Posts
Wednesday, February 16, 2022
What's the Delay?
My understanding is that the Emergency Act must be voted on tomorrow, because the House is going away for a week, and it must be approved within seven days. Yet the Conservative House leader co9mplained this evening that he had not yet been shown the bill. It had been promised for this morning.
The obvious explanation for this is that the government is now afraid it will not pass, or afraid it is a mistake. There may be furious negotiations going on within their caucus, or with the NDP.
If it does come down, some members may find here a safe, uncontroversial “öff ramp” to vote against it—on the grounds that the government did not give them enough time to examine it.
Will the Emergency Act Actually Pass?
I assumed that Justin Trudeau had solid assurance of support before he announced the Emergency Act. But the blowback seems to have gotten severe. Premiers are speaking against it. Foreign media are mocking him. Blanchet was breathing fire today in the Commons. It will not play well in Quebec.
Jagmeet Singh seems to have gotten cold feet, and now says he “may” drop his support. My own MP, Liberal, responded to my concern by saying he was examining the arguments to see if it is justified—surely implying he might vote against it.
In the meantime, the objective justification for it gets weaker. The border blockade at Windsor is over. The border blockade at Coutts is over. I hear the blockade at Denison is over. I hear the blockade at Surrey is over. What exactly is the emergency?
Yet Trudeau still sounded determined in Question Period today.
The further he pushes this, the worse it may look for him.
If he withdraws it now without a vote, having been so insistent that it was needed, it looks as though he overreacted. But even worse if he puts it to the vote, and loses. Either way, he looks foolish, reckless, and panicked.
We shall see. We may see Generalissimo Trudeau in a few days, Or we may be looking at the end of his premiership.
More than a Rhyme
Has anyone else noticed how closely Justin Trudeau’s background, character, public persona, and even his actions track those of Sir Francis Bond Head, the guy who is blamed by history for provoking the Mackenzie Rebellion in Upper Canada in 1837?
History repeats itself.
And some never learn from it.
Tuesday, February 15, 2022
Some Clarity
Going on Jordan Peterson's podcast is becoming the way of getting on the Canadian public record.
The legacy media is of no use. And to say only that is giving them more credit than they deserve.
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The Ugly Canadian
Street protest outside the Canadian Consulate in New York City. Trudeau continues to tarnish Canada's international reputation.
The Real Stakes
The Emergency Act and its predecessor, the War Measures Act, has only been invoked three times in Canadian history. The video says a bit about how our government used it the first time.
Of course the Emergency Act will pass; Trudeau would not have announced it without getting a guarantee from the NDP.
If the Emergency Act is passed, Canada is no longer a democracy.
It has been well observed, perhaps first by Thomas Jefferson, that for a democracy to work, you need a class of people who are financially self-sufficient, who do not depend on government for their daily needs. Jefferson saw freeholders as the backbone of American democracy: they could survive and feed their families indefinitely in the absence of government. Only such a class can safely organize against the current government.
This is why democracy does not work in most places until the GDP per capita hits something around $10,000. This is the point at which enough people are not living hand to mouth that they can organize.
The chronic poverty of Canadian First Nations is due to the fact that the reserve system makes everybody dependent on the band council and the federal government for their daily necessities. This makes them unable to organize to defend their interests. They have to do what they are told.
Truckers owning their own trucks are an ideal group to fight for our freedoms. Unlike people on the factory floor, or professionals obliged to buy into the system at all times, or businessmen dependent on constant liaison and permissions from government, they are relatively free agents. They can come and go, largely off the grid, moving easily with their means of livelihood to a new jurisdiction if necessary, living in their trucks if necessary. This is why they were available to defend our freedoms.
The Emergency Act seems to deliberately target financial independence from government. It gives the government the power to go into bank accounts or private transactions, and seize assets without court permission, without review, without notice and without legal recourse. It is the perfect wrecking ball to destroy democracy. Under the Emergency Act, should the government choose, nobody can afford to stand against the government of the day.
If it is invoked now, for such trivial reasons, it hardly matters if it is time-limited. Setting the precedent means it can be used again, at a moment’s notice. No organized opposition to government can now form.
If it is invoked now, as it clearly will be, the only way to restore Canadian democracy is to take the Emergency Act off the books. And exact some penalty for those who allowed it to be used.
A Journal of the State of Emergency
It is obvious that Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergency Act is a misuse of the Act. Aside from war or natural disaster, the Act is to be triggered only if Canadian national security is threatened by:
(a) espionage or sabotage that is against Canada or is detrimental to the interests of Canada or activities directed toward or in support of such espionage or sabotage,
(b) foreign influenced activities within or relating to Canada that are detrimental to the interests of Canada and are clandestine or deceptive or involve a threat to any person,
(c) activities within or relating to Canada directed toward or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property for the purpose of achieving a political, religious or ideological objective within Canada or a foreign state, and
(d) activities directed toward undermining by covert unlawful acts, or directed toward or intended ultimately to lead to the destruction or overthrow by violence of, the constitutionally established system of government in Canada,
but does not include lawful advocacy, protest or dissent, unless carried on in conjunction with any of the activities referred to in paragraphs (a) to (d)
In its own words, it is not to be used against lawful protest or dissent. That is exactly how it is being used now.
There been any espionage or sabotage. The government might point to the blockade of the Ambassador Bridge. But if blockade amounts to sabotage, strikes by unionized workers have also just been outlawed. Moreover, the blockade at the bridge has already been ended. There are smaller, less consequential blockages at Coutts, and one in Manitoba, but the Alberta and Manitoba governments both say there is no emergency.
There have been no threats of or use of violence against persons or property. Despite its size, the convoy has been a model of peaceful protest. The authorities may try to use the seizure of guns near the Coutts border crossing to claim (c) applies. This is pretty weak; Canadians have the right to own guns, and the possession of a gun is hardly evidence of an intent to overthrow the government. There are also claims online that this is a false flag, that the guns actually seized did not come from the convoy or the protesters. Given what the government has already resorted to, these claims are credible. We know they have been using plants and false flags.
There has been no activity for the purpose of overthrowing Canada’s constitution. The government and the NDP have made much of a memorandum, posted online demanding that the governor general dismiss the Trudeau government. However, this is not obviously in violation of the Canadian constitution, and did not call for any violence; and both the truckers and the online memorandum say it has nothing to do with the truckers.
The one charge the government might try is (b), clandestine or deceptive foreign influence. And it looks as though they are trying to do this. On the grounds that much of the money flowing into GoFundMe or GiveSendGo has been from the US.
This is simply inevitable. Nor is it obviously sinister. Nobody raised any red flags when Barack Obama endorsed Justin Trudeau a couple of elections ago. The government will have to demonstrate that, in this case, it was deceptive and clandestine. But it was not. Nobody was trying to conceal the sources of the donations. GoFundMe or GiveSendGo were following their standard practices. If they are problematic now, they were always problematic. There is no justification to declare an emergency.
As a practical matter, what does the Emergency Act accomplish? Nothing, in terms of public safety. The blockade of the Ambassador Bridge is already ended. If the Ottawa protest was ever unlawful, the Ottawa police always had the legal authority to break it up.
What is left, then, other than perhaps to seize the bank accounts and assets of any opponents of the government? To intimidate and cripple any future opposition to government power?
I suppose it does not matter that the use of the Emergency Act is illegitimate. If Parliament says it is proper, who can stop it? The Supreme Court?
But this is a serious stain on Canada’s reputation, and a serious destabilization of Canadian democracy. It threatens to throw Canada into a state of civil war. It is no trivial thing that, standing on the other side now are four provincial premiers, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and the last surviving signer of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Emergency Act was intended for times of war. If Trudeau is now forced out of power, the stain will be on him. If he is not, Canada itself will wear the stain for the rest of history. If Canadian democracy survives.
Monday, February 14, 2022
Cancel Culture
I wonder if anyone really does not understand that the way to defeat a bad idea is to let as many people hear it as possible. This after all is the simple insight that gave us modern science: publish your results. Let anyone who can challenge them.
If anyone instead wants to suppress speech, or suppress an idea, it is because they think it is true.
Choose your reading or listening material accordingly.
Sunday, February 13, 2022
A Journal of the Plague Year--Er, Decade
It's probably of little interest, but on my afternoon walk today, in this Toronto neighbourhood, absolutely nobody I passed was wearing a mask. One guy looked at me knowingly (I was not wearing a mask either) and said hi; as if we knew each other. A few weeks ago everyone would be wearing a mask.I think ordinary people are quietly expressing their feelings in this way.
Flying Monkeys
After a couple of weeks in which everyone seemed to be coming out in favour of the convoy protesters, we begin to see the counter-protests and the aggressively hostile tweets appear.
These counter-protesters are examples of the psychological phenomenon called “flying monkeys.” Watching them is informative.
These are people who could not legitimately expect to advance by their merits, but are determined to advance nonetheless. So their strategy is to seek preferment by showing unreasonable and unreasoning loyalty to whomever they think has the power to grant such preferment. They therefore become useful tools in the hands of any tyrant. Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern were Shakespearean examples.
You can almost see this in images of their little protests. “Soy boys”; “beta males.” Bitter, unattractive women. The mere physical contrast with the convoy supporters is striking. For one thing, they seem uniformly shorter.
Two Quick Thoughts
Two reflections on the current troubles.
1. The OPP deserve credit for ending the blockade of the Ambassador Bridge as peacefully as they did. It forms an honourable contrast to images of the French police using tear gas in Paris, and the Dutch police on horseback with truncheons. Or the New Zealand police playing Barry Manilow records.
Credit where credit is due.
2. I should have been a trucker instead of an academic.
Xerxes Weighs In
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| Brian Peckford |
Friend Xerxes has at last done his inevitable column on the Freedom Convoy—from the left-wing perspective.
He begins by writing “making demands to restore things the way they were before the pandemic is ridiculous. The coronavirus is not going to go away.”
Boy Howdy? He makes the truckers’ point for them, forcefully: the restrictions, imposed in an emergency, are going to be permanent. This is what they are afraid of.
To condemn the truckers, he makes three analogies: it is like holding somebody hostage and demanding a ransom. It is like occupying a food bank and closing it down to demand new management. Honking horns is bullying, shouting down opposing voices.
All three fail.
For the first, he would have to identify something or someone the truckers are holding hostage. He actually cites the city of Ottawa. Yet they are simply parked on Wellington Street; anyone is free to come and go. The worst you can say is that they are obstructing traffic; but they claim they are keeping emergency lanes open.
Xerxes might make a better case with the Ambassador Bridge. There, commerce is being obstructed.
But--an odd thing--when I see the photographs, videos, and aerial views, there are no trucks; just cars, maybe vans, and pedestrians. Some online say there never were any big rigs.
Perhaps there never were any trucks; perhaps the trucks drove off when the provincial government ordered them to, or after a relatively brief protest. But since there are no trucks, it seems dubious to blame “the truckers.” This may be a separate protest inspired by theirs, as others have been in Europe, New Zealand, and South America.
The analogy of barricading the local food bank looks like a straw man argument. It requires the claim that the intent of the protest is to overthrow the government, which the truckers have denied. It is to lift mandates. So the more exact analogy would be people protesting outside a closed food bank demanding it be reopened.
The third analogy, that truckers are shouting someone or something down by honking their horns, would require us to find some voice or point of view that is not being heard because of the truckers. The government’s? The media’s? That claim would be laughable.
Bullies do not pick on people bigger and stronger than they are. By that standard, David was a bully when he challenged Goliath.
And by that standard, speaking out is silencing someone else. But then only silence is free speech, and speaking out isn’t. So there’s also no problem if anyone else is silenced, is there?
Most disturbingly, our leftist interlocutor writes “’Freedom’ is, in reality, an American catch-phrase, not a Canadian one.”
The Canadian Constitution begins with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The UN Declaration of Human Rights, universal and endorsed by all member states, begins “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
“Freedom” is also a Christian catchphrase. It is to exercise free will, freedom of choice, that we were created and put in the Garden. It is freedom, being moral agents, that makes us more than animals, and participants in the divine. It gives us our chance of heaven.
You ask “Freedom for whom? For what? From what?”
In a current lawsuit, and in speeches, Brian Peckford, one of the actual framers of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, has outlined how its freedoms are currently being violated. Notably, mobility rights, the right to work, freedom of speech, the right to security of the person, freedom of association. I would add freedom of conscience; not sure he does. And the moment any right is lost, all are endangered.
Insisting none of the truckers’ rights have been violated, Xerxes writes, “no one has forced them to get vaccinated at gunpoint.”
To make that true, he had to add “at gunpoint.” The left is obsessed with guns. Only guns are evil. The truckers and many others across Canada have been forced to get vaccinated or lose their jobs and livelihoods.
He writes of “Trump posters and Confederate flags on display”; as a reason to dismiss the protests. At best, that is an ad hominem argument.
There are Trump posters. So far as I have been able to find online, only one Confederate flag has ever shown up at the protest. The man flying it was masked—an indication he was not a part of the protest against masking. He was challenged and chased off by the people around him.
What does a Confederate flag mean in Canada? Obviously not Southern pride. Slavery, then? Then it obviously has no part in a protest demanding freedom.
I think it is a fair guess that the guy was a plant.
To finish off, Xerxes claims that the truckers are suspiciously well-organized. Their funding and organization must have come from the US.
But if the US far right wants to launch a freedom convoy, why would they do it in Canada instead of the US? Why haven’t they even managed a parallel demonstration there? Bad planning, for such brilliant planners.
Odd too to assume that Canadians cannot do things for themselves, but would need American help.
Or is it that they are truckers?
The notion that the truckers could not have organized themselves reminds me of the claim that Shakespeare could not have written his plays, because he had only been to grammar school. And, of course, a carpenter and a few fishermen could not have founded a church that could take over the Roman Empire.
It is classism. It assumes that the working class is stupid.
They obviously are not. That is bourgeois prejudice. Or rather, clerical prejudice.
The Evils of Tory Rhetoric
_(cropped).jpg/330px-Nathaniel_Erskine-Smith_at_the_East_York_Canada_Day_Parade_-_2018_(42256213615)_(cropped).jpg) |
| Natty Nate. |
My MP, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, has now reversed his earlier, qualified support of Joel Lightbound. He claims his comments were “torqued” by the media—although what I read were his own tweets. He now blames the Conservatives for any verbal escalation of the current trucker protests:
“he's right that we all need to stand down on divisive rhetoric. This is particularly true for my Conservative colleagues.”
He thereby ignores as comparatively trivial such examples from his leader, Justin Trudeau, as are quoted by Bill Maher in the clip. Conrad Black writes “The defamation and the attempt to incite public hostility against [the protesters] was contemptible demagogy.”
So what were the Conservative insults that were so much worse? Erskine-Smith says, obliquely, “we should not platform or engage the language of treason, medical experiments, Nuremberg Code, etc.”
Worse indeed. So much worse that one must not just never say this; one must deplatform and silence anyone who does.
Oddly, however, he cites no one saying these things, and so far as I have seen online—and I have been following events, especially in Parliament, pretty closely—no Conservative members have accused the government using such terms.
Since nobody prominent has even made the claims, it would appear that they are terrible only in the sense that it would be terrible if anyone did say them. And so terrible that Erskine-Smith will not himself actually say them, but seems to refer to them obliquely. And even if they have not said them, the Conservatives COULD say them. Which actually implies that they are true.
It seems important, then, to find out just what he means.
Treason is plain enough. One can only be concerned that the Liberals are, in their own minds, open to that charge. Are they, for example, colluding with the US government to suppress the protests? Who else might he mean? China?
What is the Nuremberg Code?
The Nuremberg Code, I find, is a set of standards for medical experimentation. It was created in 1947 as a reaction to Nazi experiments on humans. As summarized by the British Medical Journal,
“Amongst other requirements, this document enunciates the requirement of voluntary informed consent of the human subject. The principle of voluntary informed consent protects the right of the individual to control his own body.”
Obviously, whether or not they are experimental, vaccine mandates violate this requirement for voluntary informed consent, and the principle of the right of the individual to control his own body.
And it is arguable that the vaccines, approved only for emergency use, are still experimental.
The Nuremberg Code is not a Canadian law. But the optics look pretty bad for the government. I suspect it might also be used persuasively in a lawsuit: the government may abridge basic human rights, like security of the person, only in situations demonstrably necessary for a free and democratic society. Violation of the Nuremberg Code is persuasive evidence that this standard has not been met.
It all might be hell to p[ay for the government, not just in present political terms, but in the courts for years to come.
Thanks to Nathaniel Erskine-Smith for this tip.
Saturday, February 12, 2022
Another Border Crossing Closed
Reports now there is a demonstration at the Osoyoos, BC, border crossing.
A Canadian Standoff North of the Border
It looks as though the police are not using any strong-arm tactics on the crowd at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor. And the bridge remains blocked. No tear gas, for example. No slow, steady advance on horseback with batons. No--wait, let's not give anyone ideas. The deputy chief was actually on local TV claiming the police are trying to negotiate with the protesters. They may be taking the sensible approach.
https://twitter.com/thomasdaigle/status/1492629409190268933
It looks as though they were hoping they would scare the protesters off, but they do not want to escalate the situation and become the bad guys.
Not my place to say it, I'm not there, and I don't actually support blocking the bridge, after making the point that they could, but it looks to me as though the protesters in Windsor may have nothing to fear but fear itself. It looks like a feint, similar to the one in Ottawa last Sunday night.
Stand firm, and either the government doesn't have the stomach to push it, or, at least as likely, cannot count on the police to do so.
If the police were to break in any visible numbers and join the protesters, it would all be over quickly.
One thing the Windsor blockade has probably done is taken the pressure off the Ottawa demonstrators. OPP resources have been sucked south. Whack-a-mole.
The Winds Shift Again
Almost everything in this piece from the legacy media is a lie.
If it is insurrectionist to deputize some members of the convoy as “peace officers.” so is setting up a neighbourhood watch program. Canada is full of such revolutionaries, it seems. Obviously, the truckers want to maintain order; if there is any criminal activity, they are liable to be the victims, and there are children among them. And then the government and the media will blame them for it. The Ottawa police themselves keep complaining they are understaffed and cannot maintain order.
The voiceover then claims that Candace Bergen and the Conservatives have changed their tune, from encouraging the convoy to telling them to go home. Whether you agree with her or not, Bergen has been telling the convoy to go home from the beginning.
The disturbing thing is that CTV now believes it is safe to go back to spouting the government line. A few days ago, it looked as though they were trying to pivot.
My local MP, too, has turned tail and withdrawn his partial support for MP Joel Lightbound. He now actually has the cheek to blame the Conservatives for any inflammatory rhetoric.
The worry is why they all suddenly feel renewed confidence. The obvious change is that the US government has spoken, prompted by the closing of the Ambassador Bridge. It is now as though they feel assured that, if worst comes to worst, the Yanks will come in to restore order, just like those tanks on the streets of Budapest in 1956, or of Prague in 1968.
A People's History
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| Beauty and the Beast |
Xerxes opines that he never liked history back in high school or university, because it was “primarily a record of an endless succession of wars.”
“History books say next to nothing about what life was like for the peasants who served as cannon fodder -- collateral damage -- in those wars, or how they survived when they weren’t at war.”
My take on history is the opposite. I always loved history in the traditional sense, the accounts of wars and how they were lost or won, of how government policies succeeded or failed. The recent fad of documenting the lives of ordinary people instead―including “black history” and “women’s history”—misses the point. I find it useless except as a sort of gossip, with the same appeal to some of our worst instincts.
Why do we study history? To learn the lessons of the past: Don’t pay Danegeld. Don’t debase the coinage. Don’t leave defence in the hands of foreign mercenaries. Don’t appoint two leaders with identical authority. We learn these things from the experience of leaders with important responsibilities, a high public profile, dealing with major matters of public consequence in most cases, for the obvious reason that this is where we have clear documentation of what was done and what resulted. We have more detailed records.
We might have even better records for very recent events, but there we do not have the long view, and personal interests—politics—can cause distortions of the record. Cause and effect are not yet clearly visible.
A focus on the ordinary life of the common man or woman is similarly useless. Our documentation of their experiences, their decisions, and their results is always far scantier. This leaves a barn door open to anyone to imagine or falsify. Even if this were not so, it is almost impossible to connect cause and effect.
Not that the experiences of the common man or woman are not of interest. Not that there is no documentation. But this falls in a different realm of discourse: not history, which is concerned ultimately with politics, but literature. For the average man or woman rarely made public policy. From them we learn of fundamental life decisions: whom to marry, how to raise a child. And our sources are folk songs and ballads, folk tales, popular legends.
At Coutts Alberta
Nice music. The good guys always have better music, and that is meaningful.
Leonard Cohen: "We are ugly, but we have the music."
Give Ford a Better Idea
As politically unwise as was and is Justin Trudeau’s refusal to recognize or parley with the Ottawa protesters, Doug Ford’s reaction is even worse. He seems to have turned on a major part of his base. He has probably killed any hope of reelection. As Erin O’Toole just demonstrated, this is not a time in which Tories can ignore their base. Their base is upset.
Trudeau’s actions can be explained by the urgent desire by the “deep state” to set up a system to permanently track and gather data on the citizenry. This is not just a conspiracy theory, either; some of it has come to light in recent parliamentary and congressional investigations. Some of it is visible in the “deplatforming” and “cancel culture” movement. This really has to be what the vaccine mandates were about; since they are now politically risky, and have no definite medical or scientific value.
Doug Ford may be part of this to; he has his own deep state whispering in his ear. But this hypothesis may not be necessary in his case. It is enough that Ford is indecisive. This is something we already knew. He flip flops often.
For a long time, he did not know what to do about the current protest. Queen’s Park was silent, and conspicuously absent from the Ottawa discussions among levels of government.
But when the Ambassador Bridge was closed, Ontario businessmen would have rung him up, directly and personally—as a fellow businessman and, as it were, Rotarian. Ford is always going to want to please the person he has most recently spoken to. Rumour is that he first spent some time with the deep state hoping they would agree to dropping mandates. But evidently they would not. So he acted as he did. The path of least resistance was to get tough.
This being so, the smart strategy for those who oppose the mandates, or simply oppose this getting violent, is to make sure this does not remain the path of least resistance. Resist, and he is likely to back down.
I urge all who have a Conservative MPP—I do not—to contact them and warn that you will not support any violence to end the protest. It must be done by compromise and negotiation.
The present danger is that, by clearing the Ambassador Bridge by what looks like force or intimidation, if he can, Ford will have solved his immediate problem, but will have increased the odds that the main protest in Ottawa, and the protests elsewhere, will also end in arrests, and possibly bloodshed. It will encourage this approach.
No Shirt!
RoseAnne Archibald, Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, has publicly objected to the Ottawa protesters declaring today Orange Shirt Day, in honour of allegedly murdered and abused aboriginal children. They have no business, she insists, appropriating this to their cause. This is “a real insult.”
Keep in mind that aboriginal people, and aboriginal children, are among the protesters. There have been many Mohawk, Metis, and other aboriginal flags seen in the crowds.
This is as if “Black Lives Matter” were objecting to someone saying that black lives matter; or abolitionists objecting to anyone saying “free the slaves; or Christians objecting to anyone saying “Jesus is Lord.”
It illustrates that the Orange Shirt movement is not about aboriginal children, or aboriginals, or children. It is about power. It is a weapon made and honed to be used by aboriginal leaders to advance their agenda and their control.
The Assembly of First Nations itself is not an organic growth, but a creature of the federal government, which funds it. Leadership is selected Soviet-style, not by ordinary Indians.
At the start of the pandemic, I had hopes that this would end our differences and make us all pull together against a common enemy. There would be a new era of peace and brotherhood.
I was wrong, and very soon saw and admitted that I was wrong. Instead, it has been a lightning bolt suddenly revealing where the zombies are.
More accurately, where the sheep and the goats are.
The Bible says plainly that there are two kinds of people: those who are out for what is right, the good people, and those who are only out for themselves. When a common crisis strikes, these two will quickly coalesce. The good will come together in peace and brotherhood. The goats will look for a chance at personal advantage, at climbing.
We see this now: peace and brotherhood rules on Wellington Street before the Parliament buildings. But in their high towers, many, indeed most of the authorities seem to be looking for how they can use this emergency to advance their own power. They are eager to divide us to do so.
The good people turn out to be exactly whom the Bible said: the common people, the fishermen, the carpenters, the shepherds. The kinds of men Jesus chose as apostles.
And the majority of those in civil command, the scribes, the teachers, the officials, turn out to be only out for profit, or for power, or for prestige. For self.
We out, for future reference, to keep accounts. Although my guess is that this is the sort of crisis that will topple all the obvious Pharisees by the end. New ones will soon rise up in their place.
Friday, February 11, 2022
The Battle Cry of Freedom
Lyrics (slightly modified):
Oh we'll rally round the flag, boys, we'll rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom,
And we'll rally from the hillside, we'll gather from the plain,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom.
(Chorus)
Freedom forever, our foremothers' belief
Down with the mandates, up the maple leaf
While we rally round the flag, boys, we rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom!
Oh we're springing to the call for three hundred thousand more
Shouting the battle cry of freedom!
And we'll fill the vacant ranks with a million freemen more
Shouting the battle cry of freedom.
(Chorus)
We will welcome to our numbers the loyal, true and brave,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom!
And although he may be poor, he shall never be a slave.
Shouting the battle cry of freedom!
(Chorus)
So we're springing to the call from the East and from the West,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom;
And we'll hurl the tyrant crew from the land we love the best,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.
The Unexpected Knock on Your Door
This sadly looks like a not-subtle attempt to intimidate.
Traditionally, Canadians have respected the police. It has been so central a characteristic that a police force, the RCMP, is a national symbol. Of what other nation anywhere is that true?
Now our leaders are destroying this longstanding social contract.
The Man from the Daily Mail
Over a hundred years ago, in Ireland, the Daily Mail was on the ground.
Today, they are again on the ground, for the Ottawa protests.
A Coyne Tossed in the ...
I was a little startled to see Andrew Coyne absent without explanation from CBC’s latest “At Issue” segment. I had been keen in seeing his take on the last week’s truckers’ protest, given his uncharacteristic emotional outburst the previous week. I was shocked at the time—I had always respected Coyne for his failure to play rhetorical tricks, to appeal to emotions or to prejudice, always cooly and fairly analyzing the issue at hand. The Coyne I saw last week seemed someone else: grim, angry, and full of insults.
But then, almost immediately, I thought I should have expected it.
Note that the tone of the panel in general has shifted: from mocking the truckers to complaining about Trudeau and the government. They realize which way the wind is blowing. In the past, it has been notable that members of the panel never radically disagree. They seem to decide among themselves beforehand what the line will be, and during the taped segment always basically reinforce one another.
It was the same this time, and the fact that what they were saying was close to the opposite of what they were saying last week did not seem to bother the panelists. But Coyne had always been an honest guy, a man of principle. It may have been too much for him.
Especially since I suspect Coyne knowingly sold his soul to the devil last time, going along with the agreed-upon line although knowing it was wrong, although it tore at his soul. He now cannot face the cameras as he finds himself having sold out just to immediately find himself visibly on the wrong side. It would be like standing there naked, with visible boils and cankers.
He may be having an emotional crisis. Indeed, in retrospect, there are signs he was having an emotional crisis last week.
Looking again now at the last panel, Coyne’s facial expressions are disturbing. He usually smiles every now and then. Last week, he looked resolutely grim. He was oddly blinking constantly. Experts say that rapid blinking indicates someone is lying. Coyne was saying things that he knew were not true. His failure to smile showed he was not happy about what he was saying. His tone of anger was probably chanelling his own anger and inner turmoil about selling out. He also seemed to have developed a nervous tic, his head every now and then suddenly jerking in an unnatural way. Watch and decide.
I find this sad. Coyne was a good guy. He sold out, got woke, and got broke.
This is a time that tries men’s souls. Many will fail the test. Many will fall by the wayside.
This week:
Last week:
Thursday, February 10, 2022
No Longer on Spotify, But Steve Stills May Have Foreseen It All
Okay, this is tin hat territory, but I can’t see any other rational explanation for the actions of the federal government. For some time, it has been puzzling me.
For example, what was the practical need in the first place for a vaccine mandate for truckers? They are a solitary lot; unlikely to be spreaders. The pandemic looks almost over. Why impose a vaccine on them at a time when there are already shortages and an apparent crisis in the supply chain? Why appear to punish frontline workers who have brought us through this pandemic? That’s bad pr. What’s the practical need when the government itself says 90% are already vaccinated? Yet they were planning to impose an additional mandate soon on any truckers operating inside the country, and would not back down even when the convoy showed up .
Why are vaccine mandates urgent for anyone? It can’t be to achieve herd immunity. That was supposed to happen at 70%, but we now know it can never happen. The vaccinated can still carry the virus.
And, of course, that being so, if anyone chooses not to get vaccinated, it is an issue only for themselves. No obvious reason for the government to care.
Why has Trudeau been irresponsibly demonizing the unvaccinated since last fall, as if they had any responsibility for the continuing pandemic? Why the need for a scapegoat, other than the virus itself?
Why does Trudeau—and others, to be fair—keep pretending that the issue with the truckers is that they do not want to get vaccinated, when it with the mandate? He must know he is lying.
Why is he sticking so hard to the demand, not bending in the face of civil chaos, despite much medical advice, despite the possible bad pr, despite the growing risk of losing power? Why won’t he make a tactical retreat, as Jason Kenney, Scott Moe, or Francois Legault have done?
It cannot simply be that Trudeau has gone insane, or is hysterical. Those around him would have intervened.
It has to be that Trudeau does not want the vaccine. He wants the mandate. He wants truckers to carry vaccine passports.
He wants everybody to; but truckers were a special problem. Because of their transience and self-reliance, they could not reliably be reached by other mandates: by mandating vaccines for offices, or restaurants, or air travel, or schools. It had to be a vaccine requirement even for driving a truck--or else the mandate could not get everyone.
Why does he, and surely others, want everyone to carry a vaccine mandate on their person? If the mandate is on every smartphone, it is a trivial matter to use or adapt this to track data on everyone.
Yes, I know this sounds like the ”Bill Gates is implanting us all with computer chips through the vaccination” conspiracy theory. Yet a government might very well want this. Not, in their minds, for obviously nefarious reasons. For the sake of efficiency and the general good. But behind this is the conviction present in our elites, that matters are always best kept in their hands, and not in those of common people. Trudeau for one is on record as admiring China’s “basic dictatorship.” It allows them, after all, to turn on a dime. Efficiency.
Once it became apparent that the government could track everyone, and was doing so, there would of course be a revolt against it, at least in some quarters. But if the system was already in place before this happened, it might not matter. By then a revolt might no longer be effective. The authorities could track down dissenters, seize their bank accounts, get them fired, cancel their debit and credit cards, perhaps track wherever they go and whom they contact.
Convenient things, smartphones.
Yeah, sounds paranoid. But also in line with what we are actually seeing— not least, in the government response to the convoy. We can see they would if they could. They could, so they probably did.
Or tried to.
The truckers may have reacted badly at almost the last possible moment. If so, all the chips are on the velvet, and Trudeau cannot afford to or cannot bear to back down now and give it all up.
Whoever else is involved, Doug Ford must be. His actions, too, otherwise make no sense.
New Zealand
New Zealand police apparently failed in a much-publicized full-court-press attempt to put down their own "convoy" protest.
It May Be Over
I wondered if this was a gag or a fake at first. It looks like CBC is suddenly trying very hard to pivot.
I guess they've figured out that the truckers are going to win, and their comfortable sinecures are under threat.
Wednesday, February 09, 2022
Another Crack in the Wall of Division and Hate
Last night I heard a rumour that a second Liberal MP had broken ranks on the government’s general position against the Ottawa truckers’ protest.
Today, I found this confirmed by Maclean’s magazine. I am proud to say that it is my own MP, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith. He has supported Joel Lightbound at least to the extent of saying he should stay in caucus, and that it makes sense to re-evaluate Covid measures. That took some courage. I hope he is soon joined by other Liberal voices.
I also note that this Tweet came right after I sent Erskine-Smith the letter I have reproduced here. I have some hopes that it influenced his stand.
I encourage others in Canada to write their own MP urging negotiation and compromise. This is some evidence that they are listening, and that it helps. Especially if their MP is a Liberal—they are the ones most able to influence government actions in the near term.
Kids in Cages!
Latest news I hear from Ottawa is that the authorities are suddenly concerned that there are so many children with the protesters. They are, after all, are in danger from carbon monoxide emissions. They have apparently sent in Children’s Aid.
Problem: the big rigs are just sitting there, and even largely restricting traffic, meaning there are few carbon monoxide emissions—fewer than you would normally expect in an urban setting. If there is any danger to these children, it would seem to be from the government.
The government tried to cut off fuel supplies to the protesters. In these sub-zero temperatures, that is the chief threat to the children’s safety.
The fuel confiscation has luckily failed. Not just because everybody started carrying around jerrycans; a judge has ruled the confiscation illegal, as it obviously was. A smart lawyer has pointed out that it was even in violation of international law, the Geneva Convention. The police have been forced to return what they took—although, allegedly, they returned the confiscated jerrycans half-filled with water. No doubt in hopes of sabotage.
So much for the children.
The real problem is that the authorities want to go in and get violent. They realize the PR would be awful if they got some kids hurt doing so. So they want to clear the children out.
It won’t work. As Matt Gurney recently reported from the scene, everybody is down there livestreaming with their smartphones. The PR will be just as bad if they show children being dragged away from their parents, with the children in great emotional distress. Kids in cages!
Unless the authorities can think of some other dodge, it still looks like checkmate. The only intelligent approach is negotiation with the protesters. The government is acting hysterical.
Tuesday, February 08, 2022
A Blockade
Those of us in Ontario are liable soon to find the cost of freedom. The Ambassador Bridge in Windsor normally carries 45% of all Canadian agricultural imports. It is not blocked. At this time of year all our fruits and vegetables are coming from further south. The shelves were already dangerously bare. Fruits and vegetables must reach their destination speedily, or not at all.
The Blue Water Bridge in Sarnia, the alternative route, is also blocked.
This is going to put massive pressure on the federal and provincial governments.
Breaking up the demonstration in Ottawa is almost irrelevant.
A Letter to My MP
Dear Mr. Erskine-Smith:
As my local MP, I urge you to join Joel Lightbound in insisting on moderation with regard to the current protests in Ottawa and across the country. It is not just that the world is watching, and Canada’s reputation as a free and tolerant land is in the balance. History is watching too, and will not forgive the authorities if there are any deaths or serious injuries to fellow Canadians honestly protesting as a result of government actions here.
The federal government of the day was able to put down Riel’s North-West Rebellion. But Riel is remembered as the hero, and the Conservative Party lost the support of Quebec for generations. The government was able to put down Mackenzie’s and Papineau’s rebellions. But Mackenzie and Papineau are remembered as heroes, and the Family Compact and Chateau Clique and Bond Head as villains. Before the Easter Rebellion in Ireland in 1916, the idea of Irish independence had little popular support. After its suppression by the British government, it became inevitable.
Do not allow yourself to be put on the wrong side of history. At present, the protesters sound like moderate voices, and the Prime Minister sounds uncompromising and divisive in a most unCanadian way.
You have been a good member. Do not throw it away. It is time to seek compromise and negotiation. It is time to seek unity.
Sincerely,
Stephen K. Roney
Monday, February 07, 2022
Whack-a-Mole
This could be major.
The thing about truckers is that they are highly mobile. Should the government manage to end the protests in Ottawa by bullying rather than negotiating, they can move the protest anywhere.
Apparently, trucks are now blocking the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor. I heard earlier that farmers were blocking the Blue Water Bridge in Sarnia.
Something like 60% of Canadian cross-border trade goes over these bridges.
Surely the blocking of these bridges is economically unsustainable for \Canada.
Another thing about truckers: they seem smarter than politicians.
Sinister Foreign Funding Sources
Jagmeet Singh’s biggest concern with the truckers’ protest seems to be that it is largely funded by foreign sources. By which he seems to mean, by American sources.
This is inevitably true. Is it a matter of concern? Technically, of course, we are two countries, but we could hardly be closer allies. What happens in one affects everyone in the other. Would it be a cause for concern if Alberta money was flowing into an election in Saskatchewan?
And if foreign influence is a problem now, where was Singh’s protest when Barack Obama openly endorsed Justin Trudeau an election or two ago?
Monday Morning Regrets
We are getting conflicting reports on the effects of the police crackdown yesterday on the Ottawa protests. Ottawa police chief Sloly boasted this morning that they had completely shut down one of the truckers’ staging areas, were making arrests, the demonstration was shrinking, and they were making relentless progress. But several truckers have YouTubed that the police raids had no practical effect; that they really only seized a symbolic amount of fuel, and mostly left things intact.
I think the latter must be true. To begin with, Sloly combined his claims with a declaration that the city needed much more help from all levels of government. That does not sound as though he really thinks matters are under control. The police raids were made on Sunday evening: because people have to get back to work, the size of the protest is bound to shrink for Monday morning. It sounds as though the move was strategically timed so the chief could claim he was responsible for the decline.
Sloly said before there was no policing solution available. He is under immense pressure to do something, so he is concerned with looking as though he is doing something.
One claim he made, that the funding for the protesters had been cut off, was demonstrably false. The Go Fund Me account was shut down, but donations are shifting to another platform, Give Send Go, and are already substantial. So he may be fudging or lying about the rest as well.
Possibly also the authorities hoped, vainly, that the truckers might be frightened away by a little intimidation.
The protesters have come up with a brilliant dodge for the police seizing jerry cans of fuel. Everyone has started to carry a jerry can at all times. The police cannot seize or check them all, so fuel is sure to get through.
It is hard to see how the police can get away with this tactic for long in any event. It is an obvious violation of the constitutional right to protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Since filling up your vehicle with gas is not a crime, there can be no legal justification for the police seizing private property like this. Even if they can get away with it for long enough to end the protest, surely the city is setting itself up for a lawsuit, or many. With the money donated, the truckers can probably afford the lawyers.
Meantime, the Ottawa mayor, until now uncompromising, this morning called for a mediator to negotiate with the protesters. This is an admission on his part that the confrontational approach cannot work. The little display of force on Sunday evening was probably just to give political cover for capitulating to the truckers’ basic demands. They don’t want it to look too obvious.
Theresa Tam, the chief government health officer, today stated publicly that it was about time to reexamine our approach to the pandemic, since circumstances have changed.
Again, this sounds like political cover. The medical advice has changed.
The Tories at today’s Question Period seemed excited. Their benches looked pretty full. They gave Candace Bergen a standing ovation as she rose to demand the government drop the mandates.
They smell blood in the water. They know the government will have to do this. They want to lead the parade.
The government benches looked far less crowded. The question was fielded by the government house leader—a low rank to be in command. The bigger heads were ducking.
Instead of responding by condemning the truckers as racists and terrorists who must be silenced, as had been the government’s wont until now, he insisted that most of the mandates were not the federal government’s responsibility.
Significantly, without defending them.
Sunday, February 06, 2022
Jagmeet Singh Struggles to Sound Relevant
Worth noting that his demand that swastikas be banned in Canada would lead to the shutting down of many Buddhist and Hindu temples, and perhaps the imprisonment of their priests and monks.
And would he tolerate the town of Swastika, Ontario?
Making the Important Distinctions
“Canadians have freedom to express ideas and freely to assemble. But not when it becomes an occupation, it should not be tolerated.”—U of Ottawa professor.
"The ideology behind the protests is grassroots authoritarian." -- U of Ottawa professor
“All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.”-- Napoleon the Pig.
"Four legs good. Two legs better."-- Napoleon the Pig
Oceania Was Never at War with Eurasia
Evidence CTV realizes they are on the wrong side and are trying to pivot.
Still mostly misinformation, but you can hear the tone changing.
Updates
I think it was Mike Huckabee who pointed out that there are more truckers in the Ottawa protest than soldiers in the Canadian military.
The idea that the protest can be ended by strongarming the protesters seems unrealistic. It would only get bloody and permanently divisive.
If, that is, Canadian soldiers could be counted on to use violence against fellow Canadians peacefully having a good time.
Smalldeadanimals reports the rumour that some Ottawa police are joining the protest.
Significant if true.
Were Lockdowns Effective?
Recognizing Dr. Campbell's reservations, lockdowns might have been worthwhile at the start--but it seems clear from this study they are no longer.
A Change in the Wind
I don’t necessarily have a great sense of the mood of the nation. But I think I detect a change in tone in the legacy media coverage of the protests around Canada this weekend. City News and Global do not seem to be so openly editorializing against the protests.
I suspect someone in the newsroom has woken up and realized they were sacrificing their credibility. It reminds me of when Jean-Marie Le Pen made it into the French presidential runoffs, and The Economist suddenly shifted from referring to him as “that thug” to “that wily old paratrooper.”
Like the Vicar of Bray, those in power stay in power by figuring out where the parade is heading, then cutting through side streets to the front.
The protests have only grown and spread since last weekend. The atmosphere is party-like. They have music, they’re giving out free food, they even have saunas. The protests sound like the cool place to be. Those complaining about them sound increasingly like cranks and killjoys. It’s brilliant, and reinforces their basic message of ending the interminable lockdowns.
Assuming the truckers win, Global News and City TV may be able to pivot in time. But it seems to me that it is too late for the Liberal government and Trudeau. He went all in. He wanted to make the unvaxxed scapegoats. By making it confrontational, he has painted the target, deservedly, on his own back. For the sake of social harmony, it is now evidently he who has to go. Nor can Chrystia Freedland take over. She is too much his creature, and too identified with his anti-trucker stance, to be able to replace him under these circumstances.
Others who bet heavily against the protests and stand to lose badly: the Ottawa police chief; the CBC; GoFundMe; Doug Ford. The Ottawa mayor would be on this list, but he is not running again.
The Early Odds for the Conservative Leadership
It is rather odd that Pierre Poilievre has announced for the Tory leadership when he did, on a Saturday, a day when people are liable to miss the news, and when other big news stories are competing for attention. He is also announcing before the date or the rules for the contest have even been set.
The announcement must have been preemptive. His people must have feared someone else might beat him to it and soak up some of his potential support. Who?
Leslyn Lewis, perhaps. But here’s another possibility: Jordan Peterson. Peterson has not dismissed political ambitions. He might or might not have been about to actually declare, but his hints of interest might have started a “draft Peterson” movement.
Peterson might be the only other candidate who stands a chance against Poilievre. Poilievre is a star in question period, and a star in social media. He is fluently bilingual. He is from Ontario, but his rightist politics are in sync with the West. He has cabinet experience. He is eloquent, and has great political instincts.
It is hard to see who else can go up against him. John Baird has been floated; but Baird just endorsed Poilievre. Brad Wall is not bilingual, and probably not interested. Peter MacKay is still paying off debts from last time.
In theory, given that Poilievre is on the party’s right, there ought to be room for a candidate on the left. But such a candidate probably has no chance of winning. Last time out, Peter MacKay failed to win for the left wing, despite having a far higher profile and far more experience than the three right-wing candidates. This time, the rules have changed to favour the right: from one hundred votes per constituency, the party is going to one member, one vote. That means suddenly most votes are coming from Alberta and the West.
Someone has to run, just to show the flag, to show the party’s diversity, to make it a contest. And as they say, “a week is a long time in politics.” Certainly there are other names being floated. Anything can happen.
But the early line has to be overwhelmingly Poilievre.
Saturday, February 05, 2022
Poilievre Is In
I expect this is pre-emptive, to grab the top organizers and warn others on the right not to waste their time and resources.
Toronto Freedom Convoy
There is a barbeque and street party now underway in Toronto outside the Royal Ontario Museum. A local convoy is in place.
How the Truckers Have Shut Down Ottawa
There are complaints that the truckers' protest is interfering with merchants and malls in Ottawa, forcing them to shut down.
This is ridiculous.
The protests have brought a huge clientele right to their doorsteps, with time on their hands and in a festive mood.
If they refuse to reap the benefits, it is on them... or if the government won't allow them to, that's on the government.
Donation Link
As a public service, here is the link to GiveSendGo, an alternate site where you can send your donations to the truckers protesting in Ottawa.
Whether or not you support their cause, or think they are foolish, the collusion between government and a private corporation to enforce government aims is fascism by definition. Doing what we can to prevent the triumph of the fascist ideology and in defence of basic liberties such as the freedom to assemble and to peaceably petition the government is an overriding concern.
In other news, four members of the trucker's protest outside the Manitoba legislature were deliberately run down by a white van last night.
So far, all the violence and threats of violence are coming from one side. And it is not from the truckers.\
Friday, February 04, 2022
Dirty Business
Looks like the government has bought up all the hotel rooms in Ottawa to try to drive out the truckers. GoFund Me, no doubt under government pressure, has seized all the money donated to the truckers.
Nazi Flags at Ottawa Protest!
"Some did use images of swastikas in their messaging." A lawyerly phrasing;.
Here is the media's best attempt to show swastikas at the Ottawa protest.
One guy put a swastika on a Canadian flag most probably to express the notion that the current government were Nazis--not to show his support for Nazis.
Another guy appeared for about five minutes with a Nazi flag, then disappeared. Anyone's guess who he was, whom he supported, and why he had the flag. True North is offering $6,500 to anyone who can help identify him.
I have also seen video of one guy with a modified confederate flag. He was wearing a mask, which pretty obviously sets him apart from the protesters, who are objecting to masks. Those nearby, the real protesters, seemed to confront him and drive him off.
Trudeau, the Liberals, and the mayor of Ottawa have made repeated claims as well that truckers stole food from a local soup kitchen. According to the truckers, some truckers asked for food, were given it, and assumed the soup kitchen was expressing their support, as many are. The truckers seem deluged by donations of food. Then the soup kitchen decided the good was stolen...
There are also complaints that the truckers are honking their horns day and night, preventing anyone from sleeping. This seems improbable, since the truckers too need to sleep.
If they hadn't experienced it before, now everyone in Canada should understand what gaslighting is like.
Desecration of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
In case you were wondering, this is apparently the desecration of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier made so much of by Justin Trudeau, the Liberals, and the mayor of Ottawa.
Pretty brief, a solitary act, and it really does not look as t though her intent was to desecrate. More likely, she had no idea where she was.
Thursday, February 03, 2022
How Cancel Culture Must End
I am inclined to be overoptimistic. I have been wrong about this before. But I feel we might be at the tipping point.
It is like the story of the boy who cried wolf. You lie once too often, and get caught, and it is all over.
In Canada, the lies the government and media are telling about the behavior of the “Freedom Convoy” look like this to me. Their wild claims do not match the many visuals all can see on YouTube.
More broadly, their claims about Covid are no longer believed by a large portion of the public, as the Ottawa rally demonstrates.
I think, when the pandemic hit, the governing elites, in the civil service, the universities, the media, the schools, were already in a state of paranoid hysteria, seeing their positions threatened by the new technology.
As a result, they have overreached to the pandemic. They were already afraid of losing control, so they conceived this as a greater threat than it was. And, given control as a result, they are having a hard time releasing their grip. Their knuckles are whitening.
The pandemic, the lockdowns, and the vaccine mandates now become the symbolic rallying point for the opposition, and may bring them down altogether.
I think by now, it is dawning on the average person that the elites are either insane or consistently lying, and the reasonable guys are on the other side.
Joe Rogan stands as the perfect image of this: he is so transparently just folks, straight and honest. And so many people have listened to him, for hours, that it is hard to make any slandering of his actual views stick. It looks suicidal for the leftists to have gone after him.
But they had already gone after Don Cherry, and J.K. Rowling, and the president of the United States, and the logic of revolutionary prestige is that they always wanted to get credit for a bigger and more improbable scalp. It was bound to end in their destruction when they overreached. If they have not yet, they inevitably will.
This also looks like the point at which the guillotine is turned on the Committee for Public Safety itself. Attempting to cancel Joe Rogan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Stephen Stills are cancelling themselves. Whoopi Goldberg got herself suspended for two weeks, and reputedly is threatening to quit—self-cancellation. Her colleagues on The View are also threatening to cancel themselves in protest. Jeff Zucker over at CNN cancelled himself, apparently with a push from Chris Cuomo, whom he cancelled a month or so ago. Arguably, he was this revolution’s Robespierre.
At some point, it makes the most sense not to cower and obey, but to turn on the censors and guillotine them before they get around to guillotining you. Because eventually they will get around to you no matter what you do. So there is a growing incentive for people who feel relatively safe to risk turning openly against the cancel culture. Jon Stewart seems to be a recent convert. John Cleese. Elon Musk. This natural tendency, once it starts, and it seems to have started, means that in short order, the radical censors find themselves as the small irrelevant fringe.
Wednesday, February 02, 2022
Erin, We Hardly Knew Ye
Erin O’Toole is out as Conservative leader. Watching the CBC speaking about the event, one would think the Conservatives were in disarray, in danger of splitting, losing their direction and losing the voters.
I don’t buy that spin. It is just media partisanship. I think this vote was how parliamentary democracy is supposed to work. Kudos to Michael Chen, who designed this system and got it passed into law. Kudos to the Conservatives, who have now proven themselves Canada’s most responsive and democratic party.
The general public do not elect the Prime Minister. We vote for our local member. The Prime Minister is then whoever has the support of most of these members. Democracy demands that the Prime Minister serves at the pleasure of his members; not vice versa.
This system has been perverted in Canada by the legal requirement, introduced by the Liberals, that the party leader sign the nomination papers for local candidates. This gave the leader power to choose his own electorate, reversing the equation, and to punish or cashier anyone who did not do as he willed. The result has been an elected dictatorship. Debates and votes in parliament have become irrelevant to the nation’s business. Question period has become no more than rhetoric, a battle for the best sound bites.
Chen’s reform bill restored that balance. The Conservative Party embraced it, and deserves credit. O’Toole got voted out in part at least because he was being authoritarian with his own caucus.
Chen’s reform/restoration gives the Canadian or British system a significant advantage over the American system. A failing or disastrous or corrupt leader can be removed within days, if not hours, without tying up t6he nation’s business, without bitter recriminations, without requiring any particular reason or finding of fault. As Theresa May was; as Neville Chamberlain was. O’Toole was able to leave with dignity. The US, currently saddled with a declining Joe Biden in the midst of crisis, should envy us.
Nor is the Conservative Party divided by this. To the contrary, the vote was quick and decisive, so that it should be easy to come together now under a new leader. Had they been obliged to continue under O’Toole, divisions might have festered.
Lauren Southern on the Canadian Mass Graves
I think Southern gives too much credit to the story that the residential schools were oppressive or malicious generally. There, she has not done the research.
Tuesday, February 01, 2022
Whoopi Goldberg and Holocaust Denial
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Whoopi Goldberg’s comments on the Holocaust are kind of dumb, but not scandalous. There is an old scientific classification of mankind into three or four distinct races: Mongoloid, Caucasoid, Negroid, and Australoid. If Whoopi learned this definition in some science class, it would be right for her to say that Jews were not a different race from the Aryan Germans, and so the Holocaust was not about race, but ethnicity.
It’s a little weird, because the Nazis certainly did consider Semites a separate race from Aryans, so their motivations, even if scientifically mistaken, were racist. But that argument is semantic, and it seems foolish to assume Goldberg was saying something shocking or offensive. Perhaps she intended to, but it cannot be assumed from this.
Erin O'Toole as Seen from a Semi's Rear View Mirror
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| Pierre Poilievre |
It looks as though Conservative leader Erin O’Toole is on his way out. No sure thing—only one third of the caucus voted to force a review. But he seems unlikely to survive such a lack of confidence even if he nominally wins a vote.
I feel relieved. Many objections might be raised to his leadership; his absence from the current Ottawa convoy protest makes him look irrelevant. But in my own mind, to be honest, there is just one. He ran for the leadership as a “True Blue” Tory, then pivoted. Not that I am any “True Blue” Tory. I am not a member of the party, and my own choice for the Tory leadership at that time would have been Jean Charest. But such blatant dishonesty in a politician should not be accepted. It showed contempt.
Pundits suggest the Conservatives are shooting themselves in the left foot: they must not cave to their right wing, as they appear to be doing now, or they are unelectable. There are just not enough conservative-minded voters in Canada.
I disagree. I used to think in those terms. I learned otherwise. I thought the Conservatives were waiving their chance of winning, in favour of rebuilding for the long term, by choosing Stephen Harper, a known hard-right ideologue, as leader. I thought the Republicans were losing their chance by choosing Ronald Reagan in 1980. Margaret Thatcher was also a hard-rightist; she did pretty well at the polls in the end.
The idea of catering to the polls is exactly wrong. So long as conservatives do this, they will always lose, because the media are against them, and the media have the dominant influence on the polls.
The only way the Conservatives can ever win is by choosing a leader who will lead: who will try to change the polls. Who will not accept the framing done by the media, but try to change the framing. Trump is a model: they can only win with someone able to appeal directly to the people. Whoever they choose, anyone who fits that profile, will automatically be condemned by the media as “extremist” and “populist.” Even a moderate like Trump.
They might as well go for Pierre Poilievre. Could make for an exciting next few years.
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