This Morning’s News

First thing this morning, I listened to the News on Radio-Canada, the French-language CBC. The news was not pleasant. I heard that lawyers and jurists were now protesting against Bill 78, a law deemed a violation of our cherished freedom of speech. It had turned into a Crusade.

The Crusades

The Crusades were “God’s war” (Christopher Tyerman),[i] but wait a minute.  As David Hume wrote, the Crusades are

the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation.[ii]

“The Lord is a man of war.” (Exodus 15:3) 

First, the time may have come to take God out of the Crusades. The Crusades were a human endeavour. Second, if one takes the view expressed by David Hume, one might come to the conclusion that the last hundred days have been an “assault on reason,”  (Al Gore), were it not that the students were manipulated into breaking a lot of rules and, at times, laws, existing laws, not Law 78. There have been several arrests, which is regrettable.

I believe the lawyers and jurists will soon return to their offices and comfy homes or run the risk of looking ridiculous. Nothing worse could happen to them.

Let us see what the papers and the television have to offer of this subject.

English

The Montreal Gazette: http://www.montrealgazette.com/index.html

The National Post: http://www.nationalpost.com/index.html

The Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/

 

CBC News: http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/

CTV News: http://www.ctvnews.ca/

 

French

Le Devoir http://www.ledevoir.com/

La Presse http://www.lapresse.ca/

 

 

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[i] title of Christopher Tyerman’s God’s War, A New History of the Crusades  (London: Penguin, 2006).

[ii] Quoted by Christopher Tyerman, God’s War, A New History of the Crusades (London: Penguin, 2006), p. xiv.

 

Haendel: “Ombra mai fu,” from Serse, Jennifer Larmore

Haendel: “Ombra mai fu,” Philippe Jaroussky

 

 

© Micheline Walker

29 May 2012

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