Feet of Clay

I contend that great men should be remembered for their achievements and that the foibles of their day-to-day life should not diminish their status. Success in life is difficult to achieve – pitfalls are everywhere and everyone has a million reasons why they can’t accomplish their goals. One road to success is to emulate those that have already been there. Mentors and heroes who have defied the odds and succeeded where most have failed can be of great comfort to one in time of disillusionment.

Why then have we entered upon an era where it is almost obligatory to denigrate our heroes? My answer is that we have dispensed with principles and have entered an age of pragmatism. The consequences of the acceptance of a pragmatic world are subtle at first, almost imperceptible. A great swath of grey begins to encroach on what was once the demarcation between black and white. Certainty begins to dissolve into doubt - Confidence devolves to fear. In this world reason is supplanted with a determination to mould reality to fit our desires in spite of contradictions.

No one in a pragmatic world can stand for anything but the social caprice of the day. What is right today may be wrong tomorrow. Everyone must experiment with short-term solutions devoid of context. A pragmatic notion is held in esteem as long as one can get away with it. How could a hero survive in this world?

Heroes are discredited by the pragmatic idea of “moral equivalence”. This means that modern ideas of social conformity to which a hero may not adhere are used to discredit the hero’s achievement. This argument can also be used to explain away all manner evil in the world.

An argument of this type that I have heard stated with a straight face is: Stalin’s liquidation of thirty million people was not as bad as Hitler’s murder of ten million because he did it to achieve a noble end, where as Hitler simply was a racist. Quite a pragmatic view!

I have heard that Ronald Reagan's policies contributed to the end of the cold war but he was a fool and a liar because he tried to say he did not dye his hair. Many great heroes are dismissed simply for being dead, white and male.

Many people today accept the notion that war is bad in and of itself. They accept that terrible evil could be happening in the world, but they say war is not the answer. A good admonishment at the UN should do the trick. Mass murder may continue but at least we did not go to war. I say this line of non-thought is devoid of any understanding of the principle of self-preservation. It is a pragmatic moral-equivalence.

Heroes are invariably men of principle. They would be waffling poll readers plagued with indecision if they were not. Gandhi was a man of principle who gained independence for India and at the same time proved the humanity of British rule. Had Nazis or Communists ruled India he would have been shot on the first day of protest. Gandhi counted on the fact that the British would adhere to the principles of human decency and fair play. If he had faced pragmatists instead – well.

Cecil Rhodes was a man of principle and energy who built an empire in southern Africa. Today he is scorned as a racist and a tyrant by the mainstream. He may have employed thousands of whites and blacks where there was no work before. He may have undermined and subverted a truly racist government in the Transvaal primarily for business principles and built a country of immense wealth. He may have believed that the right to vote should be based on education achieved and not on skin colour – but today in spite of the corrupt mess that modern rulers have inflicted on southern Africa he is considered a vile evil racist. A very pragmatic view!

Western civilization was built on principles that cannot be denied without contradiction. That is why it has dominated the world. Other civilizations are awash in mysticism and emotion. Pragmatism is undermining our heroes and thus destroying the principles that we have built our civilization upon. It is with selfish intent that I ask – Have you defended your heroes today?

Closing the Window on the Left.

The Transition to Hydrogen fuel – The window of opportunity for the Left

The purported motive for countries to sign on to the Kyoto Accords is to reduce greenhouse gases and thus theoretically slow down global warming. In fact it is a thinly disguised formula for wealth redistribution throughout the world – but I digress. One would think that the deployment of an alterative fuel that does not pollute and exists in inexhaustible abundance would be the prime directive of the Accords. The environmentalist elites are forever complaining about the “tons” of effluent that burning fossil fuels spews into the atmosphere. Yet why is there not a chorus of support from these elites for the transition to a hydrogen economy?

Most proponents of the environmentalist movement prefer restrictions on or scaling back consumption. More controls are necessary they say in order to protect the planet from humans. We should move away from private automobiles and use mass transit. We should not live in low-density suburbs, but rather in high-density urban condominiums. We should sort our garbage for free and then pay huge fees to dispose of it. Solutions for energy requirements should be in “harmony” with nature, expensive and in your face. A constant reminder of the guilt we should feel simply for existing.

Most of us don’t like scaling back on consumption – whether we can afford it or not. Most of us believe that the planet should exist for the benefit of mankind not in spite of him. We prefer the freedom of the private automobile to the inconvenience of mass transit and many would live in a low-density private home given the opportunity. This is the problem that confronts the social planners of the left as they try to mould society into dependent communities.

In a way Hydrogen is the worst nightmare for the left. It will allow the private automobile to dominate human transportation unfettered by the pollution argument. Personal freedom will be enhanced and commerce will flourish. How can a group of oligarchs’ control and mould society with all this freedom about? What’s more, because so many consumers desire all the things that the left wants to restrict, this new means of their attainment will become inevitable. The left knows this and can only use the interregnum period between the transition from fossil fuel to hydrogen as a closing window of opportunity to put more controls in place.

70 Years Late

It looks like there will be a German Pope.

It is too bad that there was not a stong willed German Pope in place in 1933. He could have saved us alot of trouble.

Time for an Irish Pope?

The tremendous impact of Pope John Paul II on Cold War politics leads one to think that perhaps an Irish Pope could do the same for the Troubles in Ireland.

This conflict is long overdue for a solution and the Pope has the right authority to impact a positive outcome. Fear of the Papacy could be overcome by an empathetic policy of outreach toward the Protestants. At least we could have peace with a Catholic acceptance of the Protestant North's right to exist.

Party on the Black Sea?

Why are so many people in Ontario still going to vote Liberal?

The question begs an answer in the light of the scandals that are breaking in Quebec.

In order to understand we must examine what the Liberal Party stands for and who benefits.

In their hearts Liberal Party strategists believe that the deft use of Government force to redistribute wealth is their magic bullet for remaining in power. They also believe, unlike their more honest NDP colleagues, that this axiom should be treated like a dirty little secret. The party is in effect a collection of special interests that use the brand of big “L” Liberal as cover to support their habits.

Ontario is the keystone of special interests in Canada – even more so than Quebec. This former Loyalist Tory bastion has in the last forty years been transformed into a polyglot where a coalition of monopolies and subsidised industry determine the politics of Canada.

There exists a “United Way” mentality in Ontario. As with the charities, using an umbrella organization like the “Liberal Party” deflects scrutiny from organizations that would have trouble gaining public support on their own. The brilliance of this interaction of special interests and hidden agendas is that it is able to produce Liberal Governments that will ever enhance and expand a very cozy arrangement.

The Liberal Party (both provincially and with Federal Party interference) will protect at all cost the largest monopoly in Ontario (the Teachers Unions) by restricting competition. The granting of tax relief for those who did not use the Public School system was a grave threat to the Liberal Party. It could have produced many new teachers that would operate outside the Union and thus offer an alternative to this overwhelming power block. Now we get a bureaucratic educational system that costs too much, delivers sub par results, but in the end votes Liberal.

The Liberal Party will protect those that benefit from the healthcare monopoly. Privately delivered healthcare would be a grave threat to the Liberal Party. It would produce entrepreneurs that could not be controlled and restricted by government largess. The system may tolerate long waiting lists, indifferent service, and hospitals with unusable capacity, but those who benefit from the security within the confines of this system will support the Liberal Party.

The Liberal Party will create and protect industries that are dependent on vast government social engineering schemes. Liberal concepts such as multiculturalism, bilingualism, environmentalism, public transportation, racism, feminism, sexism, soft power, community, “self esteem”, minority preference, and hate speech all produce unviable entities that can only survive on the backs of tax payers. The organizations that benefit from these concepts will support the Liberals come hell or high water.

The Liberals will be a focal point for anti-Americanism and deny our British heritage while diligently dismantling it. Since the once proud Canadian Armed Forces do not tend to vote Liberal and divert money away from Liberal Special Interests they are shunned.
The Goal of the Liberal Party is to create a country that will devolve voluntarily into a "Second World" status where special interests are dependent on the patronage of the central authority.

In Canada a Party only needs about 40% of the vote to form a majority government. It helps if the support is concentrated in an area that has many parliamentary seats. For the “Liberal Party of Canada” Ontario is the bedrock of its success. Ontario has been hit by the magic bullet. The Liberal Party (that supports the special interests, which in turn support the Liberal Party) has reached the tipping point and now controls enough support in Ontario to win the province despite blatant corruption in Quebec.

When I hear commentators on radio talk shows pulling their hair out because of the incredibly large number of apologists for the Liberal Party I can only shake my head. Many rational people ask how can these voters support a party that is caught red handed in the most repugnant scandal in Canadian history. If it had been any other party these same voters would have been merciless in their response. Just ask Brian Mulroney.

The answer is that these people have a cozy deal and they don’t want to mess it up. They know that if the Conservatives get into power they will reduce the influence of Liberal Special Interests – though I fear not as much as I would prefer. They also know that if many of them vote NDP they would split the vote and elect the Conservatives. The special interest voters have nowhere else to go and the Liberal Party knows it. If the Liberals were caught with their comrades and families at a Party resort on the Black Sea, spending our money of course, large numbers of Ontarians would still vote for them.