There has been a fair bit of traffic visiting Bah-nanada, my post decrying the reflexive anti-Americanism displayed by the typical Canadian politician. Setting up that point, I referenced statistics comparing Canadian and US crime rates. I have pursued the statistical bits further, but they weren’t the point of that post, or this one, and I will put them up separately.
The point of Bah-nanada was not statistical comparison. It was that when the local equivalents of The Crips and The Bloods stage The Battle of the Eaton Centre, they are not doing it because of Americans or American law. They’re doing it because there is confusion in Canada, as there is in the US, about equality and responsibility. This is how Canada has “imported” un-Canadian values:
Canadian multiculturalism is fundamental to our belief that all citizens are equal. Multiculturalism ensures that all citizens can keep their identities, can take pride in their ancestry and have a sense of belonging. Acceptance gives Canadians a feeling of security and self-confidence, making them more open to, and accepting of, diverse cultures. The Canadian experience has shown that multiculturalism encourages racial and ethnic harmony and cross-cultural understanding, and discourages ghettoization, hatred, discrimination and violence.
If “belonging” to a street gang is the object, if the “potential of all Canadians” is to shoot straight, if discouraging “ghettoization” means the shooting of innocent shoppers outside of Jane-Finch proper, if “harmony” discourages “violence”, and if “acceptance of diverse cultures” would include Americans, then the results seem to be mixed.
If this “cultural re-adjustment” follows the same pattern it has in the US, it further promotes the suicidal moral equivalence model for which Canada has already proven fertile ground.
The danger is not that some petty demagogue like Toronto’s mayor or a Prime Minister with latter-day delusions of Pearsonesque world-stage relevance will say stupid things: It’s that those stupid things they’re bound to say will be believed.
If the United States repealed the Second Amendment tomorrow, Paul Martin would blame US CO2 emissions for damaging the fetal brain development of Toronto street-gang members.
If Finance Minister Ralph Goodale turns out to have been involved in insider trading, Paul Martin will blame the export of Enron style corruption on the SEC.
If gun control worked then the murder at the Eaton Centre wouldn’t have happened.
From street violence to the Kyoto Treaty (where Canada’s emission reduction performance lags the United States’) to a scandal-ridden Liberal government – the cult of smug moral superiority is showing its bare threads.
The policy consequences of believing Paul Martin are more wasted money on feel-good laws and more coddling of murderers.
Following France’s Vanity of the Bonfires principle of mealy-mouthed acquiescence to “youth” violence:
Prime Minister Paul Martin said feelings of hopelessness and alienation plaguing youth in Toronto’s troubled areas must be dealt with.
“Yesterday’s shootings in Toronto serve as a painful reminder that we cannot take our peace or our understanding for granted,” Martin said during a Hanukkah celebration in Montreal.
“I think more than anything else, they demonstrate what are in fact the consequences of exclusion. I was in Toronto not long ago and met with a number of members of communities in the Jane and Finch area … and the young people talked to me about the void in their lives, and what hopelessness and exclusion can bring.”
The condescension is as palpable as the narcissism is ingrained. It couldn’t be elitist discouragement of assimilation of conscience, or welfare policies that make work optional that have reduced opportunity, initiative and a sense of community. “Our programs are right; we just haven’t had enough of them.”
Mark Steyn nails it:
Like many enlightened western leaders, the Canadian Prime Minister will be congratulating himself on his boundless tolerance even as the forces of intolerance consume him.
Please, read Steyn’s entire article It’s the demography, stupid.
Paul Martin was right about one thing, though, Canada can no longer take peace for granted. The decreasing homogeneity of population has been harmonized with a calculated elevation of multi-culturalism and its handmaiden, moral relativism. The reasons for “exclusion” may be debatable, but the mind-set of Toronto’s street thugs is not.
If Canadians think allowing guns to be smuggled in from the United States is a bigger security problem than protecting Islamofascist travel arrangements and health care; if they think murderous amoral thugs, imported or otherwise, will be affected by more gun control laws; if they believe that their federal government can somehow fill the “voids” in those gangsta lives; if they think their problems are not subject to their own control because those problems originate in the United States – and they are looking for ways to display Canada’s disdain for George Bush – then they should vote Liberal on January 23rd.
If it doesn’t work out, they can always blame the results on Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky.