Parties and Ideologies: Who's Who at the Zoo

Your conservative candidate.

As we get close to the Canadian federal election, pal Xerxes laments that party labels are no longer meaningful. Nobody seems ideologically consistent.

Certainly true; in electoral politics, things easily get elastic. Ideology probably matters less than getting on the right side of an issue identified by recent polling.

But some of the confusion can be clarified by realizing that the various parties have come to be mislabeled. The conservative party in Canada is the Liberals; the liberal party is the Conservatives.

Xerxes writes:

“In a leaders’ debate this week, the Greens came across as more conservative than the Conservatives -- at least the Greens are trying to conserve something.”

Exactly right. “Conservatism” automatically means “conservation.” Conservatives in the true sense have always been the political group that cared about preserving the natural environment, as a shared heritage. It was Teddy Roosevelt who created the national parks in the US, and Sir John A Macdonald in Canada. For many years, the head of the World Wildlife Fund was Prince Phillip. It is an intrinsic part of the conservative philosophy to conserve nature. Animal rights, too, tends to be a natural conservative concern; today it is represented by the Greens. 

Your liberal candidate.

The Greens, in other words, are indeed a conservative party. But recently these ideas have been identified as leftist.

Not that liberals would be opposed to a clean environment. But they would generally prefer to leave such things to market forces and non-government initiatives—it is not a core mandate of government.

“The supposedly socialist NDP isn’t threatening to nationalize anything. Justin Trudeau, on the other hand, has already nationalized a pipeline.”

Exactly. Nationalizing a pipeline—direct government involvement in the market—is against liberal principles. It might be Marxist; but would fit as well with traditional conservative values. Conservatism holds the national interest to be part of government’s mandate, wherever that leads; so this justifies such government intrusions in the market. Just as it justified Conservative government involvement in building the old CPR. Or Disraeli getting the British Tory Government to build the Suez Canal, or Roosevelt the US Republican administration to build the Panama Canal. A classically conservative act.

And that is exactly the rationale the Liberal are using—the classic conservative one.

The NDP has been deliberately mislabeled from the start. It is or was, indeed, as Xerxes says, a socialist party. Not Stalinist, but democratic Marxist, after Bernstein. “New Democratic Party” is a fudge, for a party that should more clearly have been named “Socialist” or “Social Democratic.”

Xerxes is right too that, properly, it should therefore be calling for nationalization of the means of production. But when did it last do that?

Strip this out, and what is left is another conservative party, with the same platform as the Liberals. Or, given that it now apparently believes in leaving the means of production in private hands, while heavily regulating it to enforce national goals, perhaps the NDP is closer to being Canada’s fascist party. 

Your fascist candidate.

Still Marxist, then—Mussolini was a Marxist.

Xerxes:

“Conservatives may be opposed to government, in principle. But if elected, they have never declined to become a government themselves.”

Xerxes does not understand liberalism. What he describes here is anarchism. Liberalism is not against government, but sees government as having a specific mandate. It can therefore be either too big or too small.

Xerxes:

“In practice, when conservatives govern [sic—he means Conservatives, with the capital letter], they don’t reduce government. At least, not much. They divert tax resources to different areas. To more rigorous law enforcement, for example. To bailing out banks, or carmakers, considered too big to fail. And to the military. Currently, I read, the U.S. government uses 20% of its total budget to pay for its war equipment and personnel -- all tax funded.”

This illustrates the liberal understanding of government’s mandate: it is to protect the rights of citizens. Accordingly, expenditure on law enforcement and the military are legitimate.

Bailing out carmakers or banks, on the other hand, is not legitimate. While, granted, Conservative governments in Canada, and Republican administrations in the US, have resorted to such bailouts, they are more reluctant to do so than the Liberals or the Democrats. They at least lean more liberal. Witness the Liberal Party’s longstanding support of Bombardier, or SNC-Lavalin, let alone the pipeline purchase. Or Obama’s wholesale bailout of GM in the US, opposed by Romney and the Republicans.

Let’s clarify definitions.

Conservatives will generally prefer a bigger, more intrusive government. Bill Davis’s Ontario Tories were still classically conservative. Conservatism, following Burke, sees the state as an organic entity, more or less on the model of a family. “Paternalistic government” is baked into the mix. Government can be as big as seems useful.

Liberalism, on the other hand, as the name implies, starts from the premise of liberty--that is, the rights of the sovereign individual. Government has a specific and defined role, the protection of rights, and may not legitimately overstep these bounds. The US Declaration of Independence is a good primer here.

And surely by this you can see that the current Canadian Conservative party is liberal, and the Canadian Liberal Party is conservative.

The first and critical shift in the proper naming of names probably came with the New Deal in the US, and King’s copycat initiatives in Canada. In the early years of the Great Depression, the traditional political theories seemed to have failed. In desperation, and directly against the platforms they had run on, FDR and King reached for any new ideas that might be around. Most prominent among them were, of course, Marxism and fascism. This was the New Deal.

But admitting that these new approaches were either Bolshevik or fascist was not going to play well in Medicine Hat or Peoria. “Liberal” was a safer label for electoral purposes; especially after the Second World War. It was a “new liberalism.”

True liberals, precisely because their own philosophy was diametrically opposed, were over time forced out of the Liberal Party, and the Democrats, and needed a new home. They found it by default in the conservative parties, and over a longer period they came to dominate them. 

He never identified his party as "conservative."

Manning’s Reform Party was pretty classically liberal, and was bizarrely branded as to the right of the Tories. Then they managed a hostile takeover. Any traditional conservatives who linger in the Conservative Party are now, erroneously, called “Red Tories.”

The Republican Part in the US similarly flipped over to liberalism with Ronald Reagan. The UK Tories flipped from conservative to liberal with Margaret Thatcher. At about the same time, by merger with the Social Democrats, the UK Liberals tipped over from liberal to conservative or Marxist.

Now the average Canadian large-l Liberal is even prone to call authentic liberals “fascists.” Although their human rights - individual liberties philosophy is probably the point on the political spectrum most diametrically opposed to Fascism. You want fascism, your best bet is the NDP.

Xerxes continues:

“Small-l liberals [sic] … focus on big corporations as the enemy. With good reason.”

This is a small-c conservative position. Conservatism, seeing society as organic, always suspects the profit motive. Government is best left to those whose eyes are not habitually focused on the balance sheet—traditionally an idle ruling class freed from financial concerns and schooled to the job, more recently a credentialed professional elite. Who are supposedly, if less convincingly, above caring about their own financial interests.

Mere tradesmen are always to be scorned. They do not have the proper breeding for the job.

One can see this underlying classism starkly in left-wing reactions to Donald Trump. He is a mere tradesman, lacking proper breeding. Much of the visceral hatred on the left for Richard Nixon or for Joe McCarthy was the same: they were not gentlemen. The problem was always style more than substance.

Over recent decades, this conservative distain for “the trades” has conveniently merged with Marxist theory, which blames our failure to achieve an earthly paradise on a bourgeois or “capitalist” class. Which may or may not actually exist in a meaningful sense.

If the wrath of the modern left is directed towards “big corporations” instead of the older “rich capitalists,” this is no doubt for two practical reasons. Firstly, such highly visible rich capitalists on the original Marxist model as we have tend to be Liberals and Democrats: the Zuckerbergs, Brins, Gateses, Bezoses, and so forth. They have, naturally enough, gravitated to the conservative side of the spectrum, which tends to preserve existing social structures and so existing privilege. 

The old Marxist stereotype of the "capitalist." Usually ethnically Jewish...

But, as they never tire of saying, a corporation is not a person. It is a vague entity. It has no public face. Politicians can attack “big corporations,” and sustain the illusion that no actual people are hurt. They are the perfect scapegoat.

Of course, in reality, a corporation is people. You further tax or shut down a corporation, and real people do indeed get hurt or pay: shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, and the community. But this is only the same sleight of hand politicians always use by promising to spend more money here and there—the money always comes out of same other people’s pockets.

But this is also dishonest in another way. Behind this façade, as noted above, the Liberals and Democrats are consistently more closely allied with the big corporations and their interests than are the Conservatives or the Republicans: SNC Lavalin, General Motors, Amazon, Google, Solyndra, and so on.

Joker's Wild

The online buzz about the new Joker movie is at a level I have never seen before. It seems that it is in the crossfire of the culture wars. Leftist commentators hate it, so much that some are, being leftist, actually censoring the name in print. Supposedly this is because it might inspire violence. From the right. Violence from the left, of course, is not a problem. Rightist commentators praise it. Critics hate it. Fans love it.

I have not seen the film, and am not likely to see it in the near future.

However, from what I hear, I am unhappy about some of the messages the movie seems to convey:

1. that there is naturally a class conflict between the rich and the poor, that might ignite at any moment.

2. that poverty and abuse cause violence; violence is the expression of pent-up rage from the oppressed.

3. that the mentally ill are violent.

Number one above is a Marxist premise. This is the Marxist theory of class war. But it is at least as reasonable to see the natural interests of rich and poor as almost entirely the same. It is not helpful to stir up a fear of the poor among the rich on this basis; or, conversely, a hatred of the rich among the poor. It is no healthier than stirring up hatred against the Jews among the Aryans, by suggesting that open conflict might erupt at any moment. Do this, and it will inevitably be the weaker party that will suffer. 

Number two is twofold. The poor may be more likely to use violence, because they have less to lose by it, and fewer alternate means. But that is a secondary consideration; it is not the cause, and distracts from the real cause. Poverty does not lead to rage or violence against those who are better off; ask a Franciscan. Envy does. The rich are probably more prone to envy others: they probably became rich because they were more invested in accumulating things.

Most poor people are strictly non-violent and honest. Poverty cannot be the critical factor leading to crime.

The thought that experiencing violence makes one violent is worse. It is a way of blaming the victim. In fact, those who have themselves experienced violence or abuse are less likely to be violent towards others. Survivors of the Nazi death camps did not become serial killers.

And being told you are garbage does not make you feel more entitled. It is more likely to make you think you are garbage.

Murderous psychopaths emerge among those who have been pampered and spoiled, not the abused. Both serial killers and Nazis tend to be middle class.

Number three is worst. The mentally ill face enough utterly unjust stigma, on top of their unspeakable suffering. It is like blaming crime on the lepers. It has been demonstrated repeatedly, as this article reminds us, that the mentally ill are no more violent than the general population.

In fact, the genuinely mentally ill are dramatically less likely to be violent than the general population. This is obscured by the arbitrary act of defining “personality disorders” as forms of mental illness. A “personality disorder” is simply a conscious choice to do evil. Accept it as a “mental illness,” and there is no room left for human choice: nobody ever chooses to do wrong. And if you define “doing bad things” as a mental illness, you are of course going to find that the mentally ill do bad things. You are simply saying the same thing twice.

But this is most cruelly unfair to the genuinely mentally ill. It is like blaming Gandhi and the Jews for the Second World War.

Hell, Yes!

Michelangelo's Last Judgement.

Hans von Balthasar and Bishop Robert Barron argue the possibility that there are no souls in hell. Yes, there is a hell, and going to hell must be a real possibility, so long as there is free will, but maybe not ever an actuality.

Reportedly, Pope Francis himself told one interviewer that nobody actually goes to hell, that failed souls instead face annihilation at death.

There are reasons to suppose this is so, to, beyond wishful thinking. Why, after all, would a good God create a soul only for eternal suffering? Surely extended times in purgatory ought to be enough? What about God’s infinite love and infinite mercy?

But a view close to this one was ruled out as heresy very early on in Church history. The assertion that all souls eventually made heaven got Origen declared heretical.

The New Testament seems to say not only that some will go to hell, but that many will go there. This is the “broad gate”; “few are chosen.” Jesus tells the story of Lazarus, in which a rich man is in hell, and he seems to emphasize here that there is no exit, no way out.

The Rich Man and Lazarus.

“Then he will say also to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you didn’t give me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and you didn’t take me in; naked, and you didn’t clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’
… These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

It may be possible to tease a different interpretation out of such passages, but the literal meaning seems plain.

In the visions of Our Lady of Fatima, the child seers reported seeing a great number of souls descending to hell.

“As Our Lady spoke these last words, she opened her hands once more, as she had done during the two previous months. The rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a sea of fire. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke now falling back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear…. Terrified and as if to plead for succour, we looked up at Our Lady, who said to us, so kindly and so sadly: You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go.”

Fatima comes with some impressive miracles to attest to its authenticity, and is endorsed as genuine by the Church.

How can we reconcile this severity with a good and merciful creator?

According to Catholic doctrine, God sends no one to hell. Nevertheless, free will necessarily means that it is possible for some to choose to go to hell. Milton saw this when he had his Satan say “I would sooner rule in hell than serve in heaven.”

One can choose to turn away from God in a systematic, definitive way. All of us probably know someone who has. In a word, narcissists: we call people “narcissists” who choose systematically to put self above God, to think of themselves as godlike. This is the same pride we see in Milton’s Satan.

Heaven is the presence of God; hell is his absence. If they do this, they are choosing hell. And a hardened pride may indeed make this choice irrevocable.

Muhammed Visits Hell.

What about atheists? You may ask. Is belief in God all that is needed? And are all atheists then condemned?

No; nominal allegiance to God, or to the person of Jesus, is not the issue. The New Testament makes this clear enough. Jesus condemns, and seems to assign to hell, the religious authorities of his day: these are the Pharisees. Conversely, even the demons he casts out acknowledge him as the son of God.

Remove, if you like, as atheists do, the notion of a personal God. The Logos remains: that is, the transcendentals, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. These are God himself, as he manifests in creation.

A good atheist is an atheist because he believes this is the truth. If so, he is a true worshipper of Christ, the Logos. A good atheist is adamant that he is obliged to act morally. If so, he is a true worshipper of Christ, the Logos. Conversely, someone who declares himself a true worshipper of Jesus Christ, yet who is not genuinely convinced this is the truth, is a Pharisee, a hypocrite. He is a worshipper of Satan. Someone who declares himself a worshipper of Jesus Christ, yet who does not consider himself bound to act morally, is a Pharisee, a hypocrite. He is a worshipper of Satan.
And the same, perhaps less obviously, is true of beauty. One who genuinely values and seeks to preserve beauty is a follower of Christ; one who does not worships Satan.

Anyone, nominally Christian or atheist or Hindu, chooses hell if they deliberately turn away from truth, good, and beauty.

We all do, of course, some times. Having sinned does not send you to hell. Repentance, not sinlessness, is what separates the sheep from the goats. 2 Peter 3:9 speaks of God “. . . not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” A good person sins, even again and again, like Peter himself. But he admits he has sinned, and repents. A narcissist will instead insist he never has. He or she will, if necessary, deny the very possibility of good, or truth, in order to preserve the godlike delusion of self.

Sisyphus, Ixion, and Tantalus in the Pagan Greek Conception of Hell.

Now, surely it is plain to anyone that a great many people are currently doing exactly this. It is the dominant doctrine among our educated elite. When a postmodernist says “there is no truth,” they are deliberately choosing hell in just this way. When they say that morality is culturally determined, purely a matter of group consensus, they have turned away from good. They have chosen hell.
Hitler, for one, barring some sort of last-second private repentance, is plainly in hell on these grounds.

It is also a commonplace among academics and others commenting on art today to reject the beautiful and seek the ugly. Much contemporary art is deliberately ugly. I hesitate to say this view is common among artists—I find in my own experience of practicing artists that it is not. It comes from elsewhere, from art criticism. And I expect it is not definitionally possible to be an artist without seeking beauty. Not the pretty or cute; beauty is something other than this, and must include the sublime. But if you simply set up a urinal on its side, and call it art, you are of the devil’s party.
Given all this, it seems obvious that a large number of people are indeed bound for hell.
Is it an absolute majority?

I think there are hopeful reasons to believe it is not. While the educated elite may be officially committed to postmodernism, the average person, having it explained, probably sees it as madness. These are the “little ones” Jesus praised in the Beatitudes. Even many of the “elite” are probably, like Nicodemus, in private dissent.

A Buddhist Conception of Hell.

When the Book of Revelations describes the cosmic war between the loyal and the fallen angels, it says that one third of the stars are torn from the sky: “Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth.” This may be a reference to how far evil can extend in cosmic terms. Beyond about that proportion, it tends to be self-defeating. If everybody lies, for example, lying is no longer of advantage. If everybody is out to kill everybody, there is no longer any crime of murder; killing is self-defense. If everybody steals at will, in effect, nobody has any property. And so there is nothing to steal. And so on: moral evil needs good, and good to predominate, in order to exist.
By this rule, which seems at least as solid as the law of gravity, up to one third of souls probably end up in hell.

Book Burning in Georgia

If this report is accurate, the actions of the students in burning books deserves our condemnation.

But it may also be evidence that the tide is turning. Straight white men in academics are perhaps no longer happy to sit still for being lectured on how evil they are.

Elton John Reveals His Problems with His Mother

Ordinarily I avoid celebrity gossip; it is usually the sin of calumny. However, our awareness of childhood abuse is growing, and more and more celebrities are opening up about their own experiences: Michael Jackson, Brian Wilson, Stefan Molyneux, and so on.

Each time one of these big names does, it reduces the oppressive social taboo that keeps us from dealing with the problem. And helping the young victims at the crucial time.

http://www.narcbrain.com/elton-john-brands-his-mother-a-sociopath-who-never-met-his-sons/

Election and Other News

The polls have finally begun to move. It looks as though this time, the debates were important. Votes seem to be shifting from the Liberals to the BQ in Quebec, and from the Liberals to the NDP in English Canada. This reflects the consensus among commentators on who did best in the debates.

The principal beneficiary is going to be the Conservatives, as the vote on the left splits more evenly.

In other news, Bernier’s PPC is taking heat because one of their NS candidates tweeted in 2017 that “Islam is pure evil.” Storm in a shotglass, it would appear. Candidate explains she failed to make the distinction between Islam and Islamism.

It would be fair comment if someone did consider Islam purely evil, mind. Islam is a set of opinions or beliefs. Just as we could honourably say “Nazism is pure evil,” or “Satanism is pure evil,” logically, we might believe this of Islam. But it would be political suicide. And of course, for the record, I would consider this wildly wrong. Islam is wrong on some things, but a force for good.

Islamism, on the other hand, is pure evil.

It would be tough for Bernier to dump her, in any case. This late in the campaign, it is not legally possible to replace a candidate.

In other other news, Star Metro reports Ontario students and parents protesting Doug Ford’s cuts to education. They are upset at a new requirement that four high school courses be taken online, and a rise in the number of pupils per class from 22 to 28.

As someone more or less in the education field, I feel this opposition is misguided. Although all educational studies are necessarily dubious, there is no good evidence that the number of students in a class affects student achievement. It affects the teacher’s ability to break classes into small groups instead of lecturing. But some of the most popular courses at university level fill huge lecture halls.

There is no evidence either that breaking students into small discussion groups leads to better learning than a lecture. There are theories to support this claim, but no actual empirical evidence.

Perhaps it is more significant that lecturing requires more work by the teacher than having students break into small groups and discuss. As a teacher, I love such group discussions.

As a student, I always felt I learned more in a lecture.

Such studies as have been done also suggest that online courses teach more efficiently than conventional classrooms. And there are reasons to expect this to be so: online a student is able to work at their own pace, potentially has access to a variety of different forms of presentation, text, audio, images, video, interactive, animated visuals, and instant search, and can back up and try again if they miss something.

This is not to say that there is no value in the physical presence of a teacher, or of other classmates. Best results are obtained by “blended learning,” combining online with classroom. But students are gaining, not losing, on balance, if the choice is online versus conventional class.

The problem with online learning is that it automates so much of the process; over time, fewer teachers are needed. This is of course not good for teachers. Moreover, in my experience, most teachers are confirmed Luddites. They are afraid of the new technology, and will not use it if not forced. With some reason: inevitably, the students are better at it than they are.

So why are students and parents protesting?

Perhaps because they are too inclined to accept the authority of teachers as the “experts.”

But for students, it may also be a matter of not daring to alienate your own teacher. That could be risky.

Are the Winds in Canada Shifting?

Seems like I scored a clear miss on my reading of the recent Canadian leaders’ debate. I thought Jagmeet Singh did not do what he needed to do. But it seems to be the consensus among the pundits that Singh was “the winner.”

Mainstream media left-wing bias? But Steve Paikin had a pollster reporting the same, based on overnight polling. It seems it was I who was blinded by ideological bias.

I agree that Singh scored for being likeable. I just did not think that mattered, because for likeability he was ideologically up against Elizabeth May, who is more so. So that, I thought, was not going to sway votes.

The pollster says it has.

Partisans of Scheer need not panic, however. This should be good news for them. Singh pulls votes from the Liberals, for the most part. A more even split between them lets the Tories take more ridings. Singh would have a lot of ground to make up before he actually challenged for power.

But buoyed by my wrong call here, let me make another.

I have a vague sense that we have come to an inflection point in the campaign, and in Canadian politics. Possibly even a watershed.

I mean the recent video of Antifa members harassing an elderly woman with a walker who was trying to attend a Bernier event in Hamilton. They blocked her way; they loudly chanted “Nazi scum! Off our streets!” 

Note that the clip featured here is from RT, Russian TV. It is getting international attention.

It may have pulled the claimed moral high ground out from under the forces of “progressivism” in the public mind. The absurdity of the charge was too apparent. It was too apparent who was the bully, and who the bullied. Mainstream media reports have tried to obscure it, but the video itself was too vivid.

Someone was then able to ID one of the Antifa members in the video, and outed the man behind the mask on YouTube. He turned out to be a recent (2015) Syrian immigrant. Who, we are then shown, has a history of rioting. 

https://www.facebook.com/rick.boswick/videos/2667612919944522/

The optics could not have been better for Bernier’s cause: a recent immigrant from Syria, of all places, declaring exclusive ownership of the streets of Canada, showing hatred towards a native-born Canadian simply exercising her democratic franchise. And a little old disabled lady, at that.

“They hate us, they are violent, they lack all humane instincts, and they plan to take over.” That’s the visual message.

His family runs a restaurant on Queen West. More bad optics, violating the popular meme of destitute Syrian refugees. Looks like they were economic migrants after all.

Said restaurant was soon identified, as it bore the suspect’s family name, and some online called for a boycott.

Within days, the family announced the restaurant’s closing. They said the hostility they were getting on social media was apparently too much.

Doxxing is immoral. The family, as opposed to the individual, may bear no blame.

On the other hand: the perp was wearing a mask. Like the masks once worn by the KKK, almost demands a public unmasking.

And was this deliberate doxxing? Or was the matter simply self-evident by the restaurant’s name?

It was the family’s decision to close the restaurant. Nobody else made them do this, and so nobody else may deserve any blame for it. Obviously, they had suffered some very bad publicity, very likely to harm their business. Welcome to the free market.

Some were calling for a boycott. Okay: the left has made boycotting businesses for the slightest of reasons standard practice. It is something right-wingers have long just had to live through.

Did they get death threats? Any prominent figure on the right has been getting death threats for years.

The message the closing of the restaurant conveyed seems to be that the left has a glass jaw.

I think some people on the right now smell blood. And some on the left are smelling their own.

Predator may suddenly be prey, and prey may now need to be reckoned with. They, these despicable “right-wingers,” may be really angry, it seems, and not inclined to just take it anymore. It’s no longer going to be just fun for the left.

It’s probably nothing, as Kate McMillan would say.

But I attended a local all-candidates rally a couple of weeks ago, I think the day after the video surfaced, and then another just last night. The same set of candidates. At the first, the other parties tried to hammer the PPC to death, with their verbal bicycle locks, for their stand on immigration and on climate change. I noted pushback from some in the audience then. I thought I detected surprise in the candidates. Their expected applause lines were suddenly drawing flak. They seemed to pull back for the rest of the night.

Politicians are always brave at attacking nonexistent or absent enemies. But they are not going to oppose anyone real to their face. They might have a vote.

Last night, nobody took a jab at the PPC. The unkindest cut was just the Liberal saying he had no idea how they planned to finance their promises. That seemed a backhanded compliment. It was as if suddenly they were understood as an otherwise appealing electoral option.

Aside from the Liberal, none of the other candidates, all further to the left, even referred to the PPC or their stands on the issues. It was as though they were afraid to test those waters; afraid that if they made their disagreement plain, it might lose them support.

Meantime, Andrew Scheer just announced a new tougher stand on turning away refugees at the border. His pollsters may have told him something. Until now, he has been triangulating to the left.

It is all unrepresentative, anecdotal, and mostly just my sense of smell. Which has recently been proven unreliable.

Make of it what you will.

This Way Madness Lies

Nietzsche mad.

My portside pal Xerxes proposes one essential rule for open discussion: never drag in an external authority. He objects specifically to looking to the dictionary for definitions of words, quoting the Bible, or quoting any famous writer. He mentions here Nietzsche, or Kant, or Confucius.

This is indeed the spirit of the age. This is the postmodern spirit. It is surely the spirit that has us all pulling down public statues.

I have seen it too in Adult Children of Alcoholics. They began with much promise in the 1980s; in more recent years they have fallen into decline. And I think it is precisely because they embraced this rule from the start. Everyone gets to speak “their truth” at a meeting, and nobody is supposed to “cross talk.”

And so nothing is ever resolved. People seem to hang in, hopefully, for six months or a year, and then give up and drift away.

Xerxes’s claim is that referring to authority, being “judgmental,” ends a discussion.

Just the opposite has happened with ACoA. Refusing to pass any judgments or refer to any authority has caused people to leave that discussion.

Because without appeal to some authority, it is all just words repeated forever. Or not even that. If there are no dictionaries, and nobody knows what anything means, words themselves are only empty noises from a random throat.

One might noise on forever, but to no possible result.

And the problem goes beyond words. Consider this scenario: you are on a stroll down a pleasant lane. It is twilight. Someone jumps from the shadows, stabs you in the heart, and takes your watch. Do you really want to rule out any appeal to authority here? Can you shrug, and accept that the mugger’s experience of things is simply different from your own?

Or if that still sounds okay, let’s ratchet it up a level. Without appeal to some moral authority, you can have no objection to Hitler, the Nazis, and the Holocaust. You might suspect that the Nazis were violating their own conscience; but you cannot know their own experience, can you? Mustn’t be judgmental.

Does the postmodern left believe in climate change? They obviously, passionately, do. But this is on the basis of authority. It is impossible for anyone to make a political and public case based on personal experience. You may detect that last winter was colder than this winter. Someone else, living somewhere else, will have had the opposite experience. We all must take the word of this or that scientist, or “scientific consensus.”

But that’s only the beginning. None of us have personal experience of evolution, either. So why is the left so fierce about rejecting creationism?

No; it is specifically traditional moral authorities that the modern left is really targeting. All else is alibi.

Nor is Xerxes right to claim that citing an authority ends a discussion. That too is alibi. He says “the only way to refute one authority is to quote a different authority.” It is more effective to refute using the same authority. But there are many other ways. Authorities are routinely refuted, or refuted on specific points. Authorities, after all, do not become authorities by simply pulling opinions out of thin air.

Xerxes’s next claim is that the authorities themselves, had they lived longer, might have changed their mind.

This is not relevant. He even mentions Nietzsche. Nietzsche went mad. Do we assume that his later insane ideas supersede his earlier work? Of course not: his earlier arguments stand or fall on their own merits. So also for Origen, a church father, later heretical; Christians still take the earlier Origen as an authority. 

Origen

In preference to authority, Xerxes advocates personal experience. Echoing the ACoA handbook, he writes, “a personal experience is never wrong. If that’s how you experienced it; that’s how it is for you.”

If this is true, there is no such thing as a delusion or hallucination. If I think I am Napoleon, I am Napoleon. You might suppose this is an arcane objection; but each one of us, every day, even every moment, need to make a distinction between experiences we have in dreams, or in imagination, and those we experience waking and alert. If we cannot or do not, we are dysfunctional at a fundamental level. We are a danger to ourselves and others.

Quite literally, we are insane.

Perhaps here we also see a little of how narcissism works. To cite personal experience as the only source or standard of reality is to make the self the measure of all things. With no reference to external authority, you can freely assert anything that seems advantageous to you.

This makes true madness, psychosis, a conscious choice. It is at base a moral issue. Madness is just narcissism taken to its extreme.

Canadian English-language Leaders' Debate

Who won last night’s Canadian leaders’ debate?

This time, at least, that seems to be the wrong question. Winning and losing really only makes sense in a debate between two sides. It is artificial when you have six.

Each probably had different objectives; everyone did well.

Let’s instead look at each in turn.

Andrew Scheer’s job, I suspect, was to position himself as the obvious choice if you wanted to defeat Trudeau. He needed too to overcome suspicions that he was a milquetoast.

He accordingly went after Trudeau immediately with both barrels. Asked, as I recall, about foreign policy, his response referred to both blackface and firing Jody Wilson-Raybould.

I think he did well at, on the one hand, looking combative, and on the other, still appearing dignified and in control. What he said was harsh, and he interrupted with abandon, yet he retained a calm tone of voice. I think it was effective.

When he raised the bit about Trudeau’s campaign using two planes, he was well-prepared for Trudeau’s inevitable response about using carbon offsets. He responded that “carbon offsets” were something only the rich could afford, something the average Canadian cannot resort to. I think that rang true, and played to a growing perception of Trudeau as privileged.

He got in a great dig, perhaps memeable, perhaps killing this line of Liberal attack for the rest of this campaign, on Trudeau’s tactic of linking Scheer with the less popular Doug Ford. “You seem obsessed with Ontario politics. I understand there is a vacancy for the Ontario Liberal leadership…”

Soon after this Trudeau started to sound a little shrill; I think it may have knocked him off his balance.

Scheer scored likeability points as well, preventing him from coming across as too harsh, with humour: like ostentatiously turning toward Trudeau when told he had his choice of whom to challenge. He scored again by generously praising Singh when the issue of Bill 21 and tolerance came up. This was at no cost: Singh is not appealing, for the most part, to the same voters. Any vote for Singh is more likely to be taken from Trudeau.

He was also ready for attack from Bernier, at his right flank. He accused Bernier of having changed his own positions on the issues on which he claims to be the authentic conservative voice. Bernier might have had a comeback; but the structure of the debate did not allow it.

Scheer was evasive at times. May hit him for this early on, and the charge may resonate. He was evasive on Bill 21, evasive on pipelines through Quebec, and evasive on abortion. This may do him no harm in his contest with Trudeau, who is more evasive; but it may hurt him by comparison to Bernier, among his supporters on the right.

Justin Trudeau was always going to have a tough time. He was the guy to knock off, and he had a record to justify. He faced challenges on two sides: he could lose by leaking votes rightward to Scheer, or leftward to Singh and May, and they were going to attack him from both angles. At one point he lamented, “I knew I was going to be criticized by some for building pipelines, and by others for not building pipelines.”

Which was probably his worst, and most revealing, moment: it suggested, first, that he thought it was all about him, and that he did not have principles. And that he did not grasp basic realities: could this be a surprise? Surely only to one who felt entitled, privileged.

And it opened him to a great response from Scheer: “you did nothing.”

Listened to closely, too, Trudeau is often talking nonsense. The words are all that matter. At one point, he actually argued that we needed pipelines in order to sell more gas and oil to raise the money to reduce our use of gas and oil. Perfectly postmodern; but it seems there is a simpler solution.

But overall to me he seemed well-versed, with facts at his fingertips. He performed much better than in the debates of 2015. I was expecting less; I was expecting him to show cracks under the pressure. At one point, near the end, after a hit from Scheer, but debating Elizabeth May, he sounded a little out of control of his emotions. But otherwise, he seemed fine.

He drew blood, I think, against Singh over Bill 21. Not especially clever of him—Tom Mulcair, in Singh’s own party, had just complained about this. It was raised directly by the moderators before Trudeau raised it. But Singh could not respond clearly, because he feared a firm stand would lose the NDP Quebec support. On the other hand, Trudeau’s own stand is barely different from Singh’s, for the same reasons; his firm stand is only to "leave the door open" to challenging the law in the future. Singh might have made something of that. A little honesty might have gone a long way. Instead, Singh tried to make it all improbably enough about big corporations and poverty. Lame as a two-legged cow.

Singh’s main task was to distinguish himself from both Trudeau and May. I don’t think he did this, but I think it was an impossible task. He did show a sense of humour, boosting his likeability; Trudeau, by contrast, showed little humour. He got a good dig in on Trudeau, unexpected by me at least, over two of his cabinet ministers supposedly using offshore tax havens. Trudeau was not able to respond; again, this may have been because of the debate format.

Overall, however, Singh sounded to me too much like an overeager schoolboy. A CTV commentator this morning declared him the winner of the debate. I can’t see that.

Asked a question on foreign policy, the NDP leader actually led with the need to “stand up to Trump.” This contrasted rather awkwardly with Bernier, who had just pledged to “Stand up for Canada.” It suggested that to the NDP, opposing the current US administration was Canada’s primary foreign policy objective.

I am not sure that will play well with the general public. If it does, it certainly does not reflect well on Canadians. Are we that nuts?

Elizabeth May did well, as she does, on sounding sincere. She took on Singh, for a second time, on the fatuousness of claiming he could pay for all his new spending simply by increasing taxes on millionaires. She was also casting doubt on her own spending plans; but in pointing this out, she demonstrated honesty and sobriety. People do value honesty when offered. Most politicians either do not believe this, or lie habitually.

May put a great hole in Blanchet for speaking of Albertans as others. This was fairly irrelevant politically; May’s support in Alberta is no doubt negligible, and Blanchet’s is nonexistent. It is not likely to help May in Quebec. It suggested, again, that May genuinely is a conviction politician.

But May also said, at one point, flatly and gratuitously, “anyone with white skin has privilege.” Sincerity only goes so far; perhaps Vlad the Impaler, too, was sincere in his beliefs.

Yves-Francois Blanchet had no objectives, and nothing to lose. So he was mostly able just to have a good time.

I think his presence, however, was useful. For example, he was able to give the common Quebecois position on Bill 21 and laicization. I think it is fundamentally wrong, but it does have logic behind it, and people in Anglophone Canada never get to hear it. As Blanchet rightly pointed out, it has nothing to do with race or with people different in appearance—a falsehood pushed by Singh in the debate. Calling everything you disagree with racist is cheap, dishonest, and the ideal way to popularize racism.

Blanchet neatly nailed Trudeau on his usual evasiveness, by asking him a straight up or down question, and pointing out that he did not answer it: “No answer?” And at the end: “No answer.”

He also got in a deft shot at Bernier, predicting that he would interrupt, and announcing the precise second when he did.

Up to that point, Bernier was interrupting everyone. From then on, he seemed to mostly hold his tongue and fade into the background. Probably not the best strategy, for him; suggesting that Blanchet scored a clean punch to the chin.

Which brings us to Bernier, who probably had most to gain by a good performance here.

Maxime Bernier needed to do several simple things: he needed to inform the public on what the PPC’s platform was, since this has generally been suppressed and falsified in the media. He had to make a distinction between himself and Scheer; and he had to sound like the guy to turn to if you are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, to surf the populist wave that Trump found in the US, and Farage in the UK.

I think he did the job, but nothing spectacular. There were no surprise revelations, no quick and withering rejoinders. He said only things he has said before. Except for one memorable phrase: referring to Trudeau’s and Scheer’s promises of tax reductions for specific purposes as “boutique tax credits.” Implying several things at once.

He oddly misfired, on the other hand, in accusing Scheer of not reducing foreign aid. Scheer had just referred to his plan to reduce foreign aid, and caught fire from May for it. Bernier seems to have not been paying attention. Or perhaps his English failed him.

Following the comments on the CBC live feed, the largest number seemed to see Bernier as the overall winner. Either he was, or he has a lot more support than the polls seem to show. Or else his supporters are more likely than others to be watching this debate online on CBC. This seems unlikely—even assuming Bernierites are more likely to be computer geeks, would the right prefer the public broadcaster to the various private channels available?

Perhaps this reflects the reality that his role was intrinsically easier to play than that of Scheer, or Trudeau, or Singh, or May. Unlike them, he was able to turn all his guns in one direction. If all the other candidates turned on him, that was only to his own advantage: it distinguished him as the voice of populist dissent.

Given the barest opening, a question on foreign affairs, Bernier led with his proposal to reduce immigration—his most controversial stand, in the eyes of the media. This was deliberately bringing down enemy fire. But Bernier obviously thought this was his best issue. As he repeatedly said, 49% of Canadians want less immigration; only 6% want more. Yet all five other parties want more immigration.

His judgement therefore seems right. This is a winning issue for him.

Bernier went after Singh on free speech. A bit surprising, since Singh is not appealing to the same voters. This makes me think that he did so out of genuine commitment to principle: Bernier really believes in liberal values. Singh soiled himself by doubling down, insisting on someone’s right—necessarily, in the end, his own—to silence opinions they consider objectionable. I hope others were as shocked by this as I was. I hope this is a winning issue for Bernier.

I know Bernier’s position on the Indian Act, and I wish he had injected it into the debate on “indigenous rights.” But it was probably his strategy to remain mostly silent. The boondoggle of Indian affairs is far too complex and too generally misrepresented to address in a sound bite. Scheer perhaps did as well as could be done in this context by pointing out that “advice and consent” of indigenous peoples is something that needs to actually be measured on the ground, and never has been; their opinions are forever imposed on them by outsiders acting in their name. As if they are to be perpetual wards of someone or other. Bernier did call, at least, for property rights on reserves.

I was disappointed not to hear Bernier’s position on Bill 21, a liberal/libertarian issue. But he was probably wise, again, to duck it. Apparently, he supports the principle of laicization. Nobody but the Bloc can win on Bill 21: the position that is popular in Quebec is unpopular in the other provinces. Bernier deserves credit, however, for bringing up “supply management,” his old signature issue, and calling for the construction of pipelines through Quebec; considered by others third-rail issues in Quebec.

Perhaps the most telling part of the debate was when the issue of abortion came up; something other leaders thought they could use against Scheer. Chaos seemed to immediately ensue, everyone shouting at once, Singh and Blanchet apparently breaking into their own side debate.

I think this is revealing: abortion is actually the single most important issue effecting our politics and culture. It is what divides us.

Very much like slavery in the antebellum USA.

Like slavery, it cannot be avoided forever, and the longer it is avoided, the nastier the inevitable confrontation may become.

A Personal Request

My brother is soon to undergo a serious operation. Could all Catholics reading this post, and others as well, if Marian devotions fit with your religious leanings, please make space in your daily prayers to include this brief request for intercession to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for his restored health?

Immaculate heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Kinjd of soothing for you as well, of course.

If you have a problem praying to Mary, please by all means pray to God directly.

Thanks so much. I'll try to keep you posted.

Biden's Narcissistic Rage

I may be missing something; too much has been going on elsewhere—but I cannot see the case for Trump’s impeachment. What wrong has he done?

What I have heard is that he tried to force a foreign government to influence a US election by threatening to withhold aid.

Based on the released transcript, if it is accurate, this charge is plainly false. Perhaps some other evidence will emerge, but it seems obviously wrong to launch an impeachment investigation with no initial evidence that anything wrong has occurred.

All Trump did was ask the Ukraine to investigate a possible crime. If potential political opponents are immune from investigation, this presents an opportunity for any criminal: simply declare your intent to run for office, and you cannot be investigated, let alone prosecuted.

And isn’t that a great way to ensure that all our politicians are honest?

By this same standard, Pelosi and the House Democrats automatically deserve to be impeached as a body if they launch an impeachment investigation against Trump.

One could not imagine a more perfect example of hypocrisy.

It also, in the absence of decent evidence, looks like harassment—and probably Trump would have a case against the Democrats in civil court for damages were he an ordinary citizen.

Joe Biden, on the other hand….

People all over the spectrum have fixed on the idea that Trump is a narcissist. This shows our perilous ignorance about narcissism. Trump is boastful; people think that is what narcissism is. That’s true only in cartoons and on TV. Which is perhaps where Trump learned his shtick.

But whether or not Trump is a narcissist, Joe Biden is. And his reaction to the current events is illustrative of how narcissists operate.

He begins his latest press conference by ruling out the subject of his own misdeeds as a topic for discussion. Self-evidently, it is a fair topic for discussion, and should be the main topic, since Biden is standing here, not Trump.

But this is the typical narcissist tactic. Dysfunctional families always have “elephants in the room,” as Adult Children of Alcoholics call them: large areas of discourse that must be avoided. Nobody must mention the parent’s drinking problem, or the things they do when drunk, or their business failures, or the family abortion, or whatever else reflects badly on the narcissist.

Why? Because the narcissist is the prime consideration, to which all, and all else, must submit: nothing must make the narcissist look bad.

This alone demonstrates that Trump is not a narcissist: he has no problem with making himself look bad in the eyes of many. And he’ll talk about anything.

Step two, having been accused of corruption, Biden leads by accusing Trump of corruption. This is the standard narcissistic tactic of “deflection” or scapegoating. It is not complex: narcissists are not deep. It is the ancient schoolyard taunt, “I know you are, but what am I?”

In the last few days, Rudy Giuliani has called Biden “the most corrupt vice president in modern times.” Biden actually takes this accusation word-for-word and hurls it at Trump: “the most corrupt president in modern times.” He acts like an automaton. Tellingly, “corrupt” is not the apt word in referring to Trump the politician, even were the current charges against him true. “Corrupt” is generally used to refer to improperly amassing money—as Biden and his son are accused of doing. We see Goering as corrupt: he pilfered paintings and lived the high life. We do not see Hitler as “corrupt.” Nobody is accusing Trump of trying to shake down the Ukraine for money; if money were his object, he would have stayed in the private sector. He was surely making more money there.

Biden then makes a show of finger-thrusting anger; the next inevitable narcissistic response when challenged. It is like a childhood tantrum. It is, in fact, a childhood tantrum, by a child who never grew up. And then, inevitably, he deflects this on to Trump as well, describing him as acting emotional and irrational. Just as Biden is acting while saying so.

Considering what he is being forced to deal with, Trump is demonstrating surprising calm, surprising level-headedness. He fights back, and no holds barred; but if one pays attention, always in a measured way, never in anger. For him, it seems to be purely business. His great talent is that he seems to take nothing personally.

A rare talent for a “narcissist.”

The next inevitable narcissistic tactic on display in Biden’s press conference is the naked lie. M. Scott Peck called narcissists “people of the lie.” Confronted with obvious proof that he had lied about never discussing Ukrainian affairs with his son—photos of him and Hunter playing golf with two executives from the Ukrainian oil company—he simply ignores the evidence as though it does not exist, saying “I stand by my statement.”

The typical narcissist, Biden lies even though his audience has to know he is lying, and he has to know that they know.

Biden of course deflects as well, insisting that Trump is a great liar. Here, of course, he has a case. That is his good luck.

Notice that narcissists do very well as second bananas. Biden was a near-perfect vice president, from Obama’s point of view: the obsequious servant, publicly praising and faithfully echoing the official line. This is something rarely understood, although it is plain in the original Greek legend of narcissus. Narcissists are naturally dependent personalities; they are not leaders. They are actually leaning for emotional support on those they try to dominate: they must be fed by their “supply.” They therefore easily segue into the Echo or “co-dependent” role: being fed from above.

It looks as though, whatever else it may do, this current Ukrainian furor will finish Biden’s chances to be Democratic presidential candidate. That seems almost providential, in terms of the good of the American nation.

It might also hurt Trump. It is as likely to help him. Even kill him, politically: you are left with Mike Pence.

It seems, therefore, that the entire Democratic Party is throwing a narcissistic tantrum.

But that perhaps is a subject for another column.

An Endorsement of Maxime Bernier

If You Like Political Islam, How about Political Catholicism?

Toronto's Cardinal Collins.

At the election debate a night or two ago, Cardinal Collins announced the intent to form ongoing political interest groups in the archdiocese, to advocate for Catholic political causes.

This idea makes me uncomfortable.

It does have some historical justification. In mainland Europe, there have been Catholic political parties. The Church does have a defined social teaching.

However, the image it immediately evokes for me is the United Church, which seems to have abandoned religion altogether for politics.

Which is an abdication of responsibility. We already have political parties to handle such affairs. By comparison, we lack awareness of religion.

Most political issues are not moral issues; they are disagreements on how best to accomplish some shared moral aim. To inject the Church into the political discourse systematically, without reference to some specific issue, risks missing this, and so increasing political divisions that have already become too wide. As well as alienating Catholics who cannot in good faith support the Church’s particular political positions. Bishops, priests, or religious people generally have no special insights or expertise here. Their training is not in law, or economics, or practical affairs, or political science.

Some political issues are indeed moral issues, and here I would expect the Church to speak loudly: abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, conscience rights, the seal of the confessional, whether a war is unjust, human equality in its true sense, real racism and discrimination—as opposed to the current gross misappropriation of these terms to mean their opposite. In principle, concern for the poor, of course—but this illustrates the problem. All current political groups profess concern for the poor. Accusing any current political party of lacking it is therefore claiming either greater expertise in politics than the politicians or non-Catholics generally, or claiming that those who oppose you politically are evil people, both malicious and dishonest.

That is a serious charge to make without strong evidence; it is destructive to society if not true; and it is bad Christianity.

The same would apply, in bargain quantities, to the Church getting involved with “environmental” issues. Nobody is opposed to a clean environment.

And I certainly do not want the local parish agitating for such things as a new neighbourhood crosswalk. Which is an example I think the cardinal actually used. How confident are we that it is objectively more moral to spend public funds on a new crosswalk than on some other priority--say, a seniors’ centre, paying down public debt, or a soup kitchen for the poor? Are we supposing the non-
Catholics are too stupid to see this, or simply evil?

It is not always obvious that we are well-served by the priorities of the North American Church hierarchy.

An Electorate on a Razor's Edge

The Toronto Archdiocese held a candidates’ debate last night. Not a leaders’ debate; just designated spokesmen for each party, all of whom were candidates, but for various ridings.

Apparently the hall sold out within 17 hours. The event was therefore broadcast to four other venues, and livestreamed. A friend watched from Vancouver.

As with the local all-candidates’ meeting I attended earlier, this suggests a strong interest this time.

Given that the platforms of the three main parties are almost the same, why? What is so at stake?

The opinion polls, moreover, show little movement.

It seems to me the explanation is that people are interested in the election, but have not yet made up their minds whom to support. Meantime, they are parking their votes in their traditional spots.

This means the campaign matters more than usual.

Trudeau is probably in the most trouble. The voters already know him; they have what they need to make a decision.

This unusually large group of voters must therefore be trying to decide among the alternatives. The opportunity is for one opposition party or another, with a good campaign, to pick up the lion’s share of the remainder and suddenly sweep ahead.

More or less as the Liberals and Trudeau managed to do last time.

This is also bad news for the Conservatives, since they are the obvious alternative if the consideration is to vote out Trudeau. They are failing to appeal, and voters are instead nosing around the NDP, Greens, and PPC.

But then again, maybe not so much the NDP. Current polls show them well down from their support last election. Even traditional NDP voters are apparently not parking there.

The big opportunity is for the Greens and the PPC. Perhaps the BQ too, but they are not a factor in the ridings where I have seen these turnouts.

If it seems odd that voters would be undecided between the PPC and NDP, supposedly at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, this is the usual thing. Political analysts are big on ideology. Disaffected voters are usually most interested in sending the strongest message they can to the ancien regime that they are dissatisfied. When, in 1968, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, the candidate that gained the largest share of his supporters was George Wallace—the southern segregationist. We saw the same dynamic last Ontario election; polls were surging back and forth between the PCs under Ford and the NDP under Horvath.

This is also what we have seen elsewhere recently; in the last few European elections. The electorate has been increasingly forking to Greens, on the left, and populist/nationalist parties on the right.

I expect this will be the big story this election: gains by both the PPC and the Greens. The question is which will surge the most.

This should produce a very unstable minority government, either Liberal or Conservative. Surging, neither Greens nor PPC are going to be interested in propping anybody up. NDP might back the Liberals, but doing so risks surrendering their usual support to the Greens for the sake of self-identifying with a sinking ship. So a new election is likely quite soon.

Will it be PM May or PM Bernier?

A Desire Named Streetcars

At the candidates’ debate I attended a few sleeps ago, the need for better public transit in Toronto came up. All candidates, being in Toronto, agreed that the federal government should put more money into public transit. A lot more. The city and the province concur; they argue only on which new subway line should be built. Other Canadian cities are in a building period.

I agree that public transit is a good idea. It is of particular benefit to the poor, it reduces traffic, and it reduces pollution. It also reduces carbon emissions, for what that is worth. As one candidate put it, “we need to get people out of their cars.”

At the same time, putting huge sums into subway lines right now strikes me as perhaps a bad idea. Technology is changing quickly. There is a real possibility that, with self-driving cars, the private automobile will become obsolete on its own: no need for anyone to keep a car idle in a garage for private use. When an owner does not need it, they can let it roam for fares. Less traffic, fewer emissions, and a quite possibly cheaper form of transport than a bus or subway. At no public cost—or government could spend their money subsidizing such rides for the poor.

Other technologies also seem to be on the horizon. There is Elon Musk’s tunnel-boring project, which may make subway tunnels a lot cheaper if we can just hold off for a bit. Along with road tunnels to reduce traffic problems. Dubai is experimenting with self-driving helicopter taxis, which may not do much for the carbon footprint, but could reduce both traffic and commute times. 

Self-driving air taxi.

Is this a good time to be ploughing billions into traditional technologies that may be obsolete in a few years? Especially since a new subway line takes years to build.

I can see a thing or two we could do right now, instantly improving the situation at almost no cost.

Shut down an existing street with an existing streetcar line to vehicular traffic. I’d say we choose Queen, Roncesvalles, and Broadview. We instantly have what is now referred to as LRT, as with the Spadina line, or the new line being built on Eglinton. Such streetcars no longer face the delays from traffic and obstructed track that are the great curse of the current system. Cyclists instantly have a safe route to and through the heart of downtown. Segways, electric scooters, and e-bikes could share the space—all more efficient and less polluting than cars. We will have improved public transit, and at the same time forced more people out of their cars, supposedly one of our objectives. We will, at almost no cost, have the “feeder lines” to east and west so long called for to reduce congestion on the existing downtown subway lines. Shopping will be easier and more social on such streets, without the need to go to the corner and wait for the lights to cross. And with the ability of commuters to impulse buy as they see an interesting shop on their way—something lost in a subway ride. Street life, a wonderful part of the urban experience in so many European cities, will be intensified.

You might object that all this makes things tough on the poor drivers.

But it is impractical now to try to drive downtown; much faster to cycle or subway, not to mention the problems with parking. Is much really lost? And if cars depart a given street, we suddenly have new real estate available for development, currently locked up in parking spaces.

Why is nobody suggesting this?

I fear it is because, without big new public expenditures, there are simply fewer opportunities for graft.

Going to the Candidates' Debate

Conservative candidate Nadir.

Last night I attended a local candidates’ debate here in the Canadian federal riding which, to preserve anonymity and protect the ashamed, we shall refer to as Bitches-East Yuck.

Such an event is probably not representative of anything at all, but nevertheless, I did it, so you must suffer through my notes.

First note: it was a packed house, in a large church. This suggests great public interest in this go-about. This may suggest trouble for the incumbents. Or it may not. Experts argue.

Second note: Liberal candidate Nathaniel Eelskin-Jones oozed charisma. If he survives this election, this guy has a future.

The Libs were out in force with glossy big flyers to hand out. The candidate himself extended a hand to all at the entrance to the church beforehand. A highly professional, well-funded operation. Not hard to recognize the establishment.

Four out of five candidates showed: Greens, Liberals, NDP, and PPC. The Conservative standard-bearer did not show. A pity, because she seems to be gorgeous. This no-show evoked the earliest boos from the audience.

This may suggest that Justin Trudeau’s non-appearance at national debates has similarly hurt him. On the other hand, this riding is historically unTory: they’ve never won it. It is a swing riding between the Liberals and NDP. They probably would have booed her presence at least as much as her absence.

Given this, the PPC candidate, Debandoug Mackenzie, deserves credit for courage in coming.

Actually, I am not quite accurate in saying that only the Tory candidate failed to show. So did Joe Ring, running for the None of the Above Party.

Unsurprisingly, given the electoral history, the Liberal and the NDP candidates got the most applause at their introduction. I could not tell who got more.

The NDP candidate, May Day, ranking challenger to the reigning Nat, was not impressive to look at. Short, squat, long straight hair, she looked like a campus radical from central casting. For some reason, leftist women are rarely attractive, and rightist women always are. She introduced herself as a human rights lawyer. She probable won likeability points by mentioning she was also in a klezmer band.

The Green Man was thin, young, bespectacled, and bowed of tie. Not a serious look. Let’s call him Waldo. If you need to ask why, look closer.

Debandoug Mackenzie was tall and blonde. An appropriate contrast to the NDPer aside her.

The MC, a local news anchor, twice jumped right in immediately after Ms. Mackenzie had stopped speaking, stepping all over the applause. He did this to no other candidate all night. This may have been to hurt, by masking the applause, or to help, by masking its absence. Since there was actually pretty enthusiastic applause, and it began before he did, I highly suspect the former. Like most gentle folk of the press currently, this guy seemed fairly blatantly partisan and on the left. Perhaps the Conservative candidate, Nazeerah Nadir, was forewarned.

I can even name this guy's preferred party: he made it easy being Green. At one point, he cited scandals affecting all the party leaders, in a feint at being even-handed. He had to stretch a bit to hit Jagmeet Singh—only that he had not yet visited the Maritimes. But he actually said it was hard to think of anything against Elizabeth May.

This no doubt came as a surprise to many who had heard of photoshopped straws, or endorsing separatist candidates, or failing to support her own Green candidate against Jody Wilson-Raybould. It was all like the persistent media myth that the Obama administration was free of scandals.

He was not so fond of the Liberals.

For the PPC, he asked about Bernier calling Greta Thunberg “mentally unstable.” Hardly a public issue; more a declaration of partisan allegiances. Mackenzie drew boos by responding, in part, that this was admitted publicly by both Greta and her mother. She might have added that Bernier did not bring it up in his tweet: he was actually agreeing with supporters of Thunberg who were referring to her as autistic. Presumably the problem was no more than his choice of words?

But the boos then also drew pushback from others in the audience.

Not necessarily significant. Obviously, all candidates would have brought with them a corps of supporters.

Later, the moderator asked each candidate in turn what government could do about the housing crisis. The other three all talked about the government building more housing. Odd that none thought of the possible participation of the private sector. But then it came to Mackenzie, who after a halting start saying only that it was not a federal responsibility, said there were two sides to the equation, supply and demand. Short term, it was hard to do anything about the supply. But we can reduce the demand by taking in fewer immigrants.

This provoked a stronger reaction than the Thunberg comment. Someone from the middle rows shouted out, “if that’s how you feel, you should leave.”

But there was again immediate pushback: someone else shouted out, “if you don’t want free debate, YOU should leave.” “This is Canada; we have freedom of speech. We are a free people.”

This may have changed something. Mackenzie was not booed again. When Mr. Green tried to condemn her from the front of the room, for being opposed to immigration, there were voices calling out, “no one said that.”

That seemed to end attempts to attack her from the podium as well. She made her closing statement all about the current assault on freedom of speech. She referred to the troubles around Maxime Bernier’s talk in Hamilton, and specifically to a little old lady with a walker who was confronted and her progress blocked by a swarm of young blackshirts ironically shouting at her that she was a fascist.

This time her ending was not stepped on by the moderator, and she was given energetic applause. There were no boos.

As the meeting broke up, she seemed to have at least as many audience members surrounding her as anyone else. I saw Mr. Green and May Day talking to each other.

I think both audience and other candidates read the room and realized, perhaps with some surprise, that scapegoating the PPC was not going to help them here. But then again, why bother? The PPC is no threat to anyone else except the Tories, and the Tory candidate was not there.

They turned instead, sensibly enough, on the Liberals.

Support for Natty Eelskin-Jones seemed to wane as the night wore on. The moderator asked each candidate how free they would be to dissent with their leader. Eelskin-Jones was the obvious target. He insisted he was perfectly free; that got guffaws. Everyone, of course, was thinking of Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott. Eelskin-Jones prevaricated in typical political fashion, saying he was personally “not entirely supportive” of kicking the two ministers out of caucus, but “the way things unfolded” it was necessary, because they had made it “personal.”

That got applause from some in the audience. But I suspect to others it diminished him.

As he made his closing statement, he drew hoots: “pipeline!” “SNC-Lavalin!”

The PPC candidate and the NDPer both insisted that their parties and leaders left them free to vote their conscience. Audience members who followed the news knew this was untrue of the NDP, who have recently bounced candidates for little cause. But nobody called Ms. Day on it. Mr. Green, a bit more honestly, insisted that Green MPs would be free to vote their own views on all matters “except a woman’s right to choose.”

Now isn’t that peculiar, and isn’t that an indication that there is something wrong here? The official raison d’etre for the Green Party is, of course, the environment. But once the chips are down, that is not their prime concern at all.

Waldo’s mention may have reminded some in the audience that the Liberal Party has the same dogma: Justin Trudeau is on record that nobody can run for the Liberals who does not support unrestricted abortion.

Nobody took the matter further. It all came too close, perhaps, to pulling back the forbidden curtain.

May Day’s performance was perfectly unremarkable, and nobody ever challenged her or gave her a tough question.

Maybe that means she won. Or maybe that means nobody is very excited about the NDP.

Reasons to Vote for Bernier

Maxime Bernier

The Liberals, Conservatives, and NDP are all running on the same platform. Of course, the NDP always says this of the other two parties; but it is true this time of the NDP as well. This is deadly for democracy—it withholds policy choices from the electorate, allowing all to be decided by some unaccountable elite. Aside from one’s position on the issues, it is important for the sake of Canadian democracy that we vote for Maxime Bernier. Vote for Bernier now, or forever hold your peace.

There is a concurrent effort by a faction of the population to prevent Bernier from being heard, and even by violent means. A recent event in Hamilton with Dave Rubin required police protection, and was almost cancelled. This again makes it vital for democrats to vote Bernier. Such tactics must not succeed.

Even leaving this aside, Bernier is the only candidate running who is qualified to be prime minister. It is as my friend says, of Scheer, Singh, and May: “can you imagine any of these representing Canada abroad?” As with Trudeau, none has done anything particularly impressive in either politics or any other field. No career in senior cabinet positions, no Nobel Prizes, no Canada Steamship Lines, no great battles over principle fought.

Bernier alone has held senior cabinet positions, including Foreign Affairs, often considered the number two spot in cabinet. He had a prominent career in business before entering politics. He led, alone, on the issue of supply management.

Bernier deserves support as well for showing principle: he came out against supply management in Quebec, home to much of the dairy industry, even though representing a riding in which dairy farming was a major business. He probably lost the Conservative leadership on this issue—the dairy lobby backed Scheer as a result.

If we want honest politicians, such commitment to principle must be rewarded, even regardless of the particular principle involved. If we want true leaders, we need someone who, like Bernier, shows the ability to lead on an issue.

With his free market creed, Bernier represents a promising trend in Quebec politics, away from the eternal and unproductive federalism-separatism issue, towards a more healthy liberal-conservative divide. The CAQ has risen provincially on this basis; only Bernier embodies it at the federal level. For the sake of Canadian unity, and for Quebec’s economic health, it would be a very good thing if this focus on practical rather than ethnic issues were to succeed. Accordingly, those who want Canadian unity and prosperity ought to vote Bernier.

All of this is without even considering the rights and wrongs of Bernier’s stands on the issues. Even if you disagree with him on these, you should vote PPC. But now let’s look at the issues.

Bernier, and only Bernier, wants to end the government-enforced cartel that forces up the price of milk, cheese, and eggs. Legally mandated cartels are intrinsically violations of human rights, giving special privileges to a favoured group. They also violate good economic principles, encouraging inefficiencies. These particular restraints on trade have been a stumbling block in negotiating better trade deals with other countries; other parts of our economy have had to suffer for it. Subsidizing the dairy and egg industry deprives us of the right to object to similar subsidies elsewhere, which prevent Canadians from entering those markets.

Most importantly, these particular price controls are a cruel imposition on the poor. The rich do not spend their surfeit on extra eggs or milk; these are staples. Eggs, milk, and cheese are in most places the cheapest protein sources. This is a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

And it is in particular babies who need milk to thrive.

Bernier, and only Bernier, also wants a values test on new immigrants. This caught a lot of hostile attention in the last Conservative leadership campaign; we all hate values any more. But it is obviously necessary. Canada is not based on ethnicity, as most states are. So what can it possibly be based on, what brings us together in this shared enterprise, if it is not shared values? Without a strong shared commitment here, Canada is not viable. It will fall apart at the next real stress.

Nor is it hard or should it be controversial to come up with such shared values. Shared values are plainly stated in the Canadian Constitution.

It ought to be self-evident that all new immigrants should sign on: this is the Canadian social contract.

Bernier, and only Bernier, wants to end funding for multiculturalism. Again, this is almost a no-brainer. A Canadian government should be supporting Canadian culture, not Icelandic or Somali or Vietnamese culture. A nation is a shared culture, by definition. Promoting cultural differences is promoting factionalism, tribalism, and mutual distrust, in opposition to the nation and its common interests. Nazism was multiculturalism: it believed there was an Aryan science, and a Jewish science. And was not keen on letting them mix.

On top of building a society of peace, order, and good government, the entire process of civilization is a process of mixing and merging cultures: one selects the best options available from all sources. The idea of artificially nurturing cultural differences is accordingly a deliberate descent into barbarism. It is to do the work of Babel.

I am not spontaneously enthusiastic about Bernier’s desire to lower levels of immigration. I agree with the argument that we need more immigrants for economic reasons: people are the prime economic resource, as well as being an end in themselves. Canada, moreover, is objectively underpopulated. As a Christian and a liberal, I endorse the view that people have an inherent, God-given right to freedom of movement. And the process of civilization should accelerate with the closer contact of cultures: it is the reason we once held World’s Fairs.

However, there can still be such a thing as too high a level of immigration. We are dangerously ignorant of the problem of culture shock. Immigrants to a very unfamiliar culture are likely to go more than a little mad and assume that here, anything goes. They can be hostile to the resident population. It can even take a few generations for this to settle down. For most of last century, the face of crime in America was Italian. Before that, the Irish went through a similar spell of “gangs of New York” and Tammany Hall corruption. Less well known, but there were also ethnically Polish criminal gangs, and ethnically Jewish criminal organizations, like Detroit’s “Purple gang,” and so forth. If some groups have been less of a problem, this can be accounted for pretty consistently by relative lack of initial cultural difference, smaller numbers, and greater initial dispersion.

We are currently striving for maximum initial cultural difference, maximum numbers, and everyone is settling in Toronto and Vancouver.

If the body of immigrants is too large, too distinct, too concentrated in urban centres, and going through culture shock, we have a big, expensive, and dangerous problem. People can get killed, towers may be toppled, and the system can be subverted.

Given this, Bernier’s limits on immigration, while favouring immigration that makes the most sense in economic terms, seem right.

Bernier wants to abolish the Indian Act. This is again almost self-evidently good. The Indian Act was passed as a transitory measure. It enshrines the improper notion that there are two classes of Canadians, with different rights and privileges. It obviously violates the fundamental moral principle of human equality. It had to be given a special exemption from the Charter of Rights. Indian leaders ever since have blamed almost everything on the Indian Act, and declared it paternalistic and racist. This seems to be one thing we can actually all agree on. Indians governed by the Act are demonstrably, objectively, doing worse than other Canadians.

Bernier notes that any existing treaties must be respected.

How could anyone object?

Bernier’s views overall mesh notably better with those of Donald Trump’s administration in the US than those of any other candidate. Adolescent anti-Americanism aside, it is obviously in Canada’s extreme interest to be on good terms with America’s government. The US is our largest trading partner, and we depend more on trade than any other developed country. We could never defend this vast land mass, either, without the American guarantee. Anyone else would have long ago swallowed us up. We ought in good faith as well as in our interests to always seek common ground.

We are still in the middle of an election campaign. Calculations may change. But for now, it seems important to vote PPC and Bernier.