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Lessons from the Trojan horse

September 8, 2016   ·   0 Comments

There have been a few – not many, but a few – times in my life I have decided not to invite people back to my home. I’m pretty sure most people have had guests that they wish they had not invited.

Maybe it was something minor like a guest who said the wrong thing. Maybe it was more of a serious infraction, like a visitor who over-imbibed and pretty much ruined what would have been a fun evening for everyone else. Either way, there are people you just don’t want in your house.

Let’s take a pragmatic look at having a guest in your castle. You have a new neighbor and being the friendly sort, you invite that newcomer to your home for a ‘welcome to the neighbourhood’ barbecue. Your new neighbour arrives and informs you he’s looking forward to the barbecue because he hasn’t had a good T-bone steak since he got out of prison after serving a sentence for aggravated assault and manslaughter.

He then makes a sexual remark to your teenage daughter and implies she looks like a prostitute because of the way she is dressed. Your son, the new neighbour says, is an idiot for wasting his time taking university courses when he could make a real living selling drugs, and he looks like a loser anyway because he plays the accordion.

Your new neighbour then notices your Bible on a coffee table and tells you to ‘get rid of it now’ because he’s an atheist and he is offended by that ‘religious stuff.’ After the barbecue, he looks around your house and tells you to remove those shrubs you planted last spring because in the town where he was born, they don’t allow shrubs on anyone’s lawn and he doesn’t want to see them here either. He says he will be back to make sure you have followed the new rules he has given you.

Do you invite him back the next week for that block party event you planned and are hosting? Probably not. If you had known ahead of time what your new neighbor was like, would you have invited him in the first place? That’s doubtful.

So why, in our national house, would we invite guests who we already know would behave inappropriately in the living room of our nation? Federal Conservative leadership hopeful Kellie Leitch, who represents the riding of Simcoe-Grey, is now being criticized for a survey from her campaign that asked whether would-be immigrants should be screened for ‘anti-Canadian’ values.

“Screening potential immigrants for anti-Canadian values that include intolerance towards other religions, cultures, and sexual orientations, violent and/or misogynist behaviour and/or a lack of acceptance of our Canadian tradition of personal and economic freedoms is a policy proposal that I feel very strongly about,” Leitch said.

She is being criticized even by members of her own political party. A parliamentary secretary to Immigration Minister John McCallum said she’s “going back to a type of politics that really one would have thought that she and the Conservative party would be leaving behind.”

Seriously? Leaving behind? Since when is the idea of making sure people coming into our national house will abide by our rules and live by our cultural standards something we should leave behind?

Since when is ensuring that people who are openly hostile to our freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of mobility, and our form of democratic government, are kept out, somehow an outdated way of thinking?

While Immigration Minister John McCallum has made it clear he is hostile to immigrants from certain countries while throwing the doors wide open to others, Kellie Leitch has done the near-impossible in today’s political climate. She has made a politically incorrect statement.

Wow! A politician who hasn’t hid behind words, spun the speech to appease every single lobby group and Girl Scout Troop, and responded to a question by delivering an answer that is so convoluted that a real answer is never given.

Her statement says nothing negative about immigrants, but it does say our society is tolerant of all religions, all sexual orientations, and we value our personal freedoms. There are still countries on this earth were being a gay person will get you arrested, executed, or beaten to death by a village mob. There are still places on this earth where being a member of a certain religion will get your house burned down or worse.

Yes, screening for immigrants who take part in and believe in these practices would be a good thing. If anything, Ms. Leitch should be commended for actually asking her constituents what they think and acting on it, rather than brushing it aside like most politicians, and towing the party line and bowing to the politically correct interests who supported their last campaign.

Immigration is going to happen, but allowing any hostile group to set up shop in our modern society is like dragging in the Trojan Horse and just waiting for something to happen.

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