Posted on 08/25/2007 9:18:42 AM PDT by Clive
Who says Ontario's Liberals oppose a faith-based school system? They certainly don't, as long as the faith on which it's based is Ontario's official religion.
Ontario doesn't have an official religion, you say? Please! It's a deep and abiding faith, called State-sponsored Non-denominational Multiculturalism. Think of it as SNM for short.
Ontarians can certainly have other religions; Premier Dalton McGuinty doesn't mind. As long as people keep their antediluvian beliefs to themselves, they can even educate their children in their divisive and barbaric faiths -- after all, it's a free country. Only they shouldn't look to the Premier to fund their endeavours.
Let me stress that the Premier didn't say any of this. He never uttered the word "divisive," let alone "barbaric." He didn't even say "antediluvian." All he said, according to the newspapers, was that funding schools was to be a "defining issue" between him and Conservative leader John Tory in this fall's provincial contest.
"I'm hoping to grab Ontarians by the earlobes and say it's not just another election, it's not just business as usual. It's about the kind of Ontario [they] want," McGuinty was quoted as saying. "If [they] want the kind of Ontario where we invite children of different faiths to leave the publicly funded system and become sequestered and segregated in their own private schools, then they should vote for Mr. Tory.
"If they think it's important that we continue to bring our kids together so that they grow together and learn from one another, then you should vote for me."
Why, the reader might ask, does Ontario's Premier believe that parochial schools "sequester" and "segregate" their students and must therefore be divisive and reactionary -- even if he doesn't use those words? Why does he seem to think that faith-based systems prevent kids from growing together and learning from one another?
We wouldn't even know that growing together and learning from one another are good things if we didn't derive our notions of good and evil from faith-based systems of morality. Geometry is important, but we know about peace and goodwill among men from Luke, not Euclid. We hear about justice from Moses, mercy from Muhammad, charity from Buddha. If getting along harmoniously were a Liberal government's primary goal, it should promote faith-based education instead of opposing it.
Needless to say, the Liberal government's primary goal is to win the October election in Ontario. Reconciling diversity with harmony is secondary at best -- and I suggest it isn't even secondary. For all the lip-service contemporary governments pay to diversity, they don't like diversity at all. They hope to eliminate, or at least to de-fang it. How? Paradoxically, through multiculturalism.
Few things would promote genuine diversity in Ontario more than encouraging people of various faiths and ethnicities to educate their own children their own way, instilling in them respect for their own heritage along with respect for the heritage of others. But diversity isn't the goal of SNM. Ontario's official religion isn't looking for people of diverse denominations worshipping God (Jehovah, Allah) in their own way, but for the cookie-cutter Universal Multicultural Person (UMP) worshipping the omnipotent State.
State-or government-worship isn't exactly new. God-kings, like the pharaohs of Egypt, were the common currency of antiquity. The state actually came down a notch in the Middle Ages, when kings were merely the anointed of God, rather than gods themselves, and it diminished even more as individual liberties advanced in the 18th and
19th centuries. But then state-worship rebounded with a vengeance in the 20th century, the era of the totalitarian state, and it seems to have survived the fall of both the Third Reich and the Soviet Union.
I'm not suggesting Premier McGuinty is looking for the scepter of a pharaoh, or even a Mao jacket, but he's a child of the times. The last thing the ascendant state wishes to subsidize is an alternate source of authority. When the government is God, why would it fund the competition? The religion of SNM needs more UMPs, not more Christians, Muslims or Jews.
Does this mean that I favour subsidies to faith-based schools? No. It means I favour tax cuts.
I would eliminate subsidies to the school system, secular and religious. I would abolish public education, except for the indigent. I would, if I could, raise my children with my own money for my own purposes --and theirs --instead of being obliged to let Mr. McGuinty or Mr. Tory use my money to raise them for purposes of their own. Simple? Yes. Likely? Sweet dreams.
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America could benefit from the author’s sage advice. I’m glad to see Canada still has free thinkers besides the Canucklehead Freeper’s who post here.
The funny thing about multiculturalism is that it denies and obscures the different aspects of culture in favor of crude statism and racism.
Except when the “religion” is islam. Then it’s pandered to.
Not by me. speak for yourself.
I am speaking for myself, and I don’t pander to Islam. But you certainly have seen where many of our officials do? Why did you make this about me?
Because I think it is way too general and not at all useful or constructive.
Thanks for the ping.
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