So, most of you by now have heard that the Canadian Parliament, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a standing ovation to Jarislav Hunka. Hunka was described as a Ukrainian hero and a Canadian hero because he is, and I’m quoting, “a war veteran from the Second World War who fought [for] the Ukrainian Independence against the Russians, and continues to support the troops today.” At which point the entire parliament gave him a standing ovation.
Now, if you’re not a history buff, let me explain this a little bit for context. If you asked 1,000 history buffs, either academics or armchairs, and you say, “Hey, who fought against the Russians in WWII,” their first answer is going to be, ‘Germany,’ or, ‘Nazi Germany,’ or, ‘the Third Reich,’ or ‘Hitler,’ or, something to that effect. And people who paid attention in high school history should know that too. But, sticking with real history buffs, those buffs would know that the Nazis had a lot of support from people in the Soviet Republics who hated Stalin and Russia enough to side with the Nazis. And this was a bit of a devil’s bargain because there really wasn’t a “good guy” that you could side with. Do you side with Stalin or with Hitler? I mean, Hitler was trying to exterminate the Jews which was bad, but Stalin was in charge of the Holodomor, which best estimates suggest starved 4 million Ukrainians to death, and that’s just one source of murder, pillage, rape, starvation, torture, extortion, and cruelty that the Ukrainians suffered under Stalin. So, if you’re a Ukrainian, your hatred for Stalin is pretty intense.
And I’ll be honest, if I’m a young Jarislav Hunka living in Ukraine and someone shows up who’s going to give me a gun and kick out the Red Army, I’m probably going to join up. And I think that everyone who’s on their high horse about how Trudeau applauded a Nazi needs to remember that it’s not as though there was a good side to pick if you’re a Ukrainian living in that era. Who’re you going to choose, the Austrian murderer or the Georgian murderer? If I were in Hunka’s shoes I probably would have joined up with the Waffen SS, too. And so would most people. That doesn’t make Hunka good, but it does help us understand his actions.
And, as I’ve talked about a lot, this is what happens when people with little to no knowledge of history start blabbering AND when foolish people foolishly believe that history is full of white-hats and black-hats. As I have said MANY times, history does not present us with heroes and villains, but with people who have motivations and have to make choices. AND as I’ve said, our ability to sympathize with people and put ourselves in their shoes does not mean that all historical figures made the right choices and that moral evil isn’t a thing. The point is that reading history and trying to figure out who “the good guys” are is a lot harder than people think—or at least harder than people have convinced themselves it is.
So, am I saying that people dunking on the Liberal Party of Canada should stop? Nah, it’s pretty hilarious. I’m just here for the memes, baby! Because as much as I want to have a serious conversation about historical complexity and the nuances of geopolitics and the hard moral choices that that entails, this is just all so deliciously ironic.
Let me take you back in time to February of 2022 to a debate on the Canadian Parliament floor. Justin Trudeau, said this:
"Conservative Party members can stand with people who wave swastikas. They can stand with people who wave the Confederate flag," he said, defending the government's decision to invoke the Emergencies Act to quell unrest in the nation's capital.
"We will choose to stand with Canadians who deserve to be able to get to their jobs, to be able to get their lives back. These illegal protests need to stop, and they will."
So, to get this straight, the Canadian Truckers were essentially called Nazis and a Jewish Conservative Woman MP was called a Nazi sympathizer. She demanded an apology that never came, by the way. So, Trudeau, who basically called the Truckers Nazis gave a standing ovation to a guy who literally fought for the Nazis in the Waffen SS in WWII, whose unit some have accused of being involved in anti-Jewish and anti-polish genocide.
Yeah, so the guy who calls people Nazis because they don’t want to simply obey the whims of a tyrannical government actually gives a standing-O to a guy who fought for the Nazis.
It’s too funny.
Again, I would love to give Trudeau and the Canadian Parliament a pass on this one and simply say that, “History’s hard, and that there are ZERO Ukrainian WWII vets who weren’t associated with somebody terrible, and that MAYBE this is a sign that we ought to chill on the hero-worship of war veterans.” I want to say that. I REALLY do. Because I believe that.
But Trudeau called people who didn’t want to force others to take an experimental drug Nazis. And this is his comeuppance—and a rather paltry comeuppance it is. But it makes him look ridiculous. And that’s worse than just about anything in politics.
It has become apparent to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention that Trudeau and the Canadian government are a pack of clowns and worse than clowns. Because clowns may be ridiculous, but generally, they’re harmless. But Trudeau and the Canadian Parliament have done actual harm—like criminalizing Christianity and bodily autonomy and wrecking the Canadian economy and turning down unfathomable amounts of money that could have flowed to the Alberta oil fields in the name of saving the planet. That’s not to mention the new suicide squads that Canada has legalized, because as all good Northerners know, if you’re sad you have a duty to just kill yourself so you can ease the burden of an already overburdened health-care system…I mean, exercise your rights. Canada is a proud and glorious country with a rich history and fine people, and it’s being torn down by a pack of petulant puritanical puerile posturing clowns.
Canada is a great nation—as their national anthem proclaims, Canada should be “the True North, strong and free!” But more and more its freedoms are eroded, and its future endangered by people who are too ignorant or idealistic to know better and celebrated in true seal-clap fashion by those who know even less, or frighteningly, by those who in fact do know better and are getting what they want.
A Canada that calls truckers Nazis, and a Jewish MP a Nazi sympathizer, and gives two standing ovations in parliament to a Waffen SS veteran, ON YOM KIPPUR, is a Canada that has lost its way.
But this is not just folly that came from nowhere! This was not unforeseeable. It is not just a gaffe! These kinds of incoherencies are built into a godless political ideology. And make no mistake, for as much of a clown as Trudeau is, he has an ideology. He said, before becoming PM that Canada was “the first post-national state.” He stated, “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada…”
Whether he truly believed that it didn’t exist or not is impossible to tell, but what is clear is that Canada being post-national and lacking a core identity is not a status quo Trudeau intended to leave be. No. He and his ilk have been busily engaged in creating a core-identity for Canada. And it is, essentially, the identity of woke metropolitan elites. Trudeau may not think that the Maple-Leaf stands for much of anything—so he’ll wave the Rainbow, or better yet, the Pride Progress Flag. Because that represents the core-identity that Trudeau et al. wish to inculcate into our neighbors to the North. And sure, a lot of Canadians aren’t particularly interested in that kind of identity. Quebecers want to retain their French heritage and their own way of life—too bad. Albertans and other Western rural Canadians are socially conservative and want to exploit the seemingly endless natural resources of Canada to bring prosperity to their province and nation. Too bad. Newfies and Nova Scotians have distinct cultures and Irish and Scottish heritages that they take pride in. Too bad. Canada is creating a core-identity; or rather, Trudeau and the Canadian progressives are busily asserting their political might to force Canadians to get on-board with the social agenda that is being foisted upon them while younger cohorts are brought up in this new image and will internalize these beliefs.
Which is, of course, the only way to have durable social change is to get ‘em while they’re young. The business of changing a culture and society is generational work—it takes decades. Rudi Deutschke coined the term, “the long march through the institutions” to describe the process that Marxists would need to engage in to create the conditions necessary for the success of Socialism in the West for a reason! And this is consonant with what all the leading lights of post-war Marxism were saying. Herbert Marcuse, Antonio Gramsci, the whole lot of them realized that they needed to capture the institutions, especially the academy, and bureaucracy. So, I guess check that off the list.
And here’s where there’s a temptation. There’s a temptation for conservative Christians to look at the Marxists and Progressives and Trudeau and all the wokesters and say, “Whoa! Those guys are the villains of the piece. These guys ruined America and Canada and the West. These are the bad guys.”
Sure.
Fine.
But why were they successful?
Why were the Progressives successful? Trudeau is wildly unpopular in Canada. The ONLY group in which he has a >40% approval rating is with women, as a whole, and the highest approval by age cohort is in the +55y.o. age-range.
Joe Biden is wildly unpopular.
And out there there are all kinds of conservative Christians who are licking their lips. They see the utter folly of the secular-progressive program and they keep telling themselves: “it’s so obvious; people have to become conservative! Biden wrecked the economy, embarrassed us in Afghanistan, ruined the border, is corrupt as the day is long, and his DOJ is engaged in political vengeance—people have to see it and become conservative! People have to wake up and join our side. They have to see that the transgenderism stuff is nonsense! They have to see it. They have to.”
Except no. No, they don’t.
American Christians have played the fool for decades thinking that they were going to win the argument on abortion and family values and all other political issue because it was self-evident that we were right and all we had to do was continue to do the hard work of debating policy positions and that the attrition of leftist failures would lead to people becoming conservative and the nation would be saved.
And that’s stupid.
It’s stupid because, A) we have lot of evidence that that’s not how it works. It’s also stupid because B) it ignores that the left has slowly eroded the capacity for people to engage in critical thinking through the abysmal failures known as the public school system. And C) it ignores the simple fact that the Bible says that’s not how it works.
Read the Bible friends. When the Israelites chased after new leaders did things ever get better? Did things ever improve when they assassinated and overthrew king after king after king seeking someone to fix the problems left by the last guy? Did it ever help?
Nope.
Not once.
But when did things get better? They got better when the Israelites came to their senses and turned to God, repented, and asked Him to forgive them and save them. That’s when God sent a deliverer. That’s when God saved His people.
And there are two simple reasons for this. First, the reason why changing politicians without crying out to God in repentance for forgiveness and deliverance doesn’t solve anything is because all political problems are theological problems. Because all politics is is theology with a gun…or a sword depending on your place in history…but you get the point. Politics is theology. All political problems are theological problems. And so trying to fix a corrupt nation by changing the leaders is like trying to get rid of poison ivy by chopping off vines but leaving the root. Sure you get rid of the problem, but you may, in fact, make it worse because unless you kill the root, you’re going to get a bunch of suckers and you might end up instead of one big vine you might have 20 small ones that will all become big ones.
The second reason is that bad government, being ruled by clowns, is the wrath of God being revealed. God hands us over to our sinful desires as a punishment for suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness.
Friends, the wrath of God is not Sodom and Gomorrah levels of destruction for having a Pride Parade! The Pride Parade IS THE WRATH OF GOD! The parade, the celebration of perversion and debauchery, with the support of the government is the wrath of God—this is what God is handing us over to. And when God hands you over to your sinful lusts there is no escaping it. You say, “Lukey, that sounds like a vicious circle!?” Yep. It sure is.
And that’s why trying to own the libs doesn’t change anything. We’re not going to solve this with new leaders. We’re going to solve this with prayer, fasting, confession, humiliation, and a deep and prolonged pursuit of holiness. Solving the political problem will also not happen for its own sake! We need to seek God and repent so that souls can be saved—not so that we can “get our country back!” I want my country back because get my country back means that people can flourish and become like God and more people can hear the gospel and more people can support missionaries and so that more people can glorify God and experience his goodness.
We live in clown world because Christians got worldly.
There I said it.
The solution is what it always has been: repent.
Pretty simple. Sure.
And thank God for it. We don’t have to come up with a perfect policy position and vet every candidate. We couldn’t do that even if we wanted to. No. We need to simply repent. And Ask God to save us.