Condemn Captain Airhead – But For the Right Reason

Captain Airhead, or Justin Trudeau as unimaginative types like to call him, has received a lot of much deserved criticism this week. As was the case in the notorious “blackface” scandal of last year’s Dominion election, in which it was revealed that on at least three occasions he had worn skin-darkening makeup which, had any of his subordinates or opponents done, would have resulted in him requiring that they resign and be sent in permanent exile to the land of perpetual shame, a hypocritical double standard was the problem.

Captain Airhead, like his Communist father before him, hates the rights and freedoms of Her Majesty’s free subjects in Canada and the Common Law tradition from which they arise. C. S. Lewis in The Horse and His Boy has the Tisroc of Calormen utter these words to his Grand Vizier and to his son Rabadash “It is very grievous…Every morning the sun is darkened in my eyes, and every night my sleep is the less refreshing, because I remember that Narnia is still free.” This is very similar to the sentiment of Captain Airhead, except that he is the Grand Vizier, which is another name for Prime Minister, and it is his own country’s freedom that he hates.

In what used to be called Christendom, but is now called “Western Civilization”, people who hate freedom tend to hate Christianity. Christianity teaches that God, after liberating Israel from literal slavery in Egypt, made a Covenant of Law with them, and promised that one day He would make a New and better Covenant, which promise He fulfilled in the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, events which took place on the anniversary of the original Passover, and which brought spiritual liberty to the entire world. St. Paul, especially in his epistle to the Romans but in many of his other epistles as well, emphasizes that through our union with Christ in His death we die to the sin which enslaved us and that through our union with Him in His Resurrection we are raised to the new life, which is a life of liberty. This is the reason why totalitarians have always hated Christianity above all other religions.

Needless to say, the Christian Passover, known as Easter in countries with Germanic languages, and Pascha everywhere else, which commemorates the liberation of the world from spiritual bondage in the death and Resurrection of Christ, is not the favourite holiday of freedom haters.

With all the necessary apologies to Dr. Seuss, the following is what I suspect went down in the Prime Minister’s residence as Lent drew to a close and Holy Week approached. Captain Airhead, whose heart and whose brain are at least two sizes too small, was stewing away and saying to himself “I’ve got to stop Easter from coming, but how?”

So he consulted with Hajdu, he consulted with Tam, he called on his Cabinet to think up a plan.

Then Captain Airhead, he had an idea – a terrible, monstrous, horrendous idea.

Said Captain Airhead:

“I know what I’ll do, I’ll frighten them all with catching bat flu. The virus from China is now over here, I’ll shut down the country for over a year. I’ll close all the churches, I’ll close all the schools, I’ll close all the libraries, malls, parks and pools. I’ll close all the businesses, except grocery stores, I’ll clear out the sidewalks, and lock all the doors. I’ll scold them and nag them and boss them around, I’ll bully, I’ll badger, I’ll act like a clown. After eighteen months straight of only TV, they all will forget that they ever were free. And then when Easter is just round the bend, I’ll tell everybody ‘Stay home this weekend!’”

He’s a mean one, that Captain Airhead.

Well, we all know what happened. After telling Canadians to sacrifice their Easter plans, he then took off from Ottawa to Harrington Lake, Quebec to be with his family at their cottage for the weekend.

Did Captain Airhead’s heart and his brain grow three sizes that weekend?

Sadly, I’m afraid not. He still insisted that the rest of us give up Easter, put our lives on hold, and surrender our freedoms to the total control of the public health officials.

He has not escaped criticism in the press for his double standard, but that criticism, or at least the portion of it that I have read, has all been rather wrongheaded in my opinion. It has taken the form: Trudeau told all the rest of us to sacrifice our Easter plans, therefore he should have sacrificed his own. It should have taken this form instead: Trudeau was not willing to sacrifice his own family plans for Easter weekend, therefore he should not have told all of the rest of us to do so.

The problem is not that he spent the weekend at the cottage with his family. That at least is a human thing to do. The problem is that he has been bullying and threatening and scolding the rest of us into giving up our lives and our freedoms. That is a despotic thing to do.

Should the fourth estate finally start criticizing Trudeau for piling on rule after rule on top of an already excessive heap of rules, this will be the first sign of our recovery from our true affliction, which is not some batty coronavirus from China but a lack of appreciation of our fundamental rights and liberties.