Mr Bill Beswetherick’s letter is a clear-eyed, res...

2008-02-06T17:19:00.000-05:00

Mr Bill Beswetherick’s letter is a clear-eyed, respectfully presented and convincing argument that the Cross of Valour is awarded to those who meet ALL of the criteria set forth by word and tradition.

Mr Beswetherick’s letter is quite a bucket of cold water poured over the clamour-parade promoting the Cross of Valour for Chris Garrett. The local papers have a serious courage-deficit.

In the 1960’s, Foster Russell, the publisher and editor of the Cobourg Sentinel Star, took me under his wing as a stringer. I learned much from him; the most important was courage.

Mr Russell was the only Canadian to win the Parrish Lovejoy award for Courage in Journalism. A recent recipient of the award is Daniel Pearl, who had been beheaded in Pakistan – the award was accepted by his sister. Mr Russell won because he had written an editorial denouncing unions at the same time that a labour strike was shutting things down in Port Hope.

The spin off was Mr Russell being hung in effigy on a float in a parade in Port hope. The windows of the newspaper had been smashed in one night. Another night, his house on Creighton Heights was attacked in the middle of the night.

So he published another defiant editorial.

I felt privileged to be able to drop in to his office and engage in rigorous debate over the limits/cutting edge of freedom of speech.

Over the decades that have followed, I feel that the local newspapers have become increasingly timid. A case in point is the Cobourg Daily Star.

A couple years ago, during the Muslim temper tantrum over a Danish newspaper publishing satirical political cartoons of Mohammed, the Cobourg Dainty Star published an editorial to explain why it chose not to reproduce the cartoons. I wrote a letter in response to this editorial. The letter never saw the light of day for reasons known only to the Cobourg Dainty Star. Below is the letter:
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On Feb 8, 2006, the Cobourg Daily Star published an editorial entitled, “How free should we be?

The answer: As free as the imagination can be.

The Cobourg Daily Star is free to publish editorials full of biased bluster, bigoted banalities, distorted details and to do so in a prose style resulting from an over-active bland-gland. The editorial ends with the tepid assertion: “Freedom of speech and freedom of the press comes with a certain amount of responsibility.”

It is a pity that the readers of this newspaper receive only the mediocre advocacy of a “certain amount” of responsibility. Readers should receive much more from those who are paid good money as practitioners of those freedoms.

Those freedoms, won by the blood and pain of countless practitioners over the centuries, come with an enormous amount of responsibility. The primary responsibility is the unwavering defence of those freedoms, the proselytizing of those freedoms and the expansion of those freedoms as far as the imagination soars.

I am a blasphemer. Some of my blasphemies have appeared in Canada’s literary journals. I am also a heathen, an infidel, a fornicator and an apostate. I am a chronic advocate of a broad assortment of apostasy; it rhymes so harmoniously with ecstasy.

Jesus Christ of Nazareth was a victim of blasphemy laws. He asserted He was the Son of God. Perhaps if He were more inclusive, politically correct and sensitive to the hair-trigger feelings of the religious bigots of the day, asserting instead that “We are all the Children of God.” his life would be spared. But He didn’t, so the holy leadership of the day in collaboration with the local agents of the dictatorship, hung Him out to dry.

For centuries the clerical crusaders of Christendumb burned assorted Joans of the Arts, Galileos, Martin Luthers, and generally tormented and tortured countless unknowns, thereby impeding the advancement of humankind. I am eternally grateful for the Voltaires, de Sades, Byrons, Irving Laytons, etc. who defied the sanctimonious totalitarians of God-on-Earth. Poetry is Poetency!

Freedom of speech is the seedbed of human development. It nurtured the Enlightment, the extension of life expectancy, the diminishment of infant mortality, the expansion of literacy, the liberation of women, the liberation of sexual enjoyment, the liberation of Imagination.

Now that I have excoriated Bible-thumpers, it is the turn of the Ku Klux Koran. It is always time to mock men wearing silly hats, whether rabbis, bishops, mullahs, or voodoo shamans. They are agents of theological totalitarianism, and as such, anti-imagination.

The West is now under siege by the Mullah Masters of Massacre, proselytizing the obliteration of women’s sexuality (God willing), the beheading of infidels (God willing), the stoning of adulterers (God willing), the amputation of thieves (God willing), the execution of cartoonists (God willing), and the eternal confinement of the joy of imagination (God willing).

It is not enough for the West to defend itself. Victory in any team sports is not achieved by defensive actions or refusal to cross the 50 yard line. It is not enough to defend freedom of speech; it needs to go on the offensive, it needs to be FREE. It needs strong advocates. It needs to be victorious. It needs to prevail against the veil of ignorance and arrogance.

It means seeking out and supporting Muslim dissidents and “apostates”. In Canada it means supporting Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam, who lives behind bullet-proof windows in her Toronto apartment.

It means supporting Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born member of the Dutch parliament, who collaborated with Dutch iconoclast, Theo van Gogh, to produce the film, Submission, about the enslavement of women by Muham-madism. She fled to the Netherlands to avoid an arranged marriage. At age five she had undergone genital mutilation, still practiced in many Muslim communities.

More apostates can be found at www.apostatesofislam.com.

And my faith? Irving Layton wrote: “Whatever else, poetry is freedom.” And this is the icon I celebrate:

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That is an eminently sensible opinion, one I share...

2008-02-05T09:53:00.000-05:00

That is an eminently sensible opinion, one I share.

The Rotary Club boys and girls seem like the perfect recruiters for this effort, especially the members of the Probus club. They are the type of folks who can relate to the doctors and persuade them that our former cedar swamp is the most civilized and recreationally correct place to be.

On a barely related topic, why is every monument Rotary ever builds called the "Rotary Monument" - no matter where you go in this country. Can't they come up with more imaginative names? It gets confusing after awhile too, as in which Rotary Park is the one you wnt to find? They're all called Rotary Park!

Comments on The Burd Report: The Monday read

Mr Bill Beswetherick’s letter is a clear-eyed, res...

That is an eminently sensible opinion, one I share...