It's Time to Reinstate the Cucking Stool

Canada, for reasons obscure and probably troubled, has not just a tolerance but a positive fondness for professional scolds.  There is a gaggle of these haughty merchants of sanctimony and rebuke who inexplicably flourish at  our major newspapers.  They have names like Wente, Blatchford and, in the case of the Toronto Star, Rosie DiManno.

The common scold, or communis rixatrix, who vexes me today is the venerable DiManno who, from her bunker, has penned a screed about Muslim terror in our midst in which she castigates dim-witted Canadians for "whistling past the graveyard" as our neighbours practice the dark arts of terrorism.   She writes in trembling hand:

The other is us.

The other is in our midst.

The other lives in our neighbourhoods, attends our schools, prays in our mosques and temples, alongside a broader community that would be appalled if aware of what they were contemplating.

The other breathes our air but inhales as well the toxic messages spread so easily via the Internet.

The other is enthralled by alien causes.

They are still a mere few. Yet that’s all it takes, as we have seen in just the past week — a pair of hapless brothers with just enough tactical wherewithal to construct crude bombs aimed at the “soft target’’ of the Boston Marathon.

Apart from nuclear reactors, airports, government buildings considered prime targets — the White House, Parliament, military bases — everything is a soft target. The world is made up of soft targets and soft flesh.

What has Rosie so exorcised is the arrest of two guys apparently plotting to attack a train that runs between Toronto and Penn Station.   This event, she informs us, has finally shattered our "false sense of security."

At the very least, the bubble of immunity and inviolability under which too many Canadians have laboured since Sept. 11, lulled into a false sense of security, has been pierced. Al Qaeda has long tentacles, can reach out and bite into the bosom of even so peaceful and embracing a country as Canada.

Tell me now about root causes of terrorism, as if they can’t ever be nurtured here and, if so, might be averted by moral and religious intervention wisely applied.

Tell me now about an exaggerated and counterproductive “war on terrorism” unleashed by the U.S.

Tell me now that Al Qaeda is a diluted and degraded ideology, operationally incapable of even imaging an overseas strike.

Tell me again how we’re so different from London, Madrid, Bali, Moscow, Nairobi, Mumbai, Karachi . . .

Tell me again how Canada is so damn exceptional.

It sounds like somebody has been telling Rosie things, a good many things, that is unless she's been listening to those voices in her head again.  Then again it sounds like DiManno is indulging in hystrionics and fear-mongering, the stock in trade of the common scold.

In English common law a common scold was recognized as a public nuisance, the penalty for which was a ride on the cucking stool for a quick dunk in a cold river.

As for me I certainly don't whistle past the graveyard but I do place very deserved trust in our police agencies to keep terrorism and other threats under control.

And no, Rosie, I won't tell you how Canada is "so damn exceptional" because I know our history.  I know there were domestic terrorists among us during the War of 1812 and what of the Fenians?  Have we ever existed as a nation at a time when we were really immune from some form of terrorism, domestic or foreign?  How did we ever get by without Rosie DiManno? Then again I wonder who strikes more terror, more fear, in the heart of Canadians?  Is it these two characters turned in by Toronto's Muslim community and rounded up by police or is it DiManno's alarmism?

Rosie is no terrorist but she is a damned nuisance.