An Average Defence Of John Carpay

John Carpay, President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, has found himself in the middle of a media and twitter shit-storm.

In a 20-minute speech he delivered at a Rebel Media event on November 10, 2018, Carpay said the following:

"How do we defeat today's totalitarianism? You've got to think about the common characteristics. It doesn't matter whether it's a hammer and sickle for communism, or whether it's the swastika for Nazi Germany or whether it's a rainbow flag, the underlying thing is a hostility to individual freedoms."

(The full video can be found here, so long as Social Justice Warriors aren’t successful in their petitions to have it taken down, of course.)

That’s it. That’s the statement that got Carpay in hot water with the far left. I’d say it’s hard to believe, but nothing shocks me about the far left anymore.

Nothing about Carpay’s statement is wrong. It’s a well-known sociological fact that people often assemble themselves into ideological ‘tribes’ and rally around a cultural symbol. This symbol could be anything-a statue, a rock, a political leader… a flag. Rallying around these symbols makes sense in the minds of these tribesmen as these symbols have come to embody their collective values.

The essence of what Carpay was getting at in his speech isn’t new. It was noted by the founder of sociology, Emile Durkheim, back in the late 1800’s and has been written about by a number of sociologists after him. Carpay (according to all those intelligent academic leftists who think they know better than the rest of us) is actually spot-on with his statement: flags are more than colored fabric, they are the embodiment of the ideological values held by their bearers.

Regardless, Carpary did make a massive misstep this weekend: he apologized.

In a statement published by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms on November 11, 2018, Carpay wrote:

In speaking about the nature of the free society, and attacks on the free society, I referred in the same sentence to the rainbow flag and to the flags representing communist and Nazi ideologies.

…

In doing so, I unintentionally drew a broad comparison between the rainbow flag and the flags which bear the symbols of Communism and Nazism.  I should not have done so, and I apologize.

There are two things that should be said about Carpay’s apology.

Firstly, while I understand Carpay’s need to do some damage control on behalf of the Justice Centre and even the United Conservatives, he isn’t actually sorry. Nor should he be.

I feel confident that Carpay actually believes what he said. He has certainly got an academic basis for saying it. And, we, the majority of ordinary Albertans believe it too. But if organizations like the Justice Centre choose to retract the statements we agree with, or worse, evolve to a point where they refuse to say what their own supporters believe, there is absolutely no point in having them. We might as well concede now.

A large majority of Albertans disagree with the leftist principles that have been seeping into our institutions one by sad one. We believe leftist principles to be fundamentally harmful to society and inherently evil. We’re not okay with leftist sickos sexualizing our children in our schools, nor are we okay with private religious schools being forced by law to teach the unscientific perversion of the political far-left.

But we, unlike Carpay, are unable to do anything about the leftist long march through our institutions. Carpay and a handful of others like him are fortunate enough to be in place to push back against the cultural invasion of our schools and have the ability to put up at least some kind of fight against the left-wing trample over our Constitutional rights and freedoms. But this fight requires that they show no weakness.

Apologizing was Carpay’s only misstep this past weekend.

Secondly, someone should gift Carpay a copy of Vox Day’s Social Justice Warriors Always Lie for Christmas this year. There’s a lot in Day’s work that could have helped Carpay this weekend and could still help him weather this shit-storm.

As Day tells us, an apology is used by normal people to repair a damaged relationship that they hope can be salvaged. It’s a bonding process when someone repents for a wrong they’ve committed and the offended party chooses to forgive them. It’s a healing way forward for people who actually like each other and want to maintain a relationship. But the far-left aren’t normal people. They’re ideologues who will stop at nothing to win the political battle.

To the far left, an apology is an admission of guilt.

Day tells us exactly what Social Justice Warriors truly want when they seek an apology:

They don’t care how you feel, they don’t care about your future behavior, they don’t expect to have a future relationship with you, and there is absolutely no chance they are going to forgive you for anything. You are, after all, a dangerous thought-criminal. When they push you for an apology after pointing and shrieking at you, what they are seeking is a confession to bolster their indictment.         

Day further notes that an apology is just the first step in the far-left program to force those who disagree with them to “do and be better.” Their modus operandi is to change you, to get you to embrace their belief system instead of your own. To apologize for saying anything you believe is to concede that their worldview is the superior one. It isn’t.

The moral of the story is this:

Heather is free to have her 52 mommies. Heather and her 52 mommies, however, are not free to use the full weight of government to silence people who disagree with their lifestyle. Nor are Heather and her 52 mommies free to force their lifestyle on others, including our children, who we sadly place in the care of total strangers for seven hours a day. The moment Heather and her mommies use government force to push their ideology on others (including innocent children) and silence others, they become totalitarians who should be stopped. For that, no one should ever apologize.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, the rainbow pride flag is a political symbol. It holds special meaning for those who subscribe to a particular political ideology. Whether it’s the hammer and sickle, the swastika or the rainbow flag, these symbols serve as rallying tools for ideologues. And any ideology backed with government force, as we know, is a recipe for disaster.

Not sorry.