"O Canada" has a Lesson for New Zealand

Dieuwe de Boer
Culture

On a quiet Wednesday last week, the Senate of the Dominion of Canada voted in favour of neutering their national anthem. The offending words "thy sons" were replaced with a more inclusive "of us" in an act of cultural vandalism, and as Mark Steyn puts it, an act of bad songwriting:

The big Canadian story of the day broke just after I came off air. The Senate voted to perpetrate an act of vandalism on the national anthem and change the words of "O Canada" from "True patriot love in all thy sons command" to "in all of us command". Whatever their credentials as full-strength Social Justice Wankers, Canada's politicians are no songwriters: Even if the change wasn't intended to portray us as a nation of weedy ninnies, it does. "All of us" sings feebly, because it has no consonantal heft, weakly offering the soft elision "of us" instead of the firmly voiced dental fricative and diphthong of "thy" and the hard "n" of "sons". On the broader question, as I first wrote many years ago:

If the objection is that it would be nice to have a national anthem with some mention of females, wouldn't it be easier to go back to 'God Save the Queen'?

I shall stand for the anthem but I shall never sing those bland, bloodless words - the all too predictable result of songwriting-by-committee.

What lesson can we learn? With these people, the slippery slope is no fallacy. We must understand the aims and goals of the progressive agenda. They wish to remove all things that offend their false morality and they must replace everything with something that does not offend. Since all offends, all must be replaced with nothing. As George Orwell famously said,

Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.

What he intended as a warning, the left has taken as a challenge. The anthem change may seem like an insignificant and harmless one, but it is only the beginning. For them, this is but a small win and the next target has likely been selected. Thankfully, the alternative Canadian anthem about maple leaves has long fallen by the wayside, but don't underestimate the enemy, as it's only a mater of time before they bring it back. It all started with the flag, when in 1965, the Canadians replaced the Union Jack with a maple leaf. Gone are the crosses of St George, St Andrew, and St Patrick, which signified nations joining in unity to form a shared heritage that was spread across the globe as the colours of the mighty British Empire. Now, the Canadian flag is just something you put on your breakfast pancakes.

They'll come for your flag, your anthem, and your statues. They'll come for it all. Don't give them an inch and don't take a single step back. Learn from the mistakes of our Canadian brothers.

May God defend New Zealand.

About the author

Dieuwe de Boer

Editor of Right Minds NZ, columnist at The BFD, and Secretary General for the New Conservatives. Follow me on Telegram and Twitter. In addition to writing about conservative politics and reactionary thought, I like books, gardening, biking, tech, reformed theology, beauty, and tradition.