`Burn it all down': What's not to abhor?

`Burn it all down.” Just to set the stage: Two Catholic churches had been burned down, when the executive director and long-time member of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association blasted “Burn it all down” over her Twitter feed. Burn it all down, hardly a placatory, peace-seeking message to the province or its people from the BCCLA.

What responsible body, what person leading a responsible body, would think or utter such a thing; an urging, a provocation to the arson of holy buildings, a total arson of all churches, during a time of civil sorrow and anger?

Does “burn it all down” sound like a reasonable call to action from any group or organization? Any time? From a civil rights organization, it is immensely discordant. And during an extremely tense and deeply emotional time it is dangerously irresponsible. Many more churches, indeed, have burned down since.

I can think of a few unworthy, in fact, criminal, groups that might see it as their calling card. Take just one. The despicable antifa in front of a police precinct might — why am I saying might? “Does” is the word — think it's a good slogan. Many a night in U.S. cities, “burn it down” has been their signature battle cry.

But antifa, to anyone with the slightest sense, would never be confused with a civil rights organization. Which — call me old-fashioned — I see as an organization dedicated to … what is the damn phrase? I've got it! Dedicated to upholding civil rights! Hard to fit an urging to torch all Christian churches under the mandate of supporting civic integrity.

The news of unmarked gravesites was without doubt a scar and a wound, and both deep. And it is worthy to note how very many Canadians, I would guess the great solid majority of the ordinary people of this whole country, felt something both of the scar and of the wound. No decent heart of any decent citizen would feel otherwise.

However, it is a long and actually impossible journey from genuine sympathy and real fellow-feeling to picking up a gasoline can and a Bic lighter on your way to put the nearest church in flames. It is a good question: who does these things, and more so, what kind of people think they have the right to do these things, that doing so makes them special and brave?

Some small clump of ne'er-dowells hoping to make a hard and painful moment harder and more painful could be one set. Opportunists seizing on other people's pain, hoping to exploit a cripplingly emotional moment, even precipitating violence using a real outrage to stir up a false one, are another likely band. There are, alas, such worthless people.

Violence, burnings, riot — these are extremely dangerous practices in any society. Yet the ease this executive director in Vancouver felt in pushing out a call to “burn it all down” was chilling. To do so in so fraught a moment, careless even of the views of those she presumed she was speaking for — the surviving relations of residential school children — is even more alarming. Our executive director put no brace on her mouth and gave her brain no second or better thought.

Violence, deep breaches of our civil code, are always dangerous. Violence is an oil on its own fire. We, or the executive directors of civil liberties associations, should never encourage violence, most particularly the burning of sacred buildings.

My point is made for me by a former Canadian ambassador to China, David Mulroney, who recently wrote that for some time, “political elites have been signalling that certain acts of criminal violence are `understandable' as long as they align with elite sensibilities. They assume that such violence can be managed, like a controlled burn of old timber. They're dangerously wrong.”

There's a world of wisdom and truth in that remark.

Here, the burning of sacred buildings went on apace with an undercurrent of attitude that because of past wrongs, arson of present-day churches was, if not justifiable, certainly “understandable.” It wasn't understandable or anything like it, and it should have been condemned without hiccups of qualification the moment it was known.

There was a notable delay in response from political leaders — more than a week in the prime minister's case (Erin O'Toole stood out on this) — and even then the responses were not definitive, but temporizing and littered with the equivalent of “we know it's bad to burn these churches, but it's understandable.”

It is not understandable. Not even close. And it is derelict of any leader to say so and provide a moral lever to others who may be thinking of burning churches. Not clearly and emphatically condemning these actions is what Mr. Mulroney is speaking of, and how such elites think “violence can be managed,” when of all things, violence unleashed and uncondemned, cannot.

Let me citizen-splain to the executive director that calls to arson at any time are despicable, and promulgating hate against religion is never attractive, and taking on the persona of the avenging angel for Aboriginal wrongs is presumptuous and insulting.

Oh yes, she claimed she was taken “out of context.” Out of context: first clichéd resort of slippery politicians and an activist trying to walk away from her own four, short, ever-so-brave, words.

Here's the whole thing again: “Burn it all down.” The context was: two churches already burned down.

Now I agree this whole four words is a lexical jungle, full of vines and intertwining branches, ever so hard to penetrate.

Which is why I've invited a whole college of linguists and semanticians to unravel its fathomless and complicated context for me.

Until then, we'll just have to go with what she actually said.

VIOLENCE, DEEP BREACHES OF OUR CIVIL CODE, ARE ALWAYS DANGEROUS.

LYNN SWYSTUN A Polish Roman Catholic church near Redberry Lake, northwest of Saskatoon, burns to the ground on Thursday. Rex Murphy condemns those who encourage the burning of people's places of worship.