[Locke]

Opinion Piece from the Calgary Herald.

What do eating beef and nude swimming have in common?

The one thing gnawing on a steak and wearing your birthday suit to a pool party have in common is the galling tendency of sanctimonious people on both sides of the political spectrum, but mostly on the left, to constantly try to stop other people from doing what they want to do with their lives, time and resources.

Twitter blew up, Phillips’ tweet made the news and some of those weighing in asked what many Albertans should ponder often: Is there any other provincial government in Canada that has staff and elected members in their ranks who actively oppose their own province’s main industries?

Is there anyone in even the incompetent provincial Liberal government in Ontario, for instance, who is opposed to the carbon-intensive auto sector? Of course not.

As for the private nude swim scheduled for Sunday at Calgary’s Southland Leisure Centre, the City of Calgary said in a statement that under the advice of the police, it has caved in to “volatile” public pressure and cancelled the swim, citing safety concerns of the participants.

So, holding a private family swim party at a privately organized, privately funded event isn’t OK, but threatening people with harm is? Shouldn’t the city and the police defend the rights of the law-abiding naturists and arrest and charge those who try to impede their movements or threaten them with injury?

Sadly, too many people don’t feel that way. More than 20,000 busybodies signed a petition calling on the city to cancel this event, which it did.

Essentially, there are two disparate groups that are constantly carping about what others do.

One group of people doesn’t want you to have a choice on virtually anything — except if it’s an abortion or allowing a doctor to kill their patient; then, choice is righteous. These are often the very same people who pretty much believe every other choice should be removed from you,

Oh, these folk talk a lot about tolerance, but they’re only tolerant if you believe exactly what they believe. They tend to sweat the small stuff and shrug off the bigger issues,

James Paton, the lead pastor of First Alliance Church in southeast Calgary, points out that Trudeau and his government are “actually asking us to agree with the federal Liberal policy platform, but they don’t ask Pakistan to do that, they don’t ask China to do that. It’s ironic.”

“Does everybody have to change their opinion every time a new government comes into power?” asks Paton. Is that what Canadians want? Or do we want real, principled tolerance?

http://calgaryherald.com/opinion/col...ity-busybodies