Dear Wingnuts: Get Over Yourselves

On CBC this morning, I had the dubious pleasure of listening to Gwen Landolt whinging on about how the Order of Canada has "become a bastion of left-wing politics" in this country, and it isn't "right wing enough" to suit her standards.

I don't exactly consider Landolt representative of anything except Canada's right-wingnut faction, certainly far from representing the majority of Canadians (or I certainly hope she doesn't)

Then there was this story in the Globe and Mail:

Edmonton's Catholic Archbishop, Richard Smith, has written to Governor-General Michaëlle Jean to ask that the honour not be allowed to stand. In a brief statement, he said that naming Dr. Morgentaler to the Order of Canada “devalues” the honour and “offends all Canadians who recognize and treasure the precious gift of human life in the womb.”

One Order of Canada recipient has already returned his award in protest at Dr. Morgentaler's appointment. Father Lucien Larre, a Catholic priest in Coquitlam, B.C., who was named to the order 25 years ago after founding a group of homes for troubled youth, said yesterday that he was “trying to make a point that we have to be careful who we give this to,” since it should be “reserved for people who can be models or be inspiring for a majority of Canadians.”

Father Larre is no stranger to controversy himself. In 1992 he was convicted of the common assault of a resident of one of his youth homes and jailed for one day, and acquitted of nine other charges.

Talk about double standards here. Of course, these are the same pretentious twits who scream blue murder over anything to do with sexuality - including condom use. I don't know when Father Larre got his OC, but I don't much care - if he wants to get on his moralizing high horse about someone else's award, then the first question I'm going to have to ask is what a convicted criminal is doing holding an OC? Unlike Morgentaler who was convicted of a crime, but through persistence and exercise of due process, convinced the courts that the laws of the day were plain wrong, Larre was convicted of assault - and as far as I know hasn't exactly provided much reason why the statutes in question would be wrong or inapplicable in his case.

As for Ms. Landolt's claim that the OC is "too left wing", it strikes me that compassion for others has long ago been lost in ideology. In short, I doubt that anyone like Landolt will ever receive an OC because doing something that recognizes and respects other people is a value that they've long ago forgotten.