Ruminations

Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions

Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Passing Judgement

Roger Clement passed righteous judgement on society, and now society has returned the compliment. Ontario Court Justice Celynne Dorval summed up the attitude to justice in this particular case quite neatly, on behalf of the social contract and the citizens that respect it. Roger Clement of his own free will and arrogant decision-making violently disrupted what we as a society like to take for granted: peace and security.

In condemning the society of which he was an integral part, as a one-time and long-time federal civil servant, he chose to demonstrate in no uncertain terms just how he wished to divorce himself from the rest of society. He was described by friends as a 'generous man and principled humanitarian', but this generous man forsook his principled humanitarianism for violence in righteous indignation and bitter disagreement with this society.

His reasoned discourse as an anarchist was not sufficiently attended to by society disinterested in his message, so he resorted to shock tactics, an act of arson, resulting in the victory of a video and a statement much in the manner of terrorists who explain their suicide-murder pact with Islamism by such explanatory videos, justifying their actions and praising themselves as martyrs to their cause.

"Crimes of urban intimidation infringe on the rights of the majority" Justice Dorval informed Mr. Clement. He still does not, however, consider his action a crime but a legitimate protest. Obvious in his anguish over facing a four-year-prison term, reduced to three and a half years taking into account the months he has already spent incarcerated since his arrest following the $1.6-million blaze destroying the Royal Bank branch on Bank Street in May.

Mr. Clement complains that taxpayer-funded incarceration reflecting his judicial punishment for planning and carrying out a terror attack in Ottawa to highlight his malcontent-group's disaffection with society is money wasted. The ideological manifesto he authored, the pride of showmanship in posting it along with the arson video, speaks about his values, rejected by society.

Events such as the Vancouver Olympics and the G8 and G20 summits in Toronto were characterized by Mr. Clement and his colleagues-in-anarchy as assaultive acts against the citizens of the country. Many other people were of the opinion that massive amounts of public funding could be better spent on social housing, but they expressed their opinion in peaceful ways, not through violently subversive acts of sabotage.

It did not enhance the judge's opinion of him that he could manage only to utter regret for any 'inconvenience' his shockingly violent act caused. Not regret for the violence itself, nor the reasoning that led to it, nor his leadership role in the act. His pride would not permit that admission of wrong-doing, reflecting his continued commitment to his original course of action.

He will now have ample time to contemplate those values that led him to the conclusion that society needed his action to serve as a wake-up call to heed his message.

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