I met the woman who reviewed my book for In The Hills. I asked her what she wrote. Well she said she read one of the blurbs on that back of the book: Back to the Ethic: Reclaiming Western Values.
“Not only are we under attack from those who hate our way of life, but our Western culture is crumbling from the internal pressures of worshiping the false gods of absolute tolerance, inclusion, and accommodation to the point that we welcome beliefs, customs, and rituals that undermine our democracy—in the name of democracy!”
Who is attacking us, she asked?
Her review was tainted by a blurb. I knew then that she had not read the book with an open mind. She was stuck with the mantra: “We are a country of immigrants.”
I asked if she read about the ethic that underpins our constitution; the Judeo/Christian ethic. She said she isn’t Christian. So? Did you know that the Constitution of Canada from the BNA Act is based on that Judeo/Christian ethic? Well, maybe back then when Christians came here.
I tried to talk about ethics-gee that’s the title of the book. Not Tracy. I explained that the ethic- all life has equal intrinsic value-makes it possible for our country to exist; to be open to all people. Blank.
For those of you who read the book you know this was the entire point. How blessed we are to have this ethic in our country. These are the values that bind us together in a country of immigrants. Tracy couldn’t grasp any of this. We are a country of immigrants. She’s worried about Muslims.
I asked her if it is appropriate for Muslims to pray in our secular schools. To have a Friday service; sermons and all. Well, everyone should have a place to pray-individually. No Tracy-the school provides a place for a complete Muslim service. No services for Catholics or Jews or Hindus or Sikhs-just Muslims. Oh that can’t be true; she said. So I told her about what is going in Peel Region in Ontario Canada, which is not far from where we live. Refused to believe it. SHE KNOWS. We are a country of immigrants. She says it like a well-trained Manchurian Candidate.
I said to her you couldn’t have read the book and said these things. I asked if she approved of the Caste system in India. Another blank look. Did she agree that people should be born into their destiny? That girls should be eating garbage because they are from the Dalit. Caught her on that one. It was in the book. She was blank. She kept coming back to Muslims. We are a country of immigrants.
Islam has done a great job of brainwashing-a lot of that going on these days. Never criticize Islam. That Islam teaches that Muslims are superior to all others, that women are less than second class citizens that gays should be thrown off building and Jews are dogs all seem to be acceptable to Tracy. I assume that had she been alive in the 1930’s-40’s would she have welcomed the Nazis-white supremacists who called for death to the Jews. How about the hard core Russian communists? Would she have said yes, we are a country of immigrants, like a Pavlovian trained dog?
Why are all immigrants welcome with all of their beliefs and values? The only ethic that welcomes people of all races, colours, creeds, religion and sexual orientation is the ethic that underpins all democracies-the Judeo/Christian ethic. One does not have to be Christian or Jewish to be welcome here. But it is a difficult ethic to follow and that is why democracy is fragile.Only 40% of the world is blessed to live in a country with this extraordinary ethic that came about at a time when everyone else believed that gods flitted in and out of your life at will, when girls were sacrificed for fertility, when life was thought of as cyclical rather than linear, when it never occurred to anyone that all people are born with equal intrinsic value, that all life is sacred and that one must at some point look beyond one’s own tribe and care for the other.
Take a look at the Middle East and North Africa, today. How are they doing? The Middle East and North Africa, today, are very similar to the time when the Jewish people came out of the desert and brought forward our ethic. I wrote all about this in my book. Yet Tracy doesn’t know this. But she reviewed the book.
Yes we are a nation of immigrants. But in the past immigrants had to decide between the ties that bound them to the past and the bonds that needed to be broken to acculturate to Canada-to our Canadian values gifted to us via the Judeo/Christian ethic. My father at 13 came here and was grateful to come to a country that would not persecute him for his religion. He had witnessed the murder of a young Jewish boy by the Cossacks who raided his shtetl. My mother’s mother came here at 15 by herself, grateful to be free from persecution for the crime of being Jewish. Not that Canada was so great to Jews. But the ethic that underpins Canada makes people accept that all people are equal and slowly over time as we humans evolve we learn not to fear the other.
But we have people coming to this country who do not want to give up their beliefs. Why would they? They have the same strong attachment to their ethical system, their values as we do. Except their values are diametrically opposed to ours. Both cannot live together in one country. Immigrants coming here, today, must not pack their beliefs in their suitcases when they come here. And if they do bring them here we must help them to unpack those beliefs and send them back.
Tracy would have understood that position if she had read the book.
But this won’t happen if people behave like Tracy, refusing to learn about the values they so admire. Refusing to accept the fact that not all people value our values. Refusing to say no-you cannot bring those values here. But the left has poisoned the well. Talking about conflicting ethical systems is now considered racist, xenophobic, fearmongering, and of course Islamophobic.
How will we be able to protect and defend our way of life if we cannot close the minds on the left long enough to at least trap one true fact?
copyright dianebederman.com 2017
