Something on my Mind: Tom and Jerry

The entertainment world is marked by pairs. Going way back, we have Martin and Lewis, Abbott and Costello, and Wayne and Shuster. And don't forget Seigfried and Roy, the lion tamers. You can even throw in Tom and Jerry, if you so choose.

The corporate world is no different: Barnes and Noble, A & W, and Johnson and Johnson. And surely you've heard of Ben and Jerry, they of the ice cream fame? Even Sears once had a Simpson.

Universities, at least to the south of us, are the same: Have you heard of William and Mary, Army and Navy, and Texas A and M? And you know that the University of Laval sports moniker is rouge et or (red and gold, I believe).

Pairs in sports are very common, too. I'll let you fill in the blanks for famous quarterbacks and their equally-famous wide receivers; in hockey, we speak of Kane and Toews, Henrik and Daniel, Johnny G and Sean M, and Funston and Trudeau.

Just wondering out loud on that last one: Would one of us be the right winger, and the other, the left winger?

We now have a new tandem for the foreseeable future: Jean and Kenny. Changing metaphors, the new sheriff in town (Brian Jean) has been joined by a (potential) newer sheriff, Jason Kenny. Ultimately, to carry this picture further, one will be the sheriff, the other will be his deputy—but who will be which, no one knows.

In Alberta's worst-kept political secret in recent years, the Progressive Conservative Party elected a new leader a few weeks ago in the person of Jason Kenny...and that by a landslide. And Kenny's main plank in his leadership run was to unite the right in one form or the other.

The Progressive Conservatives have been more "progressive" than conservative for years. "Liberal Conservatives" is a more accurate name They have been a blister in the political butt for all true conservatives for at least a decade: They carried the conservative name, but did not embrace conservative principles.

The Wildrose party has became the new confirmed conservative party (without the "C"), both fiscally and socially (though more the former than the latter) One needs to hold to both to be truly conservative. Jason Kenny, and those who support him, represent that, I think.

If you want to work with another analogy, think of a business takeover. It's a merger of two "companies" (PC and Wildrose), though a faction within the Progressive Conservatives are resisting any alliance whatsoever. Strange, isn't it, that the Progressives aren't really that progressive, after all.

Some of the old guard has even lost its grip on what it means to be truly conservative, but 75% of the delegates at the leadership convention a few weeks ago certainly saw the "light"—especially when Mr. Kenny's main platform was to "unite the right."

"Unite the right," for those of you who have spent the winter in Arizona or cloistered in college classrooms, is a merging (blending, hence, uniting) of all those on the right side of the political spectrum. There needs to be one robust conservative party to defeat the leftists before they completely destroy Alberta.

Brian Jean and Jason Kenny have already met, and plan to do it again and again, with increasing numbers of stakeholders involved in the process. There are papers, policies, and protocol to work through, and these next few months will be most exciting for Albertans. With a change of government in two years, there is hope for Alberta's future

I will flesh out these hopes next week. In the meantime, I was wondering: If Brian is Tom, does that mean Jason is Jerry?

Sure beats the NDP version of Laurel and Hardy,

Something on my Mind: White Privilege or What Privilege?--Part 2

So we're having a run on this myth of "white privilege" for yet another column. There is a lot of confusion created by a variety of sources, and they are successful when the gullible populace buy into it.

All I can address is where I came from and what I'm doing about it. You, of course, have the same responsibility. We need to be so very careful to not create a straw man, in order to mask the real issue here.

Other confusing factors are the differences between white privilege (so-called) and white supremacy.

Let me help explain what I see as the differences: the former is inherent, no choice in the matter; but the latter is an attitude, and a committed choice to that ideology. If one is white, it's no more vile than being black or brown; however, if one is a committed white supremacist, there is much evil that follows.

My caution to our left-leaning friends, to use the term "friends" loosely, is that they are confusing one for the other.

So let me address the "privilege" phenomena in my life, but perhaps not in the way it's presented publicly these days.

I enjoyed the privilege of being raised in a home where I had a dad. Many of the disaffected youth have never known their dad. Maybe that's one of the reasons for their anger. There is no question that a fatherless house is the source of much venom these days.

I enjoyed the privilege of a being the product of a traditional marriage—you know, mom and dad. No committing lovers, no affairs, no blended or broken families. Maybe the cause of marital unsettledness these days are moms and dad playing fast and loose factors into the family fallout today—and not so much the white privilege tripe.

Within the context of a traditional marriage I saw how a husband should treat his wife, and vice versa.. Maybe, must maybe, some of these disaffected parties have never seen how men should treat their wives or girlfriends.

I enjoyed the privilege of parents who believed and lived out their faith. I don't know how that's a white privilege. If there is a race element to this, I agree: the human race. Faith and truth are not limited to whites—you know that, don't you? But stability and hope in a traditional home may be misconstrued for white privilege.

I enjoyed the privilege of a good work ethic. (Okay, I didn't quite see it that way when I was subjected to chores, accountability, and doing each job right.) There was no privilege when it came to university tuition, car payments, and house mortgage. I had to pay for it all, every last loonie . No one was there to bail me out through a handout—not my parents, not the government, not people of the same or different skin colour.

So it's a royal pain when I read of a double standard for university tuition, that people of another skin colour are to blame for society's woes, seeing that there is an agenda against white privilege. I think we call that reverse racism, but I rarely ever read or hear about that injustice.

The above is a confession and a solution in a nutshell. If you didn't get it, it's all about the nuclear family. That may look a little different from family to family, but it is the smallest social unit where law, love, and life are learned, where obedience and discipline are part of a daily regimen.

There are privileges with race, but it has nothing to do with the colour white.

Something on my Mind: White Privilege or What privilege?--Part 1

Let's imagine that because I was born a certain way—a certain colour, to be precise—that I would receive the brunt of a wide variety of charges, accusations, and general harassment. My skin colour would determine whether I got free university or not, whether I was to blame for societal ills, and whether my life really mattered.

Let me now fine-tune that: I read these days that, because I was born with white skin, I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, that I have lived on Easy Street all my life, and that I have innate privileges that many others don't have.

These privileges include better jobs, higher pay, nicer house, better health, and so on. I suppose that means no line-ups, no setbacks, and no slowdowns. This nonsense is from the same source that includes global warming, vaccination, and carbon footprints. (I just couldn't resist that shot, sorry.)

I wonder on a daily basis when the myths and lies (fake information?) will end. All my faithful readers need to apply the lessons from the past two weeks column—thinking critically and leaning on dependable sources.

Just hold that thought for now: we'll circle back shortly.

Let me tell you briefly about Tom and Anne. If my history serves me correct, they left Ireland when they were fairly young; together, but not together, if you know what I mean—she to Rhode Island; he, to Winnipeg, Canada. Somewhere, they met up again and settled in Canada.

Grief  dogged their steps as they lost two of the first of four children in early childhood deaths. But at least they saw the next two--Charlotte and William—live on into adulthood. Hard times and hard work produced what it usually does, namely, a good work ethic, a spirit of gratitude for what little they had, and positive attitudes towards life in this wonderful country they adopted.

But most of all, it produced a legacy, one of hundreds of thousands in those early days of the 1900's. As families fled from Europe, Asia, and elsewhere (people of all colours, by the way), and came to Canada for a better life in Canada, they helped this great nation grew to what it has become. I speak of a nation made up of of salt-of-the-earth individuals, determined and hard workers, and traditional families, who got a chance to get somewhere in this world.

They left the spirit of hopelessness behind them, and reached out with a spirit of hope for the future. No privilege came with that effort; it was all about getting up one more time, putting up with setbacks, moving ahead, and simple, clear ambition.

Tom and Anne were legal immigrants. They entered Canada with hope and resolve in their heart. They came with nothing, continued with little, but slowly applied themselves with new resolve for opportunities to succeed.

There were no handouts, no entitlements, and certainly no privileges.

No one one told then that because of the colour of their skin they were victims (or, if the "wrong" colour, they were villains). That lie has drifted in from the Left somewhere. Most of those essential facts have been left out in today's relentless attacks on whites.

Tom and Anne had just the one son (William), and William had four sons. I'm the fourth. I guess that makes me a grandson of immigrants. And yet, I suppose I'm marked by privilege. But it's a different sort of privilege, which I'll expand on it next week.

In the interim, I'll be the first to admit that there's race privilege at every level of society, but privilege bis not simply based on colour. There are ethnic and religious components.

Why must we stop at so-called white privilege? There have been abuses right across the spectrum, in every colour, culture and creed.

If you know your history, you'll recall these have included relations between Japanese and Chinese, Vietnamese and Chinese , black and black, Canadian and Chinese, Turks and Armenians, Spanish and Inca, Hindu and Islam... and I'm just warming up.

This goes goes well beyond the myth of so-called white privilege. Those who spout off "white privilege" simply ignore their history.