End the debate on human rights

Reading through the Ontario Human Rights Commission report for 2008-2009, I'm struck by Chief Commissioner Barbara Hall's paragraph on page two of the report:

The question of “what are human rights” continues to be debated. This year, more voices called for social and economic status and gender identity to be treated as essential human rights. Some of those debates are ongoing and, made more concrete by the current economic slowdown, will grow louder. New concerns will be raised and will need to be carefully considered. Human rights, it is clear, are not static – they change as our society changes and the faces in our communities change.

Anyone who has followed Canada's human rights scandal knows that the government's definition of "human rights" is not static. Nor is Commissioner Hall's answer to her own question either "human" or "right" in my opinion. It's not human because it favors certain communities over the individual. And it's not a matter of rights because it favors government powers (and state intervention) over individual liberty.

So again, we're left with the question: What are human rights?

Conservative philosopher and essayist Russell Kirk provides the best answer I have come across. In fact he devotes an entire essay to the topic, under the title The Illusion of "Human Rights", in his book Redeeming the Time. This is a work with which every lover of human liberty and critic of Canada's abusive human rights industry should be familiar.

Here are some of the more pithy quotations:

From the first, the odor of demagoguery has clung to the political use of 'human rights' language. For all rights are human rights. Does anyone suggest a code of inhuman rights? Dogs and cats do not enjoy rights. States have no rights (despite constitutional arguments); states enjoy powers. God is above rights, and humankind can claim no rights against God.

And property has no rights, being inanimate and non-human. Human beings, rather, have rights to their lawful property. The right to retain one's real and personal property is among the most important of civil rights; the critic Paul Elmer More declared that so far as civilization is concerned, the right to property is more important that the right to life. President [Woodrow] Wilson, well acquainted with political theory and history, must have been aware that he was disingenuous when he opposed "property rights" to "human rights." President Franklin Roosevelt might have pleaded ignorance, had he been accused of this abuse of terms.

I am suggesting, you will perceive, that so vague a term as 'human rights' is easily warped to politicians' advantage; and that it may be perilous to employ.

It may have been a suggestion in Russell Kirk's time, but the Canadian experience has borne out Kirk's suspicions. Commissioner Hall's asserts in her report that "human rights" are evolutionary, community-based and non-static in nature. Which is why, as Kirk prophesied, the term would be easily warped to the government's advantage, and thus perilous to the average citizen.

Bloody Obamacare?

I had to laugh at Mark Steyn and Kathy Shaidle's treatment of Canada's sperm donor shortage. Not only is their writing superior to my own, but their knack for a good sound byte cuts always reinforces the obvious. Which is why it was such a treat to work with them on Tyranny of Nice. But I digress...

Nevertheless, in light of the Obamacare debate in the U.S., I think Canadian conservatives are passing up a (golden isn't quite the right word) opportunity when discussing this topic. As Steyn wrote over on the Corner: "The poor Canucks never saw it coming. Millions of Yank sperm leaping like salmon up the Ontario side of Niagara Falls. A wait for semen seems pretty much the logical reductio of 'free at the point of demand' health care."

The reason I chuckled is because Steyn is obviously exaggerating for the sake of comedic effect. The vast majority of Canadians will never visit a sperm bank for their medical shortages.

Not so with blood banks.

What happens when those overseeing Canadian socialized health care go hunting for the lowest bidder in the Deep South because not enough Canadians are donating blood, and the government prohibits the state-run system from paying Canadians?

Canadian readers know the answer. For curious American readers, the answer is HIV and Hepatitis B. Click here and follow the links for more information.

And, since I'm a Stupak Democrat who generally supports labor rights, this is how a socialist government in Canada's province that gave birth to socialized health care repays its most underpaid workers for exercising their collective bargaining rights. (Click here)

Lynching the context

What to make of Jennifer Lynch's recent chastising of her censorship commission's critics? It reminds me of a conversation at my buddy's place earlier this week, where we gather every Monday to watch wrestling on TV. My hunting partner and I were kicking back on his front porch, drinking beer and munching on Moose burgers, when he piped up: "I hate those blacks!"

"Careful, I might report you to the Human Rights Commission," I said.

"You know what I meant," he said, slapping me on the back of the head.

Yes, I did. My buddy doesn't have a racist bone in his body. As a full-blooded Anishinabek he's been on the receiving end of racism (some subtle and indirect, like Toronto activists who would grab his guns, and European activists who would strip him of historical hunting rights), so he knows what it's like to be discriminated against. More important was the context of the conversation leading up to this exchange: We were talking about the crows eying our food. In short, the blacks referred to scavengers, not people.

Thus context makes a big difference. It's one of the first lessons one learns as a canon lawyer - that is, one who works within the Catholic Church's internal legal system. "Laws are to be understood according to the proper meaning of the words considered in their text and context," states Canon 17, which is one of the fundamental principles for interpreting canon law.

In reading reading Jennifer Lynch's complaints against critics of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), what strikes me is how she appears to have little understanding of context. This is frightening given that Lynch is the CHRC's Chief Commissioner. The most egregious example, which you can read here, is her following accusation against Mark Steyn:

One human rights expert who wrote a letter to a major daily paper faced an accusation in a response letter by a journalist the next day asking, “is (name of person) a drunken pedophile?”

This sounds nasty at first. But like the snippet of the conversation with my hunting buddy, it misses the context. So as Mark Steyn would say (and did say), here's the expanded version:

Let me take just one sentence: “Are Levant and Steyn hatemongerers? Maybe not. But no one has decided that.”

Overlooking her curious belief that “hatemongerers” is a word, whatever happened to the presumption of innocence? Eliadis stands on its head the bedrock principle of English justice and airily declares that my status as a “hatemongerer” is unknown until “decided” by the apparatchiks of the HRC.

Can anyone play this game? “Is Pearl Eliadis a drunken pedophile? Maybe not. But no one has decided that.” In her justification of the HRC process, Eliadis only confirms what’s wrong with it.

Two points:

1 - Steyn was using a rhetorical technique called reductio ad absurdum to demonstrate the absurdity of Eliadis's argument. He wasn't calling Eliadis a drunken pedophile; he was pushing Eliadis's own argument to its logical extreme.

2 - Eliadis and Lynch appear to have missed the point.

Does this surprise me? No. After all, the is not the first time that context and references to popular culture have completely escaped Eliadis and Canada's human rights racket. As Kathy Shaidle and I wrote in Tyranny of Nice:

Pearl Eliadis is well-known human rights lawyer and a former director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. The National Post reports that during a panel discussion at a national human rights conference, Eliadis denounced popular blogger Blazing Catfur as "poisonous" for having compared the panel to a "Texas cage match." Ms Eliadis probably wasn't clear on exactly what a "Texas cage match" was, but she certainly didn't like the sound of it.

Yes, Canada’s human rights industry is really that clueless about popular culture. What many ordinary Canadians consider a staple of Monday night wrestling, or merely a commonplace idiomatic expression, the commissions and tribunals trumpet as potential hate crimes. One can imagine the hysterics were someone to accidentally expose them to Weird Al Yankovic’s song “White and Nerdy”.

Which is what scares me. Lynch and Eliadis have directed Canada's two largest government "human rights" commissions. Yet in their public statements neither individual shows understanding of context or popular culture.

This is ironic given how Lynch ends her speech:

Today, many Canadians’ perception of our human rights system has been, in large part, informed by the misinformation and spin of our critics. Many no longer see the connection between the societal values that they cherish and the organizations that are there to promote and protect those values.

Jennifer, Canadians have a poor perception of the country's human rights racket because white overlords (like you) are disconnected from the context of the discussion, as well as from average Canadians and what they value. People like my hunting buddy. He might not hail from a privileged white background - his skin is red and he lacks a LLB from a prestigious law faculty - but he understands context and culture.

Hezbollah Forever

Hezbollah Foreover
(The labour union anthem re-written for Sid Ryan)

Hogtown Hezbollah foreover,
Hogtown Hezbollah foreover,
Hogtown Hezbollah forever,
For Israel must be wrong.

We march in solidarity with the yellow flag of hate.
As we lash out in Toronto, "Let us crush the Jewish state."
We represent the left, and Jews and Nazis we equate.
For Israel must be wrong.

Hogtown Hezbollah foreover,
Hogtown Hezbollah foreover,
Hogtown Hezbollah forever,
For Israel must be wrong.

We have taken untold millions that we never toiled to earn,
As public service union chiefs, our Jewish members we spurn
We will pogrom academics, who in Israel did learn
For Israel must be wrong.

Hogtown Hezbollah foreover,
Hogtown Hezbollah foreover,
Hogtown Hezbollah forever,
For Israel must be wrong.

Hoisted with his own Raetard; and coalition math

Despite protests from Bob Rae and Hedy Fry, who are suddenly championing the rights of voters to choose, I doubt the Iggy takeover of the Liberal Party will garner much protest from ordinary Canadians. After all, the precedent was set with the coalition's attempted takeover of Parliament. I don't know if you caught Rae's most recent blog entry, but it's easy to hoist him on his own petard - especially if Iggy withdraws from the coalition. And if that isn't enough, Fry's comments demonstrate why most Canadians don't trust a Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition with the purse strings during an economic downturn.

Let's start with a fisking of Rae's most recent blog entry:

Don’t Let Your Right to Vote be taken Away

Um, who exactly voted for the coalition? Especially when, just two months ago, Dion was publicly denouncing a Liberal coalition with the NDP as bad for the economy.

All weekend, I’d been hearing rumors about this, but today I was really surprised to read press reports about various MPs moving for an immediate vote to elect our Leader next Wednesday, in the Commons caucus.

In other words, Mr. Rae is out of touch with the grassroots of his own party. I'm not a Liberal, but I have many friends who are - at all levels of the party organization. I wasn't surprised.

I thought I’d seen a lot of politics over 30 years of public service, but this one really came from left field.

No, your proposed coalition with the Bloc and the NDP is what came from left field, as well as a chunk of the bleachers that would like to separate into a new field. Which is why so many Canadians (including many Liberals) rejected it.

The idea of taking away the vote from tens of thousands of grassroots activists in every part of Canada, and reducing the franchise to just 76 men and women seems so out-of-step with the modern world.

And how many of these thousands of grassroots activists, and hundreds of thousands of Canadian voters, voted for coalition with the Bloc and the NDP after Dion explicitly rejected such a proposal during the last election?

Here’s just a quick, off-the-cuff list of things that struck me as wrong about this idea: * The activist base of the party would be unable to vote.

Was the activist base able to vote for a coalition with the NDP and the Bloc?

Significant portions of the country that didn’t elect a Liberal MP would be unable to participate. What about the voice of rural Liberals, of almost all of Western Canada, of Quebeckers outside Montreal? All of these folks would be silenced.

Most Westerners and rural Ontarians (outside of Northern Ontario) voted Tory, while most Quebecers voted Bloc. How are they represented in a coalition? Well, the latter with a veto over the proposed coalition government, but what about the former?

What about the Senate? These great Liberals, distinguished Canadians from inside and outside of politics, would have their votes taken away after lifetimes of service.

Actually, if news reports are to be believed, most Liberal senators are also backing Iggy at this point. However, you're advocating that an unelected Senate has more legitimacy than elected MPs when it comes to appointing a party leader? And that benefits democracy how?

It’s up to us to put a stop to this hasty, ill-considered idea for electing our leader.

So, Bob, you're saying the process is undemocratic when applied to choosing the leader of your political party, even though its the same process that you advocate for choosing a prime minister of the country?

On to Hedy Fry, who opposes a caucus vote for new leader, stating during an interview that the 77 Liberal MPs currently in the House "only represents really one-third of all the ridings in Canada."

Really? With 308 seats in the House of Commons, most mathematicians (and Grade 5 students) would find the math quite simple. 308 divides into 77 evenly four times, meaning Liberals represent a quarter of the seats in the House of Commons.

Hopefully, this isn't a foreshadowing of how a coalition government would prepare its budget should the Rae-Fry faction gain control of the Liberal Party before Parliament resumes. No wonder a majority of Canadians fear a coalition government during an economic downturn.

Sussex Boulevard (From "Dion" the musical)

Sussex Boulevard

Sure I came out here to be PM
Wanted green shift, carpe diem!
Wanted my limo with a driver
But in the fall, election hell
Voters hate me, oh I can tell
Rejecting me in Canuck Survivor

Sussex Boulevard, twisting every card
Secretive and mean, a little scary
Sussex Boulevard, tempting me so hard
Waiting there to swallow the unwary

Green is not enough to win the House
When Harper’s branded me a mouse
From coast to coast the battle rages
A smile on Bob Rae, revolt underway
I’m cutaway, no vertebrae
Party’s ousting me in stages

Sussex Boulevard, isn’t my backyard
Couldn’t get here with Harper’s spinning
Sussex Boulevard, branding me blowhard
I was leader but couldn’t keep winning

You think I've sold out?
Dead right I've sold out!
Unity Act, for the right crack
At government, with Gilles and Jack
Commies and pequists, that’s coalition
But to the Tories it’s munition
To suck away votes, by attrition
As Parizeau talks of succession

Yes I have changed since I came here
At Jean’s bequest, I declare
To face the cranky sovereigntist
Who nearly split our land in two
I stared them down, yes it is true!
But to be PM I could not resist

Sussex Boulevard, will be my backyard
With help from Duceppe and Jack Layton
Sussex Boulevard, has become unbarred
Give thanks to Duceppe and Jack Layton

But now my dreams are sinking fast
Coalition? It will not last
Who should I blame? Well there are sev’ral
First Parizeau, his friends the Bloc
My cam’ra crew, I’m laughingstock
And don’t forget the Governor Gen’ral

John Howard Tory, will you please go now!

With my wife now a week over the due date, I've spent a lot of time with my younger two, reading a lot of Dr. Seuss. Especially Marvin K. Mooney will you please go now! - that and the following article on John Tory in yesterday's Globe & Mail. Anyway, it got me thinking about the problem with Ontario Tories right now...

John Howard Tory, will you please go now!

The year is now over.
You still have no seat.
Quit leading the party.
Please, please hit the street!

Resume the old football.
Or practice some law.
But John Howard Tory,
It's time to withdraw!

No support in the North,
Bruce – Grey – Owen Sound.
Don Valley West voters
Don’t want you around!

Among caucus colleagues,
Who vote with their feet.
For John Howard Tory,
They won’t quit their seat!

You can go light a joint.
Or go and parade.
Or parade under light,
Of rainbow motorcade!

But John Howard Tory,
We don’t want your aid.
Already your welcome,
Too long overstayed!

Your political instinct,
Left us in tatters.
As you yourself stated:
“Leadership matters!”

So John Howard Tory,
Quit thinking us fools.
(Recall how we warn'd you,
'bout funding for schools.)

Please, please move along,
By bus or by train.
Spare PCs in the province
A little more pain.

For if you're still here,
In Twenty-Eleven,
We will see a repeat
Of 2007.

So, please, Mister Tory.
Let's hear no more howl.
For the sake of your party,
Throw in the towel!

The fraud of unrestricted multiculturalism

In following recent on-line discussion over multiculturalism, I'm surprised by how few conservatives reference Russell Kirk's "The Fraud of Multiculturalism". In this essay Kirk identifies the poisoned roots of multiculturalism, and how this ideology destroys the society that embraces it:

Multiculturalism is animated by envy and hatred. Some innocent persons have assumed that a multicultural program in schools would consist of discussing the latest number of The National Geographic Magazine in a classroom. That is not at all what the multiculturalists intend. Detesting the achievements of Anglo-American culture, they propose to substitute for real history and real literature--and even for real natural science--an invented myth that all things good came out of Africa and Asia (chiefly Africa).

Intellectually, multiculturalism is puny--and anti-cultural. Such power as the multicultural ideologues possess is derived from political manipulation: that is, claiming to speak for America's militant "minorities" (chiefly those of African descent). The ideologues take advantage of the sentimentality of American liberals, eager to placate such "minorities" by granting them what they demand. But what fanatic ideologues demand commonly is bad for the class of persons they claim to represent, as it is bad, too, for everybody else. To deny "minorities" the benefits of America's established culture would work their ruin.

Of course most multiculturalists would denounce Kirk as a racist. So would many of today's "Official Conservatives" who place party before principle. Too bad. Kirk recognized that multiculturalism was impossible outside of an established culture.

Nor does multiculturalism work when subjected to any established culture. The 20th Century is full of bloodshed and genocide caused by one established culture in some part of the world asserting its dominance over another culture. Rwanda comes to mind as one egregious example; however, one could also look at Nazi Germany or Communist China.

That being said, I can think of two established cultures where multiculturalism actually works. The first is Christendom. Here multiculturalism works because everyone shares the same religious values, but simply expresses them differently. Additionally, the Roman Pontiff provides a powerful mediator when cultural disputes arise between nations.

The second is Anglo-American culture, which recognizes the rights of the individual over those of specific identity groups. Everyone is an individual first, possessing the rights and freedoms that come from being an individual. Only once individual rights and freedoms are recognized is one free to follow the customs of one's ancestors - provided these customs don't infringe upon the rights and freedoms of others. Hence "minorities" thrive under Anglo-American culture in a way that they do not in any other parts of the world. When individual rights and freedoms are society's guiding principles, a person is given equal opportunity to thrive - regardless of background or ethnicity.

And this last point reveals where unrestricted multiculturalism has become fraudulent in recent decades. In the name of unrestricted multiculturalism and white liberal guilt, society now undermines the very Anglo-American culture that makes it possible for individuals to thrive unmolested by the state - including minorities. This cannot bode well in the long-term - either for minorities or for the majority. After all, once group rights replace individual rights as the basis for social peace, society reverts to managing minorities rather than give every individual equal opportunity to prosper.

Not Left vs Right, but South vs North, East and West

My Tyranny of Nice co-author Kathy Shaidle has posted the following apologia for name-calling, to which Mike Brock responds:

I think what everyone is failing to now see, is that conservatism, liberalism and socialism are all now dead. Completely. We have acquiesced into democratic populism. The differences between the NDP and the Conservative Party today are matters of degree on various issues. And while this may be hard to accept for people who live in a partisan world, Obama is not that different from McCain.

For these reasons, I've become completely disillusioned with right vs. left politics. Our enemy is not "the left". It never was. Our enemy was the centralization of power. It always was and always will be.

Western conservatives and Quebec conservatives often gripe about being stuck in the same country as Toronto and Ottawa. I sympathize. But you folks have it relatively easy; imagine being stuck in the same province as these two cities.

Which is why, as one of the few Northern Ontario voices in this discussion, I agree with what Mike Brock is saying here. Centralization of power is the biggest threat to Canada's democratic rights and freedoms, as well as our way of life throughout most of the country. Canada boasts four big cities that don't understand the rest of the country, nor are they interested in doing so.

This is one of the reasons, as Northerners, that so few of us supported John Tory during the last provincial election. He ran a completely Toronto-centric campaign. He represented the interests of Bay Street and a Toronto cultural elite, abandoning rural conservatives and others for whom whom the "c" in "small 'c' conservative" stood for "small communities". (Yet he still failed to win a single seat in Toronto.)

A same dynamic took place during the last federal election under Stephane Dion. Northern Ontario, which was mainly Liberal going into the election, emerged NDP in all but two seats. (Three if you count Parry Sound, which most Northerners do not. Mike Harris and his Toronto power-brokers re-designated Parry Sound as part of Northern Ontario in order to funnel FedNor funds Ernie Eves's way.) The Liberals collapsed up here because of Dion's "Toronto knows best" attitude toward the rest of the province. His butchered English had nothing to do with it - in fact, his English was much better than Chretien's, who always did well up here.

Nowhere was I more amazed by our differences than in going through the responses to my recent appearance on the Michael Coren show. Kathy talks about the most fun taking place in the green room before and after the show. My own green room discussion involved Coren, a Torontonian, taking me aside and gently urging me not to put in so strongly with hunters and gun-owners. This was a followup to an on-air exchange over the same issue, which ended with me saying: "In Toronto you shoot people, in Northern Ontario we shoot animals."

But I digress. Coren, who I like and who certainly knows the Toronto market, was urging me to make alliances with people on the left who agree with us on free speech, but don't go for guns and hunting. He mentioned similar concerns over my references to professional wrestling, which is still quite popular in Northern Ontario. He named several prominent leftists - all from Toronto or the 905. In short, he was cautioning me against coming across as too right wing to these folks.

Yet back home in the North, the response was the opposite. It's Coren who is seen as the right-wing ideologue and myself as the centrist. The moment I pulled into the driveway, several neighbors ambushed me with congratulatory messages. Many of my neighbours are First Nations, almost all of them vote NDP. They were happy I had "stood up for Northerners against conservatives like Coren" who "want to impose their Toronto neo-conservative corporate agenda on Northern Ontario."

Several pointed to Coren and people like him as the reason they cannot vote conservative. "If you ran, Pete, I would vote for you because you're like the NDP - you represent the little guy in Northern Ontario and not big multinational corporations in Toronto."

A totally different perspective. But one I hear increasingly from other Northerners, who no longer identify with Toronto, who no longer feel part of the same province when traveling to Southern Ontario (I don't), and who fear Toronto's increasing power grab into the rural parts of the province. And it's not just me. Popular politicians in the North like Sault Ste. Marie Mayor John Rowswell have also noticed that Northern Ontario is being ignored, or is not understood, by Toronto and Ottawa, and that culturally we resemble Northern Quebec and Manitoba more than we do the rest of Ontario (click here).

Anyway, speaking of cowboys, culture, camo and wrestling, let's end this on a happy note. Jim over at Pundit Fight has kindly put together the following animation of what I would look like if political punditry was professional wrestling:

What are conservatives conserving?

Recent elections in Canada and the United States have left conservatives asking a fundamental question: What are we conserving?

I don't think most conservatives in either country know the answer to this question. Yet to me it seems clear: A conservative ideology should seek to conserve the family unit as the most fundamental building block of society. This may seem cliche to some, but it's a lesson history has repeatedly taught us. Societies collapse when the family unit collapses.

Looking back at the debate that arose from America Alone, Steyn presents two ideas in his book. The first is that western civilization is collapsing from a plummeting birth rate. The second is that radical Islam has moved in fill the void.

The ensuing debate has focused on Steyn's second point, to the detriment of the first. Everyone is talking about the danger to western civilization posed by radical Islam. Yet we've forgotten about the danger we pose to ourselves. The plummeting birth rate - and the near extinction of the natural family unit - is by far the greater threat. What's the use of fending off the terrorists of today, when we're allowing ourselves to degenerate into the barbarians of tomorrow. Will there still be a western civilization to defend tomorrow?

Society and government fulfill one purpose - to create a stable environment in which citizens can reproduce and raise children. Society and government do not exist solely for the individual, nor do they exist for their own sake. Rather they exist to provide the security and opportunity necessary for families to bring children into the world and raise them successfully. When government betrays its purpose, when government undermines marriage and usurps the family, the society over which it governs must eventually collapse.

This is one of the first lessons I learned while working with Catholic marriage tribunals, where most people who came through my doors with a broken marriage were themselves the children of broken or dysfunctional families. Divorce, abuse, addiction, neglect, abandonment - these were not uncommon to the childhood of many petitioners and respondent who come before the tribunal. And the consequences are life-long.

Catholics call this the social consequences of sin. Children can survive poor homes and adversity from their peers, if they have loving parents to come home to, who the children know are doing their best to provide for them. What scars children for life is homes in which the parents are unloving or irresponsible. Thus the streets are rife with prostitutes who were sexually abused as little girls by mommy's rotating boyfriends. The ditches are filled with alcoholics whose own parents were alcoholics. And the jails are filled (though not for long, given lax sentencing laws in Canada) with young men who did not know their fathers, or who suffered untold physical abuse at their hands.

It's sad and we must pity these folks. Yet they have always been a liminal part of society, which is why Jesus said the poor would always be with us. Nevertheless, government back then understood that the only way to limit these cases was to foster social conditions that strengthened families. In fact, government understood that its primary purpose was to foster such social conditions. Thus laws were enacted that favored marriage, two-parent families, and parental responsibility and control over their children's upbringing - including education. The best way to instill responsibility in a citizen was to make that citizen responsible for a spouse and children. The state only interfered in extreme cases.

The one exception was young men who got caught committing relatively minor offenses. In lieu of jail, the judge would turn them over to the local recruiter where a stint in uniform taught these young men structure, respect, responsibility, self-sacrifice and other tools needed to grow into adults and become productive citizens.

Today, the opposite is true. From no-fault divorce to abortion on demand, the government has institutionalized irresponsible behavior. The same is true with welfare, old age pensions and socialized health care that reward poor lifestyle choices by usurping responsibilities that previously fell upon the individual and the family. And yet we now wonder why our young people no longer grow into responsible citizens. The consequences of poor lifestyle choices are no longer poverty and social ostracism - conditions that in the past forced people to clean up their act and begin making responsible choices - but a lifetime meal card at the state's expense.

Therefore, if the conservative movement is going to revive itself, it must begin by restoring the rights and responsibilities of the family unit.