LETTER
An inane apologist for dictatorships
It was indecent for Fred Ryan to have given vent, yet again, to his obsessive anti-Americanism, in the week of the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day. That it was done under the guise of soliciting our opinion on the wisdom of limiting our trade with China, to accommodate the “bully next door”, made it all the more squalid.
As most socialists out to destroy the usual meaning of words, he would have us accept that the U.S. is an ... empire. It is not an empire. To suggest otherwise is delusional. Indeed, Canada is rich in resources and would need the protection of a more powerful nation, were we ever to be threatened. But to suggest that we would be better off with the help of China, a “less threatening empire” than the U.S., is sick.
The entire editorial was a ruse; such nonsense one expects only from the most inane of apologists for dictatorships. Chinese mercantilism doesn’t resemble our free-market competitive capitalist system at all. Mercantilism is another word for socialism. There are plenty more such euphemisms, nazism and fascism come to mind.
[It is my own belief that] socialists believe we have no natural rights, rights that are ours by virtue of the fact that we are human beings, individuals, clearly and distinctly different one from the other. [My view is that] they hold we have no right to life, liberty, or property; our only rights are those society sees fit to confer on us. [And that] socialist states are, to them, superior because, though they use force, unlike capitalist states, it’s for “communal goals, not for individual profit”. “So what?” asks Mr. Ryan [“when we trade with all sorts of regimes, those that behead opponents or drop them from aircraft?”] It’s the difference between freedom of the individual and dictatorship: that’s what.
While he was writing such drivel, Europeans were thanking God that Americans, Canadians, and others, who had little to gain materially from fighting the Nazis, did so back in WW2.
When it comes to trade, we should get the best deals we can for our country, always cognizant of the fact that China is notoriously unethical and unreliable. When it comes to choosing our friends, we should choose those who share our values. When it comes to doing what’s honourable, we should consult our own code of conduct. If fraud and bribery are considered a crime at home, likewise should they be so for us, when we’re elsewhere .... especially if we have signed an international agreement to do just that. And when it comes to detaining criminals, on behalf of other countries, and rendering them to that country, when called upon to do so, we should respect any reciprocal agreements we may have signed to that effect.
Ron Lefebvre
Aylmer
