students are prohibited to wear in French state schools.

However, women who are escorting children during school trips are still allowed to wear a hijab. As an increasing number of Muslim women have been doing so, this has disturbed some teachers and parents. They believe that the spirit of the law — that headscarves should be banned from schools — is not being respected.

Recently, Blanquer sparked an outcry by saying that “the veil is not desirable” in French society. He added that this was his conception of “women’s empowerment” and “the practice of women wearing a hijab during school trips should not be encouraged.”