041 – Transcript

Just Right Episode 041

Air Date: February 14, 2008

Host: Bob Metz

The views expressed in this program are those of the participants, and do not necessarily reflect the views of 94.9 CHRW.

Clip (Star Trek: The Next Generation):
Troi: I am the goddess of empathy. Cast off your inhibitions and embrace love, truth, joy.
La Forge: Oh my god.
Troi: Discard your facades and reveal your true being to me. Cast aside your masks and let me slip into your minds. Muzzle it.

Bob Metz: Good morning London. It is Thursday, February 14th, 2008. I am Bob Metz and this is Just Right on CHRW 94.9 FM, where we will be with you from now until noon. No, no, not right wing. We are just Right.

Welcome to the show on this Valentine’s Day, 2008. Are you feeling full of love today? As everyone else is, the airwaves are just jammed with all sorts of love stories from coast to coast today. And what we are going to do today, instead of telling you love stories, we are going to talk about the history of love. And also later in the show, we will be talking about some more bright ideas that we are getting out of City Hall, if you know what that might be about.

And of course, the opposite side of love is hate, and we still have unfortunately a lot of that going on in our papers with Human Rights Commissions complaints and some follow-ups on some of the issues that we have covered in the last few weeks.

And at the end of the show, I will be answering an email from someone who wrote to us at JustRightCHRW@gmail.com. Paul, who wrote his email to us, very well thought out, concerned about some of the things expressed on the show about virtue and religion that we talked about very early in, well, that was in January. So, you cannot always answer your email on a daily or weekly basis because of the nature of the show, but we do read it all and we get around to it at some point.

519-661-3600 is the number you can call if you want to join in on the conversation today.

And first, boy, did I ever open up a kettle of fish here when I decided to look into, I knew it was a lot of Valentine’s Day was coming up today, and so what could I do that might be a little bit different from what everyone else is doing? I thought I would look in my handy philosophy encyclopedia that I have back at my office. It is a wonderful set. It just has everybody you could ever think of in there who has had some background on philosophy. And I wondered if there would be something under the heading of love, and boy, was I ever surprised. Pages and pages and pages. Ended up spending half a day kind of wasting it reading up on all this stuff because it was really fascinating.

And it is really amazing how our ideas of love throughout history have actually shaped our religions, our institutions, our entire way of thinking, and our governments themselves.

And I thought, in the first segment of the show, in the few minutes we have for that, I thought I would give you what I found were most of the highlights of this. And of course we start at some of the basic assumptions. And all of this is out of this encyclopedia, which did not really give anyone any credit for who wrote what. But it was very interesting to see what the background of this was.

Now, what we were informed of here is that love as one of the most powerful of human impulses was very early seen to be much in need of control, especially if man as a rational animal was to be able to use his rational capacities. I always found that interesting. There is this real yin and yang and stress between the rational capacity and man’s animal out of control type of behavior.

In the Platonic tradition, love had a unique metaphysical status for it existed in both the material and the ideal worlds. And we have talked about Plato in the past, how he believed in that mind-body separation and in a separate reality beyond reality. Love can take on many forms from gross sexual passion to a devotion to learning, but it was argued the ultimate object of love is the beautiful. Now, love and classical mythology, we have always heard the word eros. The word eros as it is found in Homer is not the name of a god, but simply a common noun meaning love or desire. It was not until Hesiod’s Theogony that eros became one of the three primordial gods, the other two being chaos and earth. And of the three eros has the greatest power over his fellow immortals. He unnerves the limbs and overcomes the reason of both gods and men.

And there again is that, you lose your mind, your overcoming reason. For the history of philosophy, the importance of Hesiod’s brief mention of eros lies in the attribution to him of a power that is basically the enemy of reason. Such poetic passages reflect certain observations about human nature and human behavior.

And they always point to a struggle within man’s psyche between a rational, controllable, prudent and wise agent and an irrational, uncontrollable, mad and foolish agent. So as time went on in the earlier philosophic reflections, the Greeks admitted, back in the height of the Greek period, they admitted to several forms of love. And it is interesting if you compare these to some of the mores today, including heterosexual and homosexual passion, parental love, filial love, conjugal affection, fraternal feeling, friendship, love of country, and the love of wisdom. And all were associated with either eros or philia, which meant fondness or friendship. And love was believed to be a power capable of uniting people in a common bond.

I think you still see a lot of that today. A lot of people say, yeah, all you need is love. The Beatles made that song, right? And that came out of Greek philosophy. And since not only people, but also animals and the elements were thus united, it was appropriate to conceive of this power as lodged in a single agent that governed the whole cosmos. According to Parmenides, love was created by the goddess Necessity. And it is not interesting to note that at one point Necessity itself was considered among the gods, with a capital N. The later attribution of peace and harmony to the goddess Aphrodite is clearly a renunciation of the early poet’s idea of love.

Aphrodite remains the goddess of sexual love, for sexual love has become one example of the universal power of union. It provides the philosopher with empirical evidence of a metaphysical principle, according to this, although they did not really elaborate too much on what that principle was and how it related. But Plato, if they say if you want to look into all this, Plato was, of course, always a starting point. And for a complete expression of a philosophic concept of love, one must first turn to Plato’s symposium, which apparently no other document in European literature has had as much influence on the philosophy of love.

The various speeches that are reported in his dialogue represent points of view with which Plato does not always agree, but which he apparently thought were important enough to be presented as typical of his time, so they were included. From love’s effect on morality to its effect on knowledge, it was discussed in the context of various mythologies wherein, and I found this interesting, quote, it is the lover. Not the beloved who has gained virtue through his or her love, and thus two kinds of love are distinguished, that of the heavenly Aphrodite and that of the earthly Aphrodite, or the love of the soul and the love of the body.

And it is interesting that on a show previous, I remember I was doing something on a survey on morality and how I said a lot of the things that people were considering virtues were not virtues, because one of them was being loved. And being loved is not a virtue, you cannot make it that, not even under Plato was it, it was a lover who was the virtuous one, not the one who was being loved. And that again speaks to a theme that comes out of the whole giving and taking that we talked about at Christmas.

You know, you can, who is the virtuous one in the giving and the taking, since they are part of the same act when you give a gift to someone. Now of course, philosophy itself is the love of wisdom. In the dialogues, the two interlocutors are Philo and Sophia, obviously elements of the word, quote, Philo-Sophia. Philo is the lover and Sophia is the beloved, which of course is what the name means if you look it up. The conclusion drawn from these encomiums is that love is in essence the love of beauty and that beauty is nothing material. It is an ideal. But no man desires the ideal until he has been educated through philosophic training. And this is what basically Plato had to say.

Now Aristotle was primarily interested in the ethical and psychological aspects of love, which is typical of Plato, or Aristotle rather, he would always get down to the roots of it. However, he utilized the metaphor of the attractive power of love and explaining the motion of the planetary spheres. And he used this term, the unmoved mover, you know, being the beloved in the planetary system, being the lover. Now with some important differences, Aristotle’s concept of this unmoved mover became part of the Christian concept of God, believe it or not. And so they took this idea, it was translated into Christianity. I am really skipping a lot of parts here, folks.

I am just giving you the sketch of the whole thing. And in the Magna Moralia, which was probably composed at least in part by Aristotle, it is written that, quote, it would be strange if one were to say that he loved Zeus. It is not love towards God, of which we are in search, but love towards the things with life. That is, where there can be a return of affection, end quote.

Though there are myths in which gods and mortals have been in love with each other, the gods always first disguise themselves as mortals. These myths all deal with sex, basically, not with friendship or with paternal affection. And omitting some cultural heroes, there was, and this is interesting, there was no god or goddess in ancient mythology who had any love for mankind at any time. Prometheus was an exception, but he was punished for his help to mortals. And the book notes, quote, there is no god in classical religion who could be called, quote, our father in heaven, end quote.

Most of the divinities of the early times did little more than take revenge on the human race for injuries they had received from their fellow gods.

Now in Judaism and Christianity, however, a new relationship to the divinity was established. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, you have heard that one. And it will be observed that now love is not seen as a power that destroys man’s reason, but rather as an emotional attitude that can be voluntarily produced.

And I think that was probably a very positive contribution to the way people were thinking about love in itself and the whole concept of reason, that there is no conflict between reason and the emotions if you are in some sort of balance. And although the Church Fathers came closest to an identification of God with Aristotle’s unmoved mover, which mentioned earlier, there were differences that have too often been obscured, notes my encyclopedia. The unmoved mover was neither a person nor a creator. He was uniquely able to produce change without being altered himself, and he could thus suffer no emotions whatsoever.

But the biblical God was the very antithesis of this. And according to Plato, love rose involuntarily at the sight of a beautiful body. A man’s erotic education consisted in a denial of the acts that usually follow such a sight, kind of like the Vulcans on Star Trek. They are always in the state of denial about love and sex.

Once every seven years or something, is it not? I do not know how that goes with the Vulcans. But once that denial became a part of a man’s character, he could rise to allegedly noble beauties until the final goal, the contemplation of absolute beauty, completely detached from anything corporal was reached. And again, that is obviously Plato talking. Then in the Middle Ages, it is noted that it is apparent in mystical literature that erotic language is especially effective in communicating mystical experience, and the similarities between religious and sexual ecstasy are manifest.

In mysticism, the climax of the love of God was self-annihilation, which I guess explains why so many of the apocalypse stories accompany so many religious mythology and mysticism, whether religious or secular, like even in global warming when you get into that, which we will be talking about a little later on. I am going to take a break right now for a second. We will come back with a few more comments on this, and then we will switch to some other subjects as well. Back in a second.

Comedy Clip:
I was like that guy you see on the news that It all happened so fast. Woosh, all gone. Guess I will rebuild or something. Oh, as soon as you try to go to sleep, that is when the most bizarre stuff starts coming out of our mouth. Good night, baby. Do you think we were together in the past life? Yeah, and I died of sleep deprivation. Go to bed. Do not you feel like we are soulmates? Honey, I feel like we are cellmates. It is lights out. Come on. I need my rest so I can get up in the morning and fetch you things, my lady.

Comedy Clip:
This is basically the problem is that with different species, men are simple and women are complex. We love you guys, but we love you in a patronizing way. Like kind of how you love the village idiot, you know. I had this boyfriend who used to always say that I would ask him these trap door questions.

He said questions that he would say he could not possibly give the correct answer to, no matter what he answered would be wrong. There would be questions like, do you think I am fat? Do you think my hair looks good like this? Do you think my behind looks big in these jeans? And I would think, why can not he answer these questions? Then I realized they all begin with, do you think?

Bob Metz: Yeah, okay. I hope that brightened your day a little bit. Welcome back. I am Bob Metz. This is CHRW 94.9 FM, where you are listening to the show Just Right as part of the station’s feedback series. You know, the word or the term, I guess, the sentence I love you is a very selfish statement. It is not a selfless one. And when one says that they love someone or even something, you can love things. It simply means that we value it or we value that person and we value it, I think, somewhat greatly. And people often ask, can you measure love?

And I think the answer to that is yes. You cannot measure it in dollars, although some people try to. You cannot measure it in any sort of currency, but you can measure it in terms of a hierarchy of your own values. And, you know, you like some things more and other things less. And it is ironic that when we quote, give up something that is of a lesser value for a higher one, we call that a sacrifice when in fact that is not a sacrifice. It just means you made a higher priority and you made a choice. Is there only so much love to go around? I do not think so.

It is not a static thing and you do not divide it. It is a response that has to be earned. Love, I think, is something that has to be earned. It is not, you do not just love something just for the sake of it.

There is a value attached to that. And I do not think that loving one person, we are not talking about sexual relationships here necessarily, but it does not in any way detract from love someone might feel for another. You often hear people say that, you know, they love everyone equally. I love everyone.

I love all mankind. And I often wonder if that person understands the value of that word. Because if that were literally true, and I do not think most people use it mean it that way, but it would be kind of promiscuous love, would not it, if you loved everyone equally? And what would it mean, or no love at worst, and what would it mean to your spouse if you say I love you? And then the next breath, you know, they hear you saying you love all mankind and anyone in down the neighbor, and it does not make any real difference. What is the special value? So I think sometimes we treat the word with a strange equivalence of value that can often lead to many misunderstandings.

But that is enough for love for right now. I have a little, a few trivia items on the subject in case we are short of time today, but I do not think that is going to happen. Last week, I read a December 7th free press editorial by London litigation lawyer Faisal Joseph, who is representing some law students who filed human rights commission complaint against Maclean’s magazine for publishing an article by Mark Steyn way back in 2006. We talked about that last week and the week before, and there has been some response to it. And interestingly enough, it appeared in the London free press.

What is the date here? Maclean’s Muslim articles foster mistrust, says the headline, and written by three of the law students who are being represented by Faisal Joseph. Now, it is ostensibly a rebuttal to a previous column by Salim Mansur, though it does not really address any of his comments other than expressing an objection to being called Islamists. Instead, the rebuttal merely reiterates exactly what was in the December 2007 free press editorial by Faisal Joseph that I read on the show last week. And basically, they want Maclean’s to print their rebuttal to a Mark Steyn article. It appeared in 2006 and again repeated that Maclean’s refused, stating they would, quote, rather go bankrupt than print their response. And again, as with Faisal Joseph’s editorial, there is not one clue offered as to just what it is they are objecting to or one fact offered that would refute anything that was said to which they would object. So instead of again using their freedom of speech opportunity at the London free press to set the record straight on the facts, they choose instead to tell us why they want to make or want to use a legal process to force their as yet unexpressed substantive opinions on Maclean’s magazine.

So I have the article in front of me here, including a couple of interesting responses to it. And what do they actually say? You know, they say, well, you know, the people who are criticizing them do not understand the role of human rights commissions. They do not understand the true definition of freedom of expression, which is what I dealt with last week.

And trust me, they do not understand it. And they are opposed to Salim Mansur’s article that also appeared in the free press called assault goes beyond violence, in which he denounced, quote, our human rights complaints against Maclean’s as an Islamist form of terrorism. End quote.

And of course I called it terrorism myself last week, because that is what it is all about.

It is meant to shut people up. And, you know, he talks about Western, the article talks about Western human rights tribunals. And in the context of our complaint against Maclean’s, that means first examining the article. Well, yeah, examine it.

I got no problem with that. Tell us what is wrong with it. And it just says it advances some sort of unsubstantiated theory, and that the danger of such publications is the mistrust that they foster. So that is the danger of it, that there is some kind of mistrust being built in what has been written. And then they say, when dialogue stops, we risk revisiting some of our most shameful mistakes. Maclean’s and individuals such as Mansur have openly displayed their aversion to open dialogue between parties, they say. Now, as I pointed out last week, this is not between parties.

If Maclean’s is another party, then you do not go to them and say, you got to say what we are saying. That is not a dialogue. You tell us what we want to hear, and we will call that a dialogue.

You know, like I said about the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun last week, you do not expect each other to print the other paper’s opinions about each other. That is not a dialogue. You have to be an individual and separate to be a dialogue. There is no dialogue there, and there is no parties there if you are forcing your opinions to be said at the other person.

In freedom of speech, you have to do by your own means, by your own property rights, by your own methods, and otherwise expect to be invited into other forums. But interestingly enough, a couple of people responded to this in the London Free Press, and they seemed to see through the whole thing. Dawson Winchester, St. Thomas remarks, having read the Steyn Best Seller America alone, the end of the world as we know it, and counting myself as a regular reader of Mansur’s columns, I marvel at the confused rhetoric and unbalanced reasoning in their bumbling critique of Steyn and Mansur.

It is obvious they do not fully understand the meaning of a free press as we know it in Canada and other democratic nations of the world. And while I agree with Mr. Winchester’s point of view, there is one little correction I would make. I think, yes, Mr. Winchester, they do understand. They understand perfectly what they are doing. They are playing it by the rules. They know that we have a freedom of speech, and they want to change that. That is what we have to learn to understand.

And I think that is the whole point here. Michael Menear here in London writes, you know, talks, refers to this whole editorialist self-justifying Piffle, and offers this little fact here that I found interesting. In fact, Maclean’s invited a reasonable response to the article, but the group’s demands proved excessive.

They wanted a five-page article written by an author of their choice to run without any editing by Maclean’s and to be displayed on the cover with artwork of their own choice. Maclean’s refused to accede to these dictates after having already printed 27 letters to the editor in response to the article. The complainant’s contention that the purpose of their complaint against Maclean’s to the Human Rights Commission is to, quote, initiate dialogue, end quote, is phony and false.

It does not take a law degree to understand that the type of complaint lodged against Maclean’s magazine, if successful, will stifle debate and silence free expression. Right on, Michael. You got that one right, and that is exactly what it is all about. So, you know, as far as the whole Human Rights Commission thing goes, you know, with regards to my comment last week on this subject, well, ditto, ditto, ditto, exclamation point, exclamation point, that is all I can say.

You just keep talking over and over again. Now, in another totally unrelated subject, if you recall, a few weeks ago, we discussed the problem of inconsistent sentencing, where the punishment does not often seem to fit the crime. And at that time, I used the examples of Rob Bramage, Mark Emery, and Carla Homolka as my reference points of illustration. And my basic conclusion was that we end up with really ridiculously inconsistent and unjust punishments, whether they are too great or too little, it does not matter, you know, it could be too little for something or too much for something. We feel equally outraged. Because I think that happens because we are not concerned enough with judging the criminal, and we are overly concerned with judging the crime.

I think we have got to get our heads out of that. Judges use sentencing not to mete out justice, but, you know, to send the message to create a deterrence, and etc., etc. To the point where the sense of justice, as far as the individual is concerned, has been totally replaced by law in a completely moral vacuum.

And that is why I think it is just terrible. So it was great interest that I discovered an editorial by Edward Greenspan, period in London Free Press, February 11th, quote, the sentence is the crime, says the headline. Mandatory minimums often result in excessive prison terms. And of course it went on to establish its point. I was not going to really read the whole article to you except for this one sentence, which I have always known, but I do not know why it is just not accepted as a starting point. And he says, quote, there is no, nor has there been any satisfactory empirical evidence to conclude that the implementation of a mandatory minimum sentence has ever deterred crime.

And, you know, I have to agree with them. I just could not see some criminal who is about to commit a murder. Oh, what is the minimum sentence on this?

Oh, no, I will not do it. Like people think like that, you know, especially people who are in that state of mind. And they do not read the papers and they do not know what judge is meeting out what to who.

They are not even aware of it. All that stuff, those messages are for you and me. They are not for the criminals.

It is supposed to scare us, I guess, I do not know. But deterrence, I do not think should ever be a primary function of a justice system, just as crime prevention is a somewhat misguided goal for our police forces, I think. You have to understand, you know, the law really is a recourse of instrument. It is not preventative. It is not the nature of the law to be that way. You do not call somebody to say, oh, I think I am going to be robbed next week. You call them after the robbery has occurred and you hope for recourse and some sort of justice through either retaliation or some meeting out of, you know, getting your property back, for example, if it was stolen. And I think it is the failure to keep this in mind that leads to all kinds of problems with the justice system.

So they start making up all these penalties and controls and whatever, and then they find out the things just not happening the way it should. Well, there you go. There is another subject that I have put behind me. Now, after this next break, some bright ideas from our city hall. I do not think so. I think we are heading the other way and I will tell you what I mean by that right after this.

Comedy Clip:
I am afraid to travel anywhere. I was driving through Columbus, Ohio when they had that sniper. Gave me an excuse to speed. Do you know how fast you were going? Oh, faster than a speedin’ bullet.

Comedy Clip:
Of course it is better than those low-flow toilets, right? The low-flow toilet. It is supposed to save water. You have got to flush it 72 times. You keep flushing and flushing and the poop keeps spinning around and spinning around and looking at you. I am not going anywhere. And you are yelling at the toilet, no! You do not understand. This is not my house.

Bob Metz: Another great idea from the environmentalist, the low-flush toilet. I remember having to use one of those when we went to Florida because a lot of the houses down there are built with low-flush toilets.

And it is absolutely true. I do not know. Are they actually saving anything with those things? Because I have talked to a number of plumbers and they say, well, you know, plumbing systems just are not meant to run with that little water. They have got to have a certain amount of flow, a water flow to them to be running properly and keeping the sewers flowing themselves. But then again, what do environmentalists care about?

Actual environment. They have got all their other agendas to talk about. And that is what I am talking about today.

Kind of a dual theme. You know, on the one hand, we hear all this talk locally here in the City of London about restructuring government. And we have got it, you know, we have all these governance task force, you know, agrees to talk less and listen more as a headline in the Londoner under an article by, or article by Phil McLeod. And you know, our politicians are always asking us for our opinions, which kind of tells me where they are at in terms of some of the issues. And there is always this talk about changing whether we should have a board of control, which is not really an issue. They are not really asking you, do you want the board of control? They are asking you whether you want your vote for the board of control anymore. And by voting for no for board of control, they are still going to have a board of control, but City Council will appoint them and you do not get to vote for them anymore.

So here is all these people who claim to be these democratic types that run out there and they want to kill a vote for a particular level of government. And whether government is effective or not has nothing to do with how the writings are structured, how the wards are structured, how many people vote. For example, a letter writer to London Free Press here writes, voters reap what they sow, referring to the London City Council’s fiscal mismanagement, which he sees going on all the time. And he blames Londoners for not having taken their election responsibilities at all seriously. Atrociously poor voter response of well below 50% is bound to produce a weaker council, he says. You reap what you sow and we citizens do not seem to want to face that. Well, sorry to disagree, David.

I understand your frustration with City Council, but whether 25% of us vote 50%, 75% or 100%, we are going to get the same City Council. It is not going to change a thing. Does not weaken them, does not strengthen them.

It has got nothing to do with that. You know, why do polls work when they say that they only sample a thousand people and they can figure out its accuracy, you know, 19 times out of 20 within a 5% range, etc., etc. Because you do not need to have everyone participate in an election and many people who do not vote are exercising their right not to vote. I have not voted municipally.

I am trying to think maybe three, four elections now at least. And not because I do not want to. I would love to vote for somebody in my ward, but there is no one there that I could support. And of course, everybody said, why do not you run? Why do not you run?

I have been there, done that. And there is just not the support if you want to have fiscally sound management. It is just not out there. The public is not voting for that kind of thing. At least the voting public is not voting. And the rest of them are too fed up with the whole process because they know it is all a bunch of nonsense anyway. And speaking of which, I just cannot believe this.

I just look at this and I shake my head and I wonder, oh my goodness, is this for real? This headline just says it all. And it is by Pat Maloney, London Free Press, February 8th. City asked to be enlightened by dark. And the contradiction just says it all.

It is wonderful. And here is what Pat Maloney writes, quote, City Hall could ask Londoners to plunge into the dark to help shed light on a hot issue. Staff want London to join a growing list of cities taking part in Earth Hour, a worldwide environmental movement to shut off all non-essential lights and appliances for one hour on March 29th at 8 p.m. A few Ontario cities, including Toronto, Mississauga, Ottawa, and Sarnia, have already pledged to take part. London Hydro has expressed its support.

Wow, there is a surprise. And Councillor Paul Hubert, who of course is on the Environment and Transportation Committee, so he sort of has to say these things, is quoted in the paper saying, quote, any way we can promote environmental conservation and awareness is a positive thing. It is a whole shift in how we think, he said, which again tells you why the environmental movement is a mental movement, not an enviro movement.

And that is what it is about, believe me. The staff recommendations, and I do not know why they always say staff, who is a staff? It is not city council, it is just some kind of staff. Go beyond city-owned buildings and include a push to get businesses, including restaurants and homes involved. The rather romantic notion of encouraging candlelight dinners across the city, along with a request that TVs be turned off, are among the staff ideas. Oh man, I just think about that.

How juvenile can you get? I mean, okay guys, let us all do this silly thing. And then we have climate change, this is an ad, this is actually an ad that appeared in the free press, paid for by you and me, the taxpayer. And it says climate change is everyone’s business.

Have your say. Complete the sustainable energy survey reads the taxpayer ad newspaper in the February 6, 2008 London free press that I had. And it states, quote, demand for electricity, natural gas, oil and gasoline will exceed our supply sooner or later, end quote, boldly asserts the premise of the survey. Quote, use of sustainable energy must rise and demand for energy must fall. Impact on generations to come depends on what we do or fail to do in the next decade. Mayor Ann Marie DeCicobast has established the Mayor’s Sustainable Energy Council to help address these challenges. Where do you think our focus should be? What are you willing to do? Please visit www.london .ca and that is exactly what I did and I did not find anything there.

The survey, apparently all they want you to do is write a letter and there is a link there and you can send them a letter about what you think that they should be doing, which of course, I do not know, anybody going to waste their time on that? But consider the assumption of this, demand for electricity, natural gas, oil and gasoline will exceed our supply. Why is that? Why will demand exceed supply? Because there is no more supply being made. Because we have regulated ourselves to death to the point where we have not produced a new refinery in North America for over 30 years. We are still using the same refineries we used back in the 50s and 60s.

We have not built anything new here. So obviously we become more dependent on foreign oil, foreign energy. And the idea that demand must fall is completely erroneous. It is not going to fall.

And everybody knows it is not going to fall. And the way they say this to you, it sounds like you have to cut your demand. You as an individual. When really that is not the problem. The problem is that there are more individuals, even if we all cut back to basic, bare subsistence. Which is basically what these folks are calling on us to do. It is not going to change anything. Because there is going to be more of us tomorrow.

So we need to create more energy. Period. Full stop.

There is no question about this. All they are talking about is conservation. We fix the pie. It is like they did with healthcare, with education, with energy. Anything the government touch turns to stone. It does not grow anymore. Even culture dies.

If the government regulates it, controls it, or does anything like that. And it is the same with this stuff. And this is just ultimate. The ultimate, this is out of an Ayn Rand novel. And this is written by Gord Harrison in the Londoner. Quote, are you willing to sacrifice to benefit the rest of the world?

Mindlessly muses Gord. Quote, we may not think so now, but as fuel supplies decline and price increase due to higher global demand. So yeah, okay. Actually, fuel supplies are not declining. They are going up all the time. The demand is exceeding the increase, or at least they are keeping the same.

So it is a balance between demand and supply that is changing. So he says we have painted ourselves into a costly corner and it is undeniable. He says I recently read our consumption rates in total, and there he says it, in total, okay, are too high and unsustainable as well.

Well, unsustainable if you are not going to produce any more electricity. Is that the plan? Is that what you tell us? No more electricity.

Okay, that is it. We cannot afford to make any more, because it is probably true. That is why everything has to be privatized. And then he goes on, you know, greenhouse gases are 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan, and Australia than are in the developing world. Oh boy, greenhouse gases. That means CO2, right, mostly. And I am just not convinced CO2 is a problem for anything at any time in anywhere. I just have not seen that yet.

Sorry. Now Harrison refers to Jared Diamond, University of California professor, who, quote, contends the world is already running out of resources, and if China alone caught up to our levels and consumption rates of oil and metals would double. And if India, as well as China, were to catch up, world consumption rates would triple. Well, no, I do not think so.

I think world production rates would triple. You know, consumption goes on. You have to live. And all those people who are living in a lot of those countries are living, but they are poor, and they do not have the kind of style of life that we can live on because of their economies, because they think the way a lot of these writers and our politicians think.

And here is Gord. Are we headed for disaster, quote? I think the answer is maybe.

Good answer, Gord. That is what makes your column so interesting. You know, and he says, I prefer to believe that most people will make sacrifices willingly as they learn by experience that their present consumption rates are unsustainable. Which, you know, when I hear somebody talking like that, I am going, well, are you going to make this an unwilling proposition, or what are you talking about? If we are not willing to sacrifice, what then? Does the fact that you prefer that we sacrifice willingly mean that you would not force us to sacrifice?

Or is the answer to that also, you know, just a maybe? And then, again, Gord, I just clicked another article by him just this morning. Okay, I just clicked this one this morning. It is from February 13th, Londoner, which I guess is yesterday’s paper.

And you know, he says, first I want you to take five minutes of your bitty schedule and read Gwynn Dyer’s recent article entitled Climate Change. It appeared in the free press on the weekend. I did read it. I have it in front of me. I did not find anything of any particular, you know, revelation in it, but I will get to that in a second.

But Gord talks about this little booklet by Ron Nielsen, an Australian nuclear physicist. And it says in there, you know, the population explosion, diminishing land resources, diminishing water resources, destruction of the atmosphere, approaching energy crisis, social decline and conflicts, and increasing killing power, you know. And then he says, he continues by stating that through many developed countries, or sorry, that though many developed countries subscribe to a market first or a market driven future based on a faulty assumption, the planet has an almost unlimited ecological capacity to support development and industrialization. There is a far better option. And he says, with proper global management, we can fix it all.

Well, think about what he is saying. First of all, all those symptoms he is talking about, population explosion, diminishing land resources, water resources, energy crisis, you know, where all those things really exist the worst? They are all in those managed economies. In those managed economies that he is advocating, because we are going to manage the whole globe now, just the way we manage the economies. In those so-called market driven developed countries, that is why they are developed.

You see the connection there? If you have got people working in their own self-interest, you are going to have a developed economy. If you have got people who can, you know, count on their property rights and know that what they own is theirs, which is not what any of these ideas will lead to. All of these global warming ideas are to get at your property, take your property from you and give it to somebody else, basically.

And so, you know, it just goes on and on like that. And I look again at the article he recommended we read by Gwynn Dyer, you know, climate change, panic in his trenches. It is just fear mongering. And what does he talk about in this whole two-thirds page article I highlighted maybe a handful of words that actually meant anything, because there was no, nothing in there you could put facts to.

You know, discussing mandatory, internationally binding commitments on greenhouse gas. There it comes, folks. It is going to be mandatory. What is voluntary today. And they are talking about climate change may cost, you know, speculation and guessing.

South Africa, 30 cents of its main crop maize by the year 2030. When you hear that kind of stuff, just put it aside. They cannot even predict the weather for tomorrow for heaven’s sakes. And of course, the whole thing is of, you know, and I am probably guilty of this. It cannot happen here. That is what he is saying.

I am one of these guys going around saying that it cannot happen here. Well, and then he says, we must just hope that physics and chemistry will wait until we are ready to respond. He says, and then he says that he interviewed a couple of dozen senior scientists, government officials and other think tank specialists whose job it is to think about climate change. Well, of course, they are being paid to say all this stuff by government tax dollars.

I have gone through this in detail. And the belief that there are more scientists that believe in global warming than there are those who do not is absolutely false. It is like 10 to 1 against, but you will not hear about the Oregon Accord. You will hear it once or twice mentioned by the odd person or some of the other things that were signed by bona fide scientists, not by the people that these guys are talking to. And then he says, recent indications that the warming has accelerated dramatically.

Well, is not that funny? I just read another editorial by Lori Goldstein. In fact, I think his New Year’s editorial or January 31st, where he said exactly the opposite, that they have measured our climate for the past 10 years and, oh, it stopped getting warmer.

Is not that amazing? And then he says, you know, there is now a fear that the oceans might not be able to absorb all the carbon dioxide. Well, there is that fear again, fear, fear, fear, and maybe, maybe, maybe. And then he concludes, maybe the experts are all wrong. I mean, there are only hunches to go on, end quote. And that is about all I can say about Gwynn Dyer. I mean, how can you read that stuff and walk away from that?

With any opinion? It is really funny. You know, when you read the stuff in the London Free Press on global warming, anything to do with green issues and all that, it is almost virtually the opposite of what you read in the National Post. The National Post has articles written by scientists. I am not saying they are all right and that they have all the answers, but they certainly are not saying that they have all the answers. Whereas the other side is saying, we have all the answers, you shut up, and we are going to force you. Even though your mind tells you that what we are saying is wrong, we are still going to force you to do what we believe is right, but you believe is wrong. And where is that any different from what happens in religion?

And you think that is going to make for a peaceful world in the future as the, as governments start getting into debates over who gets all these, you know, these carbon credits and all that nonsense that they are getting into politically? It is just outrageous. And then we have in the February 12th Free Press again, Paul Burton.

Oh, Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul. Again, one hour of darkness helps lighten the planet, he says. On March 29th at 8 p.m. we are being asked simply to turn off the lights, the television, the computer, everything that uses power for 60 minutes, thereby sending an important message about the fragile future of the planet. Well, I am curious to whom are we sending this message and what is the message? Does not really say, although he keeps referring to conservation. So I guess that is the message.

And you know what? That is the wrong message. Totally the wrong message. We should be teaching production. We should be teaching people that we do not have these problems. If we create more energy, if we have the energy we need, we can make our lives much cheaper.

And if we do it the right way, if we do it through private, you know, protection of private property rights, through letting those markets work, you know. And it is really funny too that March 29th at 8 p.m. happens to be a Saturday. Okay, that is a Saturday.

They are going to do all this. And the irony in my personal lifestyle is that Saturday at 8 o’clock is the only time of the week I turn my TV on. So shall I leave it off then too? Or, and that is when I have company over. We watch TV together.

It is a social event for us. And we are not going to sit there in the dark for Paul Burton and the likes who think that the endowment is, in fact, enlightenment. And then, you know, he reminds us here. He says, we have been forcibly reminded in the past by various blackouts how crucial energy is to our lives. So instead of having a blackout forced upon us, we can choose to cut the power.

Well, we should not have to be faced with that choice, you know. And why does no one ever suggest producing more? You know, you do not see that anywhere in any of these ideas. These people just could not possibly run a business.

They could not possibly survive in the real world with the kind of ideas that they are pushing at us right now. You know, the whole light bulb thing. So before we go to the next section, I got a couple of quick jokes for you here. And this, are you politically enlightened? And here is a quiz for your consideration. See if you can spot the truth in the following screwy light bulb jokes, because there is a truth in them all.

OK, how many liberals does it take to screw in a light bulb? The answer depends on how many of their friends are electrical engineers.

How many conservatives does it take to screw in a light bulb? Any number. They are all really good at screwing up.

How many new Democrats does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. They use candles because it creates more work.

How many libertarians does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. You can never find a libertarian around when you need one. They think the market will take care of it.

How many progressive conservatives does it take to screw in a light bulb? Well, it depends on whether they are AC, DC, or PC. Alternate conservative, direct conservative, or political conservative. But in the end, you still end up in the dark.

How many family coalition or Christian Heritage Party members does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. They do not believe in letting anybody screw around.

How many greens does it take to screw in a light bulb? I got a lot of them, eh? None. They would rather be left in the dark.

How many communists does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. They do not screw light bulbs in. They force them in.

And of course, last but not least, how many freedom party people does it take to screw in a light bulb? Well, none. They are too bright to need light bulbs.

Wow, I am not biased or nothing, am I?

So that is it for that. You know, I feel sorry for today’s kids. They are just being brought up in a world where they are being taught to curse their own survival or else the world as they know it will end. You know, they are being declared guilty of the ultimate original sin. That of their very existence and the religion of green, which is politically red really continues unabated.

And we will be back right after this to reply to some email.

Clip (John Stossel):
What are you teachin’ the kids?

Solar, wind, geothermal, these are the future and they get it. They get it more than people my age. You show them pictures of polar bears in the Arctic. That is powerful. They feel it. They take a real visceral response to know that habitats are being destroyed. So they want to write letters. They want to contact their congressmen.

When you ask the kids to write a letter, how many do?

All of them.

You say you are educating these kids. I think you are indoctrinating.

Absolutely not. The kids are writing what they want. We are not dictating. It is it is not sort of.

It is nonpartisan.

Says nonpartisan.

Nonpartisan is absolutely correct.

Smoke, smog, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide.

Week after week, Susan Cox comes into the schools and gives her green power lecture.

And as the levels of the ocean rise, what happens to our beaches?

Fossil fuels are the problem, she tells the kids. And President Bush is an oil man. Clearly what you are doing is partisan.

No, I am I am sharing with them the fact that we have a president who happens to be an oil man.

You tell them drilling will pollute the land. Do you ever tell them that most of the land is left untouched?

You know, I show them Alaska and no, I do not, you know.

Why not? You could have a debate about oil drilling, but should not the kids learn both sides? Should not they be told that 99.99 percent of the Arctic refuge would remain untouched? And should not they learn the truth about the caribou? They coexist with oil fields.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game says the caribou population in Alaska’s biggest oil field has quintupled since drilling began. You have not heard that?

No.

I wanted to hear from the students what they learned at these lectures. So I interviewed these kids who said frightening things about the future. They feared massive floods, increased cancer, drowning in our own garbage. They said President Bush is polluting the country. One said so he can make millions for his friends.

Clip (The Agenda with Steve Paikin with guest Richard Dawkins):
Paikin: You say religion has a privileged spot in our society. What do you mean by that?

Dawkins: It is expected that religion will be treated with this kind of respect, which you would not treat a political belief or a devotion to a political particular kind of music or a football team or something of that sort. It has a license to get away with things which other beliefs do not.

It is thought to be bad manners or bad form to criticize somebody’s religion in the way that you are not forbidden to criticize their politics.

Paikin: Is it entitled to have that position in our society?

Dawkins: I do not think it is. I do not think that is any reason, or at least at very least a good case should be made. Why it is entitled to it and no case has been made.

No case has ever been made that satisfies you, in other words.

Yes, I think that if you are going to say that something is immune to criticism, then a very special case has to be made.

Paikin: Is there nothing special about religion that you believe entitles it to somewhat different treatment than politics or sports or anything else in society?

Dawkins: No.

Nothing at all. Well, can you think of anything?

Well, the fact that there are billions of people who adhere to it you know, leads one to suggest that it is it ought to be taken seriously.

And you can take it seriously because there are billions of people. That does not mean you have to treat it with undue respect. It does not mean you have to say, I will not say a word against this because it is religion. Any more than you would say that about a political opinion.

Bob Metz: And that, of course, was Richard Dawkins speaking to Steve Paikin back on TVO. Received a letter to our email at CHRW, or sorry, justrightCHRW@gmail.com from Paul. Who is a regular listener and basically, I think, was in a way expressing the opinions that you just heard expressed by Steve Paikin there that perhaps there is something about religion that maybe should not be criticized. And he writes that he was taught listening to our show about our religious people more virtuous. And he thought that the question was a little vague. It was not my question, by the way.

It was a question brought up by the media. And he says, if a religious person is merely a believer, but acts contrary to the morals of his religion, then surely he is less virtuous than a non-believer who would not engage in such behavior. For instance, someone could sincerely believe that a God exists, but then go and steal from his employer. Compare that to someone who may not be a believer, but would not ever steal a penny because his own rational or intuitive moral code precludes such a behavior. Who is the more moral?

Well, of course, the latter is not. I think we agree on that, Paul. But Paul makes a distinction between atheists. I have to shorten this up a bit. And what he calls anti-theists, who are a little bit different. He is an atheist, basically. Says he does not believe in God, but does not, you know, bother the believers. Whereas the anti-theistic forces have, you know, making headway in political arenas and actually attacking religion and the ideas of religion.

I am not sure that that is exactly what is going on. And I have not really heard any ideas. I would not recall talking ideas as being anything violent or anything of that nature.

I think that is part of the whole exchange of ideas. But, you know, if it speaks to anything, you know, when you say that Paul, that, you know, merely calling oneself either religious or a non-believer, is no barometer for determining immorality. I think if that speaks to anything, it is to the point that religion and morality are unrelated. You know, if you are suggesting that a person’s behavior is a test of his or her belief, maybe that is not even true because many thieves or murderers have professed deep beliefs in a deity and they did not stop him from doing that.

And of course, that is what you have said there. So I do not think the source of morality is to be found, you know, in beliefs and deities. I just thought I would leave you with this thought, because this sort of touches on the whole subject of perhaps the whole God and religion thing. And it is by John Macmurray out of an essay called Reason and Religion. He makes the following observation, which I tend to agree with. Agree with.

I lean towards it. It says, it may strike many of his readers as strange to define religion without any reference to God, yet it is in fact advisable to do so. The idea of God, says Macmurray, can have no fixed meaning of its own, which is not related to our experience of human relationships. And it is a significance of the term to the person who uses it that matters, not the fact that it is used or refused. When the idea of God has come to carry a meaning, which is in fact false and irrational, the use of the term will inevitably imply this falsehood. The assertion of the existence of a God will be the assertion of a falsehood and its denial, the denial of a falsehood. A process of development is always dialectical and includes negation. When therefore a society has crystallized the conception of God, which is false, the professed atheist may be more truly religious than the theist. And we must remember that in human development, a situation often arises where the falsehood of a traditional conception becomes clear long before any alternative conception, which could command rational ascent has been discovered. In fact, he says the Orthodox ritual, religious ritual of any society is always a symbol of its structure of personal relationships. And it is that which explains why so many people with no religious interests, but have large economic and secular interests, have an interest in maintaining the Orthodox and traditional structure of their society.

So it is very interesting observation by John Macmurray. And that is it for today, folks, on this Valentine’s Day. Hope you had a good time and join us again next week when we will continue our journey in the right time. Thank you for your time and direction. Until then, be right, stay right, do right, act right, think right, and take care.

Comedy Clip:
You tell a woman you love ‘em one time they wanna hear it every damn day. You did not tell me you love me today. I do not.

Hate those pop quizzes too. They wake you up in the middle of the night. Okay, what is my name? Can I buy a vowel?