“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square,” said Cardinal Francis George in 2010. The only thing the prelate might have gotten wrong, it appears, is the time frame — if the shocking reaction to Canada’s recent church burnings is any indication.
For as houses of worship, some of which serve immigrant and American Indian communities, are set alight by arsonists, a civil libertarian tweeted “Burn it all down.” What’s more, some politicians have, incredibly, tacitly or explicitly endorsed this sentiment.
So “all of a sudden, Canada looks a lot like the Soviet Union,” remarked Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson Wednesday evening. Reporting on his segment, in which Rebel News founder Ezra Levant was interviewed, Fox writes:
“This is so explicitly an anti-church hate crime wave and yet Justin Trudeau, who is normally the first and the wokest, waited a week before saying anything and he literally said ‘that’s not the way to go,'” Levant stated.
In the last couple of weeks, a series of arsons have arisen as churches and statues are being destroyed throughout the country.
The prime minister denounced the church burnings Friday amid backlash over the country’s use of church-run residential schools to forcibly assimilate indigenous children from the late 19th century until the 1970’s.
“The trouble is, from the very top, it’s either silence or tacit support,” Levant added.
And from the middle it’s sometimes open endorsement. Consider that the head of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association — an immigrant from India named Harsha Walia — actually reacted to the arson by stating, “Burn it all down” (tweet below).
(By the way, how would most countries react to an immigrant who rewards his new nation for its generosity by engaging in violence-oriented activism, hmm?)
Defending Walia was New Democratic Party member of the Ontario provincial parliament Dr Rima Berns-McGown. She tweeted:
Someone else apparently simpatico is a former top Trudeau advisor named Gerald Butts. He called the burnings “understandable” (tweet below).
Then there are American defenders such as Harvard Law School doctoral candidate Heidi Matthews, who tweeted (below) that the arson reflected “a right of resistance to extreme and systemic injustice.”
Ironically and according to Levant, the targeted churches often have American Indian congregants and are being torched by “Antifa-style terrorists”; another burned church largely serves Vietnamese refugees.
This is reminiscent of something, too. When Antifa ally BLM was busy burning black neighborhoods last year, former ESPN reporter Chris Palmer tweeted a picture of a building aflame and wrote, “Burn that s*** down. Burn it all down.”
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The building turned out to be an affordable-housing development under construction.
(Note: When the leftist rioters visited Palmer’s streets days later, he tweeted “Get these animals TF out of my neighborhood. Go back to where you live.”)
Levant also states that in the BC interior, a 250-strong village was wiped out and two people died in a fire that may be associated with the church burnings. He further said that the incidents, and authorities’ tacit approval, smack of Kristallnacht (video below).
(Moreover, Carlson points out that in addition to the church burnings, a statue of Queen Victoria was toppled in Winnipeg on Canada Day.)
As mentioned earlier, this tolerance for evil comes right from the top. Prime Minister Trudeau of “I want to raise feminist sons” fame, has in fact “denounced the burning and vandalism,” as the Associated Press puts it — a week late.
And get a load of his denunciation. Referencing the “anger” people feel toward the church and federal government, he said, “‘It’s real and it is fully understandable given the shameful history we are all become [sic] more aware of,’ he told a news conference,” the AP relates.
“‘I can’t help but think that burning down churches is actually depriving people who are in need of grieving and healing and mourning from places where they can grieve and reflect and look for support,’” he then continued.
Wow, Justin, you really told ‘em.
Now, it’s time for some perspective. Parts of the church/American-Indian situation (the mass-graves story in particular) appear to have been mischaracterized. But the reality is that to use a turn on an Abraham Lincoln line, if you look for the worst in someone or something, you’re sure to find it. You can always find a reason to hate.
So let’s analogize this: Imagine that after 9/11 and in light of the history related in The Bloody Borders Of Islam, there’d been a series of mosque burnings. Would we ever have heard a national leader say that the anger is “real and it is fully understandable given the shameful history we are all become more aware of” but, golly gee, “I can’t help but think that burning down mosques is actually depriving people who are in need of grieving”? Instead, 9/11 was followed by pseudo-elite handwringing over, and warnings about, an anti-Muslim backlash (which never occurred).
In fact, the cavalry is called out if someone so much as leaves bacon on a mosque door handle.
What we’re seeing, of course, is a historical pattern’s repetition. Whether it was the Romans, Mexico’s 1920s left-wing government, the “Popular Front” leftists prior to the Spanish Civil War, or the many Marxist states of the latter 20th-century, anti-God, big government ideologues have always persecuted the church. And today this is manifesting itself in the United States and Canada (and elsewhere), as we’ve transitioned from deep faith to lukewarm faith to indifference to anti-Christian mockery and hostility to, now, outright violence that’s almost officially endorsed.
There is good news, however. It’s related by the last part of Cardinal Francis George’s 2010 statement. After saying that his successor’s successor would die a martyr, he concluded:
“His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”