A Silly Selley-bration of Aider/Abettor of Evil, Dr. Norman Bethune

The NatPo's Chris Selley rightly slangs foolish Tory minister Tony Clement (did you see him riding in on a rickshaw--OMG!) for wanting to have it both ways: for wanting to "honour" Mao's army medic, Dr. Norman Bethune, and, at the same time, for trying to distance himself from Communism, and in particular from Mao's Communism, an evil directly responsible for tens of millions of deaths.

Not that Selley himself has any problem with Canadians transformin' Norman into an object of worship; no siree Cho En-Lai. According to Chris, venerating Bethune (for the sake of endearing Canada to the Chinese) is the sensible act of "a centrist government." And aside from aiding and abetting perhaps the greatest evil the world has ever known, Bethune did have his "non-communist" good points:

There are indeed non-communist things that one can celebrate about Dr. Bethune (though the government messaging is oddly vague): He enlisted as a medic during the First World War, was wounded and then enlisted again as a doctor. He was a renowned thoracic surgeon. He was an early proponent of universal health care...and was rapturously eulogized by Mao himself when he died in 1939.

Ah, yes, universal health care. The holiest of our land's holy bovines. If you're grasping at straws looking for an excuse to turn one of Mao's minions into a saint, that's probably your best shot. That said, given who and what he served, isn't his early belief in socialized health care what you might call a red herring (pun intended)?

Put it this way: even if Dr. Mengele had been "an early proponent of universal health care," you can be sure no one is raising any statues to him.

Mao "rapturously eulogized" Bethune (for propaganda purposes)--but we don't have to