Assorted Links: March 10, 2008

Too Much Damn Snow

There's a reason Canadians call it the white stuff.  It is a force unto itself separated from the ordinary laws of nature.  My life for the last 48 hours has been a cycle of shoveling, swearing and lying down so as to allow my back time to heal.  I didn't even want to move to the damn suburbs anyway.

The weekend marked the start of March break in Ontario, so many people were hoping for a warm weather getaway.

"I prayed so much last night, just to say, 'Dear God, let me please get out of Toronto and this weather!'" one woman said with a laugh.

Montreal's Pierre Trudeau International Airport canceled at least 90 flights, with hundreds of people reportedly camped out on the floors of the departure lounges there overnight. Air travel out of Ottawa was also significantly affected.

Toronto is coming close to a record for snowfall this winter. One person is hoping this winter does end with at least one more solid dumping.

"I kind of hope we break the record. Why go all the way and not win the gold, so to speak?" he wryly said.

If that bastard comes anywhere near me he can celebrate the record while eating out of a straw.  That goes for comrades Suzuki and Gore. It's still coming down.  Damn, damn, damn..... 

The More Time Passes, the Smarter She Looks

Oh that silly Mrs T, going off to save those worthless Falkland Islands from the Argies. 

The inhabitants of the Falkland Islands are preparing for a South Atlantic oil rush which they hope will make them among the richest people in the world.

After 10 years of frustrating delays since oil fields containing up to 60 billion barrels of "black gold" were discovered off the islands, oil companies are planning to start drilling within the next 12 months.

The move follows the conclusion of lengthy, but successful, tests by geologists and significant cash injections by two major oil companies which plan to bring rigs to the islands by as early as autumn.

The companies with licences to drill in the area met in Edinburgh on Friday to brief officials from the Falklands' government on their progress, and preparations are under way in the South Atlantic to ensure that the islands can cope with sudden wealth.

The successful extraction of oil could bring billions of pounds to the 3,000 islanders, in a cash bonanza similar to that enjoyed by Gulf states after the development of oil fields there.

Which could have made Argentina another Venezuela.

Usher of the Black Rod Wanted

Please send all resumes to S. Harper, 24 Sussex Dr, Ottawa, Ont, Canada.

The search is on for the person who will become Canada's 16th Usher of the Black Rod -- the person officially responsible for the opening of each new session of Parliament.

While most Canadians recognize the Usher of the Black Rod as the person who bangs on the door of the House of Commons before each throne speech, the job is actually a full-time position with a large number of behind-the-scenes responsibilities, according to Terrance Christopher, the man who held the title until last Friday, when his mandate expired.

Having overseen four throne speeches in his five-year term, Mr. Christopher was one of the busiest Black Rods in Canada's history. (The position was called Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod until 1997, when Mary McLaren was selected to fill the historic role.)

The Car Who Loved Me

Passed along without comment.

THE MAJORITY of men remember their first car better than their first kiss, while younger gents think getting behind the wheel is better than getting a lover, a survey reveals.

But 12 per cent of respondents to a survey carried out by the organisers of the British International Motor Show said they felt more attractive to the opposite sex when they got their licence.

The UK’s Daily Mail reported that 60 per cent of survey respondents regarded their first car as being female and a quarter gave it a name.

The newspaper also reported that a majority of respondents said owning their first car ranked higher their initial embrace, their first boyfriend or girlfriend and their 18th birthday.

About 40 per cent of respondents said they could even remember their first registration plate in full.

More than a third said they had sex in their first vehicle.

Show organiser Kirsty Perkinson said people develop “strong bonds” with their first car.

“First cars represent an explosion of independence and a gateway to untold adventures, which is why they are so special,” Ms Perkinson said.

Note the word independence.

“I Have Felt the Presence of the Holy Spirit”

Sure Hillary.  Or maybe it was Meph returning to enforce the contract.

In July of last year, Hillary Clinton gave an interview to New York Times reporter Michael Luo about her faith. It's a fairly in depth interview.

Hillary Clinton: I believe in the father, son, and Holy Spirit, and I have felt the presence of the Holy Spirit on many occasions in my years on this earth.

Reporter: Can I ask you theologically, do you believe that the resurrection of Jesus actually happened, that it actually historically did happen?

Senator Clinton: Yes, I do.

Reporter:  And, do you believe on the salvation issue -- and this is controversial too -- that belief in Christ is needed for going to heaven?

Senator Clinton: That one I'm a little more open to. I think that it is, as we understand our relationship to God as Christians, it is how we see our way forward, and it is the way. But, ever since I was a little girl, I've asked every Sunday school teacher I've ever had, I asked every theologian I've ever talked with, whether that meant that there was no salvation, there was no heaven for people who did not accept Christ. And, you're well aware that there are a lot of answers to that. There are people who are totally rooted in the fact that, no, that's why there are missionaries, that's why you have to try to convert. And, then there are a lot of other people who are deeply faithful and deeply Christ-centered who say, that's how we understand it and who are we to read God's mind about such a weighty decision as that.

If God was a politician, I'd bet he'd talk like that.

The Faith Market

The Weber argument that Protestantism helped lead to capitalism has an American twist; rather than a single religious creed helping shape an economic system, the reverse seems to be happening.  America's traditional religious liberty, a derivation and expansion on the British policy of tolerating dissenters from the Church of England, had the unexpected result, which has been accelerating in recent decades, of people switching religious allegiances.  Catholics tend to follow the traditional pattern of belief to disbelief - once they leave the Church they tend to leave Christianity as well.  Protestants have always been the most fluid in their allegiances, a process that shows only signs of accelerating.

Almost half of Americans have moved to a different religious denomination from that in which they were raised, and 28 percent have switched to a different major tradition or to no religion (i.e., from Roman Catholic to Protestant, Jewish to unaffiliated).

The fluidity is combining with immigration to spur dramatic changes in the religious landscape. Protestantism appears on the verge of losing its majority status. The number of "unaffiliated" Americans has doubled, to 16 percent. One-third of Catholics are now Latino and the religion is depending on immigration to maintain its share of the population.

Protestantism, which has shaped American identity for generations, may soon become a minority faith. In the 1980s, 65 percent of Americans called themselves Protestants; today that number is down to 51 percent. Only 43 percent of those aged 18-29 say they are Protestant.

Much has been written about the declines in mainline churches. But in comparing the current religious affiliation of adults with their childhood affiliations, the survey found a net loss of 3.7 percent for Baptists (Baptists account for one-third of all Protestants and nearly two-thirds of black Protestant churches.)

So much for the Evangelical Theocracy.  Where real theocracies emerge there is typically one dominant creed whose practices have become somewhat lax, provoking a puritanical backlash.  Religious pluralistic societies do not become theocracies.  There has never been a single dominant creed in American life and even by the time of the Revolution Protestantism had already developed a fairly strong ecumenicalism.  What about those nasty evangelicals who supposedly control the Republican Party?  Well they used to be on the political left a hundred years ago. 

William Jennings Bryan (who was in fact a Presbyterian) ran for President as a Democrat against secular candidates like McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt.  Yet it was Bryan who was one of early 20th century America's leading anti-capitalists.  He was a leader of the religious left avant la lettre.  After the repeal of Prohibition political evangelicalism remained dormant until Roe v Wade.  This re-emergence shocked many secular intellectuals who assumed religion, especially the Old Time variety, had gone extinct.  It was just politically dormant.  If tomorrow Roe v Wade was overturned the power of the so-called Religious Right would weaken dramatically.  This doesn't mean the American Right would lose its third political pillar - along with economic and foreign policy conservatives - but the intensity of their support would lessen considerably. 

There would still be the inevitable New York Times scare pieces and documentaries like Jesus Camp.  To those unfamiliar with evangelical churches the behaviour captured in these reports, itself extreme, seems like religious fanaticism let loose in the modern world.  This was exactly the same response that greeted the emergence of Methodism during the eighteenth century.  Rarely does a typical evangelical church service find its way into the NYT or other MSM outlets.  The vilification of evangelical churches is an important ideological tool for the modern Left.  Vote Republican and America becomes that small town in Inherit the Wind.  Christianity, however, is the most adaptable and resilient of religions.  The daily creed practiced by the Early Church Fathers would be alien to modern Americans.  There is no American St Augustine or even a Plotinus to pave the way.  Defending reason and objectivity does not mean ignoring the evidence of modern American society. 

Changing Hope We Can Believe in For A Better Tomorrow

Platitudes are not new to politics, the avoidance of commitment is an essential survival skill for a politician, though in the past we did get substance mixed in with our pablum. 

Pretty soon, we should be able to get electoral politics down to a basic newspeak that contains perhaps 10 keywords: Dream, Fear, Hope, New, People, We, Change, America, Future, Together. Fishing exclusively from this tiny and stagnant pool of stock expressions, it ought to be possible to drive all thinking people away from the arena and leave matters in the gnarled but capable hands of the professional wordsmiths and manipulators. In the new jargon, certain intelligible ideas would become inexpressible. (How could one state, for example, the famous Burkean principle that many sorts of change ought to be regarded with skepticism?) In a rather poor trade-off for this veto on complexity, many views that are expressible (and "We the People Together Dream of and Hope for New Change in America" would be really quite a long sentence in the latest junk language) will, in turn, be entirely and indeed almost beautifully unintelligible.

Nor should we Canadians get smug about the lack of substance in American political "discourse."  Frank Underhill, one of this country's leading public intellectuals at mid century, was fond of quoting the old truism that Canada's history was as dull as ditchwater and its politics full of it.  Underhill, himself a long time professor of Canadian history at U of T, didn't think our history boring, only its teaching.  The politics, however, he found to be little more than corrupt horse trading.  His solution, however, was socialism - he was an author of the Regina Manifesto.  This brings us to another problem of Canadian political life, what little substance there is tends to come from one side of the political spectrum.