Those Who Can, Do. Those Who Can't Teach Guilt Studies 101

it’s comforting to know that there are people in this age helping us luddites navigate history. A recent example of this thoughtful process are the Nurse Ratcheds (above) of B.C.’s  School District 74 (which covers many communities in B.C.'s Interior, including Ashcroft, Clinton, Lytton, Lillooet, Cache Creek and Seton Portage).

In their vigilance they’ve decided to tell their white students they are worthless hulks because… white privilege. And racism. Like Nurse Ratched these stern matrons are looking out for us, whether we asked for help or not. And they believe that the only reasons Canada exists is privilege. Unearned merit. Fake accomplishment. If we knew what they know, we’d fall on our knees in shame.

Then let me say, yes, Nurse Ratched, I am privileged. I’m not hiding it. I’m happy to acknowledge my privilege.I brag about it, in fact.

I’m privileged because I’m the grandson of E.E. Dowbiggin, who served with the artillery during most of the worst battles the Canadians fought in World War One. Having recently emigrated to Canada he turned around and headed to France to risk his life for the nation he now called home. He returned to create wealth for himself and his country.

I’m privileged because I’m the son of W.E. Dowbiggin, who enlisted with the RCAF upon graduation from high school in 1943. Bill flew his Lancaster bomber in 15 missions over Germany, putting his life on the line for the values of his homeland. He’d have flown to Japan, too, but that war ended in time to spare him. He came home, started a business that enriches us still and left five sons and 13 grand children as testament that his sacrifice was worth it.

I’m privileged to be nephew of Burke Mahoney, who also enlisted in the RCAF during the worst time of the war, when the mortality rate was claiming 50 recent of the air crews. A talented athlete and student, he was killed over Magdeburg, Germany, along with his entire Lancaster crew mates, who still rest in the Commonwealth cemetery outside Hanover.

I’m privileged to be the nephew of Gerald Mahoney, who likewise joined the RCAF in the darkest days of the aerial war over Germany. Gerry flew over 30 missions during the hardest fighting. He returned to Canada and later was a noted scholar, the dean of Psychology at Sir George Williams University.

I’m privileged to be the nephew of Edward Mahoney, who enlisted for World War Two in the Canadian Army. Ted was wounded fighting in Italy, but returned to rejoin the Canadians as they rolled up the Nazis in Holland and Germany. My five cousins are only here because of his bravery.

I’m privileged to be the nephew of Francis Mahoney, who also joined his brothers in the RCAF. To enlist after the death of his brother Burke he had to promise his mother he wouldn’t fly. So he became a bomb armourer, servicing the RCAF fighters as they made their way to France in the last push of the world. He came home to become a hockey executive. His name has been honoured in the Lachine, Quebec, arena.

I could go on, but you get the idea. If it’s a crime to acknowledge how privileged I am, then call me guilty. The world they fought for was one where deeds spoke louder than any poster campaign. 

What these men and women— and so many like them— did to keep our society free from tyrants was hard, dangerous work. It’s unfathomable to conceive of today’s grievance merchants— who blanch at the thought of sacrifice-- giving up everything for a notion of how a free people should comport themselves.

What the pinch-nosed Hillary Clintons in the posters are doing is not hard work. Bastardizing history to satisfy some void in your soul is the lightest of lifting. Attaching your need for self abnegation to identity politics is the easy revisionism. Assigning guilt to young people who have no possible connection to these events is contemptibly simple.

The idea that Canada’s youth is subjected to these perverse pathologies is made worse by the fact that the people who risked something more precious than a teachers’ certificate are paying for it with their taxes. Dressing up this revisionism using glib emissaries like Justin Trudeau or Barack Obama or Teresa Downs doesn’t make less odious.

The smug teachers and administrators in the posters think they’re owed respect by the mere fact of birth in a democratic nation. They believe they have a right to politicize the schoolroom. They feel passionately that they’re on the cutting edge of a new day and their students and students’ families must heed them.

That this cultural intimidation is funded by our elected officials and given comfort by an obsequious press is the real scandal. This and here  demonstrate how our educational and cultural systems have been sacrificed to the self-serving and the historically deficient. 

Every parent in B.C.’s  School District 74 should ask that these posters be removed and the staff made to apologize for politicizing at their work. If they don’t, withdraw your kids, change the tax status for your school choice and let the whole mess collapse of its own weight.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the host of the podcast The Full Count with Bruce Dowbiggin on anticanetwork.com. He’s also a regular contributor three-times-a-week to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also the best-selling author of seven books. His website is Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com