Monday, April 11, 2016

Lloyd Ferguson: Political Pinata

Vincent J. Curtis

7 April 2016

In a previous posting, I commented upon the predicament of Councillor Lloyd Ferguson, who represents the Flamborough area on Hamilton's City Council.  He got himself accused of being politically incorrect for the manner in which he corrected a city staffer who made impertinent comments regarding how far advanced Columbia was over Hamilton in respect of the socialization of means of transport.  As a result, he became a political pinata, with every progressive busy-body taking a shot at him.

I advised that Ferguson tell them all to go to hell, and this advice was published on the day he capitulated and apologized.  I forecasted that an apology would gain him no respite, and it hasn't. Now, the Columbian Refugee Association is trying to harass him through the city ethics commissioner.

Below is a further comment on the situation. 

That there is something called the “Columbian Refugee Association” is telling.  It says that at one time Columbia was a third-world hell-hole that some of its citizens fled as refugees.  These refugees are now condemning Councillor Lloyd Ferguson for describing Columbia as a third-world hell-hole.

The totalitarian instinct must go to the bone in Columbians.  That would explain why, after finding sanctuary in Canada, these refugees want to shut down the political speech of a Canadian politician in the act of doing his job.  I wonder how many Vietnamese refugees would object to a Canadian politician describing Vietnam as a communist dictatorship?

It is one thing for progressives to shut down the free speech of people they don’t like (by calling them racists), but that act becomes intolerable when refugees get into it too.  It’s quite racist of them, in fact.  By speaking in English, they are engaged in cultural appropriation, and that’s racist. 

Canada has these quaint cultural ideas of free speech, especially political free speech, and these refugees are trying to destroy that cultural tradition, and that’s quite racist of them.  To say nothing of being ungrateful, since, after all, if it weren’t for Canada, they’d likely have been tortured or killed.  That’s why they’re refugees, isn’t it?

Rather than trying to make Canada into Columbia, these refugees ought to be trying to become more Canadian, if that isn’t too racist of me to say.  They might try to familiarize themselves with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and learn that they have to take some things in stride, like speech they don’t like.  And jokes.

If Canadian politicians want to play progressive games with each other, and try to shut each other down, that is not a game for a refugee to imitate.  It’s bad form.  It’s also racist because it amounts to cultural appropriation.  But if you really feel that Columbia is not the third-world hell-hole that Councillor Ferguson said it was, and you find the Canadian custom of free speech intolerable, you can always prove Councillor Ferguson wrong by returning to Columbia.  That is, if you are not afraid of being persecuted.
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