The importance of politically incorrect history

I spoke tonight to a convention at the Canadian War Museum.

I had prepared my remarks in advance, but every delegate I spoke with before dinner asked me about the freedom of speech implications of my tangle with Canada's human rights commissions. It struck me then that museums are in the same peril that Canadian media are in, when it comes to government censorship of politically correct topics. In fact, over dinner, Jack Granatstein told me of a museum exhibit in the 1990s called "Out of Africa", where the curator was hounded out of her job -- and in fact the country -- by politically correct protests against the exhibit. It sounded like the censorious frenzy that met the Toronto production of Showboat.

So, in the end, I decided to spend half my time describing the threat to freedom of expression and free intellectual inquiry posed by Canada's human rights commissions -- and giving specific examples of how museums were at risk. It was troublingly easy to come up with plausible examples of museums running into trouble, ranging from an "insensitive" display at the War Museum about the Taliban, to an art museum that might display a cartoon of Mohammed. The room seemed genuinely concerned.

I did use some of my pre-written remarks about the "importance of politically incorrect history" -- the subject of my speech. But my own views on the kind of history that ought to be taught are less important than the larger point: that whatever our personal views are, we should have the legal right to discuss history without government censorship.

That said, here are a few excerpts from my prepared remarks that I delivered:

...It is becoming increasingly difficult to tell stories about Canada’s wars, and those who fought in them, and why they fought. And if you think it’s becoming difficult to talk about wars in a frank manner, that’s nothing compared to how difficult it is to wage wars today, in an environment of media hyper-sensitivity, where for most journalists, expressing a sense of patriotism is viewed as downright un-professional; where gotcha journalism is deployed against our own side; where military secrets are breached to earn the next day’s scoop; where any derogatory words about our enemy are regarded as bigoted – such as Gen. Hillier’s comments about the Taliban; and where eight years of anti-American – or, at least anti-George Bush – sentiment has blurred into a general anti-war ballast, which has weighed on Canada’s noble efforts in Afghanistan.

If it’s no longer culturally correct to verbally call for the death of Taliban opponents – terrorists specifically not covered by the Geneva Convention, which requires combatants to be part of a chain of command, wear a uniform, and bear their arms openly – then imagine how hard it is to actually kill them. Thank God that our historic wars for freedom happened before the age of extreme political correctness.

It’s not just political correctness, though; because political correctness is merely a mannerism, a style of speaking that uses euphemisms to avoid calling things the way they are. ...museums are supposed to be about looking at things the way they are. A museum that attempts to force history to fit into our current political fashions is revisionist at best – but really, it’s not an act of history at all. It’s an act of therapy.

Today, a single soldier’s death in Afghanistan, while tragic for that soldier and his family, precipitates a cycle of Jerry Springer-style coverage, with a generally anti-war media overcompensating for their regular disinterest in the war when it’s going well, by replacing it with maudlin displays of national grief, including the historically novel call for the flag to be flown at half mast for each such casualty.

Even once-neutral symbols, like the flag, are symbolic weapons in this fight to deracinate our military history. Even our national anthem has become a football in this fight. You might recall headlines last month that a New Brunswick school teacher shut down the daily singing of the anthem, which had been championed by two schoolgirls, who led the singing as an act of remembrance for their cousin, who died in Afghanistan. The teacher... had spoken out on many occasions as an opponent of the war in particular, and all wars in general. His unilateral decision to ban the anthem created a backlash, but one wonders how much longer before [that] view becomes the new normal.

Unlike in previous generations, the question is no longer does Canada – or indeed any Western ally – have the military might to win a war; that’s beyond dispute. The question is now can the popular culture sustain such a war in the face of even a handful of casualties? Our politicians know it; our generals know it. And our enemies certainly know it. We live in an era where terrorist groups like Hezbollah have media relations units, complete with bilingual business cards. That’s the battlefield now.

Which is all the more reason why we need to know why we’re fighting. Which means we need to know who we are, as a country and as a culture. What are the values we prize so highly that we would kill for them and die for them?

That means knowing why we have fought before.

Obviously museums are a key ideological battleground. Not just here, but in the U.S., too. In the run-up to the 1995 commemoration of the Enola Gay, the U.S. B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a national debate arose over the Smithsonian’s approach to the subject, which characterized the Japanese as “victims”, and the Americans as motivated by “vengeance”.

...In the end, the exhibit was cancelled; the museum’s director left; and a straightforward, minimalist display replaced it. Nonetheless it became the most popular special exhibit ever, with over 1-million visitors in the first year.

Why?

Because the America of 1945 wasn’t the America of 1995; the word “Jap” was in common parlance; ethnically exaggerated cartoons; approaches to domestic civil liberties were different. All of the collateral political fashions changed, even if the central historical facts didn’t. A museum isn’t the same as a war memorial; it tells both sides, not just one. But the Smithsonian seemed to be choosing sides – the other side.

Of course, museums are not the only place where history is treated. In 1992, the CBC’s TV mini-series, the Valour and the Horror, gave what many veterans claimed was an inaccurate and biased condemnation of Canadian troops, including the allegation of significant, but unprosecuted war crimes...

Paul Gross’s film Paschendaele also had significant public funding. It was well received in some ways, for merely talking about a battle and a war that was arguably more important to Canada’s history than the Second World War, but receives less public attention. And while that effort was certainly less controversial, it was still flavoured with a decidedly 2008 sense of political fashion: that patriotism was for fools; that the war was pointless; and that the true victims were German-Canadians who were treated unfairly. I’m not so paranoid to think that the fact that the chief bigot in the movie was a Calgary man named Mr. Harper, is a political statement. But it was a heck of a coincidence.

The movie made volunteer soldiers look like dupes; even Paul Gross’s character, the so-called hero, committed an atrocity in the war, and later said he had been a bank-robber. I don’t think there would be much debate about the horrors of the war, especially the muck and mire of European trench warfare. But there was another part to that story; I won’t even call it another side, but another part: that it was a political coming of age for Canada; that it was an expression of unprecedented volunteerism, of national pride, of pride in the monarchy and things military. That was completely excised in the film.

History has winners and losers; good ideas and bad ones; successes and failures. One of the reasons why Canada is so great is because we have been, generally, on the side of the good ideas, the noble causes.

But the politically correct world view holds that everything is of equal value; there is no one truth, merely many truths; that if we think we’re right, or know better than another nation, it might just be ethnocentrism, or outright bigotry.

So all sides are equal.

That might be a fashion in 2009. But that's not history in 1917 Belgium, or 1945 Japan. So a movie that draws no moral distinction between Canada and Germany in the First World War – in fact, a movie in which all of the atrocities and bigotries are those perpetrated by the Canadians and British, not the Germans – is simply not how it was. An exhibit that treats the imperialist military ambitions of Japan as victims of an American counterstrike is simply not accurate.

But put aside mere accuracy.

For if all sides were equal, why did we fight a war? It doesn’t make any moral sense. If we weren’t in the right, as Gross implies, then Canadians weren't fighting in a war -- we were not much more than murderers.

But that’s a form of ethno-centrism, too, in a way. Instead of being Canadian chauvinists, we’re being chauvinists of the fashions of 2009, judging everything through the delicate and fickle fads of today.

I don’t dispute that many of our habits today are superior than those of the past – our approach to minorities, and human rights, and civil liberties. But to be so dainty when looking at the past is to have a sort of imperialism of the present. It just doesn’t work. You can condemn, for example, the signatories of the U.S. Declaration of Independence for owning slaves; but if that were to become the chief focus of any discussion, it would inappropriately obscure the true nature and accomplishments of those men – and the fact that the seeds they planted would one day uproot slavery.

...there is a place for cheerleading, and it’s more for monuments than for museums. But in Canada, we did get the big things right, maybe more than anywhere else in the world. And, I put it to you, that’s why so many people come here: the things we take for granted, especially our chattering classes, the things we have grown accustomed to so much that we don’t even notice them, are the things that are still miraculous achievements in the eyes of most people in the world. It’s why people come here from the world’s less-blessed countries. It’s why we have net immigration.

Those old values – the values that Canada loudly lived during our formative years and especially our formative wars – may be out of style, but they still define our country. They’re chauvinistic values – pride, patriotism, moral confidence, defiance of enemies, strong self-knowledge – when compared to the relativistic mush of multiculturalism. Ironically, it is exactly those old values that have made our country to appealing to people from different corners of the world....

The rest of the speech was extemporaneous. It led to a great discussion with museum managers from around the country. What a fascinating group of people! I truly wish I could have stayed for the whole conference.

And I look forward to a speedy return to Ottawa, so I can spend more time exploring our first rate War Museum itself.