Twas the night before Xmas, when from west to east
Not a creature was praying, not even a priest.
Religion, tradition… the Canadian Way
Had now been politically corrected away.
While children were up late in front of their screens,
Texting to pedophiles, Tweeting to fiends,
Social workers poised to steal our tikes
To pump up their profits and earn their pay hikes.
The RCMP and the BCTF -
Toadies of sex activists, bullies, the Left -
Tightened their hold on the next generation,
Fending off critics with false allegations.
When out on the lawn there arose such a hollar,
My bear trap had caught a Smart Meter installer.
He filed a Human Rights Complaint right away
Claiming a hate crime because he was gay.
And downtown the junkies shot up in plain sight
Enabled by tax-paid support of Insite,
While vids lauding gay sex unencumbered
Forgot to mention AIDS’ record-high numbers.
I ran out to pick up my local news rag -
Whose stories are cleared by the largest placed ads -
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
A 12 percent tax – HST is still here!
The headlines insisted that everything’s fine
Until I began to read ‘tween the lines
To realize vaccines were an ethical breach
And “bubble zones” burst any hopes of free speech
The Tides Foundation they claim beneficial
By controlling our resources and owning officials.
The riots they claimed were anarchist-driven,
But just punks were charged – the rest were forgiven?
GMO food will feed the whole planet,
And, by the way, ultimately damn it.
Slutwalkers march for their right to dress slutty,
But marching for peace is called outright nutty.
The Supreme Court makes laws with no one’s permission
And free baby-killers and promote sedition.
Voting is passé, and voters called fools,
While indoctrination turns out in schools.
I ran to my house and pulled closed my shutters
And wondered how Canada fell in the gutter.
Well, people are lazy, complacent, and scared,
We cowered to bullies, we dared not to care.
It’s easy to coast, hand reigns to a guide,
Even when Liberty misses the ride.
On Facebook, on Twitter, the web and iPhones;
Hi tech smoke and mirrors, now we are all pwned.
We gave up our freedom, let someone else drive.
We sold out our country, our culture, our lives.
Our Masters now laugh as they call out tonight:
“Happy Xmas to all – thanks for quitting the fight.”
Does anyone other than a dwindling minority of Procrustean traditionalists recognize evil anymore—personal evil, that is? Oh, sure, there’s plenty of the geopolitical variety to go around these days, especially in North Africa. And there’s more than enough being identified on the national stage by perpetually outraged critics within this country too, most notably by those on the political left, who eagerly attach the E word to everything from corporate profits and free trade to the oil sands and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s piano playing.
But we rarely hear about individual Canadians doing “bad” things, exhibiting sinister behavior, acting wickedly, or carrying on immorally, let alone sinning.
Instead, there’s always some sort of exculpating explanation for bad behaviour. Shoplifters suffer from kleptomania; corrupt officials have succumbed to stress or have manifested a previously undiagnosed psychiatric disorder; prostitutes are victims of the patriarchy, poverty or both; juvenile delinquents are the recipients of inadequate parenting; inner-city gangsters are victims of racial discrimination; and thieves are impoverished or addicted, and, if the latter, are surely not responsible for the burden of the illness under which they are labouring. You get the picture.
Look at the website promoting the recent Pink Shirt Day/anti-bullying campaign—a cause that should easily give rise to descriptions of bullies acting wickedly, etc.—and you’ll see therapeutic twaddle aplenty along with much vigorous exhortation to get to the root of the problem, etc., but nothing about the plain and simple fact bullies are acting immorally.
Which brings me to Exhibit A, otherwise known as the spark that gave life to this particular column. You might have heard of a horrible hit-and-run accident in Coquitlam, B.C., two weeks ago which left two young women dead. In covering the aftermath of the crash, which included the laying of several charges against a suspect, including two counts of impaired driving causing death, a local newspaper turned to a clinical psychologist from Simon Fraser University for some “insight” into “what might lead someone to flee the scene” of a serious accident without giving help.
Dr. Joti Samra is quoted thusly: “Assuming that it’s a true accident, the reality is… even from the perspective of the person that caused the accident, it can be quite traumatic and cause an acute stress reaction.” Got that? Acute stress reaction.
The good doctor goes on to explain that the brain could be flooded with information and emotion that would cause a person to act unusually. “The fight or flight response is something we’re exposed to when we are faced with extreme traumatic events,” Dr. Samra concludes. “Our body kind of goes into a shock, it doesn’t know what to do.”
Notice the focus on the culprit’s body and not his mind? I suppose it’s true that this human-as-hormonal-machine answer is what you’d expect from a clinical psychologist, whose business, of course, is to produce exactly this sort of pseudo-scientific analysis. But there’s no excuse for the news media to limit their probing into human behaviour to “experts” such as Dr. Samra. Why not someone with some grasp of the profundity of human existence, someone like a novelist, a moral philosopher or a religious leader– someone who recognizes we’re more than just pre-programmed biological machines?
To my mind, it would be a welcome relief—and far more enlightening—to hear some real insights into moral character, the dark origins of personal cowardice, or the nature of evil in circumstances such as these. And so, for example, when asked why a driver might flee the scene of an accident in which he had struck two innocent people, a priest might comment that such a person had become alienated from God, had too easily succumbed to temptation, and had become a sinner in need of redemption.
This would be really useful information as far as I’m concerned, and might also help many readers reflect more deeply on their responsibility—indeed, their duty—to act in a moral fashion.
But, of course, in this secular, humanistic era of ours, we see very little serious discussion about evil in the public square. Perversely, one is more likely to find scintillatingly descriptive words, purring about the concept of evil, in advertisements attempting to induce a consumer to indulge in some sort of deliciously sinful wickedness for an affordable price. Moral inversion to sell chocolate pudding.
A recent full-page newspaper advertisement for Volvo is a perfect example of this lamentable trend. Emblazoned above an image of a shiny red S60 model, the ad copy informs us, “There’s more to life than a Volvo. Like raising a little hell with 300 horses, spanking corners with your all-new sport-tuned chassis. And feeling a little dangerous in a car tricked out with safety technology. That’s why you drive the all-new naughty Volvo S60.” (Emphasis added.)
A 16th-Century proverb holds, “Evil doers are evil dreaders.” Today, however, evil doers are either the next patient for the couch or a target market.
