This week on Forum Daily News with Hal Roberts, I discussed the JCCF petition against Bill C22 that I personally delivered to the Prime Minister’s Office in the admittedly remote hope that they’ll reconsider this Draconian and mistargeted bill.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I deplore the prideful inability of people in public life to admit an error and apologize even though, weirdly, it would be better PR than their flailing efforts at spin control, as well as better statecraft and soulcraft.
“What the present generation wants is what all generations have always wanted – a meaning, a sense of what the world and life are – a chance to strive for some sort of order.”
“Prologue” in Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals
“Henry James referred in January 1915 to the ‘baseness of demonism’ that lay behind the destruction of Ypres, but the first systematic use of asphyxiating gas on the Western Front by the Germans, on April 22nd, 1915, at Langemarck near Ypres, against French and Canadian troops, removed any doubts in the Allied populations about the satanic nature of the German threat and about German ‘guilt’. That event in the spring of 1915 was the most spectacular act in what Pierre Miquel has called ‘the terrorist war.’”
Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era
In my latest National Post column I urge media, observers and citizen-voters to devote less attention to partisan ephemera and more to deep structural problems that will bring self-government crashing down if not addressed and fairly soon.
“Remember we're talking about revolution, not revelation; You can miss the target by shooting too high as well as too low. First, there are no rules for revolution anymore than there are rules for love or rules for happiness, but there are rules for radicals who want to change the world; there are certain central concepts of action in human politics that operate regardless of the scene or the time. To know these is basic to a pragmatic attack on the system. These rules make the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one who uses the tired old words and slogans, calls the police ‘pig’ or ‘white fascist racist’ or ‘m*&^&^$@#*&^’ and has so stereotyped himself that others react by saying, ‘Oh, he's one of those,’ and then promptly turn off.”
“Prologue” in Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals
“You know the old saying, that rogues are generally fools also.”
Mr. Ball in Silas K. Hocking, “A Perverted Genius,” in Douglas G. Greene, ed., Detection by Gaslight
“the Yiddish proverb that all cats like fish, but few are prepared to get wet.”
Deirdre McMurdy in Maclean’s March 10, 1997