The Candice Malcolm Show - Don’t let the Woke Left ruin Remembrance Day

00:00:00.060 The woke left tried their very hardest to ruin and to cancel Canada Day this year.

00:00:05.140 Let's not let them ruin Remembrance Day 2.

00:00:07.200 I'm Candice Malcolm and this is the Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:14.180 Hi, thank you so much for tuning into the program. It's great to have you with us.

00:00:17.500 Now, if you have been following the news, if you've been following our reports at True North,

00:00:21.500 you know about the controversy when it comes to the flag.

00:00:24.400 The flag was lowered to be taken down to half-mast at the end of May.

00:00:28.680 May, so we're talking about six months ago, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada,

00:00:33.400 said, let's lower the flags in commemoration at the time we just learned about an apparent discovery

00:00:38.660 of unmarked graves at a residential school near Kamloops, British Columbia.

00:00:43.640 So the band leader came out, said that they had evidence and proof of unmarked graves of children

00:00:48.840 who had attended the residential schools. As you know, it created an incredible media backlash.

00:00:54.020 Several other bands came forward with their own claims of unmarked graves.

00:00:57.280 And basically, the country went into mourning. There was this great shame cast over all Canadians

00:01:02.940 and these really, really wild accusations that say that basically Canada committed genocide.

00:01:08.800 Canada committed genocide. Canada was a genocidal state that the residential schools were not 0.98

00:01:13.080 aimed at with the intention of educating people and lifting them out of poverty,

00:01:17.000 but the intention of those residential schools was simply to kill everybody.

00:01:21.440 That's basically the accusation that has been leveled against Canada by the woke left.

00:01:25.800 And Justin Trudeau just sort of shrugged and said, let's just lower these flags down to have mass.

00:01:31.700 This is totally unprecedented, totally unprecedented for the flags to be lowered down in commemoration

00:01:36.920 of a historical event and also to remain lowered for this long.

00:01:41.520 So more and more people were calling for those flags to go up.

00:01:44.840 They finally did go up, mostly just so that they could go down again on Remembrance Day.

00:01:49.080 And so I think that's at least a good sign, okay? We're coming together as a country.

00:01:53.980 We're saying, look, some really bad things happened in the past.

00:01:56.640 Residential schools were a horrible abuse of power and a terrible program that has gone wrong, that went wrong.

00:02:03.400 I don't defend it in any way. However, I don't think that the intent of it was to kill people.

00:02:07.840 I think the intent of it was good. They wanted to educate people.

00:02:10.640 Unfortunately, you know, this one-size-fits-all policy where they took children out of their homes 0.92

00:02:16.020 and forced them into residential school, bad idea. Lots of bad things happened. Lots of bad outcomes.

00:02:21.400 Okay, so because of this, because of the sort of discovery and this sort of public awakening that we've had

00:02:26.800 when it comes to the woke left demanding that every Canadian can see to this point that we committed genocide,

00:02:33.480 that Canadians are genocidal, that our country is built on this horrible legacy, that we're all white supremacists,

00:02:39.220 that we have to decolonize our country, that they did their best to try to ruin our country's national holiday on Canada Day. 0.96

00:02:45.820 As you recall, there were huge efforts to cancel Canada Day, and it worked, and it worked.

00:02:51.020 Some politicians were just so afraid to speak back against the mob, to tell them what they're saying is wrong,

00:02:56.620 that they allowed it. They canceled their own ceremonies, that they tried to equate all of Canada's history

00:03:04.140 to this one program that was a failed program, and because of it, we just didn't get to do Canada Day in the same way.

00:03:10.380 I mean, let me just say that most Canadians ignored that. Most Canadians still went out and enjoyed their freedom

00:03:14.880 and celebrated with fireworks and with friends and drinks and all the things that we love to do on July 1st,

00:03:21.640 on Dominion Day or Canada Day. But there was that movement, and there was sort of an ugly shadow

00:03:26.480 that was hanging over, looming over us all during Canada Day. Well, we sort of have the same moment now

00:03:31.960 with Remembrance Day, where for some reason, instead of, you know, the whole country coming together

00:03:37.240 to honor the good parts of our history, to honor the people who sacrificed for our freedom,

00:03:41.860 some of the great accomplishments that Canada has had on a military front to keep the entire world safe,

00:03:47.500 instead of talking about that, the same shame is sort of looming over us once again.

00:03:52.040 The same woke forces are trying to cancel Canada Day.

00:03:55.320 And so I wanted to bring on a guest today on the program to help us understand this phenomenon

00:04:01.340 and really how we can push back and fight against it. So I am joined by Mark Milkey. Dr. Mark Milkey

00:04:06.960 is a public policy analyst, keynote speaker, author, columnist, and an author of six books. His most

00:04:12.780 recent book is called The Victim Cult. I really recommend you check it out. It is excellent. So Mark,

00:04:18.120 thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me on, Candice.

00:04:21.520 Well, so Mark, you know, it's Remembrance Day. This is a time where Canadians usually reflect upon our

00:04:27.540 history, where we honor those who have sacrificed for our country. But then there is this sort of looming,

00:04:32.740 you know, guilt that Canadians are meant to feel about some of the revelations about our history,

00:04:39.320 some of the darker moments of our history. So let me ask you this, you know, you're a historian,

00:04:43.900 you're very well versed in Canadian history. Do you think Canadians have reason to be proud? And,

00:04:49.460 and, you know, how can we push back against some of the naysayers who say that we should just sort

00:04:53.940 of feel this eternal guilt about being Canadian? Yeah, absolutely. We should feel proud. And I think

00:04:59.640 the core problem in what you're seeing today, this notion that we can't celebrate Canada

00:05:03.060 is actually utopian. I mean, I wrote about this in The Victim Cult. But if you if you look at the past,

00:05:09.240 the last century, rather, the ideologues and the utopians, were at least looking forward,

00:05:15.880 right? I mean, Marxists were dead wrong in economics, but they thought they could create

00:05:20.080 this new perfect world in the future. And now we're beset by ideologues and utopians who look past

00:05:25.280 to the past, and wonder why it wasn't perfect. Well, because you live in an imperfect planet with

00:05:31.840 imperfect people. So the notion that we can't celebrate Canada is compared to what? Compared

00:05:39.900 to a utopia of one's imagination of the past or the present, or the future? Or who? First Nations

00:05:47.140 in Canada, who, you know, let me be blunt. I mean, look, everyone should be remembered fondly for their

00:05:53.580 service to Canada, their contribution to Canada on this day. But there was really no people group in

00:05:58.060 the history of the planet, for the most part, that wasn't involved in, for example, slavery, including

00:06:02.620 in British Columbia, and including before, you know, what people like to call settlers, you know,

00:06:08.400 most of us, most of our ancestors came. So there's no perfect history. And that's part of the problem

00:06:12.960 today's people somehow weirdly expect that history and those in it should have been perfect.

00:06:17.360 Right? Well, there's this weird, we're in this weird moment, Mark, where we're supposed to really

00:06:21.860 carefully reflect upon, you know, Canadian history and all of the wrongs that have been done by

00:06:27.200 Canadians. But to your point, you know, the history of the sort of pre-European history in North

00:06:34.660 America is really largely undiscussed and undiscovered. I remember you wrote an interesting

00:06:38.960 piece not too long ago, I think it was in the Orca, where you talked about how prior to Europeans,

00:06:45.180 you know, the idea that First Nations were peaceful and loving is totally wrong, that they were quite 1.00

00:06:50.020 cruel and barbaric in some ways. And like you mentioned, the history of slavery is,

00:06:57.200 is really something that people don't know much about. What I've noticed recently is that we can't

00:07:02.400 even really discuss the history of migration when it comes to First Nations people. Because when I was

00:07:08.760 in school, we were taught that people came across the Bering Land Bridge, maybe it was prior to an

00:07:14.460 ice age, but still, you know, maybe thousands of years ago, maybe, maybe more than that, maybe less

00:07:18.780 than that. But it seems now that there's this weird notion where none of this history is even

00:07:24.020 discussed is like politically incorrect or something. So, so why is it that some history

00:07:28.140 is so important to dissect and look through and revisit, whereas other histories took completely

00:07:34.020 brushed over and forgotten? Well, history has become politicized. So whenever politics gets into

00:07:40.080 history, it's no longer honest history. And I think it's become, you know, a weapon, it's been

00:07:46.440 weaponized from some ideologues. Look, you know, if I came from a culture that had been recently abused,

00:07:52.220 my ancestors have been abused, and again, everyone's has, if you go back far enough,

00:07:56.200 they're probably sensitive as well to criticism of, say, my culture. But I think the problem is

00:08:01.100 no one owns the past, no one owns history, no one owns even one's own ethnicity or culture.

00:08:06.260 What happened happens. The question is, how do you get to a better spot today? Which is, you know,

00:08:11.380 where I like to go. But I think you also have to start in honesty in the past. So yes, I think,

00:08:15.280 obviously, you know, if I was an Indigenous Canadian, I'd be pretty upset that, you know,

00:08:22.840 the vote was removed, it wasn't restored until 1960. But I think part of what we're facing today

00:08:28.000 is this weird dynamic where social media can amplify a past tragedy. And there are all sorts

00:08:34.440 of past tragedies that can be amplified. But if you think pre-social media, and let's go back to the

00:08:38.640 1970s, you know, I don't know if you're around. But you know, I was a kid. But or the 1980s or in

00:08:44.560 the early 1990s, really before the internet took off, you would have to have, say, major newspapers

00:08:49.820 or news hour broadcasts at 6pm, saying the United States, the big three, pound on a story again and

00:08:56.620 again and again to make it, you know, really, you know, give it life day after day, like the Watergate

00:09:01.160 hearings, right? Because there was something new every day. Weirdly, now, there was social media that we

00:09:05.520 can extract an event out of the past. And again, there's no shortage of tragedies, and say, well,

00:09:10.320 this this is the reason I am the way I am today, or my group is the way I am today. That's actually

00:09:15.260 really dangerous. It's a false cause and effect link. But I think there's there's some of that

00:09:19.780 happening today as well. I don't know if I fully answered your question. But I mean, that's that's

00:09:23.920 part of the dynamic, I think that we're seeing. And we have to think carefully about really dragging

00:09:27.580 the past out to beat up the present. Right. And and and to the point that you make in the victim

00:09:32.420 cult is that it's not helpful. I mean, to people who come from a group that has been marginalized,

00:09:37.240 or that have been victimized, you know, it's good to acknowledge that, but does it really help

00:09:42.280 them move on? You know, you're thinking of some of these new concepts, these new woke concepts that

00:09:46.220 we hear about, like white privilege, the sort of idea that is undergained is that white people have

00:09:52.660 more power. And and and that's a very dangerous message to be putting out in society, because it it can

00:09:58.820 give people of all different backgrounds, a really bad idea of what the real world is, you know, if

00:10:05.700 you're if you're not white, you might think, Oh, no matter how hard I try, I'm never going to succeed.

00:10:09.700 And if you are white, you might think, Oh, I'm going to coast through life, and everything's gonna 0.58

00:10:13.060 be easy for me. And both of those things are obviously wrong. And so a part part of it is like,

00:10:17.560 how do we how do we come together as a country and make sure that there is equal opportunity and that

00:10:23.340 all people are treated fairly now, and make sure that people who are still in poverty,

00:10:27.640 these people live in some of these really remote reserves have the opportunities that they should

00:10:31.520 have in a country like Canada? Mark, how do we how do we make our country better amidst this whole

00:10:36.160 sort of woke left guilt trip that we're in the middle of? Well, I think you're on to something. And

00:10:42.360 what you mentioned earlier about remembering history. So again, I look, I'm fully in favor

00:10:46.280 remembering history, you know, all of it, the bad, the good, the warts, the ugly. But I think part of it is,

00:10:51.520 again, reminding people that first of all, no one's ancestors are pure. You know, you go back far

00:10:57.520 enough, and everybody's got a black sheep in the family, their ancestral or ethnic or national 0.79

00:11:00.900 tree. But also, you know, remembering the good parts of history, like it's not as black and white

00:11:06.440 as people think. When one of the articles, I think you will reference that a moment ago that I wrote a

00:11:10.820 few months ago in the work, it was about British Columbia's history. And I came across this, this book

00:11:15.200 about the history of black Canadians, written in the early 1970s. And it had some real gems, it actually

00:11:20.980 talked about, for example, there's a migration in the late 1850s, early 1960s, of hundreds of black

00:11:27.880 Californians to Victoria. And they were actually warmly accepted by the local Anglican church,

00:11:33.660 by the local governor at the time, I think it was James Douglas. And they wrote back to their, you know,

00:11:40.180 to other, you know, friends and relatives in California saying, what a wonderful place Victoria was.

00:11:44.520 And of course, like everybody who moves to Victoria, even then bragged about the gardens, or, you know,

00:11:48.580 the pleasant, you know, climate and the rest of it. But this was 1860. And oddly enough, or ironically

00:11:56.300 enough, you know, the intolerance towards some black immigrants to Canada in Victoria came a little bit

00:12:02.380 later, when there was more American immigration from California and elsewhere of whites. You know,

00:12:08.060 because there was, you know, I mean, they're in the middle of the Civil War, or about to enter it,

00:12:11.260 or exiting it, depending on the period you're talking about. But Anglican Canadians, and, you know,

00:12:16.680 British, the British Empire in early 1860s, they were welcoming to blacks. And in fact, they were

00:12:22.960 encouraged to run for office, they were given citizenship, I think it was after nine months,

00:12:26.640 or something like that, or certainly not to run for office, even after nine months. And so, I mean,

00:12:32.480 there's no perfect history. And there's, you know, black spots on the history of Canada, for sure.

00:12:38.300 But I think part of combating the nonsense today, is to kind of virtually shake people a little bit

00:12:43.740 and say, again, you're kind of missing the point, if you think this group, you know, has some sort of

00:12:49.240 moral advantage over this group. I mean, as you know, from the victim cult, I quoted Alexander

00:12:54.700 Solzhenitsyn, the famous Soviet dissident, you know, and he talks about how it's common for people

00:13:00.180 to say, if only you are removed from this situation, or, you know, taken out, you know, in communist, 0.64

00:13:06.800 you know, dictatorships of his era, if only we remove this person, life will be better. And we see that

00:13:13.040 person is evil. And what he said was, no, the line between good and evil runs between, you know,

00:13:18.360 is it each human heart, it's in each one of us, that line, that dividing line. And so it's actually

00:13:23.300 hubris for anyone to suggest that, again, we can't celebrate Canada, because someone in 1867,

00:13:29.880 a 19th century imperialist, was a 19th century imperialist. Well, I would hope we could take stuff

00:13:35.040 from First Nations history and celebrate it, regardless of the fact that, yes, First Nations

00:13:40.060 practiced slavery in British Columbia, when the British tried to stamp it out, including James

00:13:44.080 Douglas, who in one case bought a slave to free that slave in around 1850, and tried to wipe out

00:13:49.820 slavery in British Columbia during his tenure, and it wasn't exactly successful. It lasted until the

00:13:54.660 late 1890s in British Columbia, because the region was so remote at that time. So long answer to short

00:14:01.380 question. I mean, I think telling the truth about history, in other words, getting people to think a

00:14:06.680 little more modestly about everyone's history might be part of the remedy.

00:14:10.700 Yeah, no, that's a really interesting point. And again, something that we don't often hear about,

00:14:15.180 we often hear about how the British had slaves, held slaves, or the Americans held slaves. We don't

00:14:20.240 often hear about how it was the British, and then the Americans who were sort of the earliest people

00:14:24.520 in the world, to stop slavery and to fight against those who continued to carry slaves. I totally agree

00:14:30.300 with your point, Mark, that we need to do more to celebrate First Nations people and history and

00:14:34.840 their contributions. One of the things that happened this year, is that there was a second sort of

00:14:40.720 Veterans Day, First Nations Veterans Day, or I think it's called Indigenous Veterans Day, that fell a

00:14:47.120 couple days before Remembrance Day. And for me, I would prefer that we celebrate all together. We're

00:14:52.720 all one country, our contributions came together, whether it was in the First World, Second World War,

00:14:57.540 Korea, Afghanistan, wherever it was, we were fighting together. But to your point, perhaps having

00:15:04.520 a second dedicated day to First Nations contributions might help Canadians learn more

00:15:10.700 of those stories. What's your take on that? Do you think it's a good idea to have these two separate

00:15:14.500 days? But I don't like separate ceremonies. The acerbic comedian, American comedian Bill Maher,

00:15:18.980 has ripped a strip off of colleges and universities in the United States that have separate Black

00:15:24.100 graduation ceremonies. Because really under, you know, he said, welcome back to separate but equal,

00:15:30.300 right? And I think it's the same danger here, add to the add to history. You know, let's let's help

00:15:35.020 people remember it. I mean, I just wrote a column for the Calgary Herald on Winston Churchill, remembering

00:15:41.000 Winston Churchill properly. And the co author was Kelvin Van Esch, who's half Mohawk, his father's Mohawk,

00:15:47.920 his mother's Dutch German. And he hates identity politics, because, as he told me in a personal

00:15:53.720 call, I don't think he minds, you know, me saying this. I mean, what's he supposed to do? Look down

00:15:58.880 on his mother because she's white. So this is a really dangerous precedent. We have separate this,

00:16:03.840 separate that. I mean, the, the ideal of liberal democracy isn't isn't bad. It is that you look at

00:16:10.720 people as individuals, only in law and policy. And it doesn't matter who you are, where you come from,

00:16:15.640 rich, poor, your background, your ethnicity, your nationality, what happened to your ancestors,

00:16:19.940 what your ancestors did, my ancestors, when you get before a court of law, when you apply for a

00:16:24.200 government program, when you're in the unemployment line, or whatever it is, you're treated as an

00:16:28.920 individual. And unfortunately, we're going away from that, that focus on the individual to, again,

00:16:35.300 celebrating us because of, of whatever. The danger in that, Candace, is none of us can change

00:16:41.180 this, our skin color. None of us can change, you know, much else about how we were born or our

00:16:47.080 history. And I think it's, you know, people often make the same mistake in history and repeat the same

00:16:52.820 evil, and sometimes from the best of intentions. So they think, well, you know, to make up for past

00:16:58.440 wrongs, we need to kind of discriminate against someone now. I mean, think about the illogic of that. 1.00

00:17:03.460 So let's suppose you're, I don't know, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. And somehow, because you've got

00:17:09.180 the wrong skin color in a, in an application for employment today to the federal government,

00:17:13.380 because you're not the right color or ethnicity, you may lose out the job. I mean, to even discuss

00:17:19.220 it, to even have that, I think, is so offensive to the notion of treating individuals as individuals.

00:17:25.320 And that's the danger, is we're, we're trying to correct the past, in quotes, you know, by, by making

00:17:32.240 up for it in the present, and, and you can't. Now, look, there's, there's some, you know, if you step in

00:17:36.980 my toe, Candace, and, you know, or hit me, you know, your car drives into mine, and it's your

00:17:41.080 fault. Well, you know, you're on the hook for repairing my car, you know, I don't know, my

00:17:44.700 medical bill for my foot, if this wasn't Canada, public health care. But beyond, like, pretty clear

00:17:50.940 cause and effect links, you know, the Japanese, their properties confiscated, we owed them after 1.00

00:17:56.040 that confiscation, and, you know, in the 1950s, for what we did in the 1940s, or Canada did. But, but beyond

00:18:03.080 clear cause and effect links, and recent cause and effect links, it's really dangerous to go down

00:18:07.860 this road of, your group was, you know, unkind to my group, and we're going to now punish your

00:18:14.300 group in the present, as if anybody alive today had anything to do with slavery, you know, abolished

00:18:19.860 in the United States in 1865, or practically abolished in Canada in 1820, and in the entire

00:18:25.920 British Empire of 1833, in fact. So it's a very dangerous road we're going down. So again,

00:18:31.720 I think it's helpful to remember that you want to help people as individuals. You know,

00:18:37.120 if you're poor, we have a government program to help you out, that sort of thing. But to

00:18:41.460 stay away from identity politics. Again, my fellow, my friend Kelvin, who wrote this op ed

00:18:45.760 about, you know, indigenous soldiers, by the way, we added that to the column, three indigenous

00:18:50.380 soldiers that deserve celebration. That's the way to do it. You celebrate together. You know,

00:18:56.760 and we've come a long way to try and get to that point. And it's really moving backwards

00:19:02.260 to have separateness in any form or fashion.

00:19:05.660 Well, that's very well put. And I appreciate it. Just final question for you, Mark. You

00:19:09.600 know, it's Remembrance Day. Is there any one specific moment in history or any one story

00:19:14.460 that you like to reflect on, you like to think about? I don't remember, so you just mentioned

00:19:18.040 a column that you wrote about some First Nations moments. So maybe, maybe you can, you can share

00:19:22.220 one of those with us. Well, sure. And, you know, one of the soldiers and, and so we had three names

00:19:28.900 in the column, and it's not in front of me. But one was an indigenous sword soldier born in

00:19:33.780 Saskatchewan, was the first Edmonton police officer of First Nations ancestry, later went off to,

00:19:40.380 to fight in the First World War, and was a runner. In fact, he was also the first indigenous person

00:19:46.140 in Canada to compete in the Olympics, ended up being a runner because of his, you know, physical

00:19:51.040 prowess in World War I, tragically died in 1917. But that's the kind of thing we can, we can

00:19:58.000 celebrate and point to. And, and we should. So that's what we did in our column. And if you look

00:20:03.760 up the column at either markmilkey.com or the Calgary Herald, and, you know, look for, you know,

00:20:08.640 Mark Milkey and Kelvin Van Esch, you'll see the column there about the indigenous service

00:20:13.420 in our history. Brilliant. Well, yeah, I encourage everyone to go out and do that. And thank you,

00:20:18.920 Mark, for joining us on Remembrance Day. I hope you have a wonderful day reflecting and doing,

00:20:23.020 doing what you have, whatever you do on Remembrance Day. So thank you so much for

00:20:26.320 joining us today. Thank you, Candice. All right. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Candice

00:20:30.540 Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - November 10, 2021

Don’t let the Woke Left ruin Remembrance Day

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