Remembering Sam Francis — He’s Been Gone a Decade

Remembering Sam Francis — He’s Been Gone a Decade
by Gerry T. Neal

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2015

Remembering a Philosopher-King


It has long been recognized that there are two ways in which civilization can break down into barbaric conditions. The rule of law can collapse altogether leaving ordinary citizens powerless against the criminal elements that now call the shorts. This is called anarchy. Or the state can become intrusive and controlling, curtailing its people’s freedoms, dictating their everyday decisions, and ruling by sheer force in an atmosphere of fear. This is called tyranny. It has also long been recognized that there is a cyclical pattern to the rise and fall of civilizations in which after civilization breaks down into one of these conditions for a period, the other emerges in response, and eventually a new civilization is born out of the rubble.

What if, however, civilization were to break down in both ways simultaneously and the same state was to fail in providing the basic protection of the law on the one hand, while tyrannically harassing and abusing its people on the other? Twenty years ago one of the greatest American political thinkers of the last half of the twentieth century saw this happening in the United States and all around the Western world and coined a term to describe it – anarchotyranny, the synthesis of anarchy and tyranny. On February 15th, ten years ago, he passed away due to complications following heart surgery at the age of 57. His name was Sam Francis.

 
 
'Remembering Sam Francis -- He's Been Gone a Decade

by Gerry T. Neal
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2015
Remembering a Philosopher-King

It has long been recognized that there are two ways in which civilization can break down into barbaric conditions. The rule of law can collapse altogether leaving ordinary citizens powerless against the criminal elements that now call the shorts. This is called anarchy. Or the state can become intrusive and controlling, curtailing its people’s freedoms, dictating their everyday decisions, and ruling by sheer force in an atmosphere of fear. This is called tyranny. It has also long been recognized that there is a cyclical pattern to the rise and fall of civilizations in which after civilization breaks down into one of these conditions for a period, the other emerges in response, and eventually a new civilization is born out of the rubble.

What if, however, civilization were to break down in both ways simultaneously and the same state was to fail in providing the basic protection of the law on the one hand, while tyrannically harassing and abusing its people on the other? Twenty years ago one of the greatest American political thinkers of the last half of the twentieth century saw this happening in the United States and all around the Western world and coined a term to describe it – anarchotyranny, the synthesis of anarchy and tyranny. On February 15th, ten years ago, he passed away due to complications following heart surgery at the age of 57. His name was Sam Francis.

Sam Francis was far more than just the man who thought up a clever name for this phenomenon – he was also its chief chronicler, analyst, and critic. In his twice-weekly column, syndicated by Creators but carried by far fewer newspapers than it ought to have been for reasons we will shortly get into, he provided a bold, uncompromising, commentary, expressed in a dry, sardonic wit that was perfectly complemented by the way he seemed to look out at you with amused disdain through his heavy glasses in the publicity photo attached to his column, on the news and issues of the day and the narrative beneath the news and issues – the ongoing war being waged by those presently in power in the West and particularly in the United States on the traditions, cultures, symbols, and ways of life of Western peoples. Nor did he shy away from addressing the taboo aspect of this subject, the racial element.

Dr. Samuel Todd Francis was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee on April 29, 1947, and it was in Chattanooga that he was raised and where as a young prodigy his literary talents and brilliant mind first gained attention. It was also in the Scenic City, under the Appalachian mountains, that we was finally laid to rest in 2005. He studied English literature at John Hopkins University in Baltimore before taking his Ph.D in history from the University of North Carolina. 

It was at Chapel Hill that he became acquainted with two of his fellow students, the classicist Thomas Fleming and the historian Clyde Wilson. These men would become his lifelong colleagues. They worked together on the Southern Partisan, a conservative quarterly that was started up in the late 1970s in the spirit of the Vanderbilt Agrarians. Each contributed to The New Right Papers, a 1982 anthology put together by Robert W. Whitaker. Their most significant collaboration however was in Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, founded by Leopold Tyrmand in 1976 and published by the Rockford Institute of Rockford, Illinois. Thomas Fleming became the editor of Chroniclesfollowing Tyrmand’s death in 1985. Clyde Wilson is an associate editor, and until his passing Sam Francis was the magazine’s Washington or political editor. Under the direction of these men Chronicles became the flagship publication of paleoconservatism which, in opposition to the neoconservatives who were calling for a Pax Americana, a new world order in which the United States would use its military might to export liberal, capitalist, democracy to the farthest parts of the globe, called American conservatism back to its roots in the Burkean traditionalism of Russell Kirk and the small-r republicanism of the American Old Right that had opposed the New Deal, American entanglement in foreign conflicts, and the development of the “welfare-warfare state”. This was very much bucking the trend in the larger American conservative movement. As the neoconservative viewpoint came to increasingly dominate the movement, conservative writers who having opposed mass, demographics-altering, immigration, both legal and illegal, criticized Israel and objected to America’s being drawn into wars in the Middle East on her behalf, called for a rollback of the American federal government to its constitutional limits, refused to concede the victories of liberalism in the culture wars, and otherwise offended the neoconservatives, found themselves exiled from the pages of National Review and other mainstream conservative publications.Chronicles became a place of sanctuary for these writers. By the middle of the 1990s it was a sanctuary Dr. Francis was himself in need of.

Up to that point his career as a thinker within the American conservative movement had been quite successful. It had three basic stages. In 1977 he joined the Heritage Foundation, a Washington D. C. think tank that had been founded four years earlier by New Right activist Paul Weyrich and Edwin Feulner with money put up by beer baron Joseph Coors. Dr. Francis was hired as a policy analyst in the fields of intelligence and security, particularly with regards to the threat of terrorism as a strategy employed by the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

In 1981, following the publication of his The Soviet Strategy of Terror, he left the Heritage Foundation to take a position as legislative assistant to Senator John P. East, R-North Carolina. It was as an expert on national security matters that he was hired to this position but, interestingly, in the course of his work for East he was called upon to write a document that both required this expertise yet also had to do with the cultural and racial concerns on which his later, and lasting, fame rests. In 1983, US President Ronald Reagan signed into law a bill that made the third Monday in January into an American national holiday in honour of Martin Luther King Jr. The bill had been hotly debated, and leading the opposition to the holiday was the other Republican Senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms. Senator East worked closely with his colleague and mentor in the campaign against this ridiculous holiday and on October 3, 1983, Helms read out in Congress a paper written by Dr. Francis that documented King’s collaboration with Soviet agents and Communist fronts.

Dr. Francis worked for Senator East until the latter’s death in 1986 at which point he joined the staff of the Washington Times. He served the newspaper as an editorial writer, opinion columnist, and editor and it was here that his career started to really take off. His column was nationally syndicated, and his articles won him the Distinguished Writing Award in 1989 and 1990. He was runner up for another award both those years as well. Then, in 1995 all of that came to an end.

It started with his column for June 27, 1995, entitled “All Those Things to Apologize For”. Written one week after the Southern Baptist Convention issued a grovelling apology for the stance they had taken 150 years previously in the controversy over slavery that divided them from the Northern Baptists, this column pointed out that the Baptists were making a big deal about repenting for something never condemned as a sin by the Bible. “Neither Jesus nor the apostles nor the early church condemned slavery,” he wrote, “despite countless opportunities to do so, and there is no indication that slavery is contrary to Christian ethics or that any serious theologian before modern times ever thought it was”. All of this is true. Unfortunately, it is the kind of truth that people in this era cannot bear to hear.

Dr. Francis was not arguing for slavery. He was arguing against what he called a “bastardized version of Christian ethics”, that had appeared in the 18th Century and had so permeated the churches that they “now spend more time preaching against apartheid and colonialism than they do against real sins such as pinching secretaries and pilfering from the office coffee-pool.” He observed, correctly, that to read the abolitionist message into the New Testament and dismiss the passages that tell bond-servants to obey their masters as irrelevant is to undermine the authority of passages that “enjoin other social responsibilities.” These truths were especially embarrassing to the kind of Christians who, on the one hand pride themselves on the Christian roots of abolitionism, while on the other hand trying to defend what remains of traditional authority and order against the modernizing influences of those who see the abolitionist movement as the first stage in their perpetual revolution against the “slavery” of marriage, family, and traditional morality.

This embarrassment proved too much for Wesley Pruden, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief. He rebuked and demoted Dr. Francis, cut his salary, and began censoring his columns. In September of that same year, he fired Dr. Francis outright. This time it was not over something he had written in a column but something he had said in a speech the year previously. 

In May of 1994, American Renaissance, a monthly periodical devoted to matters of race, intelligence, and immigration hosted its first conference and Dr. Francis was invited to speak. He gave a message entitled “Why Race Matters”, the text of which was later published as an article in the September 1994 issue of American Renaissance. In this speech, he talked about how the culture of Western countries, especially the United States and in particular the South had come under attack, with traditional symbols being attacked, demonized, and replaced, how anti-racism was an effective strategy in a campaign being waged against the white race, how whites themselves were digging “their own racial and civilization grave” through liberalism and leftism, and that a merely cultural strategy in defence of Western civilization would not be sufficient – there needs to be conscious racial element to Western identity as well. He said:

The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the civilization can be successfully transmitted to a different people.

This is so obviously true that one wonders that it needs to be stated. Nevertheless, it was the last straw for Wesley Pruden. The way in which Pruden learned of the remark did not help matters. Dinesh D’Souza, who had attended the conference, wrote a book, The End of Racism, which was published in 1995. D’Souza’s book discussed many of the same issues American Renaissance specializes in, and often took positions similar to theirs. D’Souza was, however, a firm believer in propositional nationalism and the ideal of the United States as a “universal nation”, who objected very much to the idea of defending Western civilization in explicitly racial terms. The chapter in which he talked about the conference contained many distortions – even after D’Souza was force to rewrite the chapter when Jared Taylor andLawrence Auster, along with Dr. Francis, wrote to the publisher to complain of the many ways in which D’Souza had twisted their words. In September of 1995, at the time the book finally saw print and reviews were beginning to appear, an article by D’Souza about the American Renaissance conference appeared in the Washington Post. D’Souza selectively quoted from Dr. Francis’ speech and presented the quotes in a very unfavourable light. And so, Dr. Francis lost his job at theWashington Times.

He remained on the editorial staff of Chronicles, of course, to which he contributed each month, either his “Principalities and Powers” column or a book review or feature article. The Creators Syndicate continued to distribute his column. In the latter he offered his commentary on the news of the day and, while immigration was the issue that he most frequently addressed, he covered a broad gamut of topics, including free trade and globalization, gun control, and the erosion of civil liberties. He supported the presidential candidacies of his friend Patrick Buchanan and kept a watchful eye on the doings of those who actually made it to the White House. Scathing as his criticism of the Clinton administration was, he was no less severe in his assessment of George W. Bush. He contrasted the way in which the Bush administration had expanded its policing powers, undermining the civil liberties of Americans in the process, by means of antiterrorist legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act, with the way in which it refused to use its existing, lawful, powers to control immigration, this contrast being a classic example of anarchotyranny. In 2002 he wrote several columns against the Bush administration’s plans to invade Iraq and when that invasion took place saw his arguments more than justified. His arguments against the war were far more sane, sensible, and interesting than either the neocon arguments for the war or the blithering banalities uttered against it by the left-wing peaceniks. His final column was about George W. Bush’s second inaugural speech and it concluded by saying that Bush had “confirmed once and for all that the neo-conservatism to which he has delivered his administration and the country is fundamentally indistinguishable from the liberalism many conservatives imagine he has renounced and defeated.”

In his Chronicles column, where he had more space to work with, he discussed the same topics at a deeper level. From James Burnham, about whose ideas he had written a book, he had learned much about the nature of power and the elites who inevitably hold it, including the present elite of technocratic managers who preside over the dismantling of the traditions, culture, and civilization of Western societies and rationalize their actions with the universalistic ideology of liberalism. From liberal sociologist Donald Warren he had gleaned insights into how the alliance of the uppermost and lowermost classes in the welfare state was putting the squeeze on the middle class, radicalizing what is ordinarily the most stable of classes, and thus generating a support base that a populist movement could use against the elites. From these insights, Dr. Francis framed his argument for such a populist “revolt from the middle”, bending the cold, hard, theory of Machiavellian power politics to serve ends that was anything but cold and hard – the cause of white, middle class Americans, who were seeing everything they held dear, their culture and religion, traditions and way of life, on every level from the regional to the national, including the constitution of their republic and their habits and institutions of freedom, being mercilessly swept away by elites they seemed powerless to stop. First in the New Right that brought Ronald Reagan into power, and later in the movement that failed to deliver the presidency to Pat Buchanan, he had found movements that could potentially achieve his ends. The dilemma for which he was seeking a solution to the very end of his life, as can be seen in his last “Principalities and Powers” article entitled “Towards a Hard Right”, was how such a movement could gain success without being sidetracked from its goals by corporate globalists dangling the carrot of the free market before its eyes.'

Sam Francis was far more than just the man who thought up a clever name for this phenomenon – he was also its chief chronicler, analyst, and critic. In his twice-weekly column, syndicated by Creators but carried by far fewer newspapers than it ought to have been for reasons we will shortly get into, he provided a bold, uncompromising, commentary, expressed in a dry, sardonic wit that was perfectly complemented by the way he seemed to look out at you with amused disdain through his heavy glasses in the publicity photo attached to his column, on the news and issues of the day and the narrative beneath the news and issues – the ongoing war being waged by those presently in power in the West and particularly in the United States on the traditions, cultures, symbols, and ways of life of Western peoples. Nor did he shy away from addressing the taboo aspect of this subject, the racial element.

Dr. Samuel Todd Francis was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee on April 29, 1947, and it was in Chattanooga that he was raised and where as a young prodigy his literary talents and brilliant mind first gained attention. It was also in the Scenic City, under the Appalachian mountains, that we was finally laid to rest in 2005. He studied English literature at John Hopkins University in Baltimore before taking his Ph.D in history from the University of North Carolina.

It was at Chapel Hill that he became acquainted with two of his fellow students, the classicist Thomas Fleming and the historian Clyde Wilson. These men would become his lifelong colleagues. They worked together on the Southern Partisan, a conservative quarterly that was started up in the late 1970s in the spirit of the Vanderbilt Agrarians. Each contributed to The New Right Papers, a 1982 anthology put together by Robert W. Whitaker. Their most significant collaboration however was in Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, founded by Leopold Tyrmand in 1976 and published by the Rockford Institute of Rockford, Illinois. Thomas Fleming became the editor of Chroniclesfollowing Tyrmand’s death in 1985. Clyde Wilson is an associate editor, and until his passing Sam Francis was the magazine’s Washington or political editor. Under the direction of these men Chronicles became the flagship publication of paleoconservatism which, in opposition to the neoconservatives who were calling for a Pax Americana, a new world order in which the United States would use its military might to export liberal, capitalist, democracy to the farthest parts of the globe, called American conservatism back to its roots in the Burkean traditionalism of Russell Kirk and the small-r republicanism of the American Old Right that had opposed the New Deal, American entanglement in foreign conflicts, and the development of the “welfare-warfare state”. This was very much bucking the trend in the larger American conservative movement. As the neoconservative viewpoint came to increasingly dominate the movement, conservative writers who having opposed mass, demographics-altering, immigration, both legal and illegal, criticized Israel and objected to America’s being drawn into wars in the Middle East on her behalf, called for a rollback of the American federal government to its constitutional limits, refused to concede the victories of liberalism in the culture wars, and otherwise offended the neoconservatives, found themselves exiled from the pages of National Review and other mainstream conservative publications.Chronicles became a place of sanctuary for these writers. By the middle of the 1990s it was a sanctuary Dr. Francis was himself in need of.

Up to that point his career as a thinker within the American conservative movement had been quite successful. It had three basic stages. In 1977 he joined the Heritage Foundation, a Washington D. C. think tank that had been founded four years earlier by New Right activist Paul Weyrich and Edwin Feulner with money put up by beer baron Joseph Coors. Dr. Francis was hired as a policy analyst in the fields of intelligence and security, particularly with regards to the threat of terrorism as a strategy employed by the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

In 1981, following the publication of his The Soviet Strategy of Terror, he left the Heritage Foundation to take a position as legislative assistant to Senator John P. East, R-North Carolina. It was as an expert on national security matters that he was hired to this position but, interestingly, in the course of his work for East he was called upon to write a document that both required this expertise yet also had to do with the cultural and racial concerns on which his later, and lasting, fame rests. In 1983, US President Ronald Reagan signed into law a bill that made the third Monday in January into an American national holiday in honour of Martin Luther King Jr. The bill had been hotly debated, and leading the opposition to the holiday was the other Republican Senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms. Senator East worked closely with his colleague and mentor in the campaign against this ridiculous holiday and on October 3, 1983, Helms read out in Congress a paper written by Dr. Francis that documented King’s collaboration with Soviet agents and Communist fronts.

Dr. Francis worked for Senator East until the latter’s death in 1986 at which point he joined the staff of the Washington Times. He served the newspaper as an editorial writer, opinion columnist, and editor and it was here that his career started to really take off. His column was nationally syndicated, and his articles won him the Distinguished Writing Award in 1989 and 1990. He was runner up for another award both those years as well. Then, in 1995 all of that came to an end.

It started with his column for June 27, 1995, entitled “All Those Things to Apologize For”. Written one week after the Southern Baptist Convention issued a grovelling apology for the stance they had taken 150 years previously in the controversy over slavery that divided them from the Northern Baptists, this column pointed out that the Baptists were making a big deal about repenting for something never condemned as a sin by the Bible. “Neither Jesus nor the apostles nor the early church condemned slavery,” he wrote, “despite countless opportunities to do so, and there is no indication that slavery is contrary to Christian ethics or that any serious theologian before modern times ever thought it was”. All of this is true. Unfortunately, it is the kind of truth that people in this era cannot bear to hear.

Dr. Francis was not arguing for slavery. He was arguing against what he called a “bastardized version of Christian ethics”, that had appeared in the 18th Century and had so permeated the churches that they “now spend more time preaching against apartheid and colonialism than they do against real sins such as pinching secretaries and pilfering from the office coffee-pool.” He observed, correctly, that to read the abolitionist message into the New Testament and dismiss the passages that tell bond-servants to obey their masters as irrelevant is to undermine the authority of passages that “enjoin other social responsibilities.” These truths were especially embarrassing to the kind of Christians who, on the one hand pride themselves on the Christian roots of abolitionism, while on the other hand trying to defend what remains of traditional authority and order against the modernizing influences of those who see the abolitionist movement as the first stage in their perpetual revolution against the “slavery” of marriage, family, and traditional morality.

This embarrassment proved too much for Wesley Pruden, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief. He rebuked and demoted Dr. Francis, cut his salary, and began censoring his columns. In September of that same year, he fired Dr. Francis outright. This time it was not over something he had written in a column but something he had said in a speech the year previously.

In May of 1994, American Renaissance, a monthly periodical devoted to matters of race, intelligence, and immigration hosted its first conference and Dr. Francis was invited to speak. He gave a message entitled “Why Race Matters”, the text of which was later published as an article in the September 1994 issue of American Renaissance. In this speech, he talked about how the culture of Western countries, especially the United States and in particular the South had come under attack, with traditional symbols being attacked, demonized, and replaced, how anti-racism was an effective strategy in a campaign being waged against the white race, how whites themselves were digging “their own racial and civilization grave” through liberalism and leftism, and that a merely cultural strategy in defence of Western civilization would not be sufficient – there needs to be conscious racial element to Western identity as well. He said:

The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the civilization can be successfully transmitted to a different people.

This is so obviously true that one wonders that it needs to be stated. Nevertheless, it was the last straw for Wesley Pruden. The way in which Pruden learned of the remark did not help matters. Dinesh D’Souza, who had attended the conference, wrote a book, The End of Racism, which was published in 1995. D’Souza’s book discussed many of the same issues American Renaissance specializes in, and often took positions similar to theirs. D’Souza was, however, a firm believer in propositional nationalism and the ideal of the United States as a “universal nation”, who objected very much to the idea of defending Western civilization in explicitly racial terms. The chapter in which he talked about the conference contained many distortions – even after D’Souza was force to rewrite the chapter when Jared Taylor andLawrence Auster, along with Dr. Francis, wrote to the publisher to complain of the many ways in which D’Souza had twisted their words. In September of 1995, at the time the book finally saw print and reviews were beginning to appear, an article by D’Souza about the American Renaissance conference appeared in the Washington Post. D’Souza selectively quoted from Dr. Francis’ speech and presented the quotes in a very unfavourable light. And so, Dr. Francis lost his job at theWashington Times.

He remained on the editorial staff of Chronicles, of course, to which he contributed each month, either his “Principalities and Powers” column or a book review or feature article. The Creators Syndicate continued to distribute his column. In the latter he offered his commentary on the news of the day and, while immigration was the issue that he most frequently addressed, he covered a broad gamut of topics, including free trade and globalization, gun control, and the erosion of civil liberties. He supported the presidential candidacies of his friend Patrick Buchanan and kept a watchful eye on the doings of those who actually made it to the White House. Scathing as his criticism of the Clinton administration was, he was no less severe in his assessment of George W. Bush. He contrasted the way in which the Bush administration had expanded its policing powers, undermining the civil liberties of Americans in the process, by means of antiterrorist legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act, with the way in which it refused to use its existing, lawful, powers to control immigration, this contrast being a classic example of anarchotyranny. In 2002 he wrote several columns against the Bush administration’s plans to invade Iraq and when that invasion took place saw his arguments more than justified. His arguments against the war were far more sane, sensible, and interesting than either the neocon arguments for the war or the blithering banalities uttered against it by the left-wing peaceniks. His final column was about George W. Bush’s second inaugural speech and it concluded by saying that Bush had “confirmed once and for all that the neo-conservatism to which he has delivered his administration and the country is fundamentally indistinguishable from the liberalism many conservatives imagine he has renounced and defeated.”

In his Chronicles column, where he had more space to work with, he discussed the same topics at a deeper level. From James Burnham, about whose ideas he had written a book, he had learned much about the nature of power and the elites who inevitably hold it, including the present elite of technocratic managers who preside over the dismantling of the traditions, culture, and civilization of Western societies and rationalize their actions with the universalistic ideology of liberalism. From liberal sociologist Donald Warren he had gleaned insights into how the alliance of the uppermost and lowermost classes in the welfare state was putting the squeeze on the middle class, radicalizing what is ordinarily the most stable of classes, and thus generating a support base that a populist movement could use against the elites. From these insights, Dr. Francis framed his argument for such a populist “revolt from the middle”, bending the cold, hard, theory of Machiavellian power politics to serve ends that was anything but cold and hard – the cause of white, middle class Americans, who were seeing everything they held dear, their culture and religion, traditions and way of life, on every level from the regional to the national, including the constitution of their republic and their habits and institutions of freedom, being mercilessly swept away by elites they seemed powerless to stop. First in the New Right that brought Ronald Reagan into power, and later in the movement that failed to deliver the presidency to Pat Buchanan, he had found movements that could potentially achieve his ends. The dilemma for which he was seeking a solution to the very end of his life, as can be seen in his last “Principalities and Powers” article entitled “Towards a Hard Right”, was how such a movement could gain success without being sidetracked from its goals by corporate globalists dangling the carrot of the free market before its eyes.

Solid Majority of Canadians Back Free Speech Even If It Offends Minorities

Solid Majority of Canadians Back Free Speech Even If It Offends Minorities

 

For years, Canadians have been regaled by minority apologists and lobbyists insisting that we must curtail or restrict our comments if they offend privileged minorities. In the Whatcott case, the cultural Marxists on our Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Saskatchewan Human Rights Act which forbad speech that might expose “vulnerable minorities” to hatred or contempt.

 
Even some of the “good guys”, like the then Reform Party justice spokesman and future hardline Justice Minister Vic Toews, when approached about Bill C-36, the government’s “anti-terrorism” bill which turned control and censorship of the Internet over to the Canadian Human Rights Commission  (Sec. 13), said he’d be supporting the bill because ” you know, we Canadians don’t have unlimited free speech like the Americans.” That sounded a lot like saying: “I’m a cripple and damned proud of it.”
 
One of the biggest challenges we in the free speech movement have is to turn Canadians on to freedom, to make them hunger for liberty, and bristle at any attempts to silence them.
 
Thus, a recent Angus Reid poll is very good news: “The vast majority of Canadians support Charlie Hebdo’s right to publish incendiary cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammed, and most prioritize freedom of speech over fear of offending religious sensibilities, according to an Angus Reid  poll for the National Post released Monday.
 

The not-for-profit institute polled 1,525 people in February, just after al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists killed 11 people inside the newspaper’s Paris offices in January. A police officer was killed just outside.

The satirical magazine is known for its provocative and juvenile humour, often poking the religious and political sensibilities of its audience. Notably, it was known for publishing cartoons that depicted the Muslim prophet, an act that is considered highly offensive to many Muslims.“We may be united by the decision a magazine has take

Although the paper was notoriously controversial, fully 70% of Canadian respondents said that Charlie Hebdo was right to publish the cartoons that eventually led to the massacre. Further, Canadians overwhelmingly believe that freedom of speech is more important than kowtowing to religious sensibilities. By a ratio of five-to-one, respondents said they prioritized freedom of speech — at least to some degree — over respecting religious feeling.

However, respondents diverged markedly when asked whether they would have advised Canadian media outlets to republish the images. Only 56% said they would advise major local news outlets to publish the cartoons; the vast majority of media chose not to do so, with the exception of the Post and several French-Canadian news outlets.” (National Post, February 23, 2015)

Paul Fromm

Director

CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR FREE EXPRESSION

The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that  went on sale shortly after the attacks on its Paris office

PASCAL GUYOT/AFP/Getty ImagesThe French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that went on sale shortly after the attacks on its Paris office
  • http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/02/23/majority-of-canadians-support-charlie-hebdos-right-to-publish-cartoons-of-mohammed-poll-shows/

Brad Badiuk — Another Teacher Victim of Political Correctness

Brad Badiuk — Another Teacher Victim of Political Correctness

 

In the 1990s, Malcolm Ross and I were both persecuted and lost our jobs after heavy Jewish lobbying pressure for what we had written on our own time off school property.

 

Our treatment made a mockery of the Charter guarantee of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, etc. Then, Alan Borovoy, the then go-to spokesman for civil liberties in his role as head of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, in a book When Rights Collide, proclaimed that a teacher should have a right to express his views, BUT, having expressed views critical of privileged minorities, no longer has the right to keep his job. Some freedom!

 

Whereas Malcolm Ross and I expounded our views in writing (he in booklets and books, me in newsletters) and public appearances, the latest victim potential victim of censorship, Winnipeg high school electronics teacher Brad Bradiuk is in trouble for expressing his views about Indians on his social media Facebook page.

 

The CBC (December 11, 2014) reported:  “A Winnipeg high school teacher who posted controversial remarks on Facebook about First Nations people is now on paid administrative leave. Some of the comments made by Brad Badiuk, an electronics teacher at Kelvin High School, concern aboriginal people generally. Others targeted Derek Nepinak, the grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (AMC).

Kelvin High School electronics teacher Brad Badiuk has been put on paid administrative leave after he made controversial postings about aboriginal people on Facebook 

The controversy started when another teacher posted an article on her Facebook page about John Ralston Saul’s book, The Comeback, which contends that repairing the relationship between First Nations peoples and the rest of Canada is a pressing issue.

In response, Badiuk put these posts (taken verbatim) on Facebook, “OhGoddd how long are aboriginal people going to use what happened as a crutch to suck more money out of Canadians? 

“The benefits the aboriginals enjoy from the white man/europeans far outweigh any wrong doings that were done to a concured people.”

Another line read, “Get to work, tear the treaties and shut the FKup already. My ancestor migrated here early 1900’s they didn’t do anything. Why am I on the hook for their cultural support?”

 

In some of his posts, Badiuk took aim at Nepinak.

“He wears feathers on his head and calls himself the Grand Chief. You see he had an idea. Indians have no money. You have money. So he could get his hands on your money, that would solve the problem of indians without money,” the comments read.

Kevin Hart, who works with the AMC, complained to the school board about the comments, calling them racist and hurtful, and demanding action be taken.

“It just shows that we have so much more to go, that even a teacher that works in a school division, we [even] have to educate those people,” he said. “I think it’s worse, especially when we have educators … leading and teaching the young minds of this country.”

 

Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Derek Nepinak, who is the subject of some of the controversial postings by Kelvin High School teacher Brad Badiuk, called the comments racist and said they were of particular concern since they were coming from a teacher. (CBC)

​Nepinak was blunt in his response.

“If racists are going to come forward like that and make comments like that, but yet are still tasked with teaching our young people, then we got a responsibility to stand in the way of that.”

 

Mr. Bradiuk was suspended with pay while the Board investigates. “School officials could not say how long the investigation would take or whether Badiuk might face discipline.

“It’s obviously really disheartening,” said Mark Wasyliw, chair of the board of the Winnipeg School Division.

“We are a very diverse school division. We have a huge population of aboriginal students and these types of allegations are always concerning and demoralizing for staff.”

And Paul Olson president of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society wasn’t much help in defending a teacher’s right to hold an opinion and express it on his own time. He said “and although there are no formal rules about what teachers can and cannot say on social media sites such as Facebook, they are nevertheless held to higher standards.

“There’s no such thing as a teacher off duty,” he said. “There’s legal precedent in Canada on that. Teaching is not so much something you do as a teacher, it’s something you are. You’re a teacher 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, anywhere on earth. That can be taken to extremes but if something in your personal or your private conduct causes any concern about your professional practice, that is fair game, at least for a conversation with your employer or your professional organization, depending. So you’re never really off duty.”

Then,  according to a CBC follow-up storyTodd Andres, a Winnipeg privacy lawyer, called for Bradiuk to be punished. “He said there are several cases in Canada where Facebook and Twitter posts made outside the workplace have been grounds for discipline.

Andres said Badiuk’s comments could have a profound impact on the Winnipeg School Division’s reputation, since its mandate is to educate all students equally.

‘If he’s made comments that jeopardize his ability to do things that are in accordance with the mandate, then it’s difficult to see how he can continue to carry on in that role,’ Andres said.

He said the school division must take action against Badiuk to protect its reputation.

‘If they take steps, I think they can mitigate their reputational harm that could come out of this,’ he said. ‘If they don’t, then I think they may be hard-pressed to justify any lack of action.’”

So, dissent from political correctness and the heretic must be punished!

Actually, Mr. Bradiuk’s views strongly echo widely held opinions cited in a recent Maclean’s (January 22, 2015) labelling Winnipeg Canada’s most ‘racist’ city.

“One in three Prairie residents believe that ‘many racial stereotypes are accurate,’ for example, higher than anywhere else in Canada. In Alberta, just 23 per cent do, according to polling by the Canadian Institute for Identities and Migration (CIIM). And 52 per cent of Prairie residents agree that Aboriginals’ economic problems are ‘mainly their fault.’ Nationally, the figure drops to 36 per cent. …

Generally, when groups interact, there is a correlating drop in prejudice as understanding grows, says Jack Jedwab, executive vice-president of the Association for Canadian Studies. But in Manitoba, where 17 per cent of the population is Aboriginal—the highest proportion among provinces, and four times the national average—and where 62 per cent reported “some contact” with indigenous people in the last year, the opposite appears to be true. Just six per cent of people in Manitoba and Saskatchewan consider Aboriginal people “very trustworthy.” In Atlantic Canada, 28 per cent do.

 

Just 61 per cent of Prairie residents said they would be comfortable having an Aboriginal neighbour, compared with 80 per cent in Ontario, according to a recent CBC/Environics poll; and just 50 per cent would be comfortable being in a romantic relationship with an indigenous person, compared to 66 per cent in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.”

 

Tim Horton’s Censors Political Sights on WiFi Available to Customers

Tim Horton’s Censors Political Sights on WiFi Available to Customers

Until it was sold to Burger King, itself part of Brazilian multinational 3G, Tim Horton’s was an iconic Canadian institution.
 
Now, it appears to be censoring the websites, especially political websites, on the WiFi it provides for customers.
 
This afternoon, after being alerted by a colleague to this censorship, I checked it out for myself at an East End Toronto Tim Horton’s (Leslie St. and the Gardiner Expressway).
 
 
Tim Horton's Censors Political Sights on WiFi Available to Customers</p><br />
<p>Until it was sold to Burger King, itself part of Brazilian multinational 3G, Tim Horton's was an iconic Canadian institution.</p><br />
<p>Now, it appears to be censoring the websites, especially political websites, on the WiFi it provides for customers.</p><br />
<p>This afternoon, after being alerted by a colleague to this censorship, I checked it out for myself at an East End Toronto Tim Horton's (Leslie St. and the Gardiner Expressway).</p><br />
<p>Efforts to access Jered Taylor's American Renaissance (AMREN), Stormfront, America's oldest White Nationalist discussion board or Vanguard News, all resulted in a notice of "Access Denial".</p><br />
<p>"Access to this page has been blocked due to inappropriate centent." There's that vacuous politically correct catch all term "inappropriate." What does it mean? It means whatever the user has in mind. The poor customer seeking to access these sites is given no clue as to just how they are wrong or "inappropriate."</p><br />
<p>This is outrageous censorship of adult Canadians,</p><br />
<p>I urge Tim Horton's customers to protest. You can e-mail them at TimHortonsWiFi@timhortons.com</p><br />
<p>Paul Fromm<br /><br />
Director<br /><br />
CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR FREE EXPRESSION
 
 
 
 
Efforts to access Jered Taylor’s American Renaissance (AMREN), Stormfront, America’s oldest White Nationalist discussion board or Vanguard News, all resulted in a notice of “Access Denial”.
 
“Access to this page has been blocked due to inappropriate content.” There’s that vacuous politically correct catch all term “inappropriate.” What does it mean? It means whatever the user has in mind. The poor customer seeking to access these sites is given no clue as to just how they are wrong or “inappropriate.”
 
This is outrageous censorship of adult Canadians,
 
I urge Tim Horton’s customers to protest. You can e-mail them at TimHortonsWiFi@timhortons.com
 
Paul Fromm
Director
CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR FREE EXPRESSION
___________________
When CAFE’s attorney approached Tim Horton’s about this Big Brotherism and censorship, this was the snotty response from Tim Horton’s lead counsel.
Dear Mr. :In reference to your note below, let me respectively decline your
request to change the Tim Hortons Acceptable Use Policy as it relates
to wifi available Tim Hortons Restaurants.
As a private entity providing a wifi service to guests, it is our
contention that it is entirely appropriate to request that guest
expressly consent to be bound by the Acceptable Use Policy prior to
using the wifi service.  If our guests do not agree with the terms of
the Acceptable Use Policy they are free not to use the service.

Best regards,
Jon

Jon Domanko
Senior Corporate Counsel | Tim Hortons
226 Wyecroft Road, Oakville ON L6K 3X7
T: 905-339-6261 F: 905-337-5205 E: domanko_jon@timhortons.com

Protesting Chinese Flag at B.C. School Brings Threats From RCMP Political Police

Protesting Chinese Flag at B.C. School Brings Threats From RCMP Political Police
 
Last week, Lisa Glatt sent out an e-mail opposing the actions of a Sooke, BC elementary school flying the flag of communist China. Within a day, she had received the following e-mail from Constable Matt Rowat of the Sooke Detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
 
It was pure and simple police state bullying. As Brad Love has found, approach certain politicians or policy makers with your strongly worded concerns and  they are likely to  … call the police! Whatever happened to a respectful response to concerns from the general public?
 
Constable Rowat says: “Your e-mail regarding the Chinese flag being flown at Journey Middle

School has been brought to our attention, and as such, a police file has

been created.  Please be aware that any threats towards the school will

be taken very seriously and can be considered a hate crime if you

threaten damage or harm to the staff or property of Journey Middle

School.”

This is intimidation. Ms Glatt sends out a protest and learns the political police are now keeping a “police file” on her. Note, these threats are not being made in North Korea or Communist Cuba or even Communist China but in Canada with its Trudeau Charter of Rights and Freedoms that even mentions something about freedom of expression.

Read Ms Glatt’s e-mail again. Do you see any threats aimed at staff, students or property at Journey Middle School? I couldn’t find any either, but she is threatened: “Please be aware that any threats towards the school will be taken very seriously and can be considered a hate crime if you threaten damage or harm to the staff or property.” 

“Any threats?” What about the threat to complain to the local board of education or the Minister of Education or the press?

Canadians have been propagandized that “hate” is wrong, maybe even criminal — we have a free speech suppressing “hate law” (Sec. 319 of the Criminal Code). Well, except that minorities can “hate” or denigrate Christians, Whites or Europeans in general.

Again, look at Ms Glatt’s e-mail. Does she mention hating Chinese or anyone else? No, she opposes the flying of the flag of a foreign country at Journey Middle School and notes, quite correctly, that Canadians were never consulted about making this once overwhelmingly European country “multicultural” or about being reduced to minority status in their own country.

I hope Lisa Glatt is one tough lady. Many people would have butterflies in their stomach being told a “police file” had been opened on them and that “any threats” to the staff or property of Journey Middle School could result in “hate” charges.

The purpose the Constable Rowan’s letter would seem to be intimidation, with the clear message: “Shut up,lady!”

Paul Fromm
Director
Canadian Association for Free Expression

Dear Ms. GLATT,

Your e-mail regarding the Chinese flag being flown at Journey Middle

School has been brought to our attention, and as such, a police file has

been created.  Please be aware that any threats towards the school will

be taken very seriously and can be considered a hate crime if you

threaten damage or harm to the staff or property of Journey Middle

School.

Please contact me if you wish to speak any further regarding this

incident.  I have included my contact information below.

Thank you,

Cst. Matt ROWAT

Sooke RCMP

2076 Church Rd.

Sooke, BC V9Z OE4 Box 40

Office: (250) 642-5241 Ext. 5315

Fax: (250) 642-3247

Gend. Matt Rowat

Services généraux

GRC de Sooke / Gouvernement du Canada

matt.rowat@rcmp-grc.gc.ca

Tél. : 250-642-5241 – Ext. 5315

Téléc. : 250-642-3247

Welcome to…China? No, actually, welcome to Journey Middle School! in Sooke, BC
 
In efforts to further promote state-sponsored multiculturalism, Journey Middle School (located at: 6522 Throup Road, Sooke, BC  V9Z 0W6) proudly flies the flag of China in order to “welcome” Chinese visitors to their school. 
Looks like at this school, students are receiving an indoctrination (not education) in the early stages of being put though our modern state-operated school system. It is no doubt that schools much like Journey are corrupt, with almost its entire faculty consisting of leftists who abuse their teaching positions as platforms to propagate partisan political agendas to young vulnerable students.
In 1971, Canada became the first country in the world to enact an official policy of multiculturalism. At the time, Canada was 96% European. There was no vote, and there was no referendum. We were never asked, and we never agreed. As in all Western countries, multiculturalism was imposed on us without our consent. 
Welcome to...China? No, actually, welcome to Journey Middle School! in Sooke, BC

In efforts to further promote state-sponsored multiculturalism, Journey Middle School (located at: 6522 Throup Road, Sooke, BC  V9Z 0W6) proudly fly's the flag of China in order to "welcome" Chinese visitors to their school. 

Looks like at this school, students are receiving anindoctrination (not education) in the early stages of being put though our modern state-operated school system. It is no doubt that schools much like Journey are corrupt, with almost its entire faculty consisting of leftists who abuse their teaching positions as platforms to propagate partisan political agendas to young vulnerable students. 

In 1971, Canada became the first country in the world to enact an official policy of multiculturalism. At the time, Canada was 96% European. There was no vote, and there was no referendum. We were never asked, and we never agreed. As in all Western countries, multiculturalism was imposed on us without our consent. 

Our countries are democracies, and in a democracy the majority rules. Across the entire Western world, undemocratically imposed multicultural policies are reducing our people to minorities within our own countries and thereby stripping us of our autonomy and our powers of self-determination; we are being of our ability to choose our leaders and our destinies. This is basically what our young people are being told to "celebrate" at schools dominated by the radical-left (Journey in this particular case, being a prime example). 

Multiculturalism runs counter to the interests of our people and we did not vote or it, nor did we need it. Therefore, it is completely illegitimate and we are entirely justified in opposing it, resisting it, and destroying it.

Yours truly,

Lisa Glatt
Regional Activist
Our countries are democracies, and in a democracy the majority rules. Across the entire Western world, undemocratically imposed multicultural policies are reducing our people to minorities within our own countries and thereby stripping us of our autonomy and our powers of self-determination; we are being of our ability to choose our leaders and our destinies. This is basically what our young people are being told to “celebrate” at schools dominated by the radical-left (Journey in this particular case, being a prime example). 
Multiculturalism runs counter to the interests of our people and we did not vote or it, nor did we need it. Therefore, it is completely illegitimate and we are entirely justified in opposing it, resisting it, and destroying it.
Yours truly,
Lisa Glatt
Regional Activist