I first saw the light of day in 1947. It took a qu...

2007-11-12T15:31:00.000-05:00

I first saw the light of day in 1947. It took a quarter century of maturation to fully realize and appreciate that for all my life I had been enjoying freedom for free. Every day is my Remembrance Day.

This was always apparent to me in spite of my long-running and well publicized conflict with the Security Service of the RCMP, who had intercepted my mail, wire-tapped my phone, traced my movements via my social insurance number, kept me and some friends under prolonged surveillance, caused me the loss of employment, caused my eviction from my apartment. The dirty tricks ended April 26, 1975 when an unknown arsonist set fire to my apartment, destroying much of the records of the Peoples Republic of Poetry and its satiric focus on The State and its Big Brat elements.

The greater point is that in this free and democratic society I was able to seek redress of grievance, pound the drums of publicity for my case, and go to sleep every night without a thought that a dreaded midnight knock on the door would be my induction into the gulag of oblivion.

The poetic satire of the Peoples Republic of Poetry eventually found itself in contact with other poetic/artistic cells around the world, but especially amongst dissidents within the Soviet bloc. During the 80’s I found myself entering into the East European bloc on smuggling operations, with the intent of assisting those willing to subvert communist totalitarianism. It was a small risk for me. I had been arrested in Poland, and had guns pulled on me in Romania, but I was aware that the worst that could happen would be to endure some slaps, or punches, followed by a rude expulsion into the Free West.

That Free West was protected by the most powerful and lethal military force the world has ever known – NATO. That was and is my gang. It was extraordinarily successful with its mandate of immediate and total destruction of the totalitarian empire of communism if it dared to take a single step onto democratic turf. My every Day of Remembrance includes this.

Voltaire wrote: “So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.”

The 20th century totalitarian ideologies of National Socialism and international communism have been rendered impotent. They had been responsible for the death of hundreds of millions of people. It is my eternal gratitude that the forces of Freedom and Democracy prevailed.

May it continue to prevail over the current threat – theological totalitarianism. They are the Islamaniacs, the Ku Klux Koran, the weapons of Hamas destruction, the hell of Hezbollah and their kith and kin.

As dangerous as the Cold War was, with the prospect of nuclear apocalypse, the core principle of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) worked because the communist totalitarians were godless and wanted to live. The jihadist barbarian ideology has no fear of death – they actually embrace death, with 72 hot little virgins waiting for them in heaven. Well, what young able-bodied man wouldn’t find this appealing? Pass the dynamite belt.

Remembrance Day is to cherish the values of Western civilization as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Remembrance Day is every day when I can open my mouth, wield my pen, tickle my keyboard, and let my imagination soar into the turbulent and exhilarating atmosphere of Freedom.

And when the Cobourg Daily Star declines to publish, I am free to find alternative avenues for my word. The following was a letter that had been declined:

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On Feb 8, 2006, the Cobourg Daily Star published an editorial entitled, “How free should we be?

The answer: As free as the imagination can be

The Cobourg Daily Star is free to publish editorials full of biased bluster, bigoted banalities, distorted details and to do so in a prose style resulting from an over-active bland-gland. The editorial ends with the tepid assertion: “Freedom of speech and freedom of the press comes with a certain amount of responsibility.”

It is a pity that the readers of this newspaper receive only the mediocre advocacy of a “certain amount” of responsibility. Readers should receive much more from those who are paid good money as practitioners of those freedoms.

Those freedoms, won by the blood and pain of countless practitioners over the centuries, come with an enormous amount of responsibility. The primary responsibility is the unwavering defence of those freedoms, the proselytizing of those freedoms and the expansion of those freedoms as far as the imagination soars.

I am a blasphemer. Some of my blasphemies have appeared in Canada’s literary journals. I am also a heathen, an infidel, a fornicator and an apostate. I am a chronic advocate of a broad assortment of apostasy; it rhymes so harmoniously with ecstasy.

Jesus Christ of Nazareth was a Victim of blasphemy laws. He asserted He was the Son of God. Perhaps if He were more inclusive, politically correct and sensitive to the hair-trigger feelings of the religious bigots of the day, asserting instead that “We are all the Children of God.” But He didn’t, so the holy leadership of the day in collaboration with the local agents of the dictatorship, hung Him out to dry.

For centuries the clerical crusaders of Christendumb burned assorted Joans of the Arts, Galileos, Martin Luthers, and generally tormented and tortured countless unknowns, thereby impeding the advancement of humankind. I am eternally grateful for the Voltaires, de Sades, Byrons, Irving Laytons, etc. who defied the sanctimonious totalitarians of God-on-Earth.

Poetry is Poetency!

Freedom of speech is the seedbed of human development. It nurtured the Enlightment, the extension of life expectancy, the diminishment of infant mortality, the expansion of literacy, the liberation of women, the liberation of sexual enjoyment, the liberation of Imagination.

Now that I have excoriated Bible-thumpers, it is the turn of the Ku Klux Koran. It is always time to mock men wearing silly hats, whether rabbis, bishops, mullahs, or voodoo shamans. They are agents of theological totalitarianism, and as such, anti-imagination.

The West is now under siege by the Mullah Masters of Massacre, proselytizing the obliteration of women’s sexuality (God willing), the beheading of infidels (God willing), the stoning of adulterers (God willing), the amputation of thieves (God willing), the execution of cartoonists (God willing), and the eternal confinement of the joy of imagination (God willing).

It is not enough for the West to defend itself. Victory in any team sports is not achieved by defensive actions or refusal to cross the 50 yard line. It is not enough to defend freedom of speech; it needs to go on the offensive, it needs to be FREE. It needs strong advocates. It needs to be victorious. It needs to prevail against the veil of ignorance and arrogance.

It means seeking out and supporting Muslim dissidents and “apostates”. In Canada it means supporting Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam, who lives behind bullet-proof windows in her Toronto apartment.
It means supporting Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born member of the Dutch parliament, who collaborated with Dutch iconoclast, Theo van Gogh, to produce the film, Submission, about the enslavement of women by Muham-madism. She fled to the Netherlands to avoid an arranged marriage. At age five she had undergone genital mutilation, still practiced in many Muslim communities.

More apostates can be found at www.apostatesofislam.com.

And my faith? Irving Layton wrote: “Whatever else, poetry is freedom.” And this is the icon I celebrate:

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I first saw the light of day in 1947. It took a qu...