Well..on the one hand, at least your foes recognize something quite a few people in the CF shy away from (including a few who have posted here from time to time...): the ultimate purpose of the military is to use lethal force, and all of us in uniform have a direct or indirect role in that. That is a fact and if you try to avoid it and argue your way around it, you are at risk of tying yourself in intellectual knots and looking like a hypocrite. So, don't bother hiding it: go with it as a strength. Nobody is forced to serve in this country, so only those who can morally accept the use of lethal force will join (or, anyway, should join...).Therefore our advertising is merely the offering of an option. The purpose of the military is not to disadvantage or harm any sector of Canadian society, as homophobes and racists intend to do. Instead we undertake to serve Canadian society as a whole, and we have accepted that at some point this will require the use of lethal force, including in an offensive manner. (Do not advance the wimpy, hypocritical argument that we only use force if somebody shoots at us first).Ask them how the massacres in Rwanda, Cambodia, and elsewhere could have been immediately halted without effective offensive action against the killers? By holding a peace conference?
Therefore IMHO, considering all of the above, we are a public institution, serving the nation at large. Thus, we have as much right to have our advertising displayed as the RCMP, the Coast Guard, or any other arm of government. Given the risks undertaken and lives lost on behalf of Canada, probably more right.
To me, that line of argument counters their moral equation of our recruiting material to the level of hate literature.
Secondly, it always fascinates me that the first impulse of so many university types is to ban speech or ideas that they do not like. This is a bit odd, considering that (IMHO) one of the great gifts and purposes of a university education should be the ability to appreciate, consider and tolerate other points of view. Instead, we often see the opposite. I suggest to these people that if they dislike military recruiting posters in their schools, that the correct approach is not to ban the material, but to let it be posted freely, then put up material challenging it. (That should be worth a chuckle-such stuff is usually not known for having much factual basis...).
These individuals might consider the outcome, and how they might like it, if someone in power was to ban their posters or stop their speeches, rallies, etc. because people didn't "like" them. They always imagine that they and their opinions will forever be in the majority and in power. IMHO true free speech is not ensuring that the ideas you like are heard over all others-it is, instead, to ensure that all ideas are heard. Once they have been heard, they can be attacked or defended or dismissed on their own merits. Unless an idea is clearly intended to urge hatred and harm to a group in such a manner as to cause criminal acts in our society, then I would not be in favour of "banning" any expression.
And, if none of that works, bash them with a pick handle, really hard. >
Cheers
