Canadian Nationalist Party Leader Travis Patron has wrote a letter to the Royal Canadian Legion following their decision to exclude his party from their branches leading up to the most recent 43rd Federal Election last year.
Read the letter Patron wrote today addressed to the Royal Canadian Legion:
Royal Canadian Legion – Saskatchewan Provincial Command,
I write you in response of your letter served to our organization last year leading up to the most recent 43rd Federal Election in which you communicated your decision to exclude us from using any of your branches. You also used the letter to condemn our speech and actions as well as falsely-accusing us of promoting hate “based on nationality, religion, and sexual orientation”.
I will have you know, dear Legion, that perhaps more than anything our political constituency hates cowardice and, unfortunately for you, your organization’s affiliation with us thus far reeks of this.
As a federally-sanctioned political constituency, and the only one headquartered within the province, your decision to exclude us from your branches is inherently against democratic association your bylaws claim to represent!
Your rash actions come in response to our event held at the Redvers Legion Branch #293 on June 14th, 2019 when we communicated our electoral policies to voters. If the purpose and objectives of the Royal Canadian Legion are to support democracy, as your bylaws seem to suggest, than this decision is counter-intuitive by its very nature!
I will have you note, dear Legion, that this address to the community on June 14th, 2019 at your branch seems to have been well-received despite your apparent reluctance to defend the national sovereignty our veterans fought so valiantly to defend!
Due to these poor decisions, not to allow federal political parties to speak at your venues, among other reasons, many of your branches are now lying desolate, on the brink of insolvency, and collecting dust. This is a disgrace to many of those who served and continue to serve in upholding our national identity and ideology, the very thing our political constituency espouses!
You dishonour us with your words and ill-conceived condemnations. Your cancellation procedures are abrupt and given on extremely short notice. We speak not only of your provincial command here in Saskatchewan, but nationally, in other areas of the country as well/ Kindly pass this letter onto your National Headquarters as well so that they may be informed of our displeasure in how the once respectable Royal Canadian Legion is being run today!
Many of us, myself included, have ancestors who fought in the Great Wars so that their descendents may enjoy basic freedoms such as the ability to express and advocate for oneself – values your contemporary command seems to run afoul of!
You disappoint us, dear Legion, as your branches no longer support the ability for people to express themselves, but censor an conceal themselves in a false veneer of patriotism! You cower under the pressure from the mainstream media narrative and nameless hooligans to cancel events which take time, money, and patience to organize. How exactly do you expect to gain in popularity from such a thing? You will quite likely not!
I will have you know, dear Legion, that if you continue to surrender the sacrifices our nation has made, and which are imbued in the history of your very branches, than some other organization will step in, with our without your consent, to defend their sacrifices and carry forward the torch for generations yet to come!
Signed,
Mr. Travis Patron Canadian Nationalist Party Leader
The decision to exclude the party came shortly after Patron hosted an event at the Redvers Legion Branch #293 on June 14th, 2019, which can be viewed below:
We thank those who attended and those who continue to support our organization.
If the Royal Canadian Legion continues to softly surrender the sacrifices our nation has made in times past, which are imbued in the historical legacy of these very branches, than some other organization will step in, with or without their consent, to carry forward the torch for generations yet to come!
Washington state restaurants openly defy COVID-19 restrictions, championed by far-right groups
Jan. 4, 2021 at 6:43 pm Updated Jan. 4, 2021 at 9:14 pm
1 of 4 | Protesters listen to speakers Monday in the parking lot of Farm Boy restaurant, outside of Olympia, that is defying restrictions against sit-down service. (Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times) By Hal Bernton Seattle Times staff reporter
WOODLAND, Cowlitz County — Outside the door to Brock’s Bar & Grill, people stood on the sidewalk with U.S. and Trump 2020 flags. Inside, the place was packed with people enjoying Sunday afternoon drinks in what was billed as a “Day of Defiance” to the COVID-19 restrictions that have banned such service in the state of Washington.
Owner Polly Merwin says she worked 32 years tending bar to make the money to buy the business, which she fears is now at risk.
“We the people have to take a stand. Small business can’t survive,” Merwin declared.
Patrons of Brock’s Bar & Grill in Woodland, Cowlitz County, head into a Sunday afternoon opening for bar drinks and food in defiance of state COVID-19 restrictions. (Hal Bernton / The Seattle Times)
This protest on Sunday was part of a broader backlash in parts of Washington and Oregon against measures imposed in recent months by the states’ governors to try to slow the spread of the pandemic.
The movement has gained support among residents in some communities wary of government pronouncements and angry over rules that have kept big-box stores open while shutting down indoor-dining services. Advertising Skip AdSkip AdSkip Ad
And it has been championed on social media by a far-right network including Patriot Prayer, Washington Three Percenters, the Proud Boys and People’s Rights, a group formed with the help of Ammon Bundy, an organizer of the 2016 Malheur National Wildlife Refuge takeover.
These events have included statehouse rallies in Olympia and Salem that drew armed supporters, and sometimes turned violent. And some have done double duty as rallies in support of President Donald Trump as speakers echo the president’s claims — rejected dozens of times by courts — that the election was stolen from him through fraud.
Another “Stop the steal” rally is planned for Wednesday at the Olympia Capitol to coincide with a larger protest in D.C. as Congress meets to certify the Electoral College votes that will put President-elect Joe Biden in the White House.
The Washington and Oregon events are promoted on a “Patriot’s Calendar” that included a post for Sunday’s Brock’s Bar & Grill opening. It also helped spread the word about a Monday afternoon rally that attracted dozens of people to Farm Boy, a Thurston County drive-thru and sit-down restaurant facing $183,141 in state Department of Labor & Industries penalties for 19 days of indoor service that are deemed to be willful violations of state rules.
Farm Boy employees on Monday were serving people inside a modest wood-frame restaurant building, which had blinds drawn down over the windows. A sign said, “Enter at own risk.”
“I stop keeping track [of the fines] because I’m not paying them,” said Brian Robbins, Farm Boy’s owner. Robbins said that his actions were “strictly about survival,” to avoid laying off his workers. In a brief speech urged “all small businesses to open — do it today.” Advertising Skip Ad
Mike Faulk, a spokesperson for Gov. Jay Inslee, said indoor dining at restaurants creates a higher risk for COVID-19 transmission. “We are at a serious point in the pandemic where medical systems threaten to be overwhelmed,” he said. “To save lives, we made the painful decision to temporarily close indoor dining. We take no enjoyment in it, but it was the right thing to do based on the science of the virus.”
Brian Robbins, the owner of Farm Boy restaurant, is hugged by supporters after he gave an emotional speech to those gathered for a rally outside his restaurant protesting lockdowns for small businesses. (Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times)
The movement’s tactics this fall have included singling out state L & I staff for harassment. One employee involved in an investigation of indoor service by Spiffy’s Restaurant & Bakery in Chehalis. His name and age were publicized, and protesters appeared outside his home, according to The Daily Chronicle.
The efforts to go after the investigators have prompted L & I to stop putting staff names on orders of immediate restraint, according to Tim Church, an L & I spokesman, who said that Spiffy now faces $202,419 in penalties.
“There have been protests at homes a few different times. Nasty voice mails and emails. All sorts of things,” Church said.
In Lewis County, Spiffy’s efforts to stay open have drawn support from Lewis County Sheriff Rob Snaza, who said in a December interview posted on Facebook that he had been a customer of the restaurant for more than 30 years. “ … We need to stand up as conservatives and as Republicans, we need to stand up for our constitutional rights and say enough is enough … Don’t be a sheep.”
The movement’s support from some local law enforcement and politicians is welcomed by Joey Gibson, founder of Patriot Prayer, who has been active in both Oregon and Washington.
“People just need to stay open. If they want to start throwing people in jail, I mean, they can try, but that’s not going to work out to the state’s favor because that’s just going to have more people rise up,” Gibson said.
Rallies against restrictions
Gibson was one of the featured speakers at a Salem rally held on a rainy, gray New Year’s Day in Salem. This event drew several hundred people, including contingents of Proud Boys, some armed, carrying cans of bear spray and wearing ballistic vests.
Two weeks earlier, during a rally against COVID-19 restrictions at a one-day special session of the Oregon Legislature, some protesters smashed glass doors at the Capitol building and an altercation became physical as those who entered the building were asked to leave by Oregon State Police troopers, the Salem Statesman Journal reported.
There were no efforts to force entry into the Capitol. The event was organized by Oregon Women for Trump, who combine a fierce loyalty to the president with a disdain for COVID-19 rules. At this rally, there was also antipathy toward the COVID-19 vaccines, which drew boos when mentioned by a speaker.
“I myself am not going to take one, and most of the people I know will not,” said Kathy Elgin.
Elgin has flown back to Washington, D.C., to participate in demonstrations there in support of the president. Despite all this travel, and not wearing masks during the outdoor events, Elgin said she has not come down with COVID-19.
She said she does, however, take hydroxychloroquine, a drug that President Trump once said he took to fend off the infection but that the Food and Drug Administration has concluded is not an effective treatment.
During a roughly 2-mile march from the Salem Capitol building to Mahonia Hall, the governor’s residence, protesters occasionally broke out in chants that hurled obscenities at Oregon Gov. Kate Brown as well as antifa, anti-fascists from the left, some of whom had organized their own small event in Salem on New Year’s Day.
1 of 2 | Oregon state police form a line to protect the Salem residence of Gov. Kate Brown — Mahonia Hall — on New Year’s Day. Protesters gathered to oppose COVID-19 restrictions. (Hal Bernton / The Seattle Times)
some of the protesters unfurled a huge American flag that they stretched in front of the Oregon State Police troopers who guarded the entryway. In front of the flag, one man held up a sign that said, “Well-regulated militia — sign up!”
One speaker denounced a fake pandemic. Another declared, “We are on the brink of civil war,” prompting someone in the crew to remark, “And we’ve got the guns.”
Packed bar, few masks
At the Sunday event in Woodland, Brock’s owner, Merwin, said in a Facebook post there would be good food, good drinks and a live band. By 2 p.m., dozens of people were inside the bar as football games and Fox News played on overhead televisions. Advertising Skip Ad
This email is to give you an update on the Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA)’s work in the surreal year of 2020. We hope to stay connected with you and work together to resist and reverse the rapid degradation of civil rights currently occurring in Canada. OCLA report “Criticism of Government Response to COVID-19 in Canada” In April, we published a research report authored by OCLA researcher Dr. Denis Rancourt, criticizing the government’s actions during the spring lockdown. The Abstract of the report reads as follows:
We review the scientific literature about general-population lockdown and social-distancing measures, which is relevant to mitigation policy in Canada. Federal and provincial Canadian government responses to and communications about COVID-19 have been irresponsible. The latest research implies that the government interventions to “flatten the curve” risk causing significant additional cumulative COVID-19 deaths, due to seasonal driving of transmissibility and delayed societal immunity.
Denis has written several research and review articles on COVID-19, including:
OCLA continues to oppose the arbitrary and draconian imposition of face masks on the general population. Our interventions in 2020 are documented at the following links:
OCLA’s submission on new online hate speech law In July 2020, civil liberties associations were invited by the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada to participate in consultations to “inform the development of legal remedies for victims of online hate”. OCLA has previously argued that the “hate speech” provisions of Canada’s Criminal Code are unconstitutional and in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and we reiterated this argument in our submission for the July 2020 consultations, as well as critiquing the Minister’s specific proposed additions to Canada’s hate speech laws.
Defending free speech of Ontario medical doctor Dr. Kulvinder Gill In August, OCLA asked Dr. Brenda Copps, President of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), to dismiss the CPSO’s investigations of tweets made by Ontario medical doctor Dr. Kulvinder Gill that are critical of COVID-19 policy and practices. The letter can be read here: https://ocla.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2020-08-11-OCLA-letter-to-CPSO-President.pdf
Internet censorship “Blocking YouTube channels and banning books on Amazon are akin to requiring government authorisation to operate a printing press or to buy a photocopier or pen and paper. Only the technology and the administrative covering structures have changed. Establishment censorship is establishment censorship.”
The above quote is from OCLA’s statement opposing Amazon’s deplatforming of Ezra Levant’s book China Virus: How Justin Trudeau’s Pro-Communist Ideology is Putting Canadians in danger.
We, like many other organizations and individuals, have also been affected by social media censorship. In July, our Facebook group was disappeared and then reappeared 24 hours later. Many posts in the group are now being arbitrarily removed by Facebook. As a backup in the event that Facebook deletes our group, OCLA maintains an alternative group at MeWe. However, our email list remains the best and most secure way to stay connected with us. Media coverage
OCLA is an independent, volunteer-run organization. Donations help cover operating costs such as booking rooms for public events, printing promotional material for campaigns and events, and paying for court filing fees and court document production costs (copies and binding) for court and tribunal interventions on civil liberties issues.
As we are an entirely volunteer-run organization with a very small budget, we do depend on donations to continue our work, and appreciate any contribution you can make. Donations can be made in three ways: 1) Through PayPal, by clicking the “Donate” button in the top-right corner of https://ocla.ca; 2) With cryptocurrency (Bitcoin and other options) at the link here; or
3) By sending a cheque to “Ontario Civil Liberties Association” to our mailing address:
Ontario Civil Liberties Association 170 Laurier Avenue West, Suite 603 Ottawa, Ontario Canada K1P 5V5OCLA is not affiliated with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) or the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA). All three associations are separate and distinct. Thank you for your support!
EOC boss Paul Johnson said bylaw officers were called to a number of private residences and establishments between Christmas Eve and this past weekend to follow up on complaints about gatherings that exceeded the province’s limit of 10 people per indoor setting.
EOC boss Paul Johson said bylaw officers were called to a number of private residences and establishments between Christmas Eve and this past weekend to follow up on complaints about gatherings that exceeded the province’s limit of 10 people per indoor setting.
Hamilton police say they laid charges in connection with an alleged house party on Primrose Avenue in the central lower city on New Year’s Eve.
Const. Jerome Stewart told Global News that a gathering of about 19 people led to the issuing of provincial offence notices following a disturbance call from a nearby resident around 2:a.m. on Jan. 1.
“There was some kind of function going on there that was not a family function,” Stewart said.
“We believe only three people were residents of the home.”
Brantford police say they also handed out a ticket to a 30-year-old on News Year’s Eve in connection to a large gathering at a house in a residential neighbourhood around 1:30 a.m. on New Year’s Eve.
Johnson said the city laid 32 charges under the re-opening Ontario act in Hamilton during the holidays related to inadequate use of face coverings and lack of social distancing.
“We did have some bylaw charges at Waterdown Memorial park for after-hours use,” Johnson said.
Under the Reopening Ontario Act attendees to a gathering deemed “illegal” by police and bylaw officers can face fines of $880, while an organizer of an overcapacity event could be dinged $10,000.
Since Christmas Eve, 14 businesses have seen charges from bylaw officers with eight receiving multiple charges under section 7.0.2 orders.
Johnson characterized the behaviour of those who hosted indoor gatherings over Christmas and New Year’s as “disturbing.”
“These are not cases where something is just amiss for a couple of seconds or somebody didn’t replace somebody at the door for a couple of minutes,” Johnson said.
“We were called to establishments with small gatherings for people, all of which are not allowed under the grey category we’re in,” Johnson said.
One of the businesses charged was a Tim Hortons in Stoney Creek in which 15 staff members gathered for a non-public function.
“It was overcapacity,” said Johnson.
“There were people not wearing masks and there was not the proper social distancing.”
Johnson went on to warn businesses that being closed to the public doesn’t change the enforcement of regulations.
“Simply closing your doors to the public, does not turn that space into an area where social gatherings can occur,” Johnson said.
Hamilton police say they laid charges in connection with an alleged house party on Primrose Avenue in the central lower city on New Year’s Eve.
Const. Jerome Stewart told Global News that a gathering of about 19 people led to the issuing of provincial offence notices following a disturbance call from a nearby resident around 2:a.m. on Jan. 1.
“There was some kind of function going on there that was not a family function,” Stewart said.
“We believe only three people were residents of the home.”
Brantford police say they also handed out a ticket to a 30-year-old on News Year’s Eve in connection to a large gathering at a house in a residential neighbourhood around 1:30 a.m. on New Year’s Eve.
Johnson said the city laid 32 charges under the re-opening Ontario act in Hamilton during the holidays related to inadequate use of face coverings and lack of social distancing.
“We did have some bylaw charges at Waterdown Memorial park for after-hours use,” Johnson said.
Under the Reopening Ontario Act attendees to a gathering deemed “illegal” by police and bylaw officers can face fines of $880, while an organizer of an overcapacity event could be dinged $10,000.
Since Christmas Eve, 14 businesses have seen charges from bylaw officers with eight receiving multiple charges under section 7.0.2 orders.
Johnson characterized the behaviour of those who hosted indoor gatherings over Christmas and New Year’s as “disturbing.”
“These are not cases where something is just amiss for a couple of seconds or somebody didn’t replace somebody at the door for a couple of minutes,” Johnson said.
The year 2020 Anno Domini, an annus horribilis if ever there was one, has finally and mercifully come to an end. It is the first of January once again, New Year’s Day on the civil calendar, and the octave day of Christmas, dedicated to the Circumcision of our Lord, on the ancient liturgical kalendar. This means that it is time once again for my annual essay about myself and my personal views, a tradition that I borrowed from one of my own favourite op-ed writers, the late Charley Reese of the Orlando Sentinel. I grew up on a farm near the hamlet of Bradwardine, the village of Oak River and the town of Rivers in southwestern Manitoba, one of the prairie provinces of the Dominion of Canada, as is still the full constitutional title and name of my country, one of the Commonwealth Realms of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Growing up, I received the basic sort of minimal, religious instruction that is generally available in the mainline Protestant denominations – I was taught the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Golden Rule, and made familiar through the format of children’s Bible stories with the most significant events in the life of Jesus Christ and of the major Old Testament figures, but not in such a way as to instill the conviction that this was meaningful truth rather than mere storytelling with moral lessons attached. Late in the summer after my fifteenth birthday, I had an evangelical conversion in which I came to faith in Jesus Christ as He is presented in the Scriptures and the ancient Creeds – the Son of the True and Living God, Who is equal to and One with His Father and the Holy Ghost, Who without ceasing to be fully God became fully Man, through the miracle of the Virgin Birth, and Who came into the world that He had made so that He might be betrayed, unjustly condemned, and die a cruel and unjust death at the hands of men in order to take the sins of the whole world, including my own, upon Himself and offer His sufferings, shed blood and death on the Cross as the one final and true sacrifice that would atone for sin and reconcile the world to God, and Who rose again from the grave, victorious over sin, death, and hell, to bring new and eternal spiritual life to all who believe in Him. I was baptized about a year and a half after this and after high school took five years of formal theological training at what was then Providence College and Theological Seminary in Otterburne, Manitoba, but which has since grown into Providence University College. I have lived In Winnipeg, the capital city of Manitoba, where I have worked in inner-city Christian outreach ministry ever since. In this time I have been confirmed in the Anglican Church of Canada, the Church of my paternal forebears, and while I have no more use for the theological liberalism that plagues my Church than I did when it infested the denomination of my maternal ancestors, the United Church of Canada, I am theologically most at home in orthodox Anglicanism. By orthodox Anglicanism I mean the Anglicanism of the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer, that is Catholic in its affirmation of the ancient faith stated concisely in the Apostles’ Creed and in its fullest expression in the Athanasian, and in its retention of the Apostolic ministry in its three-fold orders, the Gospel Sacraments, and the ancient liturgy as translated into beautiful English by Thomas Cranmer, and Protestant in its rejection of those later errors that are distinct to the patriarch of Rome rather than Catholic (belonging to the whole Church, “everywhere, at all times, and by all”).
For as long as I can remember I have loved my country and admired her history, traditions, and institutions. What I came to admire about her in childhood is what I still admire about her now. Whereas our friends and neighbours to the south take pride in the fact that their republic was born out of rebellion and revolution and built upon ideals drawn from eighteenth century liberal philosophy, what I admire most about the Dominion of Canada is that the historical path that led up to her birth in Confederation began by diverging from that taken by the Americans at precisely this point. For differing reasons, the British Loyalists, the French Canadians who had been guaranteed their language, religion, and culture by the British Crown when they were ceded to the latter at the end of the Seven Year’s War, and the Red Indian tribes who had treaty alliances with the Crown, chose loyalty and honour, the virtues of the older, pre-Modern, tradition of Western civilization over rebellion, revolution, and the ideals of the newer, Modern, and liberal form. This choice, first made at the time of the American Revolution, was made again in the War of 1812, and indeed, in the very process of Confederation, and the choice of loyalty and honour continued to light the Dominion’s way through two World Wars. This is the part of our history which ordinary Canadians admired the most when I was growing up and likely still do. The Liberal Party of Canada has tried its worst to erase and eradicate the older, Loyalist, Canada and her heritage, traditions, and history, for which reason I despise, have always despised, and always will despise the Liberal Party. The New Democrats, who differ from the Liberals in this regards only in the sense that they wish the erasure and eradication were more complete and more quickly accomplished are even more abominable in my eyes than the Grits.
If you are familiar with the party system in Canada you might conclude from the last two sentences in the previous paragraph that I am a Conservative. While I describe my political outlook as Tory I do not mean this in the sense of a Conservative Party supporter. The old Conservative Party, as it was from the time it was led by Sir John A. Macdonald, the leading Father of Confederation and Canada’s first Prime Minister until the time the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker led it in Opposition in the early years of the sweeping changes being brought in by Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau, the two Communist traitors who led the Liberals in government from the 1960s through the early 1980s, was a party I could have called my own had it not been before I was born. After Diefenbaker was ousted as leader, the party veered off in all sorts of wrong directions, which it would be too much of a rabbit trail to specify here. In the late 1980s, populists of the Western, prairie provinces, founded a new party, the Reform Party of Canada, that purported to be more conservative in its platform, policies, and philosophy than the Conservative Party. That they chose the name by which the Liberal Party had been known prior to Confederation was a good indicator that this was not the case. I supported this party in the 1990s, because it had many policies and ideas with which I agreed, but eventually I got fed up with the way these good ideas were constantly being wed to an anti-Canadian attitude, hostile to our history, traditions, and institutions, which looked with envy towards those of the United States, an attitude which is as repugnant to me as everything I loathe in the Liberals and NDP. The present Conservative Party was formed out of a merger of the old Conservative Party and the Reform, and while some of the best aspects of each party were incorporated into the new, overall it gives more of an impression of combining the worst of both.
Therefore, when I say that I am a Tory, I do not mean this in the partisan sense but in the sense of Dr. Johnson’s definition “One who adheres to the ancient constitution of the state, and the apostolic hierarchy of the Church of England, opposed to a Whig” or, as T. S. Eliot described himself, in what seems to be a paraphrase of Dr. Johnson’s definition “an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics”. I use Tory, which was the name of those who defended the royal prerogative and the established Church in Parliament in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries before Robert Peel founded the Conservative Party that took their place in 1834 rather than small-c conservative, the more common way of distinguishing one’s centre-right political philosophy from Conservative partisanship. This is because small-c conservatism is generally understood to mean support for law and order, government fiscal responsibility, property rights, low taxes, and economic freedom. While these ideas are not bad – I generally agree with them – they are all what I would consider secondary or even tertiary ideas and there is nothing in them to distinguish conservatism from what was called liberalism up until the early twentieth century. By contrast, Tory as I use the term, stresses the importance of the older virtues such as loyalty, particularly as directed towards the institutions that have come down to us, albeit in a highly diluted form, from pre-liberal Christendom and which constitute a link to the Christian civilization of the past, and the classical civilization of the pre-Christian ancient world, the best elements of which had been absorbed by Christian civilization. While obviously, when it comes to civil institutions, I primarily mean royal monarchy, I also would include Parliament as that legislative assembly, in which a voice in government is given to the Commons as well as to the lords spiritual and temporal, evolved out of the king’s council fairly early in the history of Christendom, centuries prior to the Modern Age. Whereas the typical small-c conservative is indistinguishable from a liberal or socialist in his support for democracy, an abstract ideal and hardly of the first order of abstract ideals, my support as a Tory, is for Parliament, the concrete institution, which has been tested and proved by time.
As a Tory in the twenty-first century, I am more of a reactionary than a conservative. Reactionary is a term more often used as a label of abuse by the progressive Left than as a self-description. I learned to embrace the term from John Lukacs, the Hungarian-American, Roman Catholic, historian who was, along with the Canadian Tory historians, Donald Creighton and W. L. Morton, the latter a fellow Manitoban, one of my favourite writers of history. You can read his account of how he came to self-apply it in the first volume of his memoirs, which is the best-titled autobiography I have ever come across, Confessions of an Original Sinner. The difference between a reactionary and a conservative is usually understood this way – a conservative wishes to keep things as they are, a reactionary wishes to make them what they were in the past. I would prefer the distinction to be much more nuanced than this. The conservative, an advocate of present day Western Civilization against those who wish to destroy it, whether from within or without, sees the merits of Western Civilization as consisting primarily or even entirely of elements and aspects introduced by liberalism in the Modern Age. The reactionary, on the other hand, believes that what is of greatest value and most worthy of defence in our Civilization, is what has come down to us from Christendom and classical antiquity. Furthermore, the reactionary acknowledges that the transition to modernity involved loss as well as gain, and is willing to contemplate the possibility that the loss exceeded the gain or even that it was too high a price to pay for the gain. This is why for liberals, socialists, and all other stripes of progressive, reactionary is the worst possible insult. Their most basic faith is in the idea of progress, that the present, whatever its faults, is far better than the past, and that improvement can only consist in moving further away from the past.
While one can be a Tory and a reactionary without believing the Christian faith – Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Charles Maurras and Anthony M. Ludovici are among many examples that could be named – and a Christian believer without being a Tory or reactionary, orthodox Christianity and reactionary Toryism are complementary each to the other. Before my conversion and baptism, I already had certain Tory convictions – I have been a lifelong royalist from the moment I learned the difference between a monarchy and a republic and that my country was the former rather than the latter – and what could be called a sort of instinctual reactionary skepticism towards fashionable, progressive, and forward-looking trends. These were certainly augmented by my coming to faith and growth in small-o orthodoxy. Orthodox Christianity teaches us that two human institutions are essential to human society in the truest sense of the word – they are not artificial creations of our own, but gifts given to us by God in Creation, and belong to the very nature of our esse, our being. These are the family and religion. However literally or figuratively we may understand the first two chapters of Genesis, it is clear that they teach the family to have been part of human nature from the beginning. Genesis 1:27-28 tells us God created man “male and female” and instructed him to “be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth” whereas the second chapter provides us with the more detailed account in which God, having created Adam and declared “it is not good that the man should be alone”, forms Eve out of Adam’s own flesh and unites the two in the institution of marriage (2:22-24). That religion is also part of human nature, something God gave us from Creation, is evident in the account of the Creation of the sun, moon, and stars “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years” (the calendar’s religious function is antecedent to its other functions such as civil) and the communion between God and man in the Garden prior to the Fall. The Fall changes the nature of religion by introducing the requirement of an offering when man approaches God, but the basic need for communion with God that is the essence of man’s religious nature is there from Creation, from man having been created in God’s image. By contrast, the two institutions which are fundamental – in the original sense of being the foundation upon which something is built – to civilization, the market, the place where men meet to trade goods and services, and the state, the civil authority that enforces the law and administers justice, do not go back to Creation but enter history after the Fall. This does not make them bad things – the state is clearly stated to have authority from God Himself, both in the account of its institution after the Flood (Gen. 9:5-6) and by St. Paul in Romans 13 – but they are not essential in the way the family and religion are, a fact of which we all could use a reminder after the nauseating events of the previous year in which the state declared itself to be more essential than family, religion, and the market. The ancient debate between royalism and republicanism reduces to a debate about whether the state should be patterned after the essential institution of the family (the role of king and queen is that of father and mother to the city or country or nation or empire as a whole) or be organized according to the principles of the artificial (although fundamental to civilization) institution of the market (a republic is a state organized along the lines of a business corporation). Christian orthodoxy supports the royalist side because pious as the Calvinist republican’s “no king but King Jesus” may sound, it is spoken with the voice of heresy, denying to Christ His Scriptural title of “King of Kings and Lord of Lords”. Perhaps the best argument for the Westminster System is not merely that it is a concrete example of the mixed constitution ideal of classical antiquity (pre-Socratic Athenians, Aristotle, Polybius), or even that it is a better guardian of freedom than republicanism as John Farthing so excellently argued, but that it incorporates the strengths and advantages of republicanism into the more natural, royal constitution. Or as the great Stephen Leacock put it, it solves the dilemma of the old debate by “joining the dignity of Kingship with the power of democracy”. Christian orthodoxy reminds us that Kingship, taking its pattern from the essential family, is the more important part of this union. C. S. Lewis worded it as a question in “Myth Became Fact”, but his other writings on the matter leave no doubt that he held it as a fact that “monarchy is the channel through which all the vital elements of citizenship, loyalty, the consecration of secular life, the hierarchical principle, splendour, ceremony, continuity – still trickle down to irrigate the dust bowl of modern economic statecraft”.
Furthermore, Christian orthodoxy complements reactionary Toryism in its account of the present state of Creation which is utterly at odds with the false doctrine of Progress. The overarching narrative of the Christian Scriptures begins with man being placed in Paradise at the beginning of Genesis and ends with him being brought back to Paradise at the end of Revelation. The Paradise to which man is restored, like the Paradise which he lost in the Fall, is the gracious gift of his loving Creator. The gift of Paradise in eternity future is made possible by the gift of God in human history – the gift of His Only-Begotten Son in the Incarnation, Who became man that He might raise man back up to God, by defeating the enemies of the devil, sin, and death that brought about man’s Fall and expulsion from Paradise. In all of this – man being placed in Paradise originally, man being given a Saviour in the Son of God, man’s being reconciled to God by that Saviour, and finally man being re-admitted to Paradise – God’s favour – His grace – is freely given by God, out of the goodness and love of His own heart, and man’s part is to receive that favour by faith, never to earn it. Indeed, the repentance that is the reverse side to the coin of faith, consists primarily of the humble contrition of admitting we cannot earn or deserve God’s favour. The Church, the institution that Christ founded through His Apostles, which is in some ways a form of the institution of religion that goes back to Creation, in other ways is something completely new that transcends it – see G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man for an excellent discussion of this – was not given to man as a ladder with which to climb his way back into Paradise, but as the instrument through which God works in her Ministry of Word and Sacrament to bring the grace given to us in Jesus Christ at one particular moment in history, to us that we might receive it by faith in the time allotted to us on earth. The doctrine of Progress in its myriad forms, is the idea that man can regain Paradise through his own efforts, whether they be technological development, moral reform, restructuring society, or whatever. As George Grant put it, the idea of Progress is the heresy that replaces the eschatological Kingdom of God with the Kingdom of Man. It is a scheme doomed to fail horribly. As David Warren recently reminded us “Dystopia and Utopia are really the same place”.
As a small-o orthodox Christian and a reactionary Tory I oppose many of the same things small-c conservatives oppose, including those that they opposed a hundred, fifty, twenty, or even as recently as five years ago, but oppose no longer. My grounds for opposition usually differ from those of the conservative. Often the difference is in what we would prioritize, although in some cases it amounts to opposing the same thing from different directions. A comprehensive list would make this essay far too long so I will select three as being representative – socialism, environmentalism, and anti-racism.
Before addressing socialism it is necessary to say a few words about capitalism. Whereas the market – as defined a few paragraphs above – is as old as civilization, capitalism is a Modern phenomenon. Its advocates and its foes have never agreed as to what exactly it is, just the when and where of it. Karl Marx its avowed enemy, gave it its name, which the economic liberals promptly adopted for the laissez-faire system they recommended and advocated. Oddly enough, the Marxists and liberals are largely in agreement that they are talking about the same thing, even though their descriptions and definitions of it are almost as different as their attitudes towards it. Conservatives are big believers in capitalism as classical liberals understand and explain it. As a Tory I am a critic of capitalism on the grounds that it involves a basic inversion of value and makes the market more important than family and religion. The market is a good thing and it is fundamental to civilization but it is not more important than the family or religion.
Conservative advocates of capitalism oppose socialism, as do I. Conservative opposition to socialism, however, tends to be based upon pragmatic grounds – it is less efficient, it just doesn’t work. Or, for conservatives who are not satisfied with pragmatic arguments, a higher case against socialism is made that it is contrary to freedom and amounts to universal slavery. While I don’t disagree with any of this, it all falls short of the most damning indictment of socialism that can be made. In the Seven Deadly Sins, which being behaviour patterns rather than single acts are actually vices, Pride is traditionally ranked as the worst, followed closely by Envy. Whereas the lesser of the Seven Deadly Sins – Avarice, Lust, Gluttony, Sloth – are merely natural human desires that have been indulged to the point of excess – Pride and Envy were the source of Satan’s rebellion against God. While envy sometimes is used to mean mere covetous jealousy – as I used it when talking about the Reform Party above – the Envy in the Deadly Sins is not so much wanting what others have as hating and wishing the destruction of those who have what one wants. Whereas the lesser and human vice of Avarice or Greed is frequently linked to capitalism, the most that can really be said in this regards is that capitalism provides an environment in which Greed can flourish. By contrast, Envy, the greater and Satanic vice, is the very essence of socialism – the hatred of the Haves for being Haves. The Satanic nature of socialism is doubled in that just as the devil disguises himself as an angel of light (II Cor. 11:14) so the Envy of socialism. hides its true face behind the mask of Charity – Christian love – the highest of the three theological virtues (Faith, Hope and Charity). It pretends to be about helping the Have Nots, but assisting them would never satisfy it if the Haves were not torn down in the process. Whereas capitalism must be criticized, socialism, which is thoroughly Satanic, must be opposed.. All of this pertains, of course, to socialism as the socialists themselves beginning with Saint-Simon, Proudhon, and Marx have understood it, the repudiation of private property and not what such well-meaning Christian royalists as F. D. Maurice, Eugene Forsey, and George Grant have romanticized it to be out of their well-founded criticism of capitalism.
Conservatism is less united in its opposition to environmentalism than it is in its opposition to socialism. Conservative views range from a full embrace of environmentalism (rare) to moderate acceptance tempered with the recognition of the need to balance other concerns to opposition on the grounds that the movement has been taken over by its lunatic fringe. Those who hold a more negative view of it generally do so because they perceive it to be a threat to capitalism and the livelihoods of those who depend upon capitalism for their employment. Environmentalism is this, but perhaps more importantly, it is a movement the agenda of which, if allowed to succeed, would accomplish the exact opposite of the good it claims as its end. Environmentalism purports to be a movement advocating for things that no sane person could possibly oppose – clean air, clean water, the conservation of limited resources, the preservation of beautiful surroundings and threatened forms of plant and animal life. It is not entirely wrong in perceiving a threat to these things in capitalism with its technological industrialism but it goes completely off by embracing the socialist attack on private ownership as the solution. Aristotle observed two and a half millennia ago that private ownership is generally more conducive to the conservation of resources and the upkeep of the aesthetical quality of places than public ownership and the history of the last century, in which the Soviet Union and Red China by implementing a socialism that included all of the polluting industrialism of capitalism without the safeguards of private ownership produced a level of ecological devastation no capitalist country ever came close to matching, a fact that pro-socialist environmentalist Ronald Wright conveniently omitted from his Massey Lectures on A Short History of Progress. When we look more closely at environmentalism’s agenda, we find that they envision a future in which the human population has been radically reduced, what remains of it has all been herded into big cities, where they work and socialize from home in an entirely artificial, virtual, environment. The materialization of such a vision would completely defeat the purpose of preserving clean air, clean water, and beautiful surroundings. Sane people want these things not as part of a “nature” untouched by man from which we are forever locked away in an artificial environment resembling the Matrix but as the actual environment in which they live their lives. Environmentalism is essentially a theological error – or rather a curious combination of every different sort of theological and philosophical error. It sees its cause as a crusade to save the world from an impending Apocalypse, which is a form of the Millenarian heresy. It is also a form of idolatry which makes the earth and nature into objects of worship, sometimes with the mistaken notion that it is reviving a form of pre-Christian paganism. It makes what it thinks is science into an object of faith, contradicting the essential nature of true science. It represents a complete failure to understand that fighting pollution and preserving the environment is primarily a matter of aesthetics, the pursuit of beauty, and that the ideal of a completely wild nature untouched by man is itself an invention of the human mind and not true natural beauty. Had it understood these things it would not be trying to imprison mankind in a thoroughly ugly artificial environment for the sake of protecting what it wrongly considers to be nature from what it foolishly considers to be a pollutant, carbon dioxide, the food that sustains all plant life. Ironically, in its attempt to seal man away in this prison, its destination converges with that of the very technological, industrialism that has played the villain in its narrative from the beginning. It is as if, to take an illustration from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, the Ents, in the name of protecting the forests from Saruman, were to drive the hobbits from the Shire and lock them away in the dungeons of Isengard.
If conservatives are less unified in their opposition to environmentalism than in their opposition to socialism, they have more or less capitulated completely to anti-racism. The braver among them may decry the methods of Black Lives Matter and Antifa, but few would dare to criticize the movement itself in terms of its goals and ideals, except, perhaps, to say that the movement has failed to live up to them. I condemn anti-racism totally and completely for being the very thing it claims to oppose. Racism is understood by most people to mean either the belief in the superiority of one’s own race or the contempt or hatred of other races or both. The liberals of sixty years ago considered racism to be evil because it violated one of their basic ideals, human equality. This ideal is a false ideal, a substitute, and a poor substitute at that, for what the ancients called justice, Nevertheless, liberals of that era at least conceived of the evil of racism as lying in the act and attitude itself, and not in the race of the perpetrator – or accused perpetrator. Today’s anti-racists, whose hatred of what they call racism is far more intense than that of the liberals of decades ago, consider racism to be something which all people of white skin and European descent are guilty, whether they are conscious of it or not, and which only white people are guilty of. A white person who says something that most people would consider innocuous is said by the anti-racists to have committed a “microaggression” if somebody of another race takes offence at it, regardless of how irrational that taking offense may be, whereas explicit expressions of hatred towards white people, including calls for violence and even genocide, are not considered to be racist by anti-racists despite fitting to a tee what ordinary people consider that term to mean. Last year we saw the anti-racist movement demand that all white people show their full support for anti-racism, confess to their part in “racism” whether they were conscious of any such thing in the normal sense of the word or not, and make a gesture of submission to the “people of colour” they have supposedly wronged, as the movement erupted into orgies of violence and vandalism in its demands that white men of the past be erased from history in Cultural Maoist “Year Zero” fashion. All of this, of course, constitutes racism – racism directed towards white people – and not just the relatively mild “we don’t want your kind in our club” type racism, but the violent racial hatred that is usually associated with the Third Reich. That regime had made idols out of race and nation, idols that proved to be devils which like the Chemosh and Moloch of ancient times demanded human sacrifice. Liberalism, recoiling in repugnance against this, tore down the idols of race and nation and replaced them with the idol of equality. That idol has now proven itself to be just as much a devil as the others and it is now demanding its human tribute. The orthodox Christian answer to racism, whether of the National Socialist variety or the kind that wears the mask of opposition to itself, is to call all men to turn from idols – race, nation, equality, whatever – to serve the True and Living God, of Whom, as St. Paul told the philosophers of Mars Hill in calling them from idolatry, we are all offspring.
Author of the article:Postmedia NewsPublishing date:Jan 03, 2021 • Last Updated 41 minutes ago • 2 minute read
Calgary police and bylaw officers patrolled Bowness Park for crowed control and social distancing in Calgary on Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2020. Photo by Darren Makowichuk /Postmedia Network
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Shocking video has been doing the rounds of police in Gatineau, Quebec, busting up a family gathering of six people on New Year’s Eve.
The event featured two older parents and two of their adult children, who were accompanied by their partners. A neighbour apparently called the police to rat them out.
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Two of them were arrested and all of them were fined. The video, like most such videos, does not tell the full story. But from what it does show, it appears the police response was excessive.
Did all of those cops who showed up have nothing better to do? Was there no real crime going on in Gatineau that evening?
We support many of the restrictions put in place to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 across Canada. What we do not support though is over-the-top enforcement of these rules.https://www.youtube.com/embed/uL5jSGOll_w?embed_config={%27relatedChannels%27:%20[],%27autonav%27:true}&autoplay=0&playsinline=1&enablejsapi=1
Instead of outright criminalizing the deeply personal ritual of family holiday gatherings, public health officials should have offered recommendations on how to facilitate safe and responsible gatherings — such as isolating in advance and only inviting over low-risk persons.
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People go to great lengths in normal times to gather over the holidays, making elaborate travel arrangements and rearranging their work schedules. They could have maturely handled holiday gathering protocols.
We are deeply concerned about excessive enforcement of minor infractions. Take, for instance, the policing of mask laws.
We support indoor mask mandates. But the very officials implementing them describe masks as simply an added layer of protection.https://www.youtube.com/embed/chpqhWwBUSk?embed_config={%27relatedChannels%27:%20[],%27autonav%27:true}&autoplay=0&playsinline=1&enablejsapi=1
Should you wear one in a store? Yes. Is it the end of the world if one person in a store doesn’t? No.
Nobody needs to call the cops because one guy isn’t wearing a mask. If bylaw or police officers stumble upon someone without a mask, they should politely remind them that they really should be masked up or, at the most, issue them a fine.
Instead, there have been scenes of police dragging people out of stores for not wearing masks. That is not a proportionate response, and it’s not an appropriate use of taxpayer-funded police resources.
Politicians and public health officials need to get with the program. Police need to cool it.
Canada’s Medico-Stalinist Police State at Work?: WATCH: Covid police raid Canadian home, violently arrest occupants after neighbor tattles over ‘illegal’ gathering of 6 peoplehttps://www.rt.com/usa/511395-quebec-home-covid-raid/