The Citizen series on how the Arctic is still quite cold says Canada needs a new motto. Satirists of the world unite. After all, we are funny in both senses. But given our equally famous passion for the bronze, let me try to come up with something worse. Like “Canada: It’s Not So Bad.” Bashful, yet smug. (That’s good too.) Or “Nice Unlike Those Awful Americans.” Looking outward, “The Duty to Protect... Except in Darfur.” Or “We Won’t Fund Hamas... Except with Money.” Or “Afghanistan Is Dangerous?” Or “Just Enough Backbone to Posture.” Or “Vichy, Vimy, Invade Norway” which as a bonus is easy to chant.

Looking inward, what about “Canada: Not Just the Flag is in Liberal colours” as ethics counsellors snooze through the Chretien/Martin era then wake up shocked -- shocked -- at an MP crossing the floor to a Tory cabinet? Or, as Canadian politics was founded by Sir John A. Besoin, “A Gaglianonis ad mysterium” has that certain je ne veux pas.

Our actual slogan, thanks to a 1921 order-in-council, is “A mari usque ad mare” which means “From sea to sea” or “D’un ocean a l’autre.” E pluribus drivel. The northern premiers want a motto recognizing that Canada goes all the way to the Arctic Ocean even if most citizens don’t. (Go to the Arctic Ocean, I mean, though given modern education methods they may also not know about it.) The Yukon premier said “a north-south perspective along with an east-west perspective ... is vital to our future as a federation.” Canada: Where Mush and Hyperbole Meet. His Northwest Territories colleague said “This would be a signal both to Canada and the rest of the world. ... The U.S. doesn’t accept that the Arctic waters are Canada’s waters. And we need to reinforce that they are.” Canada: Where Rhetoric is Reinforcement. Or Jack Layton’s contribution: “Symbolism is very important.”

By contrast, the motto of our elite commando JTF2 is Facta Non Verba. Even if I translated it I doubt politicians would understand. But we’ll probably render whatever vacuity we come up with in Latin, for as G.K. Chesterton said a century ago, nothing better illustrates “the immense weak-mindedness of modernity ... than this general disposition to keep up old forms, but to keep them up informally and feebly.” So the Citizen says one possible replacement is “A mari ad mare ad mare,” which sounds as if Caesar got the hiccups. (Or A mari ad maria if we can deal with a third declension accusative plural without cracking.)

The difficulty, beyond the cacophony (Hail ad mare ad mare, lacking grace) is that the original comes from (gasp) the Bible. Before the psychedelic flood the Dominion of Canada had Dominion Day and a motto from Psalm 72 about Solomon’s dominion from sea to sea. Why rewrite Psalms? Let’s substitute something from The Origin of Species or Thus Spake Zarathustra or a post-modern autobiographical novel about the hero’s harrowing, albeit invented, struggles with addiction. Or “Canada: Like Whatever Man”. For, the Citizen said, “A mari usque ad mare may have deep cultural roots and universal connotations, but its use as our national catchphrase is geographically specific and distinctly Victorian, a quaint relic of the late-19th-century ... Canada’s motto sports a top hat and mutton-chop sideburns, and carries a sledgehammer for pounding iron spikes.” Religious, respectable and enterprising? Appalling.

There are worse things than quaint; visit a modern art gallery. (Motto: “I pickled a shark and peed on a cross, but I wouldn’t dare draw Mohammed.”) Are mutton-chops and top hats obviously sillier than green Mohawks and backward caps? If the new rule is ridicule the past and trash the symbols, how about “Canada: That Was Then” or “Honey, I Shrunk the Heritage?” Supporting the change, former governor general Adrienne Clarkson did say “You can never forget your history ...” Wanna bet? A new CBC documentary has Tommy Douglas played by an actor who never heard of him before. “Canada: Where Greatness Meets Obscurity.” The icon of St. Tommy prompts “Canada: Where Socialism Didn’t Die,” above every hospital door on a coat of arms with a politician rampant on a field of waiting lists with an exhausted doctor and nurse as supporters. Or “Canada: Where Religion Has No Place in Politics Unless You’re In the NDP.”

Since the old slogan doesn’t specify which oceans, I say it could already include the Arctic. But if we’re going to meddle, what about our southern border? My geography teacher said it wasn’t an ocean but lakes and dirt and stuff. A mari ad mare ad mare ad lacos ad parallelem IL? Or would that be silly? A mari ad nauseam. But speaking of silly, a failed 2004 attempt to change it to “A Nation of Rivers and a River of Nations” recalls both an unfortunate phrase in Juvenal and Ray Conlogue’s jibe about the Canada First movement’s “Torrents of terrible verse” depicting “the rocks, the rivers, the twisted pines, the vaulting mountains.” Canada: Where the Pines are Twisted and so is the Truth.

I still like my December 2004 proposal: From Sea to Shining C minus. It’s even more sonorous as “A mari usque ad C minorem.” And while the pun rather gets lost in translation, what could be more Canadian than having it all fall apart over language?

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Tuesday’s Citizen says Big Nutritionist will soon put out a revised Canada Food Guide. Pardon me while I grocery shop without waiting for it. By what tortured logic did we reach the point that we expect our government to have an opinion on what we eat? Let alone a sensible one? Especially since they now admit the old food pyramid made us look like pyramids. Something about those 12 servings of grain a day. Say, waiter, I’ll have an entire wheat field. Oh, and don’t forget five to 10 fruits and veggies. How many carrot sandwiches can a man swallow? And how many insults?

For after hyping five to 12 grains, five to 10 fruits and veggies, two to four milk products and two to three “meat and alternatives,” the old guide went on: “Taste and enjoyment can also come from other foods and beverages that are not part of the four food groups.” Such as what? Chocolate? I think it’s a vegetable but if not surely it’s a fruit. Beer? Definitely a grain. Trans-fats artificially dyed purple? What are you even talking about, in that patronizing tone, like I wouldn’t notice something was tasty and enjoyable (both at once!!!) unless some bureaucrat kindly mentioned it? Here I was chugging all this mocha and never even knew why. Is this “taste and enjoyment” I’m tasting and enjoying? No wonder I’m eating and liking it. Gosh. What next?

Next, actually, is a revision of the food guide because the experts in white coats suddenly discovered that six plates of pasta and three pork chops a day was a lot or some weird thing. Though an Ottawa doctor who specializes in mind-boggling obesity already wrote in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that if we follow the revised guide we still won’t be able to squeeze through his clinic door because we’ll be cramming down at least 1,700 calories (as Dave Barry says, units of how good food tastes) a day and more, probably 3,200 before we even get to dessert. He also told the Citizen the new guide leaves out the oils and sugars many of us gobble incessantly. Say, are those the “other foods?”

Now nothing except money attracts more cranks than health. Some people think 1,000 calories a day is about right and others recommend an all-bacon diet. There’s even a cult in Asia that thinks lettuce is evil. And within my lifetime eggs were white ovals of death for several years, though they’re fine now. So if you want to join the brawl you can go take a survey on the Health Canada website about vital issues like what the cover of the new guide should look like (I picked the one that looked like a great sheet knit at the four corners and let down to the earth, saying “eat,” though they may miss the sarcasm; governments often do). But the annoying truth is there’s nothing to add to Aristotle’s prescription of moderation. Except self-discipline. You need a balanced diet with lots of colours on the plate (if you are too fat your food is too beige; I don’t need to see it to know). And you need my MELE plan, provided here free of charge, complete with easy-to-remember acronym for More Exercise Less Eating, which is even easier to remember because you already know it, don’t you? This is not social science.

To be fair, the government’s food guide page links to a guide to exercising that shows a happy woman in a pink track suit doing aerobics with a dog. After all, if we don’t know to eat our veggies without state guidance, we probably also don’t know this “exercise” we keep hearing about involves moving our arms and legs vigorously unless they tell us with cheerful graphics suitable for children. So by all means visit this site and get their “downloadable point of choice posters (the most effective option as indicated by research)” saying climbing stairs is more exercise than taking the elevator. But I ask you: Would you let the gun registry buy your groceries for you?

I’m not sure many people do eat what the government says. I hope not. It may be just coincidence that just when government became most actively concerned about our health we became great waddling blobs of lard. But it certainly doesn’t inspire confidence that if you followed their earlier advice you’d have to climb Mount Everest before breakfast every day or end up looking like it. And more fundamentally, according to what political philosophy is it the proper business of government to glower at our salads? Are we not men? Never mind shower-adjusters; we are now ruled by portion-adjusters.

I don’t think the state’s self-interest is the key here. Sure, a government that pays our medical bills likes us lean and fit, but it’s equally happy if we keel over suddenly without submitting hospital bills or collecting CPP payments. I say it’s social engineering, and I say to heck with it. What sort of people are we that we cannot so much as eat broccoli without the guidance of government experts? It isn’t just counter-productive in the short run, it’s demeaning. The state, I say, has no place in the shopping carts of the nation.

Let us not render unto Caesar that which is Caesar salad’s.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

There’s a new kid on the block. He might look kind of dorky, but I think one day he’ll be famous. I refer to the new Institute of Marriage and the Family. I gave a speech to their grand opening last Thursday, in case anyone thinks it creates a conflict of interest. In it I said this organization (www.imfcanada.org) is not just desirable but long overdue. We live in an era of social science, and give at least as much deference on ethical as well as technical questions to “experts” as our ancestors did to priests. So isn’t it high time experts scrutinized the family in Canada? As Derek Rogusky and Mark Penninga note in the inaugural IMFC Review: “In the early 1960s over 90 per cent of children [in Canada] were born to parents who were married for the first time and who had not cohabited -- with anyone -- prior to marriage.” Now it’s under 40 per cent. “What has happened in the span of one generation?” they ask.

One odd thing is that inhabitants of Western countries, except the U.S., are suddenly having well under the 2.1 children per woman necessary to prevent depopulation. And having your populace vanish might matter. Germany’s new chancellor just urged her compatriots to have more kids, even though she has none because “it just did not fit in with my career path.” And Japan’s prime minister urged his people to “do as dogs do” because “Dogs produce lots of puppies and when they do, the pains of labour are easy.” There are worse things than carefully packaged political speeches. But at least problems related to changing family structure, to use the antiseptic social- science term, are on people’s minds in other countries.

A British study just found over half of five-year-olds haven’t met government targets for “early learning goals,” many of which are behavioural, not scholastic. And while I’m inclined to applaud anyone not co-operating with Tony Blair’s social engineering, if the disintegration of old-tyme marriage has loosed even an undersized horde of drooling barbarians upon us, we might consider studying it before they sack Rome.

Mark Steyn recently lampooned The Scotsman newspaper for agonizing about how to preserve unionized teachers’ jobs once pensioners outnumber schoolchildren in Scotland. At least they found something to worry about. Maybe we could get our policy-makers worried about sustaining socialized medicine once this “demographic winter” hits patients and providers here. Trust me, the first snowflakes are falling.

To say family is important is trite. And important is not a synonym for good. But just as good families are very good, bad families are very bad. So surely we ought to proceed carefully if there’s any real danger we’re making them all worse with ill-advised policies. Instead, politicians ritually praise the family but won’t discuss it. Mention 100,000 abortions a year and they all move away from you there on the bench. And speaking of the bench, how about that swingers’ club ruling?

It’s not all government, of course. Policy matters, and lately it rarely seems to help. But I think the most important observation on this subject was Malcolm Muggeridge’s: “Sex is the mysticism of materialism. We are to die in the spirit to be reborn in the flesh, rather than the other way around.” It can hardly be accomplished while changing diapers. It is not clear how much government policy influences life choices; state subsidies to certain lifestyles may be the result, not the cause, of voters adopting them. Nor is it clear whether having both parents work is good, bad or neutral. But wouldn’t it be nice to know?

This new institute is a project of Focus on the Family, a Christian organization. With our newfound hypersensitivity to religious sensibilities, I know no one will say anything nasty about faith orientation and research credibility. Well, someone might. Opening night saw a dreary little protest by people favouring “equal marriage.” It was so cold they left quickly. But apparently they already know solid research will undermine their position, which might make lesser minds uneasy about the position, not the research. And while you ain’t no one in this town until you’ve been protested, one point is worth making.

When same-sex marriage went from unthinkable to unstoppable in four years, advocates defended it on constitutional and abstract ethical grounds. Any sociological inquiry was dismissed as offensive and irrelevant. Yet when polygamy raised its ugly heads last year, a Status of Women Canada call for research said: “It is vital that researchers explore the impacts of polygamy on women and children and gender equality as well as the challenges that polygamy presents to society.” Indeed. But why stop there? Much of the press and the handful of experts cited ad nauseam take for granted that all types of family are equally valid. What if they’re not?

Especially with the clock running so fast here, we need research, including on whether experts really proved what they say they did. Are kids flourishing in Quebec day care? Is divorce a problem? Whatever policy and lifestyle decisions we end up making, the first step is to understand their implications.

Hey, kid. Welcome to the neighbourhood.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

"If a man starts to run, there’s nothing to do but keep running.” – Louis L’Amour

It is not pleasant to be forced to choose between seeming rude and seeming cowardly. I resent being put in this position. But in sorrow and in anger I have changed my mind about those Danish cartoons. Thanks to Muslim radicals, republishing them is now the only way to show we will not be intimidated.

I wish it were not. I write, obviously, for the Ottawa Citizen, which has not reprinted them because, as editor-in-chief Scott Anderson explained on Tuesday, “This really has very little to do with freedom of the press. Newspapers can publish any number of things that would upset any number of groups, but that isn’t reason enough to do it. There has to be some greater public good, and I really don’t see how publishing these cartoons at this time achieves any greater good.” Though I had no role in that decision, it is precisely the advice I would have given last September about publication, and as recently as last week about republication. But I also write for Western Standard magazine, which just reprinted them. And though I had no role in that decision either, it would be cowardly not to say I now think they were right and explain why.

Quite simply, another week of global riots and threats means it has ceased to be an issue of the legal right to free speech and become one of raw intimidation. We are being clearly told if we print these things we will be lynched.

Scott Anderson is not quite right that freedom of the press is not at stake. Several Canadian Islamic leaders have threatened to seek hate-speech charges against Western Standard while the European Union’s foreign policy chief supports a United Nations convention banning ridiculing religion. Most Canadian editors seem confident that their legal rights remain secure. But I wish someone with deep pockets would publish the cartoons just to make sure. And to show they care.

Normally here I would restate the case for free speech, most particularly the “Dracula effect” that sunlight destroys evil. It should be legal to obtain Adolf Hitler’s utterly hateful book Mein Kampf precisely because here is the very face of evil: Memorize its features. And Muslims who call hate-speech laws proof of Western hypocrisy on free speech are, to our shame, partly right. But I have always opposed such laws.

We should call it disgraceful to governors and governed alike for the state to suggest citizens cannot be trusted even to hear bad arguments. Instead our prime minister capped off a series of grovelling official statements by spontaneously declaring that he “regrets” publication of the cartoons. Did the government regret the press quoting Osama bin Laden’s threats or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial? Did journalists ask? Of course not. So why is this different?

A CBC interviewer interrogating Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant argued that the public broadcaster had no legitimate news reason to publish the cartoons because they were readily available elsewhere. What craven nonsense. It concedes that for the public to understand the controversy someone must publish the cartoons. Just not us. Since when do media outlets not cover newsworthy items because their rivals are already on the story? Come out from under the bed and explain.

This knocking of knees renders political philosophy irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what else I want to say. It only matters whether I can say it without being stabbed, beheaded or blown up.

For Scott Anderson is right that we are not dealing primarily with press freedom. We are dealing with explicit threats of violence. Even newspaper stories saying protests in Canada have been peaceful have generally added that no major Canadian media outlet has published the cartoons. So if they are published will violence result that, while regrettable, is predictable and thus our fault? Nice freedom of speech you have there. Pity if something were to … happen to it.

I know the people who run the Citizen well enough to know fear is not their motive. But it is not important what I think, or what is true. We are being watched closely by people who are trying to scare us, and they know we know it. We must not seem to flinch.

If there were some way to demonstrate that I despise such threats without publishing the cartoons, I would. I have no desire to offend Muslims. But their radical co-religionists leave me no choice. David Rennie in the Daily Telegraph penned an elegant blog entry about how he could not decide whether publishing them was desirable or not because the world is complex and so is he, but we aren’t writing Hamlet here. We’re writing newspapers. Editors publish or don’t. I say do.

To Muslims offended by this sentiment my message is equally straightforward: You must take back your religion from those who threaten and commit violence in your name. Don’t live through history thinking it’s just current events. There comes a point where silence is complicity and you are there.

So are journalists. Silence in the face of intimidation is complicity, and bluster is pitiful. So I say publish. The decision is painful, but not hard.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

David Emerson’s spectacular defection right into the Conservative cabinet hurts. Especially because the obvious solution won’t work. But at the risk of switching suddenly to the optimists, I do offer some hope. To their credit, their own partisan coup stings for a lot of Tories. They were genuinely outraged after Scott Brison, then Belinda Stronach, left their party for Liberal cabinet jobs (first a parliamentary secretaryship for Mr. Brison), in part because, like Reformers since 1993, they prided themselves on being less partisan than their opponents. But the essence of partisanship is the conviction that our policies and ethics are better because we’re us and they’re them, basing principles on identity instead of the other way around. It hurts to discover how easy it is to slide into this kind of thinking, even for us.

The Liberals also feel hurt. As soon as Mr. Emerson executed his somersault with half twist, people asked how a man could call the Tories “heartless,” “angry” and “uncomfortable with ethnic minorities,” stand next to the prime minister of Canada and say Stephen Harper favoured a country where “the strong survive and the weak die” – and then go join up. The question is not unreasonable. Perhaps Mr. Emerson never meant these as criticisms. But I would be more sympathetic if Liberals had been less visibly smug over Mr. Brison and Ms. Stronach.

I’d also be more sympathetic, with Liberals and commentators, if either could explain how anyone could tolerate Mr. Emerson saying these things in the first place. They were a slur on Tory MPs, candidates and supporters so outrageous as to debase the political process. I’m no partisan of the Conservatives, whom I consider too left-wing. But they are not monsters, so anyone who voted for or endorsed Mr. Emerson after these public remarks is as ill-placed to complain subsequently that he lacks ethical standards as to claim they possess them.

For voters feeling betrayed by all this cabinet-post caucus-switching jiggery-pokery, I have sympathy. But also advice. Let’s not start thinking “there ought to be a law” against MPs switching parties without resigning and running in by-elections. I do not even see why we would condemn an MP for switching parties if theirs had broken a specific important promise (say, abolishing a national sales tax) or moved persistently in a direction the MP publicly opposed. In this regard, incidentally, I think Ms. Stronach fits better into the Liberal party, although the stridency of her previous condemnations of their morals is hard to square with her smile upon joining their number.

I have at least as much trouble seeing how we could outlaw party-switching. In a parliamentary system, it is not possible for those outside the House of Commons to issue binding instructions to MPs on voting, and not desirable for those inside to do so. Jeffrey Simpson in The Globe and Mail praised the New Zealand law (expired but due for re-enactment), and Ed Broadbent’s proposed reform package, because both required party-switchers to resign their seats, seek their new party’s nomination and win a byelection. Both measures, however, let an MP leave a caucus to sit as an independent.

How could they not? And if they do, what can possibly stop an “independent” MP from voting with the government, following its House leader on procedure, even sitting in cabinet? We now have a minister who isn’t even an MP. It may be offensive, but not because it’s illegal. In our system, unlike the American one, the government is that group that can reliably pass money bills. What law can, or should, stop an MP voting for a budget written by a Senator, a journalist, or someone in a different caucus?

Remember: Someone is a member of a caucus because he or she votes with its leaders, not the other way around. A political party is not constitutionally superior to Parliament, and cannot reach through the doors, seize MPs by the collar and drag them about the House. Nor would it enhance our democracy if they could, so that MPs answered to their party activists, not their constituents.

As for imposing “no-switching” rules from within, the House of Commons has virtually untrammelled authority over its internal procedures. MPs could theoretically expel members for how they voted, who they conferred with, or wearing ugly ties. But long experience has led the House to interfere sparingly with MPs’ liberty, lest some unscrupulous parliamentary majority deprive the public of its right to hear the government effectively opposed. Let us not tamper with this tradition, especially on the ephemeral grounds that we are now as incensed when MPs don’t toe the party line as we were a decade ago if they did.

Now for the hope. Despite current frustrations, our system leaves voters anything but helpless. We possess the mighty safeguard of our determination to elect men and women of character, who will not switch parties except on grounds of principle. Dismiss the laughter of cynics, and resolve instead to be at least as offended by shallow or abusive statements from your side as the other.

It is, I concede, a painful duty. But other things hurt more.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Apparently the Hamas Charter says: “The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: ‘The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.’ ” Is this true? I don’t mean does the Hamas Charter say it. Translations differ in a few details but they all agree that the relevant part of Article 7 reads in essentially the same horrifying way; the version above from the Cornell University Library (www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/midea st/hamas.htm) declares itself “A verbatim reproduction of the Palestinian Hamas Movement’s own English version of its covenant.” Clearly Hamas believes, and says, that the Prophet said it.

What I am asking is whether other Muslims think Hamas is right on this point. I know enough to know this passage is not in the Koran, and that in Islam nothing else approaches the Koran in terms of authority. What Hamas is citing is alleged to be a hadith, one of the many sayings (plural ahadith, I believe) traditionally attributed to the Prophet. But beyond that I need some help.

To begin with, is it supposedly a hadith? And is there one set of ahadith that all Muslims consider authoritative, verbatim or with small variations? Is there one set accepted by Shia, another by Sunnis, and still others by Ismailis or Sufis, and if so how large are the variations? Or is there no such thing as a canon with respect to such things?

Since 9/11 we’ve been hearing a lot about the need to reach out to Muslims, to understand Islam and so forth. I think it is sound advice. I’m doing it now. Right after the election of Hamas, former U.S. president Bill Clinton warned against rising anti-Muslim sentiment. And since statements like the one above from the Hamas Charter could potentially contribute to such sentiment, I would welcome clarification from Muslims, especially imams, religious scholars and spokespersons for Islamic organizations within Canada. This passage from the Hamas Charter has been quoted in the National Post and the Citizen and I have not heard its authenticity or applicability challenged. (Regrettably, the Canadian Islamic Congress did not respond to requests for comment.)

I note that there is currently a huge outcry in the Islamic world over some cartoons published in European newspapers, with ambassadors recalled, bomb threats and gunmen storming an EU building in Gaza. If the troubling saying above is not considered authentic, I would expect Muslims to be at least as upset with Hamas. So is it, or is it not, theologically orthodox for various branches of Islam to believe the Prophet said something very much along these lines?

If it is, I have another question: Do Muslims believe it is true?

I mean that literally. Many people seem to regard theology as a bizarre, private, insubstantial hobby these days. Not me. I think people believe their beliefs.

So when Hamas claims the Prophet said the day of judgement will not come until the very stones of the earth exhort Muslims to kill Jews, and provide helpful directions on where they can be found and exterminated, I want to know whether most Canadian Muslims think he said it and, if they do, whether they think it will happen. And I want to know whether they are in favour of it.

If elected Christian politicians claimed that Jesus or the Pope had said something of this sort about Jews, or Muslims, we would demand an explanation from them and other Christians. For that matter, the Bible gives a very explicit picture of end times including, for instance, the moon turning to blood and it is fair to ask Christians whether they really think it will (liberal churches might claim it will just be water with red food dye or something) and whether they want it to. Now the Apocalypse, as part of the Bible, is more authoritative for Christians than anything not in the Koran is for Muslims. So perhaps there is some accepted theological reason this hadith, even if genuine, is not to be taken literally. I don’t know. But I want to.

I confess to some concern. Do significant numbers of my fellow Canadians think the Hamas version of Armageddon will happen? Do they look forward to it? And are there politicians seeking to solidify their support in major urban centres by telling such voters they share foreign policy views, while stridently warning the rest of us that their partisan foes are narrow-minded bigots?

These are sincere and serious questions. I would very much like to be told this saying is not regarded as authentic and that it is outrageous for Hamas to claim it is. Adherents of a religion of peace, tolerance and understanding among people, tragically misrepresented by a few demented fanatics, should have no trouble shouting such a thing from the rooftops. Yet this passage has sat undenounced in Hamas’ Charter since 1988.

Stones and trees? Did I hear that right?

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

The newspapers tell me Hamas won a surprise victory in the Palestinian elections. I must have missed that. They also say Hamas can be domesticated by European diplomatic chitchat. I missed that, too. Finally, they say this result is a catastrophe. I missed that as well. Someone needs to pay more attention. There does seem to be widespread surprise. On Thursday, a number of newspapers were reporting a Fatah victory in paper editions and a Hamas victory online. Yesterday’s main National Post headline said “Hamas win stuns world.”

I think the world was stunned long before. As writer George Jonas noted, this result ought not to have been surprising. Yasser Arafat’s Fatah administration was corrupt, unpopular and increasingly powerless. Perhaps sophisticated people assumed Fatah would quietly steal the election and planned quietly to acquiesce. If so they quietly underestimated the collapse of administration under Arafat, cowinner of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for reasons history will never understand.

Hamas’s victory was not just the product of Fatah’s failures. It was also the product of its success. Sophisticated people have also quietly acquiesced in the poisoning of the minds of two generations of Palestinians by the PLO/PA propaganda machine. But glorifying violence and raw anti-Semitism logically leads to voting for Hamas.

Meanwhile, the notion that Hamas can be domesticated by contact with sophisticated people is as preposterous as it is widespread. The Daily Telegraph editorialized on Friday that “in practical terms there is much to be said for engaging with Hamas, in the hope of steering it toward the renunciation of violence.” And a news story in yesterday’s Ottawa Citizen said Hamas’s “landslide victory might force it to take clearer positions on key issues.”

Really? Yesterday’s Post says the Hamas charter includes this: “Initiatives and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of Hamas. There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.” Also: “After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. Their plan is embodied in the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’.” These statements are open to reproach on a number of grounds, but lack of clarity isn’t one of them.

In any case, as Barry Rubin of the GLORIA Centre has noted, the theory that power moderates fanatics is poorly supported by history. It didn’t happen to Lenin, Hitler, Mao or Pol Pot. Nor, crucially, Arafat. He never renounced terror or cleaned up his administration. Instead, he lied to sophisticated people who then lied to us.

Which is why the election result is no more a catastrophe than a surprise.

Many people have recognized for some time there is no one for Israel to talk to. Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza was not a bold gambit to restart peace talks but a grimly realistic recognition of their futility. I cannot say the election of Hamas rules out the possibility of illusions on this point; nothing could. But it certainly makes them harder to entertain and easier to combat.

This conclusion is uncomfortable on several levels. As a short-run practical matter, where do we go from here? As a long-run strategic matter, if Israel’s neighbours remain hostile and its supporters lukewarm, wobbly and in demographic decline, sooner or later a fatal mistake will mean a second genocide. (Europe’s sophisticated diplomatic response to Iran’s nuclear ambitions might have made “later” a moot point.)

Third, Palestinians’ dysfunctional political culture is not only dangerous to others but terribly sad for them. I want it to be different. I want those little girls and boys taught love not hate (and equality; feminists should object that photos of Palestinian protests so often show only angry men). But the truth is their minds are being poisoned and for the time being successfully. Including by an educational system funded by Europeans who periodically cluck their tongues and feign shock when unable to ignore what the textbooks and official TV say about Jews.

Ignoring such things produced this result, and surprise at it. Now perhaps we can pay attention.

[First published in the Montreal Gazette]

My mother once heard a man stagger off the golf course gasping “Thank God that’s over.” Doubtless he played again soon. So shall we, politically. In this election we avoided one disaster. Liberal re-election after so much scandal, ineptitude and bombast would have made Western separatism a reality before Joe Clark could finish telling the CBC it was not to be taken seriously by serious people. But it is not obvious to me where we go from here. Except in one unsavoury particular.

The outcome was bad for all the parties and the nation. And perhaps my standing as a pundit; I predicted 14 too few Liberal seats (and nine too many Tories). The UBC electronic stock market (esm.ubc.ca) helped me get close. But I, and others, underestimated how divided Canada has become.

Forget “red” and “blue” America. The Liberals have an apparently unshakable hold on our major cities and, partly as a result, are increasingly unelectable elsewhere. Our politicians call themselves uniters, but have divided us so badly three social- democratic parties with a majority of Commons seats dislike one another so intensely the fourth gets to govern if it can find a suitable dance partner. And the differences among the Bloc, NDP and Liberals are, except on national standards versus provincial autonomy, largely cultural, not ideological. Some multiculturalism this turned out to be.

If the Conservatives can somehow govern for a while we are promised a respite from the failures of our political system. I find no joy. Many commentators are partisan in the sense of being fixated on winning in politics. I say endless instability is worse even than bad government, but must these really be our choices? And if so, what then?

Some claim the Conservatives have up to two years to push their program through because voters who just turfed the tired arrogant Liberals are in no mood for another election. A minority governing as if it had a majority? Say it ain’t so, Joe. Others tell the Tories to forge ahead boldly with a timid program because they don’t have a mandate for radical change. True. Moreover, they didn’t seek one. In Wednesday’s Globe and Mail, former Liberal party president Stephen LeDrew did a little victory dance, saying: “Harper’s victory actually confirms the triumph of liberalism in Canada. Mr. Harper built his victory on his ability to convince people that his Conservative party is now middle of the road, and therefore able to satisfy people’s obvious desire for a change in government -- without a change in the philosophical premises of that government.” It’s cause to celebrate if you are a liberal, philosophical or partisan. What if you’re not?

In 1984 the Mulroney Tories came in with a strong commitment to spending control and a massive majority and blew the lid off the budget. In 2006 the Harper Tories have a strong commitment to spending increases, a fragile minority and the lid is already stuck in the ceiling. A C.D. Howe Institute report co-authored by my brother said federal program spending went up by nearly double the planned $21 billion from 1997-98 to 2003-04. Budget documents say in 2004-05 alone the overshoot was $13.5 billion. And C.D. Howe president Jack Mintz warned of an “eye-popping” 15-per-cent program- spending increase last year. If the Tories even know of this problem their only discernable plan is to make it worse; they promised more new spending than anyone but the Greens. And economic conservatism is supposed to be where they didn’t compromise.

If our only problem was the Liberals’ corruption we’d be fine. If it was also bad governance we might be OK. But if it was way too much short-sighted spending, the longer such a government lasts the worse. Except the alternative is no different. Our politics is, in a very fundamental way, stagnant. Only failed remedies need apply. It’s tearing us apart.

Our biggest problem is our most fundamental divide. Large numbers of Quebecers, rightly or wrongly, refuse to be governed from Ottawa in the usual way, and elect enough Bloc MPs to make an otherwise divided nation ungovernable. People dismiss Jacques Parizeau as blunt, jovial and tactically inept. But as a strategist, remember his never-ending visit to the dentist. Now open wide. Wallet, not mouth.

If Stephen Harper meets Bloc demands he may retain power briefly; Mr. Duceppe says the door is open. But what will walk through it? Some English Canadians think giving votes, or parliamentary support, to a federalist party means Quebecers are willing to make concessions. Across the river those are the concessions, and must be paid for. If they are, it confirms the wisdom of electing Bloc MPs; if not it confirms the necessity. And fiddling the voting system to reduce Bloc influence would create winning conditions for separatism overnight.

It is not the path of statecraft to paper over cracks in the foundation wall. But it is the path of Canadian politics. >From gun registry to national finances to regional alienation, we encounter unwise policy, inept execution and windy self-congratulation. Our electoral paralysis is a symptom, not a cause, of massive problems festering untreated and undiscussed.

Thank God that’s over. When’s our next tee time?

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]