In an act of ignorant political opportunism, a Conservative MP drew a
disturbing comparison between the long-gun registry and slavery.Last April, I stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial beside the tiny plaque dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech of August 28, 1963. The plaque, signifying so much but measuring perhaps 8x10 inches, was dwarfed by the monument to the former U.S. president and author of the Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln, but has since been complemented by the full-scale stone and granite memorial on the National Mall. This is only fitting, since King’s stirring call for the end of race prejudice endures as strongly as any formal doctrine dedicated to the end of slavery, and remains one of humankind’s greatest testimonies to peace and justice in the face of violence and despair.
That is why Conservative MP John Williamson’s appropriation of King’s words the day after the 44th anniversary of King’s assassination is especially disturbing. Williamson, in his euphoria over the demise of the long-gun registry, cried out in Parliament, “Free at last, free at last! God Almighty Canadians are finally free at last” of this legislation that curtails individual freedom. I, for one, am ashamed to live in a society in which no one in government, the media, or the general public seems to have denounced such a despicable twisting of what it means to be free, and of what King stood for through his words and actions.
Have we so obliterated the past and its lessons as to ignore ignorant political opportunism and insult against not just an individual, but an entire race of people and their struggle for equality? Have we become so immune to politicians and others’ daily distortions of character and speech that we cannot respond to their complete deformations of ideas and their contexts?
Williamson clearly chose to cite King’s words because of the anniversary of his death, and to draw some kind of strange parallel between his constituents’ right to bear arms and the gunning down of one of the most important civil-rights activists in western history. The comparison between the long-gun registry and slavery is odious in the extreme. The defiling of King and the message he tried to deliver to America is reprehensible. And the deafening silence from the CBC, The Globe and Mail, and anyone else who had the opportunity to speak out and did not is wholly without excuse.
Original Article
Source: the mark news
Author: J.A. Wainwright
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