Remembrance gone wrong

Lately the white poppy campaign has, again, reared its ugly head. These people claim that the red poppy glorifies war, and that the white poppy is a better symbol, representing peace. They think that they are doing the world a service.

They are vastly misguided. At best.

That they assert red poppies are in celebration of war is indicative of ignorance. It also contains a highly offensive insinuation: that the veterans who hand out red poppies are glorifying and celebrating war. I submit that these very people who experienced the living hell of the battlefield are the ones who most want to put war behind them.

Poppies were never meant to glorify or celebrate war, and neither was Remembrance Day. If these people took a proper look at history, they'd know that Remembrance Day, November 11, is in celebration of the Armistice; that is, the cessation of war, in 1918. That said, maybe it's not their fault entirely. Perhaps some fault lies with our education system. If they didn't feed us the boring tripe that they currently do, maybe students would actually learn Canadian history, and this sort of travesty could be prevented.

The fact that this campaign has taken on a blatantly political overtone, despite Remembrance Day being a day where we are supposed to set aside differences in order to remember those who fought and died for our country, is a further slap in the face to veterans across the country. Are you trying to tell these men and women, who fought and died for our nation, that it is wrong of them to continue handing out the traditional red poppy, in remembrance of, very often, their friends and family?

But at the very heart of this discussion, the entire idea of a peaceful world is steeped in the strongest naivety. These bleeding-heart pacifists are the same voices that join in the call for the felling of dictators across the globe. How, exactly, do they propose to accomplish that feat? With flowers, rainbows, and unicorns? War is a great evil, but it is also a necessary evil, for "peace without justice is tyranny." There can be no true peace without tyranny, but the world is inherently unjust, and there will always be those who aspire to tyranny.

Our very best died so we could live freely. They died so we could speak freely. They did not die so that people with their digestive tracts reversed could speak through their arse and s*** through their mouths.

Lest we forget.

Lest we remember incorrectly.