The English writer Hilaire Belloc wrote about the Barbarian: a man with a perpetual sneer on his lips, who laughs at the fixed convictions of our inheritance.

Paula Adamick, in the January issue of Challenge magazine, quoted Belloc: “We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his … comic inversion of our old certitudes … But as we laugh, we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces, there is no smile.”

If they are watching, those “large and awful faces” see that we have modern Barbarians in abundance, even in our Parliament and Supreme Court. Efforts to provide legal protection for “sex trade workers” (prostitutes) began some months ago.

The Justice Department has been sitting on a government-sponsored study that recommends legalizing polygamy, the Canadian Press reported in January.

Just in time for Christmas, the Supreme Court legalized bawdy houses and swingers’ clubs. Activities such as orgies and partner swapping are now not considered legally indecent. “Even public disgust (isn’t) enough to make something indecent,” wrote Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin. Is anything, anymore?

Canadian children read American books. Stories that say “Dick loves Spot” may soon have a whole different meaning, for Democrats in Massachusetts recently introduced a bill to reduce penalties for sex acts with animals. Persons with this orientation are to be known as ‘zoophiles,” or “zoos” for short. How totally appropriate.

A significant body of medical research documents serious psychiatric and medical illnesses associated with same-sex behaviour. Yet, the influential American Psychiatric Association now says same-sex “marriage” is a mental health need.

Columnist Father Tom Raby wisely noted in the Catholic Register (Nov 13, 2005) that you can’t fool with nature and expect its laws of harmony to remain in good order. “Reject the laws that govern human nature … and all society will suffer,” he wrote. “Nature has time on its side. It may take years before the results become evident. But sins against nature will never win. For nature comes to bat last. And it always hits a home run.”

Truth will out, as the celebrated South Korean researcher Dr. Hwang Woo-suk discovered when the world learned that the evidence proving his successful cloning of embryo stem cells was fabricated. The scientific community condemned the fraud.

Therein lies further deception, suggests Dr. John B Shea, for even in the absence of any demonstrable clinical success, that same scientific community tried to convince us that embryo stem cells will solve the problem of tissue rejection. Shea claims the researchers know full well that because those embryo stem cells contain donor DNA, many could in fact cause tissue rejection in the recipients and sometimes even life-threatening diseases.

The truth may limp, as Belloc says, but it cannot be denied forever. Hwang’s fraud has already been revealed. Sooner or later, the rest of the truth about embryo stem cell treatments will emerge. Eventually, it will also be known that the morally acceptable use of adult stem cells is more successful, already providing treatment for 58 serious illnesses and diseases.

Meantime, we need to hold onto the knowledge that some things are true and others not. That some things are virtues, others vices. We must learn to tell the difference and spread the word that virtues lead to happiness, contentment, satisfaction and peace. Vices do not.

We must try to conduct our lives according to that knowledge. In P.E.I., apparently many pro-life and pro-family Islanders forgot how important that is, for in January all our Liberal members of Parliament were re-elected, despite their track record.

Nevertheless, that election win has given Stephen Harper a very slim chance to make changes that so many of us long for.

For a short time at least, everyone will try to make this Parliament work. That is our one small window of opportunity, a brief time to get across to Harper and all MPs of every party that we really really want them to propose and support policies that will restore sanity and morality in our country.

Weary or not, we must make the most of that opportunity.