Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.—Gustav Mahler

Friday, April 08, 2016

Louise Arbour’s Administrative Unit 34B



Did you see the April 1, 2016 Munk Debate? The resolution debated was: 
Be it resolved, give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . . .” 
It was on the global refugee crisis, particularly the crisis in Europe. The participants were, in support of the motion, Louise Arbour & Simon Schama, and against the motion, Nigel Farage & Mark Steyn. The full debate was live streamed and then posted on Youtube, but it has since been taken down. If you register with the Munk Debates on its website, and it is for free, you can see the full debate. It is available here.

I am not going to comment on the debate’s details. It is worth watching in full. There are several good reviews, including one by Douglas Murray, of the Henry Jackson Society, in The Spectator

I think there was some deep support among the speakers and the audience that Western society has to be more assertive and actively integrate newcomers. [at 56:00–57:45 Steyn, at 1:03:30ff Steyn & Schama] Steyn made the point that to do that Western societies have to stand for something, have to believe something, have to have a history, language, and culture. There has to be something for the newcomer to integrate into.

I am not entirely sure Louise Arbour agreed with that above. 

Who is Louise Arbour?: 

The Honourable Louise Arbour’s career of public service includes sitting on the Supreme Court of Canada from 1999 to 2004, acting as the Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and serving as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She was CEO of the renowned International Crisis Group from 2009 to 2014. Arbour is a Companion of the Order of Canada and recipient of twenty-seven honorary degrees.

Arbour is a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy and of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of The Coalition for the International Criminal Court. She chaired an inquiry commission that investigated certain events at the Prison for Women in Kingston, Ontario, and has also served as a member of the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security.

Arbour has been a Companion of the Order of Canada since 2007 and a Grand Officer of the Ordre national du Québec since 2009, as well as a Commander of the Légion dhonneur, and has been decorated by both Spain, Colombia and Belgium. She is currently a jurist in residence at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP.


[here

Again, at one point, Steyn stated:
Holding a passport does not make you Canadian and does not make you Belgian and does not make you French. [at 1:04:30]
Later, Arbour stated:
If you have a Canadian passport, you are a Canadian citizen. [at 1:12:34]
As a technical, legal matter, Canadian nationals get to hold Canadian passports, and they are “Canadian citizens” in this legal sense and also in the everyday layperson’s sense. But if that is all it means to be a Canadian citizen, you can kiss social cohesion and integration in the West goodbye.

This is Louise Arbours Administrative Unit 34B.

Seth

PS: My co-bloggers do good work. So, please have a look around New Reform Club.

PPS: Here are links to Mark Steyns posts on the Munk Debate. [here] [here] [here] [here]

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SethBTillman ( @SethBTillman )

Seth Barrett Tillman, Louise Arbour’s Administrative Unit 34B, New Reform Club (Apr. 10, 2016, 3:38 PM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2016/04/louise-arbour-34b.html>;

Seth Barrett Tillman, Part II, Louise Arbours Millions [of migrants] [of undocumented aliens] [of asylum seekers] [of stateless persons] [of internally displaced persons], New Reform Club (Apr. 11, 2016, 7:38 AM), <reformclub.blogspot.com/2016/04/part-i>;

My prior post is here: Seth Barrett Tillman, Trump Voters and Modern American Legal Academia, The New Reform Club (Apr. 8, 2016, 5:41 AM)



1 comment:

Tom Van Dyke said...

But if that is all it means to be a Canadian citizen, you can kiss social cohesion and integration in the West good-by.

Good-by, then. The left does not believe in the concepts of "society" or "culture" unless it's somebody else's, in which case it must be revered.

Their belief is in government and government alone, that Western bourgeois democracy and the welfare state is sufficient for all man's goods and ills.

The universal homogenous state, home of The Last Man.

The End of History was never linked to a specifically American model of social or political organization. Following Alexandre Kojève, the Russian-French philosopher who inspired my original argument, I believe that the European Union more accurately reflects what the world will look like at the end of history than the contemporary United States. The EU's attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a "post-historical" world than the Americans' continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military.