Wednesday, December 21, 2005

CANADIAN TRAGEDY

I have a special interest in Canadian politics, primarily because I once lived so close to the border and had many friends who lived in Canada. Watching the decline of a country with such potential for greatness has been saddening and infuriating and downright tragic at times.

From widespread government corruption on a scale that would thrill the Mafia and inspire the United Nations, to the activist courts to the massive interference by Canadian media in politics, the country has been moving gradually but inexorably toward what I call continental Europeanism. Canada has lost the traditions of Anglo-Saxon law and, under the Liberals, have embraced Secularism with a passion that rivals the French and Dutch embrace of a Godless world. If Canada inspired to become a Third World nation complete with SARS and French pretensions, they couldn't have succeeded better.

The Canadian Supreme Court recently blessed gay unions. Now they are giving similar blessing to group sex in swingers clubs. The text of their decision, written by the Chief Justice, is here.

Excerpt:
Canadian law on indecent acts, from its origins in the English common law, has been firmly anchored in societal rather than purely private moral concerns. For example, in the early case of R. v. Hicklin (1868), L.R. 3 Q.B. 360, Cockburn C.J. stated that the test for obscenity was whether the material would tend to deprave and corrupt other members of society.

16 However, depravity and corruption vary with the eye of the beholder, and the Hicklin test proved difficult to apply in an objective fashion. Convictions often depended more on the idiosyncracies and the subjective moral views of the judge or jurors than objective criteria of what might deprave or corrupt.
No longer is indecency a community standard. The new standard is - was anyone harmed? If you accept that standard I suppose an attempted murder that caused no injury means you get a pass, doesn't it?

It's like watching a train wreck. It's the kind of social and moral train wreck our mainstream old media planned for us. The operating theory seems to be, if you can't compete with the United States, try to drag it down to the level of Old Europe.

Sad.

2 comments:

Mediaskeptic said...

The logic of law is the applicability of a decision in furtherance of other law. In other words, consistency.

If the only criteria is whether anyone was harmed, as opposed to community standards, you have no basis for most law that upholds community decency. Who does it hurt, for instance, to have naked shoppers in a mall? Or sex on the front lawn? What possible basis do you have to prohibit lewd acts in front of children? Who defines lewd acts, community standards, or an appointed, un-elected judge?

Your courts just decided that the definition of "indecency" was NOT a community standard. The community is no longer involved in establishing that standard. The courts will decide whether any harm was done. That's the significance of the decision.

Swingers in a community are not acting privately in any place except in their own homes. Legally and in all practicality, the public has no expectation of privacy elsewhere. When you charge money for them to meet, even in a private club, you create a public arena. You endorse that activity.

Swingers are a community. But so are pedophiles in joining NAMBLA. Do you endorse that community? It's quite legal to join. Do you think most people would tolerate such a club in their community?

If you bothered to read the two decisions and compare the logic, you might learn something besides rudeness. Because you just aren't very good at the rude thing either. It just makes you look very petty and juvenile. And not particularly lucid.

Mediaskeptic said...

Come to think of it, it's probably why you want to be a journalist. :)