Don't be Self-Silencing as Your Freedoms Are Destroyed!
What tactic do the radicals of ISIS, the revolutionaries of Maoist China and the current Social Justice movement have in common? All of these movements have attempted to distort the perception of history in their efforts to affect social change. The first two examples led to massive chaos, destruction and suffering that affects much of the world even to the present day. Will the third example come to a similar conclusion? How can such a disaster be prevented?
In February 2015, the Christian Science Monitor began reporting that followers of the Islamic ISIS movement were destroying magnificent artifacts of ancient civilizations throughout Iraq and Syria. To historians and archeologists, the losses were devastating. The fanatics of ISIS were fundamentally seeking to eliminate irreplaceable pieces of history, whether sculptures or inscriptions, that gave evidence and understanding of peoples of the distant past. It was a program of vandalism on a grand scale.
Much of the world stood by in shock and horror as museums, ancient architectural structures and even remains of ancient cities like Nineveh were smashed or blown up. The print and electronic media of the liberal West openly decried this savagery and barbarism.
Fifty years earlier, the Western world was witness to similar behaviour by the Red Guards of the Maoist Cultural Revolution. A violent oppression of the Chinese people by young activist gangs was largely stirred up by the influence of Mao's third wife, who sought to thwart threats to her vision of the revolutionary development of China. Across the land, roving gangs of youth defaced and destroyed artifacts of four millennia of Chinese culture. Carvings, statues, inscriptions, ancient books, traditional instruments, and anything of the past was subject to destruction. Millions were killed, many whose only crime was that of being well-educated. Again, Western media condemned such behaviour.
Yet strangely that same media today treats similar criminal behaviour occurring in Canada and the United States sympathetically. A modern barbarism, driven by the same zeal and motivation as that of the Red Guards of the 1960s, is destroying the legitimate and recorded history in our lands. Protests against police violence end up in rioting and willful destruction of public property. Statues representing the history of the nation are torn down, often without any idea of the real story behind the person represented or the context of the time. Truth and actual history are not considered, just rumour and a tweet.
Sir John A. MacDonald for example, who numerous Canadian historians have admitted was the driving impetus behind the development of the modern nation of Canada, is derided by people for being bigoted in the starting of residential schools for Native children. Radical activists demanding the removal of statues in his honour, and even his name, sweep across the land.The truth is that the concept of residential schools for indigenous children started long before MacDonald—as early as 1831 in southern Ontario. A more comprehensive Canadian program was started in 1883 under MacDonald's government, with the agreement of tribal leaders. Attendance was voluntary, as it was up to aboriginal communities and parents to send students if they wished. Initially, these schools were to provide education in skilled trades to older students. It was designed to enable them to take part in the economy of the new nation. Attendance was not mandated until 1920, long after MacDonald was dead. Yet on rumour, mobs roam the streets and tear down statues of long-dead leaders, even of Queen Victoria. Unschooled masses with a mob mentality, motivated by activists, act largely in ignorance to destroy history, so an inaccurate but politically-correct narrative can take society blindly down a neo-Marxist path.
The similarity with the Cultural Revolution is remarkable. In 1966 the Red Guards were told to destroy the "four olds": ideas, customs, cultures, and habits of the past. This is precisely what we see happening today in North America. Schools have largely abandoned the teaching of an historical timeline, with key events of the past taught in sequence. Thus, today's student does not appreciate the events that shaped the present. Statements (whether true or untrue) are released on social media to create opinion and raise up protest movements.
We need to be acutely aware of another aspect of this illiberal trend. The radical theories known as cancel culture, Critical Race Theory, or a host of other monikers, are driven by a few who seek to eliminate the foundation of Western culture. School curricula and statues are not the end goal of the radicals' reign of destruction and terror, only stepping stones along the way. Their final objective is the elimination from the public square of the concept of traditional Western morality. This idea of right and wrong, that guided the generations who founded the Western world, and nurtured its capacity to create wealth and produce a stable and peaceful society, originated from what is called the Judaeo-Christian Ethic. This set of guidelines to life and human interaction is drawn uniquely from the pages of the ancient text known as the Bible. This book and its adherents are the ultimate target of the new anti-intellectual and anti-morality barbarism sweeping the West.
It is the duty of those who still have a sense of that morality, and of a society driven by an ethic of hard work and the provision of opportunity for all, regardless of ethnicity, to strive to retain and live by this Biblically-based code. Anything else will lead to a frustrated life in a country that will no longer provide the freedom of expression we have all come to love.
Do not allow the new barbarians to destroy the foundation of our society, and steal from you that which can guide you to a happier life. Watch our Tomorrow's World program "The Judaeo-Christian Ethic."