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its too expensive
I was mulling over the matter after Joy Reid's ludicrous comments that U.S. schools teach "Confederate Race Theory", and I'm increasingly thinking that Critical Race Theory itself, or particularly something like the 1619 Project, are essentially Neo-Confederate ideas. That's not meant as a rhetorical point, but moreso a descriptive one: the fundamental premise of the Confederacy was that slavery was intrinsic to America and the relationship between black and white was intrinsic to society. The Confederacy believed that slavery as an institution was something that was at America's heart from the start, the Founding Fathers supported, defended, and wrote support for it into the founding documents, and that all of American history was not 'all men are created equal', but structured around a power imbalance between white and black. The 1619 Project teaches that slavery, as per it's title, was central to American history since 1619, that the Founding Fathers not only built the founding documents around their support of slavery, but that it was a driving cause of the American Revolution, and that white people were universally the race on top of the heap because of their 'whiteness' and power.
It is bizarre that the proponents of CRT accuse anyone not supporting it of not wanting to say anything at all about slavery, or minimizing how central it allegedly was to American development-essentially that "slavery in the United States was not local in nature but existed before the foundation of the Union and derived recognition from the Constitution that it would not have had without it." The problem is that that's not a Nicole Hannah-Jones quote, it's a Jefferson Davis quote, and if you put her or a CRT leader and a Confederate leader into a room, they would find little to disagree about in how they presented the centrality of slavery in the United States and its support in the Constitution.
https://notthebee.com/article/another-canadian-pastor-has-been-arrested-for-violating-worship-restrictions-being-hauled-off-in-front-of-his-family-while-his-church-meets-underground
https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/calgary-church-pastor-arrested-for-second-time-after-holding-service-in-violation-of-health-orders
A Canadian pastor was arrested and had his church seized by Canadian government agents armed with 'assault weapons' for holding services that were above the government-mandated capacity. He had to be let free on a technicality (they put the wrong name on the court order), but the church building had been occupied by the government with any re-entry barred. So, in Canada, a alleged liberal western democracy, he formed an underground house church akin to 1st Century believers in Rome or modern-day believers in places like China. He was discovered, apparently by a police helicopter, and hauled off to jail in front of his family and children.
The level of illiberal and outright authoritarian behavior that now simply passes by as normalcy as society carries on reaches the level of insanity, but that's not going to change. The biggest lie of all of this is that when the jackboots come, it will be with a bang, a great crisis, a fundamental change to society. No, it'll be treated as normal and reasonable by the powers that be, any dissent will be labeled as extremist, and people will carry on carrying on, half of them likely to never even hear about it.
Armed government enforcers physically taking over a church and hauling off a pastor in irons is going to get less attention and outrage than a random teenager allegedly smirking at a man banging a drum.
I agree aspects of the police/court behavior there seems heavy-handed and ridiculous. I would, however, like a bit more context about what law he was violating, why he alone was arrested, and the justification for both before I make a quick judgment (Not the Bee isn't great for that). Assault weapons would be ridiculous over use of force, for example, but the actual video of the second arrest seems like very normal police business with no weapons and general civility. The Herald article makes a point, for example, of attacking Jason Kenney (as does the video on Not the Bee). I don't know him personally, but he's about as conservative/"small government" a politician can get in Canada and he is a fellow member of my church (so, to my knowledge, a God-fearing man and someone who would very much respect the need to attend church, which our bishop has stressed much stronger than most). Obviously police action and government aren't equivalent, so I would want to know what he thinks of this.
Also: a reminder to everyone watching the RMB that there is a poll posted, please participate!
Horatius Cocles, Roborian, and New Kiwis
The first link is desperately trying to sensationalize the second article for clicks. The readout of the second article is much more balanced. The whole fracas over this is because he's a pastor and we're dealing with a church. If the setting was anywhere else, this would not be such a big deal. The events essentially go like this:
1) Many fellow citizens complain about the public behavior of Person A.
2) Person A refuses to stop said behavior despite complaints from the public that his actions put them at risk
3) In light of refusal, Person A is served with an order which he still refuses to obey
4) Person A is apprehended after he's done with his service
Why should the laws not apply to Person A simply because he's a pastor? It's not like he can claim ignorance of the laws in effect. He knew the laws an deliberately broke them on multiple occasions, which gave rise to public complaints. Neither article referred to the actual Calgary restrictions specifically, which a simple Google search brought up: https://www.alberta.ca/enhanced-public-health-measures.aspx
Here's what it says about places of worship:
Mandatory – Effective June 10
Provincewide restriction
Indoor faith service attendance is limited to 1/3 of fire code occupancy.
Outdoor faith service attendance is limited to 150 people.
Additional safety measures
Virtual, online or drive-in services where people do not have to leave their vehicles are recommended.
Mandatory physical distancing between households must be maintained.
Mask use is mandatory for indoor services:
faith leaders and other speakers can remove their masks while speaking if there is a distance of 2 metres and must be put on again once finished speaking
performers must wear masks at all times
Group performance activities, such as choir singing and playing music, are permitted if they are normal worship practices and not for the purpose of entertainment.
In-person faith group meetings and other religious gatherings are:
not permitted in private homes while these measures are in effect
permitted when conducted at a place of worship as long as physical distancing and public health measures are followed
Furthermore, also in effect starting June 10, Alberta is entering Stage 2 re-opening, so restrictions are lessening anyway and will continue until stage 3.
I don't have an agreeable option to choose. In some ways the world will be better when I hit 70 and I'm sure in other ways it will be worse. The poll options are too stark for any level of meaningful nuance.
we are now going to buy weaker nukes because of destroying a rural area of caterama, the nuke is located underground and it exploded so thats why the poor rural place of caterama has been destroyed, reporters said that the nuke was placed by enemy rebels of caterama, those rebels come from my enemy country, well the name of that country is idk, i know that it comes from the region called 'brasilistian' and i dont know why did he send rebels to our country, because of that i build a boarder between caterama and brasilistian, i dont need help. i can handle this! -Caterama
we also arrested those rebels :)
'Assault weapons' with the scare quotes was more my needling Canada's gun laws than anything-the cops just had entirely basic semiautomatic pistols, typical police sidearms, but in Canada those are classified as assault weapons and illegal for civilian ownership because a standard-capacity pistol magazine is criminalized as a 'high-capacity' magazine. They were not rolling in with military equipment or anything, but according to Justin Trudeau's standard, they were carrying 'weapons of war.'
My understanding of the situation is that the primary issue was the violation of capacity limits (set at 15 people, though they are now starting to slowly loosen that after re-tightening it just last month) though I believe the church was also not enforcing masking, he had an injunction pre-emptively issued against him and went ahead with the service anyways, I imagine it's primarily a matter of practicality to just target the pastor rather than trying to haul off an entire congregation, in some other crackdowns on churches they have charged others as well. He was most certainly in violation of the COVID rules, he does not deny that either, it is openly a civil disobedience matter.
I don't disagree that it's sensationalized, but I do not think it really even needs to be just based on the basic facts of the matter, but for that sequence of events-that is frankly something I would consider to be a fundamentally illiberal construction. Even if people in the community were legitimately complaining about events that at most had a very indirect effect on them (it's not as if they were marching through neighborhoods), the general construction of rights is that they are designed to protect unpopular activity, not popular-no one needs freedom to do something that everyone is already fine with, they need it to do what other people would oppose. Public complaint is really not sufficient grounds for legal action, and in the age of 'speech is violence' I would be especially concerned by a precedent like this that could presumably be deployed just as easily against a church that 'put people at risk' by teaching Biblical views on marriage and sex. To use a historical example, you could go through the exact same series of steps in the Jim Crow south with members of the community complaining that a black man getting a milkshake at the counter was putting people at risk and justify police action off of both that and the laws of the time.
I am also not sure how much of this was grassroots complaints of legitimate fear by local people who presumably would not even be attending these gatherings versus ideological and political snitching. The city councillor for the ward the church is in who had been pushing the government to crack down on it had this lovely and not-at-all-concerning quote on the matter: “It’s a tightening of the screws and we’ll start to see some behaviour modification.”
they stole the nuke from an military base and they got that quietly, if nukes are weaker, it cannot destroy the whole rural area. -caterama
I'm sure that everyone will be completely shocked by my opinion on the matter...
im finally a democratic republic state!
can we invite johnny and theo
hewwo new nation :)
New Kiwis and New terran republic
I would pick "certainly not" if it weren't for my untrouncable idealistic side that thinks people may one day begin to wake up to reality, return to that good ol' time religion, etc. and, of course, the general unpredictability of the future. Who knows, in 30 years I could be witnessing the crowning of a Catholic monarch in the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis!
I pick "no" due to the far more likely option that I will be jailed by a national socialist AI algorithm.
To slightly altar an old statement:
"One of three things is going to happen. One of three things: not one of two. It is always one of three things.
1) This industrial civilization...will break down and therefore end from its monstrous wickedness, folly, ineptitude, leading to a restoration of sane, ordinary human affairs, complicated but based as a whole upon the freedom of the citizens.
2) Or it will break down and lead to nothing but a desert.
3) Or it will lead the mass of men to become contented slaves, with a few rich men controlling them.
Take your choice....One of the three things is going to happen, or a mixture of two, or possibly a mixture of the three combined."
In all seriousness, I really do hate doomsaying all the time, and I've tried a few times to just isolate myself from the news, but I always end up going back anyways one way or another (and sometimes it is just unavoidable). There's virtually no good from keeping up with all the terrible things happening to society, but I just hate the idea of being voluntarily uninformed, even if it is probably better for one's mental health and well-being. I consume less of it now, at least, but I cannot fully cut it off.
I purposefully gave no middle position so no one could weasel out! Certainly, since things are always changing, some improve and some decay; I'm looking for 'overall'. (This is actually based on a discussion I had with my students about how within the last decade or two it seems like there has been a widespread fading of the belief that things are improving.)
Hello
Horatius Cocles, The Rouge Christmas State, Diwala, New Kiwis, and 1 otherNew terran republic
G'day!
Horatius Cocles, The Rouge Christmas State, Diwala, New terran republic, and 1 otherDixiana
I'm finally ready to participate in some old fashioned national diplomacy.
Dixiana is ready to spread its wings, and bring forth the word of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant God upon the world.
hello my new friends
Horatius Cocles, The Rouge Christmas State, New Kiwis, New terran republic, and 1 otherCaterama
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