Liberals move to keep tight grip on Canada

Chicago Sun Times ^ | 1-17-2006 | John O'Sullivan

[FFIGHTER]

In 1945 Canada was the world's fourth-largest military power. Its soldiers, sailors and airmen had played a major part on D-Day and in finally defeating Nazi Germany. And its national image was that of a tough, self-reliant, stand-up guy whom you would like on your side in a barroom brawl.

From 1945 to the present the history and changing national image of Canada was brilliantly summed up in the Monty Python song that begins "I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK" and gradually develops into "I put on women's clothing and hang around in bars." In other words, not necessarily someone you would like on your side in a barroom brawl.

This new Canada was the child of the Pierre Trudeau and the Canadian Liberal party. As the government in power for most of the postwar period, they remade Canada in their own image: left-liberal in politics, tightly regulated in economics, welfarist in social policy, officially bilingual and multicultural as regards national identity, allied to the United Nations and the Third World in foreign policy, and therefore self-consciously different from (and sometimes even hostile to) the United States.

In one significant respect, however, the new Trudeaupian Canadians imitated America: They ditched their British-style parliamentary constitution and introduced an American constitution with both a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, broader and more collectivist than America's Bill of Rights, and a U.S.-style Supreme Court to adjudicate and enforce it. By making the courts the all-but-final political authority, the Liberals hoped to ensure like-minded judges could continue to impose Trudeaupian liberal policies on Canada even during the brief intervals when they were out of office.

[jocon307]

"But is there still a lumberjack under all that mascara?"

I'm afraid this is not just a question for Canada, but for all of the West.

Read the first paragraph or two, damning they are, and GO VOTE TO THROW THE BUMS OUT! Oh Canada, oh Canada, I beseech you!

PLEASE, PLEASE, DO NOT LET US DOWN!

[fanfan]

Canada Ping!

Please FReepmail me to get on or off this Canada ping list.


Latest poll numbers......

CPC 42 Lib 24

[proud_yank]

CPC 42 Lib 24

Congrats fanfan!! Some around campus seem to be 'sulking' already. I love it!!

[Hawk1976]

I don't know if there is still a lumberjack there are not, I sure hope Canada wakes up though. I think the West in general may finally be awakening only to find the adder is so close it is staring them in the face.

[fanfan]

If we get these numbers in the actual election....Woo-Hoo!!!

[The_Reader_David]

A wag once observed that Canada could have had the benefit of English government, American technology and French culture, but instead ended up with French government, English technology and American culture.

(It's particularly true of Quebec, where Le Budweiser, Target (pronounced 'Tar-zhay') and American-style shopping malls with French names bestride the cultural landscape, such as it is; where they actually have Code Napoleon civil law, despite never having been part of the Napoleonic Empire; and everything seems to be perpetually broken.)

[The_Reader_David]

A wag once observed that Canada could have had the benefit of English government, American technology and French culture, but instead ended up with French government, English technology and American culture.

(It's particularly true of Quebec, where Le Budweiser, Target (pronounced 'Tar-zhay') and American-style shopping malls with French names bestride the cultural landscape, such as it is; where they actually have Code Napoleon civil law, despite never having been part of the Napoleonic Empire; and everything seems to be perpetually broken.)

[proud_yank]

It'd be awesome alright!

Hopefully, this trend continues around the globe and people start waking up.

[sasportas]

And its national image was that of a tough, self-reliant, stand-up guy whom you would like on your side in a barroom brawl.

True of WW2 Canada. But also true of the Aussies...and is still true of the Aussies. But I believe there is a lumberjack under the mascara.

[Peter Libra]

Some very thoughtful and nicely paced commentary here. As I started to read it, my thought was that Pierre Trudeau had better be indicted. He was.

One of the most curious examples of a paradox is often re-enacted by CBC,the national network television. Again and again grainy films are shown of Canadian forces at Vimy Ridge. A few square miles of French farmland with cost about 2,OOO Canadian lives. 900 men of the Newfoundland Regt. killed in the space of an hour.

We are told that Canada found it's identity in that awful carnage of 1917. Canada became a separate nation, they said. So far so good.

Almost in the next breath, CBC sneers at the Americans and Coalition in Iraq. Snide comments about George W. Bush. We know that tyrant is removed. Acts of utter deprivation and mass killings are uncovered.

Vimy Ridge- Iraq?. Hard to figure the minds of CBC. Then there was Pierre Trudeau. Came WW2, he went to Switzerland- now they show shots of Trudeau- WELCOME TO THE EIGHTIES, the image cries.

Right on. Trudeau fouled the lives of many.

[M203M4]

The Liberals are pretty desperate. Locally where I am, it looks like a meltdown.

My riding's Liberal MP and her staff have called AT LEAST six times in the last two weeks, leaving messages four times and talking to my wife on the other two occasions (we are just too nice...). A flier a day in the mailbox too.

Haven't heard a peep yet from the other parties (not that it matters), Conservatives included. Oh, there was a fallen Marxist-Leninist poster on the sidewalk that I went out of my way to step on, dunno if that counts.

[beaver fever]

Well Fan Tan it's less than a week away and those numbers are insurmountable at this point.

It's looking like a liberal version of the Kim Campbell meltdownd.

When Canadians clean house they sweep clean.

I think the Martin campaign has been the worst of any politician in living memory.

[fanfan]

It's looking like a liberal version of the Kim Campbell meltdown

Wow.

Can you believe it???

[fanfan]

Hopefully, this trend continues around the globe and people start waking up.

From your lips to God's Ears!

[beaver fever]

A weak ago I would have been sceptical but now it's a given.

Even liberal insiders say they are looking at ten years in opposition.

For a man who wanted the job so badly, Martin doesn't seem to want to put too much energy into keeping it.

He bought a strong party machine and ran it into the ground in two years. After the election he will be gone as leader.

[Snowyman]

But is there still a lumberjack under all that mascara?

Aussies got nothing on this guy

Ask this Canadian what he thinks . Then say a prayer for him. Master Cpl. Paul Franklin, a medic, told his wife that the blast severed part of one leg and broke the other.

Canadian medical officer, Maj. Nick Withers said he believes one of the soldiers likely saved the lives of the others. Franklin, the medic, is thought to have applied a tourniquet to his own severed leg, then helped Bailey and Salikin . "I think it would be extremely difficult, given both the initial trauma of the situation and, as well, the excruciating pain that the individual would be going through," he said. "It's quite impressive."

[proud_yank]

Amen Brother! I'll keep praying.

[Unrepentant VN Vet]

I don't want to be a wet blanket, HOWEVER......

Don't get too swept away by the goofy pollsters, just keep on plugging away at the campaign until the last possible moment. If a ten-point lead is good, twenty is bloody outstanding.

Let the election commission do the vote count, and only celebrate AFTER they pass out the numbers. (I do believe that I'll have a cold one down south for you all as well.)

[CardCarryingMember.VastRightWC]

Around 1980, I was talking to a Canadian attending college in Colorado. At the time, one of my favorite singers was Gordon Lightfoot, and I asked him if he was also a fan.

No way! - he spat. Years earlier, he had liked G.L. But then came the day that the Liberal govt. decided that there was just wayyyyy too much American culture in Canada, and they issued a lot of boneheaded new regulations to fight back. One of the rules was that Canadian pop radio stations had to meet some quota of "percentage of songs" sung by Canadian artists. (Eg, 50% of all songs played had to be by Canadian artists, or something like that).

As a result, according to him, every other song was Gordon Lightfoot or Ian & Sylvia or Neil Young or Joni Mitchell. As a result of there being so few popular Canadian singers in proportion to American & British singers, this resulted in tremendous overexposure of these Canadians, and it caused he and others his age to soon loathe these artists.

So the rules produced the exact opposite effect desired by the idiots in the government. No doubt the Liberals declared the new regulations to be a rousing success, because they - like liberals anywhere - rate the success of their programs not on the actual outcomes produced by the programs, but rather by the "nobleness" of the intentions behind the programs' creation.