Monday, January 12, 2009

Canadia Core Values

In a letter to the editor in The Globe and Mail this morning, a fellow named Owen Leitch writes from Toronto that "innocent people {are} dying by the hundreds {in Gaza}."

"We in Canada should stick to our core values of peace, tolerance and respect for human rights...."

How seldom we read in the newspapers about Canada's "core values." The word 'values' is bandied about, without the speaker/writer really knowing what he/she is talking about. It sounds nice, it seems to get attention, it apparently makes the speaker appear knowledgeable.

One definition of "values" is our "deeply held beliefs." And 'core values' are those few that are at the heart of a person or country (in this case). There aren't lot of core values; there are few. But Leitch hits it correctly when he says that there are three core values which are at the heart of this country: peace, tolerance and respect for human rights. Without these, we would not be what we have become.

And that is why some Canadians are so opposed to the change in our armed forces, from a group who act to maintain peace, to a group that far too often is the aggressor.

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