Ezra Levant was in Ottawa this week to deliver a speech to various museum officials on the problems surrounding presenting history, as it was, when those views are shall we say, out of fashion. Ill post a few paragraphs of it but do click through to his blog and have a look at his own speech there. Political correctness, once a kind of near hollow rhetorical phrase meaning changing a word for another word to mean the same thing and while not entirly harmless was at least not fear inducing, is now policy. Now to the extent that one can no longer trust anything presented by governments, (if you ever could) or by any agent licensed by governments such as broadcast media, or even any agency which has assets which a government or ‘activist’ group may attack through ‘lawfare’.
The days therefore, of bloggers such as we here at VTB are clearly limited as Europe seeks to limit what bloggers may do, and Australia already has, North America cannot be far behind. While the ‘fairness doctrine’ may be sufficiently vague to not appear to be a threat to freedom, you can bet that like all other similar tools throughout history it will be selectively enforced to favour the political dogma of the day.
Museums are rightfully worried about this as hell, the amount of materials you would have to throw away and rebuild on an hourly basis would be staggering trying to appease every offense to any group. Think of the wasted carbon alone. Displays would change faster than the Canadian National anthem, whatever that is.
Even once-neutral symbols, like the flag, are symbolic weapons in this fight to deracinate our military history. Even our national anthem has become a football in this fight. You might recall headlines last month that a New Brunswick school teacher shut down the daily singing of the anthem, which had been championed by two schoolgirls, who led the singing as an act of remembrance for their cousin, who died in Afghanistan. The teacher… had spoken out on many occasions as an opponent of the war in particular, and all wars in general. His unilateral decision to ban the anthem created a backlash, but one wonders how much longer before [that] view becomes the new normal.
Unlike in previous generations, the question is no longer does Canada – or indeed any Western ally – have the military might to win a war; that’s beyond dispute. The question is now can the popular culture sustain such a war in the face of even a handful of casualties? Our politicians know it; our generals know it. And our enemies certainly know it. We live in an era where terrorist groups like Hezbollah have media relations units, complete with bilingual business cards. That’s the battlefield now.
Which is all the more reason why we need to know why we’re fighting. Which means we need to know who we are, as a country and as a culture. What are the values we prize so highly that we would kill for them and die for them?
That means knowing why we have fought before.
Please go to Ezra’s blog and read his whole article. This really does matter. Remember, the important victories are thought of as having been made on the battlefields. The truth is, they are made in dull office cubicles and dreary corridors by stodgy bureaucrats with agendas which are a total mystery to people in the real world. When we lose these battles, we seldom get to even fight the ones on the fields. The ones we actually hear about. The ones which are easy to understand.
