David Warren: Russia ‘Annexes’ the North Pole
Gentlemen need never resort to arms, for gentlemen may agree to a reasonable compromise. We live in a world, however, where not all the national players behave like gentlemen. Against them, gentlemen must remain well-armed, to vindicate not only their own interests, but civilization at large.
This week, the Russian administration of Vladimir Putin — true son of the Cheka — proceeded to “annex†the North Pole, symbolically, using a submersible to plant a titanium Russian flag on the seabed.
Mark Steyn: There is no reason for Islam to moderate itself in a land that declares it worships only hockey and donuts
The other day I found myself on a panel with “Ibn Warraq,” the pseudonymous Muslim professor–or, as he sees himself, non-Muslim professor. Born in British India, raised in Pakistan, educated in Scotland and now resident in the United States, Professor Warraq has spent his whole life on the ever-moving frontier between Islam and the rest of the world. But, for all his scholarly research, he’d been asked by the organizer of the conference we were at to frame the issue in personal terms. So he said that awhile back he’d been in Mississauga visiting his niece. And, while they were talking, her children came into the kitchen and were eagerly anticipating a forthcoming hockey game between an American team and a Canadian team–presumably the Maple Leafs, though Professor Warraq is evidently not a great follower of the NHL. At any rate, the kids were excited about cheering for the Canadian team because, after all, they’re Canadians and they wanted their fellow Canadians to win.
And their mom rebuked them sharply: “You are not Canadian. You are Muslim.” Ibn had been depressed about this, as well he might be. There are many people who might say I am a Christian first and a Canadian (or American or Irishman) second and would regard it as entirely reasonable to place their obligation to the Almighty above their allegiance to the Queen. It would not prevent them being functioning members of a civil society. But the professor’s niece was demanding not that their Muslim identity supersede their Canadian identity but that it supplant it entirely.
Sally Pipes: More lies from Moore
In “Sicko,” Michael Moore uses a clip of my appearance earlier this year on “The O’Reilly Factor” to introduce a segment on the glories of Canadian health care.
Moore adores the Canadian system. I do not.
I am a new American, but I grew up and worked for many years in Canada. And I know the health care system of my native country much more intimately than does Moore. There’s a good reason why my former countrymen with the money to do so either use the services of a booming industry of illegal private clinics, or come to America to take advantage of the health care that Moore denounces.
Government-run health care in Canada inevitably resolves into a dehumanizing system of triage, where the weak and the elderly are hastened to their fates by actuarial calculation. Having fought the Canadian health care bureaucracy on behalf of my ailing mother just two years ago – she was too old, and too sick, to merit the highest quality care in the government’s eyes – I can honestly say that Moore’s preferred health care system is something I wouldn’t wish on him.
