The best news for Syrian refugees might be that an incoming prime minister and a departing president have refused to join the orgy of fear taking hold in some quarters.
Both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Barack Obama have remained steadfast and calm in their commitment to move forward with plans to accept Syrian refugees. All this despite the Paris attacks that have caused some politicians to use rhetoric that could be described as mere opportunistic pandering were it not so ugly at its core.
During the Second World War, both Canada and the United States decided to intern citizens of Japanese descent in camps – separating and isolating them from the society they had grown up in.
This was implemented, not because of anything they had done, but out of fear for what they might do. That they looked different from the majority made the process palatable and acceptable to the population at large.
They were ‘other.’ They could not be trusted.
Their loyalties must surely be to the Emperor and, if not, better safe than sorry.
With each new challenge to national security, with every threat that an unstable world poses, comes the danger that we will repeat mistakes of the past and vilify entire groups of human beings based on national origin, religious belief or ethnicity. It is a very human reaction based, not on logic or reflection, but on knee-jerk expediency and a primal fear provoking us to avoid, destroy or run away from a perceived threat.
When faced with a medical crisis, health officials employ quarantines for those infected or suspected of infection. They are held until they are deemed free from disease.
Concurrent with that draconian but necessary precaution, those arriving to our shores during a health scare are monitored and screened at ports of entry.
Technology allows for temperatures to be taken with a pinpoint laser to determine the existence of a telltale fever.
But there is no device that allows us to look into a person’s heart and soul to determine what they might do, feel or act upon in the future.
National origin and religious belief are personal, private expressions of identity.
They are not viruses but those who would have us close our borders, our communities and our countries are, in effect, treating them as such.
We need to extend compassion to the refugees fleeing the very same people we identify as terrorists. They are not de facto threats simply because they share the same ethnicity and religion of those who would do us harm.
At some point, we have to trust our intelligence gathering capabilities to identify and prevent terrorist attacks on our soil.
Every free society comes with inherent risks because of the very fact that they are free and with that freedom comes choice and risk. We will never live in absolute security until each of us finds a solitary cabin in the woods where we can board up our windows and sit in the dark with shotguns on our laps - waiting for the noise outside that signals an intruder has come.
It is not in times of comfort, in times of safety and security, that a society is tested. It is in times of turmoil, upheaval and danger. The fundamental question we must ask is if we are willing to abandon or forsake those values and beliefs upon which we have built our communities, our countries and our lives.
Vigilance should not give way to vengeance nor should legitimate wariness devolve into hate and fear. Terror may have come to be a word denoting mayhem and violence but let us not forget that it is also a feeling of extreme fear. We control, both as societies and individuals, whether we will allow ourselves to feel terror, to feel terrorized.
If we do, then those who would perpetrate their acts of lunacy against us have achieved their goal. If, however, we resolve to remain true to our core beliefs, to our core values and aspirations as a free society, then we have surely won the war on terror already.
Gavin MacFadyen is a lawyer and freelance writer living in New York State.
Troy Media
