Nova Scotia Scott

The Halifax Chronicle-Herald interviews Saint Mary’s University philosophy professor Mark Mercer about last week’s disruption of a pro-life presentation.  In Dr Mercer’s view, the shouters who prevented Jojo Ruba from speaking should have been removed from the hall. “I don’t want to defend what he said as non-hate speech because I think that’s irrelevant,” Mark [...]

Also in today’s The Journal from Saint Mary’s University is a column by SMU philosophy professor Mark Mercer, aka The Cranky Professor, outspoken defender of freedom of speech. Dr Mercer states that SMU students and faculty do not enjoy freedom of expression.  An administration official has veto power over what may be expressed, and he [...]

Chutzpah on stilts: A bunch of anti-free speech fascists shouted down pro-life speaker Jojo Ruba at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, last Thursday evening and the chairwoman of a university board is so offended that she threatens to lodge a human rights complaint—against one of the speaker’s sponsors! Lesley-Anne Steeleworthy, who is chairwoman of the board [...]

As one of the relative few (apparently) who followed Sarah Palin’s career before the vice presidential nomination thrust her onto the national stage, I was baffled that she became a focus of social and cultural conflict during the presidential campaign. As a gubernatorial candidate and as governor of Alaska, she was far more interested in [...]

A Swedish Liberal Party working group has proposed ending the policy of allowing students to study mathematics in Arabic, and the Green Party hits the roof. “We are very skeptical toward the experiment taking place around Sweden right now, with maths being taught in Arabic. The risk is that it will worsen students’ development of [...]

Peter Hitchens is outraged by the “child welfare” authorities who ordered two young children taken away from their grandparents and given to a homosexual couple for adoption. People in Western societies were encouraged to show tolerance for homosexuals, but now we are being tyrannised into giving approval. For objecting to having their grandchildren adopted by [...]

Vishal Mangalwadi, a Christian who was born and raised in India, says that Barack Obama was elected president because Americans hold a belief that is rare in most other countries—human equality—and Americans believe in human equality because of their Christian heritage. Thomas Jefferson was wrong about one thing: Human equality is not “self-evident.” Inequality is [...]

A UCLA psychology professor has linked deteriorating critical thinking skills with advancing technology. She tries to put a positive spin on her findings by arguing that technology has boosted visual skills, but I think wise people would generally view that as small compensation for an important loss. As technology has played a bigger role in [...]

John Attarian was an atheist and free-market libertarian until he wrote his doctoral thesis on Ayn Rand’s economic thought, which posits a view of human nature unable to account for the achievements of Western civilisation.  He accepted the supernatural and soon became a Christian.  Then he read a volume of the Marquis de Sade’s writings [...]

Pigs fly in Holland. The biggest left-wing political party in the Netherlands, the Dutch Labour Party, has released a position paper calling for an end to the country’s failed model of “tolerance”.  Immigrants should be expected to integrate into Dutch society, and the government must be free to criticise cultural practices it finds repugnant. The [...]

Religious authorities in Ghazni province, eastern Afghanistan, have ordered state radio not to transmit female voices over the airwaves. Yesterday December 10, 2008, the national radio of Ghazni province received an official letter written by Provincial Chief of Religious Affairs that demands to ban broadcasting any female voice in news, performance and talk show etc. [...]

So says David Larter, executive director of the Prince Edward Island Human Rights Commission. That is a startling admission for a bureaucrat in his position to make. He needs to get with the programme: Hasn’t he read the script for defenders of Canada’s “human rights” commissions?   Our human rights commissions avoid adversarial procedures. Canada [...]

Check out this headline from this morning’s AsiaNews. Beijing admits “unsatisfactory” progress on human rights Actions speak louder than words. A Chinese government bureaucrat says that his country could improve its human rights record but, in fact, it’s not actually doing anything about it. AsiaNews lists several important issues that the government persists in ignoring. [...]

I was surprised to discover who said this. To find out, click here and scroll down to the fourth and fifth paragraphs. “Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; [...]

William Katz, writing for the American think tank Hudson Institute, argues that multiculturalism has become, in effect, an ideology of the left. For one thing, Westerners are expected—indeed, constantly hectored—to “understand” other cultures, but other cultures are not encouraged to understand ours. Multicultural ideology is anti-intellectual, amoral, and runs counter to the very idea of [...]