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Since we all agree with ourselves…

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A remarkably narrow-minded and short-sighted editorial in the Ottawa Citizen on that Unicef report mentioned here yesterday. I especially take issue with this bit:

The time for ideological debates are long past. Most parents of young children are in the workforce and they need and deserve high quality, accessible daycare. UNICEF has usefully reminded us that such a system does not currently exist in Canada.

The time for ideological debates rarely goes away. On most subjects there is usually room to disagree and argue on an ongoing basis. I would think child care is very much among those. And the fact that “most parents of young children are in the workforce” is not a reason to stop wondering whether that’s a good thing. Quite the contrary.

Unclear on the concept

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A review of 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days:

In Romania, under the Ceausescu regime, abortion was banned, and within 20 years some half a million women had died from having botched illegal abortions. This severe thriller from writer-director Christian Mungiu focuses on Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), a pregnant college student, and her friend Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), who finds a man who’ll do the job: a quietly thuggish fellow who calls himself Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov). Remorseless long takes build the suspense as the young women secure a hotel room and, when Bebe explains how they’ll have to pay, question whether it’s worth the price. Strap yourself in for this minimalist, splendidly acted horror film — and count your blessings that you live in a country where choosing an abortion doesn’t mean losing a life.

So right. We live in a country where choosing an abortion means choosing a choice. It’s way better.

Gosh, what a surprise

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Put this one in your “who’d a tunk it” folder. Unicef (the well-known right-wing reactionary outfit) has just released a report saying long hours of formal, institutional child care is detrimental to very young children. Actually, I’m semi-impressed. That Unicef would have the guts to put that sort of thing in print is most commendable. Among other things, it “recommends that all children should where possible be cared for by parents at home during the first 12 months of life.” I especially love this part of the story:

The report has been published at a key point in the childcare debate. Children born today into the rich world are part of the first generation in which a majority will spend a large part of their early childhood in childcare. In Britain about 80 per cent of those aged 3 to 6 are now in some form of formal childcare or education. For those under 3, the proportion is now 25 per cent.

In part, this reflects new opportunities for women to be employed outside the home. But it also reflects new pressures, particularly on the poorest, to return to work as soon as possible after a birth – often to low-paid jobs.

The report notes that high-quality formal childcare can bring huge benefits to children, particularly those from disadvantaged homes, expanding their social and cognitive development and providing them with stimulation that they might not get at home.

But it cites research from Britain and the US suggesting that children who spend too long in formal childcare at too young an age may suffer from long-term effects, including behavioural problems, aggression, antisocial behaviour, depression and an inability to concentrate – although the effects are thought to be relatively small.

Although the effects are thought to be relatively small… You wonder, sometimes, what it would take for some people to get it. This business of sticking very young children – babies – in institutional daycare for many long hours every day of the week is a new and dangerous experiment that goes against everything Mother Nature tells us. But hey, what the heck, effects like antisocial behaviour and aggression and an inability to concentrate “are throught to be relatively small” so who cares! We’ve got jobs to get to, here! Real, meaningful jobs, mark you, not something dull and mindless like looking after our very own babies.

I wonder what Jack Layton will have to say about this report… Think he’ll change his mind about the need for a national child care program? Nah, me neither.

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Tanya remarks: “But it also reflects new pressures, particularly on the poorest, to return to work as soon as possible after a birth – often to low-paid jobs.”

Childcare at seven bucks a day in Quebec; you better believe some women feel an absolute obligation to place their tots in daycare and go back to the less than $30K/year job they very likely dislike. It’s not a choice anymore. Women constantly have to fight for their right to stay home with their children. Go women’s lib!

Oh dear, which one wins?

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Reproductive choice or environmentalism? How does a progressive mind choose between the two? Another news story about the effects of hormones on males:

Half the male fish in British lowland rivers have been found to be developing eggs in their testes; in some stretches all male roaches have been found to be changing sex in this way. Female hormones – largely from the contraceptive pills which pass unaltered through sewage treatment – are partly responsible, while more than three-quarters of sewage works have been found also to be discharging demasculinising man-made chemicals. Feminising effects have now been discovered in a host of freshwater fish species as far away as Japan and Benin, in Africa, and in sea fish in the North Sea, the Mediterranean, Osaka Bay in Japan and Puget Sound on the US west coast.

There are many bad things in the environment besides female hormones from contraceptive pills. If you read the whole story, you’ll find lots to be afraid of. But my question remains: If the choice is between continuing the use the Pill and demasculinizing fish, which one will we choose?

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Andrea corrects Brigitte: Oh dear, Brigitte, you should know this by now. “Women’s rights”, especially “women’s reproductive rights”, no matter how broadly or narrowly defined are THE trump card. Of course they win. The fish don’t stand a chance. (Unless this damages female fish too. In which case, this remains an open question. Hmmmm.)

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Rebecca is enlightened enough to realize there is no problem, since gender is a social construct: if the fish were secure in their own identity and not marginalized by a phallocentric hegemonistic culture, they would not mind feminising effects.

Since someone has to make serious points…

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I just saw Quantum of Solace and I would like to say that it rocks.

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Andrea adds: I saw Mamma Mia on the plane. It was very good, but lacked the gravitas and character development of Blue Crush.

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Rebecca says: Since we’re discussing really meaty stuff, I liked QoS because I like all things Bond, but the direction gave me a headache – far too often I didn’t know who was chasing whom in the action scenes, and why I should care. And Daniel Craig chose to give Bond a decidedly non-U accent, when everyone knows British intelligence is staffed by privileged Oxbridge alums – that’s why they were so thoroughly infiltrated by Marxists.

As to Mamma Mia, I know it only from the reviews, one of which, comparing Mamma Mia and Dark Knight to the classics, is here: http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2008-07-20.shtml

It is deliciously biting, and I recommend reading it all. Here’s an excerpt:

As entertainment, as art, there is so much to love.

As a social artifact, this movie is so loathsome it almost gives me a rash. Here’s why:

I can live with all the politically correct cant: You don’t need to find your father to find yourself! I’m glad I raised my daughter alone, it was better that way. We don’t need no piece of paper from the city hall! (Oh, wait, that was Joni Mitchell — but the sentiment is there, all right.) Isn’t it cute that Colin Firth’s character turns out to be gay?

I can live with it because I’ve been numbed. But what I can’t live with is the vile hypocrisy of it. Because, while the dialogue keeps delivering punchy little slogans for the elitist anti-marriage crowd (and all the pro-marriage sentiments are uttered by a naif who, at the end, changes her mind), this movie absolutely depends, for all its emotional interest and impact, on the audience’s innate longing for love and marriage, monogamy and fidelity, babies and nuclear families with a mom and a dad.

In other words, they’re having their cake and eating it, too. This movie has no point, it does not work, without the audience’s commitment to the traditional (and, one might even say, culturally necessary) moral worldview.

And yet the movie pretends to be post-marriage and post-family.

The problem is that while coasting on tradition, Mamma Mia! is normalizing the civilizational deathwish of our current cultural elite. As a social artifact, it isn’t worth scraping off of the bottom of my shoe.”

About the religiously secular

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Oh dear, Andrea. How right you are. I’m talking about your comment to my earlier post, below, re some libertarian types who can get quite a bit religious about their non-religion. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

Maybe Tanya is right; perhaps there are only 27 people like me – folks who mostly side with the religious social conservatives on the issues but who are not religious. And are not about to be, either; I’m not areligious because I never experienced life in the Church – quite the opposite. I don’t know. But I hope not to be mistaken for a militantly secular libertarian just because I’m not religious.

I was quite excited about a week ago when I heard that a few guys were starting a new blog called Secular Right. I thought I’d found a new home; I thought they were going to discuss conservative ideas and ideals more or less like we discuss life issues here at PWPL – without justifying our positions on the Gospel. But so far, that’s not what SR is doing. They seem more intent on demonstrating that religion is somehow inferior to reason, as though the two were necessarily mutually exclusive. I find that annoying.

It doesn’t have to be that way. There ought to be some room between the oogedy-boogedy and the dry (and aggressive) libertarian brand of militant secularism.

Oh well. It’s early in the morning and I’ve got to dash out for a couple of hours, so who knows what’ll await me when I log in again this afternoon.

Happy Saturday morning, everyone. Hey, Andrea, how’s Thunder Bay?

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Andrea adds: On numbers–it could just be me, but my world has always been made up of vast numbers of secular conservatives/libertarians, making very clever comparisons between those who oh, say, support traditional marriage and racists in the deep south. (No word of a lie–wow did I ever wish I was somewhere else for that particular luncheon.) I tell ya–I got stories. (And back to the Super Annoying Religious Christian–Brigitte, most people are areligious because they have an experience with the church, not because they never went. Back in the day, I do believe it was those sitting in the pews who convinced me that I didn’t want to.)

Oogedy-boogediness

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The things you learn. For instance, that there is such a thing as a “bloxicon”. Cute.

This here is the latest in one branch of the “whither conservatism” debate (call it the G-D subdebate). It may be me, but I’m having some trouble following her argument. Seems to be going back and forth a bit, without ever coming out and saying simply what seems to be her point: That religious zealots make her skin crawl. (The closest she gets is: “It isn’t so much God causing the GOP problems; it’s his fan club.”)

I know how it’s like. A lot of them make mine do exactly that, as I’ve explained before. I’m not against religion, but I tend not to associate with those who can’t resist talking about it even when religion isn’t anywhere near the subject at hand. I don’t mind sharing a political philosophy with the religious, not one bit. But it’s true that some of them aren’t always helping the cause with their presentation (sort of like Stéphane Dion that way).

But here’s the thing I don’t get: If, say, the GOP (or here, the Tories) did shed their oogedy-boogedy types, but kept conservatives who, like me, do not use religion to explain their position on social policy, would it really make these parties more acceptable to more moderate voters? I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure pro-choicers don’t care why I’m against abortion. They only care that I’m against abortion.

Yes, religion is here to stay. So are the religious, whether I like them or not. I can’t keep them out of my political philosophy, and they sure can’t exclude me either. We just have to learn to co-exist nicely. Find common grounds (for instance: it’s wrong to terminate the lives of innocent and vulnerable beings not just because life is a gift from God but because no society where the weak and innocent aren’t protected can call itself civilized) and move from there.

Wouldn’t that be more useful than arguing over which one of us has the best neologism for the bloxicon?

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Andrea adds: I’ve had my fair share of run ins with overzealous Christians, to be sure. (My favourite was on campus, when a girl sat down next to me and asked me if I was Christian. I said yes. She said, really? And proceeded with her spiel anyway. One thing worse than someone trying to convert you is someone testing you because they don’t believe you are already converted… But I digress.) In my experience, secular libertarians aren’t always exactly hootin’ hollering fun. They feel absolutely zero impetus to clamp down on the God is Dead rhetoric—and what with the zeitgeist being on their side and all, continue through by making progressively more idiotic comparisons between God and Santa Claus, fairy tales, imaginary friends, religion is bad/manipulative for children! Bla bla bla. You can often barely get a word in, not even to slide in an excuse to get away, say to the loo. We have to get over it. People are people. And there are strange ones on every team.

That was a long-winded way of saying yes, we do all have to get along.

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Tanya chuckles a little: But see, Brigitte, the thing is that you’re a minority here. A non-religious conservative? What are there, like 27 of you?

I agree that it’s hardest of all to get along with the oogedy-boogedy ones, but there are a heck of alot of them. I’ve been referred to as oogedy-boogedy myself a few times…what can you do? Stick to your guns and try to come off less creepy next time, I guess. (But, alas, one man’s creepy is another man’s…you get the gist of it.)

Duh, what’s going on?

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Please forgive the recent hiatus. I was busy plotting birthday parties (there’s triple-chocolate cheesecake involved, is all I can say) and – oh yeah – getting some work done. You know. Work. The kind that helps pay the bills.

Anyway.

I haven’t had much time or energy to pay attention to the ongoing Parliament Hill saga. Apparently, there’s talk of a coalition to replace the Tories. Unless of course enough people wake up in time and realize Stephen Harper has managed, once again, to trap his hapless opponents. I don’t particularly like Mr. Harper. But I sure don’t believe he’d be dumb enough to get himself trapped by Messrs. Dion and Co.

Re-anyway. I am not particularly upset by any of this. For one thing, it’s not exactly surprising (not even the part where the Bloc gets to play a major supporting role; all parties have explored similar possibilities). And whether it happens or not, things aren’t likely to change. The only kind of government this country ever gets is the socially liberal, big spending kind. There isn’t one political party that speaks to me. Not one. But they all want to reach into my wallet to pay for things I don’t like – yes, very much including the Tories, who spend more these days than anybody ever did.

Seriously; is there any reason for someone like me to care one way or the other? I’m having real trouble thinking of any, but I’d like to know what our readers have to say.

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Andrea adds: I’m a “reader” of sorts. Read this blog religiously, actually. Mostly looking for typos and such, spiffing it up here and there… anyhoo. Never miss a chance to express your opinion, I say.

I care because while Harper didn’t prove to be small-c conservative at all, there’s not an economy out there that the NDP didn’t successfully tank. They have a proven track record, so to speak. That leaves me concerned for all kinds of things–but mostly for the poor, those living on the margins, those who lose their jobs and are left with nothing but an NDP-sponsored government handout. My second point: Harper caused this (I recently mused whether youthful inexperience is actually a hiring requirement in the PMO). But is the removal of government subsidies for parties–a firing offence? Not sure.

Why you should continue not to care–on the other hand. Because this will all come to an election sooner or later. Carry on with your cheesecake (sounds delicious). (And paying work. I’ve heard of that. Gotta go.)

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Rebecca adds: I am also having trouble caring, which is unusual given my politics junkie status. Frankly I don’t like any of the players very much right now. Duceppe is the only one actually representing the interests of his constituency; I guess it’s our loss that Canada isn’t part of his constituency.

I’m chiefly curious to find out how much of this is part of a Rovian Grand Plan by Harper, and how much is wild flailing. A lawyer of whom I’m fond (they do exist) is of the opinion that “Harper speared himself, is frantically trying to pull out the harpoon, and may take constitutional democracy down with him.” I’ve also heard from people much more plugged in than I am that this has been in the offing since well before the October 14th election, which wouldn’t surprise me – as Brigitte says, all political parties scheme this way – but does mean that Harper’s real error was in giving the clowns an opening, not in committing some offense so grave that the three parties united to restore harmony, balance and Coke in the water fountains.

The larger lesson here, one of them anyway, is that minority governments are awful, and coalitions are worse. With the rise of the BQ and the Greens, they might be here to stay, and if (ftu ftu ftu) there’s another conservative schism, we’ll be permanently consigned to the ranks of unstable democracies that hold election every 18 months, like Israel and Italy.

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