No war has taken place on Canadian soil in the past 200 years, since the war of 1812. In addition to this important fact, most of us born in this country never have, nor likely ever will, experience, hunger, famine or starvation.
Meanwhile, in far too many other parts of the world, these things are very real experiences. They are taking place amidst many, long and painful conflicts. Some young people in places such as Sri Lanka and Burma for example have been at war for decades. Even when these are not world wars; people are being tortured and killed by others seeking to dominate and assume power over them.
Tragically, once in every generation or so, someone who feels a need for autocratic power seems to arise in one part of the world or another. This person is usually so driven and/or ruthless that other nations need to intervene in the affairs of his country. Sometimes this involves condemnation by organizations of nations - such as the United Nations. In extreme cases, a number of countries need to send armed forces to forcibly stop violence and injustice, when diplomacy and all other forms of censure have failed.
The very freedoms we enjoy in this democratic country ensure our 'right' to exercise free speech and also to peacefully protest. Regardless of the subject of any protest, here in Canada, we are not likely to lose our lives because of the views we express.*
Most of us are law abiding. Few of us are likely to violently assault another person however much we might disagree with them, nor are most of us likely to damage their property or the city around us. In reality, usually the only place we see physical violence is in the movies or on the News. Fortunately most of us in this country continue to go about our business peacefully.
Consequently, neither the great abuses against human rights, nor the suffering which would likely occur, were we to have a war taking place on our own soil, are absent. Pillaging, looting, theft and brutal Piracy are absent as well. Invasion or occupation by another country is not experienced here either.
Anyone thinking or suggesting that the supposed injustice they feel they have experienced in this country is remotely comparable to the mass murder which more than 6 million people experienced in Hitler's Final Solution is trivializing the truly tragic. When millions of people died, whether they were Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Slavs or any other group the Nazis intended to eliminate, we do a disservice to those who suffered immeasurably. Most of us, myself included cannot even imagine ever living through such a time in history ourselves.
It is unconscionable and disgraceful for most of us, in this generation, particularly in North America to carelessly and casual refer to, or actually compare, anyone in our country today to Hitler or Stalin. It is trivial, disgraceful and a travesty. Even a rudimentary knowledge of history illustrates and documents exactly what these Monsters did to millions of people.
The often repeated statement attributed to Lenin, that 'you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs' is just the Communist leaders way of telling us that people's heads and people's lives were worth taking in order to change the society and realize his plan to change Russia and introduce Communism.
His successor Stalin, effected a genocidal murder of 10 million Ukrainians by starving them to death. When he ordered the shipment of 100% of the grain harvest from Ukraine, which was known as 'the breadbasket of Europe', out of the country to be sold abroad, he issued a death sentence on an entire nation.
His grand design, involved 10 million people (eggs) to be broken (murdered) and was used to effect the 'forced collectivization' of independent small holdings of farmers and to replace private ownership with a Communist grand plan. These plans, one every five years, continued unsuccessfully, until Communism finally disintegrated under the weight of it's own rot and corruption without a shot being fired. Thus ended yet another great experiment at the cost of an 80 year reign of terror.
These two great -isms of the Twentieth Century, one symbolizing the extreme right - Fascism and the other the extreme left - Communism, don't even begin ot talk about the many other tyrannies that have caused and continue to cause untold suffering and pain to hundreds of millions of people in several areas of the world today.
I urge all of us to consider carefully, any comparison of our fairly trivial concerns in this free country. This country is incredibly tolerant in comparison to what many other countries would permit. It affords us all freedom of movement, and perhaps as importantly, freedom of speech which enables you and me to say and do what we want, including criticizing and perhaps even figuratively 'biting' the proverbial hand that feeds us, with our trivial concerns and discontents.
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