"Decline", As the Self-Defeatists Define It

Andrew Cohen complains Canada "declining"

If there's anything Canada's far left seems to enjoy, it's wallowing ins self-defeat.

A recent op/ed column by Andrew Cohen provides an interesting case in point.

Amidst a column in which he complains about the failure of the Copenhagen conference and about recent allegations about the treatment of Afghan detainees (although he seems to put the latter in the proper context), Cohen complains that Canada is in a state of decline.

Yet some of Cohen's arguments spectacularly fail to hold water.

"They have ignored the United Nations, which is why they were late in launching a campaign for our traditional seat on the Security Council," Cohen complains. "They have appointed a new foreign minister, on average, every year and seriously cut funding for cultural and representational diplomacy. Moreover, they have abandoned the human security agenda of Lloyd Axworthy (landmines, small arms) which cost little but brought us influence."

Now if only this were actually so. In fact, it was not a previous Liberal government, but Stephen Harper's Conservative government that signed on to the International Cluster Bomb treaty, although not until after they had secured guarantees that Canadian soldiers and commanders will not be held responsible for the use of cluster bombs by allies that are not signatories to the treaty.

Moreover, the Conservative government has matched Axworty's doctrine-related accomplishments by sponsoring the process that produced the Will to Intervene doctrine, which is a definite improvement upon Axworthy's Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

And while it's true that the valuable work accomplished by Canada's foreign affairs department hasn't been the work of one full-time minister -- Peter MacKay, Maxime Bernier and Lawrence Cannon have held the post since the party came to power -- the value of this work is not only undeniable, but comparable to the work completed by Axworthy.

These kinds of factoids simply suck any semblence of credibility out of Cohen's closing complaint.

"We began this decade in decline under one government and we end it in decline under another," Andrew Cohen complains. "On our withdrawal from the world, we have reached a sad new consensus."

First off, it's clear that Canada has not withdrawn from the world, but has rather withdrawn from a conceptualization of the world favoured by the far left. Furthermore, a great many Canadians wouldn't agree that this represents "decline", but is rather, in itself, a positive development.

The Nobel No Prize

Nobel Peace Prize as much a burden as an honour for US President

As various leftist sychophants continue to preen over US President Barack Obama recently being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the lion's share of the commentary over the matter seems to revolve around whether or not Obama actually deserves the prize.

Almost certainly, he doesn't -- not yet, not even by the specious line of reasoning used by Rachel Maddow.

But even under the questionable reasons given for awarding the prize to Obama -- encouraging him to embrace diplomacy over American force -- the award committee hasn't truly done Obama any favours. In fact, as Andrew Cohen posits, the "promisary note" award may actually prove to be a millstone around Obama's neck.

In many ways, it turned out to be precisely that for Lester Pearson, who received his Nobel Peace Prize before ever becoming leader of the Liberal party, let alone Prime Minister:

"...The prize may have been the worst thing that ever happened to Mike Pearson. To many it turned him into a peacemaker and a pacifist. It conjured up an enduring image of a toga-clad high priest atop a stony mountain, uttering mystical mantras into the winds.

Pearson was just embarking on a feverish decade as Leader of the Opposition and Prime Minister. Twice, in both roles, the prize would come to haunt him.

In 1963, Pearson reversed his party's stand and agreed to accept the deployment of US nuclear weapons in Canada. It was a political master-stroke that helped split John Diefenbaker's Conservatives and propel the Liberals to power that spring.

But Pearson angered his party's left wing. His critics couldn't believe that a Nobel laureate could countenance nuclear weapons. An angry Pierre Trudeau famously called him 'the defrocked prince of peace' and refused to run as a Liberal that year.

In 1965, as prime minister, Pearson came under pressure to urge Lyndon Johnson to end the bombing of Vietnam. The question arose: how could our poster boy of peace remain silent during the greatest aerial bombardment in history?

Once again, Pearson acted as a conscientious, practical politician, not as a pacifist. He had long tried to contain 'thermo-nuclear weapons,' as he called them, but believed that Canada had to honour its commitment to accept them as a member of NATO, which he had helped conceive and shape in 1949.

He opposed the war in Vietnam and gave a contentious speech in Philadelphia proposing a halt in the bombing. For his trouble he was picked up and dressed down by LBJ the next day. Ever the pragmatist, Pearson then went silent in public, worried about damaging relations between the two countries."

Pearson's experience demonstrates that the kind of expectations produced by a Nobel Peace Prize win can create expectations that would, if satisfied, permanently divorce that individual from realism. Moreover, observing diplomacy just for the sake of diplomacy can often paint a leader into a corner in which they can't criticize the actions of another country for fear of offending them.

For Barack Obama, the problems of living up to the expectations set for him by a Nobel Peace Prize are obvious. They are the same as the problems of living up to the expectations set for him by the progressive movement that so deftly delivered him to power in the first place.

If Obama continues -- as he must -- to prosecute either of the two wars his country is currently engaged in (and abandoning Afghanistan is simply not an option for him) he will certainly disappoint many members of the global "peace" movement who believe his Nobel Peace Prize should provide the impetus for retirement from the field of battle.

Obama is almost certain to disappoint and anger a great number of people no matter what he does from here on out.

At the very least, however, the Rachel Maddows of the world, suffering from the sycophantic strain of Derangement Syndrome, will still applaud no matter what.

Death of a Dynasty Death of a Dream?

Will health care reform die with Ted Kennedy?

At the age of 77, Edward Kennedy passed away last night after a lengthy fight with brain cancer.

In the wake of his passing, many are insisting that his passing is the death of the Kennedy dynasty. As the longest-living of the Kennedy brothers -- John and Robert both met with unfortunately young demises -- Ted Kennedy's passing is at the very least the end of an era.

(Arnold Schwarzenegger, husband to Maria Schriver, continues to govern California. One may question whether or not the Kennedy dynasty is truly dead.)

But some fear that more than simply that era may end with Kennedy's passing. Some worry that Barack Obama's health care reform ambitions -- long championed by Kennedy -- may ultimately die with him.

The so-called public option the Democrats have been pushing as part of their reform package has, amidst vociferous public dissent and the Democrats' own political clumsiness, seemingly become a dead option, as the Democrats seem to have sounded a near-full retreat on the issue.

As Andrew Cohen notes, Ted Kennedy contacted Massachussets governor Deval Patrick via letter and asked him to appoint a replacement for Kennedy in the event of his seat becoming vacant -- as it has today.

Kennedy seems to have been very aware that his passing was quickly approaching. These past few weeks must have been very difficult for him, as he watched a combination of legitimate fiscal concern and sheer hysteria combine with his personal political quest to tear his country apart once again.

Now that Edward Kennedy has passed away, observers are now left to wonder precisely what fate awaits the Obama health care reform package. Will supporters be galvanized by Kennedy's passing and become more determined to make his legacy a reality? Or will they lose heart for another decade?

Only time -- and the resolve of Barack Obama -- will tell.

The Whininess of Whiners And Their Enablers

Liberal party unwillingness to accept responsibility for its own defeat reinforced by "experts"

One of the disappointing institutional character traits to emerge out of the Liberal party's christening of itself as "Canada's natural governing party" has been an unwillingness on the party's part to accept responsibility for its own defeats.

Over the past three years, the Liberal party and its supporters have rarely hesitated to blame its last two electoral defeats on something other than itself -- anything other than itself.

They blamed the NDP for competing against them and winning seats that would otherwise be won by Liberals. They blamed the RCMP for announcing an investigation into a leak involving a taxation decision on income trusts. They blamed CTV for airing an interview which revealed Stephane Dion's inability to use the English language functionally.

But an opinion article appearing in the Victoria Times Colonist written by Carleton University's Andrew Cohen reveals a disturbing tendency by partisan "experts" to peddle these excuses under the guise of their expertise.

Cohen's article is a feverish mish-mash of what-ifs, ands, or buts, suggesting that Dion may have won the election if not for that dastardly Mike Duffy, just as Paul Martin may have won the 2005/06 campaign if not for the dastardly RCMP:

"The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council conducted a review. The council is a self-regulatory body comprising more than 720 Canadian radio and television stations. It administers the industry's broadcast code of conduct.

Its two reports, which were released recently and largely ignored by the media, criticized CTV for breaching the code, a finding CTV strenuously rejected. That was revealing.

But what's more revealing is what this little saga tells us about how things are done in this country. It's about politics, ethics and maybe ambition, too.

On CTV Atlantic, the council concluded that Murphy asked a question that was 'confusing, and not only to a person whose first language is other than English.' It said that Murphy mixed tenses (past and present) and moods (subjunctive and indicative). In other words, Dion was justifiably puzzled.

In light of the badly worded question, which Murphy could have clarified, the panel called the restarts "a courtesy" to Dion. It also said repeating questions isn't unusual in broadcasting and particularly justified here, given Murphy's convoluted question.

Moreover, because Murphy never refused Dion's requests to restart the interview, Dion had reason to believe that the embarrassing footage would not be used.

On Duffy's broadcast, the council's judgment was harsher. It called his performance unfair and unbalanced. It said that Duffy misrepresented the views of one of his guests, Liberal MP Geoff Regan. In the end, Duffy breached the industry's code of ethics.

Is all this a grammarian's revenge, Miss Thistlebottom in full flight? A silly parsing of sentences? A regulator's punctilious dressing down on decorum? Does it really matter how Dion was treated by CTV, particularly by Mike Duffy?

Actually, yes, particularly in a country where the RCMP might well have determined the outcome of the 2006 election, when it announced an investigation, in mid-campaign, into allegations of irregularities on the part of finance minister Ralph Goodale. It caused a sensation. The Liberals lost that election; no charges materialized.

Last October, polls suggested the Liberal party's ascent stalled after the interview. While we cannot say if Dion's momentum would have brought his party victory, it isn't impossible.

In other words, CTV may have thrown the election to the Conservatives. In running the embarrassing outtakes, it reinforced an image of Dion as incomprehensible and indecisive."

The fact that millions of other Canadians understood Steve Murphy's question to Dion perfectly well seems to be lost on Cohen. As does the fact that if one of the political leaders running to be Canada's Prime Minister is severely hampered in his ability to use of one Canada's official languages, the public has the right to know about this.

Cohen seems to overlook the fact that Paul Martin and Ralph Goodale had declined to launch an inquiry into the allegations. When one considers that criminal charges were laid in the affair, Goodale and Martin's decision was grossly irresponsible. It took the NDP's Finance Critic, Judy Wasylycia-Leis, writing a letter of complaint to the RCMP to get the investigation launched.

If Goodale and Martin had done the responsible thing and launched a probe before the election, the RCMP investigation would have likely already been underway by the time the election began.

In other words, even if the RCMP investigation was the Liberal party's undoing, it was their own doing in the first place.

This is before one even mentions the fact that the Liberal party was already extremely vulnerable to charges of corruption after the ground-shaking revelations of the Gomery Inquiry into the Sponsorship Scandal. They knew it well enough to threaten then-Opposition Leader Stephen Harper with a lawsuit for so much as speaking about the implications of the scandal for the Liberal party.

Harper wisely told the Liberal party to stuff a sock in it.

Likewise, Cohen seems to overlook the fact that, as it pertains to Dion's language issues, Canadians -- citizens of an officially bilingual country, and Cohen may want to remember that -- had a right to know. When the matter was discussed a few days later on Mike Duffy Live, the story was Dion's language issues.

Cohen, himself a Journalism professor, would know full well that if the false starts were the story, the rest of the interview is not part of that story and would be discussed later, if at all.

Cohen goes on to lob accusations that Duffy received his Senate seat as a reward for the allegedly-scandalous Dion segment -- Green party Elizabeth May, herself no stranger to self-indulgent whining, has also suggested that Duffy received his seat as a reward for a media hit job on her. He tries to bolster his case by noting that Duffy has been particularly partisan since being appointed, attending various party fundraisers, and noting that Pamela Wallin hasn't done the same.

Yet Cohen would also be overlooking the fact that Duffy realistically showed no such fervour for partisanship during his career as a journalist, although he was often accused of partisanship by each side of Canada's partisan divide.

It isn't at all as if Mike Duffy ever wrote an op/ed column making excuses for the Conservative party's electoral defeats -- which is more than can be said for certain journalism professors.