Ethical paralysis

Chuck Colson, in one of his Break Point articles on (Jan 11th, 2012) shared about a discussion Dr. Stephen Anderson, a philosophy teacher at A.B. Lucas Secondary School in Ontario, had with his students. He primed their minds with a gruesome picture of Bibi Aisha, the teenage wife of an abusive Taliban fighter.

Bibi was caught trying to escape her abuser, and as punishment, was horribly mutilated and disfigured and left for dead in the mountains. Fortunately she made it to an American hospital where her life was saved and her visage restored. You can see her story on YouTube -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MfE9Iv07dA.

Anderson intended to create an educational shock to their ethical system. Instead of the students sharing a strong moral aversion to this inhumanity, the students shocked their teacher with a common fear of making any moral judgment at all. “They were unwilling to criticize any situation originating in another culture.” One student said, “Well, we might not like it, but maybe over there it’s okay.”

This incident may expose what may be the tip of the ethical iceberg, a tip that may well become the tipping point for a generation morally. Our youth appear to have bought into the extreme tenets of multiculturalism, ideas that lead to an unexamined faith in the equality of all cultures. To quote Jonathan Goldberg in a 2005 editorial published in the National Review Online, “Have we opened our minds so far, our brains have fallen out?”

Wrong in itself

The abortion debate continues to heat up, and the fire is showing up on both sides of the 49th parallel. It has engrafted itself into both the Canadian and American political process because there remains a conviction in the conscience of many North Americans that aborting a life is “wrong in itself.”

Many people have bought into numerous distortions of truth. The pro-choice position is that every woman has the right to choose what she does with her own body. However, it is a medical fact that the child in her womb is a totally different person and that life begins from conception. Many are now stating that this life should have the right to choose for his or herself – ie. they have human rights that need to be protected.

Why is it that the law can make it illegal for us to put a needle filled with heroin into our blood stream? Why is it that the law can intervene when they fear we will commit suicide or take the life away from our own body? Why is it that we can face a jail sentence for putting alcohol in our own body and driving? Why is it that we will most likely end up in the psych ward for mutilating any part of our body? The fact is that we all have limited freedom to choose what we will or will not do with our bodies, and that limitation is rooted into morality.

The pro-choice movement loves to trumpet the idea that morality cannot be legislated. Is this true? What do we call it when we tell people that they cannot murder, slander, rape, steal, or enslave? Aborting a child was considered a criminal act at one point in Canadian history, and now you can abort a child simply because the pregnancy interferes with a holiday cruise. Can you make something that was immoral and illegal moral and legal by simply saying it is? Well, we did, and now we have to pay the piper.

In Criminal Justice there are two types of laws: malum in se and malum prohibitum. Malum in se is a Latin phrase meaning, “wrong in itself.” Most of us feel that murder is wrong, and so laws are constructed to outlaw it. Malum prohibitum means something is wrong because it is prohibited: eg. on this side of the Atlantic we have made driving on the left side wrong, and so sorry my English friends, prohibited.

Canada: On the incline or decline?

There was a time when, according to Edward Gibbon’s history of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, “Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth and the most civilized portion of mankind.” It had a powerful and unified system of laws and manners that cemented provinces of the Empire into a realm that enjoyed an incredible level of peace.

Gibbon pointed to a singular major cause, moral decay as the precursor for decline in the Western Roman Empire. He provided evidence of this moral decline speaking about things like the failure of the patriarchal society, sexual perversity, infanticide, high levels of divorce, violent entertainment in the Coliseums, political corruption, the loss of a national work ethic, and ultra-multiculturalism, where Rome lost its core identity.

Some historians, like Arnold Toynbee and James Burke, have argued that the seeds of decline and failure were there right from the Empire’s inception. They portray Rome as a plundering economy that was based on the military looting existing resources rather than producing anything new, a system that was entitlement based and dependent upon importing slaves from the far corners of the Empire to do work they did not want to do.

Others point to decline as an accumulation of many causes coming together in a very short time. Students of the Empire describe the corporate impact of everything from deforestation, inflation, barbarian invasion, and urban decay to political corruption, disease and plagues, and military over-extension. Smallpox itself killed close to half the population which resulted in less capability to support the tax base and other necessary institutions.

Some see Christianity’s emergence as a cause of empiric failure, as many Roman citizens adopted pacifism and refused to protect the Empire. However, others saw Christianity as the stabilizing force for the Empire, as the Eastern Empire continued to exist close to 1,000 years longer than the West, mostly due to this unifying religious influence.

The immigration tragedy

Federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney was on the hot seat this week regarding his review of immigration laws. First, he invoked a new regulation requiring new Canadian women of Muslim descent to show their faces while taking the oath of citizenship. This requirement was not considered onerous in that an open face is required to obtain driver’s licenses. A quick review of this demonstrates clearly that this regulation is not a violation of religious freedom as much as it is a challenge to culture.

Then, he ordered a crackdown on immigration fraud. Apparently, people have been using crooked immigration consultants to construct fake evidence of residency in Canada, and close to 6,500 people have now been linked to this fraudulent behaviour. This investigation may wind up exposing one of the biggest citizenship scams in our short history.

History hasn’t been that kind to Canada’s sense of responsibility towards those in need of refuge. In 1939, PM Mackenzie King rejected the SS St. Louis, a ship carrying 937 Jewish passengers who were desperately seeking refuge from the horrors of Nazism in Europe. He commented that “it is not a Canadian problem” and that “as far as he was concerned the admission of refugees perhaps posed a greater menace to Canada…than did Hitler.”

This moment has been portrayed in history books as the “voyage of the damned.” The mentality of many in our nation toward immigration then was that “none was too many.” That response, or lack of compassion, remains a dark spot on one of the pages of our nation’s history. It is vital that any residue of that attitude be wiped from our minds and hearts.

Canada likes to see itself as a sanctuary for the oppressed, but this view of ourselves may be at risk. In November 2000 Canadian clergy apologized for sending the ship back to its country of origin which led to their deaths, but as far as I know there has never been an official government apology for the rejection of the St. Louis, although a memorial for the Jewish refugees was unveiled on January 20, 2011 in Halifax at Pier 21.

Rise of militant secularism

A few weeks ago, Cardinal Raymond Burke, head of the Vatican’s highest court, noted that “secularism has become militant.” He conveyed that he could envision a time when the Catholic Church would come under persecution just by “announcing her own teaching” which would be considered “engaging in illegal activity.”

In Pope Benedict XVI’s address to the US Bishops he stated, “No one who looks realistically at our world today could think that Christians can afford to go on with business as usual, ignoring the profound crisis of faith which has overtaken our society, or simply trusting that the patrimony of values handed down by the Christian centuries will continue to inspire and shape the future of our society.”

I concur. Political, social and religious militancy has been on the rise for years. Few believe that a significant and bloody clash of values and agendas is not already occurring. The stage for determining what Canadian culture will morph into is in process right now.

Any thinking person would be concerned about the clear and present danger associated with the breakdown in the intellectual, cultural and moral foundations of social life. We seem to be surrounded by cynicism towards any staple value and authority. Our national ship is morally adrift, and the wind that blows the fiercest will eventually take us where it wants.

Right now that wind appears to be radical and militant secularism. Secularism’s roots are found in the ancient philosophy of Epicurus, the Enlightenment thinking of Voltaire and Paine, and find their way into our culture through agnostics and atheists like Bertrand Russell. Their highest value was the separation of government and religious values and beliefs. As modernists, they fiercely resist being impeded by religious or moralist thinking.

Conservatism

By nature, education, and political persuasion, I have always been a big “C” Conservative (Con). Wikipedia tells us that Conservatives carry an historic commonality. They “believe that government has a role in encouraging or enforcing what they consider traditional values or behaviours.”

That designation suits me just fine. It is one of the reasons I write this column. I sincerely believe that the nation runs best, and its people are served best, when character and principles dominate leadership’s decision making over polls and pundits. Legislation happens, but what makes legislation good is not good intentions but strong, moral foundations.

Recently there has been a lot of talk about the future of Conservatism in Canada. According to Queen’s University political-science scholar James Farney, social conservatives (so-cons) “have become a spent political force in Canadian national politics” – that is, they have become irrelevant, indistinguishable, positioned on the outside looking in, and sidelined by a past morality. Link Byfield, a so-con himself, stated, “We’re now just seen as eccentric.”

There is truth to this. Conservative positions are not stamped in cement. They are much more fluid than they used to be. What used to exist, a broad and widely accepted traditional and Biblically based morality, is no more. I am constantly surprised by the scope of beliefs and values that so-called Conservatism embraces these days.

Maternity Leave for Abortionists

Every expectant mother is extremely grateful for policies instituted by our Canadian government to allow them to take leave from work with pay so that they can attend to the critical upbringing of their baby. When they see pictures of women carrying babies on their backs while working in the fields, they can only say that they are blessed to be living in Canada.

However, I am concerned about apparent duplicity in our legal system, laws grafted in that appear to fly under the public radar. I thought maternity benefits were targeted towards mothers who brought their baby into the world and were committed to caring for them. Apparently not!

Canada’s employment insurance guidelines reveal that a woman who aborts her child after 19 weeks gestation is eligible to receive 17 weeks of maternity leave, the same as a mother who gives birth. For an abortion occurring before 19 weeks gestation, the woman can collect sick leave for the same length of time. You can read it for yourself at our government site: http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/labour/ipg/017.shtml.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation first identified this anomaly in federal policy in 2008. John Williamson, CTF’s executive director, alluding back to the Maternity Benefits Act of 1961, stated that the purpose behind the Act was to “allow parents bonding time with their newborn child.” This begs a critical question: “Why are Canadian tax payers paying maternity benefits to a mother who has aborted her child and will never experience bonding time?”

Global warming or global warning?

I love my nation of Canada. I have lived in four of her provinces – born in New Brunswick, raised in Nova Scotia, trained in British Columbia, and cultured in Quebec. I have criss-crossed the country numerous times, by car, air and rail. It’s a beautiful land, home to a great people.

I know I am not that different from most Canadians. When we watch the news and see the “acts of God” manifesting around the world – and in our own land – it makes us a bit more spiritual. Are these natural or supernatural disasters? Do they occur as a result of the hand of man or the Hand of God?

We see the devastation of the Tsunami in Japan and fears of radioactivity on the Pacific West Coast. We watch the ongoing civil strife and rioting in the Middle East against kings and dictators. We look at the spread of ash from the Icelandic volcano, and growing global socio-economic problems.

Then, our eyes turn to North America. We see loss of life, limb and property as a result of tornadoes and drought in Texas. We watch the migration of people from thousands of homes due to flooding; what some are calling “fascinating, unprecedented and frightening…the greatest flooding in 150 to 300 years.” We see fires threatening communities in Alberta.

Whether you follow Glen Beck’s, An Inconvenient Book or Al Gore’s, An Inconvenient Truth you have to know something is going on. Some scientists are saying that it’s all about global warming trends, and believe that they can predict future catastrophes.

G8 grandstanding or grand scheming

I have visited Israel a number of times. I was there when the Muslim Ramadan was celebrated. I have stood beside Jews praying at the Wailing Wall at the foot of the western side of the Temple Mount. I prayed with Christian believers in the garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives.

Jerusalem is unique: it is the holy city to three major Abrahamic religions – Judaism (since King David’s time), Christianity (since Christ’s crucifixion), and Islam (since the first Qibla, 610 CE). It has been called the “center of the world.” However, Yerushalayim, known as the “Abode of Peace,” has seen anything but that in its long history.

President Truman extended de jure recognition to the Government of Transjordan (making it a de facto Palestinian state) and the Government of Israel on the same day, January 31, 1949. This affirmed what was considered a final territorial settlement in Palestine stated in the General Assembly of the United Nations on Nov 30, 1948.

62 years later, President Barack Obama, at the most recent G8 meetings in Deauville, France stated, “The United States believes that the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines… so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. As for security, every state has the right to self-defence, and Israel must be able to defend itself – by itself – against any threat….”

Was this grandstanding or grand scheming? Ask most Americans whether or not they would support a UN resolution to give back Texas to Mexico? Remember the Alamo? Texans wanted Texas to be free from Mexican domination and Santa Anna’s grip. When invaded, the Texans defeated the Mexican troops, and declared independence.

Anyone remember the Six Day War (1967)? I was living in Montreal during the time of Expo 67. On June 5th, Egypt, Jordon, and Syria, along with co-belligerents from Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, Sudan, Tunisia and PLO, attacked Israel. Within six days Israel had decisive victory, along with effective control of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. 

Cyber-Space and Inner Space

Image Courtesy Future Blogger

Last weekend I was invited to attend The Vancouver Symposium on Christian Education for the 21st Century, hosted at the extra-ordinarily beautiful Morris J. Wosk Center for Dialogue, Simon Fraser University, downtown Vancouver. I was deeply impressed, not only with the degree of professionalism demonstrated at each one of the venues, but also with the deep-down sense that this may become an historic event.

Eighty-six leaders from nations as far away as Russia, South Africa, Malaysia, and Australia assembled to brainstorm what education will look like in the foreseeable future and to share their wisdom, vision, and technical expertise on how to make the appropriate changes. The ultimate intention of the gathering is to formulate a pedagogical manifesto that will guide Christian Education over the next few decades.

One of my colleagues, Greg Bitgood, who has written a book on Discipling this Generation for a Digital World, has had a burden to see Christian schooling in Canada emerge as a model for modern education. He leads the Heritage Christian Schools’ movement out of Kelowna, BC. Heritage has a progressive campus and online component and is influencing how education is being done locally, provincially and globally – www.onlineschool.ca.

What an exciting day to be a student and an educator! Stephen Harris, from the Sydney Center for Innovation in Learning – www.scil.com.au, shared about blending architecture with new teaching strategies and has created an open, no walls approach integrated with virtual space. Dr. Mark Beadle of Sevenstar Academy – www.sevenstaracademy.org spoke about enhancing education in the classroom through digital tools like Mobile Social On Demand, YouTube, Twitter, social bookmarking, and so on.

I realise that not all technological advancement is necessarily good. Just because something is digital doesn’t make it better – just current. However, whether we like it or not, technology is here to stay and it is producing a type of tsunami in the educational sphere that few schools are prepared for. One leader shared, “If we are going to teach our children how to drive a car, you don’t do it by placing them on a horse.” Enough said.