John Robson: Our Way of Life Deserves Defence, yet Who Now Champions It?

Commentary

“If ye break faith…” People have tried to twist “In Flanders Fields” various ways, including into a pacifist manifesto, though they haven’t yet started changing the words as if it were our mere national anthem, or calling the cemeteries stolen land. But when today’s politicians put on poppies and feign reverence, I fear the dead rest uneasy.

Normally, Remembrance Day is a time to put aside polemics and divisions. But only because beneath our intellectual and verbal disagreements, we were united on the big things that made our civilization a distinctive miracle, both capable of victory time and again against long odds and worthy of it. Were, I say.

Today, if we are to recite the poem and not awaken angry ghosts, we cannot just recognize the opening, “In Flanders fields, the poppies blow/ Between the crosses, row on row,” then lament “the Dead” who very recently “lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow” and now lie in a foreign field. We must recall and answer the challenging finale to which those verses build: “Take up our quarrel with the foe:/ To you from failing hands we throw/ The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die/ We shall not sleep, though poppies grow/ In Flanders fields.”

It is not enough to go, oh how sad, they died young, war is awful. And it is worse than useless to say that war is never worth it. Not only because author John McCrea thought war in general, and the Great War in particular, absolutely worth it. Because he was right. Our way of life deserves defence, and cannot survive unless defended. Yet who now champions it? Intellectually and morally, as well as practically?

Lest we forget, the “Chorus” of figures carved high up on the Vimy Memorial represent Faith, Honour, Charity, Truth, Knowledge, and Hope, and, at the summit, Justice and Peace. But if you were to ask today’s “leaders” whether the outcome in November 1918 was a victory for justice, I suspect they’d dodge the question and am certain they could not argue the affirmative.

Doubtless, their staff could churn out platitudinous press releases praising knowledge, truth, and honour. Though possibly not exhibiting it, given the Royal Canadian Navy’s gall in just announcing: “#HMCSCornerBrook is back online and ready to return to operations. Freshly upgraded, it’s now the most advanced submarine in the Canadian fleet, and will play a key role in supporting a free and open Indo-Pacific region.”

How dare you? As one commentator immediately sneered, “You have one operational submarine. It’s diesel. It’s almost 40 years old. You bought it second hand. The only reason it works is it ran aground and took 14 years to rebuild. You have 243,042 km of coastline & one functioning sub. You couldn’t deter a lost flamingo with dysentery.” Another contributed, “Colombian narcos have a larger submarine fleet than Canada does.” A third went with “Just say ‘thank you’ to the @USNavy for protecting you.”

Unkind words, to be sure. But true. Whereas “a key role in supporting a free and open Indo-Pacific region” is a flat-out, oily lie. If, say, China were to invade Taiwan, what would CornerBrook do? Run? Hide? Sink? Moreover, what could our armed forces generally do in any conflict, anywhere? Nothing, because a public indifferent to security and unsupportive of defence spending nibbling into free money elects politicians vacuous about geopolitics and hostile to our heritage from an elite in revolt against Western civilization and in default of its obligations across the board.

One illustrative consequence is that Canada faces a recruiting crisis because the Canadian Armed Forces are not an outfit a sane patriot would want to join. Practically, they’re underfunded, underequipped, understrength, and overstretched for all the wrong things, from disaster relief to peacekeeping. Morally, they’re scorned for martial virtues. Intellectually, they’re a sociology experiment gone wrong. Yet our solution is to have a chief of staff cry, literally, over systemic racism, appointed by a PM who took the knee for a supposed Canadian genocide on his watch, commanded by a governor general who misses virtually no opportunity, except Remembrance Day, to declare our national capital stolen land.

They have broken faith. Speaking of which, don’t ask them to explain what Faith, Hope, and Charity are doing up there, let alone defend it. Because “now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity” is St. Paul’s first Epistle to the Corinthians, 13:13.

Our soldiers fought and died, from Badon Hill to Waterloo to Verrieres Ridge, for a Christian society with Christian virtues. Now we scorn Truth, scoff at Honour, discard Knowledge, and our PM says Muslim values are Canadian values.

We haven’t just dropped the torch, we’ve hurled it scornfully into the mud. Should they sleep?

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.