Nine months ago, Russians celebrated Baby-Making Day. They didn’t call it that, exactly, but the propaganda was no less subtle: “Remember the mammoths?” said the speakers at a reproductive youth camp known as Nashi. “They became extinct because they didn’t have enough sex. That must not happen in Russia.”

In a country where SIM cards outnumber people, the birthrate has fallen to 1.26, the population is declining by 700,000 each year, and humans are looking like the next endangered species, there is no better way to celebrate today, the national holiday of Russia, than by spending it in the hospital delivery room. You might remember the news story from last September 12: “Procreating for the motherland” became the battle-cry of Russia, as youth flocked to love-camps and government officials encouraged couples to skip work and be more productive—or reproductive—at home.

Nine months is a long time to prepare for today’s holiday, but those who have stuck with it will be rewarded–and rewarded well. The central Russian province of Ulyanovsk, for instance, is offering valuable prizes to women giving birth today—from TVs and refrigerators to even new jeeps and houses. And they’re not even gender-discriminatory about the outcome. Says a member of the Ulyanovsk press office: “It doesn’t matter if it’s a girl or a boy.”

So far, the scheme seems to be successful—the number of babies born on June 12 increased threefold last year at the main Ulyanovsk regional hospital, and the numbers are still due for 2008.

It is good to see something of a reversal in (or at least questioning of) the pervasive and longstanding pro-abortion, anti-childbirth mentality in Eastern Europe. Yet I can’t help being haunted by thoughts of the Stalinist “Medals of Maternal Glory”—transmuting procreation from a sacred act to a national service—or, eerily similar, George Orwell’s descriptions of the sterile world of 1984 baby-making. It’s “our duty to the Party,” explained Winston’s partner Katherine.

“Our duty to the party,” is the tagline of today, with one small addendum: “I pick the black jeep.”

Today, with the help from my friends at the Shrine of the Holy Whapping, I discovered the French TV show Kamelott. It’s a comedy show set in Arthurian times with colloquial modern language, and its episodes are all under five minutes in length. My favorite so far has been “The Perfect Fifth.” There are a few dirty words present in the English subtitles, but having warned you of that, I can heartily recommend this scintillating discussion of medieval music between King Arthur, Sir Bors, and Fr. Blaze.

He was, over his long life, the indefatigable teacher, enthusiastically discovering with each new generation of students at Fordham University the inexhaustible riches of the Angelic Doctor.

In season and out, he sought to demonstrate, in the face of every new philosophical fashion or school, that St. Thomas had been there first. He was the original inspiration for my definition of a Thomist of the Strict Observance: Someone who believes that Thomas is the hardware that will run any software. I was never entirely persuaded, but his many books — for instance, The Philosophical Approach to God, The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics, and interviews in The Universe as Journey — are warmly recommended to anyone seriously interested in exploring the riches of the Christian intellectual tradition.

Please join in the prayer that Father W. Norris Clarke will be welcomed with the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Two more articles appeared on Canada and Free speech. The first comes from the Ottowa Citizen (reproduced on Real Clear Politics). The author, David Warren, reviews some of the recent cases before the human rights commissions, then highlights the surprising acceptance among journalists at the revocation of the freedom of expression:

Among the spookiest aspects of these cases is the silence over, and indifference to them, on the part of journalists whose predecessors imagined themselves vigilant in the cause of freedom. As I’ve learned first-hand through email, many Canadian journalists today take the view that, “I don’t like these people, therefore I don’t care what happens to them.” It is a view that, at best, is extremely short-sighted.

The second article comes from the New York Times. It highlighted how America protects the freedom of speech more vigorously than any other Western nation. But it wasn’t clear that this is a good thing. The underlying question for much of the piece seemed to be whether or not we should allow the hate-mongering conservatives to express themselves.

I agree with the Times that the tone of much of Steyn’s piece was not respectful of Islam, and was not ideal for a serious examination of the rise of Muslims in Europe. But the content of his article is a far cry from the words of the KKK and neo-Nazis, a distinction that the Times seemed to blur. It would also be interesting to see whether those who advocate restricted freedom of speech would extend their prohibitions evenly. Would Ward Churchill calling the victims of September 11 “little Eichmanns” constitute hate speech? Would disparaging remarks made against Christianity, people of European descent, or heterosexuals?

It all begs the question of who gets to decide what is acceptable criticism or analysis and what is not, and on what grounds those decisions will be made. The cases of Steyn and the others Warren names make it clear that the Canadian process is anything but objective and fair. As the Times wrote:

Mr. Steyn, the author of the article, said the Canadian proceedings had illustrated some important distinctions. “The problem with so-called hate speech laws is that they’re not about facts,” he said in a telephone interview. “They’re about feelings.”

“What we’re learning here is really the bedrock difference between the United States and the countries that are in a broad sense its legal cousins,” Mr. Steyn added. “Western governments are becoming increasingly comfortable with the regulation of opinion. The First Amendment really does distinguish the U.S., not just from Canada but from the rest of the Western world.”