timeimmortal

File this under “you can lead a horse to water…”

I think the good Reader can agree that Europe has evolved, in recent decades, very liberal sexual morés, and that European governments spend a lot of time and money promoting safe sex, birth control, and all the rest. I’m sure that sex-ed in European schools is probably quite comprehensive, much more so than in North America.

And what has been the result? Are European teens and young-ish adults more sexually responsible than their North American counterparts?

Apparently not: “[a] third of 16 to 35-year-old men and 23% of women questioned said they drank to increase their chance of sex.”

Almost half of participants in Vienna, Austria had drunk alcoholand had sex by the time they were 16 compared with 36% in Venice, Italy, 37% in Palma, Spain and 30% in Liverpool.

…

Those who had been drunk in the past four weeks were more likely to have had five or more partners, sex without a condom and to have regretted sex after drink or drugs in the past 12 months.

Cannabis, Cocaine or ecstasy use was linked to similar consequences.

Study leader Professor Mark Bellis, director of the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool said: “Millions of young Europeans now take drugs and drink in ways which alter their sexual decisions and increase their chances of unsafe sex or sex that is later regretted.

“Yet despite the negative consequences, we found many are deliberately taking these substances to achieve quite specific sexual effects.”

Chickens do indeed come home to roost; it was predicted, many years ago and many times since then, that comprehensive, birth control-focused sex education would increase the promiscuity and sexual irresponsibility of society.. Of course, only easily ignored conservative commentators were doing the predicting. Now that the evidence is showing that those predictions are being borne out, perhaps we can begin to re-think the damage we are doing to our children, and to ourselves?

If you didn’t give up beer/alcohol for Lent, O Reader, have a pint for me! And someone pinch me! I totally forgot to wear green today.

Also, I don’t care if it means I am white — Guinness really does taste better across the Pond.

I heard the tail end of this song on the radio last night, and rather liked the idea Brad Paisley was expressing. That guy, I tell ya…he has released some interesting tunes over the last little while (my favourites being alcohol and Whiskey Lullaby). This one, in particular, speaks to a mentality that is too sorely lacking from our society today. I know in the past that I’ve kind of hated the thought of being a “typical guy,” but I have to admit that there’s a lot in the lyrics below that has a certain appeal.

Title: I’m still a Guy
Artist: Brad Paisley
Album: 5th Gear

When you see a deer you see Bambi
And I see antlers up on the wall
When you see a lake you think picnics
And I see a large mouth up under that log
You’re probably thinking that you’re going to change me
In some ways well maybe you might
Scrub me down, dress me up oh but no matter what
remember I’m still a guy

When you see a priceless French painting
I see a drunk, naked girl
You think that riding a wild bull sounds crazy
And I’d like to give it a whirl
Well love makes a man do some things he ain’t proud of
And in a weak moment I might walk your sissy dog, hold your purse at the mall
But remember, I’m still a guy

I’ll pour out my heart
Hold your hand in the car
Write a love song that makes you cry
Then turn right around knock some jerk to the ground
‘Cause he copped a feel as you walked by

I can hear you now talking to your friends
Saying, “Yeah girls he’s come a long way”
From dragging his knuckles and carrying a club
And building a fire in a cave
But when you say a backrub means only a backrub
Then you swat my hand when I try
Well, now what can I say at the end of the day
Honey, I’m still a guy

And I’ll pour out my heart
Hold your hand in the car
Write a love song that makes you cry
Then turn right around knock some jerk to the ground
‘Cause he copped a feel as you walked by

These days there’s dudes getting facials
Manicured, waxed and botoxed
With deep spray-on tans and creamy lotiony hands
You can’t grip a tacklebox

Yeah with all of these men lining up to get neutered
It’s hip now to be feminized
I don’t highlight my hair
I’ve still got a pair
Yeah honey, I’m still a guy

Oh my eyebrows ain’t plucked
There’s a gun in my truck
Oh thank God, I’m still a guy

Okay, I’ve never been one for hunting, but I absolutely hate the “Bambi complex” that too many people today seem to have developed in their view of wildlife. And while I have gotten my hair accented in the past, well…let’s just file that under “Mistakes,” and the less said about it the better. There was a time, O Reader, when I was well on my way toward liberalism and all the trappings that it brings. Thank God that the love of a good woman, and the support of a good friend, managed to pull me back within the fold of orthodox Catholicism.

I can’t help but think that if the above were still more the norm in society, society itself would be a nicer place to live. There’s a certain…I don’t know…virtue in being able to just stand up to, and if necessary knock down, someone who offends you (or your friend/loved one). Compared to the modern method of dealing with people we who offend us (which seems to involve Censorship and human rights commissions), the old practice of two or three exchanged punches and a bloody nose seems a pretty enlightened way of resolving conflicts. It’s right to stand up to someone and demand an apology for something offensive which is said or done, but only if the offended person himself confronts the offensive person and makes the request in person, one on one. Forcibly compelling an apology, perhaps accompanied by $30,000 HRC-mandated dollars in “fines” is not — or shouldn’t be — a socially acceptable way of settling differences.

And as for backrubs…well, let’s just say that it would appear that Mr. Paisley knows from which he speaks.

Also, my desire to get my firearms license just rekindled itself. When I have time to take the necessary classes…

Traditional jihad is waged with scimitars and their contemporary equivalents, e.g., stolen Boeing 767s, which make handy instruments of mass homicide. Soft jihad is a quieter affair: it uses and abuses the language and the principles of democratic liberalism not to secure the institutions and attitudes that make freedom possible but, on the contrary, to undermine that freedom and pave the way for self-righteous, theocratic intolerance. Soft jihad is patient. It can add and multiply as well as Mark Steyn can (and here). It, too, sees the demographic writing on the wall and is content to wait a few years to occupy the West’s real estate — it’s so much easier, when you come right down to it, than blowing the stuff up and then finding yourself with a massive clean-up and rebuilding bill. Just sit tight and watch the infidels tie themselves into knots making excuses for you while, elsewhere in their lives, they embrace barrenness as an “environmentally friendly” alternative to Genesis 1:28.

Speaking as a right-wing, knuckle-dragging Eurocentric infidel, however, I feel it incumbent on me to point out that where traditional jihad is probably best dealt with by talented chaps like General Petraeus, soft jihad might often be more effectively countered by quieter crusades. Clever readers will doubtless have many fertile ideas to contribute to the fulfillment of what I hope will become the West’s new Quiet Crusade to make the World Safe for Christendom (remember that?). Here’s a modest proposal to get the ball rolling. It was suggested to me by another story from the London Times today. Under a headline shouting “Muslims shocked to learn that crisps contain alcohol” is the illuminating news that that Walkers snacks “contain traces of alcohol” and that eating them is therefore prohibited by Islam.

Shuja Shafi, who chairs the food standards committee of the , said that he intended to investigate. “Certainly we would find it very offensive to have eaten food with alcohol.”

Is that so? Well, here’s my modest proposal, which I offer to British Food and Beverage industry free and for nothing: start putting a bit of alcohol in everything edible or potable. There are, of course, other reasons for wishing to increase one’s usual consumption of alcohol, but here is a patriotic imperative to guide you: what if you went into food hall or your local grocery shop and every item had at least some trace amount of alcohol (or, alternatively, pork residue)? I understand that there might be certain logistical difficulties, but if the EU can effectively police the system of mensuration used in its jurisdiction, if it can prohibit certain types of bananas because they deviate too markedly from the perpendicular, then surely they can employ the vast apparatus of their bureaucracy to assure that a drop of alcohol or a dollop of bacon fat is added to any food stuff sold in Britain.

I think the alcohol suggestion is the better one — Jews have no problem with alcohol, and both Jews and Muslims are supposed to avoid bacon (and all pork-related things). We wouldn’t want to unduly penalize Jews, after all.

My agreement with the above is mostly facetious, but I think the point one can derive from it is this: there has emerged in the West a tension between two ideals. One one side, we see arrayed the laws and traditions that have formed, and informed, the various nations of Europe and North America and made them, to one degree or another, free. On the other side, we see arrayed the tenets of Sharia law (a barbaric and misogynistic system dating back to 7th century Araby) and the violence and noise of those who demand that sharia be made into the law of the land in places like Britain. Increasingly, the West — its thinking mired down in the cowardice and confusion of multiculturalism — caves in to the demands of the barbarians.

We don’t give away piggy banks (to say nothing of other “pig related items”) “for fear of offending Muslims.” We don’t draw cartoons of Mohammad “for fear of offending Muslims.” We mustn’t publish articles pointing out the demographic disparity between the Muslims of Canada and Europe and other parts of the population “for fear of offending Muslims.” We mustn’t even publish books saying critical things about “Saudis and terrorists” “for fear of offending Muslims.”

And so we come to the point of all the above — that it is not the place of those who immigrate to a new country to demand that the new country become more like the old one. But to effectively communicate that truth, the culture of the country to which these immigrants have come must have the courage to hold itself up as (let us be honest) superior to the one that these immigrants have left behind. It must be willing to exert and assert itself in cases where some demand that it be thrown down. And it must be willing to say “to heck with your backwards traditions; this is how we do things here.”

There’s a certain…attractiveness to the idea that every demand for, say, sharia banking be met with, say, an increased prevalence of something considered haram in run-of-the-mill foodstuffs. There’s a certain poetry to the idea that every demand for sharia courts be met with, say, increased restrictions on the production and sale of halal meats.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Ezra Levant chronicles the tale of an Ontario restaraunteur who has been hauled before the Ontario HRC because he forbade a patron of his eatery from smoking a joint whilst on the premises.

Light up a cigarette in an Ontario restaurant, and you’re breaking the law. Light up a marijuana joint, and the restaurateur is breaking the law if he tries to stop you. Here’s an excerpt:

Kindos has already spent nearly $20,000 of his own cash, and estimates he could spend upwards of $150,000 more fighting an Ontario human rights commission complaint launched by Steve Gibson, who is licensed to smoke marijuana by the feds to manage the chronic pain of a neck injury that has kept him out of work since 1989.

Fighting the case, which will be heard by the province’s Human Rights Tribunal in May, could send Kindos’ business into bankruptcy and is playing hell with his health, he said.

“If this thing goes to the tribunal, that’s it, we’re done. Our restaurant is done,” he said. “We’ve already been told we can’t win.

Even allowing for the fact that Mr. Gibson smokes marijuana for medicinal reasons, one cannot escape the fact that, in addition to the known link between pot smoking and psychological disorders, pot is as much as five times more carcinogenic than cigarettes. Ontario, in the interest of public health, has banned cigarette smoking within businesses — by law. Should it not be every bit as illegal, then, to light up a joint within those same businesses? Should not any person who does so be subject to fines? Especially when reasonable alternative methods of marijuana consumption exist to persons who, for whatever reason, have need of it?

Even Canada’s own Prince of Pot, Marc Emery, said common sense and reason are paramount in this issue to effectively balance everyone’s rights.

“I don’t see people with insulin bringing their syringes out in the middle of restaurants and giving themselves injections,” Emery, who is facing a 10-year jail sentence at the U.S.’s behest for selling marijuana seeds, said from his home in B.C., noting that since Gibson was drinking alcohol at the time of the Burlington incident in 2005, he could have ingested the cannabis via an alcoholic tincture that would have been just as effective and more discreet.

The human rights commisssions seem, at times, to exist solely for the benefit of those who think only of themselves — for people, in other words, who feel that every other consideration is secondary to their slightest whim or desire.

Mark Steyn comments thusly:

As with last week’s shakedown of a cosmetic surgeon who declined to perform a labiaplasty for a transsexual dissatisfied with her new parts, the eventual verdict is largely irrelevant: The process is the punishment. It seems almost certain that this restaurateur will lose his business. The trick is not to attract the attentions of the “human rights” enforcers. But, even if you’re not a notorious hatemonger like me, in an age when Canadian “human rights” have dwindled down to the human right to a labiaplasty even when the guy says he wouldn’t know what he was doing, and the human right to smoke pot in some other fellow’s restaurant, trying to avoid catching the eye of this racket is harder than it looks.

Too alarmingly true.