Ignatieff's Afghan Problem

Peace keeping means what it says. It involves keeping the peace between two identifiable warring factions who want peace and have invited third party in to keep it. It really only has a hope of succeeding when those groups are separated from one another by geography. In this sense Ignatieff is right about the Afghanistan mission and the others dead wrong. Afghanistan is not suited to peace keeping. Furthermore, as guerilla war supplants state on state violence as the dominant form of conflict, peacekeeping missions have become less and less useful. In this sense too Ignatieff is right, albeit for the wrong reasons, and his opponents are wrong. Peace keeping has had it day; it represents a proud chapter in Canada history, but that chapter has been written; let us move on. The question is to what.

Given that he is the only one willing to admit that peace keeping has had its day, it should come as no surprise that Ignatieff is the only candidate is to propose a replacement and for this he deserves still more credit. Ignatieff, however, proposes that the Liberals adopt a Neo Wilsonian doctrine that works in theory, but is a miserable failure in practice. In short, without Ignatieff the Liberals would have remained trapped in the past, but with him the Liberals are trapped between ideology and nostalgia.

Moreover, while Ignatieff "responsibility to protect" doctrine does not piggyback on US foreign policy in theory, it certainly does in practice. No other Western country has the economic, military, political and diplomatic wherewithal to intervene in situations that Ignatieff claims we have a duty to intervene and in the manner in which he advocates. If the US does not intervene, then the West will not intervene and the UN and other international bodies will certainly not intervene.

Ignatieff: "Multilateral solutions to the world's problems are all very well, but they have no teeth unless America bares its fangs."

http://empirelite.ca/ The relationship is not entirely a parasitic one though. The so called "liberal hawks" did much of the intellectual heavy lifting for the Bush administration prior to the Iraq War. If Ignatieff has his way, Canada will fill that role as well as offering token support.

Needless to say, being wedded to US foreign policy has it consequences. If the US attacks a Muslim country, an obvious consequence is an increased risk of terrorism, but more on that latter. Another one was mentioned by Ignatieff following the Iraq war. Motives matter. It is not enough that an intervention be justified on humanitarian grounds. Motives determine policy. As a result, if the motives of the interveners are not in the right spot the desired outcomes will likely not be achieved or worse. Ignatieff claims that he only recognized this with regard to Iraq after the fact. To date, Ignatieff has not, however, mentioned what motivates US policy in Afghanistan and how this might affect outcomes there.

As for Afghanistan, while many people may side with him and admire his past writings, the manner in which Ignatieff has defended the mission has angered people on both sides of the debate. His performance in the first Liberal leadership debate particularly irked people. During the debate Ignatieff claimed that the death of a Canadian soldier meant that if the house did not vote to extend the mission her death would have been in vain and by implication that the mission had merit by virtue of her death. "I supported the extension of the mission because that very day a brave soldier from Shilo, Manitoba, gave her life". http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/06/10/libs-sat.html?ref=rss Now, no one wants to see someone die for a mistake, but it is incredible that Ignatieff would imply that a mission is validated if soldiers have died carrying it out. That was not the worst of it though. He went to say suggest that voting against an extension meant that one did not “support our troops”. "I couldn't in good conscience stand up in the House of Commons and not vote for the extension of a mission when our soldiers' lives were on the line." The Star's Chantal Herbert rightly called him to task for this:

"Saturday, he said he felt he would have let the Canadian soldiers who had put their lives on the line in Afghanistan down if he had voted differently. The notion that support for our troops should mean support for the government's decisions on the deployment is one of Stephen Harper's most demagogic arguments. In a rebuttal to Ignatieff, Bob Rae was right to point it out."

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1150064106473&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist969907622983

However bad these talking points are, what threatens to do the most damage to Ignatieff's reputation is his failure to acknowledge the Afghan elephant in the Canadian living room. Namely, Ignatieff has not acknowledged that our presence in Afghanistan greatly increases the chances that Canada will be targeted by terrorists, especially domestic ones. The arrest of the Ontario 17 has certainly driven this point home. According to the crown, Canada's Afghanistan policy was what motivated them. Canada is thus added to the list of countries targeted (Britain, Spain and Australia (the Lodhi case) and the US) by its own citizens because they were angered by their country's foreign policy. If a desire to speak the truth was not motivation enough, then Stephen Harper's denials should have been. Ignaiteff gains nothing by remaining silent. The Canadian people certainly do not believe Harper's propaganda about the Afghan mission making us safer.

"When asked about the likelihood of Canada being a terror target because of its military presence in Afghanistan, 56 per cent said we are more likely to be attacked.

This represents an increase of 18 per cent compared to one year ago. Thirty-four per cent say the military presence has no bearing; while five per cent say having soldiers in Afghanistan make us less susceptible to an attack."

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060609/terrorism_poll_060609?s_name=&no_ads=

And it is not as if Ignatieff has not acknowledged a connection between foreign policy and terrorism before. For example:

"After 9/11, Islamic terrorism may have metastasized into a cancer of independent terrorist cells that, while claiming inspiration from Al Qaeda, no longer require its direction, finance or advice. These cells have given us Madrid. Before that, they gave us Istanbul, and before that, Bali. There is no shortage of safe places in which they can grow. Where terrorists need covert support, there are Muslim communities, in the diasporas of Europe and North America, that will turn a blind eye to their presence. If they need raw recruits, the Arab rage that makes for martyrs is still incandescent. Palestine is in a state of permanent insurrection. Iraq is in a state of barely subdued civil war. Some of the Bush administration's policies, like telling Ariel Sharon he can keep settlements on the West Bank, may only be fanning the flames."

http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/opeds/2004/ignatieff_less_evils_nytm_050204.htm

The longer Ignatieff sits by and lets Stephen Harper echo Bush and claim that Canadian foreign policy plays no role and that "we are a target because of who we are, and how we live, our society are diversity our values” the more damage is done to his strongest asset, viz., his reputation as public intellectual committed to open and honest debate, and the more ammunition he gives to those who claim that he a Republican lap dog. No public intellectual worth his salt, no matter where they stood on the mission, would tolerate Stephen Harper claiming that sending troops to Afghanistan will protect Canadians from domestic terrorists, who have never sat foot in Afghanistan, but who are, according to the crown, motivated to attack Canada because we have sent troops there.

Even Bin Laden has mocked Bush's claim that the reason Al Qaeda attacked the US was because Al Qaeda hate American freedoms.

"Oh American people, my talk to you is about the best way to avoid another Manhattan, about the war, its causes, and results. Security is an important pillar of human life. Free people do not relinquish their security. This is contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. Let him tell us why we did not strike Sweden, for example. It is known that those who hate freedom do not have proud souls, like the souls of the 19 people [killed while perpetrating the 11 September 2001 attacks], may God have mercy on them. We fought you because we are free and do not accept injustice. We want to restore freedom to our nation. Just as you waste our security, we will waste your security."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3966817.stm It goes without saying that no Conservative has ever explained why Al Qaeda has singled Canada out, but that is not because they have not said. Al Qaeda has made it clear it is because of our presence in Afghanistan.

"What do your governments want from their alliance with America in attacking us in Afghanistan? I mention in particular Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Australia. We warned Australia before not to join in the war in Afghanistan, and against its despicable effort to separate East Timor. It ignored the warning until it woke up to the sounds of explosions in Bali.”

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/osamabinladen/tape.html In Al Qaeda speak, Canada's involvement in Muslim lands makes us part of the "far enemy"; the "near enemy" are the regimes of the Middle East. However much Harper might wish it, Bin Laden's words can wished away with the wave of his neo conservative wand. Bin Laden's words lay out an ideological and strategic Western citizens inspired by Al Qaeda's ramblings and as sure as the sun will set and rise some Canadians will be inspired and will consider carrying out acts terrorism so long as Canada is part of military operation in a Muslim country. Furthermore, pace Rae, Kennedy and Volpe, it likely does not matter what the nature of our military role in such missions is. Sending a "reconstruction team" is just as likely to get us targeted as peace making team. It is foolish to believe that anyone inspired by Al Qaeda would care to make such distinctions; most are too blinded by ideology lies and hate and those that are not will see the strategic reasons for erasing such a distinction.

His support for Afghanistan good harm Ignatieff in yet another way. According to Ignatieff, despite his strong support for war in Iraq, he would not have sent Canadian troops into the country. He gave several reasons. http://www.speakeasy.invisionzone.com/lofiversion/index.php/t7732.html One was that Canadians did not support going to Iraq and public support in a democracy matters. The other was that going to Iraq would have had significant consequences for national unity here at home. Separatists had historically made hay whenever Canada had sent troops abroad and this time would have been no different; it is hard to argue that Ignatieff is wrong in this regard. Iraq would have been a huge boast for them. That said, in trying to distance himself from the Iraq war, Ignatieff created more troubles for himself then he solved. For you see, the sword cuts both ways. As with Iraq, the Canadian people did not support extending the Afghan mission. Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that separatists could not make hay with Afghanistan. Indeed, a terrorist attack, inspired by Canada's presence in Afghanistan, could spilt the country apart, especially if Quebec is the victim. Currently the Afghan mission is opposed by what 60% of Quebecers and huge number opposed the mission's extension. If Quebecers die as a result of us being there, the separatists will use it as a reason why Quebecers need their own country with its own foreign policy. Given what has just transpired in Ontario and the fact that the accused were said to be motivated by Canada's role in Afghanistan, Ignatieff can not very well claim that chances of such an attack or not insignificant.

Indeed for a schoolar who has made a reputation for himself sketching out the possible and actual consqunces of a war on terrorism, Ignatieff has been remarkably silent on what a terrorist attack motivated by Canada's involvment in Afghanistan might mean for the country. A further problem that Ignatieff surely recognizes but cares not to comment on is this.. If Canada is going to avoid a European like demographic meltdown, Canada will have to keep allowing in large numbers of immigrants. If a terrorist attack does occur, this may no longer be politically possible. We may find ourselves in same situation as Europe, namely, badly needing immigrants, but unable to do so because it is not politically possible.

One would think that given such risks, not to mention the costs, that Ignatieff would at least have a convincing argument for why the Afghan mission will succeed and, just as importantly, how success in Afghanistan furthers Canadian interests, but alas no. He has not said a peep. It would thus appear that while Ignatieff the intellectual might be worried about mounting coalition causalities, the introduction of suicide bombings into Afghanistan, riots in Kabul, aid agencies all but abandoning Afghanistan's hinterlands and recent reports that the coalition is loosing the battle for hearts and minds, Ignatieff the politician seriously believes that good intentions somehow guarantee success.

Thankfully not all supporters of the Afghan mission have sold their soul and their brain in the hopes of political glory.

Ahmed Rashid:

"Since 2003 when the Taliban first began to regroup, they have gradually matured and developed with the help of al-Qaeda, which has reorganized and retrained them to use more sophisticated tactics in their military operations. As recently as a year ago, the main Taliban groups were composed of a few dozen fighters; now each group includes hundreds of heavily armed men equipped with motorbikes, cars, and horses. They burn down schools and administrative buildings and kill any Afghan who is even indirectly associated with the government. In the south, they operate with impunity just outside the provincial capitals, which have become like Green Zones. Approximately 1,500 Afghan security guards and civilians were killed by the Taliban last year and some three hundred already this year. There have been forty suicide bombings during the past nine months, compared to five in the preceding five years. ....

The aid programs supposed to provide alternative livelihoods to farmers producing poppies or help them grow other lucrative cash crops are derisory when compared to what the drug smugglers offer. The best-functioning programs to help farmers are run by opium traffickers who provide improved varieties of poppy seeds, fertilizer, and better methods of cultivation to increase opium yields and even large-scale employment during the poppy harvest. When we compare Afghanistan's situation today with that of 2001, we see the country now needs to develop an entire alternative economy to replace the drug economy."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19098 (The Taliban have recreated themselves as the champion of the opium trade; defending Afghanistan's only viable crop and export from outsiders who only seek to destroy the opium trade, has proved very successful and explains why many experts fill the Taliban is winning the battle for hearts.)

How the Neo Cons paved the way for liberal Interventionists

Saying that intervening in foreign conflicts purely for humanitarian reasons is bad foreign policy is certainly legitimate -in fact, this is basically the position of the neocons who dominate the Bush administration (and recall that Bush himself opposed "national building" like NATO's eventual intervention in Yugoslavia after the spectacular failure of the UN in the 2000 election campaign).

The Bush administration has never has been a unified monolith. There are and have been fissures. State and DOD were frequently at loggerheads when Powell was still there and CIA and Vice President’s office were not exactly friendly. Moreover, there are very real differences between 41 and 43. Philosophically, realists Scowcroft and Baker simply do not see eye to eye with neo cons such Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. Before you interject I would certainly not accept Wolfowitz’s implication that what distinguishes the two camps is that one believes in democracy and the other in propping up tyrants. If I was to draw the line, I would say the main difference is how powerful each group believes the US to be.

Anyway, whereas you imply that Bush’s hostility to nation building in the 2000 campaign is continuous and compatible with post 911 rhetoric, I believe a major shift has occurred. After 911 the neo cons not only won over W, they won the battle for the Republican hearts and Republican minds. Their victory was so complete that in the lead up to the Iraq war realist critiques of the potential consequences of such an adventure went entirely unnoticed. The Republican base bought into Neo Con assumption that the UN was only ever a constraint on US power and rejected that realist belief that the multilateral institutions were a useful way of limiting potential costs and risks. Rumsfeld’s yammering about “old Europe”, "freedom Fries" etc were seen by the Republican base as evidence that Gulliver had at long last broken free of the Lilliputians. It was cause for celebration and no thought was given to the fact that such comments or campaigns might have caused the US a great deal of damage. Similarly, traditional realist laments about nation building went unnoticed for one simple reason. A key neo con assumption is that nation building, in the traditional sense, is not necessary. This is the main reason for the complete lack of planning in Iraq. Society is organic. Free it and the market from various “unnatural” restraints and it will flourish all by its own. The Republican base swallowed this assumption whole. With concerns over nation building out of the way, the Republicans were able to play up the humanitarian angle to a much greater extent then they would have had such a campaign occurred before 911 and in the process draw closer the liberal interventionists/ “liberal hawks”. (Sure the administration focused primarily on WMD, but Republican chattering classes, most notably those at the weekly Standard, and the right wing think tanks certainly pushed transformative power of democracy and the market line.)

For me whether Ignatieff can offer a convincing reply to this question is the litmus test that determines whether he is legitimately a liberal interventionist or merely an academic apologist for the Bush administration's imperial fantasies.

Look there is always going to be a decent humanitarian case for following the Bush administration on any given adventure. After all, the type of places the Americans are limited to attacking openly are always going to tokens of world’s worst. That is why the rise of neo conservatism has made me dislike liberal interventionism a lot more than I used to. Not constrained by with usual realist laments, the project for new American Century promised to turn liberal interventionists into kids in a candy store. They insured that no one would be attacking them from the right flank at a time when the post 911 zeitgeist in the States had muted the left wing of the Democratic party. In return, these so called "liberal Hawks" did the intellectual heavy lifting for Bushco on the Iraq war.

Pramatic Turn

I would love it if a Liberal candidate made a speech resembling the following.

Peace keeping means what it says. It involves keeping the peace between two identifiable warring factions who want peace and have invited third party in to keep it. It really only has a hope of succeeding when those groups are separated from one another by geography. As guerilla war supplants state on state violence as the dominant form of conflict, peacekeeping missions have become less and less useful. In this sense Ignatieff is right and Rae, Volpe and Layton are dead wrong. Peace keeping has had it day; it represents a proud chapter in Canada history, but that chapter has been written; let us move on. The question is to what.

Ignatieff is the only candidate is to propose a replacement and for that he deserves credit. Ignatieff, however, proposes that we adopt a Neo Conservative doctrine that works in theory, but is a miserable failure in practice. So here we Liberals are, trapped between ideology and nostalgia.

It is time we Liberals take a pragmatic turn. This should be a simple enough, but alas I fear no. For most Canadian politicians foreign policy is a subject they would prefer to forget much less discuss and is only made tolerable for us Liberals by a number refined and ready made platitudes. Do not be fooled by Ignatieff’s muscular Victorian venire either, a puritanical adherence to altruism still has domain over all parties and one asks “how does this benefit Canada?”, “what are the risks?” or “how likely is such a mission to succeed?” at ones own peril. Good intentions and moral obligation are still seen as magical guarantees of a mission’s success. Ignatieff’s position is just more in keeping with Conservative axiom that when it comes to foreign policy all one need do is to puff out one’s chest and hope for the best and a different set of platitudes. In keeping with such a testosterone driven attitude, Ignatieff followed Stephen Harper’s lead and claimed that anyone who opposed the extension of the Afghan mission does not “support the troops”. Where Ignatieff differs from Harper is that he does not believe that our obligation to protect does not in theory depend upon American’s willingness to intervene even if it does in practice.

As Liberals, we must not be tempted either of these two sets of platitudes. We must be more worldly in outlook. We must start asking questions that we have either repressed, or were afraid to ask. Only once we start asking the more mundane questions about how this or that policy benefits Canada, what are the chances of it succeeding, will we create a more realistic picture for the Canadian public. As representatives of the people, we owe the public that much; we owe them the truth.

For starters this means removing the fig leaf of Conservative procedural misconduct and having the very debate about Afghanistan we, rightly claim the Canadian people missed out on. In doing so, pace Ignatieff, scared cows are not the only wild animal to be avoided. We must also be wary of elephants and guerillas. Let us not pretend, for example, that our Afghanistan policy will not have domestic consequences. We have recently seen that it does. We can not pretend, as Stephen Harper does, that sending troops to Afghanistan will not protect us from terrorists who have never set foot in that country, but who wish us ill will because we have sent troops there. We must accept that in a democratic society, politicians have a duty to base their arguments on the truth and that they do not have the option of designing arguments to obscure it even if believe our hearts in the right place.

Ignatieff and Rae on Afghanistan

Bob Rae /http://www.bobrae.ca/enontheissues.php has adopted the NDP line that the problem with Afghanistan is that our role has supposedly changed and we have moved from being peace keepers to peace makers. "The unilateral extension of the combat mission is a departure from Canada's traditional role of peacekeeping and reconstruction. Bob believes Canada could have instead focused our military, aid and diplomatic resources on reconstruction and rebuilding that war-torn country . . ." This is kind of idiotic reasoning born of focus groups and polling. Such polls show that Canadians have a high opinion of peacekeeping, but a low opinion of offensive missions. So the NDP says give the people what they want. The thing is, though, that Peace keeping means what it says. It involves keeping the peace between two identifiable warring factions who want peace and have invited third party in for that very reason. (Ignatieff says that Rwanda was peace keepings death nail. I disagree. Rwanda was never suited to be a peace keeping mission. Indeed, in many ways having peace keepers in Rwanda lessened the chances of the needed military intervention. The killing of Belgium peace keepers made intervention far harder politically and the prospect of more dead UN peacekeepers also probably played a role. The two groups were not geographically separate. That said, just because you can not use a hammer as a screw driver does not mean that hammer is useless. A hammer is only useless only in so far it no longer serves any purpose and that might just be happening with peace keeping. As guerilla war supplants state on state violence as the dominant form of conflict, peacekeeping missions have become less and less useful. In this sense Peace keeping is indeed dying.) Despite what Rae, Volpe and Layton might say, Canada was never doing this in Afghanistan nor could it ever hope to. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are not so kind as to distinguish themselves from the rest of the population and they simply do not recognize the distinction between a foreign military force focusing on peacekeeping and reconstruction and those focused on peacemaking. (Some have suggested to me that a focus on reconstruction and peacekeeping would result in fewer causalities, would make us less susceptible to terrorism and would produce better results. This is bullocks. The Auzzies took on an offensive role in Iraq and Spanish took on the role of nation builders. The Auzzies lost far fewer soliders than the Spanish, spent far less than the Spanish and it was Spain and not Australia that was attacked by terrorists for their role in Iraq. If Canada signs on to some furture American adventure, I hope they have the good sense to at least to take on a short term offensive role (special forces air strikes), a la Austraila in Iraq, and not a nation buidling role, a la Spain in Iraq. ) What changed is that we went from a region where the insurgency was weak to one war it was strong.

Ignatieff employed his own focus group and poll driven talking points with regard to Afghanistan during the recent leadership debate and unlike Rae's Ignatieff’s went down like a Led Zeppelin. Incredibly Ignatieff http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/06/10/libs-sat.html?ref=rss claimed that death of a Canadian soldier meant that if Canada did not vote to extend the mission her death would have been in vain and by implication that the mission had merit by virtue of her death. "I supported the extension of the mission because that very day a brave soldier from Shilo, Manitoba, gave her life," No one wants to die for a mistake, but it is incredible that Ignatieff would imply that a mission is validated if soldiers have died carrying it out. That was not the worst of it though. He went to say suggest that voting against an extension meant that one did not “support our troops”. "I couldn't in good conscience stand up in the House of Commons and not vote for the extension of a mission when our soldiers' lives were on the line." Chantal Herbert http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1150064106473&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist969907622983 rightly jumped all over him:




"Last month, Ignatieff was one of only two leadership candidates to support the Prime Minister's decision to extend the Afghan mission for two years beyond next February. Saturday, he said he felt he would have let the Canadian soldiers who had put their lives on the line in Afghanistan down if he had voted differently. The notion that support for our troops should mean support for the government's decisions on the deployment is one of Stephen Harper's most demagogic arguments. In a rebuttal to Ignatieff, Bob Rae was right to point it out."


Rae http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/06/10/libs-sat.html?ref=rss “I disagree quite profoundly with Michael [Ignatieff] on this issue," Rae said, adding that "it's most unfair" to suggest that "if you vote against the resolution you are not supportive of Canadian troops overseas."


Liberal Bloggers, even the pro war ones, made the same point as Hebert and Rae.


Calgary Grit http://www.gerardkennedy.ca/default_e.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/blogfull_e.aspx “For Iggy, he couldn't vote against the motion because Nicola Goddard had died that same day. That answer just blew my mind. Here we have a world famous intellectual who has written about international conflict his entire life and his answer was that we had to extend the mission because someone had died. If Ignatieff is going to name drop Trudeau twelve times in his opening statements, then he should at least follow the "reason over passion" mantra Pierre lived by.”






A Bcer in Toronto: http://bcinto.blogspot.com/2006/06/dont-be-playerhatin-or-afghanistan.html#links “I was disappointed at Ignatieff's poor showing defending his Afghan vote on Saturday though. His saying he couldn't vote no because a soldier had died that day doesn't fly. He's a smart man and even in the limited time allotted he was capable, or should be capable, of making a far better argument than that. Because I do agree with his vote on that issue, and it was the right thing to do.”






Cerberus: http://canadiancerberus.blogspot.com/2006/06/liberals-and-afghanistan.html#links “It is utterly asinine to say that supporting or opposing an extension of our mission is tantamount to supporting or opposing our troops.” Ted did not direct this comment towards Ignatieff but rather Stephen Harper. However as both held the same “asinine” view it is applies to both.




Just as bad Ignatieff has still not addressed the concerns many people have with the Afghan mission. Indeed, his arguments so far add up to little more than good intentions and moral obligation guarantees success. What is more, Ignatieff has not acknowledged that the same arguments he used to say that Canada was justified in staying out of Iraq can also be used against the Afghan mission. http://www.speakeasy.invisionzone.com/lofiversion/index.php/t7732.html For one, polls suggest that the mission has no better than support of half the population and polls showed at the time of the May vote that most Canadians were opposed. Ignatieff said that support of the population was vital. For another, a terrorist attack, inspired by Canada's presence in Afghanistan, could spilt the country apart, especially if Quebec is the victim. Currently the Afghan mission is opposed by what 60% of Quebecers. If Quebecers die as a result of us being there, the separatists will use it as a reason why Quebecers need their own country with its own foreign policy. Given what has just transpired in Ontario and the fact that the accused were said to be motivated by Canada's role in Afghanistan, Ignatieff can not very well claim that chances of such an attack or not insignificant. Ignatieff claimed that a potential national unity crisis was reason enough for staying out of the Iraq war.

Multiculturalism's true signifiance

Actual policies associated with multiculturalism mean very little and if the associated programs disappeared tomorrow not much would change. That said, the importance of multiculturalism does not lie there. Over the years it has morphed into a founding story of who we are. Indeed it is the antithesis of what conservatives, such as Travers, drone on about.

Travers: “In pursuing multicultural tolerance, Canada has been negligent in reinforcing essential, common-denominator values. Most of those are self-evident: human rights, the rule of law and the understanding that one person's freedom ends where another's begins.”

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1149545411381&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist969907626423

For Travers et al, we need to lay down a number of core principles for what it means to be Canadian. For Travers et al, ambiguity is a dangerous thing. Nothing is specifically ruled out and so everything is permitted. Such thinking is old world and is not suited to any country (basically any Western country) dependent on immigration for its very survival. Most Western nations have a fairly good sense of themselves, but far from being a strength such fixed notions of what it means to be French, German or Polish, for example have proved to be obstacles to integration. Canada has not had as nearly a difficult a time. One reason for this is that Canadian identity, as signified and legitimized by official multiculturalism, is not a fixed set of precepts, but rather a byproduct of existential engagement, bounded by certain legal framework to be sure, of peoples from all over the globe.. It has severed as an anticoagulant, preventing a crust from forming on top of the Canadian melting pot. Canadian identity is, as it should be, a work in progress. There is no Canadian dream as there is an American dream. We are not limited that way. We do not believe in passing down a script of what it means to be Canadian down from one generation to the next. We leave it up to each generation to decide who they are through existential engagement. The process only allows a generation to do decide who they were by retrospectively looking back; for Canadians as for Hegel, the Owl of Minerva only flies at night. For those who are still in the sunshine of their lives, they simply say want they know they are not, viz., Americans.

They hate our Policies: what this means

US foreign policy, both real and imagined, is the well spring of terrorism. Anyone who believes the Bush line about they attack the US because they hate their freedoms is an idiot.

Similarly anyone who believes Harper’s application of the Bush line to Canada is also an idiot. "We are a target because of who we are, and how we live, our society are diversity our values.”

As with US, the major bone of contention Jihadists, both domestic and foreign, have with Canada is not our freedoms, but rather Canadian foreign policy. They do not like us being in Afghanistan. Needless to say, most of what they say about our motivations for being there and the conduct of our troops is patently false and often absurd. For example, I do not think for a second that Canadian troops are raping thousands of Afghani women, as the ideological ring leader of the Ontario terror group is alleged to have claimed. In fact, I am rather inclined to believe that they are preventing many more rapes than they are committing if they have committed any at all. The validity of what these nut bars claim is not the issue though. The issue is does Canada being in Afghanistan greatly increase the chances of Canada being the target of a terrorist attack. The answer is yes. Bin Laden has said we are an Al Qaeda target because we are there. However, much more important is the fact that the chances of the Canadian government, or any other Western government for that matter, being able to prevent groups of disaffected youths from within their own populations from adopting Jihadist ideology, or worse is hopelessly unlikely. In other words, whatever the merit of what these nut bars are saying, the chances that they will say it and find domestic coverts, who will act on what they say, is all but guaranteed. This is the part conservatives have gotten right. Jihadist terrorism is a reality Canadians must face. What conservatives are not saying though is what this means; it means that we must assume that trying to install democracy at gun point in Muslim countries greatly increases the chances domestic terrorism.

Sometimes this risk will be worth it. However in the case of Afghanistan, for me and for many other Canadians this increased risk is intolerably high price to pay for involvement in a war that is costing us billions, is doomed to failure and in no way furthers our national interests.

Canadian "cool" and American Bullshit

Decriminalization marijuana, a promise to anyway, SSM and Canada’s opposition to Iraq made Canada in the words of Economist “cool”. Other publications expressed similar sentiments and all cases above three where the focal points. For example:

The New Yorker:

“They have a comparatively sensible approach to the drug problem: while our federal government tries strenuously to put marijuana smokers in jail, even (or especially) when the marijuana has been smoked for medical purposes in states whose people have voted to sanction such use, their federal government is about to decriminalize the possession of small amounts. And now—with a minimum of fuss, hardly any hysteria, and no rending of garments—they have made it legal for persons of the same gender to marry each other. …

“A week later, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien announced that, instead of trying to get the decision overturned, his cabinet would seek to codify it. Legislation is to be drafted over the next few weeks, vetted by Canada’s supreme court, and submitted to the federal parliament. It’s pretty much a lock that, perhaps as early as next fall, gay marriage will be the undisputed law of the land from St. John’s to the Klondike.
This ghastly prospect was evidently on Scalia’s mind as he composed his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas. If sodomy laws are unsustainable, he warned, then so are “laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation”—masturbation? is that one still on the books?—“adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity.” Doom looms, it would appear. According to Scalia, “The Court has taken sides in the culture war,” and the next step, logically, must be “judicial imposition of homosexual marriage, as has recently occurred in Canada.” Leaving aside the question of who, exactly, gay marriage would be an imposition upon, ….
Good old Canada. It’s the kind of country that makes you proud to be a North American.” http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?030707ta_talk_hertzberg

San Jose Mercury:

THINK CANADA COULD USE ONE MORE PROVINCE?

Oh, Canada! Has someone dumped something into your water?

The government up there will soon bless gay marriages, hand out marijuana to cancer patients and legalize possession of small amounts of pot by others. Canadians were as staunchly against the war in Iraq as San Franciscans. Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto are as ethnically diverse as San Jose -- and tolerant, too.

Americans have tended to think of Canada, if at all, as a placid little brother, a bland 51st state. How times have changed.

In terms of soul mates, the Bay Area could be Canada's 11th province. http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v03/n1051/a10.html

Pittsburgh Post Gazette:

“And then there's the wild drug situation: Canadian doctors are authorized to dispense medical marijuana. Parliament is considering legislation that would not exactly legalize marijuana possession, as you may have heard, but would reduce the penalty for possession of under 15 grams to a fine, like a speeding ticket. This is to allow law enforcement to concentrate resources on traffickers; if your garden is full of wasps, it's smarter to go for the nest rather than trying to swat every individual bug. Or, in the United States, bong.
… Like teenagers, we fiercely idolize individual freedom but really demand that everyone be the same. But the Canadians seem more adult -- more secure. They aren't afraid of foreigners. They aren't afraid of homosexuality. Most of all, they're not afraid of each other.
I wonder if America will ever be that cool.” http://www.post-gazette.com/columnists/20030730sam0730p1.asp

Christian Science Monitor:

“It's moving to become the third nation on the planet to legalize gay marriage. It's primed to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. And it vocally opposed the US war on Iraq. These moves reflect a growing cultural assertiveness - especially on the importance of tolerance and multiculturalism, which are enshrined in Canada's version of the Bill of Rights. The shift is increasingly putting the US and Canada - the world's biggest trading partners - on a cultural collision course.” http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0627/p02s01-woam.html

Why did these issues come to define a nation south of the boarder and why did, in words of the words of Bill O’Reilly, “The Canadian model [become] what progressive Americans [were] shooting for.” The moving to Canada meme was, after all, not born of nowhere. http://www.slate.com/id/2109300

The reason I think is this. The dominant critique of the Bush administration inside and outside the US is that it plays fast and loose with the facts, often pandering to US society’s worst fears and prejudges, for political gain. These three issues are excellent examples of where the Bush administration did exactly that. American progressives latched on what was happening in Canada because they thought Canadian politicians respected their citizens enough not to try to BS them into accepting policies of little merit. Of course the fact that until Dean, Democratic party did not dear question the merits or rational of the Iraq adventure and that they have been almost as bad as the Republicans in pushing reefer madness and defense of marriage also helps to explain why American progressives latched on to Canada. There has long been a progressive void in the states.

Needless to say, it was silly of American progressives to put any faith in Martin and in the Liberals. He proceeded at snails pace with regard to SSM, arguably would have taken us to Iraq if he had of been prime Minster at the time and never moved forward on marijuana legislation. Whenever Martin had an opportunity to come down against BS, as during Terry Shivio saga, he declined. One can only presume that he did not wish to divert the public’s attention away from the inquiry that was devouring the Liberal party; after all, the public might forget that it was he who called the Gomery Inquiry. The Conservative victory back in January officially closed the book on “cool” Canada and now we ourselves are drowning BS gleefully heaped on us by the Conservatives. As for the Liberals, they are looking more like the Martin government minus the power or headlines everyday, completely lifeless and without a soul.

Marijuana Policy and Liberal Bad Faith

The Le Dain Commission called for Marijuana to be decriminalized some 33 ago.

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----
"The ordinary citizen, seeing the assertions implied by the law frequently belied by pharmacological fact or the effects that he himself experiences in the use of drugs, has long since ceased to look for a relationship between the harmfulness of a substance and its classification under criminal law. In this domain, it must be said that the criminal law is thoroughly outdated and outworn."
------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

Marie-Andrée Bertrand, Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Montreal, Le Dain Commission 1973.

Gordon Gibson explained Trudeau’s reaction thus: “The report was released as we were touring a bull-semen facility in Guelph, Ont. (I am not making this up.) The press cared not at all about productive agriculture and totally about weed. At an end-of-tour press conference, the prime minister was asked if he favoured decriminalization. We were in the semen facility's boardroom and it had a blackboard with a permanent picture of Elsie the cow painted on, perhaps in recognition of the customer base. Mr. Trudeau was very quick. Saying not a word, he went to the blackboard, took the chalk and drew a cartoonist's balloon out of the cow's mouth. Inside he slowly wrote, "I like grass!" The room dissolved in laughter.” With regard to marijuana, the Liberals have lived in a perpetual state of bad faith ever since.

Sure in the 1980 throne speech Trudeau did say that it was time "to move cannabis offences to the Food and Drug Act and remove the possibility of imprisonment for simple possession”, but that never came to past and such comments only served as an acknowledgment and a reminder that the Liberal party had kept marijuana possession illegal for 7 years without itself believing in the rational for keeping it illegal.

In 2002 a Senate Committee looking into the issue of marijuana recommended in start terms that marijuana legal. Shortly thereafter Canada’s possession laws began to creak and break under their own internal contradictions; for four months Ontario had no possession law and laws in other jurisdictions narrowly avoided the same fate. Neither escaped Jean Chrétien notice. Chrétien did not share Trudeau’s catholic guilt in not allowing truth to prevail. However he did have revengeful streak, a good sense of Martin conservatism and good sense of political timing. He promised to decriminalize marijuana possession; Canadians he promised would face fines not criminal charges. His public musings about trying marijuana were a cruel reminder of the fact that for decades Canada had on its books a law its leaders literally regarded as a laughing matter. “I will have my money for my fine and a joint in my other hand.”

A commitment to decriminalize marijuana stayed Liberal policy after the Chrétien left and Martin took over, but remained a neglected child weighted down my provisions and language designed to pacify the Americans. Indeed, it seems that the more Martin tried to tape into anti Bush sentiment in Canada the more he was willing to allow the US to control Canadian drug policy. The Marc Emery case is a great example. For years Marc Emery had been paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in Federal taxes on money he made “selling marijuana seeds”. Yet last summer, at the behest of the American government, Canada arrested Emery and laid the groundwork for him to be sent to the States to face charges. If convicted, which is a forgone conclusion given that Emery never hid what he was doing, Emery faces anywhere for 10 years to life behind bars for a crime that is rarely prosecuted in Canada and has only ever warranted a small fine. An attempt by BC marijuana activist to save Emery from being sent to the States speaks volumes about the Martin’s government lack of courage and bad faith. The activist has long pressed to have Emery charged under Canadian law. Under the terms of the extradition treaty, one can not be extradited if one is facing the same charge in one’s country of residence and one was arrested there. So far his efforts have not been successful. Canadian authorities seem unwilling to charge him under Canadian law, but are willing to send him to the States to face 10 to life in prison.

Needless to say, neither of what Chrétien or Martin proposed would have worked. One can not have, on the one hand, stringent enforcement for trafficking and, on the other hand, mere fines for possession. The problem is that at bottom the population rightly views marijuana as being pretty innocuous and this undermines the legitimacy of such a sharp conceptual divide. Indeed it undermines the legitimacy of Canada having any sort of marijuana laws at all. Even parking tickets have to be seen to serve some legitimate purpose for people not to view them as an unfair imposition. Such was not the case with the Liberals proposed Marijuana fines. Sure, Canadians understand that the Americans would not be pleased about legalization and as such there would be certain practical advantages to not legalizing it. However, that does not make marijuana prohibition in a general sense legitimate in their eyes; it just means that Canada is tailoring its own laws to meet the demands of Americans consideree so illegitimate that popular cultural considers them a symptom of madness “refer madness”. This can not stand. Any perception that Canada is enforcing laws to met with illegitimate demands of a bullying third party, whoever that may be, is simply poisonous to the health of a functioning democracy.

The Liberal Party is broken: A new Policy focus needed

The Liberal Party of Canada is broken. Its political strategists are grossly incompetent and the party has no long term strategy to speak of. However that is not the worst of it; the party has lost the ability to inspire; it is party without a soul or character.

The confrontational, impish, poetic and witty Trudeau is gone, as is the crusty, cagy street fighter Chrétien. The last Liberal leader neither inspired Canadians with his intellect and humor, nor did he have our grudging respect as many had for Chrétien’s plebian tenuousness. Martin was not hated; he was the kind of Prime Minster a focus group would prefer; he was good on paper. However, in reality Martin’s temperamental conservativism, stuttering, dithering and lack of conviction, corporate world view that shone through even in the name given to Liberal candidates, viz., “Team” Martin, dampened the enthusiasm for those how supported Liberal social policy. Such was the case with child care and SSM. His naïve belief that he could use Gomery to win the Liberal civil war and still come out unscathed was one of the biggest blunders in Canadian political history. Such was Martin’s talent, people thought he was lying even when he was telling the truth.

Graham is little better, but he is only a temporary plug.

In order to capture the imagination of Canadians the Liberals need to develop policies that are as readily comprehensible as tax cuts are. Simply promising to improve health care, the environment and education mean nothing. Indeed, as a rule of thumb if the negation of a promise makes no political sense, then such appeals are so much hot air and noise. Furthermore, although promises to increase funding to the aforementioned big three are not completely void, Canadians need to know just how increased funding will be cashed out, so to speak.

The Liberals need to look beyond our borders as a guide, but they need first look back at the past. Trudeau’s lasting legacy will be the Charter and the Charter, or more correctly the longing for “a Just Society” that the Charter symbolized are still part of the Liberal brand name. The Charter is designed to help make a dreams come true. Incidentally, unaware of the significance and meaning of Trudeau’s legacy, Martin perverted Trudeau’s vision in defending SSM. For Martin, the Charter was not a tool to better ourselves with and not a symbol of hope for a better tomorrow, but a legal framework compelling us to act a la Max Weber’s Iron Cage of Rationality. “Our hopes are high. Our faith in the people is great. Our courage is strong. And our dreams for this beautiful country will never die” became one can not “cherry pick rights”; the implication being that SSM was not a cherry. For Martin’s Liberals, SSM was not a righteous cause, but was rather the straight man’s burden.

Part and parcel of rediscovering Trudeau’s legacy is that the Liberals need to rediscover universality. Under Mulroney and Chrétien universality died as Stephen Harper duly and happily noted in 1994.

"Universality has been severely reduced: it is virtually dead as a concept in most areas of public policy…These achievements are due in part to the Reform Party.”

Under Martin the Liberals did rediscover universality again – well sort of. They promised to implement a “universal” early childhood education program that would in drips in drabs grow bigger over literally decades with no time line as to when the program would become truly universal. The more the Liberals talked up the need for more child care the more inadequate and lackluster their proposal appeared. Needless to say, piece meal universality is no universality at all and if the Liberals want to capture the imagination of Canadians by promising a universal program they better make sure that they are able to deliver and all at once.

One issue worth exploring is expanding the Canada health care to include dental care. As business picks up most of the dental tab already, the idea of offloading the coasts of dental to the public sector will have its supporters even on the corporate right. Paul Martin may be of some use still.

Alas it is unlikely that the current crop of Liberals will move beyond their commitment to universal early childhood education for 10 to 15 percent of children 3 to 6 in 5 to ten years time. Worse, the way Harper is going the ability of the Federal government to implement any social programs is quickly being crippled.

One thing that Liberals can certainly do is to steal a page from the rest of the Western world minus the US and give Canadians more vacation time. Everyone else gets at least 4 weeks: Canadians deserve no less.

If the Liberals going to recapture the hearts of Canadians they are going to have stop acting and sounding like a bunch of ninnies and above all stop trying to please everyone. Paul Martin sometimes acted as if he was heading up Disney and not a political party. Martin acted as if scandal and controversy were of a piece. They are not. The foundation of many a government is controversy and confrontation. Isn’t that right Ralph Klein? The foundation of Klein’s rule has been opposition to Ottawa and it not just a coincidence that Klein was being ushered out the door as a new Conservative Prime is being ushered in. Anyway, back to Trudeau for second. Could anyone ever picture Martin saying the following?



“Yes, well there are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don't like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed”



Rhetoric only goes so far though. If one is really going to piss off a targeted group and have them scream bloodly murder, there is no substitute for policy. Now, pitting one region of the country against region is not good long term strategy. It limits one potential for growth. The targets should be selected on primarily on the basis of ideology and the nature of the confrontation should be just that. For the Liberals, as I have said time and again, angering social conservatives and the Bush administration is winning strategy, particularly with regards to Quebec. And as I have said time and time again, promise to legalize marijuana, for one, and force Stephen Harper into defending an intellectually bankrupt prohibitionist along with Bush administration and James Dobson. Every bad word from Dobson and Bush is a free ad time as far as the Liberals would be concerned. What seals the deal is that unlike opposition to SSM employed by Karl Rove in the States, legalizing marijuana is a good politics because in the long term it is the right thing to do and as such a good long term play.

Kyoto represents one of the failings of the Martin government. Martin was not entirely to blame. The opposition successfully saddled Martin with Chrétien’s poor environmental record even when Martin’s financial commitments to Kyoto were quite substantial. Where the Martin government fell down was that Martin’s environmental policy depended upon the public understanding Kyoto. They did not and quite frankly never will. The same thing can be said about Global warming. It is an abstract concept and one that probably appeals to many Canadians in winter. Moreover, as with SSM, Martin emphasized not the merits of Kyoto, but Canada’s Kyoto obligations. I image many Canadians recalled their mothers urging them to eat their broccoli as homage to the starving kids in Africa whenever they heard Martin talking about Canada’s Kyoto obligations.

Kyoto is important yes, but the Liberals have quite a bit of leg work before it can become a burning issue. What the Liberals need to do is they need to draw out the immediate to long term consequences of smog, say. In order to sufficiently appeal to Canadians the Liberals need to forget about thinking globally and focus locally.

Vancouver and Toronto should be two of the focal points. Vancouver is rightly regarded as one of the world’s most beautiful cities, the ocean and the Mountains being its two biggest selling points. However every summer brings more smog and the view of the North Shore Mountains becomes a little less stunning. If this continues, there will be potentially huge long term consequences for Vancouver’s tourist industry to mention just one. This point can brought home by juxtaposing older clear pictures of mountains of Santiago Chili and LA with newer ones taken from the same vantage point showing them obscured by smog.



As for Toronto, the emphasis should be on how air pollution is affecting the daily lives of people who live there. How many smog days are there? What is the impact on the cities most vulnerable? As with Vancouver, juxtaposing older and newer pictures of cities aboard should be used. Pictures of people in Tokyo; the older ones showing people walking around without masks and the newer ones of people walking around wearing masks, should hit home. Two pictures of the same person would be good.

Is "only the fittest survive" a tautology?: A Wittgensteinian Take

“One of the best documented examples of natural selection in modern times is the English Peppered Moth. Typically, this moth is whitish with black speckles and spots all over its wings. During the daytime, Peppered moths are well-camouflaged as they rest on the speckled lichens on tree trunks. Occasionally a very few moths have a genetic mutation which causes them to be all black, so they are said to be melanistic. Black moths resting on light-colored, speckled lichens are not very well camouflaged, and so are easy prey for any moth-eating birds that happen by. Thus, these melanistic moths never get to reproduce and pass on their genes for black color. However, an interesting thing happened to these moths in the 1800s. With the Industrial Revolution, many factories and homes in British cities started burning coal, both for heat and to power all those newly-invented machines. Coal does not burn cleanly, and creates a lot of black soot and pollution. Since lichens are extremely sensitive to air pollution, this caused all the lichens on city trees to die. Also, as the soot settled out everywhere, this turned the tree trunks (and everything else) black. This enabled the occasional black moths to be well-camouflaged so they could live long enough to reproduce, while the “normal” speckled moths were gobbled up. Studies done in the earlier 1900s showed that while in the country, the speckled moths were still the predominant form, in the cities, they were almost non-existant. Nearly all the moths in the cities were the black form. It was evident to the researchers studying these moths that the black city moths were breeding primarily with other black city moths while speckled country moths were breeding primarily with other speckled country moths. Because of this, any new genetic mutations in one or the other of those populations would only be passed on within that population and not throughout the whole moth population. Additionally, because the city and country environments were different, there were different selective pressures on city vs. country moths that could potentially drive the evolution of these two populations of moths in different directions. The researchers pointed out that if this were to continue for a long enough time, the city and country moths could become so genetically different that they could no longer interbreed with each other, and thus would be considered distinct species. In this case, what actually happened is that the people of England decided they didn’t like breathing and living in all that coal pollution, thus found ways to clean things up. As the air became cleaner, lichens started growing on city trees again, thus the direction of the selective pressure (birds) was once again in favor of the speckled moths. By now, English cities, as well as countrysides, all have speckled moths, and all are interbreeding at random, thus were not separated for long enough to develop into separate species.”

Let us suppose that contrary to all expectations after the trees of Northern England were no longer covered in soot the black coloured moths continued to thrive at the expensive of the speckled coloured moths. Some have implied that this would be a strike against Darwinian Theory; the theory would have predicted a falsehood, viz., only the fittest survive. I think they are mistaken. Only the fittest survive is not proposition and as such true or false. Rather, survivability is a built in criterion of fitness.

Back tracking a bit, I think we can agree that the reason the speckled coloured moth was expected to resume its original predominance was that it was presumed to be better suited to its environment. In other words, it was presumed to be fitter. Here in lies the problem for opponents of my view. By holding that “only the fittest survive” is like any old proposition they unwittingly run two empirical propositions together, viz., the notion that only the fittest survive and the notion that speckled colouring confers fitness. As a result, they render both unfalsifiable. Indeed, faced with such contradictory evidence one can always insolate one proposition by rejecting the other. Either, the speckled coloured month’s colouring did confer fitness and Darwinian maximum is wrong, or the moths colouring did not confer fitness and the Darwinian maximum still holds.

Conversely, in accordance with what I said above about “only the fittest survive” being a criterion of fitness, I would say that the hypothesis that the speckled coloured moth’s colouring gave it a selective advantage is false. This is also the conclusion I think scientists would draw. By holding out survival as a criterion of fitness we are able to test our predications as to who we think is fit in present day populations (e.g. a population of moths). I suppose we could do something similar using complex computer programs for past populations. Feeding all the information we have about old environments into computer simulation program, we could test various adaptationist explanations.

Before I am dismissed as an adherent of the view that the Darwinian maximum reduces to completely vacuous “only survivors survive”, let me say this. Populations change from generation to generation and often in a particular direction. This is denied by no sane person. The rub for scientists has always been how to account for these changes. There have been many ill fated attempts. Lamarck’s theory of acquired characteristics being passed down to the next generation being the most well known. Darwinians say that “natural selection” can explain at least some of these changes in populations and most people, even creationists, have no trouble conceding that it can (e.g., as in the moth example quoted at the beginning). Darwinian Theory fits with our understanding of genetics and there are powerful mathematical models that explain how selective pressures can change the distribution of any one gene in a given population and at can explain at what rate that change occur. (Of course, these models also explain why artificial selection works) All in all, Darwin has offered up the most coherent and popular theory to date. Where they part ways with many lay people, at least in the States, is that Darwinians believe, as any believer in evolution does, that these changes can eventually lead to speciation.

All that being said, it seems outrageous to say that the success of Darwinian Theory rests on some slight of hand. There is good reason for this. When you really get down to it what Darwinians do is to come up with just so adaptationist stories for why this or that trait or behavior evolved and make predications about survival rates based upon what who they think is fit. As noted, there is nothing suspicious about the latter. As for the former, many are admittedly speculative. However, they are no more mysterious, or on a less academically sure footing than many other historically based fields of endeavor. Moreover, many of the best known evolutionary theorists (e.g., Stephen Jay Gould) reputations rest or rested on their willingness to rein in those who went beyond the available evidence.

Another fundamental misunderstanding concerns the nature of the maximum itself. A statement is tautological in so far as the meaning of the terms are defined by means of each other. In this case, so the argument goes the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed the fittest. With regards to the famous Darwinian maximum this is false. It only makes sense to talk about fitness in terms of populations that have undergone or are undergoing selective pressures. A segment of the population is fit relative only to another segment of the population that is unfit. If one invokes another mechanism to explain some trait’s dominance, then strictly speaking there is no segment of the parent population that is fitter than any other and consequently it would be inappropriate to describe the offspring (i.e., survivors) of that population undergoing, for example, genetic drift as being fit or not. To think it otherwise leads to the strange conclusion that any Darwinian who wanted to stay true to the maximum would have to avoid ever adopting another evolutionary mechanism.

In coming to this conclusion about the nature of Darwinian maximum, I did not draw my inspiration, Popper, who at one time thought the Darwinian maximum to be a tautology, but rather Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein rejected the Logical Positivist mantra that some propositions are true by definition (e.g. “All bachelors are unmarried men” is true by virtue of the meaning of “bachelor” and “unmarried men”). However, Wittgenstein thought the positivists like so many before them were right to think so called analytic statements were special. He thought, though, they were wrong to think them propositions. According to Wittgenstein such statements are, rather, explicit rules for how to use words (e.g., “All bachelors are unmarried men” rules out the use of word bachelor in the following sentence. “She was a lifelong bachelor.”) Wittgenstein likens these explicit rules to the hum drum rules of grammar. Indeed, he deems them as being part of grammar proper. Like the everyday rules of grammar, they help constitute the bounds of what is sensible and unlike propositions are neither true nor false.

Wittgenstein thought that not all grammatical statements were so easy to pick out. In fact he held that people frequently mistake some grammatical rules as normal propositions (e.g., Sensations are private) When that happens he said, “language goes on a holiday” and the only way “to shew the fly the way out of the fly-bottle” is to investigate, hence the title Philosophical Investigations, the relationships between the offending rule and others parts of language. In Wittgenstein’s case, what such a typical investigation involved was Wittgenstein showing how treating a particular grammatical rule as a proposition leads to absurd conclusions. If successful a cloud of philosophy would be condensed into a droplet of grammar.

If I had to classify “only the fittest survive”, I would say it was a grammatical statement and the absurd conclusion that is avoided by treating it as such is the possibility that sometimes the weakest survive.

Official Multiculturalism: Part 2

I would like to make two clarifications about the last post. First, Multiculturalism helped speed up the process of cultural change and make the transition less painless. It was not the driving force behind cultural change; increased immigration was. Another important factor that helped birth the new Canada was that social mobility for new Canadians has been, relatively speaking, pretty good. Too be sure, there are areas of Vancouver, say, were virtually all school children are members of minority groups. However, all regions of Vancouver have a large ethnic mix. This is in marked contrast to areas of many ethnically diverse cities in the UK and the US, where white enclaves still exist. (Speaking of ethnically homogenous, you could literally have counted the number of people of colour at the Yankees and Red Sox games playoff games.)

Yes, multiculturalism sometimes encourages people to fail to take ownership of their membership within Canadian society, but outside of Canada’s native communities (a separate issue really) I do not see this as a big problem. More and more Canadians describe themselves as Canadian and this is particularly true of young Canadians. More than anything else, the risk is that multiculturalism could provide fertile ground (e.g., by making various cultural institutions (e.g. Sharia law) more available) for this trend reversing itself. Since 911 and start of the War on Terror, some members of well integrated and prosperous groupings in the States (e.g. in LA’s Iranian community) have started to turn their back on American society and have sought to crave a more “authentic” identities for themselves. (The New Yorker had a profile of two Americans of Iranian decent who had sought to create such an identity. It made for strange reading. The teenage son of long time US citizens was using the very writings of the same Mullahs his parents left Iran to escape to create for himself a new identity. Also strange was how much to his consternation and surprise the Iranian traditions and language he picked up in LA alienated him from his Iranian cousins. The idiom and slang he used was 25 years out of date and made him sound not like his peers put like their parents.)

Official Multiculturalism

Official multiculturalism has been a success, but not in ways usually appreciated. Official multiculturalism proved to be the death nail Anglo Canadian identity based on god, king and country. As it stood Anglo Canadian values were not woven together by prominent national myths as in the United States and without official state sanction such an identity simply dissolved as Canada opened its borders to more and immigrants. Only trace elements remain.

The policy was not nearly so successful when it came to Quebec. Quebec nationalists have for decades used to state institutions to sew together a new secular identity out the historical threads of an older catholic Quebec that modernity had unraveled. Thankfully, the emergence of a large “ethnic” community has made Quebec nationalist identity based on blood and shared historical grievances into an anachronism. Perhaps with help of Harper, the sovereigntists dream may very well be realized, but it will not be the Quebec Lévesque wanted.

Official multiculturalism has done something else. It has severed as an anticoagulant, preventing a crust from forming on top of the Canadian melting pot. Canadian identity is, as it should be, a work in progress. There is no Canadian dream as there is an American dream. We are not limited that way. We do not believe in passing down a script of what it means to be Canadian down from one generation to the next. We leave it up to each generation to decide who they are through existential engagement. The process only allows a generation to do decide who they were by retrospectively looking back; for Canadians as for Hegel, the Owl of Minerva only flies at night. For those who are still the sunshine of their lives, they simply say want they know they are not, viz., Americans.

If there is a downside of official multiculturalism it is this: it has helped encouraged certain forms of ethnic essentialism. Cultural traditions are not something that can be boxed away and put in a museum. Cultural traditions are by products of a great interplay of forces (political, social, and economic) and it is these forces that give the traditions their meaning. Take the Hindu prohibition against killing cattle. Taken alone the prohibition seems strange. However, the important role the cow has played, and indeed in some parts of India continues to play in the lives of peasants, such a prohibition becomes intelligible. (Cow dung was important source of fuel and building material. Cattle were used to plow fields and of course cows are source of milk.) Removed from social-economic body, these traditions harden and eventually die.

That said, not everyone recognizes this, including it seems the government of Canada, and here in lays the rub. Things can go badly in one of two ways. Parents may force these traditions that once where alive for them onto their children for whom they never where, or children can adopt these dead traditions as means of creating an identity for themselves (e.g., the large number of North African youth in France turning to Fundamentalist Islam). The former creates generational divisions and is natural enough. The later is far more serious. I think it is safe to say that it heightens ethnic tensions, but it does something else as well. As these cultural traditions are not given any meaning by the larger societal forces, they only come to have meaning by virtue of them being practiced exclusively by a particular group and more often than not by all supposedly self conscious group members. The many people who stray from identity supposedly prescribed to them by such things as skin colour are not looked upon kindly by “self conscious” members of the same group and a whole host of names have evolved to describe them. Apple for example is used to describe a native Canadian who is red on the outside but is white on the inside. Banana is used to describe someone of Chinese origin who is yellow on the outside but white in the inside. Oreo is used to describe Black person who is black on the outside, but white in the inside. On the flip side of things, people who are supposedly not free to develop such practices are guilty of cultural appropriation.

Belief and Desire not Choosen

Beliefs are not something one chooses. I do not choose to believe there is a computer screen in front of me, nor do I choose to believe I am now typing. I just so believe. The same goes with desires. I do not choose to desire a glass of water. I just desire one. Why anyone would think it any different when in comes to sexual desire is beyond me. The whole debate about whether homosexuality is a byproduct of biology, while interesting, is complete red herring. Whatever the casual history of a desire it is not chosen.

Why we should not care about a guility Mind

In order to be found guilty in our system one has to have a guilty mind. It is for this reason that young offenders, children, people with mental defects and the criminally insane are given lesser sentences or no sentences at all. They are deemed not as capable of understanding all our some of the consequences of their actions. It is also for this reason that people found guilty of manslaughter receive a lesser sentence than people guilty of first degree murder. And finally, it is for this reason that people of Native decent are to be treated more leniently by the courts. In the eyes of the law makers, the social environment is a mediating factor and must be taken into account when sentencing Native Canadians.

One problem with all this is roughly as follows. Rather than being able marshal the full weight of the sciences in its efforts to curb future criminal acts, our legal system is undermined by some of them. Indeed, the social sciences, in so far as they are, as any first year professors will tell you, deterministic, are like little factories producing ready made mitigating factors.

Now, when defense attorneys use one of these ready made mitigating factors, the response of many people is to jump up and to do what amounts to denying the validity of these areas of study. “His childhood had nothing to do with it. He knew exactly what he was doing and he chose to do wrong.” This response is neither legally sound nor rationally convincing. Worse still, it takes the focus away from the true source of the problem, i.e., the notion of culpability. There is no better demonstration of this than the XYY chromosome defense and the decision to have the courts treat Native Canadians more leniently.

Used in the 1970s the XYY argument is in its most basic form this. Males with an extra Y chromosome are inherently violent and thus are not criminally responsible for their actions. The defense failed, but only because the defense was based on bad science. In theory is could have worked. In our legal system, it is possible that someone could be found not guilty because they are inherently violent.

As for Native Canadians, the powers that be looked at the crime figures and saw that Native peoples commit an unusually large number of crimes and have a higher rate of recidivism. They, rightly, concluded that their social environment had something to do with it and in a highly controversial decision decreed that Judges must consider the social environment when sentencing Native peoples. Put differently, their reasoning was this. The social environment predisposes Native Canadians to commit a greater number of crimes, hence high crime rate, and because they are so predisposed Native offenders are not as culpable and therefore should be sentenced more leniently. This is, indeed, consistent with our current understanding of culpability, but needless to say it seems just, well, ass backwards. If someone is more likely to re-offend, or commit some other crime, than it only seems reasonable to give them a stiffer sentence and not a lighter one.

Smoking Bans

While people, can certainly choose what pubs and clubs they go to and while people can refuse to work in a certain establishments, most people have no choice but to work. As such, most people would agree that in theory that the government should prohibit employers from needlessly exposing their employees to danger. Alas though, theory is one thing and practice is another. For all sorts of reasons, regulatory bodies sometimes turn a blind eye to work place dangers and when called on this they simply deny the obvious. There should be no such discrepancy in the case of second hand smoke. The government readily acknowledges that second hand smoke is dangerous. It is for this reason that they require tobacco companies to say that “second hand smoke kills” on cigarette packaging and it is for this reason that they have already banned smoking in most workplaces already. Some governments have even mulled over the suing tobacco companies over the damage that second hand smoke has caused. All of this makes the failure of certain governments to extend such a ban to all workplaces particularly galling. But there is more. Eventually someone will get around to suing one or more levels of government for this and while private individuals and entities can always argue the merits of claim that second hand smoke is dangerous, the government, whose stated position is that second hand smoking is dangerous, would be forced to either concede the point, or undermine the basis one of largest public health campaigns in the country’s history and worse still the very legitimacy of all future public health campaigns.

Dangerous Offender Status and Capital Punishment

Even though there is no proof that capital punishment serves as a deterrent, I think a case for capital punishment can be made. From time to time certain criminals hit a societal nerve. Not surprisingly, once caught and convicted these people become the face of evil for whole communities. Here in lies the problem; so long as these people remain alive these communities remain haunted by such figures. There is no better example of this than Clifford Olson. Since, his arrest in 1983, Olson has found himself in the media spotlight from time to time and whenever that has happened old wounds where once again ripped open. Olson also has become the living embodiment of what people think is wrong with the justice system. Executing Olson and his kin seems the only way giving afflicted communities, but certainly not loved ones, a sense of completion and peace and clear sense that justice has prevailed.

The problem is that if Canada were to reintroduce the death penalty as a punishment for first degree murder, some of the same problems that plague the States and helped get capital punishment abolished in the first place would again plague the Justice System. Most notably, while the introduction of DNA evidence has lessened the likelihood of innocent person being put to death, the likelihood of an innocent person being convicted of a capital crime, somewhere down the line, is still pretty high. As such, just as Olson has become a living argument for capital punishment, Guy Paul Morin has become a living argument against capital punishment.

I think there is a way around this objection, but to my knowledge I am the only one to have put it forward. What I purpose is that the state be allowed to execute someone not for what they have done per say, but for what they are. In a Canadian context what this would boil down to is this: Rather than defining what is a capital crime, the notion of Dangerous Offender should be refined to include people convicted of murder and that authorities should have the option of executing, at least offenders, deemed such because they met the first criteria listed below. Technically speaking, the possibility of executing a person for a crime they did not commit would not exist. Currently, “under the Dangerous Offender provisions, the Crown can ask that an offender be sentenced to remain in prison for as long as he or she is considered dangerous, which in some cases, can be indefinitely. This must be done through a special court hearing held soon after the offender has been convicted. Not all offenders are considered dangerous. In order to be considered a DO, an offender must have committed a "serious personal injury offence" (for example, sexual assault, manslaughter or aggravated assault). Murder is not included since a conviction results in an automatic life sentence. In addition, there must be evidence to show that the offender constitutes a risk to others, based on any one of the following:

•a pattern of repetitive and persistent behaviour that is likely to lead to injury or death, or a pattern of aggressive behaviour showing indifference to the safety of others;

•the likelihood of injury through a failure to control sexual impulses; or

•a crime so "brutal" that it is unlikely the offender can inhibit his or her behaviour in the future.

Incidentally, "as of September 24, 2000, there were 276 active Dangerous Offenders in Canada; representing approximately 2% of the total federal offender population.”

Tuition Hikes

I am puzzled as to why I keep coming across the following rather stupid argument for hiking tuition fees in Canada. The argument goes something like this. There is a wide income gap between people with university degrees and those without degrees. Clearly, obtaining a university degree leads to better things and given that gap seems to be ever widening, having a degree will probably be even more valuable in the future than it is now. That being the case, it is only right that those that who benefit from obtaining a degree pay more towards what it costs to educate them.

Now, leaving aside the problems associated with drawing a causal relation from a correlation, problems associated with projecting data well into the future and whole host of other missing caveats, let us just assume that they have hit the nail on the head. Obtaining a university degree is well worth it.

Does it follow from this that the only way of having students give back to society is by having them pay higher tuition fees? Of course, it does not. As a population, those with degrees earn more than the rest of the population and so pay more taxes. Once more, the way the system is currently set up the more you benefit from your degree the more you pay.

I dare say, the tax route is a much more attractive option for other reasons too. People are not burdened with the expense of having to pay for their education at a time when they can least afford it (when they first step into the working world), but will instead be able to pay for it at a time that they can most afford it. What is more, this way the person that benefits from the having a degree is more likely to assume more of the financial burden. After all, in many cases a student’s family fits all or part of the cost associated with obtaining a degree.

The real beauty of this argument, though, is that it can be employed against those who object to tax option on the grounds that a degree holder pays the same tax rate as a non degree holder in the same tax bracket. Tongue firmly in cheek, simply agree that, alas, this is true. Despite the fact past graduates had their education supplemented by tax payers to a much larger degree then is the case now, university graduates pay no more than non degree holders in the same tax bracket. Having said so, ask the following question: If current students, who have yet to benefit from their education, should be made to pay for a larger chunk of what it costs to educate them, should those who are currently benefiting from having a degree also be made to pay retroactively for a greater chunk of what it cost to educate them?

Different rules Different Game

During a conference on female circumcision a French theorist stood up and questioned the very validity of the conference. I can not remember exactly what he said, but he was a moral relativist and what he said went something like this: Who are we to tell them that female circumcision is wrong? There are no absolute criteria by which they can be judged.

Now, typically moral relativists buttress their arguments by employing concepts like "language games" and "incommensurability". However, I have not come across someone who has employed concepts such as those against moral relativism. This, though, is what I will attempt to do.

"Who are we tell them that a rook can not move diagonally?" What makes this sentence seem perfectly odd and "Who are we to tell them that female circumcision is wrong?" common place? Are we right to treat the two differently?

With regard to the first of these questions, there is, of course, nothing wrong of a conceiving of a game in which the “rook” can move differently. It is just that that this game would not be chess. The pieces might be the same and the board might be the same and the other pieces might move in identical manner. However, the game of chess is, by and large, no more then the sum of the rules that make up the game and moving a “rook” thus would violate those rules. (It should be pointed out that a chess piece, such as a rook, is a chess peace by virtue of the rules of the game not by virtue of what it is called or how it is shaped. For this and other reasons, a move is only a move in a game.) Different rules different game. (To be sure, it is possible to conceive of chess as being played in alternative manner. Imagine for example that in the Western world the pawn can be moved two spaces forward on its first move, like it is now, but that the Chinese forbid it. My playing partner and I could then ponder whether we wanted to play by Western rules or by Chinese. However, there would be no non question begging why of determining what was the right way to play chess, the Chinese way or the Western way. Minor differences do not always add up to a difference in kind.)

Now, there are societies in which female circumcision is consistent with “moral” teachings of those societies. That is not in dispute, nor is the notion that female circumcision violates “western” ideas of what is right. What I think should be disputed is the notion that we can not condemn the practice because other people “conceive” of “morality” differently. The problem for the moral relativist is not that, dammit, female circumcision is just wrong. His problem is it is not enough to say that Westerners engage in particular language games and that the rest of the world plays in some cases altogether different games. What he needs to do is akin to explaining how a game of chess is more than just the sum of the rules of the game. He needs to show that the game westerners play is the same game that other people play, only it is played according to entirely different rules. Only then will he be able to say in the case of female circumcision that for one group the move is legitimate and for the other group illegitimate.

The problem is, though, that failing to condemn female circumcision would send logical tremors that could threaten to break apart the series of interlocking language games we call morality. We can no more recognize an alternative account arising from a different set of moral precepts than we can recognize a game in which a “rook” moves differently as chess.

All told, if we conceive of morality as simply a bunch of interlocking language games, what we end up with is remarkably similar to the static universal morality that the moral relativists dismiss. The moral relativist is right about the very human origin of morality and chess. However, what makes, say, a game of chess a game of chess is simply that the game is played in accordance with the rules that make up the game. As such, there are limits to the extent we can change the rules of the game and have it still have it remain the same game.

Dick Pound is an Idiot

IOC should stop trying to ban every conceivable substance that might enhance an athlete's performance. There is simply no way of ever achieving a mythical level playing field. Indeed, the fact of the matter is that access to good trainers and good training facilities, being able to afford the right equipment, good nutrition, excess to health care and having the time to train are far more of an advantage than downing a few cans of Coke before a race. This is the reason why Norway (population 4.5) beats China (population 1.4 billion) in the Winter Olympics. Instead, what the IOC should seek to do is to ban substances that both improve performance and that have not been proven to be safe. In other words, the IOC should seek only to ban substances whose use would threaten workplace safety.

This should go for other sports as well. As it stands, the emphasis on potentially banning any substance that may improve performance regardless of the health costs associated with it has driven a wedge between various parities in the sporting world in part by obscuring just how some performance enhancers can reduce workplace safety. (It has also led to some pretty strange talk. For example there was talk of banning oxygen cambers for awhile. The reason being there is that although they are not in anyway dangerous, there is some evidence that by speeding up the healing process -- god forbid! -- it “artificially” improved performance.) No where is this more apparent than in major league baseball. Fearing what testing might mean for a few individual players, the major league players union has lost sight of the following. Most major leaguers who use steroids feel that the lax testing in baseball, do in large part to the players union, has created an environment where they are forced to take them in order to keep up with other players that use. Asked if they would then welcome more stringent testing, the vast majority said yes.

A Paradox

If you feel that a group should abstain from a particular activity for the simple reason that they lack the ability to fully appreciate the consequences of carrying out such an activity, then what sense does if make to try to convince them of that? Indeed, either such an enterprise would undermine the very basis for having them abstain from the activity in the first place (by helping see the possible consequences of a given course of action), or it would be a complete waste of time (i.e., they would not grasp the link between a given course of action and a possible outcome). However, such seems to be the case for many school programs. Teachers regularly delineate possible outcomes of certain activities (e.g., choosing to become sexually active). They then test them to see whether they understand these links. At the end of the day, however, no teacher that I know tells students that have mastered the subject matter that they should now feel free to become, say, sexually active.

At best, what can be said in the case of alcohol is this: "Yes, there are plenty of teenagers that know how to drink responsibly and you might be one of them. However there is a critical mass of teenagers that do not. With this in mind, the courts have set the drinking limit at 19. Now, in order for the law to be workable, the law must target all of those under the age of 19 and not just those who drink irresponsibly.

Continuing on in rant mode, it is clear that the just say no drugs and alcohol model simple does not work. Now, let me add to the speculation as to why. Somehow it is not dawned on the just say no crowd that some teenagers will continue to drink and do drugs no matter what and that by tailoring their message only to those kids who are having drugs pushed on them they are, among other things, failing to reach one of the most influential segments of teenager culture, viz., those that push drugs onto other kids. One needs to acknowledge this group and teach them to respect those who refuse their overtures.

Liberals must Court Controversy

The timing of the 2004 election call was all wrong for the Liberals. I told this to a Liberal MP during the 2004 election. He agreed. I said that he should have called a late fall election to coincide with the US election. The Liberals could have more easily painted Bush and Harper as two peas in a pod. However, Martin never fully realized what a pariah Bush had become until well into 2005 and he was reluctant to go back on a promise to Canwest Global and CEOs everywhere to improve relations with the Bush administration (Incidentally, when CEOs call for improved relations with Bush what they are really calling for is for the road to further integration not be blocked by politics.) In typical fashion, Martin took that tact an election too late. By December 2005, Harper had realized that he had to distance himself from Bush if only on the surface. Harper managed to do this rather effortlessly. It did not matter a lick that Harper uses Republican talking points by the volume, has repeatedly bashed Canada in terms that would make Carolyn Parrish blush, ends his speeches with “God bless Canada”, supported the Iraq war, promised that SSM would wreck havoc on the country and what he has to say about government is more or less indistinguishable from Grover Norquist. Harper’s word that he was not a Republican want to be was good enough for docile, biased, gullible, ignorant and lazy political Canadian punditry.

The other reason why Martin was an election too late in his anti-Bush rhetoric was that Bush was a spent force politically in December 2005; he was less threatening as a result; he no longer represented the same ideological challenge and Canadians could not as easily define themselves as being anti Bush because America, Canada’s identity foil, no longer believed in him. Indeed, by the fall of 2005 it was clear to everyone that Bush administration had made some serious errors in Iraq and top officials, most notably Rumsfailed, are incompetent. After Katrina, the competence critique became received wisdom and not only with regards to Iraq but virtually all areas of governance. The red state blue state debate that many Canadians had lived vicariously through various US media outlets died down and after a while it just seemed that the media was piling on.

Yet another reason why the timing of the 2004 election was all wrong was that it was too close to the breaking of the sponsorship scandal. The more time that eclipsed the better for the Liberals.

Without Bush as foil, what is the Liberal Party to do? Set the media agenda. The Liberals might have been in power for the last 13 years, but it is conservatives have determined what the media has talked about for most of it. Not all this is the Liberals fault.

Tory Toadies Worthington, Yaffe, Michael Campbell, Frum, Harvey Enchin, Trevor Lautens, Don Martin, Charles Adler, Lorrie Goldstein, Paul Jackson, Ken Whyte, the list goes on and on, are all de facto agents of the Conservative party. These pundits figure that it is too much trouble to critically examine Conservative talking points when you can mindlessly repeat them as if they are some sort of Buddhist chant designed to clear the mind. Take Dingwallgate, for example. For a whole month various Tory Toadies across the land went off about Dingwall wild expenses. Assuming that most of them truly believed what they said, they had no excuse for not having done some basic fact checking and their lack of outrage at Conservative Pallister for magically transforming, for one, a 2 day conference for 24 a romantic dinner for two speaks volumes about their complete lack of regard for the most basic tenant of their profession, i.e., a respect for the truth. The fact that some of the pundits are now blaming only Chicken Little Martin for having fired Dingwall is a further affront to the reading public.

As a group, these Tory Torries are not, however, without a sense of humor. Virtually all insist they are courageously fighting a rear guard action against the “mainstream media”; in their mind the "MSM" love the Liberals and are dangerously anti-American. Needless to say, all of available evidene proves that anyone who believes this is either ignorant or retarded. Declan from Crawl accross the ocean sums up the findings of the 2006 McGill Media study and makes clear that things were no rosier for the Liberals in 2004. http://crawlacrosstheocean.blogspot.com/2006/01/conservative-media-part-3.html



quote:
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"During the campaign there were 3,753 articles written about the election in the 7 newspapers studied (The Calgary Herald, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, the Toronto Star and the Vancouver Sun, La Presse and Le Devoir)

Of those 3753, 3035 mentioned the Liberal party. Out of those 3035, there were 40 with positive mentions of the Liberal party and 445 with negative mentions of the Liberals, giving a 11 to 1 ratio of negative mentions to positive (slightly higher than last election's 10-1 ratio).

Meanwhile, for the Conservative Party, the figures were 2730 total articles, including 144 positive mentions and 127 negative mentions, for a slightly positive overall slant (the positive mentions were similar to last election, but the negatives were cut in half).

The NDP garnered 2% positive mentions and 3% negative mentions, while the Bloc received 2% positive coverage, 4% negative.

The numbers for the party leaders are quite similar with Martin getting 5 negative mentions for every positive one, while Harper received more favourable than unfavourable mentions."
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Operating under this assumption, they give Conservative leader Stephen Harper free reign to deride Canada as some second class banana Republic whenever the urge strikes him, but screamed bloody murder when back bench Liberal MP blasted arguably the most hated man alive, viz., George Bush. Indeed, such unforgivable blasphemy was countered in a front page editorial (The Vancouver Sun) on at least one occasion. All of this has left a remarkably strange record in the annals of Canada’s press. References to former Liberal back bencher Parrish’s transgressions abound, but Conservative Leader, and current Prime Minster, Stephen Harper’s Canada bashing has only ever reached the light of day when the Liberals have leaked it to the media and is never touched by pundits working outside of Toronto. Type in "Damn American, I hate those bastards" (Parrish) in a Canwest archive and you get 324 hits. Type in "second-tier socialistic country" as in http://www.stephenharpersaid.ca/


quote:
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Harper: "Canada appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status, led by a second-world strongman appropriately suited for the task.Albertans would be fatally ill-advised to view this situation as amusing or benign. Any country with Canada's insecure smugness and resentment can be dangerous."
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You get 28 hits. Indeed, when such an unfortunate speech came to light last election, Canwest global did its best to both distance itself from the bad news, by implying that their reporters and pundits would never dream of actually finding out what Harper has said of their own accord, and to try to harm the Liberals at the same time, by printing the following from the Conservative war roomers at Canadian Press. http://www.canada.com/national/features/decisioncanada/story_05.html?id=0177dfdd-e9c6-4275-9749-7278ab7cf64d




quote:
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“OTTAWA (CP) _ An eight-year-old Stephen Harper speech dug up by Liberal researchers cracks a rare window into campaign war-room strategy, media manipulation and the ethical quicksand that sometimes underlies an election leak. This is a tale that reflects well on no one. In its simplest terms, the Liberals used a third party to put a buffer between them and a story that was unflattering to the Conservative leader. It began the day before the first
televised leaders' debates in Vancouver, with the Liberals scrambling to change the channel following the already infamous ``beer and popcorn'' gaffe by communications director Scott Reid and an unusual mid-campaign broadside from the U.S. ambassador to Canada.Alex Munter, a former Ottawa city councillor and
well-known gay rights activist, helped set the ball in play.”
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Once one gets past the Tory Toady crowd, there is the Conservative ideologue crowd, Andrew Coyne being its most prominent member.

However, truth be told Paul Martin never met a Conservative issue he did not like. Whether it was addressing the “democratic deficit” or as mentioned previously promising better relations with the US, Martin was there. Indeed, it is debatable whether Martin or Harper liked to talk about the sponsorship scandal more. (It was obvious to all but Martin and the beer and popcorn crowd that calling the Gomery inquiry would a) prolong the amount of coverage the sponsorship scandal would receive, b) drive up support for separatism, and c) magnify the affects of scandal on party by airing the party’s dirty laundry in a public forum. The smart thing to do would have been to call an RCMP investigation. However, I have sneaking suspicion, and I am just speculating here, that Martin, confident in the belief that he was not involved, thought he could use the Gomery inquiry as a means of crushing the Chrétienites once and for all. If this was his motivation and he seriously thought that he could call such and inquiry and not fatally damaging his party’s reputation at the same time, he was hopelessly naïve. One can not wholly rebuild a ship while out at sea.

The only way the Liberals are going to set the agenda in this media climate is if they grow some balls and court controversy. One would think that a party rocked by scandal would have done so long along (e.g., Martin could have used the Terri Shivio debate late last March, just before the April bombshell, as a pretext for promising to introduce something that might actually find favor with Quebecers because it is well progressive, viz., a euthanasia bill.) After all, doing so would have been a good way of changing the subject. However, Martin had his eye on the ball the whole time; he did not wish to divert the public’s attention from the sponsorship scandal least they forget that it was he who called the Gomery Inquiry.

So, what issues are likely to grab the media’s attention and to be treated by them in judicious manner? I just mentioned one. Euthanasia is a so called hot button issue. Another issue is the liberalization of Canada’s marijuana laws. (In the wake of the Alberta shootings, the number of articles dedicated to the subject was fairly substantial. If legalization was ever seriously on the table, the amount of coverage this subject would garner would easily match the amount of attention SSM garnered and, given the weightier consequences, likely surpass it.) If things worsen there and public opinion is marshaling against the mission, Afghanistan is potentially another.

One reason the Liberals have avoided hot button issues in the past is that voters, as older people vote in disproportionately large numbers and young people vote in disproportionately small numbers, tend to be more conservative than the population on the whole. Older people tend to be bigger defenders of the status quo then younger people. On the surface not rocking the boat is the smart play.

However, politics is all about defining yourself and opponent(s) in terms that are favorable to oneself. SSM was not a winning issue in terms of the support it garnered amongst voters, but having the Conservatives defend a legally, morally and intellectually bankrupt position certainly helped the Liberals. Indeed, it was the only issue that Martin and crew really stuck it to the Conservatives.

Of the three mentioned above, there is one issue in particular that could turn into next election’s SSM issue and that is a promise to legalize marijuana. It not a particularly pressing issue and it is certainly not the most important, but then again neither was SSM. Tackling it would, however, put the Conservatives in the position of defending an intellectually bankrupt prohibitionist stance. It is also an issue that would garner a lot of international attention, particularly south of the boarder -- attention that would not be flattering to the Conservatives. Rock stars, sports stars, Hollywood, academics, high brow papers and magazines, such as the New Yorker and NY Times, would side with the Liberals; the Christian right, a Bush administration with no credibility and fox news would line up behind the Conservatives. The prospect of such a policy dealing a death blow to the US war on drugs would really stoke interest.

The bonus for the Liberals is support for such a policy is strongest in BC and Quebec, two provinces that they really need to make gains in.