Large Fierce Mammal

” … the anecdote goes, a Canadian immigration official was asked how many Jews displaced from what was left of Europe Canada would accept as immigrants, and was said to have replied, ‘None is too many.’ Whether or not the story is true in its placing the speaking of those words in the mouth of a single individual, the sentiment was widely held at the time, notwithstanding 21st century attempts to expunge it from the history of peace loving, cosmopolitan, all accepting Canada.

” … our family has been having trouble with immigrants ever since we came to this country ….” ~ Dark Sentiments 2015 – Day 19: The Year in Zealotry – Part 1 of 2

At a press conference held on 11 November 2015, newly minted Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said –

“ISIS is a threat, no doubt about that. Should we fear it? No. The Canadian population should have full confidence in all the security services to keep us safe.”

I agree with the Right Honourable Defence Minister’s statement that fearing ISIS is decidedly not the thing to do, but what concerns me is the thought that his French counterpart may have been inclined to say something similar only last Friday afternoon. As you all know by now, Defence Minister Sajjan made his statement two days before a series of ISIS credited attacks in Paris left 129 dead at last count, and scores wounded.

Here in Canada, the secretive, bullying, vindictive oddity that was the Stephen Harper style of governing has, we are assured, left the building in the wake of the political bloodbath that was last month’s federal election. And now, one Friday night in Paris but two days ago has left the freshly minted hope that is the virgin Parliament headed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with a magnificent bag of shit to hold. As I understand one of his campaign promises, Mr. Trudeau has pledged, and continues to pledge, teasing out the legislative legacy of Stephen Harper’s anti-terrorism laws to separate legitimate and necessary national defense and law enforcement measures from those that might too easily serve as a platform for quietly silencing all forms of civil dissent and political opposition. In this enterprise, I wish him bon courage.

The human tsunami sweeping into Europe from Syria and Iraq has met both sympathy and enmity, and in the middle is a group of national governments responsible to their extant populations, some already staggering under the weight of crumbling economies and crippling debt, agonized in deciding the best thing to do. This agony, for all concerned, is compounded by an inexorable and merciless time limit – Winter is coming.

Naysayers to an open door policy of refugee acceptance based purely on humanitarian desperation have repeatedly argued that adequately vetting claimants in the current situation has become impossible under such conditions. That the opportunity exists for enemy combatants to infiltrate under a guise of fleeing the scourge. I was personally unsurprised to learn that evidence from the late Parisian unpleasantness supports this view so that, yet again, we find a lifeboat intended for “women and children first” contains a man in drag.

There are two issues coming out of all this that I have more than a little trouble with. One is hardly being talked about; the other entirely too much.

The first – what gets little press – is this. In all the hand wringing over wolves in sheep’s clothing, it seems to me more than a little obvious that everyone may very well be looking in the wrong place.

We read that the western world – those nations that have no historical foundation in Islam – groans under the weight of what is promoted as decent, humanitarian, even Christian “obligation”. Canada promises to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of the year – a number that represents what tiny Sweden struggles to handle every fortnight. While governments worry over how many ISIS agents may be among their number, security and immigration agencies are completely unable to keep up with the desperate tempo of it all. As mentioned above, the onset of Winter represents a hard limit for action by those who feel they must assume responsibility for the welfare of this endless mass of unfortunates.

It seems to me that if I were facing a militarily stronger enemy that I have come to regard as being spiritually weaker and less decisive in action than I am when faced with what has come to be known as a “humanitarian crisis” demanding of “relief efforts”, I might find it desirable to drive a desperate throng of terrified, pitiful, predominantly non-complicit sheep before me, to flood the lands of my opponent in large part for their utility as a weapon of economic ruin. That the West is first of all concerned with the humanity of its response, before anything else, is well known to the enemy, and while he might despise it as a form of weakness, he will certainly not be above exploiting it. He may be zealotry incarnate, but stupid in matters of manipulation he is not.

Secondly – what gets far too much air time, both in the press and via social media websites – is an endless litany of ill conceived, decidedly inaccurate comparisons to pretty much every immigrant and refugee who has ever lived. These comparisons range from reminders that all of European descent living in North America are here because of immigration, and so should be more accepting of other immigrants notwithstanding any or all complicating circumstances; to reminders of the xenophobia that led to such injustices as the refusal of Jewish refugees referred to at the top of this piece, and the internment of Japanese families by the Canadian and U. S. governments in  the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbour simply on the grounds that they physically resembled the people who did it.

I cry bullshit. There is no comparison to the present situation beyond an undeniable state of misery that has grown to exceed what anyone can do to fix it.

Both sides of the family I was born into, the Weihnachts and the Zincks, came to settle in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia in 1753 as part of a group of immigrants from Germany. They were Protestants, and while part of their motive for leaving Europe for an unknown wilderness was to distance themselves from perpetual sectarian – Protestant vs. Catholic – animosities, they came at the behest of the British Crown in its need for solid, faithful, hard working colonists to inhabit and build upon the partially prefabricated town already laid out by the Royal Corps of Engineers. They didn’t come as refugees, but as immigrants in the more traditionally understood sense.

Mrs. LFM and her family did come as refugees; from Poland in the 1980’s, as part of a steady trickle through Italy, and more specifically, Rome. They were classed as refugees because Poland was still under Communist dominion at the time, and their exodus fit the definition of a defection from totalitarian rule. I was working as a security consultant in Halifax at the time, and I heard concerns voiced, than as now, that the Polish influx, small though it was, might afford an entry point for Communist infiltration. Might I add that those who spoke of such things were seriously misjudging the hatred harboured by Poles for the creatures of Moscow who would likely not have survived their Roman holiday, where even the Pope was Polish. In the end, nay saying voices fell silent as this group of refugee immigrants simply settled in, went to work, and raised their children in Canada, just the way it’s always been done.

I do not accept that the present situation, with its ill timed – or well timed, depending on your perspective – wave of piteous humanity, is in any way comparable to anything that has come before. Why? Because nothing has heretofore prepared the West for living like it’s another day in Israel. For an enemy that can justify blowing up, running over, stabbing, beheading, raping, enslaving, immolating, or otherwise destroying others, notwithstanding age or gender, as an act of religious devotion. One who not only doesn’t fear death, but invites and embraces it as part of his or her mission, in a quest for the glory of martyrdom.

I happen to know, and have had as valued clients for many a year, a number of Muslims. Descendants of a family that came to Canada from Lebanon in the late 1950’s, more trustworthy, decent, and hardworking people would be hard to find, and I harbour grave concerns for such as they who actually personify the sort of decency and trustworthiness I expect to see in any person, notwithstanding spiritual leanings or faith. If anyone’s beliefs lead them on the path of being a decent, trustworthy person to all deserving others, not only those who share their beliefs, is that not the point?

I do not advocate nor condone the rushing to take matters into the hands of the public where the law abiding, who I know to exist and might bear some passing resemblance to the perceived enemy, may be swept up in a misguided web of vengeance. In the wake of 9/11, even Sikhs with their signature turbans were being assaulted in the street by mobs calling them “terrorist”, “Osama,” and “bin Laden”. But neither can governments be so clearly seen keeping a cork on the beverage we’ve come to know the flavour of all too well. Those referred to in Presidential press conferences as “extremists” and adherents of “radical Islam” have done entirely too good a job of rebranding what being Muslim means to the non-Mulsim world, so that now, more than ever, it’s all one and the same. Like a room full of mouse traps awaiting the tossing in of a single tennis ball, another attack like that in Paris last Friday night, occurring in Canada, the United States, or another country in Europe, is likely to ignite a new and horrible reality for anyone who might by any stretch be identified by the Great Unwashed as Muslim.

From all of this, I can tell you that I will not stand idly by and do nothing while decent people I know to be innocent face harm or even insult because of the way they look or the religion they follow. Neither, though, does my heart hold a shred of mercy for the real enemy. They offer War against all non-Muslims including those actual Muslims who do not subscribe to their particularly vile version of Islam. Do they not deserve to be accommodated, so they come to look it in the eye and learn its every terrible nuance?

I cannot accept that throwing open the gates of the nation in an expression of magnanimity under the present circumstances is anything close to a good idea. Some of the aforesaid refugees are already here, and what’s done is done, but their leash needs to be short indeed while our border, external, and internal security watchdogs do their duty with the utmost diligence. For those who come after, let us call a halt, and only reconsider our largess after this heinous enemy has been destroyed with the kind of absolute resolve and finality Adolph Hitler’s Germany could tell you all about.

Unavoidably I fear, and even with all portals thrown wide, the refugee situation is a monster not likely to be put to rest before somebody’s government leads its combined but divided population of heart rending hand wringers and fence building door lockers into taking the blame for the next viral photo of a dead toddler. Maybe this time, a frozen one.