CIVITATENSIS

One can agree or disagree with David Warren, but it’s hard to walk away from his writing disappointed.  Here is a taste of his last piece on political correctness:

It is crucially important to fight back: to denounce those who try to silence us; to subject their intellectual fashion cults to public ridicule; to show solidarity with those who are being muffled and victimized; to give them encouragement, and prevent their isolation; to defy openly the edicts of the politically correct; to retaliate against every attempt to encroach upon academic freedom. (”Forgive, but retaliate,” was Prof. George’s formula, by analogy to Reagan’s old Cold-War detente formula: “Trust, but verify.”)

A good place to start would be with those orientation programs. They need to be exposed for what they are, and challenged in forensic detail. Professors of goodwill, regardless of their own political views, should go out of their way to uphold the honour of their profession, by assuring incoming students that the university is not a closed leftwing camp; that social and political indoctrination is not a natural expression of academic ideals, but a subversion and perversion of them.

See here for the whole thing.

In what amounts to be practice for ousting the Conservative government of Stephen Harper come January, the Liberals are poised to install Michael Ignatieff as their new “interim” leader next Wednesday, after Stephan Dion finally steps down today.

While the Liberals constitution allows for the appointment of interim leaders, Michael Ignatieff is also running formally to replace their briefly rehabilitated but disgraced leader Stephane Dion. In effect, Ignatieff becomes the de facto Grit leader, which tramples the chances of the other two leadership hopefuls, including one Bob Rae.

Bob Rae, the Grit most animated to topple Stephen Harper is effectively being ousted himself. The leadership race will still be on, of course, but in reality the party will have robbed Rae of his chances to 1) get his hat trick toppling governments in Canada, and 2) become the leader of the battered Liberal Party.

In essence, a coalition of Liberals other than Bob Rae supporters is colluding behind close doors to take Bob Rae’s democratic chances away and to give the prize to Michael Ignatieff.

What goes around…

When science ceases to allow the possibility of doubt and dogmatically shuts down questions or other points of view, it has ceased to be science.

From Saturday’s Globe and Mail

September 20, 2008 at 12:37 AM EDT

At least Galileo was afforded the benefit of a trial by the Inquisition. No such process was observed by Britain’s prestigious Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific body, when it summarily dismissed its director of education for saying that creationism should be treated as a "world view" and not simply a misconception.

The culprit, Professor Michael Reiss, who is also a priest in the Church of England, made some remarks that are sensible enough, except to those who adhere, dare we say, religiously, to scientific dogma. Prof. Reiss was not preaching creationism from his Royal Society pulpit; he strongly defended evolution. Indeed, his main point was that children from religious upbringings should be engaged in science lessons, rather than dismissed out of hand as cranks: "There is much to be said for allowing students to raise any doubts that they have – hardly a revolutionary idea in science teaching – and doing one’s best to have a genuine discussion." This is a perfectly lucid argument, one to which you would think the Royal Society would gladly adhere. When children raise questions based on what they have learned at home or in church, synagogue or mosque, they should be respectfully engaged. Their minds will not be changed by outright dismissal or ridicule, but possibly by respectful and dispassionate debate.

Some of the eminences who serve as Fellows of the Royal Society, however, mounted their lecterns to enthusiastically condemn Prof. Reiss. His enlightened views were then adamantly rejected by the Royal Society, which claimed they had "damaged its reputation." Its dismissal of Prof. Reiss makes it clear that, when opinions diverge even slightly from accepted scientific wisdom, they will be met with ruthless suppression. This says something sorry about the state of scientific enquiry as practised by that august body. Prof. Reiss has not been forced to recant or placed under house arrest. He has only been packed off to his old job at the Institute of Education. But the loss of a job over such a minor heresy suggests a new inquisition has been convened, absent a certain due process of the old.

Michael Coren has chosen to be charitable in his interpretation of how Quebec journalists, politicians and members of the intelligentsia in general are reacting to the news that some of the candidates in the present election campaign have Christian beliefs of one sort or another.

Coren thinks that Duceppe is stupidly going after Opus Dei caricature, disingenuously detaching it from the Catholic Church.

 But Dan Brown is evidently big in Quebec and, much to the chagrin of the Bloc, so might be the Conservatives. Accordingly, Gilles Duceppe announced that the Tory candidate in Saint-Hubert-Saint-Bruno, Nicole Charbonneau Barron, was an Opus Dei member. Then Raymond Gravel, a Catholic priest and outgoing Bloc MP, opined that, “Social conservatives such as members of Opus Dei may be running for office in order to change policies concerning abortion and same-sex marriage.”

Earth to dotty separatist: It’s not Opus Dei but the Roman Catholic Church that teaches that life begins at conception and that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. You might know that if you weren’t suspended from almost all priestly duties. Indeed it is entirely likely that in a less liberal place than Quebec in the 1980s, this former prostitute who worked in Montreal’s gay leather bars would never have been ordained in the first place.

They are not at all detaching it from the Roman Church. They know very well that their smear of an Opus Dei candidate is also an attack on the Church. They also know well that there will be no backlash. Quebec is the same province in which a bunch of radical feminists desacrated Mary Queen of the World cathedral but the police refused to press charges.

Among journalists, academics and politicians of most stripes in Quebec it has for long been fashionable to ridicule Christianity, and Catholicism in particular. It is the bigoted fetish of their Intelligentsia to claim that the Christian faith renders one incapable of occupying and exercising public office. It’s what passes for intellectual enlightenment and sophistication. It’s as fashionable in Quebec as their anti-semitic cousins were in the nineteenth century. Quebec’s anti-Catholicism has become the last refuge for ‘enlightened’ scoundrels.

See also here for a peak on how Le Devoir reports the presence of Christians on the ballot as though they were announcing that candidates have cancerous moral failures (en francais). Barbara Kay examines the double standard.

CTV has acquired the rights to the theme song that has played on CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada for 40 years.Last week, the CBC publicly announced that it could not reach a deal with the song’s copyright holders. CTV sealed the deal with Copyright Music & Visuals Monday morning.Beginning this fall, the song will now be heard in NHL broadcasts on TSN and RDS. CTV will also air the song as part of its hockey coverage during the 2010 Olympic winter games.

It’s a done deal. Just this morning I heard on the radio a CBC executive, who took part in the negotiations for the CBC’s right to continue to use the piece, saying that the author could not just take the song and sell it to just about any one else. CTV is not just any one. That’s true, but the mistake of the statement is in your typical bureaucratic mindset: CBC seems to have thought that they are the market.

CBC will moan about not being able to compete with private broadcasters, but will not stop receiving commercial revenue. In the end it’s not so much that CTV may have more money. It’s that CBC executives understand so little about markets and competition.

John A. Macdonald used to describe himself as a cabinet-maker, a formula that a recent Liberal prime minister repeated without ever giving Sir John A. credit. Cabinet-maker is not a reference that one can apply to Ed Stelmach, the Alberta premier. Cabinet-making is significance because in the parliamentary system we do not elect governments. Governments are formed, and the government is the cabinet, chosen by the head of the government. Those choices make a government. Stelmach’s first cabinet last December was a textbook case on how to ignore the tradition of forming cabinets in this country.

Some commentators have attacked Stelmach for not being acquainted with the most basic rules about cabinets. I disagree. Stelmach knows the rules. He himself was a cabinet member for more than a decade. He knows the rules well, but he chose to ignore the tradition.

Traditions may not mean much in the hyper-changing society in which we live. But in government, they are often the one thing standing between good government and government by whim. Parliamentary traditions, in other words, exist in order to limit the power of those in office. When politicians ignore tradition is almost always at our peril.

Stelmach ignored tradition, not out of ignorance but from defiant will. He simply did not seem to  believe that he had to follow them.  He may think he is above them, which betrays a certain amount of hubris in a man who has made a virtue of portraying a self-effacing public image. The saving grace may be that it does not seem to be hubris for its own sake. His innovative spirit may be misguided, but he now has admitted to have been wrong.

There is nothing wrong with rewarding proven loyalty, but it should not be the defining consideration, and that’s where Stelmach erred.

Stelmach has pledged to have learned the cabinet-making lesson, but I am not sure what lessons he means. He hinted that he will give more real cabinet seats to Calgary (instead of the junior junior stools that he created), so there is a hint that he has learned something about geographic representation. But insofar as he mentioned the number four, he seems not to have learned about proportionality. Given that he now has more MLAs in total and more urban MLAs, including an increased number from Edmonton, the demands have increased and so will have the pressures to get it right. It’ll be interesting to see what he does with that.

Stelmach has the added advantage –which is also a problem, of having had all his ministers re-elected. He probably hoped that Iris Evans would lose her seat. But he will have to do more juggling than just keeping previous ministers. The need for greater representation from the southern end of the province, where Stelmach does not have too many die-hard loyalists, will force him to do some re-arranging. Redford and Ady in Calgary have a good chance.

We should expect a more carefully balanced cabinet on the geography front but I remain sceptical about its proportions. Stelmach’s natural reflex to reward those who have expressed in deeds their loyalty to him will not disappear. However, he is trying to do better. When we fail, there always remains the danger of over-compensating. Eddie is just the guy to overcompensate. If he does, rural Albertans will be unhappy.

And one more thing: keep an eye on Lloyd Snelgrove and see where he goes.

William F. Buckley Jr., who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, famously arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse, died Wednesday at his home in Stamford, Conn.

The Globe and Mail’s envy of Alberta’s wealth on behalf of (Lake-polluting) Ontario does not seem to stop. For all the great things that Alberta has, they are unable to stop themselves from referring to us as “oil-rich.” We’re also reach in beautiful rolling hills, mountains and wonderful parks; we’re rich in people, flora and fauna; we’re rich in great schools and teachers, we’re rich in collective autonomy and individual self-reliance, and the list goes on.

That Ontarians are able to see us almost exclusively through the lens of oil and dollars does say infinitely more about them than it can ever say about who we really are.

That's right. You don't need to readjust your reading glasses. Today is the first ever Louis Riel Day in Manitoba. It brings us closer to Riel's own dream to found a new religion, of which he would be center. We can look forward to the day when the Manitoba government declares St Vital to be the Third Rome, as Riel wished it.

Happy Louis Riel day one and all!

I saw one of the TV ads attacking Premier Ed Stelmach for the first time last night. The same ad was played twice, back to back. The drive-by smearing is claimed by a group calling itself “Albertans for Change,” which masks the real source of the attacks, a coalition of labour unions.

Two things struck me about them other than the content. One is that the Left has always taken the position that dirty attack ads is an American thing. Second, as the Calgary Herald editorialists point out, the Left has often argued against third-party campaign advertising and has pushed for gag legislation. Typical left ideologues accuse third-party advertisement as the peddling of individual interests to the detriment of the public good. Have Alberta unions abandoned their adherence to the “general will”?

The ads take aim at Stelmach, calling into question his leadership abilities (is the jury still out on that?)

What was encouraging about the ad campaign and the subsequent coverage was the fact that there seemed to be no reaction at all to the existence of such ads — no concern about those dastardly “third party” groups hijacking the electoral process with their deep pockets and brainwashing us all with their fancy advertising.

I suppose those who sneer at the National Citizens Coalition and warmly embrace the federal gag laws have conceded their partisanship — it’s bad when right-wing groups run ads that could harm a left-wing government, but it’s good for democracy when a left-wing union group runs ads that could harm a right-wing government (right wing in their minds, anyway).

We don’t have to look at it as a double-standard, but as a change of heart. We seem to have turned the ideological corner here and unions may have come to see the light. Lefties in Alberta are slowly becoming cultural individualists. It’s Craig Chandler’s dream come true.

“We’re a culture that still has a very rigid notion of sexual categories: If you’re not totally gay you must be totally straight,” Dr. Diamond said. “Bisexuality throws that right out the window. So it’s easier to dismiss bisexuality as not being real.”

Of the women who identified as bisexual in 1995, 92 per cent identified as bisexual or unlabelled in 2005. Of the women who identified as lesbian in 1995, 66 per cent identified as lesbian 10 years later, 19 per cent had switched to bisexual and 16 per cent to “unlabelled.” None of the women who identified as lesbians in 1995 switched to the heterosexual label.

But Dr. Diamond found that her subjects’ definition of their own sexuality was quite fluid.

So fluid it is, it might constitute a wave of its own.

The Economist has picked up on the Mark Steyn/Maclean’s as Islamophobes story:

Maclean’s published 27 letters, many of complaint. That was not enough for some offended Muslims. Last spring a group of Toronto law students marched into the magazine’s offices demanding equal space for a rebuttal by an author of their choosing. Ken Whyte, the editor and publisher, told the group he would rather see Maclean’s go bankrupt.

That story here.

Mark Steyn comments on the silliness of Human Rights complaint against him. That there are people offended by some of what he writes should not be a surprise, but Steyn is livid about the Human Rights Commission accepting and thereby legitimising political idiocy.

If you examine Dr. Mohamed Elmasry’s formal complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission about my article, Grievance #16 objects to the following assertion:

“The number of Muslims in Europe is expanding like ‘mosquitoes.’ ”

That claim certainly appears in my piece. But they’re the words not of a notorious right-wing Islamophobic columnist but of a big­­shot Scandinavian Muslim:
” ‘We’re the ones who will change you,’ the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. ‘Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children.’ ”

Given that the “mosquitoes” line is part of the basis on which the HRC accepted Dr. Elmasry’s complaint of “Islamophobia,” I’m interested to know what precisely is the of­­fence? Are Mullah Krekar’s words themselves Islamophobic? Or do they only become so when I quote them?

A third grade child would know what the appropriate answer to the last question is. As Steyn sees it, the Commission has demonstrated an efficiency rivalled only, perhaps, by the Soviet Show Trials in the 1930s.

Nonetheless, even in this craven environment, Canada’s “human rights commissions” are uniquely inimical to the marketplace of ideas. In its 30 years of existence, no complaint brought to the federal HRC under Section XIII has been settled in favour of the defendant. A court where the rulings only go one way is the very definition of a show trial. These institutions should be a source of shame to Canadians.

The whole piece is here.

There are apparently no bounds to the ways in which Canadian media feed this country’s self importance.

A new poll suggests Canadians so massively favour the U.S. Democratic party that they’d back any of its leading candidates in a presidential race against a Republican.

A similar poll in the United States would simply not work because they just don’t care. If Americans started to express wide opinions about our elections, chances are Canadians would feel threatened.  We’re so pathetic.

Seeing the world through the eyes of a troubled Anglican Church and placing emphasis on the dissipating United Church in Canada, Michael Valpy can’t seem to make up his mind as to whether Christianity in Canada has reached the end or the end of history.

Valpy is not saying anything new or more hostile to orthodox  Christianity than what he has said before. He’s just found new ways to make his convoluted ideas more so. He’s making progress, but he still can’t tell which end is up.

His knowledge of Catholicism has often been sketchy, but more often than not it has been rather ignorant. Here, he quotes an expert making the silly assumption that only “liberals” can reform the Catholic Church.

And Michael Higgins, president of Fredericton’s St. Thomas University and an expert on contemporary Roman Catholicism, sees a crucial absence of “credible moderate and liberal witnesses” for reforming the Catholic Church from the inside, people who remain strongly attached to the institution and haven’t left. “They don’t seem to be there.”

Like his “expert,”Valpy still has not been able to figure out that the 1960s liberalisation of the Roman Church brought by Vatican II has failed, and that the the Roman Church is being reformed as we speak, from the inside out, from below and from above, by witnesses of a very different persuassion.

Of course, like everything in the Roman Church, it will take a long time. But the parsimony with which these things are taking place seems far too fast for Valpy and company to register them. The Bolsheviks are on their way out.  They’ve written themselves out of the Church and out of the genetic evolutionary chain. Incredibly conservative witnesses are taking their place.

It’s the right idea and it would be enacted by the right constitutional jurisdiction. And who knows, it might even catch on in some other provinces.

Conservative MLA [Wayne Cao] wants to force Alberta high schools to devote 75 per cent of social studies classes to Canadian history.

It’s so simple, it’s beautiful. Presently, Alberta offers in its Social Studies a strange amalgam of issues that is often presented a-historically and without context. What drives the curriculum often is political correctness, so any increase in the amount of history would be welcome. Cao has a “patriotic agenda” and that is also welcome. But teaching history to our children and youth does not need to be justified on utilitarian grounds.

The purpose of education is to educate. There should be history courses taught; proper history properly taught, so why stop at the 75% history content that appears to make Premier Stelmach recoil. The premier seem unclear on the concept:

 ”It’s a good bill in that he’s putting Canadian history forward,” the premier said of Cao’s bill. “Seventy-five per cent? I don’t know, but the merit of the proposal is good.”

A return to the purpose of education after decades of wondering in the desert is just the right thing to do. Cao needs to be supported by all Albertans. Call the premier, write to the premier and let him know.

The mayor of Paris has launched one of his toughest battles to date: weaning French men off their penchant for urinating in public places.

As the Museum Just Pour Rire (Just for Laughs) shows, comedy is a component of our culture. Comedy and satire have been imprinted in Western culture all the way back to the Greeks. But Elections Canada will have none of it in today’s Quebec by-elections.

This [electoral] provision allows women who wear veils for religious reasons to vote without revealing their faces. However, Elections Canada advises those obviously mocking the law by wearing Halloween masks or the like will be turned away.

Can’t mock bureaucrats any more, eh?! Is Rick Mercer about to have his right to vote revoked? Not likely, but the humourless mandarins will need to decide who is funny and who is not: they’ll  probably lobby for a new mandatory federal license to practice comedy.

I remember the time (yesterday!) when the word “manliness” was used in reference to character or qualities of a person. This insightful writer succesfully argued that some women can be manly and many men are not.

CanWest’s Megan Fitzpatrick has now recreated the meaning of manliness. Foolishly manly now means the presence of men, and thus manlier means a greater number or men, and the superlative manliest means the presence of the greatest number of men.

Fitzpatrick may need to read Harvey Mansfield’s book. She may indeed be correct that Alberta is manliest among Canadian provinces, but not for the reason that she states.

Former porn star Ronald Boyer has chosen to retire from his carnal commercial activities and become a priest in the Episcopalian Church, the US version of the Anglican Church. This is not the first time a bona fide sinner turns around, of course, but this guy is no Augustine of Hippo:

He [Boyer] has tired of performing in sex movies, but even now doesn't condemn it. "Not one time did Jesus refer to pornography, or homosexuality," he observed on the Internet show, which he began as a co-host in May. "Jesus could have commented. He didn't."

To be fair to Boyer, Augustine may have had it somewhat easier. There are no videos of  Augustine excercising his pre-conversion activities.

Boyer’s quitting porn because he’s tired of it, not because it might be contemptible or less than Christian behavior. He was spooked by some of the satanic themes in contemporary porn.  I liked the part when Boyer suggests that Jesus didn’t condemn porn movies and porn magazines. That Jesus fellow was certainly lacking in the area of foresight, according to the would-be priest. With that kind of interpretive theology, Boyer is ready to be a Doctor of the United Church.

Then again, if he follows this bishop, he might find a nice home in the Anglican Church.

Liberal-appointed Senator Romeo Dallaire and the Glob are riding a tempest in a teapot over the decision to fly the Red Ensign at the Vimy memorial. Dallaire is upset that it violates protocol.

Mr. Dallaire said Ottawa’s decison suggests the country does not know how to properly [sic] mark its history.

“You sort of wonder sometimes at the maturity of our nation in things of this nature.”

Dallaire may be sort of correct. The inhabitants of this country do not know their history. Taking advantage of that collective ignorance in 1965, a Liberal prime minister decided to ditch our flag, the Red Ensign, and adopt a new  designer flag.  Surely, maturity is an issue as well. Mature countries don’t need to change their flags at the whim of one party leader.

Furthermore, Senator Dallaire is not quite clear on the latest political and sociological developments in this country regarding the proprieties of the use of the word “nation.” Canada is not a nation, as he naively contends, but a country with at least four tacitly recognised national identities. On repeated occasions, the Quebec National Assembly and the federal Parliament have said as much. If the former general were not so preoccupied with protocol, he might have heard about that.

Lastly, not knowing history is one thing. In its quest to reveal  protocol propriety to its readers, the “national” newspaper is unable properly to conjugate verbs. Grammatical maturity too has been ditched.

The Quebec license plates read: Je me souviens, which means I remember. Nations, as Ernest Renan tells us, choose what they wish to commit to memory and what they chose to commit to oblivion.

Part of what Quebeckers remember from their past is the defeat of French forces at British hands at the Plains of Abraham, just outside Quebec City, in 1759. Remembering is fine, but some don’t want to see it re-enacted. Some history is fun to remember, other is not.

Nicole Madore, spokeswoman for the Societe nationale des Quebecois et Quebecoises de la Capitale, says her group won't speak out against the production because it teaches history, but fears the re-enactment may spark divisions in Quebec society.

"We say go ahead, but you'll face the consequences if it ends up dividing people," Madore warned. "Some people will probably be upset. We're not keen on celebrating our defeats."

Ms. Madore is unwilling openly to express her opposition to the re-enactment, so she displaces her attitude to portray it as that of other people in Quebec. But she stumbles and uses “we” in her last sentence, taking ownership of her phobia of specific parts of history.

The battle at the Plains of Abraham was a defeat for France and the New French then became British subjects; there are worse fates than being subjects of the British Crown.  Let’s look around and compare Quebeck today with any off-shore former French colony: Vietnam? Haiti? Senegal? Would Quebeckers rather have lived the history of Haiti, who became independent in 1804, and would they rather live its present? The Quebecois were not defeated in 1759 for there was no such a thing as Quebecois. Most of the New French colonials who stayed in these parts of North America became Quebecois in the 1960s, under the godfatherhood of Britain and later of the Canadian state they willingly joined in 1867.

France does not object to us celebrating their defeat; so many countries do it so often that the French have become used to it. Are there objections from Paris to El Cinco de Mayo celebrations in Mexico and the US? If the Quebecois don’t like to celebrate defeat today, it is precisely because under British rule they did not have to become used to defeat as their continental cousins did. Quebeckers should also remember that.

Madore assumes that Quebeckers today should not be shown anything that might foster disagreement among them. The people are one, she figures, also assuming that Quebeckers are not mature enough to disagree without getting upset. Quebeckers are a people, to be true. They are a confident and culturally robust people who can handle disagreements and the re-enactment of a foreign country’s loss without feeling threatened. The Quebeck separatists should stop projecting their own pathologies on the rest of Quebecois society. Il faut se souvenir, et je me souviens.

For Bishop Henry who once let it be known that if Joe Clark showed up to his Cathedral in Calgary, Clark would not be given communion, this is encouraging.

Arriving in Brazil on his first visit to Latin America on Wednesday, the 80-year-old Pope said the Church “will not fail to insist on the need to take action to ensure that the family, the basic cell of society, is strengthened.” This followed his remarks earlier in the week in which he backed Mexican Church leaders who have threatened to excommunicate Catholic lawmakers for voting to legalize abortion on demand in Mexico City.

“This excommunication” was not an arbitrary decision but one foreseen by the Church. “The killing of an innocent human baby is incompatible with being in communion with the body of Christ,” the Pope said during a news conference on the plane taking him to Sao Paulo.

Bishop Henry has been at the forefront of Canadian Roman Catholics, calling attention to public figures who openly declare to be Catholic while conveniently sidestepping the Church’s doctrine on life.

During the 2005 campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in Canada, Fred Henry, Bishop of Calgary, said if it were up to him he would excommunicate Paul Martin, the then-prime minister. The bishop added that Mr. Martin’s political views clashed so severely with Church teachings he no longer deserved to receive Communion. Yesterday, conservative Catholics were thrilled to see the Pope simply use the word excommunication.

The Gainey Foundation has created a website.

Roy MacGregor has a piece in the Globe here.

Charles Krauthammer, that old Cold War Warrior, remembers Boris Yelsin’s great achievement. It is worth noting that Krauthammer begins by undermining the popular view that Mikhail Gorbatchev was the man who took the USSR down.

Credit for the fall of communism usually is given to two sets of actors. On the one side, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and John Paul II, whose relentless pressure caused a hollowed-out system to collapse. On the other side, conventional mythology credits Mikhail Gorbachev.

This is quite wrong. True, Gorbachev inadvertently caused the collapse of communism. But his intention was always to save it. To the very end, Gorbachev believed in it. His mission was to reform communism in order to make it work. To do that, the Soviet system had to become more human — i.e., more in tune with real human nature — and thus more humane. Gorbachev’s problem was that humane communism is an oxymoron.

The man who brought down the Soviet Union from the inside was Boris Yeltsin. In the mid-1980s, he turned decisively against communism and, fully intending its destruction, performed one of history’s great acts of liberation.

Yeltsin, who died this week, did this without turning to the guillotine. “For the first time in Russian history,” notes Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov, “the new ruler did not eliminate the losers to consolidate control.” What distinguished Yeltsin “was something that he did not do when he took power” — “wipe out the other side.”

The rest of the piece is found here.

I do have something of a quarrel with one of Krauthammer’s sentences:

Outside of college English departments, no sane person takes Marxism seriously.

Frankly, the comment bestows underserved sanity to English departments.

The historical record is littered with politicians masking as prophets and prophets taking on political roles. Al Gore is a politician dressed as a religious prophet.

The Florentine political philosopher, Niccolo Machiavelli, understood well how princes can use religion to advance their political power. In reference to how Ferdinand of Aragon advanced his own power in the late fifteenth century, Machiavelli wrote:

Further, always using religion as a plea, so as to undertake greater schemes, he devoted himself with pious cruelty to driving out and clearing his kingdom of the Moors; nor could there be a more admirable example, nor one more rare. Under this same cloak he assailed Africa, he came down on Italy, he has finally attacked France; and thus his achievements and designs have always been great, and have kept the minds of his people in suspense and admiration and occupied with the issue of them. And his actions have arisen in such a way, one out of the other, that men have never been given time to work steadily against him.

That Gore preaches but does not practice his own message is evidenced in the way that he lives. As Machiavelli counsels, it is more important for princes to appear to be pious than to be pious. Gore knows his Machiavelli and has increasingly understood how to turn the power of the new environmental religion to his personal political advantage.  He has become the de facto head of the Holy New Congregation of Climate Change

The Reuters picture of Al Gore that adorned the story about Gore calling the Harper government’s Green Plan a fraud is a clear example (see below). Gore has recently adopted a new pose in a deliberate attempt to appear pious.

And here is the iconic Dalai Lama, the most famous of Tibetan monks, displaying the same holiness that Gore seeks to portray by clasping his hands together.

A common attitude of prophets is to join their spiritual struggle willingly but reluctantly. Biblical prophets often are reluctant to carry the message to their people that the divinity has revealed to them. Al Gore’s reluctance was expressed last week in very similar manner:

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore said yesterday [April 25] that he initially thought that making his climate-change lectures into the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth was a serious mistake.

“I had to be talked into it and I’m glad that I was talked into it,” Gore told reporters in New York.

I am willing to bet that when Gore runs for public office again, he will say the exact same thing in relation to civic duty.

Al Gore is encouraging the breaching of the separation between church and state at the hands of the new religion. The breach is taking place without much objections from those who have traditionally been the greatest advocates for preserving the same separation.

In a world threatened by a new desire to have government become the handmaid of religion, Al Gore represents a new danger to the American republic and to the rest of liberal democracies.

The West, even the very same people who follow Gore today, would not normally tolerate religions leaders telling government how to run public affairs and what their priorities should be. As media and an increasing number of faithful devoutly follow the Gordian religion and demand that international and domestic policy conforms to their beliefs, Gore is making such practice more and more acceptable.

We’re not all rednecks in Alberta.

I might be, but not all of us are.

How one could be in blanket favour of partial birth abortions is beyond my comprehension. The US Supreme Court has banned the procedure, and I am pleased about that.

The GM report claims that these is a victory for conservative antiabortion groups. As views go, that would be the narrow view. There is more riding here than mere partisan political competition. But if we are going to express the outcome of the decision in terms of winners and losers, I am inclined to say that it’s a victory for decency and humanity.

Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaà «lle Jean, C.C., C.M.M., C.O.M., C.D., Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Canada

Her predecessor once called herself the new Head of State. This Governor General believes that Rideau Hall is HER house and she is in command of Canada.

Michaelle Jean is hell-bent on changing not just the look but the texture and flavour of Rideau Hall as though it were her own private residence. In the process she wants to change Canadians. She is achieving that task in the name of Canada and Canadian art, though the motivation seems to fashion the Queen’s residence in her own image. Mostly, she is in the business of erecting a monument to herself.

The changes have continued, as a tour this week revealed, and are part of a deliberate effort by Ms. Jean to make the home more relevant, contemporary and a showcase for Canadian work that reflects stories about Canada. But as a result, Ms. Jean, who is an avid art lover, is highlighting paintings that draw less and less on the office's British traditions.

While the governor-general represents the Queen in this country, the increased emphasis on Canada means less on the royal family past or present. The Lemieux portrait is the only one of the Queen on display. "That's it as far as Her Majesty is concerned," said Fabienne Fusade, interpretation and exhibition planner at Rideau Hall. "We really want to create a Canadian interior. So some of the old furniture pieces, part of our history, they are very important, we don't want to get rid of them but … it is all about Canada."

The changes include a gradual shift to modernize the art that predates Ms. Jean's time in office. No longer in the residence: a more traditional portrait of the Queen, as well as images of the Queen's father, King George VI, and the Queen Mother that once graced the entrance. They are now in the Senate.

Where is the dignity of Jeanne Sauve, our fist woman governor general? Sauve showed that female governor-generals do not have to be consumed by personal preoccupations with fashion and interior decor. As usually, souls of significant depth do not concern themselves so highly with the world of appearance. Mostly, Sauve showed that a female GG does not have to be absorbed with oneself when one understand the purpose of the position.

Since Romeo Leblanc (who succeeded Mme Sauve), two consecutive Liberal prime minister have bequeathed to Rideau Hall, to the country, larger egos than our whole 10 million square kilometres of geography. Worse, these giant egos are closet republicans. Their republican souls render the last two GGs incapable of understanding the role of the Crown and Her Majesty’s position. They think of the Queen as arrogance, and arrogance is what they offer to represent her, so unschooled they are on what it means to serve, and how this Queen has lived her life.

Michaelle Jean the latest example: she is a half-breed born in Haiti. Today Haiti is the poorest and more backward country in the hemisphere, and it was no different then. She was born to privilege in a country where less black heritage usually implies better social status. There, her whiteness was emphasized, alongside a pretentious concern for the darker peasants. Now she is in Canada where more black is politically advantageous, unless one is driving a taxi in Montreal.

Jean was a separatist not all that long ago, but now she is Paul Martin’s legacy to represent our Queen. Jean is a chameleon with no recognisable publicly established image; she will change into whatever she needs to change in order to advance herself. As a separatist, she worked for the national broadcaster. As a republican, she represents the Crown in Canada. She now pretends to be concerned with the whiter Canadian peasant’s identity.

Jean thinks that by stripping Rideau Hall of British iconography and symbols she is going to make Canadians more Canadian. It presupposes that Jean knows what being Canadian means, of course, which she does not. Hers exhibits a republican attitude most typically found among Quebec dilettantes. It’s not distinctly Canadian. Being Canadian, for better or for worse, includes our historical ties to Britain as much as it does imperial France.

Being Canadian is in part being British; our very constitution is based on that premise. Not just the written one, but the one that accumulates our traditions and dispositions in our memories and actions. Jean’s project is a project that warps our collective civic memory, though there is a tradition of doing such things among Liberals since Pearson (fittingly we mostly name airports in central Canada after them). Her Canadian history probably goes that far. She ignores that a denial of our British heritage is a denial of our own selves.

Michaelle Jean’s understanding of being Canadian is not in keeping with the whole of Canada and is not in keeping with the political traditions upon which most of this country was based. The British Monarchy has been around for a millennium; Jean is a arrived in Canada in the late 1960s. Her arrogance toward Her Majesty and things monarchical is an arrogance against all Canadians who value our political traditions and historical roots. Jean’s souls is fundamentally trudeauvian: she would minimize the great institution of the Monarchy and the Queen herself in order to aggrandize her own self.

In the typical Canadian Liberal tradition, Michaelle Jean is a woman without tradition; she is a woman without a past; she is a woman without identity in search of making one up. In the absence of all these, much of what fills her soul is a concern for power. She suffers from what most condescending liberal politicians of this age are afflicted with: the assumption that they know better than the common Canadian peasant, a desire to improve us whether we want it or not, and a will to transform us or our country as a means to leave us “a legacy” –that “legacy” is a way to erect a monument to themselves in our warped civic memory.

More Michaelle and less Elizabeth amounts to less Canada. Monarchist and republican Canadians, we are all poorer for having self-importance incarnate presently dwelling Rideau Hall. It stands to reason that the man guided by nothing other than the single-minded aspiration of becoming prime minister would be the one who chose her to be our governor general. The void of substance recognized itself.

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And now for some political gossip.

This anecdote has been circulating Ottawa for months: When Alex Himmelfarb, Paul Martin’s Clerk of the Privy Council, had finished briefing the Harper Conservative transition team on the Hill, he said his goodbyes and well wishes, grabbed his coat and his hat and headed toward the door. As he had crossed the threshold, he turned around retracing a few of his steps into the room and said something like: “Good luck with that woman. She is the most difficult person to deal with in this whole operation.” Stunned, people in the room asked “Who?” The one in Rideau Hall, he said, and off he went. A pearl of wisdom! That was the Clerk for the very liberal prime minister who chose her. One can only imagine what stories Kevin Lynch and others will have to tell.

We may not always be able to write French properly, but we helped save their cowardly behinds a couple of times in the last century.

Still, DND should be embarrassed. French is not a foreign language in this country.