Once again proving that they wouldn’t understand a damned thing about the military if it jumped up and bit them of their sorry backsides, the Grits, Dippers and Blocheads managed to shove a dumbass motion through the House today, which demands “a moment of silence” (which is okay) and the lowering of the flag above the Peace Tower on any day a Canadian soldier is killed overseas (which most definitely is not). Some people might, with all respect and good intentions, think that this is a good idea. It isn’t. What it is, is yet another sorry example of the Leftist obsession with taking any real tradition and watering it down to meaninglessness. Peter Worthington hit the nail on the head in his column today:
Rather than supporting our troops, I’d argue it was a cynical political ploy aimed solely at embarrassing the government of Stephen Harper, which has ruled that the flag be flown at half-mast only on Remembrance Day, Nov. 11, or on specific commemorative occasions, like the death of the Sovereign. […]
“Respect” for our military from Layton? Poppycock.
With all due respect to Mr. Worthington, I’d have used a word a little more bluntly honest than “poppycock” but hey, it’s his column, right? It’ll have to do. This idiocy reminds me of when, a while back, the HypoGrits were squawking out their fartholes over the Tories’ supposed “abandoning” of the “tradition” of lowering the flag for a day for every Canadian soldier killed. One little problem with that: there was never any such tradition. The Chretien Grits started it in 2002 after we lost 4 men at Tarnak Farm. Veterans’ groups were disgusted by it. There was never a “tradition” of lowering the flag for each and every soldier. If there were, most of us would have never even seen the flag at full staff.
Think about it. We lost about 67,000 in the Great War, another 45,000 in the one after that, and hundreds more in Korea. This doesn’t include soldiers killed in those lovely, so-called “peacekeeping” operations that Leftists get so hot and bothered about (until they turn into real work). A little bit of simple arithmetic shows that, by the Grits’ logic, we should have lowered the flag in 1914 and wouldn’t be due to raise it to full staff again until sometime in the early 23rd century. Not exactly the mindset we want when thinking of the men and women who provide us with our freedom.
Don’t be fooled by the Leftist hype on this one. This has nothing to do with our soldiers. Not a damned thing. What it does have to do with, is the Grits and their fellow travelers constructing the illusion that they actually give a shit about our military after inflicting years of abuse and neglect on the very people that they’re suddenly pretending to care so much about. The Tories know better…
OTTAWA — The federal government is standing by its decision not to lower the Peace Tower flag following each casualty in Afghanistan, despite a vote by opposition MPs yesterday calling for a reversal of the policy.
The Conservatives see their position as a matter of respecting history and point out that the Canadian flag on Parliament Hill’s Peace Tower has never been routinely lowered for individual military deaths during past wars. The government is also taking a hard line on the issues, say Tory sources, because it believes some opposition MPs who supported yesterday’s bill are trying to draw attention to the Canadian deaths in Afghanistan for political gain.
Soldiers don’t want this. The National Council of Veteran Associations doesn’t want this. The Canadian Legion doesn’t want this. Right now the flag gets lowered every November 11th, in honour of all soldiers who gave their lives for this nation, and that’s enough. They don’t want any more than that.
When you lower the flag often enough, it becomes meaningless. Soldiers understand that. And God bless them for it. (more…)
Time for me to give a tip o’ my toque to a fellow Blogging Tory — in this case, the lovely Spitfire over at A Step in the Right Direction. Let me start off by saying to her, don’t feel so bad; we seem to have been living under the same rock, so it’s definitely not just you. 😛
