Our senate has just confirmed itself as the chamber of serious second stupidity.
Okay, we’re changing the National Anthem. As we should. I’ve been wondering about the “all our sons” line since I was about fifteen years old.
But would someone please tell me; what strange language did “…in all of us command…” come from? Is that the way they talk in the rarified political air of the House of Commons? It certainly validates the old joke that a camel is a horse designed by a committee.
I know national anthems aren’t expected to be models of modern grammar. The original line from 1908, “thou dost in us command,” is hardly better, although it offends secular sensibilities rather than feminist ones. But surely, given the rare opportunity, someone in that whole huge building full of intelligent people might have suggested that we update the wording as well? At least they could have run it past a speechwriter or two. But no, they had to fall prey to the statistic that the IQ of a committee drops in inverse proportion to the number of members included.
I mean, what’s wrong with, “in all of our command,” or “as all of us command?” Both regular English, both meaning something nebulously like the intent of the line.
But the people we elected because we trusted them to make intelligent decisions on our behalf put their little heads together and came up with a compromise that pleases no one and creates a huge wave of resistance that has nothing to do with the anti-feminism of the Conservatives who opposed the bill on the spurious grounds that “the people of Canada haven’t been asked.” The only reason I agree with those stick-in-the-muds is that if a few regular Canadians, not politically motivated, had been given input, perhaps the new line would have at least been in normal 21st Century English Canadian. I have a question or two for Mr. Trudeau. “If one of your speechwriters came up with a phrase like that, could you say it to an international conference and keep a straight face? You’re a teacher, for heaven’s sake. If you said that line to your class, what on earth would you think it taught them?”
The Bottom Line?
Presumably we are changing our national anthem to bring it into line with modern sensibilities, to reach out to people learning about Canada and teach them our national ethos. By changing it to gobbledygook, Parliament has caused us to be the laughingstock of that small sliver of the English-speaking world that cares. More importantly, it has made the song even more inaccessible to new immigrants and young people, the very citizens it is meant to reach out to.
Congratulations to all our legislators. You have once again proved that the committee is the stupidest creation of humankind.