Opinion

TORONTO, August 26, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – I had planned to write a commentary on the irrational emotional outpouring, or as one writer called “Dianafication” in response to the death this week of Canadian radical socialist activist politician, Jack Layton. It seems some of the public, many establishment leaders and all the media have lost their marbles or, shall we say, objectivity at the moment regarding the actual legacy of Jack Layton. Some balance is essential.

Critical thinking and perspective has dramatically declined in recent years when it has come to the deaths of prominent, well-liked personalities. And Jack Layton was indeed an often likeable person. However, charisma has become everything, it seems, for the evaluation by many of the lives of such persons.

Regardless of the consequences of the public actions of these attractive individuals, and the lack of any evidence that they repented for their harmful policies or misdeeds, we now automatically canonize them. The media, and even many Church officials, participate in the new feel-good cult of no earthly or eternal accountability.

Of course we can never judge the final state of anyone, but we can and often must judge what they did – both good and bad – and offer appropriate praise, and at least some mention of their seriously harmful public actions. To not do so is a smearing of the record, a deliberate avoidance of uncomfortable and significant truths, an altering of history and a loss of important lessons for the good of the nation’s future.

Most notable were the very disturbing Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Ted Kennedy funeral extravaganzas or scandals – and now the unprecedented Stephen-Harper-ordered state funeral for Jack Layton.

For more on the subject, I direct LifeSiteNews readers to today’s brief commentary by Father Alphonse de Valk, the National Post Barbara Kay article on the strange decision by Stephen Harper to order an inappropriate State Funeral for Layton, Christie Blatchford’s revelations about Jack Layton’s final letter that was largely drafted by a committee, and the commentary, How to think about Jack Layton, by the editor of the Interim, Paul Tuns.

Also, check out the perhaps too hard hitting commentary “Capitalizing on a corpse” by Ezra Levant on Sun Media TV. Still, Ezra does make some good points. For a far less critical article see, The Canonization of Jack Layton by Bill Beliveau of the Moncton Times & Transcript.

Saturday, Canada will be subjected to a politically and ideologically exploitive state funeral service for Jack Layton, attended by the Prime Minister and other Canadian notables.  The service will be an exploitation because, among other things, it will be led by the Vatican-hating, notorious homosexual activist, Metropolitan Community Church pastor Brent Hawkes. Layton’s selection of Hawkes to lead his funeral service tells a great deal about Jack Layton.

God help Canada.