Article

2004-03-28 Great White North

Canadian prison guards forbidden to wear protective gear

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Posted by Seafarious 2004-03-28 2:29:29 AM|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 What did the gaurd miss the "Hugs and Kissis
seminar"

Posted by Raptor 2004-03-28 7:26:40 AM|| 2004-03-28 7:26:40 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 I have a theory: that it is possible for a country to become "over-civilized". And being over-civilized is, in its own way, just as bad as being uncivilized. And if the condition isn't corrected, it will become fatal.

Canada prohibiting protective vests for prison guards who have a high probability of being assaulted by violent prisoners is one symptom of overcivilization. Britain prosecuting victims of home break-ins for acting in self-defense against their violent intruders is another.

There is something deeply, profoundly wrong about all this, and I have to wonder if some of the source for Canadians' and Euros' resentment of the U.S. is our refusal to join them in their politically-correct perversion of morality.

Posted by Dave D. 2004-03-28 7:43:51 AM|| 2004-03-28 7:43:51 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Dave, your theory has long and deep roots - the usual words for 'over-civilized' are 'efete' or 'decadent'.

Note that some think decadence has to do with slimy sex or similar practices. It really means "in decay", as with an overly-ripe piece of fruit. While public flaunting of sex, drugs and ostentatious wealth are common symptoms, the underlying cause is just what you've articulated.

And yes, I do think that is one cause of their resentment.

Posted by rkb 2004-03-28 8:07:33 AM|| 2004-03-28 8:07:33 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 Sorry, that should be "effete". It's BC (Before Caffeine) here.

Posted by rkb 2004-03-28 8:10:10 AM|| 2004-03-28 8:10:10 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 rkb:

Whoa. You mean sex, drugs, and ostentatious wealth are right out for us non-effete, anti-decadence types ? Damn. Do I have to pay for my own monk habit, or will one be provided ?

Posted by Carl in NH 2004-03-28 8:52:53 AM|| 2004-03-28 8:52:53 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 [Off-topic or abusive comments deleted]

Posted by Anonymous TROLL 2004-03-28 9:18:14 AM|| 2004-03-28 9:18:14 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Yes, I considered "effete" and "decadent" both when writing that comment, but rejected each because of connotations that were not really relevant--like the ones you cited.

I also struggled for several minutes before coming up with the final phrase, "politically-correct perversion of morality;" originally it was "politically-correct delusions."

The particular delusion that sometimes seems to be at the core of much loony-left-liberal thinking is this: if only we would be nice enough, pleasant enough, and tolerant enough of the uncivilized, then they will reciprocate in kind. They act like murderous, subhuman savages ONLY because we don't smile enough.

I sometimes get the feeling these people have spent too much time watching Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, and are unable, out of fear, to shake the infantile belief in a world which is universally warm, fuzzy, nurturing, and benign.

The world is not benign. Fred Rogers lied. And preventing Canadian prison guards, or British home-owners, from protecting themselves is evil.

Posted by Dave D. 2004-03-28 9:49:28 AM|| 2004-03-28 9:49:28 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 I sometimes get the feeling these people have spent too much time watching Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, and are unable, out of fear, to shake the infantile belief in a world which is universally warm, fuzzy, nurturing, and benign

I think you're on to something. Perhaps a Sesame Street reality show is in order. Perhaps Big Bird will describe how he preys on defenselss robins or some such.

Posted by Shipman 2004-03-28 10:18:24 AM|| 2004-03-28 10:18:24 AM|| Front Page Top

#9 I can just picture Big Bird batting those enormous eyelashes of his and saying, "Oh, look! It's a little robin! It must be Springtime!"

And then down the hatch it goes...

Posted by Dave D. 2004-03-28 10:54:49 AM|| 2004-03-28 10:54:49 AM|| Front Page Top

#10 I can just picture Big Bird batting those enormous eyelashes of his and saying, "Oh, look! It's a little robin! It must be Springtime!" And then down the hatch it goes...

Actually, Dave, that's not a bad idea. In the springtime you will oftentime see dead baby birds the mother has rejected and therefore killed. I guess it would make the kid upset but it would also be a demonstration that human beings do not treat their offspring in that manner. Could help instill some values in the kid's life.

Posted by badanov 2004-03-28 11:46:29 AM|| [http://www.rkka.org] 2004-03-28 11:46:29 AM|| Front Page Top

#11 ...youâre sending a signal to the prisoner that you consider him to be a dangerous person

They should have got that signal from the fact that they're incarcerated in a MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON!!!

Posted by BH 2004-03-28 11:56:11 AM|| 2004-03-28 11:56:11 AM|| Front Page Top

#12 I can just picture Big Bird batting those enormous eyelashes of his and saying, "Oh, look! It's a little robin! It must be Springtime!" And then down the hatch it goes Yumm!

And don't forget that Bert is Evil.

Posted by CrazyFool 2004-03-28 12:02:44 PM|| 2004-03-28 12:02:44 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 CF - Hey, you're "Bert is Evil" link is better 'n mine! I loved the closer on the main page:
"This Website has been brought to you by the letter H and the CIA."

Re topic: Canada is, simply put, fucked. Until "PC-run-amok" is cornered and eradicated, good decent innocent people will be put unnecessarily at risk. I know the do-gooder jerkoffs sleep like babies, believing their "good works" bring good results, but it would be so very appropos to exchange a few of these upstanding morons for the prison guard hostages during the next (inevitable) riot. Most people in prison are not there because they're misunderstood victims, they're there because they are predators - and they certainly won't miss any opportunity to create an uprising / riot. After all, the twits are in charge and negotiating with them will undoubtedly be a win for the predators.

Posted by .com 2004-03-28 12:13:29 PM|| 2004-03-28 12:13:29 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 Thanks one helluva lot, CrazyFool; I had a mouthful of food when I clicked on that link and read the line, "This Website has been brought to you by the letter H and the CIA."

.com, I have doubts that even throwing the idiots into the lions' den to give them a first-hand demonstration of their foolishness would have any effect at all; this naive belief of theirs that "everybody's beautiful in their own way" seems almost impossible to dislodge.

This really does bother me, a LOT: how the hell do so many people manage to get so freaking stupid??

Posted by Dave D. 2004-03-28 12:29:51 PM|| 2004-03-28 12:29:51 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 DaveD -
"...how the hell do so many people manage to get so freaking stupid??"

Brother you've nailed the question dead solid perfect. Sadly - the entire social spectrum is at stake because of them, too. And I figure there are hundreds of tiny little things, from the movie plots which paint Gov't as the evil bogeyman to the 60's-Radicals-turned-Professors to just plain gullibility primarily from laziness. I know you've captured it, but it prolly requires a book to answer that one question - and I can only see the mountain tops - there's bound to be a hundred contributing bits and pieces.

BTW, your posts on this thread are truly great - thoughtful and insightful - thanx! The backbone of the commentary. 8^)

Posted by .com 2004-03-28 1:01:18 PM|| 2004-03-28 1:01:18 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 [Off-topic or abusive comments deleted]

Posted by Anonymous TROLL 2004-03-28 1:19:44 PM|| 2004-03-28 1:19:44 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 .com:

I don't know about you, but before 9/11 I had been thinking that this politically-correct rot was most likely what would do us in; that it, more than any other factor, would probably be the cause of our ultimate downfall from a once-thriving, viable constitutional republic.

Briefly, after 9/11, I thought I had overestimated the threat: suddenly, in the aftermath of the attacks, there seemed to be a near-universal outbreak of clear-headed common sense as well as a shared sense of community. The only exceptions were the clearly insane, out there on the extreme fringes of the left and right.

And then came the 2002 congressional elections, and the Democratic Party leadership unleashed the hounds of hell in their quest for contrived "issues". And ever since then, the DNC has been throwing its most rabid followers huge helpings of raw meat. It has been nonstop since then, and now it seems as if even the previously sane have been drawn into the feeding frenzy. The way it's going, it wouldn't even surprise me very much to see "Bush = Hitler" signs being waved around at the Democratic National Convention this summer. That's the direction they're going, and they're getting there at an alarming clip.

WTF is wrong with these people, anyway??? Keep in mind, I'm not very much of a Republican partisan: until about this time last year, I was a registered Democrat; and I had been one for ALL of my 31 voting years. There is something profoundly ugly going on here, and I can't figure out what it is. And it really bothers me.

It's as if the Democratic Party has been taken over by space aliens, pod-people from the planet Anus and they've been secretly converting the rank and file into Anusians. And now almost all of them are Anus people- i.e., assholes.

BTW, thanks for the kind words. I'll try to live up to them.

Posted by Dave D. 2004-03-28 1:35:08 PM|| 2004-03-28 1:35:08 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 Dave D - I'm with you -- and I think this general election will be a watershed - and only when the dust settles will we know just how good or bad our situation actually is.

If the idiotarians win this time, we are doomed to a period of severe pain - Madrid-style, I believe. I do believe, however, that we would wake up - and become as mad as hornets. But the grief would have been unnecessary had the non-idiotarians prevailed.

Looking back at our history we're damned slow to anger. It's righteous and nasty when we finally do come together, but it seems we have to be cornered and slapped around before that happens. For you and me, 9/11 was enough. For the others, this election will tell the tale.

I think we just have it too good - so the default isolationism (and this actually makes a joke of the multiculti crowd when you think about it - they're just jetset iso's) tendencies make some sense. The sad thing is that this isn't 1941 (for example only) - the toll demanded by the trolls of terror will be much higher due to weapon lethality. So if we are forced to "learn the lesson" yet again, it will be a mofo of a lesson, I fear.

For the closest match to the current campaign atmosphere I know of, look back to Civil War times and Lincoln's re-election bid. Check out the political cartoons of that day. Lincoln was viciously reviled in exactly the same way that Bush is wildly vilified today. And Lincoln was assassinated by clear-eyed loonies who thought they would cheered and praised by the public. They thought they would be heroes. Remind you of anyone?

Keep up the good work, bro - you've been posting Grade A stuff since the first day you came to live in RB. I'm happy as hell you're here - and on the same side! I'd hate to have to field your points and try to parry them! No thanks! ;-)

Posted by .com 2004-03-28 2:10:28 PM|| 2004-03-28 2:10:28 PM|| Front Page Top

#19 This idea that we're supposed to be nice to criminals applies to our police forces here in Canada as well. The effect, of course, is that you get more and more of FIDO and NCNC among officers, especially the older ones. FIDO="fuck it, drive on" and NCNC="no contact, no complaint". The criminals know this, and take advantage.

What amazes me is that there are people elected to municipal government who make it their mission to attack the police, in a time when criminals are getting bolder. WTF is going on? It could be that what you guys talked about is true. Now it seems to have reached the prison guards. God help us.

Posted by Rafael 2004-03-28 2:18:32 PM|| 2004-03-28 2:18:32 PM|| Front Page Top

#20 "For the closest match to the current campaign atmosphere I know of, look back to Civil War times and Lincoln's re-election bid. Check out the political cartoons of that day."

Hmmm. That hadn't occurred to me. Thanks, I'll dig around and check it out.

With regard to what it would take to get us REALLY riled up as a nation and force us to put aside partisan differences for an extended period of time, I shudder to think. A massive chemical attack on the NY subway system during rush hour? A suitcase nuke devastating downtown LA? Who knows? I thought at first, after 9/11, that we'd be able to pull together as a team for at least the next five to ten years until the job was done; but it's now obvious that we cannot. I'm amazed at how fast it all fell apart.

If the United States of America cannot hang on to its collective national will and sense of community long enough to deal effectively with a long-term threat such as that from Islamist totalitarianism, then that would have extremely serious implications.

Imagine this scenario:

It is September 11, 2009. You are the President of the United States, a Republican elected by a slim margin over his Democratic predecessor. President John F. Kerry had made a complete balls-up of his first term (he really shouldn't have proposed a Federal "Fairness Enforcement Administration" during his campaign, nor should he have made such ludicrous promises about how it would "make everything, everywhere, fair to ALL Americans in every way, forever and ever. Everybody will now have the same rewards in life, no matter what they do."), to the point where enough Democrats stayed home on election day to give you your unexpected victory.

And now you're into your eighth month in office, facing this special day with solemnity and some trepidation.

At precisely 8:48 in the morning, Islamist jihadis detonate a 1300-kiloton stolen Ukranian nuclear warhead, smuggled on board a cargo freighter, in the middle of the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Camden. In a blinding flash dedicated to the greater glory of Allah, everything between Valley Forge in the West to around Marlton, NJ in the East, is instantly vaporized. In the Oval Office, you can see the flash yourself despite the bright morning sunlight and the intervening distance. Before you can finish muttering, "What the hell was THAT?" the phones start going nuts.

Twelve million people are dead, and you are in the Mother Of All Binds. Kerry's 2004 landslide victory over Bush, on an anti-war platform, had made it very clear to all political pundits that the American people no longer have either the attention span nor the sense of political unity required to sustain a protracted "War On Terror". And Kerry's abandonment of Bush's "Middle East Democracy Initiative" (which he publicly attributed to Iraq's so-called "failure" to wholeheartedly adopt democracy, but had actually done so he could pay for his latest round of Federal social programs and thrill his Democratic base by "bringing the boys home") had left most Americans with the firm conviction that de-fusing the root causes of terrorism by liberalizing Arab regimes was an utter waste of time.

So here you are. You know the American political climate won't allow you to wage a long campaign to defeat whatever forces brought this atrocity upon us. You also know, given how Iraq turned out (or was portrayed as turning out, by the Democrats), America won't support yet another quixotic quest to democratize whatever Arab dictatorship(s) sponsored the attack.

What do you do? You conclude there's only one thing you can do: an immediate, total fix that will cure the problem and cure it forever.

That night, in a titanic flash so bright it startles the Explorer astronauts on the surface of Mars, the matter is settled; and Paradise runs out of virgins.

I don't know about you, but I don't want that scenario to happen. And the best way I can think of to prevent it is to vote for Bush this fall.

(Sorry about the bandwidth thing, Fred...)

Posted by Dave D. 2004-03-28 3:40:30 PM|| 2004-03-28 3:40:30 PM|| Front Page Top

#21 What amazes me is that there are people elected to municipal government who make it their mission to attack the police, in a time when criminals are getting bolder.
It's an old leftist tactic dating back at least to Stalin, Rafael. Stalin labelled criminals as "class allies." In the prison camps, they were given greater priviledges than the "politicals" and could prey on them at will as long as they didn't attack the guards or administration. I don't think that today's leftist want to open camps and start putting us away, but they do believe and act on the Stalinist line of criminals being the product of an exploiting capitalist society. Since the criminals are the victims, they need protection from exploiters like police and businesses (since these are representative of the worst in capitalist excess). The whole mindset is incredibly illogical and naive (especialy when you consider how machiavellian Stalin's original calculations in this regard were), but after reading posts here from antiwar and other far left posters, I think that you might have some apppreciation of just how naive and illogical some of these folks are. (Go to Kos or Atrios if you really want to witness an addled soup sandwich of bad reasoning!) Memes are hard to kill when the people who embrace them have closed minds.

We need yeomen, not dependents.

Posted by 11A5S 2004-03-28 3:44:44 PM|| 2004-03-28 3:44:44 PM|| Front Page Top

#22 That night, in a titanic flash so bright it startles the Explorer astronauts on the surface of Mars, the matter is settled; and Paradise runs out of virgins.

Dang! That's good. Leave us hope the colonists brought enuf O2 to get through the break even period.

Posted by Harry The Hose Seldon 2004-03-28 5:31:23 PM|| 2004-03-28 5:31:23 PM|| Front Page Top

#23 Dave D. The only implausible part of your scenario is the Mars thing. Frankly, whether Bush is relected or not I believe that we will have to incinerate at least half the Muslim world before this is all over. Sad, but they will leave us no choice. And after that is done it will also be necessary to completely eradicate Islam as a religion.

-AR

Posted by Analog Roam 2004-03-28 5:51:17 PM|| 2004-03-28 5:51:17 PM|| Front Page Top

#24 Dave - den Beste and Wretchard both went that direction. They quibbled about some aspects regards what would trigger it, but both ended up concluding that (and they did suppose there was a President with head on shoulders, not up his ass) a genocidal situation could result. And personally I don't find your scenario impossible at all, either. Almost anything could transpire, given the purely political nature of Skeery & Co. The only item that is a little far fetched and prolly out of the range of possibilities, IMHO, is the Mars base. The nuke exchange is far more likely, infortunately, IMHO. Thx for the analysis and thoughts... it's appropriately chilling - and motivating.

Posted by .com 2004-03-28 5:59:28 PM|| 2004-03-28 5:59:28 PM|| Front Page Top

#25 "The only implausible part of your scenario is the Mars thing."

Wow. Not much optimism, there.

Well, I don't have much myself, either; in fact, I'd give that scenario a better than 50-50 chance of coming to pass. But before we allow it to come to that, I hope we make every possible effort to succeed in the more liberal approach we've been trying.

Posted by Dave D. 2004-03-28 6:12:50 PM|| 2004-03-28 6:12:50 PM|| Front Page Top

#26 Dave D. Allow me to expand my comment a bit. I believe that we will eventually get to Mars. But, your timeline has it in 2008. And I just don't see that. In fact, I don't see it before 2028.

-AR

Posted by Analog Roam 2004-03-28 7:20:20 PM|| 2004-03-28 7:20:20 PM|| Front Page Top

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