Support our truths
Ted Byfield - Monday,22 May 2006
Western Standard
The Harper government is about to bring in legislation that is vital to the cause of social conservatism. It confers real power on the traditional family and is therefore being opposed by those who seek to diminish the family's role. Yet "pro-family" organizations seem woefully negligent in offering support for it.
I refer, of course, to the government's plan to pay a day-care subsidy directly to parents, rather than use the money to set up state-run day-care centers to indoctrinate preschool children against the mistaken ideas of their parents. In short, the move will disrupt the grand plan of the left to create what they call "Canada as we know it," meaning a Canada that is increasingly unrecognizable to most Canadians.
Ever since the sixties we have watched this grand plan being imposed upon us. We now see sexual aberrations, once criminal, being presented to our children as highly respectable alternate "lifestyles," so respectable that to even criticize them is now against the law. We see parents frightened of spanking their children because state officers may come and take the children away. We see children being taught their "rights" and urged to report their errant parents to state officials. We see forms of entertainment offered to our children on the electronic media that can be described only as diabolical. We see police required to patrol some schools. We see our kids absorbed by so-called "music" whose lyrics unabashedly celebrate criminal behaviour. We see the legal safeguards intended to reinforce the traditional family taken away one by one, so that marriage gradually comes to mean any combination of people living under the same roof.
Now these innovations did not just happen. They were caused. People planned and pursued them, not as a dark conspiracy but quite openly. They were out to create a new society, and they said so. They soon discovered, however, that they could not gain general public approval for what they sought to do. They found a stubborn conservatism at the core of society, rooted principally in the family. Parental "bigotries," as they called them, passed from one generation to the other. There was no winning the public over. Referendums must be avoided.
But then they realized there was no need to win the public over. The revolution could be worked through three institutions--the educational bureaucracy, the media and the courts. These they now almost fully control--this magazine being among the few exceptions--and thus they have largely gained control of the political process. Largely, but not entirely. Reversals happen, one of them being the election of the Harper government.
Whatever other values Stephen Harper may or may not cherish, he and his wife certainly believe in parenthood. That is, they believe it is their job, not the state's, to bring up their children. The state can help them, of course, or it could possibly hinder them, but it is they, the parents, who have the primary authority, the right and the duty to decide. That's why Harper promised during the election campaign to pay the subsidy to the parents. What the parents do with it is up to them. They can put their kids in a private day care, a church day care, or they can educate their preschoolers themselves. The parent decides. Not the government. That's the principle Harper is fighting for.
In doing this, he is flatly reversing the plans of the Martin administration. Ontario and Quebec had developed schemes for a comprehensive state-run system. The revolutionaries naturally want to get the children early enough to disabuse them of those dreadful parental bigotries--and the Martin government had promised federal assistance. Harper has withdrawn it, and the revolutionaries are yowling.
The presidents of three public school teachers unions have denounced the Harper plan as "a hollow public relations exercise." Give us your kids sooner, they cry, so we can better mould them. The Globe and Mail, voice of the revolution, is going ape.
But where are our people? Where is Focus on the Family? Where is Real Women? We should be shouting from the rooftops in favour of this legislation and we aren't. That is a mistake.
Ted Byfield - Monday,22 May 2006
Western Standard
The Harper government is about to bring in legislation that is vital to the cause of social conservatism. It confers real power on the traditional family and is therefore being opposed by those who seek to diminish the family's role. Yet "pro-family" organizations seem woefully negligent in offering support for it.
I refer, of course, to the government's plan to pay a day-care subsidy directly to parents, rather than use the money to set up state-run day-care centers to indoctrinate preschool children against the mistaken ideas of their parents. In short, the move will disrupt the grand plan of the left to create what they call "Canada as we know it," meaning a Canada that is increasingly unrecognizable to most Canadians.
Ever since the sixties we have watched this grand plan being imposed upon us. We now see sexual aberrations, once criminal, being presented to our children as highly respectable alternate "lifestyles," so respectable that to even criticize them is now against the law. We see parents frightened of spanking their children because state officers may come and take the children away. We see children being taught their "rights" and urged to report their errant parents to state officials. We see forms of entertainment offered to our children on the electronic media that can be described only as diabolical. We see police required to patrol some schools. We see our kids absorbed by so-called "music" whose lyrics unabashedly celebrate criminal behaviour. We see the legal safeguards intended to reinforce the traditional family taken away one by one, so that marriage gradually comes to mean any combination of people living under the same roof.
Now these innovations did not just happen. They were caused. People planned and pursued them, not as a dark conspiracy but quite openly. They were out to create a new society, and they said so. They soon discovered, however, that they could not gain general public approval for what they sought to do. They found a stubborn conservatism at the core of society, rooted principally in the family. Parental "bigotries," as they called them, passed from one generation to the other. There was no winning the public over. Referendums must be avoided.
But then they realized there was no need to win the public over. The revolution could be worked through three institutions--the educational bureaucracy, the media and the courts. These they now almost fully control--this magazine being among the few exceptions--and thus they have largely gained control of the political process. Largely, but not entirely. Reversals happen, one of them being the election of the Harper government.
Whatever other values Stephen Harper may or may not cherish, he and his wife certainly believe in parenthood. That is, they believe it is their job, not the state's, to bring up their children. The state can help them, of course, or it could possibly hinder them, but it is they, the parents, who have the primary authority, the right and the duty to decide. That's why Harper promised during the election campaign to pay the subsidy to the parents. What the parents do with it is up to them. They can put their kids in a private day care, a church day care, or they can educate their preschoolers themselves. The parent decides. Not the government. That's the principle Harper is fighting for.
In doing this, he is flatly reversing the plans of the Martin administration. Ontario and Quebec had developed schemes for a comprehensive state-run system. The revolutionaries naturally want to get the children early enough to disabuse them of those dreadful parental bigotries--and the Martin government had promised federal assistance. Harper has withdrawn it, and the revolutionaries are yowling.
The presidents of three public school teachers unions have denounced the Harper plan as "a hollow public relations exercise." Give us your kids sooner, they cry, so we can better mould them. The Globe and Mail, voice of the revolution, is going ape.
But where are our people? Where is Focus on the Family? Where is Real Women? We should be shouting from the rooftops in favour of this legislation and we aren't. That is a mistake.
Comment