Trudeau's Trumpisms: There were not fine people on both sides.

While the "very fine people" meme about Trump isn't entirely accurate, it is accurate to suggest Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is guilty of worse.  Trudeau tried to suggest false relevancy when he offensively included the suggestion that "freedom of expression is not without limits" when discussing a teacher being beheaded as an act of terrorism. Suggesting that the teacher who was murdered had any fault at all is more dangerous than negotiating with terrorists, and grants power to that terrorism. This should not be tolerated, and I am glad that many people are condemning Justin Trudeau for this.

 

 

My position on tolerance of religious influence on governments and politics has been clear.  I am a strong supporter of secularism, which is the separation of church (the threat) from a democratic state (what needs to be protected).

My beliefs aren't tied to any specific religion, but on how hierarchical and powerful a political structure exists, and how much they wish to impose their views on non-adherents and other political structures. If you want to know which religion I wish to have extracted from politics you only need to look at the List of religious populations, with the top 3 threats at this point in history being Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. Any religion that is political enough to want to have its own nation-state is in my opinion a foreign political threat against any democratic state.

Every Canadian should be aware that Catholic Monarchs funded Christopher Columbus, and that it was papal bulls from the Catholic Pope that were used to justify the doctrine of discovery.  The concept is simple: subjects of Christian Monarchs were to take over lands (and remove existing civilizations, including democratic nations) not under the control of Christian Monarchs.

It is not only residential schools which the Pope and Catholic Church specifically, and Christianity generally, has never adequately apologized or made amends for.  These papal bulls, which the colonial United States and its supreme court considered international law, have never been rescinded.  This means that the political interference from Christianity against North American civilizations, parts of which have been recognized as a form of "race-based genocide", is still considered current policy of the Catholic Church.

The Vatican was granted permanent observer state status in 1964, and while it hasn't applied to be a member is given considerable privileges.  Let this sink in...

 

In the 1920’s the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, also known as the Iroquois Six Nations from Grand River Ontario, applied for membership in the League of Nations (what later became the United Nations). The UK forced its colonies to block their entry, a civilization that had a democracy that dated back to the 1100's, and yet the political headquarters of a specific denomination of a religion is able to directly influence the United Nations.

1924: A History of Governance at Grand River from Grand River Governance on Vimeo.

 

 

While the specific violence being discussed in France this year wasn't perpetrated by Christians in the name of Christianity, the relationship seem obvious to me.  Countries such as France have a very sorted history with carrying out extreme violence in the name of religion, including on Turtle Island. Where I type from today was part of New France and later the British colony of Quebec, province of Canada, and most recently part of what is currently called Ontario. (It is actually unceded Algonquin territory)

Given that history there was a fight for freedom by separating church from France, specifically reducing the influence of the Catholic Church.  This is a hard-fought process that has been ongoing for over a hundred years, and secularism ( laïcité ) is currently a constitutional principle of France. It isn't yet perfectly separated, but it is headed in the right direction.

Given this history, it should be no surprise that the French will aggressively and justifiably push against the very notion that the harmful influence of the Catholic Church should be allowed to be replaced with harmful Islamic political interference.

As Christianity was successful in falsely claiming that their political influence was only a matter of culture or spiritual beliefs, Islamic politics does the same. There is something fundamentally different between the political influence of church (especially any that have state aspirations) and culture, and it is both offensive and dangerous to equate the two.  In fact, allowing the influence of religion within politics is opposed to the concept of multiculturalism, especially from the most aggressive religions such as Christianity and Islam which seek to impose themselves onto others.

While Saint-Pierre and Miquelon are the last piece of French territory in North America, I applaud the Quebec provincial government for following the lead of France in separating the Catholic Church from Quebec.  Allowing the Catholic Church to administer healthcare and education, the two primary responsibilities of a province in Canada, should be recognized as a dark time in Quebec history.  Their ongoing fight for laïcité should be both applauded and emulated within the rest of Canada, and hopefully eventually the rest of the world.

I found Justin Trudeau offensive when he tried to one-up Singh's offensive attacks against Quebec's progressive Bill 21 during the last federal election. I am offended this year when he suggested that someone being critical of religious doctrine by showing pictures did anything remotely wrong.  For me this is not a matter of freedom of speech or multiculturalism, but an example of Trudeau and others who agree with him being apologists for terrorism and related religious threats to democratic states.

Justin Trudeau and other Canadians must start to do better!