http://www.thenownewspaper.
Tom Zytaruk
The Now Newspaper.
So let me get this straight. Somebody with a politically incorrect belief system who did not share it with the kids he taught or coached should be fired because a person who holds such beliefs must be regarded as a poor “role model”. As one parent said, “You can’t be a Nazi and coach kids’ hockey”.
OK then. Can you be a fundamentalist Christian and coach kids’ hockey? For a great many people, fundamentalist Christian beliefs are politically incorrect. Members of the Law Society in this province, for example, recently voted for a policy that would deny graduates of the Trinity College law school accreditation because of principles thought to be, well, “politically incorrect”.
Can you express support for the Conservative Party of Canada on your Facebook page and coach kids’ hockey? After all, many supporters of the Green, Liberal and NDP parties would consider Conservative ideas, particularly social Conservative ideas “politically incorrect”.
But hey wait, you say. Comparing fundamentalist Christians and Conservatives to Nazis is absurd. Nazism is a totalitarian ideology associated with the commission of some of the most horrendous crimes in human history. But guess what? So is Communism. In fact the “body count” of Comrade Stalin or Mao is many times greater than Hitlers’. Funny though, many people with a Communist past in Canada, like former BQ leader Gilles Duceppe for example, were never held accountable by the media for it. In Canada, being a student Marxist has been treated almost like a rite of passage, a forgiveble stage of growing up. Those with a Nazi past, though, were hounded and deported.
Throughout the sixties and seventies and eighties, Leftists and progressives decried the persecution of the “Hollywood Ten” and others, like Pete Seeger, who were blacklisted for their alleged Communist sympathies. (But according to recent revelations by Washington Post journalist and author Diana West, many of these allegations were based on fact.) More than that, at least in Canada, many self-described Communists served on city councils,unions, school boards and taught in schools. Hmm. Interesting. It is also interesting no one on the Left seems to have a problem with a guy getting fired for his far-right beliefs or sympathies or associations.
That leads me to wonder. If Mr. Sandau made his Facebook page “a shrine for Communism”, do you think he would have been fired? Would he have been fired if he questioned the estimated number, 8 million, of Ukrainians killed in the Holomodor, which has long been established as a Plan to wipe put the kulaks? A great many, if not most members of the Canadian Communist Party at one time publicly denied that the Ukrainian “Holocaust” happened, but no one demanded that they be fired. No one, I seem to remember, ever stated that you can’t be a Communist and coach kids’ hockey (or teach kids in classrooms, as many of them did).
The double standards and hypocrisy over this issue astounds me. But then again, in Canada, it has become par for the course.
Malcolm Ross—a published anti-semite, was fired from his teaching job in New Brunswick even though he was well regarded by students as a good Math teacher who never shared political views with them. The School Board, as I recall, made the argument that Ross, given his off-hours views, presented students with a poor role model. I don’t recall the Civil Liberties Union rising to his defence. Meanwhile, in BC, the BC Civil Liberties Union defended a teacher in North Vancouver who was fired by a Catholic School Board when it was learned that he was living common law. The Board argued that he was a bad role model for Catholic