To the Editor,
Re: Empire Days name divides community, Letters, March 3.
To make the excuse that the terrors of empire are but some side effect of all of their benefits is tantamount to suggesting that losing one’s head is a side effect of the guillotine and only goes to the blind and wilfully ignorant devotion commanded by any cult of empire. Perhaps in both perspectives the fear of the empire is the beginning of all wisdom, such as it is and as far as it goes.
As George Orwell once said, “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”
Rayn GryphonNanaimo
To the Editor,
I am sorry to see city council decided to take on the issue of a name of a parade and essentially attempted to blackmail the Empire Days parade organizers by withholding the yearly funds.
This is a bad sign that council has caught the disease of political correctness and now is a pliable group overly susceptible to the sympathy of special interest groups rather than listening to the wishes and needs of the community on whole.
It was nice to see such community enthusiasm in putting so much time in the costumes and the props for the parade to share with the community what it was like for people in the time of the British Empire. It was nice to see the little kids dressed up like their great, great grandparents, but at the same time it was sad to see that sour-looking protest group with signs attempting to poison them with shame as the procession went by.
For me this obsession to change the name of a parade is a form of mind control where one group uses the technique of repeatedly attaching misplaced guilt on someone in order to take authority over their moral compass.
The British Empire as it was is past but it is the newly forming globalist empire of the west that threatens to impose economic and cultural imperialism on the rest of the globe through encouraging dependence, debt and by destabilizing autonomous nations through covert means and military interventionism.
Holden SouthwardNanaimo