Book review: The Charter Revolution & The Court Party

The Charter Revolution & The Court Party, by F.L. Morton and Rainer Knopff (Broadview Press, 2000, ISBN 1-55111-089-X, 227 pages, soft cover, $22.95 (Can)).

The book will help understand how the justice system got to where it is. It traces the history of the evolution of charter rights and how they became subverted to make the justice system as capricious as it is now, driven by liberal, politically activist justices who represent minority interest groups. It describes better than anything I've read so far what caused us to be where we are, having elitist representatives of minority interest groups run our country (the same is happening in the US and elsewhere), people who live in ivory towers and in no way represent the mostly conservative masses: labourers, waitresses, the trades, business and the producers. Not only do they not represent the masses, but they are out of touch with and not even part of them, having themselves not ever produced anything that can be consumed but being nothing more than consumers of what the masses produce. It doesn't matter whether they consume products or services; although they consume both, they are not producers of either.

The Court Party changes society by using litigation based on creative interpretations of the constitution and by means of re-writing the constitution to suit them, using activist judges to help them, being to some extent led by those activist judges. The book describes the warring factions within the Court Party, the egalitarians, the libertarians and the social engineers, who have often conflicting interests but who all share one common aspect, that of being out of touch with the masses and nevertheless believing that they must tell the masses how to lead their lives because it is only they who know what is best for the masses. In the process they not only promote new laws that further their interests, but they declare illegal the traditions by which civilization came about and that were also the result of the evolution of society.

Morton and Knopff illustrate that the elitists of the Court Party go by the premise that since change is unavoidable, it may as well be brought about — thereby to force and guide the evolution of civilization through the creation of a welfare state.

It all relates well to the elections, not only the presidential elections in the US but also the Canadian federal elections that took place at the end of November 2000. The book doesn't recommend any solutions, but it is a very well-written and well-researched problem analysis.

Solutions come out of understanding a problem, a common understanding that we are dissatisfied with the problem, and that we want to do something about it. We may think that one of the solutions for overcoming the power of the Court Party may be to alleviate voter apathy, but that would be wrong. Although the members of the Court Party can't completely ignore the wishes of the masses as expressed in Parliament or in Congress nor the wishes of the bureaucracy or of business, they are undeniably in power, power so great as to make our legislators ineffective, let alone that some of our legislators are themselves members of the Court Party and that it is wealthy private sources, business and (at least in Canada ever since Trudeau) the State itself who provide the funding for and even create the minority interest groups that drive the Court Party.

The driver of a car is in control of where it's going. In the case of society, it is without any doubt the Court Party who is the driver. We are engaged on an accelerating course of ideology-driven self-destruction. The Court Party is at the steering wheel.

Whether we want the Court Party to remain in power and at the wheel depends on whether we are satisfied with having a society imposed on us that is fashioned after Marxist principles (read "communist party lines;" most of the masses have have no longer a clue what "Marxist" is) and strategies for change, in which the program for the elimination of class struggle by eradicating the right to own private property is augmented by a program for the elimination of "gender" differences; a program that requires the elimination of the family and of other traditional institutions and social standards.

Whether there are enough people who want to oust the Court Party is questionable. Just look for example at the undeniably libertarian and egalitarian new breed of the sector of younger people who are subscribed to Fathers Rights discussion forums. Most are undoubtedly firm supporters of the Court Party. It also appears that they have the primary prerequisite for becoming Court Party members in good standing. It seems that without exception all of them are students — consumers who never once in their lives produced anything for consumption.

It is a somewhat sad circumstance that caused me to find the time to begin reading the book. I spent a good portion of yesterday in the University Hospital in Edmonton. Anthony had a serious accident on the oil rig he was working on in Southern Saskatchewan. His left femur got broken into three pieces. It was an open fracture. He was extricated from where he got pinned and then flown to Edmonton to undergo three hours of surgery to insert a steel pin that will string the three pieces of bone back together. But Anthony is lucky. Hadn't he jumped, he would have had his back broken or at least have his pelvis crushed.

It brings back to mind the injuries I received over the years, almost without exception injuries received on the job while working to produce something, whether it was in the installation of telecommunication equipment or whether it was working on my farm producing grain and hay or sheep, hogs and cattle. The Court Party members, without exception, don't receive injuries on the job other than perhaps the odd paper cut. What kind of sacrifices do they make and what kind of risks do they take for society? Nevertheless, social activism by Court Party members is a growth industry and provides lucrative incentives for many to join.

F.L. Morton and Rainer Knopff received their Ph.D.'s from the University of Toronto and have both taught at the University of Calgary for the past twenty years. Writing together and separately, their previous books include "Charter Politics" (1992), "Morgentaler v. Borowski: Abortion, the Charter and the Courts" (1992), "Human Rights and Social Technology: The New War on Discrimination" (1989), and "Federalism and the Charter: Leading Constitutional Decisions" (1989, with Peter H. Russell).

In February of 2000 I ordered a copy of the book, through Coles. In November of 2000 the copy I had ordered still had not been delivered. It is still on order, or perhaps I should say censored. The copy used for this review was lent to me. If you intend on obtaining a copy it may be more effective to write directly to Broadview Press at customerservice@broadviewpress.com

Update: March 1, 2001 I finally received from Coles the book that I had ordered in February of the Year 2000.

Contemporary (or second wave) feminism has aptly been described as "Marxism without economics," since feminists replace class with gender as the key social construct. Of course, what society constructs can be deconstructed. This is the feminist project: to abolish gender difference by transforming its institutional source — the patriarchal family. Certain streams of the Gay Rights movement have taken this analysis one step farther. The problem is not just sexism but heterosexism, and the solution is to dismantle not just the patriarchal family but the heterosexual family as such.

— F.L. Morton & Rainer Knopff in
The Charter Revolution & The Court Party (p. 75)

Morton and Knopff may have underestimated the seriousness of and motives behind the assault on the family.
All of humanity is under assault. The proponents of negative population growth heavily fund the efforts of organizations that impose forced sterilization and abortion on primarily the underdeveloped countries of the world. Already in the latest UN World Population Report it is stated that that a population crisis has been created in many of the UN member nations. Eighty-four of the UN member nations now (as of 2000) experience birth rates that are below replacement levels. The developed nations lead the pack. Their population sectors containing the elderly grow at an unprecedented rate in absolute terms and especially in relative terms with respect to the size of the younger productive population sector that has to bear the increasingly unbearably large responsibility to care Cartoon showing disproportionate burden of providing for the elderly

Cartoon showing disproportionate burden of providing for the elderly

and provide for those who can't produce anything any longer for themselves. One of the consequences of that is an enormous increase (150% in the US from 1986 to 1996) in elderly abuse, predominantly cases of neglect of the elderly. (See Trends in Elder Abuse in Domestic Settings, NATIONAL CENTER ON ELDER ABUSE, Elder Abuse Information Series No. 2 (PDF 42kB).   The St. Louis Post-Dispatch produced an excellent series of articles on the topic of fatal elder abuse and neglect in US nursing homes (it is estimated that tens of tousands of cases happen each year), Neglected to Death (Oct. 12 - 19, 2002). See abstract and commentary relating to the articles and to the problem of elder abuse and neglect in nursing home and hospitals.)
     Moreover, the burden of the cancerous growth of government becomes ever larger, inverse in relation to the ever shrinking population, and taxes are rising inexorably.
    The Russian Federation expects to lose 50 million of its population over the next three decades, with the total fertility rate (TFR) of Russian women having precipitously dropped to an average of one child per woman. The TFR of women in all other developed nations is below the level of 2.2 children per woman required to maintain their population. In countries like Italy, Germany, Japan and Greece it has fallen so close to the Russian's TFR that they lose population at the rate of 30 percent or more with every successive generation. (The Demographics of Death, or The Decline & Fall of the Human Empire)
(See also Parents' rights a demographic issue, by COLIN P.A. JONES, Special to The Japan Times, Tuesday, July 18, 2006)

________________

Current total fertility rates (TFRs) for countries in the world - Rank Order. The web page accessible through the preceding link lists the rank order from highest to lowest, with a TFR of about 2.2 indicating a stable population. The TFR required to maintain a given country's population varies a little from country to country, depending on the life expectancy for the average resident in that country. (Source: CIA World Factbook)

As of June 2008, the CIA World Factbook showed 104 countries (generally the richest and most developed) to have TFRs of less than 2.2. In other words, in those countries the population is in the process of shrinking. (Related Articles at Fathers for Life)

Is the world overpopulated?

If all of the world's people were located in the Province of Alberta (just a touch smaller in area than the State of Texas) and each were to have an equal share of all of the land in Alberta, then each of the world's people would have 98.6m² of land to live on.

Assuming that the average household consists of three people, a family of three would have enough space (3,184 ft²) for a moderately-sized house and a garden large enough to grow some of the food consumed by the family.

Alberta land area: 661,565 km², 255,541 miles²
World population: 6,706,993,152 (Source: CIA World Factbook, July 2008 est.)

It is obvious that the world's population density will be the controlling factor. Is that a problem? Will people any time soon be standing on each other's shoulders?

How can the world be overpopulated if it is possible to fit the world population, fairly comfortably, into a province the size of Alberta or a state the size of Texas, even if we divide the whole population into families of three and give each a bungalow and a good-sized garden to boot?

The following table list a number of nations, ranked by their population densities.

Does anyone seeing those numbers still think that the world is overpopulated?

Additional reading:

The 1989 Montreal Massacre in the context of men's sacrifices, 2008 12 07, by Professor Jeffrey Asher.
UN Population Policies, World Demographics, Job Fatalities and the Extermination of Men
UN World Demographics and the costs of disregarding the value of male lives
Population pyramids for selected countries in the regions of the world
Impact of Affirmative Action on Population in Selected Countries

If you have concerns about these and other issues related to the condition of seniors, visit, contact and perhaps even join:

SUN — Seniors United Now

The up- and coming, rapidly-growing advocacy organization for seniors (55 years and over) in Alberta

There are in the order of about half a million or more people of age 55 and over in Alberta. If all of them were to join SUN, they would become the most powerful advocacy organization in Alberta; and seniors would no longer be robbed of their comforts and otherwise ignored.
At the price of one package of cigarettes seniors will be able to gain a voice that will be heard by a government that otherwise can and will take from seniors what they worked for all their life to enjoy in their old age.

If you are concerned about how seniors are affected by the planned, systematic destruction of our families and society, a search at google.com (for elderly OR seniors OR grandparent OR grandfather OR grandmother site:http://fathersforlife.org) will provide you with the links to about 84 web pages at Fathers for Life that will be of interest to you.

As if all of that weren't enough, it isn't just our families who are being dismantled and the size of the world population that is under attack to reduce it to pre-Columbian levels of 300 - 500 million. Now it is the very nature of humanity that is under serious attack.
Efforts are mounting to launch a massive attack on the God-given, natural and normal sexuality of humans. Success in that will be achieved by making the abnormal the norm by which all else is measured.[*]

Townhall.com Columnists

March 6, 2001

Transgender issues are matters of medicine, not politics

A media boom is under way on behalf of transgendered men and women. Last week, for instance, A&E's "Investigative Reports" ran a segment, "The Transgender Revolution," quoting an activist who called it the fourth great rights movement of our era. The Los Angeles Times weighed in with two days' worth of long, sympathetic reports. One account featured an enormous bald man with a long beard who had been born a woman, and a husband and wife who are both undergoing sex-change operations. They will stay married, but the husband will become the wife and vice versa.

Some of the current publicity has been triggered by San Francisco's decision to pay medical expenses of city employees who want sex-change operations.

Like most homosexual groups, the city's large gay population is basically committed to the transgendered cause. Gay empathy and power in Hollywood help explain the surge of cross-dressing and changed-sex characters appearing in movies and on television. Gay activist Nick Adams, a former female, told the L.A. Times that transgender characters are following the earlier TV pattern of blacks, feminists and homosexuals — appearing in sympathetic roles in comedies and as characters in crisis or dramas.

In general, the media have depicted transgender issues as an extension of the rights revolution. It's a matter of "fighting bigotry" and "taking America to the edge of a gender revolution," as A&E's announcer tells us.

Transgender complaints and activism are now bathed in liberation rhetoric, with the customary stress on anti-discrimination laws, hate crimes, and even the mandatory new word of indignant accusation, "transphobia."

Is there anything wrong with this? Well, yes. Reducing cruelty and acknowledging the humanity of all our neighbors are obvious social goods.

But framing the transgendered and their problems as essentially another victim movement skews the discussion. It locates the source of the problem in society, when the focus should surely be on the hormonal or psychiatric factors that cause some people to hate their own bodies and reject their own sex.

Here's an interesting argument from Dr. Paul McHugh, director of psychiatry of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine: A patient's feeling that he is a woman trapped in a man's body is not obviously different from an anorectic woman's feeling that she is drastically overweight. In 1992, writing on sex-change operations, he said: "We don't do liposuction on anorectics. Why amputate the genitals of these poor men? Surely the fault is in the mind, not the member."

In the late 1970s, McHugh halted sex-change operations at Hopkins, calling them "perhaps, with the exception of frontal lobotomy, the most radical therapy ever encouraged by 20th-century psychiatrists." His conclusion was that reputable surgeons should not be in the business of carving up a healthy body to satisfy a feeling about what that body should be.

At the time, it looked as though the Hopkins decision might discourage and help stop sex-change surgery. But it didn't. One reason is that no medical way of relieving the pain and torment of the transgendered has appeared. The cultural acceptance of body modification — everything from breast enlargement to tattooing, scarring and branding — made drastic surgery on healthy organs seem routine. The rise of radical gender studies on the campuses played a role, too, spreading the argument that gender (as opposed to sex) is socially constructed or at least very malleable.

Now a new argument is forming against sex-change operations because of a peculiar demand for a different kind of surgery: People are asking to have one or more healthy limbs cut off because they say they don't feel whole or happy with both arms and both legs attached. This is a psychiatric condition known as apotemnophilia. Last year a surgeon in Scotland drew heavy publicity for amputating the healthy legs of two patients. His hospital stopped him before he could amputate the leg of a third patient, a New Yorker.

In the December 2000 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, University of Minnesota bioethicist Carl Elliott notes that "clinicians and patients alike often suggest that apotemnophilia is like gender-identity disorder and that amputation is like sex-reassignment surgery." This has the effect of undermining the uniqueness of sex-change surgery and challenging the social value attributed to it.

Elliott suggests that unpredictable psychopathologies rise in certain societies "seemingly out of nowhere ... and then disappear just as suddenly." In 19th-century France, young men commonly lapsed into a "fugue state," often coming to in a foreign country with no idea of how they got there. In the 1970s and 1980s, thousands of Americans came to believe they had multiple personalities as a result of childhood trauma.

Fifty years ago, Elliott says, nobody suspected that tens of thousands of people would want to have their genitals surgically altered as a way of relieving suffering. He thinks transgender activism and many social cues may have resulted in a temporary boom for sex-change surgery. It's a tentative analysis, and maybe he's wrong. But at least he is pushing the discussion back into the right arena — psychiatry and medicine, not politics.

—2001 Universal Press Syndicate

It appears that the label of "unpredictable psychopathology" that University of Minnesota bioethicist Carl Elliott attached to the unhealthy desire to have a sex-change operation is correct. However, there are also true medical causes of psychological and physical aberrations that should greatly concern us

Incidence Rates of Chromosome Aberrations.

Down's Syndrome

Overall:	1:700 of live births
Young Mothers:	1:2,000 of live births
Mothers over 40:	1:50 of live births

Sex Chromosome Aberrations

Gonadal Dysgenesis
(Turner's Syndrome, Bonnevie-Ullrich Syndrome)

1:3,000 live female births

The XXX Syndrome (The "Super Female")

? rare

Klinefelter's Syndrome (XXY)

1:500 to 1:1,000 live male births

The XYY Syndrome

? A few males were found in institutions for criminals with subnormal I.Q.

Intersex States (True Hermaphroditism)

? Extremely rare in humans (less then 500 reported cases in the whole world)

Pseudo Hermaphroditism — is not a chromosomal defect. It is due to endocrinal imbalances during gestation and is curable with varying degrees of success through treatment with hydrocortisone and other similar preparations.

Dr. Warne cites an incidence rate of 1:4,500 live births, while inter-sex advocates claim an incidence rate of 1:1,500 live births

Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS)

1:20,000 to 1:60,000 male and female births

Hermaphroditism

In human beings, hermaphroditism is an extremely rare sex anomaly in which gonads for both sexes are present, in which external genitalia may show traits of both sexes, and in which the chromosomes show male-female mosaicism (where one individual possesses both the male XY and female XX chromosome pairs). Choice of sex must be made at birth, usually on the basis of the condition of the external genitalia (i.e., which sex organs predominate), after which surgery is performed to remove the gonads of the opposite sex. The remaining genitalia are then reconstructed to resemble those of the chosen sex.

—ENCYCLOP—DIA BRITANNICA

Although there have been some attempts by gay advocacy researchers to have society accept their claim that homosexuality is genetically pre-determined, not one of those claims has withstood objective scrutiny.

Similar claims have been made by advocates of bisexuality in humans (the preference of an individual to have sexual intercourse with members of either sex), but it appears that not one of those claims has been confirmed by a reputable researcher.

There is a remarkable dearth of solid data regarding true bisexuality in humans. It is not so much a lack of data as it is that the data that exist are being either censored or obfuscated. Some medical writers cloud the issue by making statements such as the following:

SEX differences occur on a number of independent dimensions. Genetic sex, or the organization of the "sex chromosomes," is often thought to indicate the true sex, with males having one X and one Y, while females have two Xs. However, about one in 400 people are neither XX nor XY, but have less common combinations, such as XO (a single X), XXY, or even different combinations in different cells within the same individual, for instance some cells XX and some cells XY. —Association for Humanistic Psychology

Consider the propaganda value of that statement. It contains not a single false item of data. However, it leads the innocent reader to conclude that perhaps as many as 1 in 400 people are by nature bisexual. Nothing could be farther from the truth, although it is true that about 1 in 400 are born with a genetic abnormality. However, virtually all of those abnormalities relate to and cause all kinds of human conditions, but virtually none of them have anything to do with bisexuality, and few, if any, have anything to do with bisexual orientation with respect to sexual preferences.

In the whole world, very few instances are on record of cases of true hermaphroditism or bisexuality.

True hermaphroditism, although rare, has been reported in nearly 500 patients. (P&S Medical Review: August 1996, Vol.3, No.2

Note that the report in the P&S Medical Review doesn't identify whether the "nearly 500 patients" relate to a given hospital, city, country or the whole world population. However, if you read the article, you'll find that the scope of the discussion involves all of the world's population, and that the author of that article did a very thorough review of the literature.

Dr. Garry Warne, head of the Endocrinology Department at Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, attending an international workshop on inter-sex disorders:

Male and female embryos are indistinguishable until 42 days' gestation when 'SRY' -- the gene that releases the initial signal in determining cell fate -- is switched on to assign the sex of a child.

"But about two-third hermaphrodites do not have this important sex determining gene, due to some unknown reasons," Dr Warne said, adding one in 4,500 children around the world is born with such ambiguous sex. (Marriage Between Close Relations Increases Risk Of Hermaphroditism, Feb. 1, 1999 - Press Trust of India)

Nevertheless, a considerably lower figure for the number of children born with the defect was mentioned by someone else at the conference.

...India has the highest number of babies with indeterminate sex, Dr Gupta said, adding each year about 40 such cases are treated in AIIMS. (Ibid.)

The article doesn't state where Drs. Warne and Gupta obtained their information. Without any doubt, what they both are referring to are cases of both true- and pseudohermaphroditism. Treating 40 children per year could involve children that were born in previous years, but it appears that no more than 40 children per year are born with that condition, whether the cause of the abnormality involves a genetic abnormality (in two-third of the cases according the Dr. Warne) or whether it is due to endocrinal imbalance during gestation of the children.

Given that according to Dr. Gupta the highest incidence rate of hermaphroditism is in India and that his figure is that much closer to what was reported in the article from the P&S Medical Review, it appears to be safe to assume that the total number of cases according to Dr. Gupta is in the order of no more than about 300 new cases per year in the whole world.

I prefer to take the word of the author of the article in the P&S Medical Review. That article is most certainly based on a thorough review of many medical researchers in the field of inter-sex disorders. Of course it is quite likely that Dr. Warne may be speaking of all cases of true hermaphroditism plus the cases of pseudo hermaphroditism plus the cases of transvestitism, the latter being a psychiatric condition that some consider incurable and unalterable, while others report a better than 60 percent success rate in their attempts to cure it.
     Pseudo-hermaphroditism is claimed by some to occur as often as once in every 1,500 births. It appears to be unclear what its cause may be other than the often cited and handy diagnosis of Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, which occurs with an incidence rates of 1:20,000 while others estimated the incidence rate of that to be in the order of 1:60,000.

It would seem that the large disparity between readily identifiable but relatively rare causes and comparatively high incidence rates due to indeterminable causes, that are claimed by some to be involved as often as once in every 1,500 births, will be the subject of much discussion for many years to come. However, it seems to be somewhat irrational to redefine human nature on the basis of someone's whim, by re-assigning him to a given sex. In cases of genetic abnormalities that cause hermaphroditism, no matter how radical a sex-change operation is undertaken, that will not by one iota change the genetic condition that caused the problem in the first place. There appears to be no evidence to indicate that people who have had a sex change operation are on average any happier after the operation.

Should we put our trust in medical experts who consider people afflicted with hermaphroditism as patients, or should we put it in psychologists and psychotherapists who have an agenda of manufacturing victims to further, as Dr. Tana Dineen (author of Manufacturing Victims) describes, a goal of expanding their detrimental influence in society with little more than mercenary intentions of expanding the psychology industry and to create a market for it.
     They may not truly be a superstitious bunch of charlatans, although all evidence seems to indicate that most of them are, but they most certainly are obsessed with promoting superstitions.
     Can anyone trust a profession in which 97 percent of its members who attended a conference in London, England, a few years ago, stated that they firmly believe that there is such a thing as satanic ritual abuse of children? The evidence proves that there isn't such a thing, but the psychologists want us to believe the superstitions they promote and that they appear to believe themselves. That is not merely the manufacturing of victims but the manufacturing of witch hunts — and now they are expanding their field of endeavors into the nature of human sexuality and thereby human nature itself.

"Theologues," too, become involved in the discussion of intersex states. Consider this one:

CURIOSITY
If Jesus was genetically male, he had to have had a Y chromosome. My "personal curiosity" is the possibility that Jesus may have been genetically female (which is possible if one considers parthenogenesis) and gonadally male (which is also possible). From a metaphysical standpoint, this would be a marvelous way of incorporating the totality of creation into one being and would force the artificial barriers we place between men and women to dissolve.
—Male/Female
A Polydimensional Continuum,
By Roberta M. Meehan, PhD

Christian? Some will say she is. Intersex advocate? Yes. An opponent of absolute moral standards and traditional religious doctrine? Most definitely! Artificial barriers? What is she talking about? There never were any barriers until the feminists suddenly claimed they saw them.

The strongest force seeking to destroy traditional religions is feminism. Radical feminists have little use for religion or churches as they are, but they do not leave the churches whose doctrines and liturgies they find objectionable. They work within to change the churches so that the final product will bear little resemblance to Christianity.

— Robert H. Bork
in Slouching Towards Gomorrah (p. 287)

The concern about how feminists work to alter and redefine established religion, expressed by Robert H. Bork in Slouching Towards Gomorrah — Modern Liberalism and American Decline, requires to be expanded, to include not only feminists but as well other enemies of the traditional nuclear family and religions, not only pro-gay activists, as identified in The Charter Revolution but, as shown in the article at Townhall.com and also by Roberta M. Meehan, also the advocates of bisexuality, androgyny, and of indiscriminate sex-change operations.

It follows that when the social engineers who want to normalize the traditional nuclear family down to the common denominator of social aberrations, who want to change traditional religions along with that, and who want to redefine human nature by reconstructing human sexuality itself, then their final product will bear little resemblance to humanity. That will be the end of humanity.

As to the few hundred true hermaphrodites in the world, why don't we just let them be? God caused them to be what they are.

________________
See also: Family Law — Table of Contents