Barrel Strength

The Liberal blogosphere is rumbling that the Harper government will “go after” the CRTC. The stated reason for this animus, according to Lawrence Martin, is that the CRTC has not been sufficiently cooperative in relation to the bid for a national must-pay television licence for the Pierre-Karl Peladeau/ Kory Ten Eycke conservative television network.

The CRTC has sent a letter to Peladeau, owner of Videotron and Sun Media,  saying that the Commission is reviewing must-carry rules, and that he will not get a must-carry, that is, be required to be carried by regulatory fiat in the meantime. The entrepreneur is free to expand his current Toronto television station’s reach by working out deals with the incumbent cable carriers across Canada: Shaw, Rogers,etc. Fat chance of that.

I think most conservatives would favour an explicitly Canadian conservative politics channel. But would they also favour another must-carry ruling from the CRTC? The CRTC has already established several must-carry channels and they reach into your pockets every month. Remember APTV – aboriginal people’s television? CTV’s newschannel? CBC’s Newsworld? TV5, the French-language thing you probably don’t watch? Do you want another?

The CRTC’s own statistics for 2010 show that the growth of payments we make for cable television exceed all the rates of growth of other payments we make for telecommunications, the consumer price index and the Internet. (Table 5.1.10, on page 121). Only cellular phone industry revenues show a greater increase than those for cable television, industry-wide (Table 3.1.1, on page 16). That rate of increase of revenues  for them and payments by consumers is fuelled in part by the de-regulation of cable rates by the CRTC. Another large portion of that increase consists of the fees imposed by the CRTC on consumers for must-carry channels.

And consider this: how conservativeis it to ask for a must-carry? In effect you ask for government intervention to cause Canadians to pay for a “conservative” newschannel? Can you really be conservative if you live off a state subsidy?

Two questions for you conservatives and libertarians.

1. Do you want the CRTC to force you to pay for a conservative TV channel?
2. And is that position consistent with your views on the long-form census?

The US is bankrupt. Canada is not. Therein lies a remarkable possibility for this country in the next twenty years.

Two books should be part of the reading of Canadians of all political persuasions, especially conservatives. The first was Brian Lee Crowley’s “Fearful Symmetry”, which explained what went wrong in Canada under Trudeau and successive governments until Mulroney introduced North American free trade and then Chretien (yes, Chretien) fixed our public finances. The second is “The Canadian Century”, by the same Brian Lee Crowley, Jason Clemens, and Niels Veldhuis. Both are examinations of the public finances of Canada, and to read these books is to understand, at the highest level, what has gone right and wrong with our society. Crowley never ceases to set out the moral dimension of excessive public expenditure: the electorate drunk on government services, the cost of which is deferred to future generations; the creation of pseudo-jobs; the electoral blocs of state dependents which prevent the correction of the very problem that their existence creates, and so forth.

Crowley and his co-authors make it abundantly clear that:

1) Laurier, not MacDonald, should be attributed the credit for a low-tax, free-trade policy – the classic hallmarks of what we now call “conservatism”, and

2) Bill Clinton waged a successful campaign to get the US fiscal house in order, and that both Bush the elder and the younger, to say nothing of Obama, have run the US into massive debt. In other words, Bush the younger squandered the legacy that Clinton handed to him. (Canadian Century, at pp 116-117) Clinton: bastion of fiscal probity. We conservatives need to absorb that.

Now peace upon all those partizans of conservative government who think that mentioning any merit in any liberal, no matter how long dead, is akin to “deserting the cause, that gave us our freedom, religion and laws.” The points I am making here are twofold.

First, these two books are a rapid and painless education in the essential facts of politics: how we finance government is as much a moral as it is an immediately monetary question, and it gives insight behind the squabbles in Parliament, which are of little account in the history of nations. No wonder the people who really  understand money are not fussed by whether the Liberals take over; they are only concerned with how public finances will affect the value of their investments. Conservatives do not have a better penchant for fixing them than Liberals, in both Canada and the United States, according to these writers.

Second, the Canadian Century establishes the current Conservative government in Canada is not doing a great job in sustaining the gains that Chretien and Martin made in fixing our public finances. Why conservatives should care about this issue is explained in The Canadian Century. It is a must read for the politically literate.

It started with Roger Scruton, naturally. A review of his book, “The Uses of Pessimism”, by Ed West in the Telegraph got me going, Oban responded, and Rebel Yell got into it.

Here is a quote from Scruton’s book:

“As Scruton notes: “Since the 1960s western countries have adopted policies in the matter of immigration that no person schooled in the elementary truths of pessimism would have endorsed. Anybody who has studied the fate of empires, and the difficulties of establishing territorial jurisdiction over communities that differ in religion, language and marital customs, knows that the task is all but impossible, and threatens constantly to break down in fragmentation, tribalism or civil war.”

Ed West continued in his Telegraph review:

Like Communism, mass immigration was based on a denial of human nature, and an inability to distinguish between what might work in individual human relationships and in society as a whole. Just because people of different groups are capable of getting on perfectly well as individuals, becoming friends and falling in love, it does not mean that a multicultural society (and one as diverse as ours will be multicultural as well as multiracial, whatever the Government does) can become a racism-free paradise; anymore than the willingness of people to give money to perfect strangers means Communism can work.

There were other comparisons with Communism: thought crimes were created, and eventually passed into law; dissidents were made public enemies (it was Scruton who published Ray Honeyford’s article about multiculturalism in Bradford, for which the headmaster was victimised and vilified); history was rewritten to educate the next generation in the new realities of their multicultural history; and children were indoctrinated “to embed a culture of equality in our schools and communities“. Even the language was changed, so that holders of non-revolutionary opinions could not express their opinions without becoming outcasts.

Contrary to what was said after Communism fell, we did not reach the end of history, merely a new chapter in the endless story of human stupidity.

This set me going on a rant of agreement and Oban responded:

This sent Rebel Yell into orbit:

To which Oban replied:

-Oban

Facts.

1. But while 76% of Mainstream voters think the United States should continue to build the fence, 67% of the Political Class are opposed to it.

2. Missouri Health Care Freedom, Proposition C aims to block the federal government from requiring people to buy health insurance and bans punishment for those without health insurance.  It was approved by 72.7% of the electorate.

3. A Rasmussen Reports survey “finds that just 28% of voters believe increased government spending is good for the economy….  This suggests that for 72% of voters, asking about a trade-off between cutting spending and helping the economy doesn’t make sense. A look at the demographics shows that the trade-off makes sense for only one group– the Political Class.  Among that group, 67% believe increased government spending would be good for the economy.”

 Tory results are down. Why? What about boneheaded stubborness on the census issue.

 It is a losing position, Mr. Prime Minister. Get off it fast.

Do what Tasha Kheireddin suggested yesterday:

• abolish the Indian Act
• reform our antiquated health care system
• get rid of ethanol and other green subsidies
• chop corporate welfare
• lower taxes

For example, according to Brian Lee Crowley, Jason Clemens and Niels Veldhuis in the brilliant new book “The Canadian Century“, our health care system is heading for catastrophe (see page109-110). The expenditure is unsustainable, the service  bad, the costs crippling, and the system shows no signs of improvement. Why not some free market reforms where they matter?

Stephen Taylor makes the best argument I have seen so far on the significance of ending a mandatory long-form census (LFC).

“The conservative/libertarian Fraser Institute think tank’s motto is “if it matters, measure it.” The untruth of the inverse of this statement is at the centre of why this government should follow through. “If you measure it, it matters” is the motto of those net tax-receiving organizations who only matter if they can make their case. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has tried the ideological argument against these groups for years. But ideology is by its nature debatable; removing the framework of debate is his shortcut to victory.

“If Stephen Harper succeeds in moving in this direction, he will be in the initial stages of dealing a huge blow to the welfare state. If one day we have no idea how many divorced Hindu public transit users there are in East Vancouver, government policy will not be concocted to address them specifically. Indeed if this group were organized (the DHPTUEV?) and looking for government intervention, they’d be against the census change. The trouble is that in Canada, the non-affiliated taxpayers not looking for a handout have not organized. Indeed, the only dog they have in this fight is the amount of tax they pay (aka “transfers”) to sustain the interests of others.”

This argument appeals to me profoundly. It elicits every aspect of my resentment at the growth of the snivelling whiner state of the last fifty years. It appeals to my strong belief that this country should have more aircraft carriers than human rights commissions. Fuck the bedwetters and the industries of concern! Disestablish the political parties and make them run on citizen contributions! Yay us! Boo them!

Taylor continues:

The other recent Lockheed Martin-related news story of the past couple of weeks was the Conservative government’s huge sole-sourced $16-billion contract with Lockheed Martin to buy F-35 fighter jets. Perhaps I was a bit naive to think that every part of that sentence should be offensive to the Ottawa media… sole-sourced… American arms dealer… flying war machines… Conservative government. No, this largest military purchase in Canadian history didn’t even make a significant blip on the Ottawa establishment radar, simply because it didn’t challenge the position of any special interest groups. There’s no bevy of community/cultural/government organizations ready to line up to criticize/laud such a move. If the government had taken $16-billion out of HRSDC’s $80+ billion annual budget to pay for it, however, there’d be a swarm.

Yes, this is the political miracle of this summer. Why is anyone sensible upset that the government may be destroying the basis of rational policy when they are feeding us the red meat of conservatism? Beautiful fighter bombers! And we already have the Leopard 2A6 models in Afghanistan, so we do not need to ask for more tanks. And supply ships for the navy! Hip hip hooray! Doing everything right for the military is the best change the Conservatives bring to government.

So why concern oneself with the mandatory nature of the long-form census?

Because accurate measurement of what needs to be fixed or ignored is at stake. Right wing or left wing, everyone has a stake in a statistically  informed government. As Ivan Fellegi pointed out, do you want to continue to allow tens of thousands to immigrate when every generation of our multi-culti immigrants is doing less well then their previous generations of more European-sourced immigrants? How do you know this for a fact? Statistics. Do you want to build many more prisons for a population whose crimes rates are declining? I may or may not have a problem with that, depending on the facts. But what are the facts? This is one of those many matters of state where ignorance is not strength.

It pays to reconnoitre. In fact, you can never have too much reconnaissance. When reading Reinhard Gehlen’s discussion of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, my takeway was that the Germans utterly failed to factor into their invasion plans just how many million men of military age the Soviet Union had. So when in the winter of 1941, and again in the summer of 1942, the Germans were hit with something like 200 divisions’ worth of Soviet army morre than they had calculated could exist, they were utterly surprised. The Soviets had men to throw away, which they did with utter disregard for life. They could afford to. The Germans lost three times fewer men on the eastern front than the Russians and still lost the war against the Soviets. Have you ever heard of the losing army losing three times fewer men than the winning army?

Just because you do believe the Titanic is unsinkable does not mean that icebergs do not lie in its path. A more cautious approach to facts is the sign of a wise physician. In so confused and ignorant arena as politics, the measurement of what can be readily measured strikes me as a sound and efficient step. And if the questions are too intrusive, lessen or change them. But do not, I repeat, make the LFC year over year incomparable because the sample is not random.

Ignorance is not strength.

I said previously that the honest argument about the long form census was essentially that

• it would make government less effective. It would do so by making the gathering of data less accurate, less statistically significant,  and less useful.
• By doing so it would make government less intrusive.

That at least, is the theory.  It has a certain attraction for those of us who fear the power of the state, as I do.

My argument with the libertarian opponents of the LFC is that making government less effective does not accomplish their other, laudable goals. In my view, accomplishing goal number one – less effective government- absolutely fails to accomplish goal number two, less intrusive government.

Here are a couple of columnists with the clarity to argue this point explicitly.

This from Ian Robinson in the Calgary Sun:

What they (those who favour the LFC)  don’t get is that those anachronistic idiots who believe in personal freedom and responsibility think things have already gone terribly, terribly wrong. If we can contrive to throw a monkey wrench into most anything government has planned, we’re standing in line to see who gets to throw it.

We want less government. We certainly want less planning because the more these creatures plan, the less money we have in our pockets to spend on stuff we actually want.

A lot of us never signed up for the degree of insane intrusion that is part of everyday life in this country — an intrusion partly fuelled by census data.

We never expected to see once self-respecting nation states teetering on the edge of bankruptcy — and threatening to bring us all down — because the cancer of big government is sucking so much money from their productive minorities that their economies are imploding.

Filling out a census form has been described as an act of social responsibility and it may well be … if it’s voluntary.

What the sheep don’t get is that it’s also an act of social responsibility to extend your middle finger to government.

It never hurts to remind these leeches they work for us … not the other way around. And without allegiance to that bedrock principle, we’re nothing but serfs.

And that’s a principle a trifle more important than permitting the government to threaten you if you don’t fill out a form

 I agree with every sentiment Ian Robinson expresses. But I think he is doing the equivalent of trying to pick up the Gross National Product with a set of tongs. Of a hundred ways to curb the nanny state, the hundredth least effective is to wreck the statistical basis of understanding the population’s wealth, movements, living patterns, immigration patterns, income distribution, and so forth. It is exactly the argument Bjorn Lomborg makes against the global warming enthusiasts: if you had a hundred things to do to help the planet, reducing green house gases would be the last on the list. In matters of domestic policy, chop taxes, lower expenditure,  pass a law allowing people unequivocally to defend themselves and their families from house intrusions and property loss by all force necessary, fire a few judges by Act of Parliament, legalize private medical care: the list goes on and on.

The inimitable sage of mediaeval Catholic thinking, David Warren, objects to the use of numbers to obscure our understanding of reality.

Let me record in passing how happy I am that the Harper government is getting rid of the “long form” of the census. Or rather, I wish it were doing so entirely: instead it is replacing one of innumerable arbitrary invasions of the citizen’s privacy and freedom with something “voluntary.”

Still, one may hope this will give results so obviously skewed as to be unusable, since a voluntary long form can appeal only to people who enjoy meeting bureaucratic requirements, and we can at least hope that they are unrepresentative of the general population….

I have written before, and from several angles, about the evils that flow not so much from the merely wasteful gathering of statistics, as from the uses to which statistics are put, and the addling of the minds of the users. Few drugs are as debilitating, and even in the course of his narcotic dreams, the drug addict seldom tries to impose his view of reality on the rest of us.

My friend Mr Warren does not merely have an argument with the size and pretensions of the state, he has an argument ith modernity itself: the misuse of science to obscure the truth. Or perhaps, in his terms,  even the proper use of science to obscure the Truth of Revelation.  Very well, David, but I am not alowing you anywhere near the machinery of government, business, or the more prosaic ones found in my toolshed. You would wreck my tools through sheer incompetence, an incompetence founded upon  a profound refusal to contemplate the natural laws and mechanical characteristics on which they are predicated.
And here I return to the argument I made previously, that the opponents think that the government will be less intrusive when it is less knowledgable; that its actions will be less obnoxious to freedom of behaviour and belief when it does not know who you are or what you are doing, as a statistical aggregate [note the vital condition here - statistically].  The argument seems plausible until you examine what we ask out of governments: sewers, highways, medical care, urban planning – and however ineffective , law enforcement. Asking for the same level of services while denying  government (all three levels) the means whereby to deliver them, or to plan for their delivery, does not strike me as sound policy.

Trust

Finally, to make a point on which  Blair Atholl frequently has founded his arguments, the social capital of trust is of great importance. Once trust is exhausted, we are caught in a profound morass. (see Francis Fukuyama’s book of the same name, Trust, for an explanation of the relationship between tyrannical governments and the destruction of social capital, such as trust).  The trust I am speaking of here is the trust Canadians have that our governments are by-and-large well intentioned and persuaded by evidence. It seems to me that the government is shredding that trust to no profit by rasing alarms about the degree of personal intrusion mandated by the long form census. The personal data is jealously guarded by StatsCan and is not available, by law, to any other department or branch of government. The government also seems intent upon signalling that it cares little for evidence in the formulation of policy. We will not get that trust back.

This issue may not resonate for partisans, but it does with the kind of people the Conservatives need to raise them to a majority in Parliament.

It has not taken long for the editorialists to put their fingers on the button: are the Tories suppressing the long form census for purely ideological reasons? And I ask: what ideology? Or is this just know-nothingism?

The reason why this issue has resonated is that it goes to the issue which all sensible people must ask about any government. Do these people actually care to make fact-based policy? Or worse, are the Conservatives “ideological” in the same way that the NDP are ideological?  My feelings trump your facts: the kind of rubbish we conservatives hear so often on global warming, or any other leftward hot-button issue. Or as the Citizen editorial bewails  today, “the increasingly anti-intellectual and anti-science orientation of the government.”

The data derived from the long form census is the basis of most government policy at municipal, provincial and federal levels, as well as private and public sector investment decisions.

The arguments of the know-nothings tend to be that a) privacy is invaded and b) that, by inference, by depriving governments of data they will somehow make better (more conservative) decisions.

The privacy invasion argument is rubbish, for two reasons. First, because Stats Can shares no personal information whatever with other departments, and has never been faulted for improper revelation of personal matters. As the former head statistician  Ivan Fellegi said on the radio, StatsCan is “obsessed” with the security of its data. The agency  is bound by law not to reveal it. Second, because compared to the data that all financial institutions are required to submit to the Department of Finance in relation to any “suspicious” transactions, the data collected in the long-form, such knowing how long it takes you to commute or how many bathrooms the average person has, is utterly without adverse effect on the citizen. The Privacy Commissioner reported three complaints in relation to the long-form census in the past decade. So if all the know-nothings were really concerned about privacy, they have exercised highly selective indignation.

No one has been bold enough actually to state that governments would somehow make better (that is, more conservative) decisions if it were deprived of accurate data. Yet that is the inference one must draw from the arguments the true believers are making. I am unable to elaborate this argument more fully; it cannot be done.  Not knowing what effects your policies are having  will not make those policies go away or cause them to be cheaper to deliver. Not knowing where and to whom services are to be denied or delivered will not increase efficiency.

Take a case dear to conservative hearts: reducing inappropriate immigration. Immigrants are continually doing less well with the passage of time. Their rates of assimilation  and finding jobs have worsened  overall as we change the composition of the immigrant populations away from Europeans. It is evident that, as we increase  immigration from non-European countries, the cultural transitions are harder for many immigrants to make. Mix in Islam and you can foresee massive social problems building up for the future. Does it profit us not to know exactly how badly or well new waves of Third World immigration are doing? I thought so.

The sad truth of the matter is that the know-nothings are as wrong about this issue as the global warming fanatics are about their pet obsession. They share the same tendency to believe something a priori (we are doing something terrible to the planet; all government is excessive) and to marshall the facts to suit the false premise.

They are missing the point that science – real knowledge- is the basis of material and intellectual progress. Knowledge, grounded in accuracy, assisted by diligence, and aided by perseverance, will finally overcome all obstacles, raise ignorance from despair, and produce happiness in the paths of science.

In turning away from science-based policy, the Conservative government is betraying reason, and demonstrating to a skeptical middle ground of Canadians that they should not be trusted with a majority. So to answer my colleague Duggan’s Dew, the statistics issue is vital to the march towards a Conservative majority. And they – we – are providing a stumbling block to that outcome.

Stephen Harper: this is your issue. Do something intelligent.

The federal government’s decision to make voluntary the answering of the long form census is a major policy error in about five  different ways. A decision so fundamentally wrong raised questions about the intelligence of our leadership.
The census is the basic instrument whereon depend a vast number of marketing, social policy, taxation, immigration, construction, business location and health policy questions. You cannot conduct government without adequate data on who lives where, how much money are they earning, what they own, how they get to work, whether they have work, and so forth. The Conservatives propose to suppress the rigorous gathering of data through the long form on spurious grounds of privacy. After the long form becomes a voluntary activity, virtually all data collected will become incomparable to previous, more rigorous data.

The mounting ignorance about the facts of our demography will make government a by-guess-and-by-golly affair. It is as if you turned off the instruments on an aircraft at night and tried to land by dead reckoning. Why would you want to turn off your headlights in a snowstorm?

Ivan Fellegi, the former Dominion Statistician, spoke about this the other day on radio. (You will have to endure the CBC for a few moments.)

His points were:

• The results will be biased because aboriginals, new immigrants, the poor, those with low educational attainment, and the very well off are less likely to respond. This will deprive Canada of important information about social trends such as income polarization. It will eliminate our best source of information about aboriginal Canadians, immigrants, and minority language groups.
• Municipalities and provinces will lose their main source of planning information for transportation systems, housing, and other local issues.
• The introduction of such a major change will disrupt any comparison from previous censuses, since it will be impossible to know whether a trend is real or simply an artifact of the switch to voluntary reporting.
• The change will deprive private polsters and researchers of the baseline data they use to check the validity of their samples, and adjust them to ensure they accurately reflect the Canadian population.
• The change means we will spend upwards of $100 million to gather unusable data.

I cannot imagine how the federal Cabinet could make so unbelievably, unspeakably stupid a decision. It is anarchistic in effect, if not in motive.

-no polling preceded it

-no consultations preceded it

-no thought preceded it.

The issue is not StatCan: as Fellegi says, it is the impact on the myriad users of this statistical information for every kind of business and governmental purpose.

Is their purpose the deliberate blinding of governments at all levels?  Why would they think blinding government will make it less intrusive , less costly and more effective?

Prime Minister Trudeau used to walk over to the Governor General’s at Rideau Hall every Wednesday when they were both in town and have a little chat. We never knew whether the briefing notes prepared for their meeting had any relevance to their real discussions. But they did talk to each other, in keeping with Bagehot’s dictum that the rights of the sovereign were “to be consulted, to advise and to warn.” I have difficulty imagning that this practice has continued under some of the succeeding Governors General and Prime Ministers.

With the appointment of David Johnston to the Vice-Regalship, we can see the re-establishment of this useful tradition. Stephen Harper can cross Sussex Avenue by the traffic circle outside the GG’s, wander up the tree-lined avenue, up the steps and into the Governor General’s library where they can have a drink and talk politics, or watch a game on the tube. The Governor General has the best job in Ottawa, and the cushiest digs.

What kind of advice willl David Johnston give? Very shrewd advice. Johnston is a Presbyterian to start with, and I generally ascribe to Presbyterians a high degree of conscientiousness coupled with a desire to do good. Johnston has been so careful in his announcements that no one can figure out whether he is a Liberal or a Tory (I suspect a Liberal). And surviving the raising of five daughters requires intense political skills, which you would understand if you have ever fathered one, let alone five.

Johnston already gave the speech which would define his term when he alluded to David Hackett Fischer’s recent book on Samuel de Champlain, the founder of New France. Fischer’s book has been a raging success among various portions of the intelligentsia this past year. Quoting from him on the subject of Champlain’s tolerant attitudes was a brilliant, apt move by Professor Johnston, hereafter, His Excellency.

It is a choice which brings credit on the person chosen, the chooser, and the office. Bravo to all of you!

Under the supreme direction of the Prime Minister Harper the country is drifitng into the state where adults are in charge of its vital political institutions.

Check out this training video employed by the G-20 protestors:

H/T  www.latfh.com

You wonder: can it be true? Is this just a right-wing stereotype? Maybe we are being unfair. Maybe we exaggerate. Then comes “Swept from a peaceful protest”. the essay in yesterday’s Globe and Mail by one of  its design editors, Cinders McLeod.

A self-confessed veteran of the anti-Thatcher poll tax riots, she decides to take her children to the G20 demonstrations.:

“I thought since the detention centre was local and far away from the G20 security zone, it would be a gentle introduction into the peaceful art of protest. I cared for the community, I cared for the people who were unjustly detained and I cared that my children cared too. “

“A gentle introduction into the peaceful art of protest”. What a load of hypocritical cant! As if her “caring” justifies her vapid political posturing.

McLeod continues:

“I saw [her daughter] Anya being pushed by one of the group of police. I screamed out her name. They threw the young man next to her to the ground. Diarmid [her son] ran toward the skirmish just as a kind boy pulled Anya out of the policemen’s path. She looked so thin and vulnerable and 14 in her short shorts beside the black, violent swarm.

The front line of protesters sat down again, hands held in the air in peace signs, chanting, “We are peaceful, how ’bout you.”

Someone called out to take care because a line of police officers was approaching from the other end of the street. I had just enough time to take in the notion that we were surrounded when a line of riot police moved in on the crowd. There was smoke and sounds of shooting. Diarmid and Anya ran to us and we all turned to run down a side alley. I felt a punch on my back and calmly thought, “Oh, that’s what a rubber bullet feels like.”

We found our way to the nearest street and headed for home. Diarmid and Anya walked side by side, all sibling rivalry forgotten. They now had a common enemy: injustice. They knew the police had a job to do, but what they had witnessed wasn’t it.

According to McLeod, the reason for showing up at the detention centre was,

“And I didn’t feel good about teaching my children that we should just sit and let the world be interpreted to us by TV. Did good citizens stay home and mimic the broadcasters or endeavour to find the truth out for themselves?”

What truth? A riot is a riot. Police will act brutally or fairly, but they will act to suppress it. And this was the truth you bring your children to?

Is bringing your teenage children to what obviously will be a riot considered a normal part of educating your children?  Would you expose your children to the threat of tear gas, rubber bullets, truncheons, the rough behaviour of cops suppressing a riot, for any reason? for any reason less than revolution against tyranny? Under what conditions would you parents out there bring your children to a G20 demonstration?  If you are Cinders Mcleod, the answer seems to be: knowing they will not be shot, truncheoned, beaten, or otherwise murdered, but also knowing they will get their blood up against the cops. A good indoctrination in becoming a leftist.

 Today’s announcement of the Governor General’s awards lists the traitor Gwynne Dyer as an officer (!) of the Order of Canada.

Gwynne Dyer was the weedy leftist who droned on about the moral equivalence of the United States and the Soviet Union back when sucking up to communism seemed like a winning strategy. He is still a weedy leftist, shilling for every anti-Christian, anti-Western, anti-liberal force on the planet. He is very high on the list of those whose corpses  should be plowed into a ditch after a short ride in the back of truck holding other condemned traitors for their mandatory bullet in the head. He is one of the very, very few people for whom the term traitor is  fitting . He is not merely mistaken; he is actively against Western civilization.

A disgrace.

For revealing what an intolerant leftist snob you are. 

That was redundant. Not all snobs are leftists but all leftists are snobs, and intolerance goes hand in glove with both. (Not that intolerance of the intolerable is a virtue). But back to our silly Mr. Rock, President of Ottawa University and former Liberal Minister of Justice, founder of the now defunct gun registry, and representative specimen of Canada’s former ruling class.

The Windsor Star says:

In fact, the released documents show that it was Rock — not Houle — who asked that the email be sent. Rock even dictated some of the wording.

“Ann Coulter is a mean-spirited, small-minded, foul-mouthed poltroon,” Rock wrote to Houle in a March 18 email. “She is ‘the loud mouth that bespeaks the vacant mind’.”

“She is an ill-informed and deeply offensive shill for a profoundly shallow and ignorant view of the world. She is a malignancy on the body politic. She is a disgrace to the broadcasting industry and a leading example of the dramatic decline in the quality of public discourse in recent times.”

At the same time, he argued, “we should not take any steps to interfere with her plans to speak next week on our campus.”

Instead, Rock advised Houle he should write to Coulter informing her of the different rules surrounding free speech in Canada compared with those in the United States.

“You, Francois, as Provost, should write immediately to Coulter informing her of our domestic laws. … You should urge her to respect that Canadian tradition as she enjoys the privilege of her visit.”

After seeing a copy of the final email to Coulter, Rock praised Houle: “Quel excellent message! Merci et felicitations. I am sure she has never been dressed down so elegantly in her life!”

O gosh golly, Allan, are we ever kicking butt today!

Her books sell more than yours, she makes tons of money more than you do, she influences public policy much more effectively than you ever did, even as fons et origo of the hated and useless gun registry, she eats meat (which you do not) and she is welcome at the best parties, whereas you are not, since your reputation as a prating killjoy precedes you. So if you want ad hominem (or ad feminam) attack, check your face in the mirror. Realize what  you are in store for. You stepped into this, and the smell is all over you.

The throngs in the streets over the G20 summit may pride themselves for their post-modern sensibility, yet they are oblivious to their own fetish for a largely — and deservedly — extinct mode of political action. Mobilization of the masses is an input that modern democratic social systems do not recognize and genuinely repressive ones have little fear in crushing. What many thought was “direct action” merely turned the Toronto of 2010 into an abortive pathetic LARP of Petrograd in 1917 or Paris in 1968.

For all of the hype that internet technology has brought forth phenomena like flash mobs, there is the countervailing truth that online community building has produced a vast number of “boutique” interest groups with wildly varying degrees of impact. A Facebook campaign can help get Betty White as the host of Saturday Night Live; a piece of performance art on University Avenue will have zero possibility of affecting any decision by the likes of Dimitri Medvedyev or Angela Merkel, the YouTube video of it equally so.

Popular direct action is the dreadnought of political communications. When media were closed systems, it took a critical mass to propel a message past conventional boundaries. So it is only the devotees of Noam Chomsky and Robert Fisk who refuse to acknowledge the futility of the classic “streets of outrage” demonstration.

I invoke the term “Ostalgie” in the title because it strikes me that many of our domestic activists pine for the sort of popular upheavals witnessed in the disintegration of the Soviet Union and more recently the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine. But those occurred in nations whose ease with democratic culture ranged from slim to none. For we who dwell in the realm of the sane, Stephen Harper is not a latter-day Erich Honecker nor Maude Barlow a distaff Lech Walesa.