I suppose the Conservative Party of Canada is where libertarian dreams go to die.
Scheer is respectable. Nothing wrong with him.
But he is not going to change much.
Too bad. Bernier would have actually represented an alternative to the endless middle of the roadedness of Canadian politics.
Blowing up teenaged girls and their parents is despicable. So are the predictable vigils, flowers, little stuffed bears, politicians vowing to stand together and all the other ritual manifestations of impotence we’ll see in the next few days.
At this point, the suicide bomber’s name is known, Salman Abedi. Yes, he was a Muslim. It appears that the bomb was fairly sophisticated and there are suggestions it was made by someone who knew what they were doing. But we’ll have to wait on the outcome of the investigation to find out if Abedi acted alone.
After this sort of attack there is a natural tendency to look at what can be done to prevent further attacks. Hardening the perimeters of public spaces and such like. The Israelis pretty much defeated the waves of suicide bombings which plagued the country a couple of decades ago by creating and enforcing very strict security in every public space in the country. Certainly, something to be looked at in England and, sadly, in Canada.
Is there an argument for more aggressive policing in Muslim majority areas? Probably. And more surveillance and more human intelligence. But I would be surprised if this had much effect. There is already a lot of surveillance and intelligence gathering in these communities and terror plots are broken up regularly.
The political classes are keen to say that “This will not break us, we will not give into hate. Islam is a religion of Peace.” They utter these banalities because they have no other solutions. Decades ago the political class decided that Muslim immigrants and refugees were exactly the same as any other sort of immigrant or refugee and that, in a matter of a generation or two, would assimilate to English or German or French society. This has not turned out to be the case. No doubt some of the blame for that rests on the native populations’ failure to really welcome Muslim immigrants. But the bulk of the problem arises from the fact that as a matter of religious and cultural practice, Muslims tend to self-ghettoize.
So long as Muslim numbers are small there is very little choice for arriving Muslim immigrants but to work hard to join the mainstream societies they have arrived in. However, once Muslim numbers increase, parallel societies grow and assimilation becomes optional.
Non-assimilation does not automatically produce terrorism. And partial assimilation, Abedi was, apparently, a Manchester United fan, does not automatically prevent terrorism. The problem is that a relatively isolated community can contain and conceal a radical fringe and that fringe can produce terrorists.
There are no easy fixes for the errors made decades ago. Yes, it would make sense to avoid making the problem worse by letting in thousands of unvetted, military aged, male Muslims as “refugees”. And it would make sense for every European nation to regain complete control over any “no go” areas in its territory. (Which may be more than a little difficult but needs to be done quickly.)
Beyond that, programs to voluntarily repatriate recent Muslim arrivals could make sense for some countries. Setting a goal and a budget to entice Muslims to leave places where they may not feel welcome is a step in the right direction. Implementing a general rule that where an immigrant or refugee breaks the law in a relatively serious way, expulsion is automatic might also be effective.
None of those measures does much damage to a rights-based, liberal, society. Whether they would do much to reduce terror remains to be seen. However, if they do not then more intrusive measures are likely to be demanded. Shutting down mosques where there are indications of radicalization, aggressive searches where weapons or explosives are suspected, repatriation of immigrants and refugees who are unemployed after a fixed period are all things which might improve security but at the cost of some of the rights of the Muslim community.
None of this is going to happen quickly. It has taken years for the West’s Muslim problem to develop and it will take years to improve the situation. Mouthing the platitudes does essentially nothing; but it will take real political courage to admit the West, in particular Western Europe, has a Muslim problem and to suggest ways of fixing it.
I am not holding my breath.
Trump.
There really has never been a President anything like Trump. Or a Presidency.
There was a fair bit of anti-Bush sentiment, and Reagan was often attacked, and, of course, Nixon was vilified long before Watergate; but for sheer, sustained, noise, anti-Trump campaigning by the Democrats and the mainstream media is an order of magnitude or two greater. Everything is a potentially impeachable offence or an indication that Trump is mentally unbalanced or both. The never-Trumpers in the RINO section of the Republican party are having a great time suggesting that Trump is a threat and a menace and needs a good impeaching.
In the hysteria virtually any bit of information, regardless of source, so long as it is anti-Trump, is a page one story. Anonymous sources say Trump revealed super secret stuff to the Russians? Perfect, Wapo is on the job and he’s a traitor or an incompetent or both. Doesn’t matter that the people in the room heard nothing of the sort. Impeach him! Guy phones the NYT with a pull quote from a memo that former FBI Director Comey wrote to file on a meeting with Trump? Quote says Trump said, ““I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Trump allegedly told Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”” which is clearly the biggest obstruction of justice since Nixon wanted Archibald Cox fired.
At this point, Trump supporters usually say, “but the White House could have handled this better.” I don’t. I don’t say that because there is no “handling” the mainstream media, rabid Democrats and charging RINOs.
Trump and his people have to make a choice between conforming to the norms of a Washington Presidency or simply saying that was what Trump was elected to fix.
“I didn’t get elected to serve the Washington media or special interests,” Trump said. “I got elected to serve the forgotten men and women of our country, and that’s what I’m doing.” (Breitbart)
It is an audacious position to take. It will only work if Trump sticks to his guns and backs up his people. And it will only work if some of those people are smart enough to be silent officially while working very hard and very quietly. Trump was elected as an oppositional President and he does best when he is opposing.
An encouraging sign is the Congressional reaction to the Comey “memo”. Unlike the NYT, Congressional Committees have subpoena power. They want to see the Comey memo. And, perhaps more to the point, Senators and Representatives are asking to see Comey memos on his conversations during the Obama administration. In particular, they are looking for memos to file vis a vis the decision not to prosecute Hilly.
The Trump remark about Flynn, assuming it was made as Comey is reported as having recorded, is not an obvious candidate for an obstruction of justice charge. It might be an impeachable offence as an abuse of Presidential power but, as written, that would be a stretch. But, by leaking the contents of his memo to file, Comey has put his archive of such memos into play.
I don’t have any sense that Trump or the White House staff know much about “damage control”; however, they have a good deal of capacity to, in the words of a former President, punch back twice as hard. To do that they need to ignore the storm and fury of the Washington establishment and the legacy media and go for kill shots with live ammunition. The Comey memo archive is a great place to start.
We at Voices Publishing (thanks to the Canada Council, Heritage Canada and the Ontario Arts Council for their generous support) in light of recent events, wish to make clear our writers’ guidelines for all fiction, non-fiction and poetry. We are committed to hearing the voices of Canadian writers and welcome manuscripts of inclusion. Please note:
1. We have a zero tolerance policy for cultural appropriation in all its forms.
2. Cultural appropriation occurs when a writer appropriates the voice or lived experience of a person or persons whose lives are outside the lived experience of that writer by including such a person in their story.
3. To avoid offending any marginalized or oppressed persons no white writer shall include in his or her manuscript any character or situation in which non-white persons are portrayed. For consistency, this same rule applies to First Nations writers, POC writers and foreign born writers. (Note, for greater clarity, we have adopted the time tested “one drop” rule for determining race. If you have a white ancestor or think you might have a white ancestor you will be deemed white regardless of self-identification, lived experience or other extenuating factors. Check your privilege.)
4. There is obviously a huge problem with ageism. Many middle-aged writers submit manuscripts in which characters in their teens or even younger appear as protagonists. We regret that we cannot publish manuscripts in which such ageist appropriation occurs. To that end, we will not be accepting manuscripts in the children’s category or young adult category without positive proof that the mss was written by a child or a young adult. All characters in your mss must be +/- five years of your own age at time of submission.
5. Gender appropriation: many of the mss we are offered are written by men and contain female characters and vice versa. Needless to say we are unwilling to publish mss in which male writers’ attempt to claim the female voice and vice versa. In unusual circumstances, we may allow the visual depiction of a female character by a male writer or vice versa providing always that the character so depicted remains entirely silent.
6. The appropriation of sexual experience: We have been disturbed to receive mss in which hetrosexual authors include homosexual or bisexual characters. And, just as bad, homosexual authors are often guilty of portraying straight characters. These provocations will not see the light of day under the Voices colophon. You’ve made your beds now lie in them.
Many of you may regard these guidelines as simplistic or censorious. Shame on you. For each of our authors there is a simple solution which can ensure that the marginalized and oppressed voices in the great Canadian mosaic are heard. Whenever your story requires white person, a First Nations person, or homosexual, or POC, or female/male, or child/adolescent voice go and find a writer with the correct characteristics and invite them to contribute their voice and lived experience to your book. (We will, of course, require a Certificate of cultural authenticity to accompany such contributions.)
Voices Publishing believes that by following these simple guidelines we can all work together to eliminate the implicit priviledging of the individual author’s voice and build a new, inclusive, Canadian literature.
Thank you for your attention and your commitment to the elimination of the retrograde, individualist, authorial literature which has disfigured so much of Canadian Literature to this moment. Voices Publishing is committed to the celebration of our diversity.
Hal Niedzviecki was forced out of his editorship of an obscure magazine published by the Writers’ Union of Canada for daring to suggest that writers should try to get out of their identity silos and use the voices of “others”. Apparently, this offended the Writers Union and its “Equity Task Force” and Niedzviecki was forced to resign.
A number of brave souls in Canadian media stepped up and said Neidzviecki had a point and was a victim of political correctness run wild. On Friday, the Walrus’s editor in chief, Jonathan Kay wrote an article for the National Post in which he said,
Personally, I land on the side of free speech: I’m fearful that, as at many points in history, small acts of well-intentioned censorship will expand into a full-fledged speech code that prohibits whole categories of art and discourse. national post
He went on to conclude,
What I don’t find helpful is the reflexive instinct to shame those with whom we disagree—the kind on display at TWUC this week. Indeed, it is these mobbings that encourage the idea that free speech is under siege from a systematic program of left wing censorship. On both sides, it is fear and suspicion that is driving the social media rage. And as of this writing, there’s no sign it will dissipate soon. national post
Today Kay resigned as the editor in chief of The Walrus.
Niedzviecki was entirely right in his initial article. White people should be encouraged to write about non-white people, women about men, blacks about Asians and gays about straights; otherwise we’ll have a sterile, politically correct, literature in which the only characters in a novel will be from the “community” (however defined) of the author.
Kay was entirely right in standing up against lefty cultural pogroms.
Where both were wrong was in capitulating to the cultural fascists without a fight. The Twitter mobs are nasty but they are relatively powerless unless a target is willing to give them power. Niedzviecki was pushed out the door by his employer but, realistically, other than a craven apology for “glibness and insensitivity” Niedzviecki barely fought at all. Kay’s meager defences were apparently overwhelmed in less than twenty-four hours and he scuttled off to a baseball game with his phone off to escape the baying hordes.
Free speech and freedom of cultural expression in all its forms are won by people willing to fight back. People who actually believe in their positions and are willing to fight their corners. Niedzviecki was beginning to gain support for his liberal view of how writers should approach the world. Sure he was being howled down by lefty illiterates on Twitter. So what? The Twitter mobs of SJWs live to howl and denounce and yell about their sensitivities. The cultural cringers at the Writer’s Union would have fired Niedzviecki in any event, but rather than apologize, he should have published a really fierce piece defending his position and calling out the censors of the identity left.
Kay, having adopted a strong, liberal, free speech position should have stuck to his guns. If The Walrus wanted to fire him, fine. But surrendering before an actual shot had been fired is just sad.
The only way to stop the SJW barbarians is to shoot back. Make it tough, if not impossible, for them to impose cultural tyranny. Surrender only leads to more demands, more censorship, more badly grounded claims of moral superiority. Surrender narrows the discussion and the boundaries of what may be discussed.
The only silver lining to Niedzviecki and Kay’s failure to fight back is that their cowardice in the face of the viciousness of their detractors shows just what liberal, free speech, supporters are up against. Kay, in particular, has access to major media, friends in government and the academy (not to mention the PMO) and has demonstrated a willingness to suck up to the PC SJWs on issues like “climate change”. If these cultural fascists can “get” him it is a huge warning to the rest of us.
So Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.
On the Left this is the “Saturday Night Massacre”, grounds for impeachment and an obvious cover up of Trump’s treason. (I always thought David Frum was an idiot and the linked article confirms it.) On the right Trump is seen as taking out the trash and there is no evidence of any Russian links and, hey, the Democrats were calling for Comey’s head only yesterday.
I am delighted Comey was fired simply because he totally blew the Hillary Clinton email case. Not by talking to the press, several times, about an ongoing investigation but rather because, in the face of the law and the evidence, he decided a statute imposing strict liability should be read as if intent mattered. He was wrong. Worse, he was arrogating a decision which was not his to make. Now, admittedly, Loretta Lynch had managed to destroy her credibility as the Attorney General by having a little face time with the husband of the suspect to chat about golf and grand kids; but that does not excuse Comey’s usurpation of the prosecutorial function.
Meanwhile, Trump on advice of his Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General fired Comey. David Frum tweeted that this was a “coup”. Did I mention David Frum really is an idiot. (Needless to say, the Lying Jackal has the Saturday Night Massacre headline front and center at his unlinkable blog.)
The last person to fire an FBI Director was Bill Clinton. Was it a coup? Likely not as the Republic remains and, pace Hilly, the House of Clinton is not still in office.
A lot of a President’s job is appointing and firing people at the very highest levels. It is routine. Trump, on advice, apparently did not think Comey did a very good job. That is his call and the Director of the FBI serves “at the pleasure of the President” and at the direction of the Attorney General. If they don’t like your style, your decisions or the colour of your socks, out you go.
Bye.
Since moving to Vancouver Island twelve years ago we’ve lived in Oak Bay, the Cowichan Valley and North Saanich. All three ridings seem to have gone Green tonight.
My own sense is that Green voting is a class and virtue signifier. Oak Bay and North Saanich are very, very well off communities. Cowichan is less affluent but it is very much a retirement world where people live on not terribly generous pensions. But they are fairly secure knowing that their cheques will come.
These three ridings are also, compared to Vancouver and its suburbs, remarkably white.
The NDP and the Liberals have a see-saw battle in the Chinese and Sikh communities. In First Nations communities both parties are competitive. (I note that the winning Green candidate in my riding is a First Nations person named Adam Olsen.) But the Greens are currently confined to largely white enclaves.
Now, here is the thing: in 40 ridings the Green Party broke 15%, in 17 they broke 20%. They ran second in 6 and won 3.
There are two losers tonight: the Liberals and the NDP. And there is one winner: the Greens. They managed to split the NDP vote and likely cost the NDP a majority government.
However, where the NDP and the Liberals have no obvious room to grow their electorate, the Greens have a very good shot at expanding theirs. The fact is that the people who shop at Whole Foods, send their kids to “French Immersion” if they can’t afford private (not for racist reasons of course) and think recycling is an act of benediction are legion. They used to vote NDP, now they have an alternative.
Andrew Weaver may be a lousy climate scientist but he is not an unintelligent man. He can count (so long as it does not involve climate change time series) and there are six ridings where the Greens came second. A rational, non-coalition, support of the Liberals would let him pass legislation of greater consequence than a ban on mandatory high heels for women in serving jobs. The Liberals, who will likely be reduced to a rural rump despite having likely won the most seats, are basically being elected by BC’s version of “deplorables”. Nice people think they are a bit, well, common.
Dr. Weaver, well educated, Oak Bay resident and articulate guy that he is should be able to target those nice, white, very liberal people and peel them away from both the Liberals and the NDP. Plus, Weaver has the children who have grown up on Green ideology masquerading as education.
One winner tonight: the Greens.
It appears that political cipher Emmanuel Macron is on his way to beating Marine Le Pen. While a Le Pen victory would have been a useful poke in the eye to assorted French and Euro elites, that poke would have come at a price. Namely Le Pen’s 50’s style dirigiste economic policies and, frankly, the wrong sort of nationalism.
France faces the necessity of untangling fifty years of statist economics. It also faces having to deal with 5 to 10 million unassimilated Muslims who are largely outside French society. And it faces waves of “refugees” pushing in from the Middle East and Africa. M. Le Pen’s economic positions would have simply re-enforced the anti-competitive labour, tax and pension laws which have hollowed out the French economy. And, while she was willing to talk a tough game on terrorism, her brand was so toxic that actually dealing with the combined Muslim and refugee crisis would likely be stillborn in a bureaucracy terrified of being associated with that brand.
I don’t hold out much hope for Macron. He seems stuck in the rut of claiming that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam and the happy fantasy that people who have little to do with French society will, somehow, soak up enough terrior to leave North Africa behind and become “French”. While, at the same time, saying “French culture doesn’t exist in and of itself; there is no such thing as a single French culture. There is culture in France and it is diverse.” (link) (I use the full quote lest I be accused of taking Macron out of context.) This is multi-kulti at its best and is essentially meaningless as a defence of France as a European nation.
Unfortunately, that is about the best that can be expected at this stage of re-alignment in French politics. Macron, without a political party behind him, is likely to preside over a do nothing, status quo ante government. The French economy, France’s role in Europe, its position in the Euro, its “community” relations and its refugee problem are all likely to get worse. Systematic corruption, the extension of the “no-go zones” and “youth” riots will likely increase. Which, realistically, is pretty much the outcome I would have predicted if Le Pen had won.
People have a natural inclination towards the status quo until, somehow, that inclination collapses. That collapse can be triggered by a crisis or by the promise of something better. This French election occurred in the midst of a slow moving economic and social disaster but, realistically, there was no sharp “crisis”. And M. Le Pen offered nothing “better”; just something different. That was not enough.
France’s mainline parties were knocked out of the race as was the hard left: in a battle between the status quo and a ideologically incoherent, semi-charismatic, leader with the press and the elites strongly on the side of the status quo, it is not surprising that the French chose a President with very little ideological baggage.
Macron might surprise and turn out to be the right combination of flexible and tough. He might create a government of all talents and begin the task of rebuilding France. I certainly hope he turns out to be a good choice for France. But I am not optimistic.
For a nation to abruptly change course things sometimes have to get worse, much worse, before they get better. The status quo, (as Trump is finding out), is deeply resilient. Real change, change which actually looks to solve problems rather than manage them, comes when the status quo actually begins to collapse and real change is the only alternative. However, as Adam Smith observed, “Be assured young friend, that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”
Marine Le Pen wrapped herself in a populist mantle and suggested a return to pre-1968 France; that was not change, that was nostalgia. Le Pen was not of the Right, rather she seemed to want to substitute one status quo for another.
When and if France’s crisis comes nostalgia will not be a winning idea. Facing the future and deciding what that future means to France will require a radical, likely libertarian, re-allignment of French politics. Something which cannot be forced but will rather rise in answer to the challenge faced.
In the last BC provincial election Andrew Weaver – master of doubtful climate models and UVic professor – managed to win the riding I was living in. He has turned out to be a reasonably competent MLA and had led the Green Party on a relatively moderate course. Yes, there is still a lot of looniness about “climate change” but that goes with the territory.
A few years later and for this election I am living in a riding where there is a real chance that the Green candidate can pick up the seat bringing the Greens to two in the Legislature assuming that Weaver keeps his seat. Vaughn Palmer writing in the Vancouver Sun goes into the details of the three way fight in Saanich North here.
I have not voted yet and am weighing the options. I have no particular animus towards Christy Clark and the BC Liberals – other than the fact the silly woman put in a knee jerk carbon tax – but I don’t see any reason to vote for them other than to keep the NDP out of government. As a general rule I never vote for the NDP, especially at the provincial level, simply because BC has enough economic problems without putting a bunch of agenda driven, public service union beholden, socialists in charge.
Normally, that calculus means that I would hold my nose and vote Liberal; but in this election, in this riding, voting Green is very tempting. Not because I agree with much of what the Greens stand for, rather because voting Green is a safe way of registering dissatisfaction with the BC Liberals. (This, by the way, is driving the NDP crazy as illustrated in this interview with eco-warrioress Tzeporah Berman in The Tyee. There is nothing like a good faction fight on the eco loon left to warm the cockles of my heart.)
An ideal election outcome from my perspective is a BC Liberal victory by about one seat. Or a BC Liberal minority relying on the Greens to win confidence votes. The libertarian side of me wants to see government in all its forms rolled back; but if that is not going to happen then a weak, worried government is the next best thing. Voting Green in Saanich North takes a seat away from the NDP but avoids giving it to the BC Liberals. It is awfully tempting.
Jay Currie 