It’s nice to have it both ways. Have your cake and eat it too. So it is when Paul Wells doles out thick gobs of sarcasm at the Conservative government this week.

Mr. Wells is a smart man who, as the expression goes, does not seem to be plagued by self-doubt. While he has taken some shots at the nasty, ideological nature of the federal Tories before, this time he does the flip side, mocking them for really not pursuing ideological goals at all. This is reminiscent of Wells’ colleague Scott Feschuk, who tried the daring rhetorical gambit of suggesting PM Harper is an unimaginative dope. This after arguing, along with much of the press gallery, that he is an evil, manipulative brainiac. Yup, have the cake - but oh, can I eat it too?

After pointing out the growth in program spending under the current government, Wells launches into  “randy” Maxime Bernier’s Libertarian pretensions. Hilarity ensues.

Bernier writing for the Western Standard’s blog he describes as  “a deposed former (sic) cabinet minister, writing on … a defunct magazine”. Ouch! That hurts.

Riffing on the census story, Wells’ message can be roughly summarized as “reducing government is a joke,” Or is it simply “the current government is a joke?” Using the old exaggeration-for-comic-effect ploy, Wells wonders out loud whether, if one is serious about cutting, whether one shouldn’t start by getting rid of half the cabinet. Zing! How about useless ministers like Verner, Baird, Prentice …? They’re not really doing anything anyway. Bada-bing!

For Wells, it seems to be comic irony that Conservatives, who in their heart of hearts want to cut government (or do they?) end up having to become cabinet ministers and work in “the system”. OK, call Comedy Central.

His parting salvo is pure Hasty Pudding, comparing the “assault” on the census to prying “the jackboot of the state … from the neck of the law-abiding taxpayer”. Stop now! My ribs are starting to hurt.

Once I stopped laughing I realized that Mr. Wells was pretty much suggesting Conservatives, particularly with any Libertarian pretensions, were dough-headed hypocrites. Then I really felt bad. And I thought he was laughing WITH us.

If I weren’t such a dough-head myself, maybe I could grasp Wells’ subtlety. I just can’t help thinking that his underlying theme is, beyond just ridicule of the Conservative government, that trying to reduce the size of government is stupid in and of itself. It took me a while, but I finally concluded that when he talks about “the serious business of tearing down the Canadian federal state” he’s not serious, just sarcastic. Shucks.

Too bad that, in the end, Wells’ yuk-fest reads like Henny Youngman applying for membership in the Rideau Club. It’s not the Ottawa bubble that’s stupid, it’s not the myriad programs and agencies that are ridiculous. No, there’s no fodder there for humour. Actually, it’s those lame-brained Conservatives who might want to reduce the size of government. They’re a joke. Yup, that status quo, it sure needs defending.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Paul Wells really wants to lead a journalistic revolution for more freedom and less government. It’s just that he first needs to ridicule the only party that might ever actually want to cut something. It’s like those cerebralists who insisted they weren’t against tax cuts per se, it’s just that reducing the GST was the “wrong kind” of tax cut.

On reflection though, I think Wells like’s Ottawa just fine. Beneath that periodically edgy exterior there’s a Jeff Simpson crying to get out. And that’s not all bad. If he keeps it up, he may just get the Order of Canada.

   

How many Poles were gnashing their teeth seeing Polish-born Miroslav Klose not only playing for Germany in the World Cup, but actually singing the German national anthem at the start of each game? Sport has thankfully, become an arena for ersatz violence between nations whose past conflicts were far too real. In immigrant nations like Canada, the World Cup sprouts seas of flags reflecting the oft-buried allegiances to old bloodlines. Families may rally, or fight over the old flags, as the case may be. One of my Austrian cousins is a resolute Anybody But Germany partisan, while I’m certainly more sympathetic to at least the sports fortunes of the Red/Black/Gold; as Canada is nowhere and the U.S. not quite there.

The elimination of Germany from the World Cup of soccer yesterday ends a remarkable run for the talented young side fielded by a nation known more for its conservative, often stolid football. Even very occasional soccer fans will have appreciated their impressive series of wins marred only by a Serbian speed-bump and of course the ultimate loss to the oleaginous Spaniards. An offense that produced several four-goal games was silenced in the semi-final by what seemed to be a deliberate defensive coaching strategy.  Pity.

Interestingly, Germany fielded a team with as much or more international flavour as many of its competitors. The German side included one Brazilian-born, at least one Turk and a Tunisian-German; and a Nigerian-born player. One German player, Jerome Boateng, has a brother on the Ghana side, care of their father’s birth-country.

However, the largest “foreign contingent” were the Polish Germans - or is that German Poles? Three regulars - Miroslav Klose, Lukas Podolski and Piotr Trochowski made important contributions. All were born in Poland, but used provisions in German law (that allow those with German ancestry) to obtain German citizenship. They have all lived in Germany for most of their lives, Klose since he was seven, Podolski since he was two, Trochowski since five. This is likely small consolation for the Poles.

Klose is by far the most prominent, with his four-goal performance in the tournament tying him for second (with Gerd Mueller) in all-time goals in the World Cup, Second only to Brazil’s Ronaldo. Born in what was German Oppeln, now Polish Opole, Klose is discrete in treading between the two nationalities. He has said it would be best if he were called “neither Polish nor German, but European”. Klose’s father is barely clearer, stating that he is “Silesian and European, and … that the success of his son is due to himself and German clubs. Podolski has stated that his “heart beats for Germany” even though he often communicates with Klose in Polish during games, so as not to be understood. Trokowski apparently did not interest the Polish national squad, so he plays for the Germans. Poland might have used them all, as they did not qualify for the 2010 World Cup.

Nationality is a funny thing. For example, back in the day ethnic Germans on the Hungarian national soccer team were compelled to change their names to sound Magyar. To paraphrase the Office de la Langue Francaise, they wished to maintain the “Magyar face” of the national team. The match between Austria and Hungary in 1902 has been called “the first international match played between two non-British European countries” - this while they were ostensibly part of the same country, Austria-Hungary. That hyphen obviously bridged an unbridgeable gap.

Wherever his “heart beats” Klose, at 32, has likely played his last World Cup game. A great footballer, by whatever name or nationality.

   

Mao has a pretty good rep for a mass-murderer. If, heaven forbid, he was still with us, and had a cut of his international T-shirt sales, he’d be a richer man. He gets a pass from all the right-thinking people, and has, since his heyday of tyranny. But more on that in a minute.

I’ve been savouring the 600-page biography of the Great Helmsman by Jung Chang, a gift from the ever-reliable, ever-generous Mr.K. Savouring might not be the right word to describe the story of a maniacal psychopath, but it is instructive. It should be required reading at DFAIT (Department of Foreign Affairs, etc., etc.), but don’t hold your breath.

If you consider making Stalin look benign an accomplishment, Mao was accomplished. Each chapter speaks to his single-minded ruthlessness. In fact, his success can largely be attributed to the fact that he was simply more ruthless than his contemporaries.

The book is fairly easy going – I’m a slow reader – but I want to highlight one part for you, one I had to re-read. I had to re-read it not because it was badly written or obtuse, just because it was almost unimaginable.

Some publicity, but not much has been given to the famines which occurred under Mao’s regime. The recent, definitive study by Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng cites 36 million deaths from starvation. What Chang’s biography makes unequivocally clear is that the famines were caused by Mao’s policies, specifically his “Superpower program” in which he wanted to make a world power of China over a few years beginning in the 1950’s. He particularly coveted nuclear weapons, and was willing to do almost anything to get them. He also dreamed of supplanting the Soviet Union as the leading nation in the Communist bloc.

To achieve these aims he had precious little to exchange, except for food. Thus began the ruthless requisition and export of food, until literally millions of people were starving. Chang repeatedly reveals Mao’s callous contempt for the suffering of the peasantry with quotes like this one: “Peasants are hiding food … and are very bad. There is no Communist spirit in them! Peasants are after all peasants. That’s the only way they can behave …” During the height of the famine, an estimated 10 million kilograms of grain was used to make ethyl alcohol for use in the nuclear program. Chinese food exports allowed countries East Germany to end rationing for the first time since WWII.

The famine peaked in 1960, spreading from the countryside into the cities. The Black Book of Communism refers to numerous outbreaks of cannibalism - where parents sold children between villages to provide the meat some anonymity.

Then came the passage I had to re-read. While peasants were resorting to murder and cannibalism, in the cities, people were “told to eat ‘food substitutes’. One was a green roe-like substance called Chlorella, which grew in urine and contained some protein. Chou En-lai tasted and approved this disgusting stuff, it soon provided a high proportion of the urban population’s protein.” How far, from that, is it to the Soylent Corporation?

Even an apologist for the regime, Han Suyin, reported that urban housewives were getting an average of 1200 calories a day during this period. Chang notes that slave labourers at Auschwitz got between 1300 and 1700 calories per day.

It is into this horrendous maelstrom that Pierre Trudeau, with his fellow traveller Jacques Hebert walked in 1960, and recorded in their book - Two Innocents in Red China. As the title of this blog entry suggests, “innocents” might be too soft a term to describe them. As Jung Chang describes, most foreigners refused to visit China at this time, having at least an inkling of what was going on. Trudeau and Hebert, along with Francois Mitterrand, were exceptions; and dismissed reports of the famine.

It is certain the two “innocents” were deliberately misled by the Chinese, but it’s also clear (unlike others) they were ready, willing and able to be duped. More astonishing is Hebert’s continued endorsement of his original work, having attended the Shanghai launch of the Chinese language version in 2005. Accompanying him was Sacha Trudeau, demonstrating a similarly astonishing ignorance of history and/or lack of judgment.

They are, of course, far from alone. A gratuitous quote from Mao appeared in, of all things, a MacLean’s article on the World Cup. One wonders what the response would be if Mr. Marche had dropped an aphorism from Mein Kampf into his piece. Far from being rehabilitated, Mao clearly has never gone out of favour with many right-thinkers. Unlike the Holocaust, there is no need to deny the slaughter, it is just never mentioned or simply, deliberately, never learned.

Perhaps it’s a manifestation of the famous Stalin quote “One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.” The reality of the Maoist crimes - eating human flesh and scum from urine ponds - simply cannot register in the mind of the soft Left. But as we’ve seen, even if they could comprehend it, they wouldn’t want to. So the Mao myth persists. Chang finishes her book with these words:

“Today, Mao’s portrait and his corpse still dominate Tiananmen Square in the heart of the Chinese capital.  The current Communist regime declares itself to be Mao’s heir and fiercely perpetuates the myth of Mao.”

   

For those of us whose idea of “urban chicken” is either a piece of meat wedged between Styrofoam and cellophane, or a trip to KFC, we might be in for a shock.  If, some time soon, you’re awakened by what sounds like Foghorn Leghorn’s barnyard cousin just remember there’s no snooze button. It will mean that supporters of residential chicken coops will have won their battle with city hall.

As it is, a Calgary city council committee last week rejected a bid to allow its citizens to keep chickens. According to this Herald story, there are three known chicken keepers in the city. One apparently lives in my neighbourhood, although I’ve neither seen heard, nor smelled any evidence of it. This “neighbour” of mine, carrying her toddler Safree, was quoted as saying “They can say whatever they want, man. I’m keeping my chickens”.

These self-styled “urban-hen advocates” tout their cause as a means of ensuring “food safety and supply”. One such, Paul Hughes is described as the “long-time frontman for Calgary’s urban-chicken movement”. How three people constitute a “movement” is not explained. Hughes, propping himself on a UN human rights declaration guaranteeing a right to food, says he’s willing to take this to “a judicial setting”.

So, looking at it from the narrow, biased, jaded view of the taxpayer we have a “movement” of three people that has already taken up X amount of our paid councillor’s time about to burn up more tax dollars with a court appeal. Marvellous.

Sure, there is the Libertarian argument that people should be as free as reasonably possible. But let’s put this into context. This is a city that can’t remove snow; that builds roads only to impede traffic with concrete barriers and speed humps; that sets out scads of bedding plants every year to be consumed by frost after 60 days; in short, that squanders money in every conceivable manner.

“I don’t have Salmonella. I don’t have avian flu”, commented Mr. Hughes. Well, that’s reassuring.  I guess those periodic quarantines in the Fraser Valley, with thousands of gassed birds dumped into pits, those are just aberrations.

But even if they are, it doesn’t negate the simple point - why are we talking about this? Why is the city spending their time/money on it? Next somebody will want to emulate Siegfried and Roy and … wait for it … have a Siberian tiger in their garage.

Oh no, wait a minute, that would be covered by Calgary’s cat by-law (where it spells out that “cat” means “the male or female of the feline family”), which makes it an offence to have a cat “running at large”. And to take another digression, I’ll remind readers that this city controls cats, but not coyotes…

All of which is to say that, just because “urban hens” have been stopped for now, there is no predicting - based on the city’s past and present foolishness - whether or not you’ll see a neighbourhood barnyard near you in the future. If the pro-chicken movement burgeons to, say, four people, maybe we’ll start the process all over again.

To finish, may I remind Calgary readers that there’s a municipal election this fall? Good luck.

   

One of the few benefits of getting older is gaining some perspective. Being a native Quebecker, but not a Quebecois - not pure laine - it is interesting to look back on the events of 30 years ago and think about what has changed, and what hasn’t.

It’s hard to describe the pressure-cooker atmosphere that existed in Quebec around the 1980 referendum and in the years before and after. Kind of like the, if you’ll pardon the expression, frog in the pot of water, the political heat had been growing for years. It was not a question of if, but only a matter of when the uncontainable force of Quebec nationalism would burst forth - with unknown consequences. The streets of Montreal had been rocked by explosions as early as 1963, with the FLQ targeting English shops and institutions. The election of the federalist Bourassa in 1970 was followed quickly by the October Crisis. His re-election in 1973 papered over the growth of the separatist Parti Quebecois, who got over 30% of the popular vote.

The exodus of English Quebeckers, beginning as a trickle in the 1960’s, became a torrent after the election of Rene Lévesque’s PQ in 1976. Restrictions on access to English education and the use of English were also increasing: further evidence that the changes wrought by the Quiet Revolution were as much ant-English as pro-French Canadian.

The morning after Lévesque’s resounding victory left a monumental hangover. On one level the internal demons of French Canada were let loose in the political arena, and many parts of life that were purely personal became political. Could one put up a “For rent” sign in the window; did one ask for, or expect service in English; or more broadly, did one as an English speaker have a future in one’s home province? To many, the answer to all these questions was “no”.

The 1980 referendum campaign was fought in this kind of environment. Although the English minority and the ethnics had much at stake in the result, the fight was fundamentally for the hearts and minds of French Quebeckers. One example of the atmosphere is that it was almost unheard of that one would display a “No” sign during the campaign, particularly in an English neighbourhood. This, to nationalists, was a “provocation”, and would likely be answered with vandalism.

Everybody knew, after all, what side the minorities were on. But it wasn’t just the Separatists who held the view that, morally at least, they “didn’t count”. Typical was an interview with a PQ spokesman, on the CBC’s As it Happens, shortly after the Federalists won 60 to 40%. He very pointedly emphasized that 50% “of French Quebeckers” had supported sovereignty. This was the same sentiment expressed by Jacques Parizeau 15 years later, when he blamed his narrow referendum loss on “l’argent puis des votes ethniques“.

So, in some important ways - despite losing the (referendum) battles - the nationalists, the Separatists, won the war of hearts and minds. The historic English community is decimated, its institutions hollowed out and under-funded. English on public signs is proscribed, in order to preserve the “French face” of the province. Freelance “citizen spotters” frequently report on neighbours who transgress the law. In 2005–2006 alone, 1306 individuals filed 3652 complaints. English place names are eradicated by a government commission, for similar reasons.

It’s ironic that, in the Habs’ latest play-off run, fans hoisted “stop” signs with the name “Halak” on them: ironic because you won’t find a stop sign in the entire province. Similarly, in Quebec, Victoria Day is now known none-too-subtly as “Journée nationale des patriotes” (National Patriots Day).

Add to this 40 years of nationalists dominating the Arts, Education and many other aspects of Quebec life and you arrive where we are today. Whether this will ultimately lead to more political strife is uncertain. The economic tensions alone, with Quebec a chronically subsidized, “have-not” province may be sufficient to ignite new versions of the old conflicts.

Strangely, some are nostalgic for the years of strife. CBC’s Michael Enright became almost wistful when he talked about the times of titanic struggle from the 60’s to the 80’s, of Lévesque and Trudeau. Weren’t they so much more “stimulating” and “interesting” than today’s dull political landscape? He specifically praised Donald Brittain’s documentary “The Champions“, which chronicled those years.

Recalling those upheavals, I almost reflexively say - “Give me dull, thank you very much”. Enright did tempt me to watch part of the series again though. What struck me was a quote from Lévesque (from the mid-sixties!) that Canada was “the most ill-governed country in the world; over-governed and ill governed”. Wow. And I recalled the only thing I would agree with Trudeau on, the dangers of nationalism; as has been borne out in Quebec since the 1960’s. So, were the referendum years “stimulating”? Yes, they were. But from the perspective of 2010, dull is just fine.

   

The problem with elites is that they can be so well, you know, snooty. If they weren’t so superior to the rest of us, they’d have a lot easier time of it trying to be just folks. I couldn’t help thinking of that when reading this Maclean’s article about our late great Governor General, Adrienne Clarkson, and her itinerant-philosopher husband, John Raulston Saul.

One delights in the unintended humour that oozes from nearly every paragraph in the recounting of their life – as urban-peasant olive farmers – without irony. The gems about the Raulston-Saul-Clarksons’ slumming it in the south of France include Mr. Saul’s statement that, “I’m a great believer that food is about agriculture.” And about pruning the olive trees: “It works, I think the trees are happier” On the experience of farming: “I always wanted to be one; I think all Canadians come from farming backgrounds.” Love the “I think” concerning an objectively verifiable claim of fact.

The Maclean’s writer romanticizes the rural experience – again without parody or even scepticism – calling the harvest “a communal activity” and “a ritual” which, says Mr. Saul, “Takes you back to the idea that gathering fruit is a cultural event.” Said with a true depth of feeling that can be plumbed only by the transplanted urbanite. 

The further one is removed from the toil and deprivation of actual peasant life, the more romantic its “rituals” seem. Like pickers receiving olive oil rather than money as payment for their labours: today it seems quaint. Back in the day, however, it was necessary because the subsistence economy was basically cashless and few actually had the money to pay their workers. Chances are, Mr. Saul and his help don’t get up hours before dawn to walk to the harvest, nor subsist on little more than bread and water like their forebears did.

One wonders also whether Mr. Saul ever thinks about the actual history of peasant life. What might he make of, say, the Vandals’ unique communal style of “gathering fruit” and what that illustrated about particular “cultural events” that kicked off back in the year 407, when they plus the Sueves and Alans rampaged through regions of France not so far from Mr. Saul’s current estate? Defenceless local peasants, with nowhere to jet off to when the ambience became uncongenial, were obliged to participate in the delightful rituals of mass slaughter, rape and the slave market.

Confinement to subsistence life for generations without end has a way of losing its earthy charms. Mr. K. once asked me why my own peasant ancestors in Hungary didn’t take advantage of their bounteous harvest of summer plums to make gallons of preserves and jams, the former to provide some nourishment during the long winter, the latter to bring some cash into the household. I replied that, lacking even the barest scraps of cash for sugar, glass jars or firewood, there was no way to turn the soon-to-rot fruit into a cash crop or pantry item. Nor, with virtually every collection of peasant dwellings boasting several ancient fruit trees, was there much of a local market. There was no foreign aid, no micro-finance, no “choices” – no way out. Mr. K. was dumbfounded but, it seems, now has one up on Mr. Saul.

However, Mr. Saul – described as “award-winning essayist and long-time environmentalist” – by now has long ago left his agronomic triumphs behind to dispense wisdom on the environment. He and the Missus don’t spray the groves “except for the minimal use of a copper mixture, traditionally considered organic”. Perhaps in the sense that copper comes from the earth and “food is about agriculture”. This spray, called Bordeaux mixture, is traditional (my family used it back in the old country) but isn’t exactly worthy of romanticizing any more than, say, DEET or PCBs (which actually consist of “organic molecules”, just not the kind you’d want on your olives).

Moving past the idyllic, pastoral retirement of Canada’s former vice-regals, one comes to the underlying irony, put best by one of their friends, a Toronto restaurateur: “When I discovered John was making olive oil, I thought ‘What a wonderful symbol. A celebrant of Canada, he is an internationalist at the same time’.” And that sums it up, doesn’t it? What, to the Iggy-Raulston-Clarksons, and scores like them, celebrates Canada more than living in the south of France?

Whether they like it or not, this does speak to a dilemma, a contradiction at the heart of the persona of Canada’s liberal elite, such as it is. How to be the embodiment of Canada and at the same time breeze effortlessly around the well-stocked buffet tables of internationalism? How to live abroad for 35 years and assume an automatic pass to a corner office in the Langevin Block?

Ironically, the crowd that strives to be au courant in Geneva and the countless UN summits, that strives for affirmation from their trans-Atlantic brethren, carries much of the old Canadian inferiority complex. By comparison, Canadian nativists generally appear more self-assured, not seeking outside approval nor seeking to emulate a foreign elite. Not do they carry the easy anti-Americanism of the left that has only slightly abated since the election of President Obama. Mr. K., for example, is unlikely to encounter the ex-GG’s at one of his reservoir-side walleye-fries in the Wyoming desert.

So it is that the international ambitions of that certain segment of affluent Canadians seems increasingly forced, unnatural and disconnected from the rest of us. Yet it continues in Mediterranean olive groves, Swiss private schools and elsewhere. Those whispered stories of senior federal bureaucrats retiring to chateaux on indexed pensions can’t all be apocryphal. On the plus side, if whatever you happen to be doing – whether it’s gracing Rideau hall or slumming at Stornoway – doesn’t quite work out, you’ll always have Provence.

   

Frank Graves is a liberal. Many readers will have seen the debate over Mr. Graves’ advice to Michael Ignatieff - “Go left old man” - as first raised in this Lawrence Martin column.  Besides raising the issue of the incendiary nature of the advice, and what it reveals about the small-L liberal mindset, it showcases a few more interesting things.

For one, it answers questions about Frank Graves, whose polls are often quoted by the CBC, Canadian Press and the Toronto Star. It further confirms many of the ideological leanings of a large part of the Canadian political class and, quite directly, what they think about conservatives.  It was refreshing to, for once, see issues of polling bias actually discussed openly. Evan Solomon went so far as to describe and justify CBC’s polling policy. Wow! But you can take that for what it’s worth.

Most importantly, and this was cleverly brought out by Kory Teneycke on the video segment, it finally explodes the myth of neutrality cloaking the majority of lefty commentators. This is a reflection the same myth the Globe and Mailers perpetuate by calling their paper “centrist”. Well, that depends on how you define “centre” doesn’t it? Lawrence Martin for one laments the fact that the Canadian media has become “dominated by the right”. When pressed, he retreats to the position of “well, it’s more conservative than it was …” Yeah, it would have been hard pressed to go any further left, wouldn’t it?

So, when backed into a corner, Frank Graves says “I guess I’m probably a centre, a small-L liberal, maybe progressive would be more accurate”. What a revelation. Up to now, based on the impression given in the media, there were two categories of commentators - all those neutral, dispassionate, objective ones, and some conservatives. That’s a true reflection of the ideological distribution amongst the Canadian punditocracy, based on what many of the commentators themselves will admit to.  But wait. Now Frank Graves is saying he’s a small-L Liberal, a “centre-moderate”. Of course, wouldn’t everyone want to be a moderate? Problem is, when you really push the matter, issue by issue, “moderate” ends up being left, left, left. So thanks you Frank Graves, for what you admit and everything else you won’t.

Later in the discussion Graves says he thinks there should be an open discussion about Canadian values (because he questions that Canadians are in fact “blue-ing” the way the Manning Institute suggests). Okay, then how about a discussion about, as Kory Teneycke put it, full disclosure regarding a pundit’s ideological, partisan perspective? Maybe that would be a useful thing?

Mr. Graves repeated contention that he’s never been on the Liberal payroll, that he’s not on the org chart, and therefore somehow less partisan, is disingenuous at best. Indications are that he has done a lot of work for them, as well as the CBC, and about $11,000 of that was returned to the party in donations after 2001 (according to Mr. Teneycke, and not denied by Graves). That’s about 20 times what he gave to Conservatives. But all of that, according to him, doesn’t mean he’s partisan. He hasn’t been “tainted” by being a professional activist. He’s just like Joe Public, except that he runs a very successful polling firm, that by all reports, does a lot of business with the Liberal party.

As to the advice Mr. Graves has apparently provided to the Libs, readers may be surprised to hear that I’m in whole-hearted agreement. Let the Libs be what they are, what they have been for 40 years - a left party. In fact, as I’ve written here many times, any pretence the federal Liberals have made at being anything but a leftist party is precisely that, a pretense. Their support of big government and sentimental attachment to every left-wing cause simply makes it undeniable.

But, for their own benefit, they do try to deny it. They are a “centre party”. Yeah. That’s a “centre” extending from Marlene Jennings to Michael Ignatieff. Quite a spread.

Finally, the tone of the advice should surprise no one. Its just the latest version of the “soldiers, with guns, in our cities” school of Liberal campaigning. Not so long ago M. Chretien was spinning regional divisions in his political favour, and Paul Martin was shouting that Canada would be destroyed if Conservatives ever took power - all while railing against the “divisive politics” of their opponents. In the end, the only thing that was in jeopardy was the Liberal Party itself. And long may that continue.

   

Alert readers may recall the dark days of the 1990’s, when Prime Minister Chretien insisted that Canada had the “best health care system in the world”. It seemed he thought that, the more he repeated it, the more folks would believe it, the more it would seem true.

So it is with objectivity in our media. I have had senior writers and editors at the Globe, for instance, maintain that the paper is “middle of the road” because it features writers of different philosophical stripes. This is no doubt true, if you ignore the matter of frequency. Yes, as one editor forcefully pointed out to me, Preston Manning does appear on their opinion page – a handful of times per year -, but Rick Salutin is there every week.

It’s therefore instructive to, at least qualitatively, compare how the Harper government is treated on given issues compared to its Liberal predecessors. Unfortunately, we don’t have a crew like the Media Research Center or Accuracy in Media to keep track of this stuff. So I just have a few anecdotal, but instructive examples.

How about appointments? Well, the issue of filling various and sundry public boards and/or committees with people of a political stripe has long been discussed. But, when for example, the Harper government appointed people to judicial selection boards who supported the policies it was elected to implement, it became an issue. The Canadian Judicial Council issued a statement suggesting the public’s trust in the judiciary would be undermined. Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin warned that the independence of the judiciary was “in peril”.

I am proud to say I was one of the people appointed to one such board, but unfortunately because I accepted a job offer in Ottawa, was unable to serve. The Globe and Mail was perturbed that, not only had some of the appointees been (like me) political volunteers, others who were apparently non-partisan, were still sympathetic to the government’s policies. The ironclad premise of their story, and the apparent concern of Ms Justice McLachin was that appointments by the previous government were, unlike the current one, non-partisan and therefore unlikely to put the judiciary “in peril”. Such a certainty was this premise that, obviously, no checking of the background of previous appointees was necessary. And none, to my knowledge, was done.

Now that the Governor General’s term is coming to an end in the summer, various media like MacLean’s and the CBC have taken it upon themselves to question just how the GG is appointed and even to suggest a “national debate” on the matter. Odd that there was apparently no need for such a debate when the previous government was making the appointment.

A recurring paradox is the attitude to the U.S., and the transformation the Obama administration has brought to the minds of Canadian media. Even the National Post couldn’t help point out that Canadian author Yann Martel received a personal letter from the president, while he was being “snubbed” by PM Harper. Readers will recall that M. Martel took it upon himself to instruct Mr. Harper in what literature he should be reading, thereby not so subtly underscoring his belief that the Prime Minister was sorely lacking in that department. No doubt our media would have been as gratified had a Canadian author received a personal note from George W. Bush.

We would clearly all be better off if we took the refreshingly simple view of M. Chretien. Just keep repeating, “We have the best media in the world …”

   

When will we have heard enough about the Sixties? For many of us, the answer is “about 25 or 30 years ago”, certainly by the time of the Sgt. Pepper 20^th anniversary specials. The Boomers are (finally) retiring, at least those who aren’t overturning all the mandatory retirement legislation and planning to stop anyone from displacing them until their emaciated bodies are carried from the corner office.

So why are we still talking about that decade? And, worse, why haven’t all the variously lettered “Gens” born since thrown over the tired ideas of the tie-dye and bead crowd? One reason is the dominance of the consensus narrative that emerged from the decade, and the fact that Boomers have bought these defining stories hook, line and sinker; then repeated them ad nauseam.

Wading through a neglected pile of magazines this Easter holiday, I turned up the best analysis of the Sixties I’ve probably ever read. As it was written by veteran author George Weigel, the depth of the analysis should be no surprise. He points to five major defining events of the decade and succinctly describes how each still casts a long shadow over today’s thinking.

The five moments, in chronological order, are: the Kennedy assassination (1963), Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965), the publication of The Secular City (1965), the Kerner Commission (1968), the Tet Offensive (1968), and the rise of environmentalism (1969). Somehow, the release of Sgt. Pepper didn’t make it to the list.

Numbers one and four should be no surprise, although his analysis there is also very instructive. For example, Kennedy’s “court historians”, Arthur Schlesinger and Ted Sorenson created not only the Camelot myth, but also the idea that the assassination was the “by-product of a culture of violence that had infected the extreme American right wing”. This despite the fact that Oswald was a convinced Communist, likely motivated by bitterness toward JFK’s Cold War policies.

Similarly, Weigel’s commentary on Tet not only reinforces what the more informed (like MrK) know about the military situation in Vietnam, but also shows how false interpretations of Vietnam affect the U.S.’ reaction to Jihadism today. Despite the density of the prose, it’s worth quoting one longer passage:

“The antiwar domestic American politics of the Sixties were a volatile expression of what might be called, following the existentialist fashion of the time, the “politics of authenticity”. In the poitics of authenticity, what counts is the nobility of my feelings; what does not count is evidence, and what is not required is an examination of conscience in the light of the evidence. The politics of authenticity lead us by a short route to a public morality of feelings, impervious to data and dismissive of a moral calculus of possible consequences. Or, to put it in Max Weber’s terms, the morality of intentions trumped the morality of responsibility in the American debate over Vietnam. The irresponsibility that characterized the Carter and Clinton administrations’ responses to the threat of global Jihadism – a fecklessness deeply influenced by the canonical Vietnam narrative – is one obvious result.”

His description of the other defining moments covered much new ground for me. Griswold vs. Connecticut was a case striking down the law against contraceptives – conveniently fast-tracked to the Supreme Court – that, though it might have seemed innocuous at the time, laid the groundwork for the unraveling of the traditional social-legislative fabric. Harvey Cox’s The Secular City may been seen to reflect the religious, and the Kerner commission the racial dimension of the same developments in America. The latter, Weigel points out, established that “Black America was a victim, and a victim could not be held responsible for lashing out against his victimization.” What has changed there in the last 40-odd years?

Lastly, environmentalism – with the first UN Earth Day declaration signed in 1969, and the annual celebration launched the following year – now appears to be a political fixture, in one form or another. To quote famous physicist Freeman Dyson, from yet another issue of First Things, “Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe global warming to be harmful.”

Well, I’ll reserve comment on the last point. I’ll simply recommend Weigel’s piece as the best eight-page summary of the Sixties I’ve read. If you’re a slow reader like me, that’s 20 minutes well spent.