Governor-General, Affirmative Action, and Breast Implants

Via Bourque, The Tyee is campaigning for Pamela Anderson to become the next Governor-General. It’s not as frivolous as it sounds. Or better. It’s as frivolous as appropriate to the office. Here’s the case:

In addition to being female entertainers, both Clarkson and Jean are married to self-aggrandizing artiste-philosophers whose work is incomprehensible to ordinary folk.

Clarkson’s mate is writer John Ralston Saul, a supercilious swell whose essays reportedly find great favour in salons and faculty lounges from one end of Toronto to the other. Jean is wed to Jean-Daniel Lafond, a former philosophy professor who now produces films.

Pam’s in step. She once was married to Tommy Lee, the drummer for Motley Crue, a heavy-metal musical group which sold millions of albums. And just as regular people haven’t got the faintest idea what Saul and Lafond ramble on about, no rational person can fathom the popularity of Tommy Lee or Motley Crue.

Start the campaign

But there is one tiny problem. Pamela Anderson is (with two exceptions) what you might call a ’self-made gal.’ Everything she has earned was through her own labour, creativity and perseverance. To the best anyone knows, she has never collected a nickel from the government: no patronage appointments, no awards, no contracts, no plums.

She’s simply a hard-working woman who has achieved phenomenal success through her own initiative.

But consider the roster of Canada’s Governors General. First there were the British snobs who received their aristocratic titles and vice-regal appointments through family ancestry. Then there were the ex-politicians and former civil servants who wanted to enjoy an early retirement while collecting a government pay cheque.

And now we have Clarkson and Jean, and their spouses, Saul and Lafond, who, between the four of them, have been feeding at the public trough for nearly a century in total. Employment at the CBC, contracts with the National Film Board, grants from the Canada Council, and countless appointments and sinecures from nearly every imaginable taxpayer-financed institution and agency, provincial and federal – the list goes on.

There you have it. Pam, with “two exceptions,”is a self-made gal and while Adrienne and Michaelle, along with the various Liberal Party bagmen and aristocrats, got appointed through various affirmative action measures.

Whereas many of our GGs up to now have been fake and useless, Pamela’s fakies are hardly useless. Though just as frivolous as our GGs.

Affirmative action: the breast-plant of the postmaterialist class.

UPDATE: Lorne Gunter reflects on the problem of celebrating M. Jean simply for being black.

Oilsands Money Gushing into Ottawa

The high price of oil has had various politicians, academics, and journalists calling for a new scheme to “share” Alberta’s wealth with the rest of Canada. I noted a while back that NOT among those demanding this publicly were senior members of the Liberal government.

A study released today by the Canadian Energy Research Institute explains why. The Edmonton Journal reports:

A combination of personal, corporate and indirect taxes are expected to send $51 billion to Ottawa, 41 per cent of the $123 billion the oilsands industry is expected to deliver to Canadian governments, according to the 20-year forecast.

Alberta would receive the second-highest amount from royalties and taxes at $43.7 billion. Municipalities, including those in Alberta, would receive $16.9 billion in taxes, and other provincial and territorial governments would collect $11.5 billion.

“That’s (the Ottawa share) a very striking number,” said Govinda Timilsina, one of the authors of the study. “There’s some misconception as to what is the realistic view (of economic benefits).”

The federal government takes in the biggest share of tax revenue. Do they want to threaten that source of tax revenue? Not likely, for the same reason they don’t want to cut gas taxes. They’d only threaten that revenue if they thought that they could replace it with something else. Given the current state of the economy, it’s unlikely they could find a different source to recover the very large amount of money they take in from the oilsands.

Paul Martin of course was the Finance Minister and had intelligent bureaucrats giving him advice, although many of those same intelligent bureaucrats were taught by Thomas Courchene, who recently said some silly things about Alberta’s wealth that had little to do with economics.

This is enough to keep in mind that goverments don’t always do what’s economically rational (understatement alert!).

Harvey Mansfield on TV

Click here to watch a 3 hour interview, and phone-in show, with Harvard political theorist Harvey Mansfield, originally broadcast on BookTV.

Click here for his most recent thoughts on why conservatives are better equipped to defend free speech than liberals are. Here’s a snippet:

Conservatism is therefore closer to the mission of the university than liberalism is. Liberals, insofar as they are progressives, believe that it is possible to eliminate prejudice from society. When prejudice is gone, truth prevails, and there is no need to reconsider the errors of the past. Progress is irrevocable, and inquiry shrinks to whatever questions remain unsettled. Conservatives, believing that it is not possible to eliminate prejudice, are more tolerant than liberals; they expect society to be, and remain, a mixture of truth and untruth.

Conservatism and Canada’s Regions

John Duffy, a Liberal strategist, has some mildly interesting reflections on the role regionalism plays in determining conservative and Conservative fortunes in Canada (as an aside, I wonder why the National Post chose a Liberal Party strategist to discuss conservatism, but maybe the Aspers owed him another favor, but I digress).

His argument can be summarized that Conservatives have done well and there’s no necessary relationship with the structure of the federation. That Quebec is socialist has little to do with it. Their biggest problem is that the Liberals are gaining hold of urban centers and the Conservatives the rural, which is a losing proposition due to shifting demographics.

Why urbans are liberal has been dealt with with exemplary precision elsewhere. But amidst Duffy’s ruminations is this worthy nugget:

More thoughtful conservatives can searchingly argue that Canada has a governing tradition, rooted in the political culture of the St. Lawrence Valley, that is based on elite accommodation via the state. Moreover, they argue, the Liberals’ stock-in-trade is broadening the definition of that tradition to where it asserts a monopoly on the indigenous values of Canadians, and brands as un-Canadian any who challenge it. There is, to be sure, some relationship between the way a country structured like Canada is bound to work and the political methods the Liberals adopt to govern it. Much of this is attitudinal: There’s something about the structure of the country and the accommodations it makes that tilts in a direction toward which people who become Liberals generally find it easier to march.

While urban liberal values plays a role, the more important factor seems to be that the Conservatives are too populist for their own good. They ignore that Canada is an oligarchy. They must work the corridors of power, from Paul Desmarais to Peter Mansbridge, if they’ll get anywhere.

Yet more evidence Canada is not a nation, but more like an imperial administration. Or call it an oligarchy, if you will.

Polygamy in Belgium

Surprise, surprise! Via Angry in the Great White North, Belgium, one of the first countries, now has civil unions extended to troikas. According to the Brussels Journal:

Netherlands and Belgium were the first countries to give full marriage rights to homosexuals. In the United States some politicians propose “civil unions� that give homosexual couples the full benefits and responsibilities of marriage. These civil unions differ from marriage only in name.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands polygamy has been legalised in all but name. Last Friday the first civil union of three partners was registered. Victor de Bruijn (46) from Roosendaal “married� both Biance (31) and Mirjam (35) in a ceremony before a notary who duly registered their civil union.

This comes as no surprise, for reasons I’ve outlined as recently as here.

Castro’s Man Killed Chilean President Salvador Allende

A shocker of a new book launched in France trashes the myth that Chilean president Salvador Allende was killed by Pinochet’s forces or by CIA operatives during the coup against Allende’s Unidad Popular government on September 11, 1973. Allende’s Cuban bodyguard, Patricio de la Guardia, the book apparently charges, shot Allende in the head when he heard Allende say that he wanted to surrender, reports Eduardo McKenzie (in Spanish). De la Guardia also killed Allende’s Chilean bodyguard, and then left the burning building for the Cuban Embassy with some other Cuban buddies.

The book (written in French) is entitled Cuba Nostra: The State Secrets of Fidel Castro, and is authored by Alain Ammar, a French journalist with experience in Latin American affairs, with the collaboration of two Cubans: Jacobo Machover and Juan Vivés, a former Castro agent. The publisher promises that the book will explain the trail of bodies that line up Castro’s path (his own comrades) and expose Castro’s “universe,” calling it “mafioso, corrupt and sanguinary.”

Hugo Chavez, who also boasts Cuban bodyguards, better take notice of this book quickly.

A fair translation of McKenzie’s entry is provided here by Luís Afonso Assumpção from Porto Alegre, Brazil at Swimming Against the Red Tide, from whom I learned about the new book.

Crossposted from Civitatensis.

MEDIA ITEM: Calls for Jamieson Resignation

Conservative organizer calls for Carol Jamieson’s resignation:

“The Invisible Hand, who is the chairman of the Conservative Council of The Invisible Hand’s Bedroom, says he has received supportive e-mails from over 40 million Canadians and the endorsement of 309 Members of Parliament.”

This will undoubtedly be on the front page of the Globe and Mail.

Anglicans Discover Friendship!

Via PoliticalTheoryDaily, we learn that the Anglicans have discovered that most unusual phenomena, friendship.

According to Mark Vernon, one of the things raised in recent debates surrounding same-sex marriage/blessings is the status of Platonic friendships. This is a question I’ve raised on countless occasions and I’m pleased other people are asking it. I note that there’s even a name for the politically correct tendency to avoid raising the point: platonophobia, hatred of platonic friendships based on the irrational insistence that our most profound way of relating to others must be sexual.

So in wades Mark Vernon who gives a little bit of lop-sided history of how Christianity has treated friendship, indicting St. Augustine for throwing suspicion on it. Why the suspicion? There’s a strand in Christianity that regards ancient (i.e., “pagan”) friendship (philia) as too egoistic while Christian love (caritas, agape) is selfless and rooted in love of God. Vernon has a book coming out on the subject too.

I agree with Vernon that such a dichotomy is too clumsy, though I disagree on which Christians think that. He mentions Augustine and Aelred of Rievaulx, and lists the latter as a great Christian defender of friendship. He concludes his brief article:

Today, though, there is an opportunity for friendship to be recovered. The networked lives of postmodern individuals rely more and more on friendship. If the Church could stop worrying so much about micromanaging people’s sex lives, and turn instead to nurturing the ways in which they love one another, it might redeem itself yet.

This is true as far as it goes. But where does Vernon wish it to lead? If friendship-love is as sacramental as he claims, does he suggest friendship blessings, for platonic friends, deserve to be sacraments?

Should the Church reach back to the example of David and Jonathan, who signified their friendship with their covenant (Jonathan, son of King Saul, gave David his regal cloak)?

Moreover, is this the best way to resolve conflicts in the Church over same-sex marriage? If this issue arose in those debates, it seems the next step would be to compare the platonic friendships with same-sex relationships involving sex. Given our culture’s general platonophobia, and the fact that it just doesn’t know what to do with individuals of the same sex who share a platonic friendship, I suspect the debate would be slanted toward the culture’s prejudices. However, it would provide the opportunity for some serious consideration of how friendship is to be understood. For instance, what do we learn about these questions by reading Plato’s Symposium or Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics?

Let the debate begin!

Canada’s Religious Right

Lorne Gunter in today’s National Post documents the failings of the religious right in Canada.

He argues that the religious right is good at making noise but it really needs a Ralph Reed who can work the backrooms and create a political movement.

Gunter’s argument is correct as far as it goes, but I think it misses an essential point. One of the reasons why religious conservatives don’t obtain wider support is that they fail to connect their socially and morally conservative message with the principle of liberty. While it’s true that they’re like preachers in the whorehouse, trying to preach moderation to an immoderate and hedonistic society. At the same time, they also need to do a much better job demonstrating that the immoderate and hedonistic policies that the other side supports undermines liberty. Too often they allow themselves to be portrayed as the enemies of liberty, when in fact the best arguments for social and moral conservatism sustain liberty understood as the “ordered liberty” of the responsible individual. Canadian social conservatives have never been good at making this argument, partly for reasons I indicated yesterday. But, unlike their American cousins, they lack a national commitment to individual responsibility, with the attendant virtues of the responsible individual, that would sustain their message.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: imperial subjects lack a public realm, a res publica, to enable them to practice conservative virtues.

The Gun Registry: Only One Part of Allan Rock’s Trail of Blunders

Via Tom right here at thepolitic and Damian at Daimnation, a story from the Winnipeg Sun regarding Alan Rock’s Gun Registry. Sheila Fraser, the Auditor General, is preparing a report to be issued in February. It is expected to paint a picture of rampant, scandalous spending. Peter McKay, the Conservative MP expects that the Registry will make AdScam look like peanuts.

“It will be like dime-store shoplifting when one starts to compare the money that was involved in this gun registry that’s unaccounted for,” MacKay told Sun Media.

The brainchild of Allan Rock, then Minister of Justice, the Gun Registry was introduced under the false pretence of saving lives. It has been a fiasco of enormous proportions almost since its inception, even among Liberals. It is said that the Registry cost Rock the leadership bid in 2003.

Allan Rock is also the minister under whose watch Andrei Knyazev, a Russian Embassy Secretary, had been caught driving drunk by Ottawa police twice before he struck two women joggers in an Ottawa neighbourhood in January 2001, killing one (Catherine MacLean) and horribly maiming the other (Catherine Dore).

Knyazev had a history of car accidents and was known to Ottawa police.

Ottawa police say they caught Andrei Knyazev driving drunk on two previous occasions. The federal government ensured no charges were laid and even apologized to the Russians for asking Knyazev to take a breathalyzer test.

Under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, Ottawa police could not detain Knyazev nor demand evidence from him, but the incidents were reported to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Such reports go to the minister’s desk. Both times the drunken diplomat was granted dispensation. Under the circumstances, Rock should have evicted Knyazev from Canada long before he killed at the wheel –instead Canada apologised to Knyazev. By the time of the fatal accident in 2001, Rock was already out of the Justice portfolio and taken over Health’s, where having done nothing memorable he improved on his record significantly.

Rock’s record in policy and decision-making in Canada is so impressive that it caught Paul Martin’s attention. In early 2004, Paul Martin appointed Rock Canada’s permanent Ambassador to the United Nations, where he’ll be able to propagate his skills among his new diplomatic peers. The federal government website boasts that Rock

has a decade of experience in government and policy-making. A member of Canada’s parliament from 1993-2003, he served in the federal cabinet as Minister of Justice and Attorney General, as Minister of Health, and most recently as Minister of Industry.

Of course, Rock is not the first Liberal crony who gets strongly rewarded with a posh life in Manhattan and gets to exalt Canada’s name with his outstanding public and personal record. In this instance, Rock’s apologetic disposition toward Russian diplomats in Canada (He’s never apologised to Canadians) made him a perfect fit to land the job in New York.

If you would like to contact our illustrious Ambassador in New York City to congratulate him on his great job, or to thank him for his contributions in the protection of the citizens of our country, please go here.

Cross posted from Civitatensis

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