Time to Grow Up
Canada's Baby Boomers could keep us in a perpetual state of adolescence
Ezra Levant - September 17, 2007
Within minutes of landing at Israel's international airport, one is struck by how young the security staff are. They look just out of high school, because they are--Israeli youth are conscripted to do extremely dangerous work ranging from manning checkpoints along the Palestinian territories, to fighting in hot combat against terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon. Both men and women are conscripted, and airport security, amongst the world's strictest, is a largely female business. Teenaged girls are tasked with front line defence.
There is a sorrow to it, but there is still a sense of national purpose there; during last year's war against Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, 100 per cent of Israel's reserves responded. It's not a tranquil way to live, but it works. And when young soldiers finish their service, they enter the private sector with enormous practical experience, ranging from working in an organization to crisis management, and often with useful technical skills.
This is not a call for conscription in Canada, of course. We don't need it, to begin with. And though Israel's defence requires it, it is still an infringement on personal liberty--a tax on the best years of one's life. But it is a comment on adulthood.
There are young people in Canada who, like Israeli conscripts, are thrust into positions of enormous responsibility and dangers. More accurately, in Canada they've chosen to thrust themselves into those positions. Everyone in our all-volunteer Canadian Forces is there with the knowledge they will almost certainly be dispatched to the Afghanistan war zone. That they would do so to project Canadian values abroad--trying to bring rule of law and liberal democracy to Afghanistan--is an incredible act of selfless idealism, and at odds with popular culture that worships idols of leisure and amusement. The same holds true with America's all-volunteer armed forces, and the Stark contrast with the anti-war chorus in Hollywood.
There are now two Canadas. The first is the serious, responsible Canada that shoulders heavy burdens and is prepared to sacrifice. That's the adult Canada, though it usually exists in the person of twenty-somethings. And then there's the perpetually infantile Canada, the extended adolescence Canada, the one that shirks real duties at home and abroad, and believes that principles are important--unless they require any form of sacrifice. These are the people who claim they support soldiers but hate soldiering, the ones who never cease to dream up pointless PR missions for our soldiers (Jean Chrétien once suggested sending troops to Zaire; today's left never stops calling for war against Sudan over their internecine Muslim-on-Muslim violence in Darfur) but fly a white flag as soon as a soldier is injured. Typically, this childish Canada takes the form of Baby Boomers, often in media and academia, but also in Parliament. Jack Layton comes to mind.
Those who fought the Second World War have rightfully been called the Greatest Generation, and Canada's contribution was amongst the greatest of all, far disproportionate to our small population and economy. But over the past 40 years they have been supplanted by a Canada more concerned with image than substance. While we keep referring to our glorious and important past, we're increasingly irrelevant to anyone but ourselves. Images of Canadian peacekeepers are now so central to our self image that they're printed right on our currency, but only 56 Canadians are serving on peacekeeping missions--41 as observers, and only 15 as troops.
What we've lacked in substance, we've made up with noise. Canada is amongst the noisiest proponents of the Kyoto Protocol, though we haven't complied ourselves. We noisily chaired the world's anti-landmines treaty, but are happy to let the U.S. lay landmines for us in Afghanistan. Canada tries to have it both ways--take a child-sized portion of deeds, but a man-sized portion of talk. The Liberals called it "soft power" but there wasn't any power in it.
That has started to change under the Conservative government. The delivery of the first of Canada's C-17 long-range cargo aircraft was a sign that Canada in the future would be more of a doer than a talker. Same, too, with the government's pledge to beef up Arctic sovereignty--something that Liberal governments talked about, but never did, preferring to shake their fists at foreign ships that passed through with impunity.
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