The Disastrous Report on Systemic Racism and Discrimination

Vincent J. Curtis

30 April 2022

Aristotle, in his work Prior Analytics, showed how to be certain of reaching the truth.  You start with true premises, reason validly, and the conclusion is true of necessity.  The Final Report of the Advisory Panel on Systemic Racism and Discrimination doesn’t follow Aristotle.  It starts with contentious premises, applies the ideology of post-modern neo-Marxist nihilism, and affirms its starting axioms.

Philosopher Roger Scruton explained this methodology.  The scholarship is not open-minded and guided by the pursuit of truth; it would be dismayed at unorthodox conclusions.  Truth is marginalized and made relative.  The commodity of interest is power, not truth: who has dominion over whom?  You “call upon a fake scholarship and a fake philosophy to give you authority.  Fake scholarship enables people to claim authority for nonsense.  The purpose of that nonsense is to make conformance with orthodoxy the only thing that you have.  But if the scholarship is nonsense, what is there except the conclusions?  And those conclusions turn out to be the usual liberal axioms which is where you started”

The Report begins with the following assertion:

“All Canadians benefit when our national organizations are safe, healthy and inclusive environments in which all citizens have an equal chance to contribute.  Consequently, Canada’s demographics should be proportionally represented at all levels of the Defence Team with regards to gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation.”

Observe the conclusion is non-sequitur of the premise.  The piety ‘safe, healthy, and inclusive,’ is one of those liberal axioms.  Its authors exhibit no comprehension of “unlimited liability” and were never in a fire-fight in Afghanistan. (a work environment)

Economist and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Thomas Sowell has written two books in the last decade that address the proposition that an organization ought to reflect proportionately the demographics of the community.  They are Discrimination and Disparities, and The Visions of the Anointed.  Sowell goes into pains-taking detail showing why demographic proportionality never happens in the real world.  Groups are not essentially alike in capabilities and desires.  Reality is lumpy, uneven, and particular. The idea that proportional representation ought to occur is a long discredited ‘vision of the anointed.’  But the Report takes no cognizance of the findings of Thomas Sowell.  To do so would be counter-productive..

Let’s try a little Sowell-like analysis here.  A Quebec Nationalist doesn’t believe in Canada, and so is unlikely to fight for her.  Given the prevalence of nationalism in Quebec, you can expect French Quebeckers to be under-represented in the CAF.  Blacks are told by the Prime Minister that Canada is a systemically racist country tainted with slavery (the Report itself says), so why would a Black man fight for a country like that?  A Tamil from Sri Lanka didn’t immigrate to Canada to join the army; he come here to get rich, and God bless him for trying.  But for that reason you can expect the CAF to be demographically deficient in persons ‘of colour.’  Aboriginals are told that Canada stole their land and committed genocide against them.  Why would an aboriginal fight for a country that did that to his people?  And so on.  Who believes in Canada and would fight for her?  Disproportionately, white men.

Systemic racism is a circular axiom by the standard of demographic proportionality, explaining it and being proved by it.

Systemic racism never gets explained, and the accusation of genocide against indigenous peoples is a blood-libel casually repeated in the Report.  But what is the reality in front of their faces?

The new Commander of the Army is LGen Jocelyn Paul, a member of the Huron-Wendat First Nation.  If Canada committed genocide against aboriginals, why is he even alive?  If the CAF were systemically racist, how did he get enrolled, become an officer, and get promoted beyond the rank of Major?  Ideologues disregard fact uncongenial to their theory.

The Report roundly denigrates Canada, and demonizes and demoralizes the one group that still believes in Canada and will fight for her.

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If you want to know why the CAF suffers from retention and recruitment problems, look no further than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  Trudeau wants Canada to hate itself.  I don’t know if this is a political calculation, a means for him to retain power, or if he is just plain sociopathic.  Regardless, Trudeau tries to make Canada hate itself through his “reconciliation” politics, and a general progressivism that blames white men and western civilization for all the evils in the world.  “Reconciliation” means that Canadians have to call into question the legitimacy of possessing the land of Canada – so call land acknowledgements.  It elevates the deaths of aboriginal children in residential schools (due to fatal illnesses) into acts of genocide.  He even raises the suggestion of a past tainted with slavery.  Now, slavery was practiced among aboriginal peoples, but was abolished in Upper Canada in 1793. Effectively, as soon as United Empire Loyalists began showing up with slaves, they were told they can’t have them.  So long as Canada is treated by her political leadership as a country to be despises, a country not worthy of being a country, it’s going to be hard to find men to fight for that.

The Report was predicated on the existence of systemic racism in the CAF, and it simply fulfilled its political mandate faithfully, even though it nowhere touches reality.  It uttered the words the political masters wanted it to say.