Twice this weekend I heard the local Talk Radio station lead their news broadcast with these words: "A handful of university students have hopped aboard the left-wing Rideau Institute's "white poppy" bandwagon for Remembrance Day, promoting their pacifist ideology by piggybacking on the Royal Canadian Legion's red poppy campaign."
I googled part of the quote and discovered that the entire news story was lifted from an article in the Toronto Sun (link). The Sun article, of course, includes additional invective and links to other stories about outrage towards the white poppy campaign.
So, first off, shame on me for listening to a radio station that takes its newscasts verbatim from the gutter press, but there's more to this. We first noticed this trend in the US, where any objection to war was deemed to be disrespect to members of the armed forces (even though the situation is exactly the opposite). Now in Canada people can't take a slightly different view of Remembrance Day without being viciously attacked.
There is something seriously, seriously wrong here.
2 comments:
Battles were fought for freedom: freedom of expression, freedom of mobility, freedom from tyranny and so much more. Many may not agree with a white poppy as a symbol of peace and some have screamed their opposition and, some have threatened violence against those who choose a white poppy. Of course the knee-jerk reaction of the irony-impaired, self-righteous, moral pontificators on show by the typical HarperCon or Ford Nation charter members diminishes the very freedoms that our veterans fought and died for.
I still choose a red poppy but I accept that the freedom of expression that the white poppy expresses is just as important and shows no disrespect whatsoever.
What is disrespectful, is how our government, which so shamelessly uses military personnel as backdrops and props in photo ops, doesn't give a damn about our veterans in need.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&list=UUt3Ag7rdgR6mtzOMEhd_v6g&v=R79U0PGpxDM
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