Читать книгу How the Granola-Crunching, Tree-Hugging Thug Huggers Are Wrecking Our Country! - Lowell Ph.D. Green - Страница 6

At Kingston is a penitentiary that at one time housed both Karla and Paul. Paul, as you know, is still there. Karla—well that’s another story thanks to the “Buffalo Bob” Rae Government that signed off on her sweetheart deal. Or, as some would say, the deal with the devil! At the rear of that penitentiary are a number of sheds—almost truck-like in appearance. The prisoners, as you can imagine, call them something not exactly politically correct. Last word, trucks. First word rhymes with truck. You get the picture! Officially they are known as conjugal visitation modules. Not a bad idea actually. Behave yourself in jail and you’ll get a couple of hours’ privacy with your wife, or whomever.

But here again the kinder, gentler people, the granola-crunching thug huggers can’t get it right. The trucks may have to be discontinued. Why? Because misguided souls in charge won’t allow body searches of the visitors. It would contravene their privacy rights. As a result, this has become the main conduit of smuggled drugs into the prison. Even those inmates who want no part of smuggling have no choice. Either sneak the stuff into the cells or get a lead pipe in a place that can cause major damage! In our effort not to contravene human rights we totally abandon logic and, as often happens, trample on human rights.

That’s the great problem with the socialist approach. In their efforts to create this great egalitarian, utopian society where everyone takes public transit, where we all recycle everything and the government takes care of us from birth to death, they fail to take into account a basic fact of life: We are not all equal, never have been, and never will be. It just isn’t human nature. And, oh yes, something else very important. We are not all nice people!

Yes, we should do everything in our power to provide equal opportunity for everyone, but that doesn’t mean we will all end up equal.

Our society should act as a launching pad. Do everything we can to make sure we have an equal amount of rocket fuel for the launch, but after that it’s up to the individual. By no means is everyone going to make it to the moon. Heck, some won’t even make it much past the tops of the trees!

Those who truly cannot help themselves require our assistance, of course. One problem is we’re so busy with handouts to people who should be looking after themselves there’s almost nothing left over for those truly in need.

Look around, please. See who is getting the government’s money. What you will find, for the most part, is that the money goes to special-interest groups, those who can scream, threaten (the unions), and beg the loudest, or have the best lobbyists in Ottawa. And, of course, a fair chunk of our money goes to a few favoured businesses. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says that while some three billion dollars has been loaned out to a few major corporations such as Honeywell and Bombardier in the last ten years, less than five percent of our money has been returned to us!

One of the last House of Commons speeches delivered by Charles Penson, Conservative member from Peace River, Alberta, before his retirement from Parliament in 2005 blasted the government for “handing out billions of dollars in so-called loans to various profitable companies.” Declared Penson, “Those aren’t loans. Those are outright grants. At least call them what they really are. Tell the truth.” [Source: Hansard, the official verbatim report of the debates in the House.]

Think you could get a deal like that from your bank? Ha!

Now look around and see who really needs our help, and how much they get. In Ontario, disabled people are expected to live on a pension of $940 a month. Many seniors who have worked all their lives to help build this country are in desperate straits. The last time I checked, the allotment of baths in government nursing homes had been reduced to two a week. There’s just no money left for people who honestly need and deserve our help!

On the other hand we are telling those who could and should be looking out for themselves, especially our young people, that they have no means of self-determination. That they are virtually powerless against the terrible forces of capitalism.

Perhaps unwittingly, our new Governor General fell into the trap of downplaying individual responsibility when she addressed the Ontario Legislature on February 20, 2006:

While our society must fight crime, it must also get at the roots of crime.Too many Canadians, here in Toronto, in Northern Ontario and across the country are relegated to the margins and left to fend for themselves.”

She then continued:

As I stated in my installation address, nothing in today’s society is more disgraceful than the marginalization of some young people who are driven to isolation and despair. We must not tolerate such disparities.

She talks about Canada having the financial resources to address these problems, but unfortunately ignored any suggestion that young people, or old, have a responsibility to make every attempt to rise above circumstance. Also lacking, in my opinion, was a reminder to all that, no matter what marginalization may or may not have occurred, there is never any excuse for committing criminal acts.

Her message, it seems to me, is one we hear only too frequently in this country—that the young people shooting each other in Toronto, the ones mugging, stealing, swarming, and raping aren’t really responsible for their own actions. It’s society’s fault, a message that is pounded into our heads from birth these days in this country.

Many members of our society, and not just the youth in Toronto, are of the firm belief that they are entitled to the good life, and if they do not obtain it, it’s everyone else’s fault. Furthermore, it’s their “right” to go out and get their piece of the pie even if it belongs to someone else. If you listened closely to the testimony at the Gomery inquiry, you heard variations of that theme repeatedly. And what was it that David Dingwall had to say about being “entitled to his entitlements?”

Small wonder, I suppose, that there are some who honestly believe that if someone happens to have a jacket they want or looks at them the wrong way, they deserve to get shot. Besides which, the shooters were driven to it. Haven’t you been listening to all those smart people out there claiming that young people are getting the shaft these days, not being treated fairly? You can almost hear the thugs saying, “Right on. The man’s got it right. It ain’t our fault we shooting people. We marginalized! We despairin’! That’s why we shootin’!”

The thugs are by no means alone in holding society responsible for their failed aspirations. With some notable exceptions, most Canadians still believe the government should create highly paid, secure-for-life jobs and then find them for us. Even more serious than that, it has created a huge subculture that believes it has no responsibility for itself.

Not only no responsibility for ourselves, for goodness’ sake. How about no responsibility to raise our own children? Right across Ontario, and for all I know in other provinces as well, we are feeding thousands of children breakfast in our schools. In some cases, we’re even providing high school students with free breakfasts in our schools! What’s next? Free drugs? (Actually, in some cities we do provide free drugs, free needles and condoms too). All of this is done, as usual, with the best of intentions.

We are told that many of these young people would go hungry otherwise, but the fact is, by feeding students at school we are absolving their parents of that responsibility. And let me tell you something. If, in fact, these kids really are so poor that they come to school starving, we had better have a much closer look at what is going on in the home. No matter what the family income, there is absolutely no excuse for sending a child off to school with an empty stomach. With all the social programs, social workers, food banks, and church organizations, the only reason a child doesn’t get breakfast in this country is because his or her parents just can’t be bothered. And, of course, if the school is going to feed your child for you, as far as some parents are concerned, “hey, why should I bother?”

All we are doing with programs such as this is making it easier for parents and their children to abdicate their responsibility. Lovely message we are sending!

Some communities take a much more responsible position. In Laval, Quebec, for example, a committee of parents has been established to work in concert with the teachers. If a teacher in Laval spots a child they don’t believe is being fed properly, they alert the committee. Someone on the committee then phones the parents to ask if there is a problem. Nine times out of ten the parents didn’t even realize the kid was hiking off to school without breakfast and the problem is solved immediately. If it is discovered that there is a real problem, someone on the committee puts the parent in touch with an organization that can help. All very quietly so as not to embarrass, but all intended to illustrate to both parent and child that they have personal responsibilities which at the very least require them to put some food in empty stomachs!

Which approach do you think is the best? Surely the answer is obvious. Why then do we insist in most of the rest of the country on doing something that at best is applying a temporary bandage to what could very well be a life-threatening hemorrhage? Is it because we are just too afraid to tackle the real problem? That we ourselves have fallen victim to the concept that personal responsibility is an outmoded concept?

Maybe this is why we now have people suing McDonald’s if they spill hot coffee on themselves. Today even the law agrees that if you get drunk at your friendly neighbourhood bar, sneak away and crash your car, it’s the poor beggar who served you the beer who runs the risk of being held responsible.

Could this be why those commuters in Toronto stepped over a dying man rather than stopping or calling for help? Do you suppose they truly believed it just wasn’t their responsibility?

One of my father’s most delightful stories was about growing up in a village of chimney watchers. On cold mornings everyone checked his or her neighbour’s chimney to make sure smoke was rising. No smoke meant possible trouble.

It has truly been a long, long trail a winding from a time when we watched each other’s chimneys. And of this I am certain: All the state-run, unionized daycare programs, all the school breakfast programs, all the social programs, all the free needles and crack pipes in the world aren’t going to convince many amongst us to start looking out for each other’s chimneys, or anything else except, of course, ourselves.