Sunday, December 16, 2007

The Canadian Gulag

In the olden days, in this country, people who were hurtin' sang a country song. I remember my little sister, when she was eight years of age, singing one in the kitchen, while affecting to wash some dishes. The lyrics were, as I recall: “My daddy hates me. / My mommy hates me. / My brubber hates me. / Everybody hates me and I'm / not very happy.” It needed at least a banjo.

These days in Canada, if you're feeling down and blue, and you think somebody hates you, you bring your case to a Human Rights Tribunal. And the people you think hate you get that knock on the door, celebrated in the literature of the Soviet Gulag, and wherever else ideology triumphed over humanity in the 20th century's painful course.