As a cranky old white heterosexual man living off a good pension who frequents Starbucks, I resent the insinuation (Jan. 18 editorial) that I'm likely to be infected by a sense of entitlement. My fellow cranks don't complain about immigrants though I have to say I've noted an excessive cliquishness in the Danes around town. Nor do we complain about Indigenous peoples, though a couple of us have neighbors across the alley who enjoy drumming circles that go on long past our bedtimes (8 p.m.).
The fact is that there are Archie Bunkers of all ethnicities, classes, sexes and religions, so I think it advisable for all citizens, especially editorialists, to avoid identity politics and stick to the Charter's abstract definition of citizens as defined only by their freedoms and obligations under the law. If we don't, if editorialists persist in mucking with identity, crowds of angry -- white women with smaller pensions, like my wife? -- will be dragging us Archies out of Starbucks and cutting up our coffee cards.
Identity politics is the preserve of poststructuralist professors, populist politicians, and ideological fanatics of the extreme right and left. These are people who hate liberal democracy, especially its provision of and dependence on freedom of speech. Painful as it may be to accept, Archie has the right to shoot his mouth off as long as he doesn't cross the line into hate speech and libel.
You should also be more specific about your complaints about "the pretender unfit to stand in his father's shadow." Your objections are to the recent transgender pronoun law, right? I agree with you on that, but I wouldn't state my opposition in such radical terms.
For example, concerning that pretender's father, whose shadow you admire so much, didn't he make an attempt to erase the special legal status of First Nations in his 1969 "white paper?"
Be careful. He was indeed as good as any prime minister can be expected to be, but he was no political saint, and any statues to him are, if the prevailing mood holds, soon likely to be moved to the basements of museums and covered in sackcloth.
John Harris
Prince George
