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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
December 18, 2005
I AM Canadian
While I am certainly irritated by Paul Martin’s anti-American posturing in the election campaign -- it is low, cheap, and vile -- it is not his most annoying, nor even his most cynical, strut. The attempts to cast Stephen Harper as a dark operator, and allege some fanciful “hidden agenda”, insults my intelligence a little more. Mr Harper leaves much for me to desire in a Conservative leader, but he is a decent, honest man. Mr Martin, of whom I once thought more highly, is not. It has become evident since the prime ministry came within his grasp, that he will say or do anything to clutch it. He now disgusts me; I think more than Jean Chrétien did, the petty thug who was our last Liberal prime minister.To be fair, Mr Martin and cronies have more reasons to cling, than the enjoyment of power itself. For if even a minority Conservative government can be formed, there may be three-party agreement to launch corruption inquiries that go far beyond the scope of the Gomery Commission. Billions upon billions are spent annually in other unaudited programmes, crying out for review. Remember this each time the Liberals sound desperate. Yet, the slanders against the U.S., and the Conservative opposition, are things that don’t touch me. They can defend themselves. Were people better informed, they might not feel the need. Take for instance the anti-American blather over the Kyoto protocol. Since 1990, “greenhouse gas” emissions have risen by 14 percent in the U.S., and by 25 percent in Canada. There are no legs on the horse Mr Martin has mounted. Or, the attempt to cast Mr Harper as a narrow religious bigot when he is, firstly, not especially religious, and secondly, timidly defending moral principles held by all the major religions in common. If the Liberals were not provided with a karaoke chamber by the Canadian media, they would be naked on stage. There would be nothing for people to look at except their record of criminal corruption, moral perversion, and catastrophic waste. Which is not to suggest any elaborate conspiracy, for the journalists here are like those in most other Western countries -- a class, sharing backgrounds and material interests, who hang out mostly with each other. They are united by a worldview, enforced by peer pressure. It just happens that this worldview is toxic. For contrast, consider the Alberta oil patch, which is staffed with another class, sharing a different worldview. You will find about as many liberal and socialist dissenters in the oil patch, as you will conservative dissenters in the media. It is how the world works: by peer pressure. Let them be them. What annoys me most about the Liberal campaign, may be summarized in the words, “Choose your Canada.” The insinuation of this slogan is that people not sleepwalking to the Liberal themes, are not really Canadian. Now, that I take personally. Younger readers -- as often as not, victims of a public education system in which history is not taught, and attitudinizing is -- are hardly even aware of the traditions and values of the Canada that was ploughed under the Liberal machine. What I’m about to say will shock them. I AM Canadian. This is something no Liberal government can take away. Yet, something they've been trying to take away for a long time. And which they now mock, and teach people to mock. I was born, in Toronto, of generations of Canadian parentage on both sides. A British subject: it was inscribed in my first passport, as the mark of my freedom. This was part of what being a Canadian entailed. I am not English, not Scottish, not Irish, not Welsh, but Canadian, and therefore as British as the rest. The Liberals took that away -- the inscription in my passport -- by a parliamentary trick. They took away the proud title of the Dominion of Canada, by another trick. They've stripped my Queen off public walls, by administrative orders; they've covered the lion and unicorn with their paper maple leaves; and that before turning the moral order akimbo. They speak as if my very loyalty to the Canadian order in which I was born, removes me from participation in their "new Canada". Notwithstanding: Civis Britannicus sum. They have created fake, paper-thin values for a fake country -- a country they made up to replace a real one. (“Multiculturalism” -- what’s that?) They have zombified much of the population, buying people off with their own money; made free men and women into dependents of the state. But I remain, while I live, a British subject, and a Christian citizen of the Dominion of Canada. For they cannot take away what I am. Let them spew their collectivist slogans. This is my country, and I want it back. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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