This trait transcends the musings of cultural elites. Even middle-class Canadians seem preoccupied with the question of who they are as a people and how they are seen in the community of nations. It is easy to laugh at the "Miss Manners" politeness to which this concern gives rise. It is harder to make light of Canada's genuine commitment to social justice. Nonetheless, while Americans care too little what others may think, Canadians seem almost neurotic over this collective identity crisis.
It comes, then, as no surprise that a society obsessed with its reputation for etiquette and progressive politics would be horrified by recent newspaper reports of a brutal attack on a young woman in Montreal. More devastating yet were stories of passersby who callously ignored her plight. The Boston Globe described local reaction: "Lines to radio talk shows from Halifax to Vancouver have been jammed by callers giving voice to something like national remorse." The article when on: "'This can't be Canada' blurted a sobbing woman who phoned a Quebec station. 'The indifference fills me with far more horror than the crime itself.'" How could so many Canadians behave so casually in the presence a semi-conscious young girl, lying naked and near death on a public street? How could some have even mocked her?
I believe I know how.
Canadians are ever more openly embracing the American impulse toward violence as a problem-solving device. When you teach kids, for instance, to resolve inconvenient pregnancies by killing unborn children, be assured that they will. In the process, you will also find yourself teaching them to rationalize savagery; to dehumanize victims and to trivialize brutality. Kids learn quickly but make no mistake: Violence taken lightly is difficult to contain.
These primitive principles can, of course, be applied to anyone else who gets in your way or has something you want and they soon will.
Now come the howls of protest. A fetus isn't a person you say. In legal terms, you know you are right. In your heart, you know you are wrong. That is why so few Canadians can stand to see the truth. Every time pro-lifers hold up a picture of a bloody baby, passersby become hysterical.
At The University of British Columbia, administrators recently tried to block our organization's display of just such pictures. Pro-life students outmaneuvered the bureaucrats by exhibiting the photos themselves. Feminists failed to shut down the display despite allegations that the pictures violated human rights commission prohibitions against hate speech. Pro-abortion students then turned violent and trashed the exhibit. The Crown refused to prosecute but UBC, apparently fearing mob rule, finally suspended the pro-abort thugs who tore up the display.
When UBC's pro-life students persevered with subsequent exhibits, the pro-aborts threatened to use physical shrouds to keep the pictures from being seen. The university, under threat of a pro-life lawsuit, pushed the pro-abortion protesters back to a distance which made interference ineffective.
Why such turmoil over mere photos? How else to obscure the truth that abortion really is an act of violence which kills a baby? But if censorship won't work at UBC, it is even more likely to fail at the scores of other Canadian universities at which aborted baby pictures are about to become a permanent part of the landscape. And it won't be long before these shocking images migrate from campus to community. We shall see how real free speech is in your country. The world will be watching.
Canada wants deeply to project an image of equity and compassion but behind this facade is the face of violence. It reared its ugly head in Quebec City with the worst rioting in Canadian history. A new generation of anti-abortion activists is now committed to unmasking it again -- with graphic evidence that abortion must no longer be ignored or trivialized. They rightly reject violence but they are not their timid predecessors. They believe that Canada should be shamed before the world and they've got the pictures with which to do it.
Stick your heads in the sand if you wish but Henry Morgentaler has sown the wind and Canada will reap the whirlwind.
I feel sorry for your country. In the ways that matter most, you're becoming your neighbor to the South; the thing you've worked hardest to convince the world you're not.
Gregg Cunningham
Director, The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform
PO Box 219
Lake Forest, CA 92609
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