Conservative M.P. Cheryl Gallant today reported to her online followers the contention of N.D.P. parliamentarian Bonita Zarrillo that indoor ice rinks, given the energy needed to create and maintain them, ought soon to be a thing of the past. I need hardly detail the multitude of repercussions, both in Canada and elsewhere, of her proposal. Ice skating in most parts of our country would be unavailable approximately 9 months of the year! The NHL as we know it would cease to exist not only in Atlanta, Florida, California, etc., but throughout much of Canada. Such cultural concerns, of course, are deemed both trivial and self-centered to those convinced the planet is in immanent danger. But inasmuch as every aspect of Western life, including the computer before me, is dependent to one extent or another on fossil fuels, the perspective represented by Zarrillo ultimately entails the end of Western Civilization itself. When I read, as I frequently do, that this complaint is just another “conservative” conspiracy theory, I am reminded of journalist Rick Salutin’s absurd Toronto Star article a couple of years ago in which he lavished praise upon America’s Indigenous for having produced little technology whatsoever throughout their history. Quite literally he was advocating a return to the Stone Age. Quite literally “progressivism” is conspiring to drag our Civilization back into the primitive past!
Given the mindless subservience of the mainstream media to the green agenda, you have not perhaps heard of Eco-Modernism, the conviction of a good many scientists and intellectuals that human ingenuity will help us to maintain and indeed improve our wonderful Western lifestyles even as we ween ourselves from those fossil fuels which will soon no doubt be exhausted anyway. Those of that persuasion of course find the trends cited in my last blog, i.e. the assault on all energy projects, the assault on farmers, the assault on the eating of beef, etc., etc., and now the assault on ice rinks [!!!], not only unnecessary but absurd.
Coincidentally, I just came across an article in the National Post of Aug. 13 by an Indigenous writer, Chris Sankey, articulating the very truths that I, an arrogant, White, privileged Male, was attempting to make in my last blog. Sankey, implicitly deconstructing Rick Salutin’s celebration of the lack of Technology of Indigenous Cultures, says, in spite of the media spin, that most Canadian Indians are eager to profit from the jobs made available to them in “responsible resource development” projects across the country. Yes, he prefers Progress to Primitivism! Indeed a sentence in his fourth paragraph echoes almost exactly a sentence in my last blog: “We are living with a Liberal government that is hell-bent on emphasizing ideology over practical, real-world solutions.”
Unfortunately, this is true not just of Canada’s Liberals but of “progressives” throughout the West who, while purporting to loathe religious fundamentalism, are religious zealots of the first order!