Editor,
As reported by Rachel Gilmore:
“Following the disturbing murder of Charlie Kirk, Canada’s MPs took it upon themselves to pay tribute to the man in the House of Commons.
Not only did they attempt to rewrite history and paint him as a man entirely dedicated to faith and family, but the remarks from Conservative MP Rachael Thomas received a standing ovation on both sides of the political aisle.”
Just so you know where I am coming from, I went to school in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood in Toronto. The parents of many of my friends had tattoos on their arms from their experience with fascism…and I heard the stories from those who would speak of them.
Let us be clear, Charlie Kirk was a pusillanimous little piece of excrement who went around espousing the same rhetoric and dogma that fuelled the atrocities of Nazi Germany and empowered the people who were responsible for the tattoos on the arms of my friends. He was not a good person…not by any definition I am aware of. The observation that he was a young father and husband exercising free speech doesn’t cut it. I am sure that could have been said about most of the defendants at Nuremberg. Kirk was a propagandist for an evil regime. The only difference between the USA of today and the Nazi regime in Germany is that the concentration camps are mostly hidden in other countries under the rule of evil people who are inflicting the same cruelties used by the Nazis of the Third Reich. Today’s victims are people put into those camps by the current regime in the USA supported and enabled by the likes of Charlie Kirk.
Rachael Thomas’s speech was “free speech” after which Parliamentarians then had a choice. To my mind they chose horribly wrong and I abhor the idea that it was given recognition in the way that it was. I will not ask my MP if he was a member who participated in the standing ovation. I would hope that he did not. The right thing would have been to call it out as misguided or, to have left beforehand. I would have left before the shame. Indeed, I would not have sat through a speech that praised Charlie Kirk or any of his ilk. I do not praise fascists…ever.
When I was a young officer in the Canadian Army, all of my NCOs and most of my Officers were WWII or Korean vets. I am glad they are not around to watch our Canadian Parliament dishonour their sacrifice and service by showing anything other than absolute contempt for the likes of Charlie Kirk. However, our Parliament did just the opposite…indeed, heaping praise on the individual. That has invoked in me an unfathomable level of disgust. It will not easily be assuaged.
Major (ret’d) Paul Wehrle, Meaford
