Juno News - September 14, 2022The left thinks patriotism is “hateful”
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Summary
The leftist reaction to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II s passing this week was totally predictable. They say that our head of state and other national symbols, from Sir John A. MacDonald's statues to symbols like the national flag, represent a colonial past of racism and genocide. Their basic conclusion is that we should be ashamed of our country, not proud of the country that Canada is today, and also that we need to tear it all down and replace it with a system that has more equity.
Transcript
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Leftist reaction to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's passing this week
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was totally predictable because that's how they react to every Canadian symbol
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Specifically, they say that our head of state and other national symbols
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from Sir John A statues to symbols like the national flag
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represent a colonial past of racism and genocide.
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Their basic conclusion is that we should be ashamed of our country,
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and also that we should tear it all down and replace it with a system
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But the Queen's death is just the latest story that's given politicians
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and the legacy media an excuse to paint Canada as this shameful nation.
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Take, for example, the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Report,
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which was released in 2019, where Trudeau affirmed Canada committed genocide.
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Fast forward to 2021, a story emerged of 215 unmarked graves of children
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from residential schools near Kamloops in British Columbia.
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And earlier this year in 2022, the trucker convoy, which was in Ottawa,
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stories emerged that a swastika flag was being waved around Parliament Hill.
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Now, unchecked, any of these claims would rightfully be horrendous.
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And what followed was a national shaming campaign
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launched by the legacy media and politicians in Canada.
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Some Canadians are rethinking what the maple leaf means.
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I guess I'm disappointed that whenever I see a Canada flag now,
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I have to second guess whether those people are patriotic to the country
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or if they are processing things that we've long held to be true.
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It is something that is a rallying call, but it has connotations that are both negative and positive.
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That's why they refer to themselves as patriots.
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But what they're patriots of is something that does not necessarily exist.
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I think from the last few months and the year we had and the previous year as well,
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it has definitely changed to a more negative light
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because of all the Indigenous graves that we have uncovered
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The small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa
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or who are holding unacceptable views that they're expressing
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Conservative party members can stand with people who wave swastikas.
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They can stand with people who wave the confederate flag.
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we think about a distant country where a genocide has happened.
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until it is clear that Indigenous peoples are happy to raise them again.
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Canada's first Prime Minister pulled from his lofty perch above Place du Canada.
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As the statue hits the ground, MacDonald's head pops off.
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Canadians are being told by our politicians and their friends in the legacy media
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And given the prevalence of this message across the country,
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it's no wonder that we saw Canada Day celebrations being cancelled,
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the Peace Towers flag being lowered to half-mast for over five months,
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certain media outlets reporting that now the Canadian flag needs a trigger warning,
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and statues of our first Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald,
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Canada's one of the greatest countries in the world,
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But before we get into explaining why the leftist argument is wrong here,
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first we really need to go over some definitions,
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because these words get tossed around all the time,
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and I'm not even convinced that leftists know what they mean.
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One word you'll always hear leftists bring up in relation to national pride is fascism.
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Again, I'd say it's worth asking for a definition,
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Because chances are they have no idea what the word means.
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Fascism is a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above
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the individual, and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial
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leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
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Nationalism often gets mistaken for fascism, so it's worth defining nationalism as well.
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Nationalism refers to support for interest in one's nation over the interest of other nations.
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So in other words, this is just kind of like that airplane instruction to put your own mask on
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Take care of your own country's interests first, above interests of perhaps the World Economic
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Lastly, the word patriotism is one that often gets stigmatized by leftists,
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and therefore is worthy of a quick definition right now.
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Patriotism can be defined as one's love of country or a statement that your nation has
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Because often if you define yourself as a nationalist or call yourself a patriot,
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leftists will often conflate those terms and call you a fascist.
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Valuing the interests of your own country above other countries does not make you a fascist.
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Loving your country and loving the values that it stands for does not make you a fascist.
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There's nothing inherently bad about nationalism or patriotism, whereas yes, fascism is evil.
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All right, so now that we've got these basic definitions on the table,
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Because if it were true that Canada had committed all of these horrendous acts,
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and if it was still a racist, genocidal, colonial country,
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you could probably understand and empathize with the left's sense of shame over Canada.
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But the left's got their facts wrong about how a lot of these things have historically played out,
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so it's worth looking into what they've got wrong.
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We really don't have time to go through how every leftist is wrong about every single
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Leftists say that the Queen's death was triggering to them
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because she represented a system of colonialism which inflicted abuse on Canada's aboriginal people.
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What's important to note here is that Canada itself is a constitutional monarchy,
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meaning we separate the roles of head of government and head of state.
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The monarch is the head of state, which is largely a symbolic role,
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and the prime minister in Canada is the head of government.
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This differs, for example, from the United States,
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which is a republic with a presidential system,
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Because the Queen only played a symbolic role.
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Now, leftists might still argue that she presided over this legislative system,
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but basically the only role that she would play in it is providing royal assent,
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which amounts to essentially rubber stamping the legislation
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Granting royal assent is essentially just a formality.
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If leftists suggest that she did not need to grant royal assent to any sort of the legislation
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this would be highly irregular and really unacceptable in a democracy today.
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The last time that the royals refused royal assent was in 1708.
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Canada's head of state does not and should not exercise legislative power.
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So it's simply just not the case that the Queen was actively pursuing
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let's move on to this unmarked grave story that emerged from Kamloops, British Columbia.
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True North has done some excellent and very extensive reporting on this story already,
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Specifically, Candace Malcolm did an interview with Professor Tom Flanagan entitled,
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The Media Is Not Telling the Truth About the Unmarked Graves.
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I'm just wondering, you know, if you can comment on why you think that the media was so sort of quick
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to jump on the story, why there wasn't any verifying of facts, why they didn't ask for
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more evidence and sort of, you know, why this story took on a life of its own.
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Yeah, well, there are several background factors here that help to explain how this
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story could gather so much momentum so quickly.
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First of all, it played to an existing narrative.
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The narrative had already been established over, well, let's say about 30 years previously,
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ever since Phil Fontaine made his famous interview with Barbara Frum in 1990.
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The story has been built that the residential schools were evil places where students were
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deprived of their language and culture and, you know, in fact, even tortured and killed.
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So there had been lots of oral testimony to this in this direction over a period of many years.
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So the media were primed to report what they thought or what they heard to be physical
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So when something plays into an existing media narrative, it's bound to get uncritical coverage.
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So as that podcast episode goes over, essentially the story started out talking about mass graves,
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which rightfully sounds horrific, and it eventually evolves into hundreds of unmarked graves.
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But really one of the key details of the story, which has been, if not excluded, or just
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significantly minimized by the legacy media, is that to this day, no human remains have actually
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So we're essentially just talking about soil disturbances, which are thought to be graves.
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No human remains have actually been unearthed to verify this story.
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I bring this story up because politicians and the legacy media were all too quick to jump
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And not surprisingly, they were happy to contribute to this narrative of national shame that swept
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Moving right along with our fact check, let's get to third, last but not least, talking about
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the trucker convoy, specifically with regards to the Canadian flag, which leftists now say requires
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a trigger warning because after they saw the truckers waving it on Parliament Hill alongside
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other flags, such as the swastika, they said now they associate our national symbol of the flag
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Obviously, a swastika is a symbol of pure evil, of hatred, and has no place in Canada.
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The missing piece of the puzzle, though, is who is actually waving that flag?
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Because the person has never been identified, despite quite a hefty reward offered by our
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very own Candace Malcolm from True North of $6,500 for his identification.
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So with no indication of who this person was, there really is no proof that he was part of
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In fact, it could have just been a smear job from somebody who opposed the trucker convoy wanting
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So as I've said, Nazi flags and symbols are evil, and we should absolutely condemn them,
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And anyone who claims that the trucker convoy was fascist or had fascist intentions, clearly,
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as I've stated before, has no idea what the definition of fascism is, so it's worth revisiting.
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Fascism subjugates the individual to country, which doesn't sound anything like the trucker
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convoy, which was saying individual rights and choice on vaccine, for example, should
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Fascism favors centralized authority behind a dictatorial leader, whereas obviously people
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that were supporting the freedom convoy were saying that, no, we don't want to succumb to
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We want to have individual choice when it comes to things like our personal health decisions
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So really, truckers waving the Canadian flag on Parliament Hill during the trucker convoy
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was about individual personal freedom, which is the opposite of fascism.
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We can all agree that racism, colonialism, and genocide are all inherent evils.
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They have no place in Canada and should rightly be condemned.
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But what we disagree on is the left's charges to Canada concerning these issues.
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Their claims aren't all accurate, and a lot of them lack consensus.
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While it's true that Canada does have an imperfect past and historical moments worthy of condemnation,
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that doesn't or shouldn't preclude Canadians from celebrating a country which today is one
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of the greatest countries undeniably in the world.
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Evils such as colonialism and racism are not unique to Canada or the British Empire or the
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And we should absolutely condemn historical wrongs.
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At the same time, it's worthwhile noting what sets Canada apart.
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Canadians' love for country stems from Canada's honoring of values such as defending human rights,
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This is what our national symbols represent, not hate.
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So when leftists claim that our national symbols like our flag, our first prime minister, our head
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of state, when they say that these symbols represent hate, in reality, these symbols just
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represent values that the left doesn't like, such as equality over equity, individual freedom
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over collectivism, unity and continuity over deconstructionism.
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So we should be very weary of leftists who are eager to tear down our institutions that
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have created, historically speaking, one of the best societies to live in of all time.
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If you liked what you heard and you appreciate the content that True North generates for you
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You can donate to True North at donate.tnc.news.
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Don't forget to tune into Reality Check next week.