Remembrance Day, 2009:   What are we Remembering?

By Howard Rotberg

In our current world of cultural and moral relativism where we are supposed to believe that we should tolerate and respect every culture and every belief system equally, Remembrance Day is more and more the last bastion of traditional patriotism.

When we remember the soldiers who gave up their lives, or were disabled, for the maintenance of our way of life, our liberal democracies and our freedoms, we necessarily hold that our way of life is superior to those whose totalitarian illiberal governments forced the necessity of war upon us.

Cultural relativists would have us believe that Tolerance is the new primary value, and that if all peoples are equally deserving of respect, pacifism is so obviously more moral than war, since if everybody is like us, who would bother to attack us, and even if they did, submission to their values would, according to the relativists, be a lesser evil than fighting them.

In my new book, Tolerism:  The Ideology Revealed (Mantua Books), I suggest that adherence to a tolerant worldview has now passed beyond mere respect for the idea of diversity – and become an ideology that holds that we must have, not only a sympathy but an indulgence, that is an excessive leniency, for beliefs or practices conflicting with our own. At times, I contend that this ideology contains not only an undue tolerance of the illiberals, but a disturbing element of self-hatred, cultural masochism, and delusions about the difference between social tolerance and political tolerance.   I explore the issue of what limitations should be placed on Tolerance and whether Tolerance should be trumped by Justice.

To understand the full dimensions of what Remembrance Day must be in 21^st century Canada, it is necessary to canvas some other commemorations that have sprung up in our increasingly international culture.

First of all, are we in Remembrance Day mourning all soldiers of every state, or only those who proudly represented liberal democracies against such forces as Nazi Germany?

I used to live in Kitchener-Waterloo.  Some years ago, the remains of Nazi soldiers who had died in POW camps in Canada were disinterred and transferred to one cemetery in Kitchener, which has a sizeable German population.   And so, a few days after Remembrance Day, there takes place a gathering of some 400 to 500 people, at this cemetery of Nazi soldiers, where the German Remembrance Day, called Volkstrauertag, takes place.   In 2006, the German Ambassador to Canada decided to include in his speech there, a substantial remembrance of the Holocaust.   This so bothered the local German organizations that the Cooperative Council of German Canadian Clubs of Waterloo Region felt it necessary to write an Open Letter to the German ambassador noting that his talk “certainly fit into the theme of holocaust (sic) education”, but expressing their “community’s extreme disappointment that its focus created the impression of a political demonstration of ‘Vergangenheitsbewaltigung’  (meaning “"struggle to come to terms with the past").

The Kitchener Germans protested that this speech “missed its mark” because in their view the ceremony was for the purpose of remembering all victims of war and political persecution anywhere “and our compatriots in particular”. (emphasis added)

And so, a ceremony attended every year by local mayors, members of the legislature and parliament is meant by its organizers to remember and honour Nazi soldiers.   Are we comfortable with this?    Are we comfortable that nearly as many people attend this remembrance ceremony as attend the Remembrance Day ceremony at the cenotaph in downtown Kitchener?

Then, since 1995, UNESCO, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization has sponsored a Day of Tolerance on November 16^th each year, again an interesting counterpoint to Remembrance Day on November 11^th. On the UNESCO website is stated that the day “affirms that tolerance is neither indulgence nor indifference. It is respect and appreciation of the rich variety of our world's cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. Tolerance recognizes the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of others. People are naturally diverse; only tolerance can ensure the survival of mixed communities in every region of the globe.”

It sounds so nice. But why must we in the liberal democracies “tolerate” beliefs and cultures that rob individuals, women, gays, or minority religions from all human rights.  Shouldn’t we be encouraged to speak out against such human rights abuses, rather than tolerate them?  I do not suggest we militarily free every oppressed group in the totalitarian parts of the world, but why is there a day to celebrate the rich variety of oppressive regimes?

UNESCO, by the way just elected a new president.   A Bulgarian parliamentarian overtook a large lead by the frontrunner, Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni.   Just to give an understanding of the absurdity of UNESCO-sponsored days of Tolerance, Hosni, who was the favorite to win, is a well-known supporter of cultural repression.   As stated by Mona Eltahawy in the Washington Post, Hosni “has alienated many Egyptians by suffocating cultural and intellectual freedom while giving a leg up to religious zealotry.”  She cites numerous examples of his preventing freedom of expression.  Then, in May 2008, he stated that he would “burn Israeli books” himself if he found any in Egyptian libraries.

Mr. Hosni tried his best to satisfy international concerns.  He wrote an article in the French newspaper Le Monde, where he apologized for the comments and said he would be willing to deal with Israel if he were elected to be UNESCO’s chief.

And yet, this modest apology led to a backlash among Egyptian intellectuals, who argued the culture minister was not abiding by the cultural limitations established by Egyptian institutions concerning normalization with Israel.   You see, while the world thinks Egypt is at peace with Israel, this country, which airs the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion on its television, actually bars cultural organizations and media from any dealings with Israeli officials and artists. 

So, this resulted in 15 prominent Egyptian intellectuals, including professors of literature, history, and international law, and prominent journalists, to write an open letter opposing Mr. Hosni’s election to head UNESCO. His apology for his book burning remarks and his willingness to deal with Israel in the course of his duties, caused these intellectuals to write:  “It is needless to emphasize that this character with such dreadful history is not fit for such great position that requires high levels of morality and integrity, as well as unrelenting support for human dignity and ethical transparency.”    And so, the chances of Mr. Hosni being the first Arab to head UNESCO were scuttled as much by hardliners in his own country as by western concerns.   But in the end, Hosni, as is usual in the Arab Middle East, blamed the Jews.  An article by Hadil al-Shalchi in The Huffington Post states that Hosni blamed a conspiracy "cooked up in New York" by the world's Jews for keeping him from becoming the next head of the U.N.'s agency for culture and education.

The point is that commemorations of Tolerance headed by intolerant people, or commemoration of Nazi war dead by people who get upset that the Holocaust be mentioned are all commemorations that are meaningless, in any positive sense.   As Canada takes in more immigrants, will these immigrants share in a Remembrance Day to remember why our soldiers die, or will they want their own remembrance days, commemorating values that may be very different than those of a liberal democracy?

One more example of the relativist undermining of remembrance will suffice:  Canadian Professor Anne Bayefsky, writing on January 27,  2005 in National Review Online points out that the United Nations commemoration of the 60^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz made sure that there were no actual Resolutions coming out of the ceremony, so as not to offend the Arab states, which boycotted the event (the auditorium was half empty).  Of the 41 speakers at the event, only 5 dared to mention the word, "Israel" in their speeches, and such word was not mentioned in the speeches by the U.S., Canada, the European Union and Australia. Then, most amazing of all, at the ceremony that took place at Auschwitz, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfovitz stated:  "We have agreed to set aside contemporary political issues, in order to reflect on those events of 60 years ago in a spirit of unanimity."   The price, however, for unanimity is to abandon the notion that the Holocaust contains lessons for contemporary politics.  To concede as Wolfovitz did, that European leftists and the Muslims are offended by the lessons to be drawn, is to render the Holocaust into a meaningless symbol.

Bayefsky notes the irony of the constant repetition of the mantra "Never Again" when we fail to give primacy to discussions of what that means in the contemporary situation for the Jewish state: "Jews everywhere are indebted to the willingness and ability of Israelis to live and breathe self-determination.  When contemporary political issues are set aside and an affirmation of the centrality of the Jewish state's well-being is not key to a commemoration of the Holocaust, 'never again' is an empty phrase."

And so we return to Remembrance Day, 2009 in Canada.   Let us, as part of the education we give to our students, emphasize that we are remembering those who gave their lives for the maintenance of liberties in a liberal democratic state.   Let us not mistake multiculturalism (that is, the acceptance of diversity as long as the constituent parts all respect our main liberal democratic values) for cultural relativism, that leads to the position that all beliefs and cultures are equal.   Let us remember, but let us first put some context to that remembrance. And that context is that in Canada we remember with pride those who did not just die, but died for the purpose of maintaining a free and democratic country, which, while always capable of improvement, represents a political system and a cultural milieu of which we can be proud.

Howard Rotberg is the author of The Second Catastrophe:  A Novel about a Book and its Author (Mantua Books) and Exploring Vancouverism:  The Political Culture of Canada’s Lotus Land (CanadianValuesPress).  His new book, TOLERism:  The Ideology Revealed, (Mantua Books) will be launched in Toronto on November 22^nd.