The Parody That (Still) Continues to Write Itself

Canadian Cynic demands anti-abortion activists be damned if they do, damned if they don't

When the story of the tragic murder of Dr George Tiller broke early this morning, anyone familiar with the demagoguery that tends to transpire at the Canadian Cynic Temple of Sycophantic Groupthink simply knew Canadian Cynic was going to take full advantage of it.

First, Cynic predicted that none of Canada's conservative bloggers would care enough to drag their attention away from the underwhelming scandal surrounding Ruby Dhalla's nannyscam.

Yet when Dr Roy Eappen blogged about the story, denouncing Tiller's murderer, Cynic quickly changed gears, noting that Dr Eappen has previously written from an anti-abortion point of view.

Apparently, Cynic would like to argue, only pro-abortion activists are allowed to denounce violence against abortion clinic doctors, and any anti-abortion activists who do so are "hypocrites".

Yet, as it turns out, Cynic and his cohorts have a far less sparkling history regarding anti-abortion violence. In fact, Cynic's blogmate at the Groupthink Temple, Lindsay Stewart, applauded gleefully when 23-year-old Nathan Richardson pushed 69-year-old Ed Snell, an anti-abortion activist, off a platform he had built on the roof of a car.

Cynic and company have spent a good deal of time since then wriggling desperately to try to slither free of the implications of their approval of that assault. But it seems like they never learn.

More recently, Stewart tried to argue that he hasn't heard that Sue Atkinson was assaulted at a 40 days for life protest in Ottawa, then it must not have happened.

But from what we've seen from Stewart in the past, one can already imagine what Stewart's response to a news story confirming any such assault would be -- she opposes abortion, so she deserved it.

The fact that Stewart indulged himself in using Richard Dawkins' "lying for Jesus" epithet despite the extent to which Dawkins has been caught being dishonest in applying it is nothing short of hilarious, and only reveals the depths to which these depraved individuals have sunk.

In the sociopathic mania Cynic and company have worked themselves into, Cynic can't even restrain himself from lying -- characterizing comments alluding to the very real hypocrisy of Cynic on the issue of abortion-centred violence as "defending murder" -- to try to milk Dr Tiller's murder for all the rhetorical advantage he can possibly gain, even if only amongst those as terminally dishonest as himself.

Even as Kevron, who has contented himself with existence as a terminal virus to even any hope faint of an intellectual debate suggests that murdering those who oppose abortion is part of the "pro-life" (forever better described as pro-abortion) philosophy, one can expect that Canadian Cynic will absolutely not, under any circumstances, denounce that.

It would actually go against his long-standing practice of applauding violence against those who oppose abortion.

It's against the backdrop of this sociopathic viciousness that the farce of Canadian Cynic -- increasingly only a bizarre parody of progressive political thought -- continues to unfold.

It's one of the reasons why Canadian Cynic and his mindless toadies simply cannot be taken seriously ever again.

Canine Carnage and the Bloodcapades

What Off the Chain lacks in production value it makes up for in sheer brutality.

The film provides a brief historical overview of the development of the Pitbull terrier. Brought to North America by upper-class Irish immigrants, these dogs were orginally pitted against live stock -- bulls -- in a bloodsport. When staging fights between dogs and bulls was outlawed the owners of the animals instead simply matched the dogs against one another.

Today dog fights are illegal. That, however, has done little to curb the continuing, organized manner in which these fights are being staged.

The extent to which dog men train their animals in the same manner in which human fighters train is remarkable. Conditioning through running and swimming are as much a part of dogfighting as they are human bloodsports like the UFC.

Unlike human athletes, there is no limit to what dog men will do to their animals. In one case, a dog man demonstrates a technique he developed where he drugs his dog so he can file its teeth into the sharpest points he can manage. Of all the depravities exerted on human athletes -- including the forced use of steroids by Soviet athletes -- few things compare to this.

The most important difference between the two is that human fighters enter competition of their own free will. The dogs matched against each other in dog fighting have no opportunity to choose.

Unlike a human competitor, the dogs matched against one another in dogfights are often denied medical attention after their matches. Even dog men who insist that they love their dogs dearly admit to killing a dog who quits or can no longer compete -- sometimes by truly brutal means. And they always seem to speak of their dogs purely in monetary terms.

One dog man talks about his dog being worth $20,000, and talks about putting down dogs who fail to produce for him -- hardly the way one treats a living creature that he actually cares about to the extent that this individual claims to care for his dog.

This is of little surprise. Who, after all, could doubt the sincerity of someone who raises a dog just so it can be maimed in battle against another dog?

Clever Fucking Idiocy

Pierre Poilevre sparks a firestorm over racist remark

Sometimes, a metaphor can simply be too cute to pass up when looking for a clever way to dig at a political opponent.

If Pierre Poilevre thought his remarks in the House of Commons today were one of those metaphors he's entirely too stupid to put his evident cleverness to good use

In a bid to remind Canadians that it was Michael Ignatieff who thought up the carbon tax on which Stephane fought and lost an election -- itself a noble act -- Poilevre made a crack that will seem to many to be reminiscent of the "secret black baby" comments used against John McCain, except without the effectiveness.

"On that side of the House, they have the man who fathered the carbon tax, put it up for adoption to his predecessor and now wants a paternity test to prove the tar baby was never his in the first place," Poilevre announced.

Which should have provoked a broad response of "what the fuck were you thinking" from his colleagues in the Conservative party caucus.

Liberal party House Leader Ralph Goodale rightly denounced Poievre's comments.

"In addition to being a pejorative term, which might well prove to be unparliamentary, the parliamentary secretary might consider that there are many authorities both in this country and many others that consider the term racist," Goodale said.

Marlene Jennings later continued the counter-attack.

"As a black child growing up, I was called all sorts of pejorative names based on the color of my skin, including the 'n-word' and 'tar baby' -- and believe me, it was hurtful," she explained. "I am offended by Mr Poilievre's insensitive remarks --and I know leaders in the black community across Canada feel the same way."

If Poilevre has an apology in the works -- which he'd damn well better -- it had better be a god damned good one when Canadians finally hear it.

All Canadians -- regardless of political affiliation -- should be outraged to no end by Poilevre's comments.

We Got Your Media Bias Right Here!

Canadian Broadcast Standards Council gives Stephane Dion something to whine about

According to a spokesperson, former Liberal party leader Stephane Dion thinks a recent decision by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council "speaks for itself."

Certainly, it does. But not in the way the perpetually-whiny Dion seems to think.

The decision was in regards to a complaint over the broadcasting of an interview between Dion and CTV Halifax News Anchor Steve Murphy in which Dion asked for the interview to be re-started on numerous occasions. The CBSC also claimed that Murphy failed to explain the question to Dion when it became apparent that he didn't understand it.

Yet the question, as it turns out, was actually rather simple. Murphy had asked Dion "if you were Prime Minister now, what would you have done about the economy and this crisis that [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper has not done?"

Dion responded by launching into his party's campaign platform. After Murphy took significant pains to explain the question to Dion, Dion again flubbed the question. It took the intervention of one of his aides to explain to Dion, in french, the question.

The interview revealed two basic facts about Dion's candidacy for Prime Minister. First, it revealed that Dion had no idea, whatsoever, what he would have done to avoid the economic crisis and subsequent recession (a crisis that began in the woefully under-regulated financial markets of the United States and spread abroad). Second, it revealed that Dion's language skills were simply not up to snuff to be Prime Minister of this country.

Canadians would be rightly alarmed at the election of a Prime Minister who doesn't speak French. Canada's Official Languages Act designates that Canada has two official languages, not one. It isn't unreasonable to expect that the Prime Minister should be able to speak both languages.

Just as a Prime Minister who cannot speak French cannot be expected to function effectively in the Province of Quebec -- and thus be hampered in his ability to address key responsibilities -- no Prime Minister who cannot speak English could be expected to function effectively in the rest of the country.

Canadians understand this. There's a good reason why Canada hasn't elected a functionally unilingual Prime Minister since Lester Pearson.

Beyond this detail, if a federal party leader doing everything he can to saddle the incumbent government with a looming recession that he knows full well that government isn't responsible for cannot explain what he would do differently that leader's credibility in terms of managing the economy is naturally called into question. Canadians have a right to know if an individual who may well become Prime Minister of this country doesn't know his economic ass from a teakettle.

The CBSC's decision seems to hit all the bases that a politially-motivated decision would reach, counter-factually insisting that Murphy's question was "confusing, and not only to a person whose first language is other than English."

Yet the millions of Canadians who realized that Dion's ability to offer any kind of constructive alternative to the Conservative government's management of the economy was precisely is understood the question. Canadians got the question. The CBSC, we're expected to believe, didn't.

But if CTV's handling of Stephane Dion's inability to answer a basic question in English was truly so terrible, one may wonder where the CBSC was when CBC reporter Christina Lawand was caught red-handed dishonestly editing footage of Stephen Harper to make him appear callous.

Oddly enough the CBSC had nothing to say about that, a case in which disinformation was deliberately broadcasted by a Canadian news agency. Apparently, we're to believe, that is A-OK.

Naturally, CTV President Robert Hurst takes issue with the CBSC's decision.

"We are deeply concerned by the tone and content of the council's decision as it is not the CBSC's role to police the nature of the questions any news organization chooses to pose to a public official," Hurst mused.

Nor, apparently, is the CBSC's role to address the deliberate broadcast of disinformation -- unless, apparently, that politician is a Liberal party leader.




Other bloggers currently writing about this topic:

Dan Shields - "158...Thought Police Strike Again; Poor Stephane"

The Not So Much News - "Making fun of Stephane Dion or journalistic integrity?"

Michael Ignatieff: The Anti-Obama

While featuring an unfortunate partisan flourish in the opening seconds of this video -- a clip of the irresponsible "Just Visiting" campaign ads the Conservative party has recently deployed -- this video of Michael Ignatieff speaking to a Liberal party rally in Hamilton should remind many people that, while Michael Ignatieff is certainly a considerable step up from his predecessors of as leader of the Liberal party, he holds the same attitude that many Canadians find distressing about the Liberal party.

"We created the country you live in," Igatnieff says. "Never forget it."

For a party working so hard to emulate US President Barack Obama, this is the kind of thing that demonstrates that they simply don't get it. For anyone who's actually paid attention to Obama, to his rhetoric, and to the nature of his politics, this kind of language seems utterly alien to the political approach of the American President.

In insisting that the Liberal party created Canada -- at least in its modern-day form -- Ignatieff insists that the Liberal party is entitled to all the credit for the shape and form of modern-day Canada.

Within an argument like this no credit would be due, for example, to the NDP for Canada's public health care system. The NDP essentially forced Lester Pearson's government to implement public health care -- which Tommy Douglas had successfully introduced in Saskatchewan -- under risk of losing their government.

As someone who boasts about how he knocked on doors for "Mike" Pearson, Michael Ignatieff knows this full well.

With an argument like the one Ignatieff has used, John Diefenbaker would receive no credit for reforming immigration policies that had once been designed to minimize the influx of non-European migrants to Canada, nor would Diefenbaker receive any credit for writing the Bill of Rights.

Moreover -- and most seriously -- with an argument like the one Michael Ignatieff has used the Canadian people who be entitled to no credit for their own, day-to-day efforts in building Canada.

The doctor who healed patients within the universal health care program that the Liberals tried like hell to never create would receive no credit. The school teachers who educate Canadian citizens would receive no credit. The Canadian soldier who deploys to distant lands in support of the Canadian values of peace, order and good government would receive no credit.

Ignatieff's insistence that "we [the Liberal party] created the country you live in" is distinctly at odds with Barack Obama's empowering message of "yes we [together] can".

It speaks to an attitude of smug selfishness in which the Liberal party, as a "national institution" feels it's entitled as the "natural governing party" to forever dictate the direction of this country, and that even a ten degree change of political course should be considered intolerable simply because it upsets the Liberal party-approved status quo.

It is this attitude, if unchanged, that will permanently hobble the Liberal party and, so long as this party remains Canada's "natural governing party" will also hobble the country as a whole -- limiting the range of the actions that we as a country would consider, and maintaining one small elite group's belief that they are entitled to monopolize the marketplace of Canadian ideas.

One can say what they will about Barack Obama. One would never find him declaring that he, and he alone, is entitled to the credit for anything his administration may accomplish. One would never hear him echoing Michael Ignatieff, telling the American people, "we have built your country. Give us your votes, give us your tax dollars, and get out of our way so that we may set the stake of American politics."

Yet that is precisely how Ignatieff speaks to Canadians.

This is why, although the Liberal party will try, Michael Ignatieff could ever be Barack Obama.

This Day in Canadian History

May 26, 1969 - John Lennon records "Give Peace a Chance" in Montreal

If there is any one iconic image of John Lennon and Yoko Ono it probably should be Yoko breaking up the Beatles.

Yet, somehow, it isn't.

Rather, the iconic image of Lennon and Yoko Ono is actually the two of them in bed together, making music while photographers documented that event for posterity.

As it turned out, that event happened in a Montreal, Quebec hotel room. At the Queen Elizabeth Hotel Lennon and Ono staged their second "bed-in" for peace, and held court for dozens of celebrities.

It was during this Montreal bed-in that they recorded "Give Peace a Chance", easily one of the most iconic peace songs in the history of the genre.

Narrowing the Debate on Public Health Care

With Barack Obama's efforts to reform the American health care system getting set to kick into high gear, vested interests on both sides of the health care debate are making moves to try to ensure that nothing resembles a full and open debate on the topic ever takes place.

In the united states, Rick Ross and Conservatives for Patients Rights have been distributing videos warning about the alleged horrors of Canadian universal health care, in which patients outline horror stories about lack of accessibility to Canadian health care.

The Real News Network has responded with a video interviewing random passers-by on Toronto's hospital row, attempting to guage Canadian's level of satisfaction with public health care.

Both provide a calculatingly incomplete image of Canada's universal health care system, each one tailored to the needs of one particular set of advocates -- those advocating in favour of publicly-funded universal health care in the United States, and thsoe advocating against it.

No one should confuse the stories peddled by Rick Scott to be absolutely representative of Canadian health care. By the same token, however, neither should anyone make the same error in regards to the stories being peddled by Geraldine Cahill insisting that Canadian health care is A-OK and everyone is entirely satisfied with it.

Not only are there existing problems with Canadian health care, but many Canadians have found it to be far less than satisfactory.

Perhaps the most telling statistic in Canada is that of the amount of after-tax income Canadians are spending on health care. One should immediately recall that universal health care in Canada is paid for out of tax revenues and, as such, the expenditure of after-tax income on health care actually amounts to a sort of double spending on said health care.

Moreover, recent studies have suggested that Canadian public health care, as it currently exists, is unsustainable. Increasing funding demands on Canada's public health care system have been increasing on an ongoing basis, as the system continually requires funding hikes of an ever-increasing percentage.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information has admitted that Canadian health care spending is growing faster than Canada's economy -- a very basic blueprint for an unsustainable system.

Another key statistic is that of wait times for medical care. In 2007 wait times for elective surgery had reached an all-time high, despite government action to reduce wait times for surgery.

So not only is the Canadian government increasingly spending more and more money to keep Canada's public health care system afloat, Canadians are also seeing diminishing returns on their tax dollar investment.

Certainly, Geraldine Cahill isn't going to get this story from conversing with passers-by on Toronto's Hospital Row, and considering the Real News' particular ideological bent a real question remains about whether or not she'd broadcast it if she did.

Just like Rick Scott clearly has a vested interest in overlooking some very key facts about the American health care system.

Many of these facts are universally well known. 15% of American citizens do not have any health insurance or health care coverage. Moreover, the American government actually spends more money per capita on health care, and provides Americans with less coverage.

If the Canadian health care system is a basic blueprint for an unsustainable system, the American system, in which the federal government pays 35% of health care costs, state and local governemnts pay 11%, private health insurance -- often provided by employers -- pays 36% and the remaining 15% is paid out-of-pocket, is a very complex blueprint for an unsustainable system.

Yet in relying on alternately nightmarish and sparkling anecdotal evidence, both Rick Scott and Geraldine Cahill are acting in a manner that fundamentally narrows the scope of debate on public health care. It obscures the reality of a health care system that, over all, is of tremendous benefit to the people it services but still has key structural problems it has to overcome.

For example, one doesn't expect Cahill to say anything about the disproportioante amount of money Canada's public health system spends on the administration of that system. Entrenched management and bureaucracy has burdened Canadian health care with a high overhead.

Any efforts made by government to try to cull off excess bureaucracy within the system is immediately siezed upon by reactionary proponents of the status quo as "an attack on health care". Health care in Canada, it seems, is constantly under attack. And so must be defended on a permanent basis.

Those most willing to harness the rehtorical strength of these reactionaries -- "Jack Layton and the NDP" -- have even set off to the United States in order to help Barack Obama steer the public discourse in favour of public health care.

"We would go down there to not only defend Canada's health-care system -- but encourage them to adopt similar features," explained NDP national director Brad Lavigne. "[Medicare] is one of the greatest connections we have to each other."

While many Canadians would rush to disagree with Lavigne's implicit argument that universal health care is a central tenet of the Canadian identity, many would agree with him that the United States would be wise indeed to implement a system of publicly-funded health care. However, many of thsoe Canadians should also be honest enough to admit that recommending a complete emulation of Canada's health care system would actually be doing our neighbours a disservice.

But for those who want to reform Canada's public health care system advising Barack Obama on the construction of an American system is a golden opportunity.

Advising Obama on methods by which he could keep administrative and bureancratic glut under control -- thus allowing more funds to be devoted to front-end service -- would allow Canadians to help build a more efficient and effective system after which Canadians could model reforms to our own system.

Unfortunately, the only Canadian groups currently engaging in the American debate are the very parties that rely on the afotrementioned reactionaries for their political strength. Consider them to be something like a socialist equivalent of Rick Scott, opposing reform at all costs.

Those interesting in preserving Canada's public health care system before it becomes too bloated and unaffordable to preserve clearly have a vested interest in the current debate in the United States.

As Canada's system gets sucked deeper and deeper into the microscope of the American debate, the time for Canadian health care reformers to seize the role of Canada's voice in this debate away from the reacitonaries is now.

Loners, Losers and Canadian Multiculturalism

Speaking via ForaTv, former US President Bill Clinton explains how the adoption of the principle of majority rules in more and more countries around the world has a potential dark side -- the oppression of those who may not readily be considered part of that majority.

Clinton describes them bascially as "losers" and "loners", and says that the litmus test for any true democracy is whether or not a citizen has enough individual rights that they can potentially lose -- politically, economically, socially, culturally or otherwise -- and still be safe from oppression.

At its basest level, there does seem to be a key dilemma between majority rule and respect for the rights of minorities. As we see in many countries less enlightened than our own, in systems wherein majority rule is considered absolute minorities tend to not have many rights.

Multicultural societies should likely be considered less prone to this kind of absolutism. As Satya Das notes, because of the broad cultural variety of Canadian society Canadians have had to set aside our differences and respect the rights of groups that, if judged by a standard of ethnic -- as opposed to civil -- nationalism would themselves be minorities.

If Canadians continued to discriminate against groups such as Icelandic, Ukrainian or Irish Canadians there would be no shortage of people for those prone to such behaviour to discriminate against. What there would end up being a shortage of is Canadians among the so-called "majority".

This is one of the best reasons for Canadians who may not yet have come around to the idea of multiculturalism to acclimate themselves to it. Within the next thirty years caucasian Canadians will be a numeric minority in Canada. Those accustomed to enjoying a privileged position within Canada on account of being part of this so-called majority will find themselves in a rather uncomfortable position at that point.

But one also has to remember that there can also be a dark side to the group rights promoted by multiculturalism as well. As Benjamin Barber points out group rights -- particularly within minority groups -- can lead to a communitarian ethos in which minority groups demand absolute solidarity from its members, to the extent that members are forced to surrender individual rights in order to remain part of their community what eventually emerges is not a society that is more democratic, but in fact less.

Mixing the notions of majority rule with an overwhelmingly communitarian ethos leads to situations were people are not free, to the extent to which they are very literally enslaved by their communities.

Canada has, for the most part, passed the test of protecting minorities from the tyranny of the majority. Whether Canada has succeeded in protecting the majority from what Preston Manning termed "the tyranny of the minority" is another matter entirely.

Some would argue that legalizing same-sex marriage over what they deemed to be the opposition of the majority -- which was actually the agreement of a minority coupled with the comparable indifference of the majority of Canadians -- empowered same-sex couples at the expense of the majority of Canadians. Many Canadians -- including this author -- would disagree with them, but this case is nonetheless argued.

The case that individuals are subjected to the tyranny of community is much stronger. Consider the case of aboriginal women denied rights granted by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- and, through it, Canada's Constitution -- because political elites within the aboriginal community oppose it.

These are merely two examples in which Canadian democracy has either failed, or is argued to fail, to amply balance the rights of majorities and minorities, and communities and individuals.

Although Canada has performed this balancing act better than many other countries, it's certainly been far from perfect, and there are many improvements that could be made.

Apologism, Defined

Lorne Gunter offers excuses for Conservative attack ads

In Canada's media environment the National Post is treated as Canada's predominant conservative newspaper.

If often receives a bum-rap for being exclusively conservative or reactionary -- often willfully overlooking the contributions made to the paper's Full Comment blog by individuals such as David Akin, Stephen LeDrew and, in the past, Warren Kinsella. Even mainstays such as David Frum aren't nearly as reactionary and dogmatic as the Post's detractors would have people believe.

There's little question that the National Post does, indeed, lean right. Sometimes it even makes good on its reputation. Such is the case today when, on the Full Comment blog, Lorne Gunter has seemingly settled for making excuses about the Conservative party's recent batch of anti-Michael Ignatieff attack ads.

Gunter does this by recounting the Liberal party's own litany of offences against political civility in Canada, and their historical tendency to wrap themselves in the flag while denigrating the patriotism of their political opponents:

"Not a fan of government monopoly health care? You're un-Canadian. Not big on easy unemployment benefits, official bilingualism, dismantling our military, beggaring our economy in the name of environmentalism, coddling criminals, huge public debts, activist judges, multiculturalism, foreign investment reviews, national energy policies and so on? Shame on you for being so un-Canadian."

There's little question that the Liberal party has indulged itself in these kinds of tactics often in Canadian history.

One recalls that the Liberals opened the 2005/06 federal election campaign by questioning Stephen Harper's alleged unwillingness to gush over his love of this country -- although his tendency to close his speeches with "god bless Canada" speaks well enough of his love for his country.

But Gunter is making the error of insisting that the Liberals' past misconducts excuse the ads the Tories have deployed against Michael Ignatieff:

"Now the Tories are using the Liberals' own tactic against them and the Grits are sputtering with indignation.

The clear implication of the Tories' current attack ads -- the ones pointing out that Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff lived outside the country for 34 years and during that time frequently scoffed at this country'simportance-- is that Mr. Ignatieff does not care enough about this country to be entrusted with leading it.

The big problem for the Liberals is that the Tory ads, while exaggerated, are largely true: Mr. Ignatieff left the country, more or less permanently, in the 1970s, lived away most of his adult life and showed no intention of returning until he was seduced back by the idea of becoming Liberal leader in 2005."

Of course, the problem with this particular assertion is that the Liberal party was not yet in search of a new leader in 2005. Paul Martin expected not only to win the federal election early in 2006, but had previously expected to win the largest majority government in Canadian history.

Few Canadians actively expected the Harper Conservatives to defeat the Martin Liberals in the 2005/06 campaign. One has to remember that, adscam and all, they very nearly didn't.

"While he was away, Canada seems barely to have crossed his mind. For instance, in The New York Times, where he wrote opinion pieces for a time, he referred to 'we' Americans.

As recently as 2004 -- just a year before his opportunistic return-- Mr. Ignatieff said on C-SPAN, the congressional cable channel, 'Look, this is America and you have to decide what kind of country you want. This is your country as much as it is mine.'

During the 2006 election, when he was first seeking a seat in Parliament, he told The Harvard Crimson newspaper that if he lost he would move back to Massachusetts. If Canadian voters did not embrace him, he apparently had no intention of making his home here or working for the betterment of the country."

All of this may well be true. Michael Ignatieff may well have made career plans contingent on a possible electoral defeat. Any wise political candidate does.

Michael Ignatieff may well have spent the surplus of his adult life outside of Canada, and some of Ignatieff's comments could certainly be spun to suggest that he cares little for this country.

Certainly, the Liberals have rarely declined to spin any comments made by their political opponents into something more damaging to the public perception of their patriotism -- many Liberals continue to milk Stephen Harper's 1997 speech to the Council for National Policy, even though the full text of that speech demonstrates those comments to be far less than malignant.

They've even gleefully played the George Bush card when desperation left them with little else to work with:

"The Liberals like to say, still, that Tory Prime Minister Stephen Harper is George Bush's biggest fan. Yet, while he was head of a human rights institute at Harvard University, Mr Ignatieff was a bigger defender of Mr Bush's war on terror than anyone else currently in Canadian politics."

All of this may well be true, and those with a taste for politics as a political bloodsport may all for the wild ruminations made in the Tories' anti-Ignatieff ads.

But the looming question is: does past Liberal misconduct truly excuse these ads?

Gunter offers his answer thusly:

"Now here's where the Liberals are their most hypocritical about the Tories' ads: Imagine their reaction if it were Mr Harper who had spent 34 years outside the country, moved back only to take a shot at being PM, said the only thing he missed while away was a provincial park and referred to himself as an American many times.

Other Liberals were saying the same things the Tories are of Mr Ignatieff just two-and-a-half years ago. While running against him for the Liberal leadership, Joe Volpe said no one who had been away for more than three decades could be an expert about his party or this country. Bob Rae complained 'there are things about a country that you don't learn from a book,' that can only be learned by being here and being at the centre of tough constitutional or economic debates. In other words, someone should only seek to lead this country if he has 'Canada in his bones.'

Now the Liberals are purple with rage at the Tories for saying pretty much the same things."

Certainly, the Liberals wouldn't hesitate to infer such things about Harper, or any other conservative leader who had done such things.

While some of Canada's most rabid partisan demagogues will offer no end of excuses for these transgressions, every Canadian who has paid so much as a modicum of attention to Canadian politics knows this.

Even the Liberals' own deployment of such such arguments against Ignatieff doesn't excuse the Conservatives' stooping to this level, as Gunter seems to infer:

"Again, I ask, imagine the Liberals' indignation and self-righteousness if it were a Tory leader who had spent very little time here in nearly four decades, who had (as Mr Ignatieff did) once told a British paper our flag reminded him of 'a beer label' and who, most significantly, had referred to himself as an American on several occasions.

In the 2006 election, Mr Harper proposed a rebuilding of our military. For that 'American' idea, the Liberals accused him of plotting to militarize our cities. They ran ads saying that were the Tories to be elected there would be 'soldiers, with guns. In our cities. In Canada.'

They claimed they were not making this up, but clearly they were. If they could spin wild conspiracies about military coups from a simple promise to rearm our military, it's not hard to speculate what they would make up to smear a Tory politician with the same CV as Mr Ignatieff.

Their ads would make the Tories' spots look like public service announcements for the Christian Children's Fund."

The point that seems to be lost on Lorne Gunter is that, if the Liberals' past conduct was truly so disgusting -- and there is no doubt that it absolutely was -- then we must expect our other political parties (and especially our alternative government) to be better.

The recent batch of Conservative campaign ads have demonstrated decisively to Canadians that they are not. Whatever other reasons Canadians have to support the Conservatives -- a stronger foreign policy, superior fiscal priorities and an all-around better nose for the current needs of the country -- moral superiority in political campaigning is no longer one of them.

Lorne Gunter's apologetics do nothing to change that.

Is Michael Ignatieff As Good As His Word?

Ignatieff pledges not to reciprocate personal attacks

If there's any one word that could be used to sum up the recent Conservative ads regarding Michael Ignatieff, it's personal.

Rarely have Canadian politicians taken it upon themselves to attack a political opponent on such personal grounds, but the Conservatives have done this. It's absolutely undeniable.

Speaking on the matter today, however, the Liberal leader has pledged not to attack Stephen Harper on personal grounds -- at least not overtly.

"Let's be clear how we carry the attack, because I will not attack Mr Harper's patriotism," Ignatieff promised. "I will not attack his character. I will not attack his family. I will attack his record, and God knows, there's enough to work on."

"There's enough on the record that we can attack: record unemployment, record bankruptcies, record deficit," Ignatieff announced. "That should give us enough to be getting along with."

And while Ignatieff knows full well that the economic stimulus package -- the stimulus package that he and his fellow members of the opposition demanded -- is responsible for Canada's current deficit, and knows full well that economic mismanagement south of the border is responsible for Canada's current economic condition, it's encouraging to hear Ignatieff pledge to restrict his campaigning against Stephen Harper to substantive matters of policy.

And while it would be both encouraging and wise for the Liberal party to try to brand itself as the party of the high road -- thereby counter-branding the Conservative party as perveyours of low-road politics -- one also has to remember that this would be counter-characteristic of the Liberal party.

After all, it was the Liberal party that dressed Stephen Harper up in fictional policy. It was the Liberal party who insinuated that Harper would summarily declare martial law if elected to office.

Michael Ignatieff may personally be able to scrape together enough credibility to temporarily change the public image of his party. But Canadians will remember the disgusting and shameful lows the Liberals sank to in order to attack Stephen Harper. They'll remember that as disgusting and irresponsible as the Conservatives' current batch of political ads are, previous Liberal ads were even more disgusting and even more irresponsible.

Canadians may also be intrigued to be introduced, once more, to the "tough guy" personae, wherein he indulges himself in blue-collar tough talk, replete with calculatingly devolved language.

"If you mess with me, I will mess with you until I'm done," Ignatieff pronounced.

It's a bold statement, but one has to hope that Ignatieff is as good as his word. Even though the Liberal party has never succeeded electorally against Stephen Harper without resorting to personal -- and often fictionalized -- attacks, one has to hope that at least someone in Canada has the courage to rise above the personal mudslinging that has passed for political campaigning in this country for too long.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Ideas Revolutionary - "Attack Ads"

Fighting the Cold War Over a Chessboard

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the western bloc countries never tested each other in a shooting war. They did, however, often contest their differences over sporting events.

One of those was the Bobby Fischer vs Boris Spassky world chess championship match played in 1972 -- the same year that Canada confronted the Soviet Union in the famed Summit Series.



In the Soviet Union, the Bolshevik party embraced chess as a matter of public policy.

As with most forms of competition -- athletic, intellectual or otherwise -- the Soviet Union sought to mobilize dominance at chess for maximum propaganda value. But chess had particular appeal.

With its overwhelming focus on strategy and not-so-subtle overtones of militarism, dominance at a game like chess could offer comfort to any members of the Soviet populace who worried about open warfare between the USA and the USSR.

Likewise, Americans who were worried about a military conflict between the USA and USSR -- and who wouldn't have been, considering that such a conflict would inevitably involve nuclear weapons -- must have been very distressed by Soviet dominance of the sport of chess. At one point, the Americans had only one Grand Master. The Soviets had numerous, a benefit of their Chess school.

Canadians were distressed by Soviet dominance of hockey during the 1960s and 1970s, but Canadians didn't have to worry about having to directly play nuclear hockey with the Soviets from across the globe.



It was against this fearful cold war backdrop that Bobby Fischer, considered to be the great American hope, failed to show up at the appointed time for his world championship match. Of all things, Fischer was repeatedly holding out for more money.

Fischer was anything but patriotic in his motives. He remarked that he intended to play a chess match against a lesser opponent every month. Instead, his handlers wanted a system for the fair selection of contenders for the world chess championship.



After significant political wranglings -- not surprising considering the environment surrounding sport at the time -- the match finally got underway.

Once the match began, Fischer very nearly quit. He lost the first game, then forfeit the second. But eventually personal pride prompted him to continue the matches under better conditions -- he insisted that television cameras were too loud, and had been distracting him.



Fischer would game three, and go on to dominate the match. The Soviets would claim that Fischer was using some sort of mind control device against Spassky -- an ironic claim considering that it was the Soviets themselves who were experimenting with techniques such as remote viewing.

Eventually, Spassky was so overwhelmed he had little choice but to concede defeat.

But Fischer would refuse to defend his championship. By 1975, Fischer was forced to forfeit the world championship to Anatoli Karpov, Spassky's Kremlin-chosen successor. Spassky would eventually be exiled from the country.

Defeat was something that Soviet sporting officials never tolerated. Just as the American Olympic hockey victory over the Soviets at the 1980 Lake Placid games led to the political disfavour of phenomenal Soviet goalie Vladimir Tretiak, and the Soviet loss in the 1988 Canada Cup eventually led to the Soviet Union turning its best players loose for the professional game, Spassky's defeat prompted an effective exile to Paris.

Just as the days when Canadian hockey players grinded out international ideological conflicts against their Soviet counterparts will likely never return, nor will chess ever see another contest as ideologically contested as the 72 Spassky-Fischer match.

Genocide Via Computer

Of all the Terminator films, Rise of the Machines was certainly the most disappointing.

Directed by Jonathon Mostow in place of James Cameron, Terminator 3 came across with all the gloss, polish and adrenaline of a Hollywood action film, and none of the grit and tension of Cameron's masterpieces.

But, interestingly enough, of the three Terminator films, Rise of the Machines may have been the best-situated out of the three in terms of its prescience.

In the film, John Connor (Nick Stahl) is living "off-the-grid", with nothing but the clothes of his back and his motorcycle. He works day jobs to subsist himself, and has no place of residence, credit cards, or cell phone -- nothing that would leave a record he could be traced by.

Even though he and his now-deceased mother, Sarah Connor, have been led to believe they had averted Judgment Day by destroying Skynet, Connor lives in terror of the future, and rightfully so.

The future isn't nearly as secure as he would like to believe.

An encounter with Kate Brewster (Claire Danes) brings John face-to-face with both the T-X -- played by Kristanna Loken, a Terminator sent back to the eve of Judgment Day to kill off Connor's someday lieutenants -- and with the T-800 sent back in time to protect her -- a role again reprised by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

As it turns out, the program that eventually leads to the creation of Skynet is still in operation. Brewster's father is the head of this project, and has his own concerns about removing human decision-making from defense planning. Meanwhile, an unstoppable computer virus is overwhelming the civilian internet, and is beginning to infiltrate defense networks.

The virus is Skynet. Whether it's been seeded in the past as seems to be happening in The Sarah Connor Chronicles or is created outside the defense program and merely infiltrates it remains unexplained.

As nuclear weapons cross the globe toward their targets, what is explained is that Skynet had presumably infiltrated millions of computers worldwide.

While one presumes that nothing as hyperbolic as a genocidal computer program plotting the wholesale destruction of humanity is currently occurring, it is a well known fact that many countries -- as well as private organizations and individuals -- have been investing in cyberwarfare capabilities that would allow them to strike at their opponents through their computer systems.

China has made its commitment to cyberwarfar technology a matter of public record. North Korea, India and other countries are also investing in cyberwar technologies at an alarming rate.

One particular cyberwarfare weapon, the zombie virus, uses infected computers to pass itself along to the next victim. It attaches itself to email and fax programs, and transmits itself through the user's own communications.

These programs can have purposes ranging from the theft of information to disruption of emergency services.

In Terminator 3, the virus' purpose was to facilitate the destruction of humankind.

Interestingly, the writers of Terminator 3 could be argued to accept the "inevitability thesis" of Andy Opel and Greg Elmer. But once again, one would have to counter by arguing that preemption is only as valuable as the amount of certainty with which it can be executed, and as the diligence used to ensure that the threat it is aimed at is actually destroyed.

(Still) Tripping Over Liberal Democracy

Human Rights Commission becomes central front in Ontario Tory leadership race

Those hoping for a lively Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership contest, with definitive matters of policy to debate, may finally have gotten their wish.

After many tranquil weeks Tim Hudak, one of the two individuals with a real opportunity to win this contest, has kicked off a political firestorm by mimicking Randy Hillier's pledge to abolish the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Christine Elliott -- the other candidate with a realistic chance to win -- opposes the move.

“It would be a gift to the Liberals, one they would exploit as ruthlessly as they did with faith-based funding,” said Elliott. “Just like faith-based funding, this is a policy that was made with the short term goal of winning a leadership campaign. Why on earth would we want to expose ourselves by plunging recklessly into such a controversial issue?”

“If we’re going to beat the Liberals, we have to show better judgment than that.”

Of course, there are numerous good reasons to support the OHRC. Defeating the McGuinty Liberals isn't really one of them.

If anything, the OHRC is becoming a battlefront in this contest between centrist progressive conservatives, like Elliott, and fiscal and social conservatives, like Hudak and Hillier. In a party recently battered by John Tory's election pledge to provide funding to faith-based schools -- something that many Ontarians seem to forgot is actually constitutionally entrenched -- real questions lurk over whether or not the party can afford to embrace any other social conservative-leaning policies.

Elliott and fellow candidate Frank Klees firmly oppose Hudak and Hillier's intention to abolish the OHRC, instead preferring to reform the commission.

The battle lines within the Ontario Progressive Conservatives couldn't more obvious when one examines the prominent endorsements already handed out -- Elliott has collected an endorsement from Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, and Hudak has recieved an endorsement from former Ontario Premier Mike Harris.

Regardless of which side emerges victorious in this tussle over the party's policy in regards to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the Ontario Tories will have taken a stance regarding the shape and form that Ontario's democracy will take -- one in which an institution arguably used to show state favour will be eliminated in the name of reinforcing the neutrality of the state, and one in which neutrality of the state may be, to some degree, compromised in favour of ensuring a more just society.

One way or the other, the party will have made a statement that won't be easily rescinded.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Russ Campbell - "Frank Klees 1, Christine Elliott 0"

Canada Shifts Course on Piracy

But will Michael Byers finally be happy about it?

Speaking on a controversy dealing with Canadian handling of pirates captured off the coast of Somalia, Defense Minister Peter MacKay has announced that Canada is in negotiations with Kenya to secure an agreement that would allow Canadian sailors to turn captured pirates over to a tribunal in Kenya for trial.

Previously, Canada had been disarming captured pirates before releasing them.

Questions had been raised over how seriously Canadian forces take piracy in that region. MacKay stated in unequivocal terms how seriously Canada takes this.

"Let's be clear — this is financial terrorism," MacKay announced. "This is not unlike acts of terrorism that we see in other parts of the world, whether it be kidnappings, whether it be issues related to fanaticism and extremism in places like Afghanistan."

One would wonder how Michael Byers would react to this news. Byers had previously denounced the government policy on piracy as "ludicrous".

"Its ludicrous for the Harper government to claim that it can't arrest and prosecute pirates,” Byers said. “Canada has a legal obligation under the United Nations and international law to bring pirates to justice.”

“The more interesting question is whether we have the authority to release,” Byers insisted.

But one may think back to Byers' stance on another issue -- the alleged torture of Taliban militants by Afghan authorities -- and realize that Byers' attitude toward this issue is actually rather hazardous.

Byers had denounced Canadian troops turning prisoners of war over to Afghan authorities as illegal in the wake of allegations that some of them had been tortured (the Al Qaeda training manual instructs captives to falsely claim they had been tortured, but that's another matter).

One would wonder how Byers would react if Canadian sailors turned captured pirates over to Kenyan authorities who tortured them. Kenya, like Afghanistan, has a history of torturing prisoners.

In fact, negotiating a deal with Kenya similar to the one negotiated with Afghanistan in the wake of torture allegations is actually the right thing to do.

Canadian officials should retain access to any prisoners turned over to any other state so we may ensure that they aren't being tortured. While some claims of torture will naturally lack credibility -- those of aforementioned Taliban or Al Qaeda militants -- they all must be investigated fully. Canada cannot allow itself to be willingly complicit in torture.

However Byers would have reacted to the torture of Somalian pirates by Kenyan officials, one would have to imagine that he wouldn't have reacted favourably. Moreover, one can assume he would have blamed the Harper government for that torture.

Fortunately for Byers, nothing of the like has come to pass. Considering that it's been his stance that Canada must seek the prosecution of captured pirates, he would have been complicit in that torture.

There Is No Inevitable Fate

"There is no fate but the one we make."

This message is at the heart of Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

The film picks up years after the original Terminator left off. Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) is in a psychiatric hospital in order to protect the public from the violent outbursts of her alleged psychotic delusions, and her son John (Edward Furlong) is in the care of foster parents.

Sarah lives in fear of the day when Skynet will either annihilate mankind with a nuclear attack or send another Terminator to kill her or her son. John, meanwhile, is living a rebellious life, angry at his current predicament.

This all changes the day that an extremely advanced terminator (played by Robert Patrick) is sent back in time to kill him. In place of Kyle Reece -- killed in the first movie -- the resistance sends a captured terminator (Schwarzenegger) back in time to protect him.

Allusions to Cold War tensions emerge for the first time in Terminator 2 as the terminator recounts for Sarah and John a more precise telling of how Judgment Day comes to pass. Skynet is designed initially as an automated pilot for stealth bombers, but eventually is placed in control of the entire defense grid of the United States -- including its arsenal of nuclear weapons.

When Skynet becomes self-aware, it responds to attempts to shut it down by launching nuclear weapons against the former Soviet Union. The notion of Mutually Assured Destruction is exploited by an entity that suddenly views the destruction of humankind as its best survival strategy.

Upon being rescued by John and the T-800, Sarah's first impulse is to slip into Mexico, away from Judgment Day's primary nuclear blast zones, in an effort to survive the initial attack.

Eventually, she decides instead to attempt to stop Skynet from ever being created by killing Myles Dyson (Joe Morton), the computer developer who will eventually create Skynet.

That attempt marks a turn in the film's plot in terms of the ideology of inevitability.

In Preempting Dissent, Greg Elmer and Andy Opel argue that preemptive action -- whether it be militarily preempting the actions of a rogue state or preempting political protests through the use of police power -- is predicated on a sense of inevitability.

In Terminator 2 James Cameron seems to reject this thesis, for a reason that seems evident to nearly anyone who thinks critically about that thesis. Preemption can only be justified if whatever it is aimed against can be prevented.

By striking against John Connor in the past, Skynet acts on the belief that its defeat by Connor in the future can be prevented. By striking against Skynet in the present -- by destroying all the research that leads to its creation -- John and Sarah act on the belief that Judgement Day can be prevented.

In choosing to collaborate with the Connors in the destruction of his work, Dyson shows a maturity that one wonders if many inventors would share -- destroying his life's work in order to prevent his life's work from taking billions of lives.

One may wonder what kind of a world we would live in today if the creators of the nuclear bomb had shown the same kind of restraint, or had heeded the warnings of Albert Einstein, whose theory of relativity actually made the splitting of the atom possible.

When the T-800 collaborates in its own destruction at the end of the film -- it cannot self-terminate, but it apparently can assist in its own termination -- it echoes Dyson's restraint.

That a machine with no real sense of human compassion -- that instead learned to mimic human compassion under John's orders -- could better comprehend the importance of such restraint than some of the arguably finest scientific minds humankind has ever produced should remain unsettling to virtually anyone.

Of course, the act of striking against a looming threat in order to avert it requires a specific amount of certainty -- first, that the threat itself can be averted, and certainty that the threat has been averted.

Preventing the weapons that humankind has created in order to defend itself from instead destroying us could never be accomplished in one fell swoop, so long as human minds remain intent on pursuing the means to destroy one another.

Fearing the Future in the Urban Environment

The Terminator was written at a time when North American society was still coming to grips with the number of urban serial killers and disturbed "spree" killers breaking out in major cities. For many people, urban environments had become -- and remain -- extremely frightening environments, with danger lurking around every corner.

Contrasted to this was the ambivalence and anomie of people more accustomed to living in those urban environments. Emile Durkheim defined anomie as, essentially, normlessness. In order for social norms to break down social complexities and the industrial division of labour had to break down traditional social value systems.

Anomie reduced the constraints on the ways one could pursue their goals. As some individuals became more and more predatory those who adhered to more traditional social norms could more easily be victimized -- whether it be through crime or ruthless business practices. That sense of victimization could manifest itself in various social problems, including domestic violence, societal withdrawal and suicide.

This anomie led to the development of truly frightening urban landscapes. Street gangs, transient substance-users and homeless people provided for an intimidating vision of a society gone horribly awry. The urban landscape was seen as hard on the mental health of its inhabitants.

The Terminator played off this concept of the urban environment. Arnold Schwarzenegger's cybernetic pseudo-character and Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) are initially framed against the image of a serial killer knocking off Sarah Connors in the very order in which they appear in the phone book.

Even after Reese saves Connor (Linda Hamilton) from the Terminator's first attempt to kill her she regards him with suspicion. The social disconnect of the urban environment -- resulting partially from the supplanting of traditional social values -- sewed deep mutual suspicion in city-dwellers.

In The Terminator James Cameron suggests that the most frightening prospect of urban life isn't necessarily the other people living that life, but rather the ultimate result of the industrialism that led to the development of the urban environment. In The Terminator's futuristic and constantly-changing future, this is a computer capable of making the decision to destroy mankind.

Cameron mixed the latent terror of the urban environment with futurism, a philosophical idea that muses about not only the potentially threatening or dehumanizing capacity of technology. Futurism is prevalent in the modern wave of neo-horror films in which technology is used to terrorize the film's protagonists.

In most of these films the threat was purported to be not technology itself, but a malevolent force that instead manifested itself through that technology. The danger was not necessary technology, but the omnipresence of it.

In the flashback scenes of The Terminator, Cameron spins this idea. Technology remains threatening, but is no longer omnipresent. Children huddle together in an underground bunker and stare into a television set in which a fire has been lit -- watching it as children did before Judgement Day. There seem to be very few telephones, no computers, and very little electricity of any kind. When a terminator arrives to clean out the bunker of human life, the danger posed by technology arrives from outside, as opposed to from within.

In The Terminator, James Cameron combined a latent suspicion of the unintended consequences of technology with the latent terror that had long become a part of urban environments.

As the one Terminator film actually produced during the Cold War it's actually rather intriguing that the political tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union would remain largely absent from the film itself. Those tensions wouldn't find a role in the franchise until the sequel.

A Foolish Assumption

There's nothing rational about discrimination

Writing in an op/ed column in the Globe and Mail, Tom Flanagan attempts to make the case that the Canadian Human Rights Commission is, essentially, obsolete and should be abolished.

In many ways, as Flanagan notes, Canada's Human Rights Commissions are largely responsible for their own current predicament -- that of a lack of public credibility:

"For the first time in a long time, human-rights commissions are on the defensive. The Harper government is taking away pay equity from the Canadian commission and University of Windsor law professor Richard Moon's report has recommended repeal of the commission's right to interfere with free speech.

Both federal and provincial commissions are suffering blowback from their unsuccessful attempts to muzzle media gadflies Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant. Mr. Levant, in particular, has declared a jihad against the commissions, drawing attention to the one-sided nature of the legislation under which they operate. For example, commissions pay expenses for complainants but not respondents; successful respondents cannot sue complainants to recover costs; commissions allow complaints for the same alleged offence to be lodged in multiple jurisdictions, amounting to double jeopardy."

There's certainly a case to made for this. The extremely self-destructive behaviour of many of the CHRC's investigators, including the one who was unscrupulous enough to hack the wireless internet connection of a private citizen, has made the CHRC extremely suspect in the eyes of many Canadian citizens.

The toll taken on the commissions by Levant alone has left the CHRC struggling to maintain its public sense of credibility.

But continuing Flanagan's analysis of the predicament confronting the CHRC hits an incredibly fatal flaw, when he attempts to analyze the phenomenon of discrimination -- with the CHRC is meant to combat -- in the same manner as would an economist:

"In a competitive market, discrimination is costly to the discriminator. An employer who refuses to hire workers because of race, religion or ethnicity restricts his own choices and imposes a disadvantage on his firm. Meanwhile, his competitors gain by being able to hire from a larger pool. The same logic applies to restaurateurs turning away potential customers, or landlords refusing to lease to people of particular categories. (I'll never forget the experience of owning rental property in the recession of the 1980s; I would have rented to Martians if they had showed up with a damage deposit.)

The argument applies no matter how rampant prejudice and discrimination may be. Those who discriminate impose burdens on themselves and confer advantages on their competitors. Competitive markets don't immediately abolish discriminatory practices, but they tend to erode them, not by trying to enlighten bigoted people, but by making discrimination unprofitable."

Flanagan overlooks two basic truths: one of economics, and one of discrimination.

Economics proceeds from the assumption that most people make rational choices. In any particular situation, they will make the decision that benefits them most fully -- or at least believes will benefit them the most.

Discrimination, meanwhile, is not rational. And although Flanagan's argument that discrimination is self-defeating and thus unsustainable in a competitive environment is an elegant argument, it overlooks the fact that discrimination has often taken place in some extremely competitive environments.

In Canada, few things have ever been as competitive as the sport of hockey. Yet the disadvantage of discriminating against the most talented or hard-working players on the basis of race or ethnicity has often proven to be a less-than-convincing incentive to not discriminate.

Canadian hockey offers numerous examples of this.

Perhaps the most little-known is the discrimination against the Winnipeg Falcons, the Canadian team that won the first Olympic Hockey Championship in 1920. The Falcons had won the Allan Cup as the champions of a league in Winnipeg staffed entirely by players of Icelandic descent. Players of Icelandic descent in Winnipeg had to start this league because other leagues wouldn't allow them to play because of their Icelandic heritage.

Their triumph at the Olympics -- which also won them a World Championship, as the World Championship was awarded to the winner of the Olympic tournament -- eventually won them a warm, if uncomfortable, welcome back in Winnipeg.

Players like Herb Carnegie -- who played excellently in training camps for the New York Rangers but were never allowed an opportunity to play for the club -- were discriminated against for the colour of their skin. Carnegie won MVP honours in the Quebec Provincial League in 1946, '47 and '48. The New York Rangers had won a Stanley Cup in 1940, but could have well won another with a player like Carnegie, whose skills were often considered comparable to those of Canadiens legend Jean Beliveau.

If discrimination could be defeated by the self-interested rationality of those who need top-caliber talents to excel in highly competitive environments, as Flanagan insists, one would have to imagine that such historical episodes never would have happened.

The truth is that there is nothing rational about discrimination. It's predicated on emotional responses to evident differences between people, and in cases of racism doesn't even necessarily rely on differently-coloured skin.

Discrimination proves to be one of those instances where the free market isn't enough to ensure justice for those involved.

Flanagan is eager to argue that cases wherein discrimination turns out to be profitable are so because of government interference in the free market:

"Government can use its coercive powers, however, to protect discriminatory practices in the private sector from being undermined by competition.

There is a long and dishonourable history of propping up discrimination in the private sector - refusing to enforce laws against violence (lynching), passing discriminatory legislation (Jim Crow laws in the American South) and authorizing business cartels (sports leagues) and labour cartels (trade unions). Satchel Paige would have been pitching against Babe Ruth if professional baseball had been a competitive industry.

Government, using its monopoly of coercion, imposes the costs of discrimination on its hapless targets. Think of the episodes in our history that make Canadians feel ashamed and for which our governments have been busy apologizing: disregard of aboriginal property rights; sending Indian children to residential schools; closing the doors to Jewish refugees; keeping out Chinese and Sikh immigrants; relocating the Japanese during the Second World War; interning Ukrainians during the First World War and Italians during the Second World War; eugenic sterilization of the mentally and physically handicapped.

Every one of these was an exercise of governmental power. Political majorities undoubtedly approved at the time, but public opinion did not relocate the Japanese or send Indian children to residential schools. Governmental authority did, backed up by the coercive monopoly of the state. Authorizing a government agency to stamp out discrimination in the private sector is truly setting the fox to guard the henhouse."

Yet the Winnipeg Falcons were the victim of discrimination within an amateur league, unprotected by government legislation, and that Carnegie actually excelled within a Quebec league that was.

As Flanagan notes, discrimination in the private sector may well be self-liquidating over time, as those who very much do disadvantage themselves by discriminating against those with valuable talents inevitably lose out.

But that does absolutely nothing for those being discriminated against today. That is where Human Rights Commissions come in handy, and that is a valuable role that they fill.

While few Canadians will pretend that Human Rights Commissions are perfect, fewer still would pretend that those imperfections couldn't be rectified with a program of reform, not abolition.




Other bloggers writing about this topic:

George Young - "World According to Flanagan (And Harper)"

Cracked Crystal Ball - "Tom Flanagan: It's All About Social Darwinism"

To Boldly Commit Genocide...

Warning: the following post contains significant spoilers about the film Star Trek. Those still interested in seeing this film should consider themselves forewarned.


Dark historical overtones at heart of Star Trek film

Franchise re-boots are all the range recently, with film franchises like Batman scoring big hits at the box office in the wake of previous disappointing film releases.

It's in this particular vein that it should be less than surprising that Paramount films would re-boot Star Trek. What should be even less surprising -- to those intimately familiar with the franchise -- is that JJ Abrams, the man behind the Trek re-boot, would fashion a Star Trek that resembles human history a little more closely than Gene Roddenberry's original series.

Yet the film retains the general theme of Roddenberry's original -- the triumph of the human spirit.

The film daringly and decisively re-shapes the Star Trek universe when Nero (Eric Bana), a revenge-seeking Romulan, destroys the planet Vulcan -- one of the backbones of the United Federation of Planets -- in order to take revenge on Ambassador Spock for failing to save planet Romulus.

Spock -- who appears both in younger and older forms (played by Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy, respectively) -- speculates that as few as 10,000 Vulcans may have survived the destruction of the planet.

Genocide is a theme that Star Trek has previously addressed, but rarely in terms so horrifically similar to human history.

As those intimately familiar with Star Trek are doubtlessly aware, Vulcans and Romulans look very similar to one another for important reason -- they share a common heritage on the planet Vulcan. As revealed in the Next Generation episode "Unification" -- in which Spock is targeted by Romulan assassins for his efforts to reveal this common heritage to citizens of the Romulan Star Empire -- Romulans were Vulcans who left the planet to follow a different path, and forge a militaristic empire.

It's in this vein, considering that Vulcans and Romulans are actually the same species, that the destruction of Vulcan isn't merely a genocide -- it's actually a fratricide as well.

Naturally, this will beg comparisons to Adolph Hitler -- who is believed by many to have had a Jewish heritage -- and to the genocide in Rwanda, where Hutus and Tutsis were not only virtually indistinguishable to most visitors to that country, but had on many occasions inter-married, making it incredibly likely that many of those participating in the Rwandan genocide were actually killing their own family members.

As Bruce Wilshire theorizes, many genocides are motivated by a mortal terror -- the belief that the existence of an ethnic rival poses a threat to the survival of one's own ethnicity or race.

Nero seems to embody this particular motivation, as he intends to continue on to destroy every Federation planet -- including Earth -- believing that is the only way he can ensure the survival of Romulus.

(Then again, considering that Romulus was destroyed when its sun went supernova, one can certainly find fault in the reasoning of this particular madman.)

Human history is full of all kinds of instances in which genocidal leaders went to shocking lengths in order to defend otherwise inconsequential ethnic differences. Wherever the Star Trek franchise may now go, one can imagine that it will very closely resemble human history.

Some may question if this remains true to Gene Roddenberry's original optimistic vision of human history, and its message that the human triumph can triumph over petty greed and racism.

By the same token, however, one would have to agree that a triumph without a challenge is hardly a triumph at all.

Tripping Over Liberal Democracy

Tim Hudak proposes abolishing Ontario Human Rights Commission

In a move that could either put him over the top with Ontarian conservatives or seriously harm his party's chances in the polls, Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Tim Hudak has proposed abolishing Ontario's Human Rights Commission.

Describing the commissions as a "tool for political advocacy", Hudak has proposed this abolition, possibly in an effort to preemptively undermine the leadership efforts of Randy Hillier, who is expected to perform poorly on the first ballot and be eliminated.

"The abolition of the Human Rights Tribunal has been a huge draw for us,” said Hulak's campaign manager, Tristan Emmanuel. Hillier's campaign has been supportive of the move as well. “Hopefully that means it will find a home in this party regardless of what happens.”

Those supportive of Hudak's promise to abolish the OHRC may echo the sentiments of Robert B Talisse, who notes that any institution that could be argued to show bias in favour of any particular political ideology is actually distinctly at odds with the very idea of liberal democracy -- political neutrality of the state is considered to be a key principle of liberal democracy.

Those who disagree with this promise -- including this author -- would remind such individuals that human rights commissions can serve an important role in fights against injustice, and that the real problem with these human rights commissions is the methods by which some of them operate.

The province of Ontario has proven to be particularly troublesome in this regard.

What is truly necessary is reform of human rights commissions that would obligate them to operate more in the manner that courts of law operate. Tim Hudak's promise would likely do more harm than good.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Matt Guerin - "Tim Hudak Shows Off His Political Immaturity"

The Liberal Scarf - "Tim Hudak's First Piece of Real Policy - Faith-Based Funding Part Two"

May 2009 Book Club - Get 'Em All! Kill 'Em!, Bruce Wilshire

Genocide born in the depths of insecurity

As the Nexus continues its observance of the 15th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, Bruce Wilshire's Get 'Em All! Kill 'Em! provides an opportunity to attempt to understand more deeply the psychological underpinnings of a genocide.

According to Wilshire, genocides are often born out of mortal terror -- they are started by populations that consider themselves at risk of being destroyed, and in a perverse fashion they embark upon genocides not out of mere hatred for their targets, but because they're convinced that destroying their targets is the only way to ensure their own survival.

While this could very well hold true for many of those who participate in a genocide as foot soldiers, history leads us to suspect that it probably doesn't absolve the leaders.

Adolph Hitler -- the engineer of history's prototypical genocide -- clearly had political motivations at the heart of his quest to destroy European Jews. He empowered himself to a stark degree by fear-mongering against Jews. Whether or not he felt that they really constituted a mortal threat is a matter of historical dispute.

In Rwanda, the move to kill politically moderate Hutus -- a move that removed political rivals to many Hutu leaders, particularly military leaders -- is itself very telling.

While Wilshire's analysis is fascinating on a macro-level when applied to the population as a whole, it is less convincing on a micro-level when applied to the leaders of a genocide.

Lizzie May Flip Flops Again

Green Party leader picking a new riding to run in

When a politician -- one would have to hasten to label Green Party leader Elizabeth May a political leader -- declares themselves to be their party's greatest asset, one has to imagine that the pressure is certainly on to get elected.

May seems to be feeling that pressure now, as the rush seems to be on to get elected -- absolutely anywhere she can.

May, who has previously run in Central Nova and London, Ontario, is apparently hunting for a new riding to run in. The most recent speculation has her taking a very close look at Ontario's Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound riding, where -- predictably -- a Conservative, Larry Miller, is currently holding office.

Miller certainly doesn't seem very threatened by May. “I think in most areas, and particularly in rural ridings, it’s important to be from there," Miller said. "It’s certainly not a prerequisite ... but ultimately it’s the people that make the decision."

Miller believes -- as many Canadians believe -- that voters prefer local candidates to parachute candidates.

The President of the Liberal party riding association in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound agrees.

“As a member of the constituency, I feel quite offended by parachute candidates. I think we should all be concerned," said Liberal RA President John Close. “Our idea is to represent the people of this riding and I don’t see how a parachute candidate can represent the everyday person in this riding.”

"If she can’t win in her own riding, why disrupt things in another?” Close asked.

That criticism should be especially biting for May, who couldn't defeat Peter MacKay in Central Nova even with the Liberal party's help. As part of an agreement hatched with then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion, the Liberals didn't run a candidate against May.

The Green Party's riding association co-President, Randy Dryburgh, is quite enthused at the prospect of the Green leader running as his candidate. He admits that she'd have a significant advantage over any local in attaining the Green Party nomination.

“Certainly, it’s pretty tough to beat Elizabeth May [to become the] candidate in your riding and I would be very pleased to have her run,” Dryburgh said. “On the other hand, if we have a really super local person, I think I’d be equally as happy to work with that person.”

Of course, there is a problem with Elizabeth May running in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound other than the troubles of being a parachute candidate.

She had previously said she wouldn't run anywhere other than in Central Nova.

"I’m never running anywhere but Central Nova. This is where I live and where I will always run," May had told reporters during the 2008 election.

The fact that she had previously run in a by-election in London, Ontario must not have fazed her at a time when she was uttering a promise she clearly had no intention of ever keeping.

But then again, this is Elizabeth May. She's proven so unwilling to stand by the principles she espouses -- ignoring Stephane Dion's failure on the climate change file when endorsing him as Prime Minister -- so one would have to wonder what would have changed for her to stop doing so now.

Breaking Bones For Politics

Produced by the CBC's Bob McKeown, Sticks and Stones is a brief exploration of right-wing bias in US news media.

The film explores notions that the news media has a left-wing bias, and points to Dan Rather and Walter Kronkite as the figures originally associated with left-wing media bias.

Bernard Goldberg became conservative America's star witness against left-wing media bias.

McKeown then moves on to address individuals like Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter and Rachel Marsden, while using individuals like Al Franken and Heather Mallick as witnesses to the virulent nature of the right-wing media -- Mallick even conjures tears at one point.

McKeown clearly takes a certain amount of glee in cornering Coulter and Marsden -- and really, who wouldn't? Marsden shifts uncomfortably when being questioned about her stalking of her ex-boyfriend, and Coulter stridently insists that Canada sent troops to Vietnam, even as McKeown inists we didn't.

(As an interesting side note, Coulter is actually right and wrong about Canadian troops in Vietnam. Canada contributed 240 soldiers to the United Nations' Operation Gallant, which was a peacekeeping mission, not part of the US war there -- although the North Vietnamese felt differently at the time, and accused Canadian troops of passing intelligence along to Canadian forces.)

Yet McKeown's own CBC is not immune to criticisms regarding bias. Fresh in the minds of many Canadians is Christina Lawand's dishonest editing of a Stephen Harper press conference, Krista Ericksen colluding with a Liberal MP, and Heather Mallick discrediting herself in spectacular fashion.

Meanwhile, south of the 49th parallel, Keith Olbermann and Janeane Garofalo indulged themselves in the kind of bombastic nonsense that so often finds a place on Fox News.

Sticks and Stones was produced in 2004, and as a result couldn't possibly be expected to address examples such as these. But it tends to ignore left-wing media bias in favour right-wing bias.

The simple fact of the matter is that both left-wing and right-wing biases can be detected in the media, depending upon which outlet one examines. Almost everyone claims to be opposed to bias in the media, but the truth is quite different.

Almost everyone is in favour of media bias. More importantly, almost everyone is in favour of their particular media bias.

The What the Fuck!? Files Vol. 7: Keith Olbermann Rips Me Off

Keith Olbermann recently debuted a regular segment on his show that seems to suggest that Olbermann may be a Nexus reader.

In a segment entitled the WTF!?! Moment -- which seems very similar to the Nexus' What the Fuck!? Files -- Olbermann takes some time out to complain about Carrie Prejean's recent complaints that her freedom of speech had been violated.

Olbermann rightly notes that the United States Bill of Rights, as entrenched in the United States Constitution via Ten Amendments, only provides decisive protection from governmental oppression of free speech.

Olbermann continues to argue that her employer could deny her the right to freedom of speech, noting that his own employer, CNBC, could deny him freedom of speech. As such, nothing Prejean said about same-sex marriage is actually subject to protection.

But Olbermann's argument fails on two key tenets.

First, Prejean made her comments in the course of a question asked by Perez Hilton, a question she was obligated to answer as part of the contest she was participating in. Olbermann's employer may be justified in taking him off the air if, indeed, he made comments that were deemed outside the realm of professionalism.

But the matter would be very different if Olbermann's producer asked him a question about a political issue and was given a question they decided they didn't like.

Second, Constitutional convention has treated the First Amendment very differently from the manner in which Olbermann describes it. There are countless cases of individuals suing for retaliation against them after the exercise of their free speech.

Amusingly, if asked, Olbermann would likely describe himself as a progressive, or at least as a liberal.

Yet Olbermann's depiction of freedom of expression as applicable to Prejean puts him distinctly at odds with the kind of free environment that is needed for liberal pluralism to survive. Robert B Talisse has noted that in order for liberalism to be truly viable, more is needed than simply legal protection of free speech. Rather, a culture of free speech -- in which public deliberation on matters of import, such as same-sex marriage -- is actively encouraged of people regardless of whatever opinion they may hold on the topic.

If Prejean were someone being censured for supporting same-sex marriage one can fully expect that Olbermann would react very differently to her plight. This is the base hypocrisy at the core of Olbermann's stance on this particular matter.

One should expect better from someone who is supposed to be a respected journalist, but Olbermann strays from the ill-conceived directly to the comical.

In addressing the recent "scandalous" photos of Prejean, Olbermann insists that the photos couldn't have been taken without Prejean's authorization because she's looking at the camera in each photo. Except, she isn't. In one of the photos -- the one with the clearly visible pre-implant breast -- Prejean is very clearly looking away from the camera.

She even has her hands up as if she's been adjusting her hair, for fuck's sake! For fuck's sake, Keith!

In the other photo, the exposure of the nipple is actually so slight that it's clearly more attributable to a Janet Jackson-esque "wardrobe malfunction" than to any willingness on Prejean's behalf to submit to a risque photo.

The utterly comical thing about that aspect of the entire affair is that very few people honestly consider the finished product of these photo shoots to be scandalous or risque. Aside from those milking these photos out of political motivations, one would have to travel to the most conservative depths of the Bible belt in order to find someone who would find them scandalous.

But it's amazing the extent to which Olbermann is willing to mortgage his journalistic credibility -- then default -- in order to contribute to the personal destruction of Carrie Prejean.

It's really the kind of thing that makes a person scratch their head and say "what the fuck" -- and we were doing that here first.

The Inevitable Attack Begins

Ever since the Liberal party started to enjoy surging popularity after the acclamation of Michael Ignatieff as party leader, it was inevitable that the Conservative party was going to air ads against him.

Unlike the "Not a Leader" ads that Stephane Dion continues to complain about, the "Just Visiting" ads really are attack ads. While the "Not a Leader" ads were certainly negative ads, they addressed Dion's legitimate political failings -- his failure to implement his party's own climate change policy, and his petulant refusal to take responsibility for it.

Attack ads, meanwhile, in the analytical parlance, are considered to be ads that single an opponent out for attack on issues which are not politically legitimate. These ads usually attack the personality or character of their opponent, as opposed to their policies -- although the Liberal party has previously made an art form out of combining the two.

The first ad, entitled "Hypocrisy", ironically targets Ignatieff over allegedly running attack ads against the Conservatives.



As ominous music looms over the background, the ad asks "why is Canada back in Canada after 34 years?". It complains that he's offered no ideas on the economy, and complains that Ignatieff is instead running attack ads.

As the sound of a typewriter rattles in the foreground, cut-and-pasted images of Ignatieff float by the screen while a portion of these attack ads plays in the corner.

Yet as it turns out, however, the ad in question wasn't actually produced by the Liberal party in any official fashion, but rather by GritGirl, whose ads are actually of better quality than any the Liberal party has been producing on its own.

And while the ad is entirely out-of-touch with the economic realities at the heart of the current economic crisis, to attribute them to the Liberal party is actually a dishonest act.

The next ad, entitled "Economy", hits a little closer to the mark:



The ad notes that Ignatieff has mused about raising taxes. It also notes that Ignatieff has mused about hiking the GST, and reminds Canadians that the carbon tax that sunk the Liberals in the last election was actually Ignatieff's idea. The ad also notes that Ignatieff had, in 2004, described himself as a "tax and spend" Liberal.

In a particularly clever twist, an image of Ignatieff floating across the screen disappears when the ad notes that the Toronto Star had described Ignatieff as the "invisible man".

The colour scheme of these ads is typical of negative and attack ads -- the colours are dingy and dreary. Even when video of Ignatieff is used at the end of the video, it's darkened and slightly out-of-focus -- the clear intent is to suggest that Ignatieff himself is out-of-focus, with little understanding of his native country.

In the next ad, entitled "Arrogance", the Conservatives attempt to counter-brand Ignatieff as out-of-touch with ordinary Canadians:



With music that is only slightly more upbeat, this ad needles Ignatieff over his GQ cover, his admission to being "cosmopolitan" and "horribly arrogant", and notes that Ignatieff once said that the only thing he missed about Canada was Algonquin Park.

With this spot, these ads have begun to go down a more politically perilous path, as the next ad, entitled "Country" will show a little more fully:



The ad notes that Ignatieff has claimed to be British and American, and notes that Ignatieff has said he would return to Harvard if not elected.

For the Conservative party to invoke shades of anti-Americanism in this ad is more than a little hypocritical -- they've criticized their political opponents for being anti-American for decades.

More importantly than this, however, there is a severe danger when any political party begins to impugn the citizenship of its political opponents -- this is one of the reasons why the Bloc Quebecois and Parti Quebecois are so civically dangerous.

Michael Ignatieff is a Canadian citizen. There is no question about this. He isn't the only Canadian to spend significant portions of time abroad, either. Former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Kim Cambell spent two years at the London School of Economics -- time abroad supplemented with a tour of the Soviet Union.

Canadian citizenship is not up for debate. Having spent time outside of the country -- even an extended period of 34 years, a time in which Ignatieff completed a vast wealth of extremely valuable journalistic and academic work -- does not undermine any Canadian's qualification to seek office in, or seek to lead, Canada. For any political party to suggest that it does is, frankly, grossly and shamefully irresponsible.

This isn't to say that there aren't politically legitimate questions that could be raised about Ignatieff's time abroad. But his qualification to consider himself a Canadian is not one of them.

As with all the ads, this spot concludes with Michael Ignatieff riding an escalator off of an airplane while he blows kisses to the surrounding media. It's actually a fairly effective finish. It seems to imply that this is just as easily something Ignatieff could be doing in reverse -- blowing good-bye kisses to Canada while he boards an airplane to go abroad again, this time never to return.

These ads are, like all the Conservative ads being produced these days, well-produced. But the conceptual end of these ads is sorely lacking, and the Conservative party may not like that the inevitable "spatter effect" that accompanies such ads may actually tar themselves far more than the damage done to Ignatieff.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Quito Maggi - "Conservative Attack Ads... Why Now?"

Luca Manfreti - "Conservative Ads Review"

Unhyphenated Canadian - "They Are Labelled 'Attack Ads'"

The Un-Funniness of Non-Comedy

There's something comical about a reporter from FOX News, of all networks, complaining that someone on CNBC would allow political invective to go unchallenged.

But there's also something extremely comical about Janeane Garofalo. Recently she was confronted by Fox News' Griff Jenkins over her recent comments in which she insisted that all of those protesting Barack Obama's stimulus package with tea parties were motivated by racism alone.

When confronted by Jenkins, Garofalo put the rather dubious standard of evidence she used to reach that conclusion on display -- demanding to know where these individuals had been during the George W Bush Presidency when he was running the United States deeper into deficit and deeper into debt.

Although, one must point out, just as Sean Hannity does, that Bush was doing so at a quarter of the rate that Obama is now doing.

In actuality, this is actually stronger evidence in favour of suggesting that the Tea Parties were politically motivated out of partisan fervour -- a possibility that Garofalo herself previously rejected.

No. Apparently Garofalo's defining piece of evidence is a "What'chu talkin' about Willis?" sign held up by one of the protesters.

Yet Garofalo clearly overlooked the fact that "What'chu talkin' about Willis" is less a racial slur and more of a pop culture reference. For the uninitiated, Diff'rent Strokes was a show about black children being raised by a white family. For those familiar with Barack Obama's life story, the parallels are evident. Obama was raised by his mother -- a white woman -- who was aided by his grandparents -- who, also, are white.

It's generally uncouth to go after an elected official for the circumstances of their upbringing. But in terms of being evidentiary of racism, this sign is very thin gruel.

Garofalo actually backpedals when confronted, falling back to talking about the "racist element" at the Tea Party protests -- very different from labelling them all as racists, as she originally did -- only to backpedal on her own backpedalling.

One has to consider that these are actually the less inflammatory of her original comments -- her insistence that American conservatives are all mentally ill as a precondition of their political alignment is actually much more alarming.

Moreoever, they're clearly the kind of arguments formulated in an echo chamber, never intended to be defended. Garofalo's reaction to being challenged bear that particular observation out.

The utterly hilarious aspect of the entire affair is that, as a comedian, Janeane Garofalo has the ultimate back door out of the base stupidity of her original comments -- she could have just insisted she was joking.

But even if Garofalo were only joking, it still wasn't funny.

Ignatieff Making a Good Habit Out of Wise Decisions

Liberal leader recognizes (most of) problems with the coalition government

Regardless of what a Craig Oliver may have to say about it, comments made by Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff on Sunday weren't merely his closing argument at a divorce proceeding -- it was a eulogy.

Although Oliver argued that the coalition is very much alive and well under the guise of threatening to defeat the Tories if they decline to amp up Employment Insurance, there has been very little doubt that the coalition, in terms of a governing agreement, is dead and now buried.

Speaking in Montreal -- the source of newfound Liberal strength -- Ignatieff admitted that the coalition was divisive and too unstable to merit trying at a time of economic recession.

"I'm in politics to unify people, not to divide them," Ignatieff explained.

"There was also a question concerning the legitimacy of the coalition that troubled me," Ignatieff continued, noting that the Liberals -- the leader of whom would become Prime Minister -- had just suffered their worst defeat in the 2008 federal election. It would be impossible to argue that the Canadian people had shown confidence in the Liberal party.

Even if the Liberal/NDP coalition commanded the confidence of the house, the outrage provoked would have led to a much more dangerous political crisis -- the loss of citizens' faith in the political system.

Ignatieff didn't seem to understand this particular danger when he insisted that the coalition wasn't undemocratic -- it's hard to have democracy when citizens utterly and completely lose faith in that system.

He did seem to understand the implicit instability of the coalition.

"I felt it was very difficult to guarantee the necessary political stability during a time of crisis with three partners in a formal coalition," he added. "That was my first doubt. I couldn't guarantee the long-term stability of the coalition under the circumstances."

It's evident that a repeat of the Liberal/NDP/Bloc coalition simply isn't in the cards -- not even in terms of defeating the government. With the Liberals leading polls partially at the expense of the NDP and Bloc, analysts of varying stripes have noted that it's unlikely that either of those parties would help the Liberals defeat the Conservative government -- not when an election would very likely bring them up short of their current seat totals.

Having instructing his party to prepare an election platform, it's very evident that Ignatieff is eager to fight an election.

But even in the absence of an election, preparing an election platform is still a very wise decision. It demonstrates to Canadians that the Liberals are prepared to govern and are preparing a program on which they would govern if elected -- notwithstanding the breaking of election promises that is common for all political parties.

Michael Ignatieff is making a habit of making wise decisions. Between doing away with the inevitably disastrous Liberal/NDP/Bloc coalition and preparing his party to seek government -- making them a much more credible alternative government -- Ignatieff is making a strong enough case for Prime Minister to make Canadians forget Stephane Dion and consider the Liberal party once again.

Although Ignatieff remains vulnerable on numerous fronts -- his time spent out-of-country, his initial support of the coalition government, the undemocratic way in which he became Liberal leader, and the fact that the ill-fated carbon tax was actually his idea -- Michael Ignatieff has proven to be the renewed strength of the Liberal party.

If he continues to make wise decisions it will be very difficult for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives to keep him out of 24 Sussex Drive.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Montreal Simon - "Michael Ignatieff and the Moral Quagmire"

Alberta Arvark - "Ignatieff, Flaky on the Coalition

Blogging a Dead Horse - "Ignatieff Knows Less Than a 9th Grader"

The Battle Over the Defining Face of the New GOP

Bill Bennet favours McCain over Palin

Speaking on CNN recently, senior Republican Bill Bennet frames with unequivocal clarity the choice that lays before the National Committee for a New America, the organization providing the thrust behind the efforts to re-brand the GOP.

That choice is very simple: rebuild the party around a Palin-esque image, or rebuild the party around a McCain-esque image. No matter what Rush Limbaugh may have to say about it, not rebuilding the party at all is not an option.

With equally unequivocal clarity, Bennet also has his own preference in terms of the identity the party should pursue -- a youth-oriented moderate image, as best exemplified by Meghan McCain.

However, Bennet contends that the media isn't doing the Republican party any favours by continuing to focus on figures like Palin.

“One of the things the media could do – some of the media – is to move the debate off Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh,” Bennett said. “This is probably not the future of the Republican Party."

"It could talk about a Paul Ryan or a Mike Pence," Bennet continued. "It could talk about a Bobby Jindal. It could talk even about a John Kyl or a David Petraeus. You know, there’s a lot of talent in this party."

"I ran into Meghan McCain last night," Bennet added. "And I have to tell you, Bill, she’s refreshing, she’s honest and she’s a face that could really help them galvanize young people and independents."

Despite what the most extreme conservative ideologues seem to insist, the Republican party very much does need to be able to reach out to independents and to fiscally conservative Democrats.

Sarah Palin herself seems to understand the need to rebuild the party for the 21st century -- something that should have been taking place in 1999 as opposed to 2009 -- as suggested by her recent membership in the NCNA. However, whether Palin intends to contribute to an effort to moderate the Republican party in the interest of being politically competitive or is merely looking for another political venue in which to hang her star is another matter altogether.

The Parody That Continues to Write Itself

One thing that has long been evident about Canadian Cynic is that he is entirely unwilling to admit when he's been caught being a hypocrite.

His milking of the insipid Antonia Zerbisias affair -- in which many right-wing and conservative bloggers have expressed outrage at a twittered joke in which she suggested Michelle Malkin should be shot in the face -- has proven to be nothing short of incredibly disingenuous.

Cynic has been continually complaining that those who denounced Zerbisias have failed to denounce Darcy Jerrom for expressing a wish that the Council of Canadians would die.

Considering that Cynic had previously expressed a wish that Rachel Marsden would be tortured to death, it becomes pretty obvious that Canadian Cynic has no business making such a complaint. Thus the evident hypocrisy.

But in a recent post at the Groupthink Temple, Cynic accuses Werner Patels of calling for the deaths of Canadian left-wingers.

Werner had recently mused that the world would be better off without left-wingers who can't read or spell -- there's often no accounting for Werner's temper, or the things he says when he gets angry.

But one has to take a look at Cynic's rationale for this claim to truly appreciate the parody that is writing itself at the Groupthink Temple:

"The world would be a much better place without [them]". What could that possibly mean, other than that Mr. Patels would like to have them killed? I can't think of any other possible interpretation. Can you think of any other possible interpretation?

It's an interesting thought. But one wonders how he'd respond to applying that logic to this post, in which Incredible Thriving Plants' Audrey offers to make a rather bizarre date with Jonathon Strong:

"I propose that "Jonathan D. Strong" name a pool and a date to test his theory that the experience of imminent death due to drowning does not cause pain or agony. I'll even bring him a towel. And when we're done, we can have a nice chat about the differences between this kind of thing occurring in the safe environment of volunteerism and it occurring at the hands of military captors in a lawless foreign prison."

By the same logical standard that Canadian Cynic applies to Werner Patels, it seems that Audrey is suggesting that she'd like to drown Jonathon Strong. If Canadian Cynic can think of no other explanation for Patels' comments, one would expect that there's no other explanation for Audrey's, either.

Then again, in order for one to expect Canadian Cynic to apply his logic to an ideological compatriot as compared to an ideological opponent, one would have to expect Cynic to suddenly respect the one quality that his entire blogging career has been spent categorically denying: intellectual honesty.

It's only one of countless reasons that Canadian Cynic simply cannot be taken seriously -- except perhaps by the equally-hateful and slavish twits who devote themselves to his readership.

Harbinger of Democracy?

In Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, Canadian anthropoligist Sam Dunn traces the history of heavy metal music and compares its historical cultural overtones to the outrage expressed against it by those who consider themselves a cultural elite.

In Global Metal Dunn takes his studies to the rest of the world and uncovers a startling and intriguing motif: heavy metal as a force for democracy.

In Brazil, Carlos Lopes of Dorsal Atlantica provides an intriguing thesis -- of heavy metal as a sound of Brazilian democracy. He relates the tale of how Brazil emerged from under the dictatorship of Marshal Emilio Garrastazu Médici and embraced heavy metal as a symbol that Brazil had finally become a free country. He and others treat the staging of a massive heavy metal festival in Rio Di Janeiro featuring Iron Maiden helped symbolize the arrival of freedom and democracy there.

Like democracy, heavy metal can be a potent vehicle for mobilizing nationalisms. In Brazil, Sepultura has become "the flag of Brazilian heavy metal". They accomplished this partially by embracing tradition Brazilian culture within their music. On Roots, Sepultura incorporated tribal Brazilian drumming into their music, coagulating specifically Brazilian cultural passions within their fan base.

Just as politicians can endear themselves to voters by embracing tenets of traditionalized culture -- or, in the case of multicultural Canada, cultures -- musicians can endear themselves to their fans by embracing their traditional culture.

Few things are as democratic as an icon. By nature of the mass embrace of the populace, individuals can become larger than life, and begin to represent more than even their music may symbolize.

In Jamaica, Bob Marley is precisely such an icon. Marley was already beloved by the Jamaican populace before 1976 due to his strict adherence to Rastafarian culture. However, Marley ascended to icon status when he appeared at the Smile Jamaica concert even after having been shot by extremists who opposed an end to the violence between factions from Edward Seaga's Jamaican Labour Party and Michael Manley's People's National Party.

By agreeing to play the concert, factions from the JLP believed Marley was siding with the PNP in a forthcoming election Manley and the PNP would win. (However, in 1980 Seaga and the JLP would win government.)

Two days before the concert PNP gunmen attacked Marley at his home. Legend has it that Marley was shot in the chest and survived, giving rise to his iconic status. In actuality, a bullet grazed his chest, coming within inches of his heart. While Marley never in his life formally declared support for the PNP or any other political party -- he rejected politics as not part of Rastafarian culture -- many credit the Smile Jamaica concert with helping the PNP win the 1976 election.

Marley's true purpose in playing the Smile Jamaica concert was in uniting the Jamaican people. Marley succeeded in bringing Jamaica together, but the concert did not overhwelmingly unite the country under one political flag. The margin of victory for the PNP in the 1976 election was 13% -- far from a political single-mindedness.

The character of Marley's music certainly helps account for its power as a force of unity.

Sepultura has rarely addressed politics as part of its music, but one particular song - "Refuse/Resist" speaks distinctly about Brazil under the military regime, and cements it as a voice for democracy in Brazil.

In China, meanwhile, heavy metal represents an intriguing break toward broader democratization. In the film, the proprietors of a shop in China that sells heavy metal music and T-shirts explains that traditionally, Chinese people have a tendency to listen to what they are told. But heavy metal provides those who feel so inclined with an opportunity to actually speak.

Considering the central importance of freedom of speech to democracy, the democratic significance of heavy metal in China cannot be overlooked.

In Indonesia, a country formally governed by an Islamic theocracy, heavy metal serves to highlight many of the injustices of their society.

Former Sepultura lead singer Max Cavalera (now of Soulfly) remarks about the brutality of the Indonesian regime, and about how seeing it first-hand surprised even him -- someone who had lived under a military dictatorship.

At a Metallica concert in Jakarta, a riot broke out when police confronted heavy metal listeners, whom they denounced as "communists". The government would respond to the riot by banning all heavy metal concerts in Indonesia, judging them to be far too much like political rallies for their liking.

The denial of freedom of assembly -- even for something as mundane as a rock concert -- seems to underscore precisely how threatening the theocracy finds the music. Indonesian heavy metal bands sing about political and social issues.

Not all bands are explicitly critical of the theocracy.

One band, Tengkorak, criticizes capitalism and Indonesia's treatment by the rest of the world. They even play a song entitled "Destroy Zionism", in which they insist that the goal of the Jewish people is to destroy Islam, and so Zionism must be destroyed. Many Indonesian metalheads interviewed seem reluctant to embrace Tengkorak's message.

While this may seem to be at odds with the argued democratizing motifs of heavy metal, one has to also remember that the right to agree with the government -- even undemocratic governments -- is actually a democratic right.

In Israel, some heavy metal bands fuse traditional Jewish instruments with Muslim vocal stylings. According to one metal musician interviewed, this is intended to represent Israel -- and Jarusalem -- in terms of cultural harmony, even as the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians continues to rage around them.

Many Israeli metal musicians play their music as a refusal to conform to, and participate in, this ongoing conflict. They demand a peaceful resolution to the conflict -- the peaceful resolution of conflicts (wherever possible) is the ultimate democratic demand.

They can also challenge perceptions of what is and is not acceptable speech. Salem, an Israeli metal band, drew criticisms from a member of the Knesset because they played a song about the Holocaust, which that individual argued is "sacred", and so cannot be played about in a heavy metal song. Fortunately, a Knesset colleague disagreed, and appreciated heavy metal as a vehicle for teaching about the Holocaust.

The same band nearly received a mail bomb from Vark Vikernes -- the famed murderer and church burner in Norway -- took issue with Salem for playing a song about the Holocaust. Sadly, heavy metal can become a vehicle for undemocratic political violence as well as democracy. As Vikernes demonstrates, heavy metal can become a vehicle for bigotry as well.

Iran is another country where the democratic motifs of heavy metal has found itself at odds with a theocracy. The Iranian regime will not allow heavy metal CDs or T-shirts to be sold in the country. Even merely having long hair can attract the attention of police. In many cases, fans have to travel to places like Dubai and Turkey in order to listen to the music they enjoy.

As one listener notes, the Iranian regime considers heavy metal to be anti-moralistic -- the same charge levelled against the music by Tipper Gore and the PMRC.

Heavy metal isn't the only genre of music oppressed in Iran. All forms of western music are outlawed in Iran. Dubai, marketing itself as one of the world's top tourist destinations, has embraced heavy metal as a tourist industry. Through concerts in places like Dubai -- one place to which many Iranians are allowed to travel freely -- heavy metal is slowly seeping into Iran.

When considering that downloading is the only method of receiving heavy metal music in places like Iran, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich actually becomes quite supportive. Downloading heavy metal in a country where it's forbidden is certainly an act of political resistance. Iranian fans find in metal an opportunity to speak out in a country that offers very few opportunities for them to do so.

One has to wonder how Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would react to an Iranian metalhead listening to Salem.

Heavy music has brought together millions of people -- not just within countries, but internationally as well. Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickenson notes that he shouldn't be surprised at this, but admits to often being astonished at the ability of his music to unite diverse groups of people.

In an increasingly globalized work, using tools such as the internet and export music catalogues, heavy metal can disseminate its democratizing message across the world and across varying cultures.

Heavy metal may only be one sound of democracy, but it is rapidly becoming part of a global rumble toward this noble ideal. This, in defiance of the music's reputation of being "unsophisticated" and "stupid".

Ugly Is As Canadian Cynic Does

Those who have paid attention to the Nexus' coverage of the dishonesty and cowardice that constitutes the core of the character of Canadian Cynic have likely long noticed a common theme amongst this coverage.

That is, all the things that can go wrong when a demagogue whose commitment to their personality is matched only by the viciousness and dishonesty of their character is provided with a small army of sycophants to dutifully feed their mania.

There's a significant amount of intellectual convenience to be found in preaching to the choir. One who does never needs risk being challenged when they're wrong, or when they've crossed the line.

Thus a vicious attack on the grieving mother of a dead soldier is instantly vindicated. Thus encouraging readers to go after a blogging rival through his children is excused -- at least for those within the closed loop of leadership.

Yet Canadian Cynic's reaction whenever he dares stray outside the Groupthink Temple and loses an argument is rather predictable -- take petulant, simpering passing shots -- the blogging ideologue's equivalent of licking one's own wounds.

It's in this vein that there's a certain amount of hilarity to be found in this:


There's a certain amount of hypocrisy to be found in Canadian Cynic attributing the "potential ugliness of the human psyche" to anyone -- for reasons that will become immediately apparent.

But before one gets to that, let's take a look at the most recent -- of many -- arguments Canadian Cynic lost:


Which, in turn, brings one to the potential ugliness of the human psyche.

If there's one thing to be said about hypocritical demagogues, it's that they don't appreciate being revealed as hypocrites. But the more Canadian Cynic continues to cry about "eliminationist rhetoric" from conservatives, the more he is discredited by his own eliminationist rhetoric.

Unable to sell his outrage to anyone other than his extremely closed-loop readership, Cynic has no recourse but to mope on his blog and lick his wounds.

If there was ever reason to take Canadian Cynic seriously, it's safe to now say that there isn't anymore, nor is there likely to ever be again.

Canadian Feistiness is Nothing New

We just might be finding a new venue for it

A new poll conducted by the Association of Canadian Studies suggests that Canadians may be shifting their attitudes in regard to international issues.

According to the poll, a majority of Canadians are willing to risk conflict with other countries in the pursuit of Canada's goals on the international stage. By contrast, in 2003 a bare minority -- 49% as compared to 67% -- had agreed that Canada should pursue its goals even at risk of international friction.

The study notes that Canadians have "grown feistier when it comes to defending their interests on the international front."

While this may be true, the feistiness itself is actually nothing new.

Canadians have always been particularly feisty about the things they care about. While Canadians have historically tended to care little about the things that go on in the international community -- although the wars Canada have fought provide momentary exceptions to this general rule -- Canadians have always cared about hockey.

Incidents such as the famed Punch-Out in Piestany -- a bench-clearing brawl between Team Canada and the Soviet Union at the 1987 World Junior Hockey Championships -- demonstrate just how seriously Canadians have always taken hockey. When Team Canada decided they didn't like the way the Soviets were playing in a poorly-refereed game -- a surplus of stickwork by the Russian team continually ratcheted up tensions in the contest -- a line brawl on the ice quickly escalated into an all-out donnybrook between both teams.

The brawl wound up with both teams being disqualified from that year's tournament. But that same feistiness had previously emerged on numerous occasions, rarely more famously than in the 1972 Summit Series.

Canadian diplomatic officials in Moscow helped negotiate the Summit Series as part of their "hockey diplomacy" program. This unofficial diplomatic policy had, until that point, mostly entailed teams of Canadian diplomats -- sometimes with their rosters rounded out by American and European diplomats -- playing against their Russian counterparts. This team would eventually become known (although not well known) as the Moscow Maple Leafs.

These officials' plans to use the Summit Series as a goodwill-building exercise between Canada and the Soviet Union didn't go as well as they had hoped. On-ice tensions often spilled off the ice, including one incident in which Alan Eagleson was nearly arrested by a Soviet guard who didn't know who he was.

Phil Esposito would pose a particular problem for Canadian diplomats. Esposito, perhaps more than any other player, took the politically ideological undertones of the series to heart. His fierce on-ice play was matched by his confrontational attitude toward Soviet officials -- at one point even blowing Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin a kiss.

The behaviour of Canadian hockey fans particularly vexed diplomats. The Canadian cheering section made it difficult for Soviet officials to make use of the series for propaganda purposes. Soviet officials even attempted to spread Canadian fans out across the arena, believing isolating them from one another would temper their enthusiasm and boisterousness.

Instead, the invidual Canadians only cheered louder. In game seven, when Soviet officiating seemed to threaten the series, Canadian fans filled the arena with a chant of "let's go home".

One Canadian fan even managed to be arrested by Soviet guards and wound up having his foot tattooed with the markings usually used to identify Soviet prisoners. Quick work by Canadian diplomats secured his release, and he wound up expelled from the country will little more than his new tattoo.

This "hockey diplomacy" program was certainly less than a rousing success with Soviet officials. But in many other Soviet-bloc countries the matter was very different.

Canadian teams were immensely popular at tournaments played in other countries behind the Iron Curtain. Canada was viewed as the one country that could defeat the Soviet team, and as such enjoyed tremendous goodwill in countries where Soviet oppression had been especially harsh -- countries like Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

When Team Canada locked horns with the Soviets in Piestany, the Czech fans whistled raucously in support of the Canadian squad.

Canadian feistiness toward hockey has certainly has its dark side in the past as well. It's hard to forget what Bobby Clarke was willing to do to Valeri Kharlamov in order to win the '72 Summit Series.

Canadian disinterest in foreign affairs certainly has yet to completely dissipate -- Romeo Dallaire noted this much during the 2008 election, but there have been signs that more and more Canadians are becoming interested in foreign affairs, as more and more Canadians support intervention in the Sudan, or demand intervention in Sri Lanka.

Once Canadians become interested in foreign policy it's likely only natural that they would become feisty about it. Doing anything less than whole-heartedly simply isn't in the Canadian character.

Al Gore and the Climate of Extremes

Featured on YouTube via TED Talks, former US Vice President Al Gore speaks about some alarming new signs of global warming.

In the video Gore talks about the alleged spread of oxygen-depleted "dead zones" in the oceans, and about methane emissions from lakes, including a video where some scientists set these methane emissions on fire. He then finishes up by debuting some campaign ads directed against clean coal technology.

Yet as it turns out, Al Gore is not at all a reliable source of information about global warming -- or as alarmists re-term it when challenged about the lack of a demonstrable warming trend, climate change.

Speaking via ForaTV, UN Inter-government Panel on Climate Change member Patrick Michaels demonstrates how quickly Gore's sensationalist rhetoric can be exposed for what it truly is.

It quickly undermines any faith in nearly anything that comes out of the former Vice President's mouth, and reminds viewers that while individuals like Gore want to insist climate change will be the end of the world, and that we should all be extremely terrified of it, there's more afoot than these alarmists would have us realize.

It's difficult to overlook the extent to which climate change alarmism is being treated as a pretext for various political programs.

In Canada, Liberal MP Ken Boschoff let a wealth-transferring agenda slip when talking about Stephane Dion (and Michael Ignatieff's) carbon tax.

George Monbiot has been amongst the most extreme of the alarmists, writing a book that insists that climate change will reach a "point of no return" if not stopped as immediately as possible. Monbiot, who is not a climatologist, had also previously spoken on CBC's Ideas radio program about the need for a global Parliament -- something that legally-binding climate treaties like the Kyoto protocol could arguably (but not necessarily) lead to.

On the other side of the coin there are those who deny climate change outright. As Gore rightly notes, many of them profit from oil and coal -- just as those who profit from oil and coal will rightly note that Gore has a political agenda that is served by climate change alarmism.

It would be foolish to deny that climate change is a problem. At the very least, it would be foolish to deny that there aren't countless other good reasons to reduce carbon emissions and other industrial emissions -- air quality being paramount among them.

But to allow Al Gore and his extremist cohorts to terrify people ignores both the tendency of these people to promote alarmism at the expense of scientific fact, and the political agendas they seek to promote.

Patrick Michaels is absolutely right. People need to stop feeding the climate of extremes.

Someone Get Rachel Maddow a Sandwich

Rachel Maddow has shown a bizarre fascination with the meals of politicians recently -- from mocking the National Committee for a New America for holding a town hall meeting at a pizza parlour to practically swooning over Barack Obama and Joe Biden treating a bunch of White House press pool reporters to lunch at a burger joint (an obvious photo op if there ever was one).

One would wonder what to make of this fascination if the answer weren't plainly obvious -- she's just very, very hungry.

Someone get that poor woman a cookie or something.

Pragmatism Is No Excuse

Democracy in short order in Conservative party

The Conservative party has surrendered any democratic high ground it may have had today, as all of its sitting MPs have been automatically renominated for Canada's next federal election -- whenever that may be.

The party had sent mail-in ballots to all of its members to ask them whether or not they wished to challenge the nomination of their local MP. A two-thirds "yes" vote was necessary in order to challenge.

Conservative party President Don Plett and sometimes-Tory strategist Tom Flanagan have both defended this move based on pragmatism.

"In a minority Parliament situation, our MPs were forever looking over their [shoulder] to try to figure out whether they were going to be challenged in a nomination and couldn't properly do their job they were elected to do," Plett explained.

"Politics isn't like mathematics," Flanagan mused about the decision, which is a departure from traditional Conservative party policy on nominations. "[it's] not a realm of eternal truths. When circumstances change radically you may have to change some of your organizing principles."

Yet when one of those organizing principles is a fundamental principle of your party -- in this case the populism championed by Reform party and Canadian Alliance founder Preston Manning -- compromising on it is a very bad idea.

In this case, the move has left the Conservative party facing a very severe democratic deficit within its own ranks.

NDP MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis hits the nail on the head when he suggested that, for any party with the ambition to lead democratically, democracy must begin within the party itself.

"Every nomination race is a challenge to the sitting MP to prove that they've still got the support of their riding's members," she said.

Which is a very important point. Even if the Tories wanted to reserve nomination contests for when they're truly necessary, a simple majority vote would be a much more democratic margin than a two-thirds margin.

Even Canadian Christian Coaliton President Charles McVety has his share of concerns about the move. "The democratic deficit in this country is already large enough," he said. "We don't need the governing party to be sinking deeper into ... a culture of entitlement."

Pragmatim is no excuse for a political party undermining its own fundamental principles -- particularly when one of thoe principles is supposed to be grassroots democracy.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Richard Evans - "Fiddlefudging by the Conservative Party"

Views from the Lake, eh? - "Where 'No' Means 'Yes'"

The Folly of the "Anti-Science Agenda"

PZ Myers' claims of a Republican "science agenda" wilt under scrutiny

Writing on his blog, Pharyngula, biologist PZ Myers seems to think a recent Hardball segment has provided him with a smoking gun by which he can prove the Republican party has an anti-science agenda.

In the segment Chris Matthews -- only one among MSNBC's increasingly-louder and FOX-esque stable of demagogues -- asks Republican Mike Pence whether or not he believes in evolution. Pence answers by explaining that he believes in a creator, but will not speculate on whatever method that creator may have used to create "the heavens and the Earth".

Pence goes on to speak about the growing scientific skepticism regarding issues like global warming -- or climate change, as alarmists call it everytime someone reminds them about the non-existence of a demonstrable warming trend -- and Matthews goes on to use this as evidence that Republicans lack a "passion" for science, and have an anti-science agenda.

Yet as it turns out, the Republicans have a very different relationship with science than Matthews or Myers are prepared to admit to.

In fact, as Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains, under George W Bush's Republican administration, the funding for the National Institute of Health had tripled. The budget for the National Science Foundation increased by 40%, and NASA's budget increased by 20%.

By contrast, Democrat Bill Clinton had reduced NASA's budget by 25%.

The funding figures -- which, as Tyson notes, demonstrates any political parties real commitment to science -- doesn't support Matthes and Myers' insistence that the Republican party has an anti-science agenda and the Democrats do not. Based on the quantifiable levels of support for science, one may wonder if maybe it's Democrats that have an anti-science agenda.

One may. But then one should also remember the folly of politicizing science. In the effort to politicize science individuals like Myers and Matthews are essentially drawing a line across science and conservative politics and telling people who believe in either that they may not cross that line.

It's a similar act that Myers seeks to accomplish with his efforts to canonize science as scripture for his religion -- his religion being atheism.

But it's especially alarming to see someone who claims to value science overlook these most basic facts in order to politicize it -- crowing that a politician who declines to accept particular scientific views (even scientific facts) as having an anti-science agenda even as he's voted on numerous occasions to increase scientific funding.

It's become terribly charactaristic of Myers and the intellectual dishonesty he's proven willing to indulge himself in on numerous occasions and numerous topics.

It isn't much unlike his cohort Canadian Cynic -- who has never encountered an anti-conservative slander he didn't instantly love.

Opportunism Defined

American left out to crucify someone -- and they've chosen Carrie Prejean

For anyone who ever bought the myth that only the right-wing in America delights in destroying people who provoke their ire, the events that continue to swirl around Carrie Prejean prove differently. In this event the bloodthirstiness of the American left is on full display, and it seems very much equal to the non-mythical bloodthirstiness of the American right.

The Huffington Post rather gleefully jumped on a recent revelation that Prejean has had breast implants.

These people have slipped so deeply into folly that they've even managed to make one of America's perrenial wrong clocks, Laura Ingraham, right about something.

Substituting for Bill O'Reilly on the O'Reilly Factor, Ingraham contronted feminist Gloria Feldt over the body image-oriented attacks on Prejean.

At issue was a segment of Keith Olbermann's Countdown in which a gay writer launched into a long tirade of personal and body-oriented attacks on Prejean.

"I am thinking to myself, where are the feminists?" Ingraham asked. "Are feminists not going to say, wait a second. You do not go there with a young woman."

"I think now she is fair game. She is now fair game because she is a national spokesperson for a group that opposes marriage equality," Feldt replied. She evidently failed to perceive the irony.

But Ingraham did.

"This is great!" Ingraham said. "A feminist is attacking a woman for how she looks. This is great. You guys have come full circle here in the United States of America. Now it is OK for feminists to ridicule women for the way they look."

Just as many American feminists threw thousands of pregnant teenagers under the bus in order to get at Sarah Palin through her daughter, many American feminists -- certainly not all and hopefully not even a majority of them -- are now throwing the thousands of women who are insecure enough about their body image to get breast implants under the bus.

But an even deeper irony seems to rest on the Miss California organization's inability to properly define "opportunism".

In an April 30 press release, Miss California spokespeople wrote: "We are deeply saddened Carrie Prejean has forgotten her platform of the Special Olympics, her commitment to all Californians, and solidified her legacy as one that goes beyond the right to voice her beliefs and instead reveals her opportunistic agenda."

They may want to double-check the meaning of opportunism.

Levelling charges of opportunism against Prejean suggests that she went looking for this controversy. Yet those familiar with the overall story know the truth is very different. Prejean didn't go out of her way to find an opportunity to voice her opinion on same-sex marriage.

Rather, she was asked that question by Perez Hilton, who was looking for an opportunity to politicize the Miss USA proceedings.

While no one is obligated to agree with Prejean's opinion -- this author has previously expressed his disagreement -- one at the very least has to respect the fact that Prejean chose to answer the question honestly. She gave her true opinion, and has since been unflinching and unrepentant about that.

Certainly, one could raise the argument that Prejean could have offered the same "no comment" answer as she has used to respond to questions about her breast implants. Then again, one also has to keep in mind that one of Hilton's complaints is that Prejean allegedly didn't answer the question.

As soon as Hilton asked that question, there was no way that Prejean could escape the onslaught of public attack she's been subject to ever since with her integrity intact. She could either lie about her opinion and escape unattacked, or tell the truth and endure it.

She chose to do the former, and history has since largely spoken for itself.

Now that their elected representatives are firmly in control of the country, the American left is out to absolutely destroy someone. They've chosen Carrie Prejean.

In Defense of Hyphenated Conservatism

Many strains of conservatism are necessary to build a movement

In an (admittedly) older post on the National Post's Full Comment blog, a speech given by Tom Long sheds some light on some of the deeper conflicts within Canadian conservatism, particularly in Ontario.

As Long explains, this conflict is between the hyphenated progressive conservative strain, and what he describes as an "unhyphenated" strain of pure conservatism.

"What does conservatism mean in a province which is as geographically dispersed, as highly urbanized and as diverse as Ontario? In the political timeline that I have been active, our conservatism has resolved itself into two major streams. One is a progressive strain and the other is an unhyphenated conservatism strain."

Long is very likely underestimating the pluralism within conservatism in Ontario.

It's hard to believe that Ontarian conservatism wouldn't feature libertarians, social conservatives or neo-conservatives. The presence of a Reform party of Ontario suggests that there are more than a few reformers in the province.

Even for the existence of two dominant strains in Ontarian conservatism requires acknowledgment of that pluralism. While social conservatism and neo-conservatism may fold neatly into one stream -- one poorly described as "unhyphenated conservatism" -- libertarianism and red toryism can be folded into another, more progressive stream.

As Long notes, the ideological flexibility of progressive strains of conservatism gives them a significant political advantage over more ideologically rigid strains.

"The progressive strain has been the dominant strain in provincial politics for a long time. For 42 years we conservatives were the government of the province of Ontario and had largely a progressive point of view. Progressives make some fundamental assumptions. The first assumption is that there is going to be an inexorable drift in terms of public policy making to the left. And our job is to inject some prudence into that process. The best example I can give you is before we lost majority government in 1975 and the Stephen Lewis New Democrats held the balance of power.

We were very quick to implement rent controls in Ontario. Privately, the senior members of the Progressive Conservative government were quite clear that they had no faith that rent controls work. But, they said, rent controls are inevitable and it is much better if we are in power and we are the ones implementing them than if we let the other guys do it."

But with that ideological flexibility comes evident risk.

Progressive conservatism can only remain conservatism so long as it continues to stand on conservative values. Rent control policies have proven to fail under any conditions other than the greatest duress, and can be shown to actually reduce the availability of rental housing, and severely harming the ability to find low-cost housing of the people who need it most.

To submit to the inevitability of socialist policies that are doomed to failure is to fail to stand on conservative principles. Principled conservatives would be brave enough to fight an election, if need be, based on rent control. At least then when such policies fail they won't have any conservative fingerprints on them.

"The second assumption progressives have made in our movement in Ontario is that all voters are in the centre and the way to political victory is to tie down the right but then move as quickly as you can to the centre to force the Liberals left. Senator Hugh Segal used to tell the story of how premier Bill Davis, when he got the sense that the right wing was getting a little cranky, used to go out and declare that the monarchy was under attack and then he’d organize a province-wide campaign to defend it."

It's very unlikely that any Conservative would find an abundance of defenders for the monarchy today.

Aside from this, it's very important that Canadian conservatism learn to moderate itself not according to mere pragnatism -- what could be done -- rather than what should be done.

To moderate conservatism merely according to the things that can be done is to risk acting on conservative principles only when it is convenient. Sometimes conservative principles must be observed when it might be politically inconvenient.

One leader who was unafraid to act on conservative principles was former Ontario Premier Mike Harris.

"We saw brief flashes of the other strain of conservatism in Ontario, the unhyphenated conservatism, in the 1980s. But it was really tested from 1990 through 2002 when Mike Harris was leader of the party. The assumptions that this strain of conservatism makes are fundamentally different from the ones the progressive strain of conservatism would make.

In the Harris years, the first assumption we made is that conservative ideas are not only politically viable but they are absolutely necessary to ensure that our province is put on the path to prosperity. There was considerable effort not only to identify policies but to ensure we were prepared to do the heavy lifting necessary to go out and sell them. So the policies that I would highlight would be injecting quality into public education and health care, powerful tax cuts to create economic growth and jobs, an end to unfair hiring quotas, a repeal of Bob Rae’s labour legislation and respect for the institutions of law and order in the province."

Harris proved to be successful in some regards, and unsuccessful in others.

Initially, Harris' Common Sense Revolution was successful in controlling militancy among public sector unions and in bringing provincial spending under control. However, he would later have to increase health care funding in the wake of transfer cuts by the Liberal federal government of the day.

However, Harris' push toward replacing government-funded services with community-based volunteer services turned out to be a failure, mostly because Harris' government never implemented any kind of programming to provide an incentive for volunteerism.

Justin Trudeau's proposed national volunteerism program may ironically provide the infrastructure necessary for conservative reforms such as Harris' to be successful in future, but only if conservative politicians perceive the wisdom of his private members' bill and support it.

"The second assumption that we made is that there is a viable conservative coalition in the province of Ontario that can deliver a majority government and is sustainable over time. That required a realignment of political thinking in Ontario and political identification in Ontario. That meant seizing the agenda. This strain of conservatism believes that specificity is your friend and being bold and clear, and being prepared to stand up and sell these ideas, is the way to political success."

When evaluated according to Ontario's more recent political history, this assumption turns out to be a poor one.

The electoral coalition Mike Harris used to get elected proved not to be sustainable over time. Upon his resignation his successor, Ernie Eves, lost the next election to now-Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty.

Not only was that coalition not sustainable enough to help the Ontario Tories hold the government, it has yet to be rebuilt in the six years since their defeat in the 2003 election.

"The two strains have typically come together and clashed within our party over the argument of who can make our party relevant in terms of urban voters, female voters and visible minority voters. For 42 years our party has taken tremendous efforts to attract all of these voters. Under Mike Harris we were able to win 45% of the vote in two successful campaigns. In 1995 we won one half of the seats in the '416' area — the core Toronto part of the GTA. In 1999 after four years of government, and after a lot of controversy and a hard fought campaign, Mike Harris held on to one third of the seats. We have won none of those seats since Mike Harris has been premier despite the fact that we have had two leaders from the progressive wing of the party who ran on the idea that only they could make us relevant."

The idea, of course, should not be that these two strains of conservatism clash. Rather, the idea should be that all the strains of conservatism, all of which are hyphenated according to their specific differences, should work together.

Even if it were true that the progressive conservative strain has become dominant within Ontarian politics, the answer certainly is not to push it away as Long seems to think the progressive conservatives have done to his so-called "unhyphenated" conservatives.

Rather the answer is for Ontarian conservatives to come together and do what Preston Manning spent the '90s trying to get federal Progressive Conservatives and Reformers to do -- come together to establish a conservative consensus, consisting of agreement on key conservative goals, and ongoing negotiation regarding what secondary goals Ontarian conservatives will pursue.

The answer for Ontarian conservatism is the same as the answer for Canadian conservatism at the federal level.

An Interesting New Puzzle Piece

Sarah Palin joins GOP rebuilding effort

Rush Limbaugh is an incredible ass.

Limbaugh is such an incredible ass that he all too often fails to understand who is on his side, who isn't, and generally what's really going on.

Such must have been his shock when he learned that former Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin has officially joined efforts to re-brand the Republican party, mere hours after Limbaugh insisted that the GOP leadership is afraid of her.

Oops.

"Something else you have to understand is these people hate Palin too," Limbaugh had mused. "They despise Sarah Palin, they fear Sarah Palin, they don't like her either. She's, according to them she's embarrassing. McCain said, 'I was there with Ronald Reagan'…. No Reagan voter ever believed McCain was a Reaganite."

"And I think… a lot of this is aimed at Sarah Palin," he continued. "When you strip all the talk — It's 'the Reagan era is over, stop all this nostalgia and stuff.' Clearly, in last year's campaign, the most prominent, articulate voice for standard run-of the mill good old fashioned American conservatism was Sarah Palin. Now, everybody on this [NCNA] Speak to America tour has presidential perspirations [sic]. Mitt Romney there, he wants to be president again. Jeb may someday. Eric Cantor, some of the others, McCain — I don't think he does, but you never know. So this is an early campaign event, 2012 presidential campaign, primary campaign, with everybody there but Sarah Palin."

Now, the National Committee for a New America -- a committee name that seems to oddly ring of Preston Manning's The New Canada -- has contradicted Limbaugh in delicious fashion, and added some level of intrigue to the affair.

Palin, after all, is held up by many as an example of the antiquated social conservative policies the Republican party has become so closely associated with. Even though her stances on most of these issues aren't nearly as extreme as many of her opponents insist -- for example, her views on abortion actually promote the kind of alternatives to an abortion that pro-abortion activists often insist they would support -- Palin's participation in the NCNA will allow the party's detractors to denounce the process as putting a new shade of lipstick on a pig.

But if a rebranded, rejuvinated Republican party is to be successful it will have to find a place in it for those who hold socially conservative values. While that place shouldn't grant these individuals the dominant position over policy making that they've previously enjoyed, their ongoing participation in the Republican party will remain important.

Certainly many social conservatives -- especially proponents of the religious right -- would reject a Republican party that didn't grant them an extraordinary amount of influence over party policy.

Moving away from these particular social conservatives is one of the most important things the new Republican party could do for itself.

For those social conservatives who are willing to collaborate with those who don't share their views in order to establish a consensus that more effectively reflects the modern-day values of the American people, Sarah Palin's influence on the Republican party will be important in terms of maintaining the Republican party as a party they, too, can call home.

It will be a party that Rush Limbaugh probably won't like very much anymore. Then again, that alone will be of immense value to the new GOP.

And Therein Lies the Problem

Ultra-secretive environment of Canadian politics keeps too many mysteries

Bob Woodward's journalism has transformed him into an American icon.

Not in the mold of Walter Kronkite or Walter Lippmann, but rather in the mold of an enterprising muckraker.

Woodward was the man who broke the story about Richard Nixon's misdeeds in the infamous Watergate affair -- the scandal that has become the prototypical American political scandal.

Woodward can make it all sound terribly easy. At a recent speaking engagement in Calgary, University of Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan was amazed at precisely how.

"Your career in Canada would be inconceivable," Flanagan mused. "No Prime Minister in Canada would give you seven minutes, let alone seven hours. And the thought that you would get all these hundreds of interviews with underlings, and meetings, it just wouldn't happen. There's like light years of difference between Canada and the United States."

"From the evidence I have, I think that's true," Woodward agreed, suggesting that Canada may have a unique national character trait as a result of its decidedly non-revolutionary nature.

While American history was forged out of the challenging of authority figures, Canadian history has emerged out of respect for, and deference to, authority as the independent Canadian state emerged slowly and steadily out of British colonialism.

Flanagan notes that an affair like the lingering Brian Mulroney/Karlheinz Schreiber affair could never have occurred in the United States.

"We have a judicial commission appointed to investigate things that Brian Mulroney did in the final years of his administration 15 years ago and we still don't know the truth, and we probably won't know the truth even after this commission is finished," Flanagan said. "I imagine in the United States, the truth would have been published at the time on the front page of the Washington Post."

In Canada, the first inklings of the Sponsorship Scandal were detected as early as 2000. Yet it took until 2005 for a judicial inquiry to begin to establish responsibility for the scandal.

In the United States, it took only two years for the Watergate Hotel break-in to lead to Richard Nixon's resignation.

This difference in response time to scandals allows for time to obscure the facts and dodge responsibility. Then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien continues to evade the scope of his responsibility for the Sponsorship Scandal despite the fact that the Spnsorship Program was run out of the Prime Minister's office, and run by his staff.

The Sponsorship Scandal isn't the only Canadian scandal to be obscured by time. The tainted blood scandal concluded with a stonewalling compensation package rammed through the House of Commons that left thousands of blood-injured Canadians uncompensated.

The federal government had collaborated with several provincial governments to force a compensation package through Parliament that had set a largely-arbitrary cut-off date for victims' eligibility for compensation.

These are only three of numerous scandals that have never been exposed to the full light of day. The low standard of transparency in Canadian politics should be alarming to many Canadians.

Woodward's words should give nearly any Canadian pause.

"Democracies die in darkness."

"Dirty" Moderates

McCains call for space for moderates within GOP

When Arlen Specter left the Republican party for the Democrats, Rush Limbaugh had one request for him:

"Well, Specter, take McCain with you. And his daughter."

Limbaugh's words underscore what has become an increasingly-hostile environment toward moderate conservatives in the Republican party -- a trend that began in the 1990s as the Republican party increasingly courted the religious right. Demagogues more interested in ideological purity than the pragmatic nuts-and-bolts of politics have increasingly led the Republican party astray.

John and Meghan McCain want to lead it back to the centre -- a task increasingly difficult with individuals like Limbaugh and Ann Coulter trying to drag the party even further to the right, and insisting that anyone unwilling to collaborate to that end be cast out of the party.

"I just wish that moderates like myself — more moderate Republicans and more socially liberal Republicans — weren’t looked at as, ‘Get rid of the dirty moderates. Get rid of them,’" Meghan recently complained, pointing to the Democrats' success in moderating itself.

“We need to be an inclusive party," she continued. "We need to be an umbrella party. We need to inspire 20-somethings, which is something the Obama campaign did very well.”

“And it’s not that I think that our message is neither good nor bad — I just think it’s that the Democrats package their message better, and I think if we could be able to communicate with my generation, the Republican Party can really rebuild itself,” she concluded.

The elder McCain, who seems to have accepted that his time to lead the Republican party is passing, impressed upon the need to embrace both youth and newer technologies. “By Twitter, by Internet, by all the things that frankly, the Obama campaign did a very good job at," he added. "That’s why we need lots of young people involved. If you are young, give us a call.”

McCain continued on the importance of mixing older conservative principles with these newer technological communication means. “I think we go back to old principles — and that’s less government, lower taxes, national security, etc, but we have to also have a new set of ideas and policies to implement and bring our principles into the 21st century.”

In order to find those ideas and principles the Republican party desperately needs to embrace moderate conservatives.

The Republican party's inability to accomodate moderates within its ranks have already cost it dearly. Once Al Franken is seated in the Senate -- and as the inconsistencies surrounding the Minnesota Senate election are cleared up it appears that he very much will win -- the Republicans will be seated across from a filibuster-proof Senate.

While all of this takes place, fools like Rush Limbaugh continue to sneer in the face of political reality. Faced with the fact that the world refuses to conform to their fantasies of ideological purity, individuals like Limbaugh have been revealed for the dinosaurs they really are.

Unfortunately they seem intent on leading the Republican party into extinction alongside them. Fortuantely, individuals like the McCains refuse to let them.

The Case For Canadian Conservatism

Hugh Segal insists Canadian conservatism is unique

When most people think about conservatism they think about Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan or Dwight Eisenhower.

Conservative Senator Hugh Segal would like to add a few figures to the iconography of conservatism -- a few Canadians like sir John A MacDonald, John Diefenbaker or Bill Davis.

In order to do this, Segal understands that he must make the case that Canadian conservatism is unique.

"Canadian conservatism is about Canadian values, not about American values or British values," Segal explained during a recent speech in Regina. "It's shaped by our feeling for community and the rights of local groups to do things in their own way. It's shaped by our strong belief in the Crown as a strong constitution structure that protects our democracy and as such, it's one of the reasons that we have a separate identity in this country from the United States who are such a powerful cultural force."

Unlike in the United States, where conservative politicians can build quick electoral coalitions then drift away from them while in office, Canadian conservatives must keep in touch with the conservative movement.

"The Conservative government in any province or the Conservative government in Ottawa is only successful when it reaches out to embrace all the brands of conservatism," Segal continued. "They all are welcome in the Tory family and this Prime Minister is doing a pretty good job of that in difficult economic times."

Intriguingly, this may have a lot to do with the never-ending American election cycles. In the United States, one third of all Senators -- the more powerful house of the American Congress -- are elected every two years.

This means that American conservative Senators are effectively granted political cover by another looming election. Even if they fail to make good on promises to conservative voters, odds are that there will quickly be another election to distract them. This allows them to quickly rebuild an electoral coalition under the guise of being a conservative.

In order to be successful, Canadian conservatives need to actually govern as conservatives.

But embracing all of the various camps of the conservative movement -- from deep blue conservatives, libertarians, reformers and progressive conservatives -- can sometimes lead to policies that don't appear conservative to people with simplistic views on the concept.

Therein lies the dilemma.

Stephen Harper's gradual program of tax reform -- a program Tom Flanagan has described as "tightening the screws" on government -- is clearly a Conservative policy, even if the stimulus-spending produced deficit obscures this considerably.

Once one gets into the issue of social policy, the matter becomes even more obscure.

"That's really the message. We have a unique brand of conservatism that those people who think that it's all simply American-brand George (W.) Bush conservatism I think got a lesson or got a different view of the kind of moderate brand of conservatism," added Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy director Ken Rasumussen.

"I think there is a debate within conservatism about what it is and of course, Senator Segal represents a strain, certainly the traditional strain, about the moderate brand of conservatism that's necessary to appeal to Canadians and I think that's the message he gave," Rasmussen continued.

Of course, the importance of the moderate, progressive strain of conservatism goes deeper than simply appealing to Canadians. It reflects the importance of respecting Canadian values, which have always been moderate and progressive in nature.

That's the ultimate litmus test for Canadian conservatism: it must be progressive in order to survive. Even if John Diefenbaker didn't fully understand this when he opposed renaming the Conservative party as the Progressive Conservatives, his understanding of this was demonstrated by his policies.

Oh Dear God, He Thinks He's Trudeau

Michael Ignatieff pulls most predictable Liberal card

In a speech at the Liberal party convention, Michael Ignatieff has taken to comparing himself to Pierre Trudeau.

Quelle Suprise.

The comparison of the Liberal leader of the day to the prototypical Liberal political myth has become so utterly predictable that one has to wonder if Canadians ever bother to take notice anymore.

"You have to indulge an old guy like me, but this is the feeling that I felt in 1968 at the great convention that chose Pierre Elliott Trudeau as our prime minister," Ignatieff crowed to an under-attended Liberal convention. "I had a feeling for the first time in my life that I wasn't a spectator, that I wasn't a bystander, that I was there, in my tiny way, making the history of my country. And this is what the Liberal party offers you, that sense, that belief, that faith, that together we make the history of this great country."

Funny that Michael Ignatieff would feel like more than a spectator at the Liberal convention at which he became leader. But the thousands of Liberals across Canada who just witnessed Ignatieff get amalgamated as leader without anything other than the preliminary pretences of a leadership campaign, it's likely that fewer Liberals share his sentiments than he would like Canadians to believe.

Ignatieff seems rather quick to overlook the fact that, unlike himself, Pierre Trudeau had to win the Liberal leadership. The 1968 convention he alludes to required no fewer than four ballots to elect Trudeau leader. Trudeau's leaderhsip was actually the most contested in Liberal party history.

Trudeau overcame Mitchell Sharp, Paul Hellyer, Robert Winters, Allan MacEachern, and Ernst Zundel (yes, that Ernst Zundel) to win the Liberal leadership.

Ignatieff's ascension to the leadership of the party, meanwhile, was abetted by the withdrawal of Bob Rae and Dominic LeBlanc from the leadership contest.

There's a world of difference between the two.

Even with the Liberal embrace of the one-member-one-vote system, Liberal leadership races will mean absolutely nothing in the absence of actual competition.

Ignatieff also falls far short of Trudeau on one other key count: Trudeau was unafraid to run and govern based on big ideas. As The Economist has previously noted Ignatieff has yet to take a stand on any particular issue that suggests that he stands for anything -- not even his own ideas.

It's far from shocking that Ignatieff would be so eager to hoist himself up to Trudeau's status. Trudeau's legacy -- for good or ill -- has been the Liberal party's most successful election tactic. The number of Liberals gutsy enough to try to identify Ignatieff as "the father of Canada" is equal parts bemusing and befuddling -- apparently they've entirely forgotten about a man by the name of Sir John A MacDonald.

Mythology has been the strong point of the Liberal party for decades. It's unsurprising that Ignatieff would ignore historical context to try to appeal to it now.

Heavy Metal and the Culture of Censorship

In Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, Canadian film maker Sam Dunne traces the historical development of heavy metal music. Applying the discipline of anthropology to heavy metal, Dunne turns up some intriguing elements to this music long wrongfully written off as "unsophisticated" and "stupid".

While its amusing to hear Dunne describe Val Halen as metal, and even more amusing for Dunne to treat Victoria, BC as some kind of musical backwater, Dunne turns up intriguing links with more standard "sophisticated" fare like Wagner or Beethoven.

Considering the nature of heavy metal, the film should also provoke deep questions about the nature of the censorship directed at it.

Many would have people believe that conservatives are the driving force behind censorship. But the involvement of Tipper Gore -- while her husband, future Vice President and future Democratic Presidential nominee, Al stood quietly by -- puts the lie to this.

In fact, the Parents' Music Resource Centre, the group under which Gore organized her famed campaign against heavy metal -- which, interestingly enough, drew the ire of John Denver of all people -- was formed by Tipper Gore, Susan Baker (wife of Reagan-era Republican James Baker), Pam Howar and Sally Nevius.

The PMRC was largely a non-partisan affair. And while conservatives would later target artists like the Dixie Chicks for political purposes, and liberal activists would frequently target Ted Nugent, Gore made it apparent that it isn't merely conservative partisans who raise the flag of family values.

It can even be said that the moral panic that Tipper Gore raised over heavy metal staged something of a prequel for the moralization of the climate change panic that her husband would later promote.

Unlike the targeting of musicians like Ted Nugent and the Dixie Chicks was based on issue politics -- the Dixie Chicks drew ire for appealing to the anti-war movement, and Nugent continues to draw ire for his opposition to gun control -- the censorship directed at heavy metal must go deeper. This is because heavy metal is more than just music -- for many people it's a lifestyle. In countless ways the music is almost cult-like. More than a mere subculture, heavy metal is a culture all its own.

Because the subject matter of heavy metal is so intense and so extreme, it's simultaneously incomprehensible and threatening to people who don't share that intensity. When heavy metal bands make political statements, they make them in terms so extreme that the message can often be lost. Few individuals who aren't frequent listeners of Metallica recognize the anti-war message at the heart of "One". If not for the music video, featuring clips from Johnny Got His Gun, even some regular listeners may have missed the message. Many may still.

Not that the stereotypes don't have any credibility. Many of the bands featured in Headbanger's Journey play directly into the sterotypes that characterize shows like Metalocalypse, such as Mayhem, who wear necklaces made of skull fragments from their former lead singer, who killed himself with a shotgun.

Certainly, these bands do appear to lend credence to the condemnation of reactionaries. But to judge an entire culture based on its most extreme few examples always leads to the folly of narrow profiling.

Censorship is always based on whatever culture aspires to dominance, and is an effort to try to enforce those values on other cultures that don't share them. It's the last sad act of reactionaries who cannot tolerate cultural dissent.

Yeah, They Evidently Aren't Poli Sci Majors

Canadian Cynic fails to comprehend the difference between Coalition governance and Parliamentary cooperation

Over at the Canadian Cynic Temple of Sycophantic Groupthink, the Liberal/NDP/Bloc Quebecois coalition government is an issue that's oddly kept rather resilient legs since Canadians overwhelmingly rejected it.

Whereas the coalition issue has, oddly enough, occasionally regained attention in the mainstream media, Cynic and his cohorts have seized upon numerous opportunities to whine about how un-democratic and out-of-step with Canadian political culture the coalition proposal has been perceived to be -- mainly because it really was.

But even as the sense of entitlement to trample Canadian democratic norms in the name of ideological rigidity has failed to subside, neither has the base ignorance of that particular crowd. Today, that base ignorance reemerged in a big, big way.

As it turns out, the ideologues at the Groupthink Temple evidently have no idea what a coalition government actually is, as made evident by a post trying to conflate Conservative efforts to ensure their government's survival through parliamentary cooperation with the establishment of a coalition government.

Which is actually rather odd, considering that within the very same post Cynic attempts to minimize the Bloc's role within the Dion-proposed coalition by noting that they would have received no cabinet posts as part of the arrangement -- while simultaneously trying to skate around the fact that the Bloc would have still been party to both the deal and the government.

Cynic is unshockingly ignorant to the fact that there's a massive difference between two or more parties cooperating in order to allow Parliament to function -- something that political parties are expected to do when a minority government is in power -- and three parties collaborating with one another to supplant a duly-elected minority government with a coalition that actually turns out to be offensive to the democratic underpinnings of Canadian political culture.

After all, by the standard Cynic has set, if the NDP and Bloc receive no cabinet seats as part of any arrangement, formal or informal (most likely informal), they are not part of the government, although under a formalized agreement they would be party to the government.

There's a broad, stark difference between the two. One which Cynic, with his elementary understandings of political science and Canadian political culture -- one recalls that Cynic suggested his sycophantic foot soldiers target Tom Flanagan at his place of work for pointing out how out-of-step the coalition was with Canadian political culture -- actually seems to fully understand.

He's just willing to pretend otherwise in order to continue to lob juvenile epithets at his blogging rivals. Which is unsurprising. When one deals with the most chronically dishonest and hypocritical individual in the Canadian blogosphere, one comes to expect such things.