February 2003
by Barry Stagg
The die is being cast in Parliament as members debate support for the American war against Iraq. January 29, 2003 may be the date when the true craven mercantilism of Canada's Liberals oozed to the surface. Word out of Ottawa is that only Finance Minister John Manley stands among the heroes of the Liberal cabinet as a supporter of the United States. The rest are apparently dedicated to being small minded wardheelers in a time and place that calls for courage and stalwart action. Instead of any of that, the Liberals are able to muster only a twisted, distorted version of the bystander politics made notorious by Pierre Trudeau.
Of course, the main Liberal inspiration for this harebrained thinking in Canada is still the late Pierre Trudeau. Trudeau, who will be labelled the triumphant bystander for this column, developed and implemented the ethos of mainstream Canadian governance, post-1968. In an incredible manner, our neutrality, our pacifism and our weakness were put forward as being strengths. It was as if Zen delusion became national policy.
The President's 2003 State of the Union address has put a lot of the smart crowd on notice that their self-anointing days are done for the foreseeable future, vanished with the lost continental serenity of September 10,2001. After the mass murders of September 11,2001, there is little popular patience for a snob class that tends to autocracy and an active embrace of the unelected and the preemptory. The furious anti-war, anti- globalization, anti-Western shtick of the terminally superior is getting a little frayed at the philosophical edges. Where else can these people go but down and out when the ordinary masses they despise insist on supporting the plain spoken resolve of American President Bush?
The pacifist geniuses in the Liberal caucus have taken their measure of President Bush and marked him for a fool. While a more apt comparison is to the late Democratic icon, Harry Truman, the Canadian political infantry blunders on in self-delusional rapture.
What could be next? Perhaps declaring Brampton to be an open city in the style of Casablanca, circa 1940, will be a vindication for local Liberal MP Colleen Beaumier, fresh from her cheerleading session with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. Brampton might be just the place for the Iraqi leader to step into exile. A little bit of diplomatic finesse, of the kind Beaumier and fellow backbenchers Carolyn Parrish and Bonnie Brown are renowned for, and the entire Saddam Hussein posse could be free and clear north of Steele's Avenue.
A final word about mercantilism: This old practice of embracing international trade to the point where it becomes a political and ethical fetish is one that has a lot to do with shaping the shallow values of Canadian political attitudes toward the Middle East. What else explains the bare hypocrisy of self-labelled Canadian neutralists embracing blatantly anti-Semitic Arab oil kleptocracies while these same tyrannies openly advocate the destruction of Israel and hatred toward Jews. A Middle East without Israel is a mercantile dream land, full of oil drenched dictatorships ready to do business with Canadians to whom a dollar saved is more important than any principles beyond their own perfunctory salutes to political correctness.
Liberal comments on the war against Iraq typify the Liberal Party's fixation and reliance on impenetrable administrative density as a substitute for clear democratic decisions. Durham MP Dan McTeague trots out "healthy scepticism" and the presence of "other dictators" as his reason to do nothing. Parliamentary savant Bonnie Brown cues up "American showmanship" as her reading of the President's address to Americans. Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham trumpets pompously about "no decision on the use of force has been taken by this government" as if he were contemplating storming the Plains of Abraham.
It seems just so plainly ridiculous for these deservedly obscure Liberal functionaries to be lambasting the President of the United States over "dramatics of the worst degree" according to parliamentary drama critic and permanent Mississauga back bencher Carolyn Parrish. They have reached the zenith of their irrelevance: Railbirds squawking at elephants. These are the expected emissions of statists who confuse tidy government housekeeping with democracy.
The federal Liberals represent a tired and empty-headed political past which marks them as last century's champions of statism. An embrace of the politics of post-September 11 Euro-cowardice dressed up as sophisticated neutrality is the last straw that should break the rubber backbone of Canada's biggest living political dinosaur: The Liberal Party of Canada.
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