Paying Tribute to a Comic Genius

Five years ago today, one of the funniest men to ever exist passed away.

RIP Mr Carlin.

Found Him

In 2008, Supersize Me creator Morgan Spurlock -- significantly lighter than when he completed the aforementioned work -- produced a documentary entitled Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?

A deeply intertextual work, WITWIOSL references Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego, MC Hammer, and Predator, the film essentially poked fun at the US' inability to find Osama Bin Laden.

Well, it's been two weeks since the world got the news. They found him.

They caught, and compromised to a permanent end, Osama Bin Laden.

It's interesting to watch Spurlock stumble through his facetious documentary. Many of the things that seemed acceptable in 2008 would be considered taboo today. For example, Spurlock notes that Bin Laden mentor Ayman Zawahiri was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood sicne he was 14 years old.

If he made the film today, Spurlock would likely be sworn by his far-left brethren to insist that the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate Muslim organization, despite the fact that they seem to have produced lunatics like Zawahiri on an ongoing basis.

Spurlock isn't wrong about everything in the film. He's certainly right to draw attention to the US' support of dictators such as Hosni Mubarek, noting that the United States has spent billions propping up such oppressive governments decades after teh Soviet Union ceased to exist. Interestingly enough, one would expect that Spurlock and Ron Paul would find a few things in common, if the very thought of it wouldn't likely disgust Spurlock.

The relationship of the United States with the Middle East will always be a complex one. The "blame America" ethos adopted by Morgan Spurlock and his contemporaries doesn't make it any easier to understand.

Just as Spurlock insists the War on Terror hasn't made anyone safer from terrorism, there's little reason to think the death of Bin Laden will make the US any safer from terrorism, particularly with the Taliban claiming responsibility for a "revenge" attack.

Even so, the killing of Osama Bin Laden seems like justice. Others may disagree, but they are wrong.

Hate Hits the Wall

In sports -- particularly those that involve running -- there's a phrase for when a competitor begins to lose energy and momentum. They call it hitting the wall.

In BBC documentary film maker Louis Theroux's Most Hated Family in America in Crisis, Theroux returns to Topeka, Kansas to catch up with the Westboro Baptist Church.

What emerges is a portrait of a social movement -- and a family -- in crisis.

Maybe it's charitable to describe the WBC as a social movement. Perhaps its more fitting to describe them as part of a hate-based religion movement that includes individuals such as Florida's Pastor Terry Jones and the Taliban. The hate-based religion movement is basically a multi-faith hate cult.



In the four years since Theroux was last with the WBC, it has slowly hemhorraged followers. As it does this, the Phelps family itself hemhorrages family members.

It's against this backdrop that it's startling to see Shirley Phelps-Roeper so enthusiastic about the state of her church when it's in fact more troubled than its ever been before.



It's almost as if Shirley Phelps-Roeper has always been emotionally thriving off the hatred she provokes. With the WBC attracting more and more hatred, Phelps-Roeper seems more and more pleased with herself.

In fact, Phelps-Roeper seems more disturbed than ever before. Presenting some pint-sized hate placards, she describes them as "cute".

She even describes President Barack Obama as "the anti-Christ".



Even more shocking than the kid-sized signs she shows off is hearing the Phelps' own very young children -- some seeming to be as young as seven years old -- spouting the same hate rhetoric. This is just a form of victimization by the elder members of the hate-cult. The children have no idea what they're saying; they don't actually understand the hate they're being taught.



Most striking is that the WBC's hate-based religion makes victims of the Phelps children. They are essentially not allowed to be children. While the elder Phelps have allowed themselves to make friends, find love (even if it's with despicable people) and have families. They do not allow their children the same opportunities to live.

It repeatedly becomes thematic throughout the film: the hypocrisy of the WBC is slowly driving its children away.

At the end of the day, however, Louis Theroux should accept that his quest to understand the Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church is futile. Try as they may, good people -- and Theroux seems like a genuinely good person -- will never truly understand evil.

In China, Even Humanity Comes Separate to Power

The question of which society in human history has been the most totalitarian will forever be up for debate.

There is, however, little question about one thing: Communist China will rank close to the top of the list. China would likely be among the top five most totalitarian societies, if not the top three. If not number one.

The Communist Party of China has declared that every institution of the state essentially has one purpose: the perpetuation of the communist political order.

In the concluding chapter of BBC's China, some basic issues of legal equality and human rights are addressed. In the cases of religious freedom, political freedom, legal equality, and even the provision of basic medical care for AIDs victims, a startling fact becomes abundantly clear: in China, even basic, fundamental humanity comes separate to the aims of maintaining the power of the current regime.

Certainly, more and more Chinese are standing up and demanding their rights, and their freedom. But when the government is more concerned with maintaining its own power, this is too often for naught.

The Deeper Perversity of Greenpeace China

In Ethical Oil, Ezra Levant finds the soft, vulnerable underbelly of a group that considers itself a world-class environmentalist rabble-rouser: Greenpeace China.

For a group that has prided itself on the ability to produce dramatic and stirring images -- small boats bobbing over calamitous waves while confronting gargantuan whaling ships, massive banners hung from flare stacks at Fort McMurray oilsands sites -- Greenpeace's relationship toward China has been remarkably docile.

As revealed by Levant -- well, perhaps Levant simply reminds readers more than revealing anything -- Greenpeace China, in order to simply exist at the mercy of an oppressive regime, must continually praise what it calls "progress" from China on environmental issues.

Yet, as part one of China reveals, China's environmental record is far from sparkling.

The rush to industrialize China at a rate faster than any previous in human history has led to environmental and human health disasters unimagined anywhere else in the world. In some places, toxic water has transformed cancer rates that were once believed to be one in 100,000 to one in 100 (although, to be entirely fair, some of the jump could be due to increased rates of detection as opposed to new cancers).

The images presented by Chinese activists in China are startling, and make anything produced by the most extreme anti-oilsands critics (such as "mutant fish" that are not actually mutated).

In fact, while China's environment brings cancer and death to so many of its citizens, Greenpeace China spends the bulk of its time complaining about recycling western celphones and disposable chopsticks.

To make matters worse, Chinese environmentalists who are not prepared to simply let these matters go out of deference to employment have very few resources available to them. Chinese law practically forbids suing the government, as lawyers are instructed that their prime goal is to ensure the continuation of the Communist Party political order... even if the communist economic order has long since been abandoned.

As badly as a lot of activists want to make the Fort McMurray oilsands the focus of the world's environmentalist rage, China is a much more dangerous polluter. As the film reveals, acid rain originating from sulphur dioxide emissions in China fall in Japan, Korea and probably Russia and India as well.

Yet Greenpeace refuses to drop the kid gloves with China.

Perhaps Ezra Levant is right: environmentalists love to pick on the oilsands because Canadians are so obliging as targets.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

As a follow-up to Kosovo: Conflict Through the Centuries, Kosov: Life After Independence chronicles the early struggles of Kosovars to create and manage their own country following its secession from Serbia.

No matter how separatists may imagine it -- from Ulster nationalists in Britain to Quebecois separatists in Canada -- countries do not break up gracefully.

While ethnic Albanians were overjoyed by the Kosovar declaration of independence, ethnic Serbs in Kosovo were naturally ill at ease -- Serbian President Boris Tadic promised nothing short of complete defiance in his bid to overturn what he termed an illegal seccession.

In the wake of such a seccession, it's certain that there are some -- in many cases, even entire families -- that may never accept the seccession of Kosovo. The separation of Kosovo may even spawn future separatist movements within predominantly-Serbian portions of Kosovo.

When that time comes, ethnic Albanian Kosovars may have to swallow their own bitter medicine. Unless abated through a proper negotiation and reconciliation, the cycle will merely continue indefinitely.

Balkanization 101

In a world where the fomer Yugoslavia is often treated as an all-encompassing example of ethnic conflict, it should be considered unsettling that so few people understand the nature of the conflict there.

While the conflict within Serbia over the destiny of Kosovo -- whether the predominantly ethnic Albanian region will remain within Serbia, or whether it would separate (Kosovo eventually declared its independence) -- is but a fragment of the overall conflict in former Yugoslavia, it's a good place to start for anyone trying to get a better grip on the phenomenon of Balkanization.

Back in Black (on Broadway)

Watch Lewis Black - Black on Broadway [2004] in Comedy  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

The Politics of Judgement and the Judgement of Politics

The attempted coup d'etat against US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt has long been a part of United States political lore.

The argument is that a group of conspirators, magnates of big business, allegedly admiring the techniques adopted by Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini, attempted to utilize a mid-depression movement of discontented World War One veterans to overthrow Roosevelt in an effort to head off the New Deal.

The players in the plot circled around an embittered Marine General, a disgruntled former Democrat Presidential candidate, and a collection of tycoons who allegedly intended to usher in a fascist regime in the United States.

The case brought against them is actually rather unconvincing. Despite the revelations offered by General Smedley Butler, no one was ever charged for the plot.

There seems to be little concrete evidence.

Yet many conservatives would argue that Roosevelt himself was exceeding the powers alotted to the government by the United States constitution. To this end -- not respecting the limits of government as defined by the highest, most fundamental law of the land -- many of them (such as Jonah Goldberg) would actually argue that it was Roosevelt who was leading the United States toward fascism.

It's a similar argument to the one currently playing itself out in relation to US President Barack Obama.

There may be some credence to the argument. It's limited credence, but it may well be there. After all, a rejection of the legally-defined powers of the government is one condition that is necessary for fascism to flourish.

What emerges is the dilemma of the politics of judgement, and how it affects the judgement of politics. Considering that communism and fascism were both movements very active in the Depression era, many find it believable to suggest that a fascist plot was underway. Many others may find it believable to suggest that the plotters were merely patriots resisting the implimentation of an allegedly-unconstitutional socialist and statist agenda (socialism and statism being central to both communism and fascism).

Many will simply read their own politics into the matter. If it's ideologically convenient to judge the plotters as fascists, they judge the alleged plotters as fascists. If it's ideologically convenient to brand them as patriots (if clearly self-interested patriots) and FDR as a soft tyrant (in the lexology offered by Mark Levin), they will do that instead.

The ultimate truth of the matter has long been taken to the grave by all of those involved. While it makes for interesting political intrigue, it makes for an even better case study in how we allow the politics judgement to effect the judgement of politics.

Balancing Gun Ownership & Public Safety A Matter Of Perspective

In Michael & Me, Phil Elder makes his case against Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine, and the arguments Moore makes in that film.

The Follies of Foreign Adventurism for Political Gain

As so many ancient myths do, the story of Jason and the Argonauts holds particular lessons for modern leaders.

Namely, the folly of foreign adventurism for the sake of domestic political gain.

The plight of Jason actually seems quite just: he is the rightful heir to the throne of Thessaly, after his Uncle Pelias siezes the throne from his father, Aristo.

When he seeks to recover his usurped throne, his uncle tells him that he may have it back if he can complete a scarcely imaginable task: he must recover the mythical Golden Fleece and return with it to Thessaly.

What unfolds should be taken as a warning to any would-be foreign adventurers: one needs to ensure that they are willing to pay the cost, even if it's in service of a just cause.

As it turns out, the difficulty in obtaining the Fleece didn't merely rest in the acquisition of the Fleece itself. As it turned out, the challenge of obtaining the Fleece rested in the conquering of the various obstacles that beset him along the way, and then in the removal of the Fleece.

Many modern foreign interventions have unfolded the same way. What were expected to be short missions in Afghanistan and Iraq have instead extended into longer foreign interventions.

When one considers the potential cost of such adventures, embarking upon them for mere domestic political gain is absolute folly. (Arguably, one may see this in the Iraq conflict. The meagre threat posed by Iraq certainly didn't justify that particular adventure.)

Rather, such adventures can only truly be justified on two counts: to confront a danger that is truly present, and in support of a cause that is just.

In the course of his quest for the Golden Fleece, Jason commits many acts that do not confront threats to Thessaly -- including Aeetes, the King of Colchis (modern day Georgia), whom he betrayed with the help of Medea.

With Medea -- one of the prizes Jason brings back to Thessaly -- Jason ultimately returns with the ultimate tool of his own destruction. Coupled with the outrage Medea feels over a plan by Jason to marry the daughter of a Corinthian King, Jason is, in the end, destroyed.

Left by his wife, deprived of his sons (murdered by Medea), and spurned by the Corinthian ruling class for the actions of his wife (who also murdered Jason's fiancee and her father), Jason is eventually crushed by the rotten stern of the Argo itself.

This befalls Jason because he was not wary of the dangers posed by his foreign adventurism. In the end, he ultimately brought the greatest of those dangers home with him -- in the form of the moral degradation of himself and others -- and all for his own political gain.

A wiser would-be ruler would have found another way to affect that gain. Jason does not, and in the end he pays the price.

The Historical Political Appeal of Myth

In , Michael Wood tells the story of a table once believed to be the famed Round Table of King Arthur. Preserved and passed down through history, the table was at one point preserved by Henry VIII, who regarded himself to be the heir to Arthur's legacy.

Many British rulers have -- publicly or privately -- regarded the mythical Aurthur as a paragon of a virtuous king, to be emulated. Arthur is regarded as the penultimate benevolent ruler.

Arthur's myth came to possess a great amount of political appeal.

Henry VIII established the Anglican Church, and broke the Catholic Church's hold over England.

Of course, Henry VIII did not act out of noble ambitions. He acted out of the desire to divorce his wife, in the desperation to produce a male heir to the throne.

The Catholic Church wouldn't allow Henry to to divorce his wife. His actions eventually resulted in his excommunication from the Church.

In time, Henry's legacy would be religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants throughout British colonial holdings -- particularly in Ireland and Canada.

Depending on which version of the Arthur legend one ascribes to -- the classic legend, or the one many historians promote, in which Arthurius led northern Pagans to ally with Woads to create a society based on religious and ethnic tolerance -- the legacies of King Arthur and Henry VIII couldn't be more disparate.

It's Devil's Night!

Steyn vs Freud... Who Would've Thunk It?

When Macleans magazine published an excerpt from America Alone entitled "The Future Belongs to Islam", it eventually led to the magazine being subject to a human rights complaint.

Various Canadian Muslim groups objected to the excerpt, and feared it would stir up public hostility against Muslims. There may have been fair reason to worry about this (although the Human Rights complaint itself was clearly frivolous).

But part three of the Century of the Self presents a theme that puts an interesting twist on the Steyn thesis: as a spin-off off an ancient showdown between psychiatric quacks.

The quacks in case are Anna Freud -- the daughter of Sigmund Fruend, who considered the human sex drive to be dangerous -- and Whilhem Reich, who considered a healthy sex life to be the definitive factor of human mental health.

A decidated life-long virgin, Freud was considered to be something of a prude. When Reich's theories came to her attention, Freud took it upon herself to destroy her career.

Reich believed that human sexuality wasn't merely the key to human flourishing in terms of demographics alone. He also believed that orgasm was central to human mental health. By modern standards, it stands out as a lunatic idea, but it's implications for Steyn's argument are intriguing, to say the least.

In the excerpt, Steyn argues a very basic and intuitive thesis: the Muslim world is reproducing at a far faster rate than the western world. In terms of sheer numbers alone, this could put the Islamic world in the position of being able to overwhelm and envelope the rest.

This is certainly a terrifying prospect for many of Steyn's most fervent admirers, who fear Muslims.

Western and Muslim attitudes toward sex are remarkably different. Through innovations in birth control, the western world has embraced sex for pleasure like at no other time in human history, perhaps exempting the height of Roman decadence. The increasing cultural focus on sex becomes most apparent through an examination of pop culture.

Meanwhile, the (at least stereotypical) Muslim attitude toward sex is considered far less enthusiastic.

As individuals, the western world has far more sex than the Muslim world and produces far fewer children. Some may say that birth control is to blame for this state of affairs and while they would be correct, any proposal to eliminate birth control is unequivocally not the answer.

If one were to judge the comparative mental illness of the western and Muslim worlds based on Reich's theory, one may be drawn toward the issue of suicide bombers. It takes a particularly fervent individual to commit to killing themselves as a means of attacking their enemies -- some could consider this to be a symptom of some sort of mental illness.

The irony is astounding: the Muslim world has less casual sex, but more children (whom some would, rightly or wrongly, consider to be candidates for future suicide bombings). If Reich's theories had any merit at all, it would be ironic that the innovations that have allowed the western world to enjoy the mental health benefits of casual sex have also led to a state of affairs in which they've put the western world at a disadvantage.

This is, of course, assuming that one grants credence to Wilhelm Reich's theories (one should not), and that one agrees with Mark Steyn (one may not).

The Quest for Total Control

In part two of The Century of the Self, Adam Curtis outlines how the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud were applied in an effort to try to prevent a mass movement like the one present in Nazi Germany from ever emerging in the United States.

Ironically, the progenitors of these efforts wound up seeking precisely the kind of total control that the Nazi Party had sought in Germany.

Sigmund Freud believed that psychoanalysis could, at best, help people understand the internal forces within their own minds. His daughter Anna Freud, however, had different ideas entirely: she believed that people could learn to control these internal forces.

Of course, if an individual could learn how to control these forces, it isn't unthinkable that other people could learn how to control them on the individual'a behalf.

This at least partially seemed to be the impetus behind the National Mental Health Strategy introduced by Harry Truman's government in the post-war years. It mixed a demonstrable actual need -- the need to find ways to effectively treat the post-traumatic stress disorder, known then as shell shock, that many American veterans had returned from the war with -- with the desire to manipulate peole for economic or political gain.

The focus of these efforts was on identifying psychological barriers to certain acts, and removing them.

Political authorities turned the techniques of psychoanalysis toward creating a stable American society -- toward building a common identity that would lead toward constructive collective action.

But this is exactly what the Nazi Party had sought to do in Germany. They recognized a German society that had become unstable under the dual strains of the Great Depression and post-World War One political instability, and sought to establish Nazism as the means by which stability would be restored to Germany.

In some regards, they succeeded. The irrational behaviour of the German masses under Nazism were directed toward rationed -- if not rational -- ends.

To this end, the efforts of Anna Freud and her contemporaries were potentially self-defeating.

The Rationality of Irrationality

In part one of Adam Curtis' The Century of the Self, Adam Curtis investigates how the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud were exploited in by Edward Burnays -- a nephew of Freud's -- to develop marketing techniques that exploited people's emotions to make them believe that emotionally-driven decisions were being made rationally.

What Burnays kick-started has over decades grown into marketing techniques whereby products are no longer sold, but rather the idea of a lifestyle.

As Benjamin Barber points out, sometimes the lifestyles being marketed are at odds with the products themselves. During the average sports telecast, for example, one will encounter ads for sporting goods such as Nike and Reebok. The idea is that one will buy the idea that by buying these goods they'll be able to emulate their sporting heroes.

During the same telecast, however, one will also encounter ads for fastfood restaurants and alcohol. This lifestyle message is at direct odds with those offered by the producers of sporting goods.

After all, few professional athletes are frequent visitors to McDonald's restaurants. Those who over-indulge in Budweiser and Smirnoff vodka will certainly not enjoy long-term success.

The fast food and alcohol advertisements are much more in tune with the lifestyle choices of the average sports spectator. As Barber notes, the lifestyle promoted through these telecasts is not one of actually playing hockey, football or basketball, but rather of being a spectator.

A lifestyle of watching, not one of doing.

Without the work of people like Edward Burnays, such things would never have been possible.

Unravelling the Puzzle of Neo-Conservatism

The War Party, a BBC documentary about American neo-conservatives and their influence on the Iraq War.

But what it fails to provide is the context for the neo-conservative belief in evil.

As it turns out, neo-conservatives were originally anti-communist liberals who joined the conservative movement because they found contemporary liberalism to be too soft on communism.

While the Holocaust does weigh heavy in the mind of neo-conservatives (who, despite the protestation of modern contemporary liberals, recognize that it was born of a left-wing regime), Stalinist atrocities like Holodomor weigh heavier.

That communism -- and its sister ideology, national socialism (with particular emphasis on the socialism for the benefit of the wilfully ignorant) is evidence to many neo-conservatives that evil very much does exist in the world.

More contemporary conservatives may be more likely to question the prospect of evil's existence at all.

Just as "neo-conservative" was coined as an insult by that era's contemporary conservatives, it has been embraced as an insult by this era's contemporary liberals, who are often all too unaware of what neo-conservatism truly is.

Neo-conservatives embraced the label because there's nothing shameful in it. Neo-conservatives recognize that there are various threats in the world. During the Cold War it was communism. Today, it's terrorism.

They also recognize that evil often manifests itself through these threats.

Unlike the contemporary liberals of the 1970s and '80s, neo-conservatives intend to never understimate the danger posed by those threats, and intend to never forget the kinds of evil acts that can be prepetrated in their advancement.

This isn't to be said that neo-conservatives themselves don't pose any dangers. As the Iraq War demonstrates, their inability to practice restraint in the course of implimenting this agenda often harms it.

In the war on terror, the key front is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Iraq has only been a wholesale distraction from this -- something that neo-conservatives in the Democratic party have seemingly recognized better than those among the Republicans.

The Forgotten Islam

For the most dedicated critics of Islam -- those better described as "Islamophobes" -- Sufism is not only the Islam they forgot. Rather, Sufism is the Islam they refuse to even acknowledge.

Sufism could perhaps best be described as the Salvation Army of Islam.

Sufism combines the joyous music and adulation of God with the generous philanthropic outlook of the Salvation Army.

Sufism refutes the iconoclastic nature of Islam, and finds its route to God through music and art -- much to the objection of Muslim fundamentalists.

Contrary to the stereotype of Islam as backward and culturally stagnant, Sufism is progressive and culturally dynamic. Sufi musicians experiment openly with their stylings, including flirting with electronic music.

It's a shame that Sufism has become the forgotten Islam. It should be the Islam that everyone remembers.

Why Do We Fight? Redux

Why We Fight presents numerous threads of director Eugene Jarecki's take on post-9/11 American foreign policy. Dominant in those threads seems to be a left-wing interpretation of the actions of the United States since 9/11 -- peppered with references to "American Empire".

But more compelling, and perhaps more illuminating are some of the personal stories of post-9/11 America. One of those is the story of retired NYPD officer Wilton Sekzer, whose son was in the World Trade Centre on 9/11, and died therein.

In the film, Sekzer tells his story of seeking comfort in the days following 9/11. In his case, he did this by asking the US military to dedicate a bomb to his son's memory during the opening days of the Iraq War.

Eventually disillusioned by the war -- he had been led to believe that the war was a retaliatory campaign for 9/11 -- Sekzer comes to regret having asked for this.

He seems to have reached a sobering revelation about the waging of war as a measure of revenge.

Not everyone in the United States has reached this realization. The plan of Pastor Terry Jones of Florida's Dove World Outreach Centre, a non-demoninational evangelical church, to burn a Koran on 9/11 -- which, at most recent reports, had been cancelled -- demonstrates this.

Revenge per se wasn't the stated motivation for Jones' announced intention to host a Koran burning. Rather, he had reportedly planned it in response to the building of the controversial Ground Zero mosque (located not at Ground Zero, but within a few city blocks of it).

But the pettiness that pervades notions of revenge positively saturates Jones' pledged act.

There should be little doubt that Jones regarded his planned Koran burning as an act of revenge for 9/11.

But revenge isn't a valid justification for any act, especially not for acts such as these. It's an emotional response.

To fight a war in Iraq or Afghanistan with revenge as the motive would be wrong. The only valid justification for waging such conflicts is to ensure the security of the states waging them, or international security as a whole.

There is no credible question that removing the regimes in place in each state at the time of the invasion would benefit international security as a whole. Whether the Iraq war, more specifically, actually achieved that goal is credibly a matter of some debate.

The question of why the Iraq war was fought, and the relationship of that decision to the events of 9/11 will remain a crucial question for not only the United States, but for the world as a whole.

When going to war, it's crucial to know why we fight. It cannot be for revenge.

Stalin's Country Embraces Hitler

In a country where the populace often expresses a terrifying admiration for Joseph Stalin, it should perhaps be unsurprising that there are also those who would express admiration for Adolph Hitler.

In Russia, the National Socialist Organization has managed to eke itself out a growing niche within Russian society. Like many neo-Stalinists, those supporting neo-Nazism in Russia have opposed immigration of any kind. Some have even suggested that Russian women who marry non-Russians should have their citizenships revoked.

Though outlawed earlier in 2010 (with Mein Kampf banned more recently), it's rumoured that the National Socialist Organization has merely gone underground, and is still growing.

While Vladimir Putin has acted to attempt to contain the threat, the greater problem remains his regime's tendency to often glorify Joseph Stalin. A government that glorifies one tyrant essentially writes its citizens license to emulate another.

When one considers that many tyrannies emerge as imitations of previous tyrannies, the danger posed by organizations such as the NSO -- who are also said to be active in Canada -- are quite real.