Recently, at least within the recent limits of my own limited memory of things inane, Justin Bieber, a Canadian from southern Ontario, stripped down to his ‘Calvin Kleins’ on national television, declaring that he is only ‘comfortable in his Calvins’, as he exposed his skinny body to too many people, most of whom would rather forget the sight (I, yes, will admit, caught an unwitting glimpse on a fleeting news story).
Our other famous-Canadian Justin, Trudeau by name, has also exposed himself of late: Well, a year or so ago, he also stripped down to his ‘boxer shorts’ to win a charity match against the heavier, and favoured, Senator Patrick Brazeau. The fight was a somewhat pre-fixed; they wore Olympic protective equipment, which saved Justin from Patrick’s initial brutal assault. Then, when the Native senator was out of steam, Justin, with his own long skinny arms, ‘tap-tap-tapped’ Brazeau into a victory.
But there is a deeper exposition in both Justins, and that is the revelation of their moral and intellectual deficiencies, more embarrassing than their underwear or boxers. Bieber’s own inanities are rather obvious, splayed over the tabloids with tedious regularity. I read recently that he spends over a million dollars a month. Oh well. I just hope someone is being gainfully employed. Do people actually still buy his music, or is he living off royalties?
More pertinent to my and your life is other Justin, Trudeau, who may well become the next Prime Minister of Canada. I make this prediction for I, as an adopted member of this country that I have come to love, long ago despaired of finding sanity and rationality amongst a good number of Canadians. Any society that could elect and admire Trudeau Senior, Pierre, a man, smirking all the while, who defrauded and denuded Canada of its original strong, virile identity, is one with which I must, at least in thought, separate myself.
But back to Trudeau Junior: I make no judgement of his interior state, but, from what comes out of his own mouth, and signified by his actions, he seems to me the perfect embodiment of the Generation-X Canadian (a generation hardly improved in the subsequent Generation Y and Millenials): Lightly and deficiently educated in the modern state-run-university, coddled in a millionaire household, Justin has grown up a self-entitled man with a seemingly inflated sense of his own importance, based largely on his family’s (read: his father’s) fame and fortune. It would be difficult to argue that Mr. Trudeau Junior would be where he is today without his lineage. The Liberals are banking on name-recognition, and the people’s natural love of dynastic rule. After all, monarchy is the most natural form of government, for, as we can read in the Israelites clamouring to Samuel thousands of years ago, ‘Give us a king!’, people will always follow a demagogue, usually one of their own making.
Take just one example, Trudeau’s claim to know better than the Church to which he professes to belong, which betrays his ignorance or his arrogance, or both. One need not be a member of said Church to realize that a man of principle would either submit or jump ship. Like father, like son. But, again, I cannot read Trudeau’s conscience, only his actions. I only wish someone would, or would have, more thoroughly informed said conscience.
Then again, perhaps he is a man of principle, but of a set that defies reason. His latest dictat that all members of his Party shall vote ‘pro-choice’ is a sign of things to come.
Just listen to one of Trudeau’s interviews. I heard a snippet of one at a speech he gave at my ‘alma mater’, the Univeristy of Western Ontario (more on that institution later). Mr. Trudeau claimed to represent the ‘party of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’, which his father helped to draft, and passed into law as the main component of our Canadian constitution (a dim comparison to the great Constitution of our neighbours to the south). From his own isogesis, he (or his advisors) find in its shallow and vague texts an absolute and inviolable right to abortion on demand for all nine months of pregnancy, at the whim of the mother, under the right to ‘privacy’ and ‘integrity of the body’. He also seems able to discover therein a right to homosexual ‘marriage’, and an obligation amongst all citizens to find sodomy normal and, indeed, a joyful enterprise, to be celebrated and promoted, even if they do not themselves indulge.
The proof is always in the pudding, and we already see where these policies are leading us. Although there are pockets of hope, for there is always hope, both Canada and America are dying countries, led by proponents of the culture of death, with no rational plan for the future, but simply an indulgence in the present.
But the can can only be kicked down the road so far, before, as one commentator declared, it falls off a cliff. Well, that cliff is looming, and the possible election of Justin Trudeau may accelerate us off its edge.
In such an occurrence, I have thought of dusting off my feet, and travelling back to the land of my birth, bonnie old Scotland; but, alas, I fear things there are not much better. Perhaps I could float about on a sailboat on the Pacific; but, then I think back to the heroic Jesuits and Franciscans who first brought the faith to this country. Like them, but in my own lesser way, I must do my duty in the land to which I have been called, and which I have come to love. Perhaps I would ask you to do the same, and, while you’re at it, do your best to ensure that the Trudeau legacy ends with the dismal record of his father.
September 19, 2014
Saint Janurarius, Bishop and Martyr