Ignatieff’s book, True Patriot Love – Revisionist Tripe

Yesterday, the National Post published an excerpt from Michael Ignatieff’s new book, True Patriot Love. In the excerpt Ignatieff spends a great deal of time waxing eloquently about the uniqueness of Canadian character compared to the brutish Americans to our south. However, Ignatieff’s eagerness to sound prime ministerial and stately falls flat when he insults his readers:

To imagine it as a citizen is to imagine it as a resident of Yellow Quill reservation in Saskatchewan would have had to imagine it, this Canada where two half-naked children died in a snow-covered field in the sub-Arctic darkness because their father tried to take the sick little girls to his parents and never made it, and all you can hope is that death was as mercilessly quick as the cold can make it. What does a resident of Yellow Quill imagine, what do we Canadians imagine our country to be, the morning we learn that children have perished in this way? It is surely more than just a tragic story of one family. It is a story about us.

No Micheal, the story of Christopher Pauchay – the man who murdered his daughters by getting drunk and then dragging them out into -50 degree weather with only diapers and t-shirts to protect them from the bitter cold – isn’t a story about us. It’s a story about abuse, neglect and a disgusting disregard for basic human life.

The only thing more insulting than claiming “it is a story about us” is Ignatieff’s willingness to warp this tragic story to further his personal political ambitions.

If this excerpt is any indication of the overall quality of the book, I wouldn’t waste my time or money.