I have routinely maintained that the political left essentially preys on the naive, the ill-informed and the just plain stupid. This is one of those times. (A forewarning: There are times when I actually temper my outrage at certain types of political activism. This is not one of them.)
As this is Remembrance Week, so-called peace activists are pushing a very ugly agenda via their white poppy campaign.
These people make the specious claim that the Canadian symbol of remembrance, the red poppy, glorifies war. It’s their claim that by paying homage to the sacrifices of the men and women who have served our country in times of war and peace, we somehow glorify conflicts of the past, which then serves to ensure that we will repeat history.
These people seem to honestly believe that wars happen because we want them to. This is so tremendously wrong-headed as to defy credulity.
While it may be historically accurate to believe that the First World War was possibly preventable, it’s also vital to understand that some sort of continental conflict was virtually inevitable sometime between 1914 and 1920 due to economic and social upheavals all over Europe.
All of the “peace activism” money could buy was never going to stop a war.
Modern peace activists seem to believe that the Second World War was somehow preventable. Pray tell, how? Hitler gassed or shot any peace activists in his country, as did Hirohito and Mussolini.
Some peace activists like to believe that they helped prevent the Cold War from escalating into the Third World War and global nuclear apocalypse.
What tripe. What utter garbage.
They believe this in spite of a common ailment among peace activists in countries such as the former Soviet Union, China and other such places like Cuba. Most of those peace activists died at the hands of their state.
The only nations in the world where so-called peace activists live long and prosper are the nations such as our where “peace activists” wag their nagging fingers at us for daring to honour the real peace activists in our history.
Men like Robert Blick, Bill McKay, Eddie Jensen, Trev Roberts and Bud Jayes were peace activists. In spite of having better things to do with their lives, they answered the call of king and country and helped bring peace to Europe.
They did it by teaching young men to fly, by keeping the machinery of war working, by flying into the flak-filled skies of the Ruhr Valley, and by carrying the casualties of war.
All of these men had better things to do with their lives than be peace activists, but they did it anyway.
Al McNeil was a peace activist. He was a peace activist in places like Gaza and Cyprus, and hard up against the Iron Curtain in West Germany.
Like hundreds of thousands of Cold Warriors like himself, McNeil’s presence in Europe acted as the real barrier to war. By ensuring that the Soviets knew that an invasion of Western Europe would cost them untold lives, Soviet expansionism stalled at the lines drawn in 1945 and eventually collapsed, as all tyrannies do.
The larch trees have overgrown the unmarked graves of the Soviet Union’s peace activists, and history has shown that, had the Soviet Union not been on the verge of collapse, so-called peace activists in the West might have actually accelerated the Cold War into a very real one.
Those who promote white poppies are not peace activists. They are horrible people who fail to grasp the cost of freedom.
This week we will honour peace activists such as Capt. Nichola Goddard, Sgt. Robert Short, Bombardier Myles Mansell, and Cpl. Jason Warren.
We will honour them by wearing a red poppy. We will honour them, and the countless others who put their lies on hold, and their lives on the line when there was no other choice but to become a front-line activist for peace.
White poppy peace activists have no grasp of history or reality. They have no understanding that peace without freedom is slavery. They have no understanding that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
To promote or to wear a white poppy is a dishonour to the memory of those who chose to pick up arms in the name of peace. It is a disgrace.
This week I will wear a poppy. A red one.
Bill Greenwood is a local freelance columnist.