Preston Manning is a breath of fresh air for many of us, even if he did come out of the West, and for many easterners, nothing good comes from outside the 416 area code, well maybe a little bit in 905. He was different, the son of a former Alberta Premier, and a man with a vision for Canada, whether others liked it or agreed with it or not.
He is doing fine in private life now, and stopped by electronically to the Globe and Mail via this opinion piece entitled "Beware the cultural wrecking ball". His concern "Removing every vestige of our spiritual heritage would be a serious mistake."
No stranger to seeing this as others don't, but maybe they should, he starts with this:
A Jewish cabbie in Montreal is ordered by the taxi bureau to remove religious icons from the dashboard of his car. And in Toronto, officials decide that a piece of playground equipment in a park depicting the story of Noah's Ark should be removed. In both these cases, the concern appears to be that such public expressions of religious beliefs are, or may be, offensive to those who do not share them. Or, as a Toronto alderman explained in justifying the removal of Noah's Ark, such displays are “inappropriate” because they go “against the city's general policy of inclusiveness.”I, of course think he is brilliant for bringing up the first item since I had done so previously here. I missed the other one, but it is equally as bizarre.
He goes on in his article to talk about the efforts that would be required by the bureaucracies that are attempting to remove our spiritual heritage right under our eyes, with but a few examples that they would have to look at to accomplish such a task. Not tongue in cheek is he saying this, because it is going on bit by bit every day, and most of us are sitting back and letting it happen.
He concludes with this:
It is not only ridiculous, but also dangerous for any nation to try to expunge the visible evidences of its own cultural heritage, even if some of those evidences serve simply to remind us of beliefs and practices we have chosen to refine, reform, or replace.
And if a nation were to actually reduce huge portions of its centuries-old cultural heritage to a pile of rubble by means of the wrecking ball, by what possible conceit can those advocating such a course bring themselves to believe that whatever cultural values they would build in its place could survive or prosper for more than a generation? Let us respect the inheritance of the past not only for its own sake but also for the sake of preserving the best of the present and the future.
It is foolish to think that those in power will attempt to get rid of the vestiges of what made our country great, our faith in the God that brought us to these shores and the One who guided us in our many trials and tribulations to date, and Who wishes to continue to guide our hands this day. What is even more foolish is that we are likely to let them, because we sit on our hands and say nothing while this happens. WAKE UP PEOPLE.
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