On Nov. 4, the National Post published an article by Tristin Hopper exposing the very real loathing for Democracy frequently exhibited by members of Canada’s Leftist National “Democratic” Party [the NDP].
Presently before Parliament, Hopper informs us, is Bill C-254 introduced by the NDP’s Leah Gazan who is seeking prison sentences for anyone who engages in “residential school denialism.” The Bill specifically stipulates that those guilty of “condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian residential school system” might spend up to 2 years behind bars!
Canada’s Residential School System was far from perfect and no doubt included reprehensible policies and actions that were racially motivated. But the relentlessly repeated charge of Cultural Genocide is absurd, based on the ludicrous notion that gifting a culture steeped in Superstition with the benefits of Reason and Science is somehow an act of Hatred. This, of course, is an example of the mindless intellectual relativism espoused by Foucault and Giroux as I indicated in my last blog, It is the Post Modern dementia gleefully embraced by many of todays “intellectual.”
The term “cultural genocide” is ludicrously deceiving, the term “genocide” usually entailing the actual slaughter of a particular people. But of course the narrative endorsed by Gazan is that Canada’s government was in no way concerned with the health and welfare of its Indigenous population. The horrors of the Residential School System were apparently validated by the 2021 discovery of 2015 graves at the site of Kamloops Residential School which were deemed to be those of innocent Indigenous kids who died at the hands of their White overlords. But this has in no way been validated, and the inarguable fact is that thousands of both Whites and Indigenous died throughout the 19th C. of tuberculosis, only to be buried in unmarked graves throughout the West. The vilification of Canada’s Residential Schools as no better than the concentration camps of Hitler’s Germany, is, in other words, highly debatable. Yet a sitting member of Canada’s parliament has sought to criminalize anyone who does not share her clearly simplistic point of view. Truly ridiculous!
But Gazan’s initiative is hardly an isolated incident. As Hopper points out, C-254 was preceded some 16 months earlier by a bill set forth by the NDP’s Charlie Angus seeking prison terms for anyone speaking well of fossil fuels! Due to the dissolution of parliament shortly thereafter, nothing came of this proposed piece of legislation and, Hopper admits, it is unlikely any such fascistic piece of nonsense would ever be approved by Canada’s parliament. Yet what his article clearly reveals is the self-righteous arrogance that pervades the contemporary Left. The Bills cited above were tendered not by some disreputable left-wing extremists, but by elected members of one of Canada’s 3 Political Parties! The disdain for Free Speech implicit in their proposals is in fact prevalent throughout the Left and largely responsible for the ugly tenor of today’s political climate in which rational debate between the Left and Right is seldom achieved. Bill Maher’s sensible willingness to criticize the inanities of those who share his “liberal” perspective is a rare exception. And while I do not approve of Donald Trump’s many angry outbursts [2 wrongs do make make a right!], I do understand his disdain for what he calls “the swamp,” that narrow-minded cadre of pseudo-intellectuals who have come to dominate Western Civilization!