The Peel District School Board – just outside of Toronto, Ontario, here in Canada – has just banned any books in its libraries published before 2008 – yes, fifteen scant years ago, a blink of an eye for some of us – all in the aim of ‘inclusivity’. Apparently, books before that magical date were not inclusive enough, or racist, or transphobic, or something, including all the Harry Potter series. Maybe they were too anti-Muggins.
Mark Steyn is right to compare this to any revolutionary regime, which always want to start over at ‘year zero’, so as to obliterate the past, along with any traditions, memories, customs or historical figures connected thereto. Just so Islam, which began a new calendar with the flight of Mohamed, or the French Revolution, with history starting in 1789, and their new months and days – September 22nd, for example, saw the start of Vendémiaire – the month of ‘vintage’. So too, the Nazi’s ‘Thousand year reich’, along with Communism in its various forms, from Lenin to the Khmer Rouge. It’s not just books they burn – even if they are primary – but also statues, paintings, commemorations – all of it must cast in oblivion, so we can never go back. Even, dare I say, the Tradition of the Church…
All such revolutionary regimes may have their day, but are ultimately futile, and fall, for they are waging war against the very Lord of History, Christ Himself, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, God Incarnate, made flesh of the Blessed Virgin, who lived and died for each and every human being, to lead them to life eternal, if they would but follow Him. It was the monk Dionysius Exiguus who, in the 6th century, divided history into the era before Christ – B.C. – and the time of Christ – Anno Domini – which era will last until the ‘last syllable of recorded time’, when the world as we know, along with time itself, will end.
So guard those books, those memories and most of all, our Tradition, which will see us through day by day, until we meet the Lord, Who will guide and provide for all history until that glorious Parousia.