Right Not Wanted

It is a sad day indeed for society when the (supposed) institutions of higher learning are both unwilling to hear disparate points of view and are able to be bullied by increasingly fascistic elements of society.

On Thursday, UBC announced in a tweet that it had has pulled an ad promoting its new swimming pool from Breitbart News, which was once led by a top adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump.

Trump's adviser Steve Bannon has promoted the site as a champion for the so-called alt-right, a U.S.-based offshoot of conservatism that critics allege promotes racist, sexist and homophobic sentiment.

A campaigner at www.sumofus.org — an international group that describes itself as targeting "the growing power of corporations" — raised concerns Thursday about the ad on Twitter, asking the university to take it down.

UBC spokesperson Susan Danard said the ad was pulled shortly after it went up and concerns were raised on social media. 

A university is supposed to be a place where students are encouraged to engage with differing points of view and come to a place of understanding. Today though, universities are more akin to left-wing echo chambers where no other thoughts are permitted, leading to an understanding that to disagree is double-plus-ungood badthink.

When the time comes I'll be sure that my children don't attend UBC.

Take 2.1

Let me begin by saying that I'm going to make a greater attempt to be more active on this blog. This of course is not a tremendous task given that I had a total of zero posts in 2015 and only two posts in 2014.

I find myself in the uncomfortable position of needing to say something about the dramatic changes that are taking place in our culture. I find that I can no longer sit idly by, having conversations in my head about what is going on, without in some way putting out there for wider consumption.

The whole point of this blog was to provide me with a space for working through thoughts and ideas and if someone out there decided to engage, great, if not, at least it provided me with a means for working out what I believe.

With that said, I don't know that I'll be looking to post long pieces all the time. Sometimes it will simply be short commentary on what I see around me.

With that, let us begin.

Political effectiveness

Apparently Justin Trudeau has made the bold and daring move of removing Liberal Senators from the Liberal Party Caucus. The net effect of this seems a bit nebulous at the moment as by the end of the day they had declared that these newly minted Independent Senators would continue to support Justin and the Liberal Party, keep their affiliations within the Senate, and moved to ensure that they were still the Official Opposition in the Senate ensuring their continued bonus monies.

James Cowan, who had been the party's leader in the Senate, says the formerly Liberal senators will continue to support Trudeau and call themselves the Senate Liberal caucus.
...
"I think not a lot will change. I think that there is a perception perhaps that senators in our party and in the other party are under the control of folks on the other side. That's not been the case in our side. We obviously talk, consult with them and we have had the privilege of being part of their caucus up to now. We won't have that anymore. But we'll continue to talk to them and I suspect that not a great deal will change."

And my personal favorite was a tweet from Liberal Independent Senator, Mobina Jaffer:

"Mood upbeat in Liberal Senate caucus. Now we will serve Canadians more effectively," Mobina Jaffer said on Twitter.

So am I to understand that removing Senators from a political party somehow makes them more effective politicians? Or to put it another way, being a member of a political party makes one a less effective politician.

Good to know.