It’s difficult to understand the apparent unreasonable and irrational behaviour of some individuals who seem to live in a bubble, oblivious to the consequences of their actions on others.
A few examples of this peculiar behaviour are as follows:
- Jordan Peterson’s Critics
A University of Toronto psychology professor, Jordan Peterson, made headlines in 2016 when he criticized federal legislation, which legalized transgenderism, by amending the federal Human Rights Act to provide that gender identity and expression be prohibited grounds for discrimination. He also refused to automatically address transgendered students by their preferred pronouns, describing this as “compelled speech”.
Mr. Peterson wrote a book, published by Toronto’s Penguin Random House, entitled 12 Rules for Life. The book was a huge success worldwide, selling five million copies.
Mr. Peterson has now written another book, Beyond Order, to be published in March 2021 by the same publisher. When the news of this broke, some employees at the publishing establishment entered into a swoon of despair and demanded that Penguin Random House decline to publish the book. As a result of this uproar, Penguin Random House generously provided an online consultation for its employees to express their concerns. About two thirds of the employees participated in this consultation during which a few of them broke into tears, demanding that the publisher withdraw from the project. Penguin Random House was not about to withdraw from the goldmine it would tap into by publishing a book by the bestselling author, regardless of its employees’ reactions. The employees, who are raising objections, are obviously part of the current push for progressive social justice issues. As one of the employees said, “By publishing this book, the publisher is supporting and fuelling conservative views and providing Mr. Peterson a platform for his views.” Diversity of opinion is apparently abhorrent to these woke employees.
Their reaction is also morally confusing. After all, should the employees be working at all for a publisher if they don’t believe in the publishing of material they don’t agree with? If so, they should also be objecting to Hitler’s Mein Kampf or Machiavelli’s book The Prince, which can be politely described as the how-to manual on the art of getting and keeping power, even by murder. These books are also made available by Penguin Random House publishers.
As stated by National Post columnist, Rex Murphy (November 26, 2020), “It is degrading to adult dignity and intellectual integrity to allow a woke mob sway or say over anything, and most emphatically, what may or should be written or said.” In a democracy, we are supposed to be free to express and publish diverse perspectives. Who are these extreme leftists who prevent the participation in the public square of those who have a different opinion from theirs? - Boy Scouts
An audit of Scouts Canada has revealed 460 incidents of sexual abuse of children, reported to the police over past decades. Unfortunately, there were additional abuse cases – 65 instances about which Scouts Canada did not inform the police.
In 2011, the CBC program, The Fifth Estate, reported that, in recent years, Scouts Canada had also signed out-of-court confidentiality agreements with more than a dozen child sex abuse victims. Scouts Canada has acknowledged that this was the case. These settlements prevent victims from revealing the amount paid or even the fact there was a settlement. Scouts Canada has refused to disclose these details but, according to CBC News, these settlements cost Scouts Canada approximately $200,000 for failing to protect the youth who were members of the organization. It is puzzling that Scouts Canada is not interested in admitting its responsibility, but only wants to minimize its financial costs and make sure nobody else finds out about the repeated child abuse occurring within its organization.
In 1989-1990, its peak, Scouts Canada had 197,508 members. In 2019-2020, it had 52,220 members.
Boy Scouts of America (BSA), which is separate from the Canadian organization, has had 90,000 sex abuse claims filed against it and, as a result, has filed for bankruptcy. At its peak, in the 1970s, BSA had four million members, but the number has decreased today to less than two million.
In view of the mind-boggling number of sex abuse cases, both in Canada and the U.S., one would think that responsible parents would not want their vulnerable children to be placed in harm’s way by being members of the Boy Scouts. It is also disturbing to learn that the Boy Scouts Association does not want to accept responsibility for the abuse of children placed in its care by trusting parents. - Physician-Assisted Suicide (Euthanasia)
Individuals are killed in Canada by assisted suicide with the same drug used in the lethal injections of criminals executed in the United States. Autopsies on the prisoners, who died by capital punishment, have revealed that the lungs of most of the executed prisoners examined after death were filled with fluid. This is a condition called pulmonary edema, which causes feelings of suffocation or drowning during the dying process: not a pleasant or easy death.
Yet, during the campaign to legalize assisted suicide in Canada, it was claimed that death by lethal injection was quick and painless. This is not the truth. Death by lethal injection is more consistent with a slow suffocation or drowning. In some cases, froth and foam were found in the airways of executed prisoners. This froth is the clue. It means the patients or prisoners are still alive and trying to breathe as their lungs fill with fluid, because froth forms only if air is still passing through the lungs. The Dutch government, which has had legalized physician-assisted suicide since 2001, recently implemented a new rule, allowing doctors to sedate patients before administering the lethal injection. This paralyzes the patient and prevents him/her from resisting his/her own death by struggling or becoming violent because of the drowning sensation, as they struggle when the lethal dose is administered.
In view of this new understanding of the suffering of patients receiving the fatal injection, one would think that this barbaric practice of assisted suicide would be stopped immediately. Instead, in an effort to make the procedure easier and more convenient for the attending physician carrying out the grisly act, sedating the patient is recommended. And this barbaric act is described as “death with dignity”?