THE PC REVOLUTION HAS DEVOURED ITSELF.
Why is school folding for one offended person?
Watching the revolution devour its children is both amusing and grotesque. It’s like something out of Goya to read that St. Francis Xavier University leapt into full grovel mode the instant some snowflake melted at the thought that going to university improved your chances in life. But it’s also something out of the French Revolution, apparently originating with Jacques Mallet du Pan: “A l’exemple de Saturne, la révolution dévore ses enfants” aka “Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.”
In case you missed it, and who wouldn’t want to, St. Francis Xavier is honouring
Brian Mulroney, who has lately become a hero to the left because he was so much more left-wing than Andrew Scheer, though as I recall at the time they hated him so much that when he stepped down as PM the opposition parties denied him the customary tribute. But I digress.
The point is, there’s a plaque at the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government at his alma mater including a quote from his father, back in 1955, when young Brian said he was going after an apprenticeship at the local mill in Baie-comeau and dad replied: “The only way out of a paper mill town is through a university door.”
Oh. My. Goodness. Some very woke person hissed, “As a social worker in training, I need to speak out against oppression and discrimination.” Right. Not at all presumptuous of a “social worker in training” to lecture a former PM on how to succeed. Or what it means. See it’s all relative. “Just because post-secondary education is your idea of success, that doesn’t mean that it’s everybody else’s. Living in a paper mill town is not an obstacle that you need to overcome.”
Might I tentatively suggest that this sentiment is just a tiny bit “judgy”? What ever happened to live and let live, you do you, be sensitive and supportive and all that talk? In fact, taken seriously this argument devours itself as well as its offspring.
See, just because living in a paper mill town is your idea of success doesn’t mean it’s everybody else’s so don’t lecture me. As a matter of fact I do think there’s a great deal of dignity in manual labour. Often more than in the symbolic professions and certainly more than in politics. But while I wasn’t a big Mulroney fan at the time and still am not, surely he’s entitled to feel that he walked the walk, and thank his old dad for sage words that changed his life in ways that for him worked out really well.
Following his father’s counsel, Martin Brian Mulroney had an outstanding career as a lawyer before going into politics and becoming prime minister, the only (Progressive) Conservative federal leader to win two majorities since the Treaty of Versailles, raising a big family with his wife of 46 years (and counting) and becoming an elder statesman. Which is pretty much what he wanted to do and he seems happy with it. Apart from that, I guess it was lousy advice.
It doesn’t matter. The main thing is that in the brave new “how dare you” world we have created, everything and everyone is offensive. Nobody can prefer anything or dislike anything. Which makes them incredibly quick to put everyone down including erstwhile allies. Who, like the university administration, immediately ate a handful of mud rather than standing up for the institution to which he has devoted his life and, I dare say, has done very well indeed from. Now what?
What Mallet du Pan meant about the revolution devouring its children was captured almost as graphically by Edmund Burke, also discussing the French Revolution, when he said caustically that “Birds of prey are not gregarious.”
The extreme sanctimony and narrowmindedness of the PC movement, however cloaked in non-judgmental tolerance, means they are very good at tearing things down including statues of Sir John A. Macdonald and, should one be erected, Brian Mulroney. But they’re lousy at building anything because they’re so angry and negative.
It’s satisfying to see such a movement devouring itself. But it’s also grotesque.