Most of my friends from Canada are economically-literate and good at evidential apologetics. So when I make fun of Canada, I’m not making fun of them. However, Canada as a whole is just a trash country. And what I mean by that is that no one there understands economics. They don’t believe in religious liberty. In fact, it’s pretty much a third world country with a few conservatives in it.

Let’s take a look at the data, starting with this recent article from Toronto Sun – which shows what kind of prison sentence you can get for organizing a peaceful protest against medical mandates:

Crown prosecutor Siobhain Wetscher said Wednesday she is seeking stiff sentences for convoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber because of the broad community harm caused by the three-week 2022 protest in Ottawa’s downtown core.

[…]Lich and Barber were both found guilty of mischief in April for their key roles in the convoy protest, which filled downtown Ottawa for three weeks beginning in late January 2022 to protest vaccine mandates and other pandemic measures.

The Crown is seeking a prison sentence of seven years for Lich and eight years for Barber, who was also found guilty of counselling others to disobey a court order.

The article notes that Barber has no previous criminal record.

Keep in mind that Canada gives extremely light sentences to real criminals, provide they are members of certain groups favored by the secular left.

Here is an example from July 15th, reported in Juno News:

An Indian foreign national, Akashkumar Narendrakumar Khant, who admitted to trying to buy sex from what he thought was a 15-year-old girl, was given a conditional discharge by an Ontario judge to help him and his wife with their immigration statuses.

In a decision released on June 25, Ontario Court Justice Paul Thomas O’Marra provided Khant with a conditional discharge on the basis that “a conviction would lead to severe collateral consequences, such as jeopardizing his immigration status, delaying his citizenship, and preventing him from sponsoring his wife, which would likely result in their separation.”

That’s what the entire justice system of Canada is like. 8 years in prison for organizing a protest to disagree with the government, and conditional discharge for trying to have s*x with a 15-year-old girl. And Canadians vote for this, they like this, they approve of this.

Corporations in Canada are allied with the government, because the country is essentially communist. And these corporations are not afraid to enforce the policies of the secular left fascist regime. For example, banks in Canada regularly freeze or close accounts of people who disagree with the government – and not just for peaceful protests, but for disagreeing with the government’s policies.

First article from Western Standard talks about what happened with the bank accounts of people protested against the governments medical mandates:

Lawyers for Evan Blackman are demanding that the RCMP and Toronto Dominion Bank hand over records detailing why his personal bank accounts were frozen following the 2022 Freedom Convoy protest.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms announced Thursday it would argue that the freezing violated Mr. Blackman’s constitutional rights.

Blackman was arrested on February 18, 2022, during police action after the federal government invoked the Emergencies Act. Although he was released the same day, he later discovered that three of his bank accounts had been frozen without warning.

You might remember that Toronto Dominion bank was in the news recently for criminal activities. That link goes to the Department of Justice web site, by the way.

Next article, very recent, from Western Standard. Canadian corporations freeze and terminate bank accounts willy-nilly. All it takes is that you disagree with the government, then corporations stomp all over you:

Eva Chipiuk, a lawyer known for her involvement in the Freedom Convoy and vocal criticism of Canadian institutions, has been blindsided after the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) terminated its banking relationship with her, citing risk-related concerns.

According to an official letter the banking institution sent to Chipiuk, her “recent activity was outside of RBC’s client risk appetite,” and it would “no longer be in a position to continue serving her.”

So what do we learn from this? Well, we learn that Americans should never, ever set foot in a secular left fascist bleephole like Canada. Most Canadians don’t believe in basic freedoms, like freedom of speech, freedom of association, and peaceful protest. If you try to exercise those rights in Canada, then it’s very likely that you will be arrested and imprisoned. Unless you belong to one of the government’s favored groups, e.g. – child abusers. There are many safer countries to visit, countries that respect human rights. Go spend your money there. You wouldn’t vacation in North Korea, so don’t vacation in Canada. They’re the same thing.

My close friends know that Walter Bradley is the Christian scholar I admire the most. I’ve mentioned Dr. Bradley on the Knight and Rose Show several times, and plugged the book about his life “For a Greater Purpose: The Life and Legacy of Walter Bradley“. Recently, Dr. Bradley passed away. Many prominent Christian scholars have been writing about his life and how he impacted them.

My good friend Kevin, who is an amazing Christian man and a real hero to me, mentioned an article about Dr. Bradley by Dr. William Dembski. Kevin asked me to write something of my own. Work has just been draining all my fuel lately, so this is the best I can do. I am not a perfectionist, and I try to write these posts in under 1-2 hours each day, so there is a lot more to say than what you will find here.

I first encountered Dr. Bradley shortly after I arrived in America by ordering some of his campus lectures from Veritas Forum. These lectures had a huge impact on me, even causing me to have a plan to do a PhD in computer science and go into teaching. I figured out by listening to all of Dr. Bradley’s lectures that this is what he was always urging Christian graduate students to do. Well, my plans got derailed because it took me 16 years to get a permanent residency, and another 5 years to get my citizenship. Even if I got the PhD then, I would have much less time for research and teaching.

Still, I thought it might be fun to list out the lectures that I ordered from Veritas Forum that featured Walter Bradley:

• Dr. Walter Bradley – Giants In The Land – Georgia – 1997
• Dr. Walter Bradley – Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer – Georgia – 1997
• Dr. Walter Bradley – Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer – Penn State – 1997
• Dr. Walter Bradley – A Scientist’s Quest For Success – Penn State – 1997
• Dr. Walter Bradley – Truth In Religion – Georgia – 1997
• Dr. Walter Bradley – Truth In Religion – Penn State – 1997

If you want to listen to some of these lectures, I uploaded them as MP3s here, from the original audio cassettes, which are unavailable now, and not online anywhere. The key ones are the “Testimony”, and the 3 versions of “Giants in the Land”. The sound quality is not the best, and there is a pause in the recording from when I flipped the cassettes. If you listen to those, and read “Cyrano de Bergerac” in the original French, then you’ll know a lot about me.

The Walter Bradley lectures I remember the most were Testimony, Quest for Success and different versions of Giants in the Land. He talked about how he grew up. His Dad committed suicide when he was young, and he was always poor. He worked a lot of jobs to make ends meet, and was excellent in his academic studies and sports. He wanted so badly to be a success, but found achieving success very empty and unfulfilling. What was fulfilling for him was his relationship with God, and serving God. It’s lessons like this that allowed me to persist all this time, even without the traditional home and church community that most Christians have. I was trained by these two lectures to operate alone in a harsh environment, like a secular university or workplace.

One part that stood out to me was his explanation of how he stopped viewing Christianity as a set of rules, instead of as a relationship. He explained this by telling how his affection for his girlfriend and eventual wife Ann caused him to finally understand that Christianity was not about stopping the things that you most liked doing, and starting the things that you least liked doing. Even though he didn’t have a lot of money for dating, he liked to take Ann on dates, because he loved her. And that’s how Christians ought to feel about the how the Boss wants them to act. Prioritizing Boss in your conduct and life-planning is easy when you are in a relationship with a Boss who leads from the front. For me, a valuable lesson was that you don’t have to care about your reputation if you are excellent in things like education, career, marriage and finances.

He also talked a lot about how to be a Christian in academia, and the importance of professors being a resource for their students. He was very familiar with the law, frequently had to “butt heads” over religious liberty with the Dean. But he also had a lot of amazing adventures by being willing to be identified as a Christian. He explains in “Giants in the Land” how he would feel about identifying as a Christian to his secular colleagues. If only every Christian son and daughter could have heard this lecture before going to college, we would never have lost any of them. Listening to Dr. Bradley talk about the struggles of being a Christian on a secular university campus was just magical. I think a lot of them just feel ashamed of moral rules and truth claims that they were never prepared to defend at the university or in the workplace. They were never taught to see the life of an evidence-wielding secret agent as more fun than getting drunk and having hook-up sex.

Walter Bradley’s thoughts about being a Christian in a hostile environment formed my character and prepared me for the secular workplace. Unlike many Christian leaders who started out conservative and then caved to the secular left for prestige, I never expected non-Christians co-workers to like me. Walter Bradley had already warned me not to expect that. I built my castle with scientific evidence, up on the hill of analytical philosophy from William Lane Craig. Later on, I added a moat around the castle, with the economics of Hayek and Sowell.

His lectures made me want to become a Christian professor. But sadly, I never did get to be a Christian professor like Dr. Bradley. I used to cry about how long it was taking for me to make progress on my “become a Christian professor” plan. Maybe some day… I have had offers to teach introductory computer science courses at Christian universities.

I wish more of our Christian leaders were evidence-based like Dr. Bradley – then then we’d avoid the issues plaguing many denominations. Whenever you look at someone like Russell Moore, David French, Brent Leatherwood, Ed Stetzer, David Platt, etc., you are looking at someone who expected that Christianity would make them feel good and be liked in non-Christian environments. Walter Bradley killed that expectation dead for me. I think that’s why people who knew him, like William Dembski and Robert Marks, have been so faithful to the Boss with their research and writing. By the way, I have met Dembski, Marks and Bradley in real life! I’ve also met Kelly Monroe Kullberg, founder of the Veritas Forum. Those are the type of Christian that I look up to. Who are your role models?

Finally, I have to mention the website “Leadership University“, which was my lifeblood during my undergraduate years. Not only did they have all the transcripts of William Lane Craig’s debates, but they also had many articles by Walter Bradley, and other scholars I loved: J. P. Moreland, Henry Schaefer, Phillip E. Johnson, etc. There were tons of articles there, including articles on controversial topics, like homosexuality. You could find anything that you were being challenged about. And then I also got a lot out of Access Research Network, which had amazing videos that I would watch dozens and dozens of times until I could remember every word.

Many of the same videos I used to watch over and over are now available free, including one with Dr. Walter Bradley.

• On the Origin of Life – An Interview with Dr. Dean Kenyon
• Focus on the Origin of Life – An Interview with Dr. Charles Thaxton
• Darwinism on Trial – Phillip E. Johnson
• Blind Watchmaker? A Skeptical Look at Darwinism – Phillip E. Johnson
• Can Science Know the Mind of God? – Phillip E. Johnson
• A Critique of Darwinist Icons – Dr. Johnathan Wells
• Doubting Darwin: An Interview with Dr. Scott Minnich
• Intelligent Design: From the Big Bang to Irreducible Complexity – Dr. Michael Behe
• Creation of the Cosmos – Dr. Walter Bradley
• Scientifically Testable Consequences of Fine-tuning Related Arguments & Hypotheses – Dr. Robin Collins
• On the Origin of the Cosmos – An Interview with Dr. Michael Strauss

Anyway, if you haven’t checked out the book about Bradley’s life, get it. And if you want to know what makes me tick, check out the lectures I mentioned. There are other things that had a huge effect on me, but those lectures are my heart and soul. I would say that my resilience over my time at the university and in the secular workplace comes from people like Walter Bradley.

I am also grateful for Art Battson of ARN, who worked on those videos so that I could buy them and watch to them when I was still young. I never met a single non-Christian in the workplace who could defeat these arguments.

By the way, these campus lectures are still going on today – if you want to donate to a great cause, check out my friend Eric Chabot who organizes campus events at THE Ohio State University. He blogs here. I support his work. The lectures that he organizes may be bullet-proofing the worldviews of the next Wintery Knights!

Things are getting much better in corporate America these days. DEI hiring standards are declining, LGBT support during “pride month” declined. It’s much easier for Christian employees to be who they are, without being shamed, coerced and even fired for taking Jesus seriously. But not every company sees it that way. And it’s happening in Indiana, of all places.

Here’s the story from The Federalist:

An Indiana IKEA employee was fired after refusing to call his co-worker “they/them” and filed an official complaint due to “unlawful termination,” the Indiana Family Institute said in a Wednesday press release.

Steven Ressler, a “devout Christian who believes there are only two genders” and who’s worked at IKEA since 2019, was under investigation in December for “misgendering” his co-worker. Soon after, Ressler filed for a “religious accommodation request” to “inform my employer of my religious beliefs and engage in the interactive process in good faith,” the press release said.

Three days after filing the religious exemption, Ressler was fired on the basis of “misgendering,” the press release said.

The article notes that Ressler has filed a complaint with both the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Indiana Civil Rights Commission.

On the face of it, I would expect his complain to easily succeed. First amendment rights protect you from compelled speech. Now, I expect that if the Biden-Harris regime was still in control, that the government would side with the corporation against the individual. But now there’s a new sheriff in town.

The article notes that this isn’t the first time that IKEA has trampled the rights of Christian employees:

IKEA, the Swedish furniture and home goods store, has a page on their website on how to be “an everyday ally” and “mak[e] space” for the “LGBTQIA+ community.”

In 2019, a former Catholic IKEA employee in Poland sued IKEA after being fired for not taking down Bible verses rebuking homosexuality he posted on IKEA’s article for “International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.”

Now, I’m not sure if you knew about this, but IKEA furniture has actually sold people dangerous furniture. Their products have actually killed people in the past.

Check out this article from Home Furnishings Association:

IKEA recalled millions of chests and dressers in June 2016 because of tip-over hazards. It repeated the recall announcement in November 2017.

In between, on May 24, 2017, an IKEA dresser toppled over on 2-year-old Jozef Dudek in his Buena Park, Calif., bedroom. The blow injured the child’s neck, causing him to suffocate.

Monday, a law firm representing Jozef’s parents reported that IKEA agreed to pay $46 million in damages, “believed to be the largest child wrongful death recovery in American history,” the firm stated. The settlement “includes non-monetary terms intended to protect other children from IKEA furniture tip-over incidents.”

A lawsuit filed in 2018 alleged that IKEA knew of many injuries and deaths associated with tip-overs of the MALM line of dressers prior to Jozef’s death but failed to take adequate measures to improve the safety and stability of its products.

I’m trying to be very wise these days about where I buy things. So, I’ll remember what IKEA did to Christians when I’m shopping for whatever it is they sell. I’ll also remember their past sales of dangerous products when I’m choosing where to shop. I’m sure I can find something more respectful of free speech and religious liberty from a smaller store in my red state.