Tag Archives: Offended

News

Ezra Levant on the new Sun News television network

2 Comments
Ezra Levant
Ezra Levant

Learn about the new Sun News television network and Ezra Levant’s new show “The Source”. Sun News launching in Canada on April 18, and it should provide some much needed diversity to the close-minded, economically ignorant climate of big government spending that dominates the news media up north.

Excerpt:

Do you want to get the Sun News Network on your TV? Then you’d better ask for it. Because we go live in less than two weeks. April 18th is the launch. And you don’t want to miss a minute of it, I can promise you that.

And maybe pick up the phone and add the power of your voice to your efforts.

If we were the CBC or CTV, you wouldn’t have to ask for the channel. It would be forced on you. In fact, under Canadian broadcasting law, every cable provider must carry CBC and CTV, and every single cable subscriber (that would be you) is forced to pay for it, whether you watch it or not.

These two companies have had a combined 30-plus years of this mandatory indoctrination — and taxation. As if the CBC’s billion dollars a year wasn’t enough, they ding you for 54 cents a month on your cable bill, whether you ever watch them.

It’s the David Suzuki tax. The Peter Mansbridge tax. It’s the Alberta-bashing tax. The gun registry tax. It’s a tax to pay for your own indoctrination.

We’re the Sun — a privately owned company. We don’t have the power of taxation. Which is fine. We’ll win our viewers the old fashioned way — by broadcasting interesting things that people want to watch.

That’s what’s so remarkable about the CBC-CTV duopoly. Despite all the subsidies and mandatory broadcasts, Canadians so often choose to get their news elsewhere — including a news station headquartered in the Deep South of the United States, called CNN. They’re headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, the cradle of the Confederacy.

It’s a pretty damning indictment of Canadian TV news that a TV station in the heart of Dixie manages to draw more eyeballs than local offerings. Imagine if the biggest-selling newspaper in Canada were USA Today. How lame would Canadian newspapers have to be to allow that to happen?

One day, the CBC and CTV will have to compete on an equal footing with Sun News Network. One day the CBC won’t get the Sun’s entire annual TV budget — $20 million — in a single week. Seriously, do the math: with a billion dollars a year, the CBC burns through the Sun’s yearly expenses every seven days.

That’s a state broadcaster for you. And that’s why they have big government built right into their DNA: without big government and high taxes, they’d have to get real jobs.

[…]That’s my real beef with Canadian TV news today. Not that it’s liberal, which it generally is. But that it has such a dreary consensus. On everything from gun control to Omar Khadr to global warming, CTV and CBC are like Tweedledee and Tweedledum. There is the official, “acceptable” view that gets on the air, and everything and everyone else can go pound sand.

In this video, Ezra Levant explains his new show, and the vision of Sun News.

My understanding of Canadian news media from my Canadian friends is that all the mainstream media news channels ever talk about is how much taxpayer money to spend on various whiny special interest groups. They just talk and talk about stimulus spending, “equalization payments”, welfare, subsidies for green energy companies and so on. The political debates are big whining sessions where the progressive political parties complain that the other progressive parties aren’t spending enough money on the poor fill-in-the-blank group. The majority of the people vote for left-wing parties like the Liberals and the New Democrats and the Bloc Quebecois, because the majority of the people get an economically ignorant view preached to them by the news media. They have been taught by the media to choose policies based on 1) their feelings, 2) greed for their neighbor’s money and 3) international opinion, especially the UN. They can’t think for themselves, and they are accustomed to depending on government to give them handouts.

Sun News will compete against the ultra-liberal networks like CTV and government-owned CBC. Unlike CBC and CTV, the Sun News network will feature center and center-right perspectives on the news, and will cover issues that the mainstream news networks cannot touch. (Yes, in Canada every province has anti-free-speech censorship panels that go after pastors and Christian business owners who offend left-wing groups with their inconvenient free speech). There really isn’t any free speech in Canada, the whole country is run like a liberal university campus with speech codes, where the governing leftists collect taxpayer money that is then used to silence dissenting voices, like those of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn. They really need some different points of view so that they can be more open-minded and tolerant. They just get offended too easily because they only know one way of thinking about the issues and they find disagreement offensive.

News

How to ensure that your children will have an enduring faith

11 Comments

Here’s a post from The Poached Egg.

Excerpt:

My seven year old son, Jeremiah, a first grader, was doing some homework the other day and was thinking out loud. “Two plus two equals four”, I overheard him say. This piqued my interest a bit and I decided to throw him a curveball.

“Son, two plus two equals five”, I said, to which he responded, “No it doesn’t.”

I decided to take things a little further and said, “But Son, I truly and sincerely believe that two plus two equals five. Doesn’t that mean I’m right?”

Without missing a beat, his reply was only a simple, “Nope”.

Although I was beginning to become concerned that I might be teaching him that ‘Dad may not always be right’, I decided to sacrifice that myth on the altar of truth and roll with it. I then asked him, “Son, what if me and a whole lot of other people really believe that two plus two equals five, and that it might offend us and hurt our feelings that other people like you might think that we’re wrong; can’t you just let be true for us and let ‘two plus two equal four’ for you?”

Another “Nope”.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because two plus two equals four!” He replied with stern conviction. I was now determined to take it even further.

“Son, what if you were the only person in the world who believed that two plus two equals four? Would you still be right?”

He looked up at me from his seat at the table with his trademark big grin and gave me a very confident, “Yes!”

“How come?” I asked?

“Because two plus two equals four!”, he replied again, but this time in a manner which implied that his patience with my line of questioning was wearing thin.

Again, I asked, “How come?”

To which he replied, “Because it just does!”

He goes on to explain that he is getting his child used to the idea that if something is true, then the people who don’t believe it are wrong, and it doesn’t matter how they feel about it. Since the author knows about apologetics, he will be able to give arguments for thinking that Christianity is true as the child grows up. That’s one way to build up your kids – get them used to the idea that truth doesn’t always make everyone like you. And that truth is more important than feelings or community.

I have a friend Andrew who does a fine job of preparing his children for their future roles as effective, influential Christians. One way he does this is by building up their ability to say no to obvious lies. He sits at the table with his kids and points at a glass of milk and then claims that it is a glass of orange juice. The child denies that it is and a fight ensues, with Andrew trying hard to get the child to just go along with his lies, and the child resisting. It’s very important for children to have the sense that if something is true, then they don’t have to change their view to make anyone feel better. This principle is helpful when dealing with aggressive people or offended people.

News

Pakistan woman sentenced to death for defending her faith against Muslims

5 Comments

A story from CNS News about a very brave Christian woman from Pakistan.

Excerpt:

A Pakistani Christian woman is facing death following a conviction under the nation’s Blasphemy Law, after she defended her  faith against a group of Muslims who insulted her for her Christian beliefs.

Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old farmworker and mother of three, was working in the fields of her small town of Itan Wali in the Punjab region of Pakistan in 2009 when her hand touched the water that the workers were to drink.  The Muslim women working with her then refused to drink the water, saying that it had been contaminated by the touch of a Christian.  Some reports indicate that the group had been pressuring Asia to abandon Christianity for some time.

In the argument that followed, Asia reportedly defended her faith, although there are two versions of the exact nature of her statements. The Muslim women claim that she insulted Mohammed, claiming that he had died “with worms in his mouth.”  However, Asia’s defenders say that she never made any insults, but rather defended her faith in Christ, affirming that he had died for the sins of mankind and risen from the dead, while Mohammed had not.

After the women complained to a local imam, Quari Salim, the cleric filed charges against Asia for “blasphemy,” and she was sent to prison to face trial.  Fifteen months later, on November 7, she was sentenced to hang for her “crime,” and to pay a fine equivalent to two-and-a half years’ salary for an unskilled worker.

A group of townspeople in Itan Wali told CNN that they all support the death sentence against Asia, and Quari told the news agency that her death sentence was “one of the happiest moments of his life,” according to the interviewer.

“Tears of joy poured from my eyes,” said the imam during the videotaped interview.

[…]It has been reported that, in recent years, over 30 people who were accused of violating Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law were either murdered in prison or killed following their acquittal and release.

Meanwhile, here’s the Democrat Hillary Clinton defending the religious freedom OF MUSLIMS.

Excerpt:

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized Wednesday the state of religious freedom in Europe, as Washington highlighted policies and attitudes toward Muslim veils and Islam as a whole.

“Several European countries have placed harsh restrictions on religious expression,” Clinton said, without elaborating as she unveiled the State Department’s report on international religious freedom for the last year.

Her assistant secretary for human rights, Michael Posner, cited France’s ban on wearing the niqab and other face coverings in public places and a Swiss motion passed last year that bans building new minarets.

[…]France’s law banning veils — passed last month — was considered an especially controversial move in a country with Europe’s biggest Muslim population, estimated at nearly six million. The Netherlands is expected to follow suit.

If you expect the Democrats to do something about Christians being persecuted by Muslims, you’re going to be waiting an awfully long time.

Also, why isn’t the secular-leftist mainstream media reporting this story as much as they report stories like the Matthew Sheppard story and the Abu Ghraib story? Do Christian women not count as victims to the mainstream media, if the perpetrators are Muslim?

Related posts