Subscribe
Donate
Subscribe
Facebook X-twitter Instagram Youtube
Stories

Nota Bene: Dictatorships and Double-Standards

C2C Journal
November 19, 2012
Why too much idealism in foreign affairs was a mistake in 1979 and a mistake now.
Stories

Nota Bene: Dictatorships and Double-Standards

C2C Journal
November 19, 2012
Why too much idealism in foreign affairs was a mistake in 1979 and a mistake now.
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter

In 1979, Jeane Kirkpatrick, a Georgetown professor and until then, a lifelong Democrat, published a famous essay in Commentary. Kirkpatrick argued that the Carter administration’s policy of undermining autocrats friendly to the West did not, as intended, produce regimes that respected human rights. Instead, we ended up with the Ayatollah in Iran. Thirty-three years later, C2C Journal highlights that essay and with it this obvious question: Are idealistic Western policies and general hopes for the Arab world doomed to disappointment once again?  See  Dictatorships and Double-Standards from Commentary.

Love C2C Journal? Here's how you can help us grow.

More for you

The Ultimate Green-Washing: how LEED certification raises construction costs and worsens housing affordability while sidelining genuinely sustainable architecture.

The Ultimate Green-Washing: The False Promise of LEED Certification

Greg Wilson

Builders, developers and politicians have all avidly pursued LEED certification of major buildings and housing over the past several decades. Meant to be the pinnacle of “green” construction standards, LEED demands not just energy efficiency but the pursuit of many nakedly ideological goals like public transit use and even social equity. And its effects go far beyond virtue signalling and woke positioning. As this investigation by engineer Greg Wilson reveals, not only does LEED certification drive up construction costs and make housing affordability even more problematic, but buildings constructed to display its contradictory desires often consume more energy than traditional ones. Wilson calls for a return to sanity and a true form of sustainability: buildings that work well and will last for centuries.

B’nai Brith Canada and other Jewish groups back Canada’s “anti-hate” laws, including the Combatting Hate Act and Online Harms Act – a bet on state power that Ezra Levant and John Carpay warn will backfire.

Misplaced Faith: Why B’nai Brith Canada and Other Jewish Groups Should Oppose “Anti-hate” Laws

Lynne Cohen

That free speech has been fundamental to Judaism for over 3,000 years is especially admirable considering the innumerable anti-Semitic attacks that uncontrolled public discourse has emboldened over the centuries. The courage it takes to defend that principle in present-day Canada is beginning to fray, however, as prominent Jewish organizations like B’nai Brith Canada are backing Ottawa’s recurring expansion of “anti-hate” laws – most recently with the Combatting Hate Act and Online Harms Act. But such legislative cudgels never work, writes Lynne Cohen in this originally reported essay – and often end up being used to batter their original proponents. Seeking safety behind the power of the state, Cohen argues, is exactly the wrong approach. Free speech can be messy, unpleasant – and very hard to extend to one’s enemies – but the alternative is far worse.

“First One to Shine”: Reflections on My Indian Residential School Experience

Elaine Ayoungman Clifton

If you want to learn the truth about a time and place, it would make sense to ask some of those who were there. In this heartfelt memoir, Elaine Ayoungman Clifton, who was born into the Siksika First Nation near Calgary, tells a story today’s activists don’t want you to hear. Far from an instrument of repression and evil, the Indian Residential School she attended for a decade was warm and welcoming, the teachers caring and conscientious. They instilled in her a love of reading, did not try to crush her language and culture, and did not try to separate her from her large family. “I am grateful for what they taught me and the care, friendship and love they gave to me over many years,” Ayoungman Clifton writes. If Canadians really want to respect the lived experience of all Indigenous people, hers is an authentic voice we should listen to.

More from this author

Letter from the Editors:
Happy Canada Day!

C2C Journal

Celebrating the fact of one’s country’s existence, its survival through the adversities of history and its positive or uplifting attributes is a fact of life the world over, even in tyrannies and oligarchies. Nearly everyone can find something to love about the place they call home. Yet this is apparently not the case for many inhabitants of present-day Canada, who claim that what was once the self-described “greatest country in the world” has suddenly become a systemically racist hell-hole. Despite such pressure from the woke mob and their elite enablers, however, the editors of C2C Journal find much that is not merely defensible about Canada, but praiseworthy and downright glorious.

Did Canada’s first immigrants fall from the sky?

C2C Journal

Aboriginal grievance and entitlement stories made a lot of news in Canada in June. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau renamed National Aboriginal Day as National Indigenous Peoples Day. He also renamed his office to erase its historic link to Hector Langevin, an architect of the residential schools system. And he gave the old American embassy in Ottawa to native groups. Still aboriginal activists weren’t satisfied. So they badgered an apology out of Governor General David Johnston for calling First Nations peoples immigrants. Which left the author of this story wondering, where on or off earth do these insatiably aggrieved activists come from?

The Revolution Eats a Few More of its Own

C2C Journal

In 1972 Lou Reed offended conservatives with his hit Walk on the Wild Side, an admiring ode to his transgendered friend Holly, who left Miami as a he and became a she on the way to New York. In 2017 the song has offended progressives as a transphobic example of cultural appropriation. In this article by C2C Staff, the Journal explains what a long, strange trip it’s been from conservative censorship to progressive censorship.

Reading Progress

Share This Story by C2C Journal

Donate

Donate

Subscribe to the C2C Weekly
It's Free!

Subscribe
* indicates required
Interests
By providing your email you consent to receive news and updates from C2C Journal. You may unsubscribe at any time.