POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
"Canada had lost sight of religious freedom as human
right," Baird says
John Baird makes me think of a man suffering from rabies,
foaming at the mouth and shouting absurdities.
His words are nothing less than the kind of crazed and
incoherent shouts we would expect from a person suffering from late-stage
rabies.
No country on earth better respects the principles of
freedom of religion than does Canada, full stop.
And certainly not the United States where the venom of
religious intolerance enters public debate and even policy on a regular basis.
I, for one, deeply resent being preached at in this fashion
by a man who holds a senior cabinet post: a torrent of deliberate dishonesty,
bent only for his own political advantage.
He not only fails utterly to serve religious freedom, or any
other human or democratic value, he clearly serves the opposite purpose, hoping
to inject America's poisonous religious and ideological debate into Canada's
traditionally peaceful politics and policy.
This is just disgusting.
Freedom of religion, everywhere and always, implies freedom
from religion.
You cannot have a free society where government serves and
promotes religious interests of any kind.
It is up to religious people in the privacy of their homes
and religious institutions to make religion part of their lives.
Good God, the very people sharing John Baird's delusional
thinking are the people who hate things like Islamic republics.
This government is now showing the most dangerous signs yet
of destroying the very fabric of Canada with such crazed and severely divisive
rhetoric.
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"Almost without
fail, the lack of religious freedom, except in a few isolated circumstances,
can be attributed to religion. Nobody hates and persecutes likely the truly
religious, and, they usually go after others who are truly religious."
The West suffered through centuries of persecution, burning
people alive or torturing them with horrible machines, over such trivial
matters as the nature of the wine and bread at mass.
Tens of thousands of proud aboriginals in Peru and Mexico
and other places were tortured into accepting Christianity, being summarily
executed if they did not.
Old women, perhaps suffering from mental illness, were
burned at the stake as witches.
There is a huge list, spanning centuries, of abuses by the
religious when they were in positions of secular power.
It is so very recently that the West has achieved the
precious situation we have of genuine religious freedom.
And people like Baird work relentlessly to set the clock
back, hoping in doing so to make a political gain for their party.
Israel styles itself a democracy, but it is a very strange
form of democracy we see there.
Do readers know that is against the law in Israel to preach
and try converting people to Christianity?
Do readers know that non-Jewish spouses are treated in an
entirely unfair way there?
Do readers know that important personal documents in Israel
are printed with your religious identity?
That many privileges and public services in Israel depend
upon your religious identity?
Is that Baird's idea of religious freedom?
Is that why he gives public money to a fundamentalist group
and now spouts utter nonsense?
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"Problem for
atheists: If God doesn't exist, where did the first life come from? Where did
good and evil come from? Why is it that life hasn't been found on any other
planets?
"If we're all
just a fluke of chance, you'd think that there would be many other 'flukes' in
the universe."
There is a perfect example of the kind of rubbish bulldozed
to the surface, contaminating public policy matters, by Baird's unacceptable
words.
What this pathetically uninformed comment-writer does not
understand is that we are at the very dawn of space exploration, comparable
perhaps to the first tests of ocean-worthy ships before even travelling to
North and South America to discover them teaming with life.
And despite that, scientists at NASA are now convinced some
forms of life do exist on Mars, the only planet we have begun to explore. The
proof will come within a decade or two.
And, please, our solar system is only one pitifully
insignificant collection of matter in the cosmos. Our own galaxy contains
hundreds of billions of suns, and so far we know that there are more than a
billion other galaxies.
Only genuine fools would say what this comment-writer says
in light of any knowledge about the current situation of science.
As to problems for people's ways of thinking: the biggest
one in all of history is whence evil if there is a god who is good?
It's never been answered - Milton tried and failed and only
survives because of his poetic genius.
It is easy to observe in the world, if you bother looking,
that evil not only exists, it thrives and prospers almost everywhere. Good
people regularly suffer, and monsters enjoy untold influence and wealth and
power.
But the important point is this: what does your religious
muttering have to do with public policy? Or what should it have to do with
public policy?
The answer is obvious: nothing.
And just so Baird's insane rhetoric.
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"Why didn't they
just give Amnesty International the $5 million and request that it be directed
to cases involving religious persecution??"
Good question.
But, of course, Baird has no genuine interest in such
matters, and his words only disguise far less worthy purposes.
My great fear here is that they are working towards a
government construct that could one day serve to criminalize or penalize those
who, for example, speak against the human rights abuses of Israel.
It would be easy to frame that kind of genuinely repressive
law in a pseudo-religious context.
And with that, Messrs. Baird and Harper would be taking us back to
the 16th century in terms of freedoms.
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Please see, postings two and three here:
The irony of the reality of Baird's private life versus the
kind of repressive forces he supports - for campaign funds, of course - is
genuinely painful.
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'He said that Canada
now will "stand with the Jewish state."'
That phrase is ominous indeed, suggesting again the sense of
my comment, previously, concerning the genuine ultimate aims of this backward
idea for a government agency.
By definition, "the Jewish state" is not a place
for religious freedom, any more than would be an Islamic republic or a
Christian democracy.
You cannot, by law, even preach Christianity in Israel.
And there is a host of other things you cannot do or say in
Israel, all of them concerning religious identity.
The very fact that Israel wants to be recognized as
"the Jewish state" is frought with danger, because Israel has about
19% of its (formal) population, Palestinians who refused to run from the 1948
terrors of Irgun and Lehi and Stern Gang.
Israel didn't - and doesn't - want them but it is more or
less stuck for now. Many Israelis speak in public for their expulsion.
I use the word "formal" because in Israel there
are effectively two levels of citizenship: those with an Israel passport and
those who are part of what is legally deemed the superior Jewish nation. All
rights and treatments under law are affected by this terrible distinction.
To endorse that kind of human rights abuse so forcefully as
does Baird is frightening to Canadians who regarded theirs as one of the
world’s freest and most just societies.
And the same man is trying to create an engine of government
that is wholly inappropriate in a free society, and which is potentially far
more dangerous than it sounds at first pass.
And the same man gave a million dollars in public funds to a
fundamentalist religious group.
Does anyone in his or her right mind trust John Baird?
