Like the last series I did during Lent, people have been after me about what exactly I'm getting at in this sequence of columns.
I've received many responses to what I've written here - most of them being "I don't really understand what your point is..." To be perfectly candid, I will say that I am spit-balling at a certain level. All I know for sure is that my faith, philosophy and familial upbringing stir me to propose a different kind of Canadiana - and that compulsion is my only compass.
It might help if I showed a few more of my cards.
As is well known at this point, I am adopted and bear a status card, all while carrying none of the baggage typically associated with my heritage. I see no leverage in victimhood, just as I see no inherent evil or privilege in the white man's ways. Furthermore, both sides of my family have people of different races and ethnicities; these differences are all but forgotten in the common life we share. Our diversity isn't a strength or weakness - it just is.
Truth be told, my family isn't even particularly political. We belong to a rather large swath of innocuous, churchgoing Canadians who, like their cousins to the south, didn't really have many political thoughts until the godless Marxists started to upset the apple cart with old heresies turned new trends. I ought to be a Christian Social Democrat or a CCF member, thanks to my anti-fascist and prairie-farmer grandparents, respectively. But since socialists now embrace relativism, I can't be anywhere near them.
Of course, being anywhere near socialists is an occupational hazard of every Canadian citizen and that is perhaps my first point: I wholly reject the socialist brow-beating insistence that their various flagship policies over the decades - public education, social welfare, the Healthcare Act - are written upon immaculate stone tablets that are above questioning.
I honestly believe it takes more faith to believe in radical leftists than any number of angels and every day the news proves me right.
Please try to appreciate how serious a doubt I'm elucidating. Or rather, go forth and see what happens to people who point out the deficiencies in our healthcare that private insurers and even other social democracies don't have; sit at the feet of gun owners and learn of the "Troubles" post-Polytechnique, which turned a sad tragedy into a political tool; inquire as to how strenuously our curriculums or its teachers are tested and monitored. I wish you luck - your public life might just end.
And that leads to my second objection.
In America, there really are at least two flavours of everything, from colas to congresses. But in Canada, there is only sanctimoniousness, to the point where even broken polices cannot be fixed because that would be admitting we've made a mistake - and we're not Americans, so we don't make mistakes.
The definition of a good Canadian is a man who waits upon the Supreme Court before acting - because doing the right thing might be illegal. That's absurd and evil.
We have so bought into the conventions of our times, we really don't believe we could discover the truth for ourselves, or that there is even a truth to discover.
There are a hundred different answers to these problems, from pipelines to the Highway of Tears; but it requires courage to make those decisions and that is a virtue our political class and its enforcers lack abundantly.
Ultimately our lack of frank discussion betrays a deep well of fear, even cowardice. And that should make us deeply ashamed.
I said earlier that my faith, philosophy and family compel me to speak against what passes for our contemporary culture and values.
My faith tells me life is not all bourgeoise socialism, especially the kind that excludes so many while gazing at its own virtue signalling; my philosophy demands that truth be sought, not compromised to keep someone employed or a given demographic happy; and my family proves to me that integrity can be had in this life, despite the darkness of our times.
I love my country.
And despite my cynic tones, I actually do love the people in it, even when they trespass against me or self-evident truths of their own humanity.
But this is not the "True North, Strong and Free," our founders imagined. They hoped for our greatness - we have accepted mediocrity.
