I'm so un-Canadian

I had decided quite a while ago that when I have kids I won't put them in hockey. I won't encourage them to play nor will I probably watch the games with them. This is just so very un-Canadian where many towns have a hockey rink and nothing else, but the growing violence not only in the professional game but in the minors as well has shown me that hockey is not something I want my children involved in.

There are many examples that one can site from the pro game. The McSorely two-handed slash to Donald Brashir's head



and Todd Bertuzzi's attack of Steven Moore



come most readily to mind, but the fact is that the game promotes fighting and needless violence as part of its product. As such kids are emulating their professional role models at younger and younger ages. Not to mention the adults who were failed hockey stars themselves that end up in fights at the rink in support of their child.

I used to go and watch my cousin's son play hockey. I watched him from about the age of 5 to 8 and I was appalled by the actions of both the players and the parents. I would watch as 7 year old kids were being yelled at by their parents to hit kids from behind. I'd watch as parents would have excessive arguments in the stands. I'd watch as parent would verbally harrass referrees after the game or as parent verbally harrassed a coach if they felt their son wasn't getting the ice time that the parent deserved.

Hockey should be fun for the kids and I'm sure it is for many but the minority that ruin the game for everyone is growing. I played hockey from the time I was 4 till the time I was 18. I enjoyed playing but I can remember being threatened with being beat up after the game for having hit a particular player or having numerous sticks broken over my body by other players. I can remember watching Hockey Night in Canada with my Grandmother each Saturday night. But these are not things I'm going to share with my children if given the chance.

Why?

Well another example has cropped up to cement in me my decision to keep my kids from hockey. A game involving 8 year olds ended in a bench clearing brawl after the two coaches got into a fight.

"Police say criminal charges could be laid following a weekend bench-clearing hockey brawl between two teams of eight-year-old players."

The game has become nothing but a breeding ground for mindless violence, all of which is glorified every Saturday night on the CBC. We are told that this is Canada's game, well I guess I'm just un-Canadian.

Because it's right

Thanks to a friend I was able to watch the documentary The Devil Came on Horseback about the genocide that has been and continues to occur in the Darfur region of the Sudan. I have posted about this before and feel compelled to do so again.

The thing that I don't understand is how people, and I count myself as part of this group, can look in the mirror and claim to be a good person and yet do nothing to end the suffering of people anywhere. Thirteen years ago the world sat back and watched as a genocide occured in Rwanda and did nothing but offer platitudes and appologies for the fact that we did nothing to end the attrocities that were occuring. After the killing was finished we stood upon our soapbox and decried the violence and told the world that this would not happen again, not on our watch. Well guess what we are a bunch of liars.

For nearly four years the systematic murder, rape and destruction of the black African tribes of the Darfur region of the Sudan has been occuring at the hands of the Janjaweed. We see the pictures, we hear the stories and we shed a tear or offer up a moment of prayer and then worry about not having an iPod or where we are going on Friday night. If these people were white would we care more? Would we do something then? Is our lack of caring, our lack of a response a racist response?

Sure it is easy to throw up our hands and ask 'what can I do? I'm nobody. I have no power.' and then change the discussion towards what happened on the latest episode of Survivor. But that is a real question, an important question. What can we do? The current state of the world dictates that action of this nature has to come from a nation, a nation responsible to its people. This necesitates that we as a people stand up and tell our governments to stand up and end the genocide.

I can understand to some extent why people have been hesitant to enter the fray in Darfur. Its really a no win situation from a public relations stand point. When the US and other countries sent in troops to end the violence in Ethiopia they were vilified for either their actions or their inaction. They were vilified as colonial powers enforcing their will on the African people. So when Rwanda was going up in flames, the powers sat back and were vilified for doing nothing and allowing the genocide to occur. Then they went into Kosovo in a limited manner and were vilified for either not doing enough or doing things the wrong way. If the west (Canada, America, Britain, France, Germany, etc.) were to send troops into Darfur, what would happen? What would China's response be? What would Russia's response be? Should we even be concerned with such things considering the attrocities that are being committed?

I guess I'm not too suprised by the level of inaction concerning Darfur. One only needs to walk down the streets of any western city to see the level of apathy we have for people. The richest countries in the world allow their own people to starve and go homeless. We are a society of me, me, me, me, me. A society of me, myself and I. There is no room for you or you or you. If I had to care about strangers that might force me to change, that might force me to sacrifice, that might force me to put someone else's concerns ahead of my own. I recently read the book Old Turtle and the Broken Truth to a grade four class and talked about things such as empathy, compassion, and understanding. We talked about how even though we may have different coloured skin or have different ways of doing things but that doesn't change the fact that we are all people and as such we need to care for one another. We talked about the golden rule. If 9 year old children can understand such things why can't we as adults?

It's complicated. The Sudanese government doesn't want us there. It's half a world away. I know all of these things but sometimes we need to stand up and do what is right, simply because it is right and bear the consequences as best we can. So I call upon you to educate yourself concerning Darfur. I call upon you to contact your political representative and tell them to do what is right for the people of Darfur and for humanity. I call upon you to make your will known with your pocketbook and boycott the Beijing olympics and to put pressure on those who wish to make money on the genocide in Darfur (namely the tv companies that will be broadcasting the olympics) to end their relationship with the Beijing olympics until Beijing uses its finanical clout to pressure the Sudanese government to end the genocide. I call on you to help spread the word an to educate those around you concerning this issue and to how they too can help to make a difference.

I call on you, and me, to do what is right simply because it is the right thing to do.

Lest we forget

November 11th, Remembrance Day.

The one day each year that we said aside time from our busy lives to recognize, remember and acknowledge the sacrifice of those who have taken up the call to arms so that the vast majority of us would not have to. So that we could enjoy our freedom and liberty, so that we can be proud to consider ourselves Canadian. We remember those who long ago in distant lands fought, we remember those who died, we remember those who sacrificed their sons and daughters, their mothers and fathers, their husbands and wives. We wear the poppy a sign of that remembrance and we give two minutes to silently ponder.

Like many others at this time I think of my grandfather who went to war when his nation called. He stormed the beaches of Normandy and lost many friends in horrific ways. He was lucky, he came home, but he wasn't the same. He was battered and broken inside. He sacrificed himself so that others might live in freedom as I do today.

Thank you, grand pa.

Theoretical equality

When I first became a Christian I was deeply attracted to and interested in apologists, those who defend the faith. I listened to tapes and read books but such leading apologists as Walter Martin, perhaps the most famous defender of Christian orthodoxy from Christian cults. My interest in such thing waned though over the years till recently when an interest in apologetics has once again been kindled. This time though the focus is not Christian cults but rather atheists.

To be honest I don't really care what you believe. Believe in God? Great. Don't believe in God? Wonderful. It matters little to me. I have no problem sharing my faith with those who are interested but I don't make it a point of conversation. I know the effect that Christ Jesus has had on me, I see the changes that have been wrought in my life for the better and I'm more than willing to help people understand Christianity or my faith more clearly (well as clearly as I can, I am far from perfect or omnicient) but I'm not going to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't believe when it comes to God.

This is where the atheists come in. I find it interesting that take such great pleasure in putting religion in general and Christianity in particular on trial at every conceivable moment. Did you know that religion is the primary cause of all suffering and death on the planet? Did you know that such an assertion is laughable in its brazen falcity? Well, it is. Atheists love to trot out subjects such as the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and religious violence during the Reformation as prime examples of religion's devastating impact upon humanity and society. It is unfortunate though that they are unwilling to acknowledge the fact that recent scholarship has shown us that the supposed death tolls of such actions are quite less than what is popularly believed. Take the Spanish Inquisition as an example. People will say that hundreds of thousands of people were put to death in the name of religion. This is not true. That is not to say that people did not die, but Inquisition scholarship of the past forty years has shown clearly that the death toll was more in line with ten to twenty-five thousand. That is of course tragic but the numbers matter in a sense, especially when one looks at the death tolls compiled by such atheistic dictators as Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. Those two people alone were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people.

Atheists though argue that such actions were not done in the name of atheism and therefore don't count. This is of course a falacy. It was Karl Marx himself that said that religion was the opiate of the masses and needed to be iradicated if the socialist utopia was to be realized. People were specifically targeted by such communist/atheist dictators because of their religion. Instead atheists argue that those people were killed in order to promote or protect some sense of socio/cultural homogeneity. Of course they discount such an idea when it is brought forth in a discussion concerning the Spanish Inquisition or the Reformation. In those cases it was clearly a case of blood thristy religious zealots. Such intellectual dishonesty.

Now we come to such bright lights of the atheist community such as Christopher Hitchens, who fights the good fight against such blood thirsty zealots so that people can think as he thinks. Its unfortunate though that he is in reality a blood thirsty zealot himself. The following was taken from a recent talk given by Hitchens.

Then it was Hitchens at his most bellicose. He told us what the most serious threat to the West was (and you know this line already): it was Islam. Then he accused the audience of being soft on Islam, of being the kind of vague atheists who refuse to see the threat for what it was, a clash of civilizations, and of being too weak to do what was necessary, which was to spill blood to defeat the enemy. Along the way he told us who his choice for president was right now —
Rudy Giuliani — and that Obama was a fool, Clinton was a pandering closet fundamentalist, and that he was less than thrilled about all the support among the FFRF for the Democratic party. We cannot afford to allow the Iranian theocracy to arm itself with nuclear weapons (something I entirely sympathize with), and that the only solution is to go in there with bombs and marines and blow it all up. The way to win the war is to kill so many Moslems that they begin to question whether they can bear the mounting casualties.

It was simplistic us-vs.-them thinking at its worst, and the only solution he had to offer was death and destruction of the enemy.

This was made even more clear in the Q&A. He was asked to consider the possibility that bombing and killing was only going to accomplish an increase in the number of people opposing us. Hitchens accused the questioner of being incredibly stupid (the question was not well-phrased, I'll agree, but it was clear what he meant), and said that it was obvious that every Moslem you kill means there is one less Moslem to fight you … which is only true if you assume
that every Moslem already wants to kill Americans and is armed and willing to do so. I think that what is obvious is that most Moslems are primarily interested in living a life of contentment with their families and their work, and that an America committed to slaughter is a tactic that will only convince more of them to join in opposition to us.

Basically, what Hitchens was proposing is genocide. Or, at least, wholesale execution of the population of the Moslem world until they are sufficiently cowed and frightened and depleted that they are unable to resist us in any way, ever again.

...

This whole last third of his talk had me concerned about the first part. He had just told us in strong terms about the failures of religion and its detrimental effect on our culture, and now he was explaining to us how the solution in the Middle East was to simply kill everyone who disagreed with you. He didn't relate the two parts of his talk, which was unfortunate. I'd like to
know whether he thinks the way atheists ought to end religion in America is to start shooting Baptists, or whether he sees other ways to educate and enlighten … in which case I wonder why he doesn't see any virtue in applying those same methods to Islam. I didn't ask the question since the line for the microphone was long, and I had a depressing feeling that the solution would involve sending the Baptists over to Iraq to kill and be killed.

This is not my freethought movement. The Hitchens solution is not my solution.

I could tell that he did not have the sympathy of most of the audience at this point. There were a scattered few who applauded wildly at every mention of bombing the Iranians, but the majority were stunned into silence. People were leaving — I heard one woman sing a few bars of "Onward, Christian soldiers" as she left to mock his strategy. The questions were all angry or disputative, and were all dismissed with comments about the audience's intelligence. The answers were always, "War, war, war," and that we weren't good atheists if we didn't agree with murder as the answer. He seemed unable to comprehend that people could despise and oppose all religion, Christian, Moslem, or otherwise, yet have no desire to triumph by causing physical harm to the believers. I've noticed the same intellectual blindness in many Christians, actually.

I can understand when people point to people such as Fred Phelps and cast derision upon him. I find it confusing that supposedly smart people can't understand that just because people such as Phelps say that they are doing something in the name of religion doesn't mean that what they are doing is supported by that religion. I find it dishonest for these same people to then turn a blind eye on such comments as above by Hitchens and try to argue them away. If Christianity and Christians are to be reviled because of the actions of such people as Phelps then so to should atheism and atheists be reviled because of the actions of Hitchens.

This of course would get us nowhere and is nonsense, but I think it points to a basic lack of theoretical equality in our society when it comes to religion and society. Phelps does not represent me and he doesn't represent Christianity despite what he might say. If someone can't understand that then they are either a moron or willfully ignorant. Just as Hitchens and his call for the genocide of Muslims doesn't represent atheism or all atheists.

Perhaps if we spent less time trying to tear one another down and instead simply talked with one another we would be much better off.