Intellectual freedom in Canada: When good intentions morph into bad policy

From Ezra Levant's excellent blog, we learn more about how the Canadian Jewish Congress built up the Canadian Nazi Party, and then put in place "human rights" commissions to control such institutions.

This was not a nefarious plot. It has more the feel of mid-twentieth-century "social worker" bungling - where the bungler doesn't really understand what he or she is actually doing.

Most of the people Levant describes never seem to have received any training in basic principles like cause and effect.

In a simple-minded way, the bungler imagines that if he created the monster, he owns it and can then destroy it at his own convenience.

That was true of the Canadian Nazi Party, which was a cultural zero anyway. (= Most Canadians figured, basically, we won the War and they lost it. So anyone parading around in Nazi get-up was a self-identified loser.)

And so now? Now the out-of-control "human rights" commissions - direct descendants of such efforts - are a menace to a free society, as Levant's book, Shakedown illustrates. No one knows what will "offend" someone - or what will be criminalized next.

If you have the time (I rarely do), listen to some fluffy-haired talk show host yatting aimlessly on TV, you might have some idea from which quarter the wind is blowing just now. (= why your life or business may be destroyed, almost at random.)

Or you could, instead, write to our Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Mr. Stephen Harper and ask politely that he convene a Royal Commission to look into this mess.

Coffee!!: Official Canadian monster from 505 million years ago

In "ROM unravels 'monster mystery': Fossil analysis sheds light on pint-sized predator that stalked Canada's seas 505 million years ago", (March 20, 2009), Joseph Hall tells us,

That painstaking, jigsaw-puzzle analysis, published today in the journal Science, reveals that this razor-toothed predator was in fact one of nature's weirdest creatures.

And, boy, was it ugly.

It had protruding, button-like eyes, set behind a large armoured plate that extended from its head like a blue whale's snout. This bony "carpus" likely funnelled prey into a pair of grasping pincers that shoved the hapless food into a round mouth sporting at least three rows of pointed teeth.

"This mouth is kind of nasty. I always use the analogy of a pencil sharpener," said Jean-Bernard Caron, an associate curator of invertebrate paleontology at the ROM.

"You put anything into this and you get the prey completely cut and broken into pieces," said Caron, a paper co-author.

The rest of the body was segmented with a tiny set of propeller-like fins at the end to help move this formidable predator along.

This reminds me of the comment of a friend who ran into Professor Guy Narbonne on the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland. That excellent scholar kindly showed him and his family some Burgess Shale/Cambrian fossils.

My friend said later, "Oh wow! I'm glad that's not around here today!"

(But of course my friend was only joking, really.)

Still, if you think life is bad now ...

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy: