Monday, 8 November 2004 - Pierre Lemieux
It has been a beautiful autumn. The other day, as I had finished
(earlier than planned) writing a speech I am giving in Rome next month,
I decided to go and adjust the sight of my .30-06, in preparation for
the deer-hunting season. Or in case somebody comes attacking me a
hundred yards away. Shhh! Don't repeat this to anybody: if the
praetorians chose to notice that I own guns for protection, they could
revoke my firearms licence and confiscate my guns, as their C-68 "law"
(so-called) allows them to.
So I hit the trail to my forest, with my knapsack on my back and my
.30-06 on my shoulder. The trees were burning yellow and red under the
deep blue sky, and the forest smelled like the autumns of my childhood.
I confess that this rifle is registered, as are all new rifles bought
after the infamous C-68 "law" came into force. Worse, I am ashamed to
say that I still have a Possession and Acquisition Licence, which
expires next year. But I deliberately did not bring with me either this
crappy licence or the registration certificate of this specific rifle,
as required by their law. My ancestors, the French-Canadian coureurs des
bois, have travelled these forests without any permission or interior
passport for centuries.
As a matter of fact, I did not bring any ID papers at all. Can you
imagine this? Armed in the forest with no ID papers! No crappy licence,
no gun registration certificate, no pleasure craft operator card, no
driver's licence, no social insurance card, no citizenship card, no
medicare card, no hunting licence, no nothing!
In his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
(1845), the author recalled his fears when planning his escape to the
North: "Any one having a white face, and being so disposed, could stop
us, and subject us to examination. . . . When I get there [in
Pennsylvania], I shall not be required to have a pass; I can travel
without being disturbed." Now, instead of "having a white face," read
"having a praetorian's badge."
My little daily acts of defiance are, of course, only small beer
compared to the slave revolt waged by the real heroes of the Canadian
Unregistered Firearm Owners Association (www.cufoa.ca). But I have not
said my last word.
Cultures can be defined as shared preferences and lifestyles. I know
something about cultures, as I switch among many. I am (nearly) as
comfortable drinking beer with hunters and gun nuts as I am at ease in a
New York City salon or talking about arts and life and Story of O with
topless women on the French Riviera. Canada has never been known for its
intellectual salons or its sensuous life, but it used to be a free
country. In a free country individuals can, within the limits set by
other individuals' free choices, adhere to the cultures they choose.
Circulating without ID papers and owning guns without permission have
been part of the Canadian tradition for centuries, but are now relegated
to a criminalized minority culture. With their laws and their cops, the
low-life statocrats in Ottawa, Toronto and Quebec City are destroying
our culture.
Why does the state want to destroy our culture? Because we are a
minority? This is not a satisfactory answer, as the state actively
protects and subsidizes other minorities: the "visible minorities," the
feminists, the aboriginals, the Francophones (whatever that means), the
national intellectual class, the homosexuals (whose activists try, like
ours, to make-believe they are more than a one per cent minority). Why,
then, does the state favour some minority cultures and oppress others?
The answer lies in the nature of the state, whose natural tendency (if
left unchecked) is to help the clienteles and cultures that support its
power, including fake dissidents who can be bribed into the court, and
to crush those minorities who represent a real challenge to its
unlimited domination. Other things being equal, the state will attack
the minorities that it can oppress at the lowest political cost. In
Canada and elsewhere, the culture that the state is trying to socially
engineer is a culture of obedience.
Link: http://www.westernstandard.ca/...
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