It is important – when embarking upon a long and convoluted description of something – to make sure that everyone following the discussion has a common understanding of what is being discussed. This may sound fatuous, but – it is very common for people to use one word in several ways, to have a very different understanding of a principle or concept from what the speaker has. Such a discussion will not be productive…
So, I would like to start by explaining what I mean by some of the words and concepts which I plan to bring into focus.
This post will continue to be updated as more posts are added.
Absolute freedom and the necessity to accomodate others if we wish to interact with them. ‘Free Speech’ is the means by which we can arrive at a workable balance.
This most excellent YouTube video (1st of 5-part series) by StopAndLook. It contrasts the view that rights are inherent to the individual vs the view that rights are given to people by the state. This results in very different attitudes (mindsets) between the state and citizen – and I contrast it to my post ‘Common law vs. civil law‘. To further demonstrate the difference in attitudes, I also mention by ‘Tax cut’ vs. ‘tax rebate’ post.
‘Absolute Freedom’ can only be achieved by a person who is absolutely alone. When a person has no others to interact with, they are free to do absolutely anything they wish – and they are absolutely responsible for the consequences of their actions.
What I mean by this is that if this person takes foolish or reckless actions – they are free to do so. But, nobody will help them, as there is nobody else there.
Humans are social creatures – we build communities. In order to get along, we agree to give up some of our freedoms willingly because we have made the judgment that it is in our best interest to do this. So far so good.
Now, we have to find the balance between what we are willing to give up and what we are not willing to give up. In other words, we have started a whole complex ‘freedom/accomodation’ balancing act.
After all, even if we give too many of our rights up willingly, make too many accomodations (or accomodate too far), we will feel oppressed. (An example to illustrate this: a young man willingly gives up his career to move into a different area because he wishes to be with the woman he loves. Even though this decision was done willingly and happily, over time, he may regret the lost opportunities and begin to resent the woman he loves… It may not even be a conscious thing – but it could fester, eventually put a strain on the relationship.)
Obviously, this balance between one’s freedoms on the one hand and willingness to accomodate the community is not the same for every person… Which is exactly why we have to be able to talk about it – openly and without fear.
It is only through open and honest discourse that we can re-balance ‘freedoms’ versus ‘accomodations’. And it is only by voicing our concerns that we can realize that the current ‘balance’ is oppressive. Every society changes and continuously evolves – and as it does, this re-balancing will be necessary!
This cannot be accomplished without the freedom of each and every person to speak their mind, openly and without fear. Therefore, I think the most fundamental freedom – the one which is key in maintaining and re-balancing all the other ones, is the Freedom of Speech.
Each and every person must be free to speak their mind, seriously or in jest, regardless of who they are or what their ideas are. I am fully willing to accept that spreading falsehoods or breaking confidentiality agreements can and should be prosecuted in civil court – that is the appropriate and necessary consequence of this right to speak freely. However, the key here it that is is actionable by the injured party, in civil court – not by anyone else, anywhere.
There is a second part to this ‘freedom of speech issue’ – every person ought to have ‘freedom of speech’ on both the output and the input side, so to speak. The ‘input side’, of course, is the ‘access to other people’s speech’. Because, if a country were to allow each and every citizen to speak freely – but only in sound-proof cells where nobody can hear their voice – the citizens may be able to say what they wish, but it is not ‘freedom of speech’.
So, in my definition, ‘freedom of speech’ also includes the ‘freedom to be heard’ and perhaps most importantly the ‘freedom to hear others’ – regardless of what they may say. As in, I get to choose whom I listen to – nobody else may make that choice for me!!! To me, this is an essential component of ‘freedom of speech’.
Have you ever found a bunch of strings so knotted up, it was difficult to tell which thread went where, how they connected – and how to untangle them? Pulling on some strings just seems to make it more knotted up and incomprihensible… you had to pull a little bit on each one, switching back and forth, to figure it out and realize which ones wrapped around which other ones – and how, before you could make much progress in untangling it.
That is how I feel when trying to describe the ‘big picture’ of the current threats to our freedom of speech – which is the key that unlocks all our other freedoms.
Because the current situation we are facing – the various threats to our freedoms – consists of exactly the type of ‘tangled knot’ made up of several quite discrete (and a few of them frayed into several ‘strands’) ‘threads’! If I ‘pull’ on one ‘thread’ alone, it will not clear up anything… Therefore, I beg you, the reader, to keep this in mind and indulge my ‘haphazard’ and disorganized presentation – hopping from one bit to another, pulling a little bit on each ‘thread’ in its turn…
Another problem I ran into while trying to write this up was just how long the post was getting… It became necessary to break it up into many shorter ones. My fear in doing this? I have tried doing this before, but never got all the ‘bits’ out because something ‘big’ happened that I wanted to comment on – or I never connected them up properly – or I went off on some tangent.
This one, however, is too important not to give it a try.
So, over the next little while, I will be posting a various, seemingly unrelated, stories – each a part of one thread or another which makes up this ‘knot’. And, I plan to connect them up! Perhaps in the last post of the series, perhaps as a separate page (like I am doing with the Aspergers posts).
Any additional information you come accross that you think should be included in this, or when I make mistakes which you could correct – please, let me know! I welcome this because even though I think I see a pattern here, one person can never get the ‘whole’ of the ‘big picture’ without the help of historical perspective…which only comes centuries after the events.
And our freedoms – they are in more danger of being eroded, one tiny bit at a time, than most of us are willing to admit.
People tend to react strongly when someone comes along and strips them of their rights. Unless it is done gradually, over time… with reassurences at each step that this will ‘only be used in extreme cases’.
Laws are laws. We must recognize what power each law gives the government – whether or not the government is claiming to ‘reserve it’ for such ‘extreme cases’ or ‘justifiable instances’ or not. Because eventually, these laws will be applied to their fullest!
Everybody is against child pornography. We would also not like our young kids to be able to access regular pornography over the internet, would we? We would all go to great lengths to protect our children! That is part of human nature. So, when Australia began to make sounds about the dangers of pornography over the internet and needing to protect our children from it, people listened – and allowed the government to pass some of the most restrictive internet censorship laws!
Of course, much of this was not enforced. Everybody knew this was just a way to get at child pornographers – and to keep little kids off porn sites – and had nothing to do with limiting freedom of speech and expression! Right? Yes, everyone was obliged to install the ‘censorship software’ on their computers, but since the government was not enforcing much of these laws, people could choose to either turn it on or off. So, no problem, right?
Except that last week (mostly unnoticed in the US pre-election frenzy), the Australian government announced that it is going to begin enforcingthat the ‘censorship software’ be turned on!
Consider the implications of this – in order to censor something, the Australian government will have to scan it. Therefore, any ‘sensitive’ or ‘proprietary’ or ‘private’ information will be accessed by a government bureaucrat….which opens an incredibly large potential for abuse – as well as goes against the inherent spirit of the internet. Want to encrypt sensitive information you send over the internet? That just might be illegal, because it would hamper the government’s ability to monitor the content…
Does it really do anything for the welfare of our children, to give the government this much power over our lives?
And it would be silly to speak up now – after all, it is a law that has been in existence for a while….there’s nothing wrong with a government enforcing its laws now, is there? But, it started slowly and reasonably…. and next year, as it slowly becomes enforced, it will be too late to begin to protest against this law.
Let’s take another example – one that is not aimed specifically at the Internet: Canada’s ‘Section 13’ of the Human Rights Act (NOT to be confused with the Human Rights CODE, like I have done in some of my comments in the past. My bad). When it was passed, we were all told it was simply a tool to root out neo-nazis and dangerous anti-semites… so we all nodded our heads and went along with it.
The Human Rights Commissions/Tribunals – established as the guardians of Human Rights – were set up with the best ideals. To make them accessible to people who have no means to afford a lawyer, they were made a little less ‘rigorous’ than a ‘real’ court. At that time, it seemed a good idea to make ‘getting justice’ accessible to everyone…
But, the HRCs have now used ‘Section 13’ to force a Christian priest to renounce his faith and forbid him to ever – privately or publicly – comment on issues relating to homosexuality or marriage. It has also been used to fine a restaurant owner who did not permit a patron to smoke cannabis on his premises – even though allowing it could have cost the restaurant owner his liquor licence. It has aslso been used to try to force a doctor to perform a medical procedure for which he did not think he was qualified. The list goes on and on!
But what is insidious about this ‘censorship creep’ is what it does to our society as a whole. It rips us apart!
It gives those pompous apartchicks and busybodies the ability to wrap themselves in the cloak of righteous indignation and impose their will in ways that would otherwise not be tolerated!
Here is an example of what I mean: reccently, a College (well, University) radio station manager, Matthew Crosier, wrapped himself up in such a cloak of righteous indignation and got rid of a show which he did not like. The reasoning? Even though the hosts assured him they would comply with any policy he might impose on them, he retorted that – and I kid you not, this is a direct quote:
“We are not looking for people to conform to our mandate we are looking for programming that fits our mandate.”
In other words, Mr. Crosier is saying: “Your obedience is insufficient – you must believe what I believe, or I’ll kick you off the air! Your actual behaviour is secondary to your political and personal views.”
This same person also refused to pass any actual complaints from listeners onto the show’s hosts – even with the names and contact info of the complainants redacted. And, this is what he said about the fact that during ‘Canadian Islamic History Month’, they did a show about the Prophet Mohammad:
“How do we build community by presenting the history of Mohammed by two non believers?’
And, there you have it. Denying someone their right to speak their mind, because they do (or do not) belong to a specific religious group.
In my opinion, by making that statement, Mr. Crosier had himself breeched Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Code – but because his beliefs and views are in in agreement with those of the current elites, in whose hands the control over Human Rights issues lie, he will never be prosecuted or in any way punished for breaking the law. We have seen it before…
Because this ‘creeping censorship’ is not about changing behaviour – it is about changing peoples’ beliefs!
It is not enough to obey, you must also LOVE big brother!
No, this is not some sort of a perversion of the ‘One Laptop per Child’ initiative – a very positive effort to help fight poverty in developing nations by placing education within the reach of each and every child, and which I wrote about here.
Instead, one Kalashnikov rifle is the price Osama bin Laden paid for each one of the child slaves he purchased to work on his marijuana farm in Sudan. Think about that next time someone offers you a toke.
You can read more in FrontPageMagazine’s story, ‘Child Slavery in the Sudan’ by Stephen Brown. The callousness and lack of empathy of the slavers is difficult to comprehend.
So, how could it be that today, slavery could still be practiced so openly?
I suppose we can thank the ‘desert religions’ and their ‘holy texts’ for this!
Please, do not misunderstand me – most Christians, Jews and Muslims today unequivocally condemn the practice of slavery. Francis Bok even says that he could only escape his slavery because a Muslim family which disapproved of slavery helped him!
Yet, Christian, Jewish and Muslim ‘holy books’ not only permit slavery, they describe the rules of how it should be practiced. And, because ‘it is permitted by God’, many people justify the practice today.
Exodus 21:7-8: “And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do. If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her.”
If you are confused by the term ‘maidservant’, note that someone is sold to become one. (Just keep this in mind when reading other bits of the Bible, and the word ‘maidservant’ is used.) And, we know what ‘bethroher her to himself’ means…
The Society’s ‘Biblically Correct’ pamphlet on how to treat rape victims is no less informative:
Deuteronomy 22:28-29: If a man find a damsel [that is] a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty [shekels] of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.
Note that it is her father who gets the fifty shekels. The rape victim herself is not even worthy to receive monetary damages.
In other words, the rapist has just bought himself a ‘wife’ by paying her father 50 sheckles. And, she becomes her rapist’s ‘wife’!
But there is more – here is explicit command to obey one’s owner– especially if one’s owner is also a Christian!
1 Tim. 6:1-2: “Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honour, that the name of God and [his] doctrine be not blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise [them], because they are brethren; but rather do [them] service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort.”
My point is not that the slavers in this story are Muslims – there are all kinds of slavers in the world today, both religious and secular. However, it seems that feeling justified in owning (and abusing) other humans who are enslaved, feeling righteous in this practice, truly believing that one has the right to oppress others because it pleases God – that is a monstrous mindset.
Yet, it is this very mindset which is at the root of both slavery and the imposition of religious law onto secular society. Whether it be the medieval Inquisition or modern-day Sharia – the mindset is the same. People feel justified in committing atrocities because they truly and honestly believe this is the will of one God or another…
That is why it is essential that we do not allow our secular laws to become increasingly accomodating of religious laws or even religious sensitivities! That is why we must fight against the creeping of religious rules – ALL religious rules – into governing the behaviour (and speech) of the people in our society!
The best way to make this world a better place for everyone, in my never-humble-opinion, is to make good education so accessible, everyone gets some.
The more, the better. Why?
It may be naive on my part, but I have always thought that many injustices throughout the world are not opposed because it simply does not occur to people that they could be opposed. One good thing that results from education is the broadening of one’s perspectives, learning about different places where things are done differently, and the realization that it is possible to ‘question stuff’…
Education also teaches us how to reason. It does not matter what we are learning, we cannot escape acquiring some formal reasoning when we ‘learn stuff’. That is also good.
But, perhaps one of the best reasons for making education available to everyone is that it will open horizons for kids and open up possibilities for them that they never dreamt of before.
That is why I think that efforts like ‘One Laptop per Child’ are so important – and why every child, male or female, should become educated.
But many people question how children would benefit from simply having an internet-connected laptop. What would they do with one? How would they learn? Many of them do not even speak English – or any of the other languages dominating the internet! What use would such a computer be to them?
A little while ago, one of my sons came across an interesting article about a brilliant study done by a physicist named Sugata Mitra in New Delhi, India. It was called ‘Hole in the Wall’:
An Indian physicist puts a PC with a high speed internet connection in a wall in the slums and watches what happens. Based on the results, he talks about issues of digital divide, computer education and kids, the dynamics of the third world getting online.
The results were brilliant! The computer, connected to high-speed internet, had a touch-screen interface. It ‘mysteriously’ appeared, cemented into a wall, in a New Delhi slum… no instructions, no manual, no rules, no help. What happened next was, well, enlightening!
What he discovered was that the most avid users of the machine were ghetto kids aged 6 to 12, most of whom have only the most rudimentary education and little knowledge of English. Yet within days, the kids had taught themselves to draw on the computer and to browse the Net. Some of the other things they learned, Mitra says, astonished him.
If you have the time to read the whole interview with Dr. Mitra, I would greatly suggest it. If not, here are some of the highlights:
Children aged 6-12 were the most avid users of the computer
without any instruction, they taught themselves to use a paint program and to access sites with games
Dr. Mitra played an mp3 file for them – a capability of the computer that had not occurred to them. In several days, Dr. Mitra says, they knew enough about mp3 files and music online ‘he could have learned a thing or two from them’.
If children think something is worth learning, it is not necessary to use formal instruction (expensive in the developing countries) to teach kids – instead, it ought to build on knowledge kids can self-teach
But there was more to Dr. Mitra’s curiosity…he wondered how effective self-directed learning would be in more formal subjects…like, say, physics…
Well, I tried another experiment. I went to a middle-class school and chose some ninth graders, two girls and two boys. I called their physics teacher in and asked him, “What are you going to teach these children next year at this time?” He mentioned viscosity. I asked him to write down five possible exam questions on the subject. I then took the four children and said, “Look here guys. I have a little problem for you.” They read the questions and said they didn’t understand them, it was Greek to them. So I said, “Here’s a terminal. I’ll give you two hours to find the answers.”
Then I did my usual thing: I closed the door and went off somewhere else.
They answered all five questions in two hours. The physics teacher checked the answers, and they were correct. That, of itself, doesn’t mean much. But I said to him, “Talk to the children and find out if they really learned something about this subject.” So he spent half an hour talking to them. He came out and said, “They don’t know everything about this subject or everything I would teach them. But they do know one hell of a lot about it. And they know a couple of things about it I didn’t know.”
That’s not a wow for the children, it’s a wow for the Internet. It shows you what it’s capable of. The slum children don’t have physics teachers. But if I could make them curious enough, then all the content they need is out there. The greatest expert on earth on viscosity probably has his papers up there on the Web somewhere. Creating content is not what’s important. What is important is infrastructure and access … The teacher’s job is very simple. It’s to help the children ask the right questions.
This makes so much sense!
And, please, consider that many universities and colleges have started putting their undergraduate courses online – accessible for free!!!
Here are some examples: MIT Open Courseware, Carnegie Mellon open learning initiative, John Hopkins open courseware, and many, many more!!! So, with a laptop, an internet connection and a healthy dose of curiosity and desire, a kid in Africa or Sri Lanka or anywhere else in the world can access world-class education. There is still the question of accreditation, but that is only necessary to getting a job – not to actually using the education on their own!
Just think how empowering it would be for young people, all over the world, to gain access to this kind of education! If Dr. Mitra is correct, then self-directed learning is the most effective way to educate our children. So, let us put the tools into their hands – and let’s watch them grow!
Of course, education is not the answer to ending oppression – but it is an important step. It is much more difficult to oppress a society of people who are well educated and internet literate than it is to control people who don’t know how to call out for help!
It is inconcievable that a 13-year old should be publically executed.
It is unthinkable to stone a woman to death for the ‘crime’ of having been raped.
My mind is having incredible difficulty wrapping itself around the fact that both of these happened to the same person – Aisha Ibrahim Dhuhulow!
What happened to this child is outrageous, and inexcusable and we must all work hard to make sure it never happens again! And the way Aisha’s execution (can it even be called ‘execution’ when we are talking about a 13-year-old child?) is being reported – that is a crime in itself!
Just in case you are not familiar with this child’s suffering and murder, I wrote about it earlier. She had been gang-raped, and when she sought ‘justice’ by filing a complaint with the police, she found out the hard way that her town had just come under ‘Sharia law’. Her complaint menant that she was ‘admitting’ to have ‘engaged in extramarital sexual inercourse’, and that ‘justice’ demands that she be stoned to death…
Sharia is NOT an acceptable ‘law’ for any human being to be subjected to! (Pay attention, all Brit readers, you have recently stripped human rights from a group of your own citizens, living in Britain – including a friend of mine – their only crime was being a Muslima!!! Every single one of you should be ashamed of yourselves, until you get this abomination overturned!)
So, let us hear what life under Shari REALLY is…
How could it happen that the ‘legal courts’ would think that a 13-year-old can even ‘commit adultery’? A ‘child’ can be abused by someone, but she cannot ‘commit adultery’! Only an adult woman can ‘commit adultery’ – and then, only if she consents to a sexual act.
How can it be that under Sharia, a 13-year-old would be considered ‘adult woman’? Is this just some sort of a mistake? Or, is it that under Sharia, it is perfectly legal for 13-year-old children to be ‘wives’??? After all, some ‘western’ reports called her ‘MRS. Aisha Dhuhuluw’…
So, what exactly is this ‘baby-wife’ ‘special case’?
But, that was a Christian’s interpretation. He could be ‘twisting’ Islam… To be fair, we should listen to what Islamic experts on marriage have to say on this topic:
Of course, this is only happening in the ‘far away’ countries ‘nobody cares about’!!!! Right??? Oh, yes – and Britain – because Britain has instituted Sharia ‘law’ for British Muslims as the legal code for such things as ‘family law’ – which includes ‘marriages’.
Here is what ‘marriage’ under ‘Sharia’ is like, from the child-wife’s point of view:
IF you are one of those sick enlightened people who think it’s OK for women in ‘far away’ places to suffer – and, please, do NOT count me among these people – then think again:
Far from being slowly but surely eradicated – these ‘Sharia attitudes’ are NOT the norm in fewer and fewer places…. To the contrary! They are spreading, as Islamists (NOT respectable Muslims, but Islamists) spread their hateful and opressive ways throughout the world.
It is up to us, the adults, to protect our children. All our children. It is too late for Aisha Ibrahim Dhuhulow – but it is not too late to save others from Aisha’s fate! If Sharia ‘law’ permits THIS to happen to children, then it is up to every single one of us to oppose this abomination perversely called Sharia ‘Law’!
Update: The people who committed this crime against Aisha may have largely been funded by Brits!
All right, we’ve all heard the gripes about how ‘things’ are distorted and what ‘gets reported’ is not always a factual, unbiased account of the events. But this, this has got to be some of the most bizzare collection of distortions I have seen so far.
Or, at least, that I am aware that I have seen…
As far as I can piece this together (and I am NOT certain of the complete facts), it would appear that 13-year-old girl-child, Aisha Ibrahim Dhuhulow, was gang-raped. She went to register the crime with the courts, presumably expecting the police to find and arrest her rapists.
However, last August, Aisha’s home town of Kismayo – a port in Southern Somalia – had been taken over by Islamist forces and Sharia law had been imposed. When the child came to file her complaint with the police, she was asked ‘if she is sure this is what really happened’. Aisha confirmed that she had, in fact, been gang-raped and asked for justice.
This last bit came back to haunt her, her family, and anyone with a conscience! At this ‘admission of engaging in extramarital sexual intercourse’ and ‘demands to be punished’, the police officials had ‘no choice’ but to arrest her. The ‘Sharia Court’ (if you can call it a court) had heard the case and had ‘no choice’ but to sentence her to death by stoning. After all, she herself ‘freely admitted her guilt’ and ‘demanded justice to be done’!!!
Dressed in black, with a green veil (green – the colour of Islam and peace), she was brought into a large stadium filled with about 1000 people. Reporters, based on her ‘appearance’, guessed her age to be about 23 yearsof age, were forbidden to use their cameras, but radio broadcasts were permitted.
Here, the child was bound hand and foot and – while screaming and pleading for her life – Aisha was buried up to her neck in a hole in the ground.
It would appear that the crowd – or at least some of the people within the crowd – tried to intervene and save the unfortunate child. The ‘guards’ opened fire on the crowd, shooting a child dead.
50 men then started to throw stones at Aisha’s head (the only part of her above ground). When they thought she was dead, they dug her up – but a check showed she was still alive, so they burried her again and continued to throw stones at her. They had dug Aisha up 3 times to check if she is dead yet….and then burried her again to stone her some more…
Her family is distrought and angry. Her father confirmed her age to be 13 years.
This, in itself, is a horrible story. It is a nightmare!
I truly don’t know if there are words strong enough to express my anger and outrage!
But, it would appear, my reaction is not all that usual. At least, if one were to go by what is being said in the many ‘official’ reports of Aisha’s suffering and murder lawbreaking and execution.
MOGADISHU (AFP) — Thousands of people gathered Monday to witness 50 Somali men stone a woman to death after an Islamic court in the southern port of Kismayo found her guilty of adultery, witnesses said.
Aisho Ibrahim Dhuhulow, who had been found guilty of extra-marital intercourse was buried in the ground up to her neck while the men pelted her head with rocks.
“Our sister Aisha asked the Islamic Sharia court in Kismayo to be charged and punished for the crime she committed,” local Islamist leader Sheikh Hayakallah told the crowd.
“She admitted in front of the court to engaging in adulterous sexual intercourse,” he added.
“She was asked several times to review her confession but she stressed that she wanted Sharia law and the deserved punishment to apply.”
The execution was carried in one of the city’s main squares.
…
Did you notice the mention of the fact she was a rape victim? No, because this was not mentioned. But you might have noticed how her ‘demand for justice’ was explained by the local Islamist leader Sheikh Hayakallah!!!
Good reporting, AFP, making sure we hear the ‘proper’ side of the story! Good reporting, AFP, for ‘digging for the details of what really happened there’! Bang-up job, you are doning! Truly!
But they are not the only ones reporting on this murder of Aisha along these lines…
Surely, that ‘most extreme-right-wing-media outlet’, Fox News, will have done a bit of digging around to find out what was happening, right? If so, it was not mentioned in their article, ‘Somali woman stoned to death for adultery’!
No verification with her family, or Amnesty International, which also seems to have had no trouble learning Aisha’s true age – 13, not the 23 admittedly arrived at by a reporter’s ‘guess’….
No explanation that the ‘adultery’ in question consisted of being gang-raped….
WHAT THE F$*&Q^#$*&!!!!!!
How about other sources?
The ‘neutral’ and award winning Sky News reported: ‘Cheating’ woman stoned to death. I suppose the ‘Cheating’ – being in quotation marks – constitutes ‘neutrality’ (also in quotation marks). And, they do report that while the officials explained she demanded this punishment herself (!), they do quote witnesses that heard her scream and saw her struggle….and they hint that only the guns of the guards – who killed a child in the process – kept the crowd from freeing poor Aisha. But, not the correct age, not a peep about the fact that she had been the victim of rape….except those quotation marks around ‘cheating’, that is…
It is a most fun day – kids (young and old) plan fun costumes for weeks and decorate their houses. Yet, the ‘Politically Correcet Creeps’ have started casting their shadow over even this innocent fun.
Children are discouraged (or actively forbidden) from wearing costumes, Halloween-related activities are not happening, the spark of joy is being choked out of yet another beautiful tradition.
Why?
Because, we are told, some ‘Wiccans may be offended because it is a religious holiday for them’….
Well, I know many active Wiccans – and every single one of them is offended that Halloweeen should be replaced by ‘black and orange day’!!! It may be a cross-quarter day – but the fun festivities and celebrations that everyone partakes in according to their taste and likes enriches the holiday experience for everyone, not takes away from it – in the eyes of Wiccans.
After all, it is not a religious holiday for others, so why should it bother Wiccans how they celebrate it? They’re happy people are finding time to have a little fun, because Wicca teaches that joy and sharing and finding pleasure in the ‘big and little things’ is a very important part of life!
‘Sanitizing’ all forms of fun – THAT is offensive!
Deciding FOR the Wiccans that they ‘ought to’ be offended – then censoring everyone else to spare them this offence –THAT is offensive!
Sorry, I just loose it when I see bullies, banning and censoring everyone around them, claiming to do it ‘on behalf of’ someone else….without actually caring what that ‘other one’ thinks, because it really is just a convenient vehicle to drive their own agenda and nothing else… Ok, so I don’t like bullies in any shape or form…and people who bully others and are not even aware they are doing it (or try to dress the bullying up so that they hope you will not realize you are being bullied) – well, they drive me mad.
So, what about other reasons being used to sour this sweet holiday?
Bad nutrition…. Yeah, pull the other one!
My kids LOVE ‘getting’ candy on Halloween! It is fun, exciting and they spend hours with their friends trading this tid-bit for that one…. and, I usually throw 90% of it out during Christmass cleaning… I honestly don’t know anyone who actually eats ALL the Halloween candy and chips they get!
Though, I have seen many kids donate sealed ‘semi-nutritious’ snacks to their schools’ ‘forgotten lunch pantry’ – where kids who forget their lunch can get someting to tide them over. And, since my older son is too old to trick-or-treat, but he does walk his brother through the neighbourhood for safety, my younger son automatically splits his loot between them when they get home! So, in effect, getting rid of ‘trick-or-treating’ is going to reduce our kid’s ability to be charitable and sharing, from things that are their own. ‘Wonderful’ lesson…
Oh, but costumes are too expensive for some families.
OK, here is what I paid for my son’s costume: $1.99 for face paints (Enough for a few kids’ faces), $2.00 for 2m of fabric (bought on sale at a fabric store for $1.00/m). $0.99 for an elastic waistband. That’s it. I already owned some thread, a needle, some scissors…. And, some years in the past, we used ‘outgrown clothes’ for materials to make the costumes out of. One year, we made a fancy cape by ‘borrowing’ a tablecloth and 2 pillows….once through the wash, all were ‘good as new’!
Plus, sewing costumes is ‘OK’ for boys, as well as girls! So, now my boys have acquired a skill… not that they boast of it. But, they HAVE it!
My first Halloween in Canada (I was too old to ‘trick-or-treat’, but a few of us dressed up to chaperone my friend’s younger brother as he went around. I was MOST impressed that my friend’s step-mom had also dressed up – and unabashedly had fun! That was most excellent – it was OK to be silly!
I had a ball! But, my family was VERY short of cash then….so I had to borrow some makeup (my friend’s step-mom had fun ‘doing me up) and I used our curtains and drapes to make a ‘fancy ghostly gown’ for an evening, uning clips (no cutting, no sewing, no pin-holes allowed)! Cost? $0.00. Fun? 100%!
Which brings me to the last major objection: immigrants might be unfamiliar and alienated.
As an immigrant, who was completely unfamiliar with this Halloween custom prior to arriving in Canada, let me put these fears to rest. THEY ARE NONSENCE!
Halloween was EXCELLENT for me! By teaching me about it, and helping me get my costume together, I got WAY closer to the people who would eventually grow to be my friends! It was ‘an opening’ to talk to me – an opportunity to talk about more than just math homework… My classmates felt good telling me all about Halloween. Doing this, they were including me – all the while they were proud to show off this most fun holiday – and now I was PART of ‘IT’!
It was just what was needed for this awkward, shy immigrant kid was to no longer just keep her head burried in a textbook and watch everyone from the sidelines – people MADE me PART of the celebrations! I had fun!
I truly felt included!
If anything, NOT celebrating Halloween will REDUCE the oppotunities for newly arrived immigrants to socialize, to make friends, to successfully integrate! And it will suck another bit of enjoyment out of living…
So, what do I have to say to those who would erode yet another cultural icon?
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 