Casting Asper-sions on Mausoleum Grumblers

Gail Asper writes (what she thinks is) a stinging rebuke to Lubomyr Luciuk, the Ukrainian-Canadian who complained about victim group inequity in Canada's "human rights" edifice:

...Luciuk raises many other examples of human rights abuses that should be studied, including victims of Communism, and the content plan absolutely includes a study of these crimes against humanity. Although this museum is not a museum of genocide filled with one depressing gallery after another, there is a permanent gallery in which mass atrocities will be studied and it has always been the intent to include the Ukrainian famine clearly and permanently.

The museum has met with thousands of Canadians and is working with respected human rights experts to develop the content plan.

At the same time, that does not diminish the need for a Holocaust exhibit which appears to be Luciuk's main point. Canada is one of the few western countries that does not study the Holocaust in its national institutions. Luciuk asserts that everyone is fully aware of the Holocaust, so it doesn't need to be prominent. The board disagrees, but in any event, because a story may be well known doesn't mean it isn't an essential part of the world's human rights history (according to virtually every respected human rights expert) and therefore a highly appropriate and extremely relevant exhibit for this museum.

Instead of creating a divisive climate, I would urge Luciuk to give the Canadian Museum for Human Rights' dedicated board, management and staff an opportunity to work on and present at the appropriate time the museum's content in its full form.

Ironically, it's the CMHR that's creating "a divisive climate," the unintended consequence in a "human rights" culture such as ours of appearing to favour two victim groups--Jews and Aboriginals, who will have their own permanent exhibit--while expecting everyone else to make do with an honourable mention in the miscellaneous "Mass Atrocities Zone."

Sorry, Gail, but the idea that "all victim groups are equal, but some victim groups are more equal than other victim groups" is apt to be a tough sell in a country blighted by the systemic enforcement of political correctness via a quasi-Soviet "quasi-legal system" that has very little to do and with--and is, in fact, intended to  replace--genuine, fundamental human rights. (That's something your late dad, a really smart guy, should have realized before he tried to get this sucker off the ground).

Sigh. If only Izzy had put his faith--and his money--in, say, a Canadian Museum for Democracy.

If only.