Paul McKeever's Definition of Freedom

On the discussion board solopassion.com, Frediano asks “What is freedom?”. He was looking for a concise description. I answered Frediano’s question thusly. Read more

Freedom Doesn't Have a Prayer

Pretense is the heart of evil.

Now, on a completely different subject, I received an e-mail today from a friend. It was a report by CBS. Though news to me, it was actually published in 2004. CBS reported, in 2004, that the council of the city of Hamtramck, Michigan was expected to make a noise ordinance amendment so that a mosque in that town could play the Islamic call to prayer five times per day over loudspeakers. The secretary of the mosque in question stated “We are not [proselytizing]…We are calling our Muslim people, reminding them they are obligated to come to pray.” Some defending the request for the ordinance amendment argued that the call to prayer is no different in nature and purpose than the ringing of church bells. Read more

Ban the Parka?

There is a growing sentiment in Europe and North America that governments should “ban the burqa”. Usually, what they are referring to is a ban of the niqab: a face covering used by some Islamic women.

There are certainly times at which the administration of justice or government requires that a person’s face be visually identified. For example, a recent Court of Appeal decision in Ontario notwithstanding, my view is that it is never any more right for a female witness to wear a religious face covering on the stand than it is for a biker to wear his headscarf on his face while giving testimony on the stand. Government-issued photo identification ought to make no exceptions: no face coverings, period, because the purpose of such identification is to ensure that the right person is identified properly with respect to compliance with our laws. We must ensure that we all can visually identify the faces of the government employees who serve us.

Private property extends the same rule-making powers to the property holder. Consequently, one should be free to set the terms pursuant to which any person enters onto or uses ones own private property: if I require you to wear lederhosen before stepping into the brewhouse I own, your choices are (a) wear lederhosen, or (b) stay out of my brew house.

However, there is at least one argument in favour of the ‘burqa ban’ that I find wholly indefensible: the argument that we must ban the burqa so that women can be freed of the oppression it represents or causes. Read more

Multiculturalism, Judeo-Christian Values, and the Broken Clock

Apart from the unbeatable “Just Right” weekly radio program hosted by Robert Metz and Robert Vaughan, I would argue that John Oakley’s daily broadcast on AM640 (Toronto) is the best radio has to offer. Every morning, just after the 9:00 AM news, John has a themed debate. Every Tuesday, the debate is called “Culture War”, and it normally involves two Christian ministers: one a liberal atheist who seeks to spread Christian morality sans Christ, and one a conservative theist, obedient to the word of his or her god. Normally, both believe that government – to one extent or another – should be influenced by Christian views concerning morality.

This morning, the topic was German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s speech last Saturday, in which she declared multiculturalism a failure. The panelists agreed that multiculturalism is inherently morally subjectivist. John then identified what he believed might be the fundamental question: is it time for government and society to end its attachment to “secular humanism” and to instead adopt “Judeo-Christian values”. The phone lines were jammed. I wrote, instead, the following. Read more

Commenting Disabled Until NetworkSolutions.com's Engineers Do A Better Job of "working on it"

Dear Reader:

For the last several days, the spam screening software used by this blog has not been working well. Rather than immediately detecting and eliminating spam Comments, it is adding the comments into a queue for moderator approval.

The spam software says “Akismet has detected a problem. A server or network problem is preventing Akismet from working correctly”. The network problem, it says, is that one of Akismet’s 4 servers is being blocked by NetworkSolutions.com. I called NetworkSolutions.com – the the Internet service provider for the Paul McKeever blog – and was told that NetworkSolutions knows of the Akismet problem, and that it is a problem with NetworkSolutions.com. Of course, I was given the stock phrase: “…and our engineers are working on it”. Read more

The Bikini, the Bill, and the Burqa

It’s the story that won’t just go away. Just two weeks ago, Tara Jones, an attractive young woman, issued a press release. It said that, on the anniversary of the gunning down of over a dozen women in Royalton, she would walk the streets near strip clubs in the city’s east side, wearing only a string bikini and pumps. Jones declared the evening to be “International Take Back the Night Day”, and said she would carry a sign saying “No Means No”. Read more

Marc Emery, Civil Disobedience, and the Fate of the Cannabis Culture

Tomorrow, anti-prohibitionists will hold “Free Marc” rallies around the globe. They will call for the release from prison of publisher and political activist Marc Emery, who was sentenced to five years imprisonment last week in a Seattle court for operating a mail-order cannabis seed business that served Americans – among others – from his store in Vancouver Canada. However, Emery’s written submissions to a sentencing judge last week have left some anti-prohibition activists thinking that Emery now condemns law-breaking and the civil disobedience that landed him in jail. Read more

The Quran, Peaceniks, and the Intellectual H-Bomb

I am, and will always be, an outspoken defender of an individual’s freedom to speak his mind, and I will remain a person who condemns censorship. I know nothing at all about Christian Reverend Terry Jones’ past statements, and little about his beliefs. However, as a person who values reason and individual freedom, I can only say “Bravo!” with respect to Jones’ now widely known plan to burn copies of the Quran on the 9th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 murders. And I cannot denounce strenuously enough those who are condemning Jones for his plan, and who are asking or threatening him not to proceed with his plans. Whatever his motives might be – to express anger or frustration; to promote his own religion as somehow being true; etc – his plan, and the angry response of many individuals to his plan, should say almost everything that needs to be learned about defending individual freedom from Islam. Read more

You're in for a Shock: Disturbing New Facts About Ontario's Green Energy Act

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is telling everyone that his decision to increase the price of electricity is “responsible” because it will force consumers to pay for the power they consume.  It will end an irresponsible old subsidy, he implies, but that implication is false.  In reality, his price hike is designed to pay for an irresponsible new subsidy. Read more

WordPress, Preview, Edit, Comments…problems solved!

This post has nothing at all to do with my usual topics. However, having discovered a SINGLE change to my WordPress settings that simultaneously fixed MULTIPLE problems I was having, I have decided to post it here (because it was so difficult to find an answer via google).

I started to experience technical problems with my blog when I changed ISPs. They included:

1. If I tried to Preview a post that I was writing, before publishing the post, I would get a 404 error message.

2. When things are working properly, if you hit the “View Post” button on any post you have published, you will see your post. Just under the title, you will see a link titled “edit”: if you click it, it takes you to an edit page for the post. Also, if – after hitting the “View Post” button, you want to add a comment to the post, WordPress recognizes that you are the person trying to make the post, so it does not require you to type in your name, blog address, and e-mail address. Yet, I was having a problem with the new installation. When I clicked on the “View Post” button, it took me to the post, but it did not recognize me as a person logged-in. As a result:

(a) there was no “edit” link near the title of the post; and

(b) if I wanted to enter a comment, I had to type-in my name, blog address, e-mail address and message. Read more

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