Something Rotten in the Dominion

Ever since I moved to Canada permanently, my first response to the question of “How do you like Canada?” has been “I hate it.” This position has been difficult to defend and articulate . . . until now.

I learned something yesterday I didn’t know before: in the latest Western Standard, in an excellent essay about the emasculation of men in today’s “progressive” societies, we read that during the Montreal Massacre of 1989, the gunman entered a classroom containing 10 women and 50 men. He “forced the men to leave at gunpoint” and mowed down the women.

In my humble opinion, any society where among 50 — count ’em: 50 — men there are none who would risk their lives defending women against a lone assailant is sick, sick, sick.

For some reason this incident has been inducted into the feminist hagiography as exemplifying the problem of violence against women in society. But if those non-patriarchal guys in that classroom had been brought up with a bit more chivalry and a bit less “women’s studies,” they would have stopped the violence against their female classmates right there.

This is the triumph of idealism over realism: violence is an evil, so it is better to pretend that good people must never be violent (and thus have no defense against the lone nutcase) than to realize that A: lone nutcases will always be with us, and B: men are good at and prone to violence. But: normal men have an instinctual drive to protect women and children. Like fire or table knives, male violence is both dangerous and useful, and should be acknowledged and controlled rather than suppressed.

The Western Standard writer makes an interesting observation (not backed up with statistics, but reasonable-seeming to me — always dangerous, I know) that the prevalent zero-tolerance attitude towards male violence in schools tends to increase the severity of violence when it does happen. It used to be that a playground scuffle (between equally-matched opponents; bullying is another matter, but ironically the best response to bullying is physical violence, since bullies are usually insecure and cowards) was no big deal.

Boys were taught to “fight fair” — using the instinctual primate techinques of shoving and punching to the chest and head, which don’t usually result in much damage. Biting, scratching and hitting below the belt were out of line — in fact, these were seen as “girly.” And two guys can turn out to be best friends an hour after a fight. (This is something girls never understand. Female conflict tends to be much more long-lasting and intensely felt than male violence.)

But now we live in the age of the drive-by shooting and playground stabbing. Without the possibility of the middle ground of the playground scuffle, conflicts quickly escalate into deadly violence. I’m reminded of the proverbial story of the Chinese peasants living under an Emperor who only had one penalty: death. When they found themselves starving, they asked themselves: “What is the penalty for stealing rice? Death. And what is the penalty for revolting against the Emperor? Death.” So they had nothing to lose by revolting. So in today’s schools, if one will be expelled for taking a swing at someone, might as well shoot them in the head.