Today's must-read is the Citizen piece on the vexed question of abortion by ... aw shucks ... my wife and Andrea Mrozek.

Well, here's a sockdolager. A new poll says nearly half of Canadians can't name a single Canadian author. I am personally hurt, as my name appears on no fewer than three worst-sellers. I am also astonished. How can anyone in this country not be sufficiently sick of Margaret Atwood to know her name?

I was going to avoid a "New Year's Resolution" column this year, especially about books, partly because it's a point I've made before and partly because I take seriously C.S. Lewis's advice to be gentle about sins to which you are not personally inclined, and my problem is not too little reading but too much (I currently seem to be reading eight books including one by a Canadian). Fortunately, I didn't put that in print yet.

Fortunately I also did not resolve to give up staring slack-jawed in amazement. So I can start 2009 agape, struggling to force out the words "How can you not have heard of Margaret Atwood?" To be sure, I have never read anything she wrote. But I didn't read it on purpose. I thought long and hard about it. And despite rigorous inattention in high school English, I picked up a few other names along the way as well.

For instance, we read As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee. Who was technically British but dreary enough to be Canadian. I also read The Luck of Ginger Coffey and decided the author wished he was Mordecai Richler ... but I didn't, which means I'd heard of Richler too. I'm pretty sure the Ginger Coffey guy was Canadian, though, because the novel is set in Canada which doesn't happen much otherwise. (Although Quantum of Solace has what I believe is the first-ever appearance by a Canadian spy in a Bond film, and while she's clueless and a bit player it's a start. Maybe someone should write a thriller about a super-villain trying to corner the world ice supply as global warming makes it rare and valuable. From a dark feminist perspective, I mean. Iccce... finger...) And we read Fifth Business by Robertson Davies which I liked but not enough to read anything else by him since. High school English was like that.

Still, I recall a few names. I even recall that we read the Odyssey, in a very condensed version, which I thought was good at the time although it turns out it wasn't. And while it isn't Canadian, didn't Margaret Atwood get hired to do a remake from, of all things, a dark feminist perspective?

I'm not saying you have to suffer through all this stuff. But you don't have to go to Mozambique to know it's a country in Africa or some such place. So how can you not be sufficiently au courant to shout "Enough with Margaret Atwood already" given the relentless efforts to convince us that Canada has a great literature and she's it? Or even "Enough with the honorary degrees for Margaret Atwood already." It's like that Bob Newhart joke about how you can generally appear intelligent by working in a reference to Kafka "even if you have never read any of his ... or her works." Surely you can manage to sigh ambiguously "Atwood, ahhhh, yes, words fail me".

It warms my chilly little blue heart to think of all those professional Canadians convinced the public's attitudes toward race, gender, tobacco, diet and exercise depend primarily on state propaganda now staring slack-jawed in amazement that they haven't even managed to make people hate Ms. Atwood. But I stare with them.

If not her, what about Farley Mowat, the guy who not only wrote about wolves but was apparently groomed by them? And I personally spent years feeling guilty that I'd never read Stephen Leacock and then finally I did and he was so funny I talked the Citizen into letting me write a "books you might have missed" review of him. Which you might have missed. But you must have heard something about a Pierre somebody who wrote about trains and stuff.

Of course you never know what people might not know. The headline on the "turn" on p. A2 of the story about that poll in Tuesday's Citizen said "Authors: 1 in 10 don't read books" while the text said "Twelve per cent indicated they spend no time reading books" which is a bit 1-in-8-ish. But who's counting? (Not journalists, as a rule.) However, while math may be hard, you only have to know there's at least one Margaret Atwood to answer that poll question.

So my non-resolution resolution is gone. Instead here's one for the 47 per cent of Canadians, or four in seven, who risk finding themselves like Dave Lister in Red Dwarf, facing imminent death and regretting all his unfulfilled ambitions including "I always wanted to read ... a book."

In 2009 I swear I'm gonna read something by that Robertson Farley Bertonwood they keep talking about. If only to see if it stinks.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

As you sit amid the wrapping paper and debris on Boxing Day, picking your teeth with a wishbone, I want to ask: What if that was it? Would it be enough?

I don't mean what if you were struck down tomorrow, or if you never saw another Christmas pudding consumed by flames. I mean what if, from now on, there were as many gifts equally good (or tacky) and the same Christmas dinner, in houses as nice and warm as this year and so on, but not more. Would Christmas still be worth it?

OK, hands down all the Grinches who think it's not worth it now. This is a thought experiment about public policy, not odd seasonal customs. And there is a curious cross-party, trans-ideological consensus that the answer to my question is, "No! Certainly not! If things don't keep getting better it's all just dust and ashes."

Seriously. Look at political manifestoes and punditry across the spectrum and you'll discover that no one even debates wealth. All they talk about is growth. Public discussion takes place as if it were incontrovertible that a man with $400 million would be unable to sleep nights were he not convinced next year he'd have at least $412 million.

I realize, incidentally, that this man had $700 million back in August and will be lucky to reach Easter with $200 million while the rest of us worry that we won't be able to afford needles next year, let alone trees. And I certainly hope things get better not worse. I'm not advocating penury as a solution to a slump. My view of voluntary poverty is that it's fine provided it's voluntary. All I'm saying is that there's something very peculiar about the way we frame public policy questions and this peculiarity risks extending deep into our personal lives.

Consider this throwaway line from a recent Fraser Institute book on taxation: "Economic growth is a widely used indicator of an economy's health. It is measured by the annual percentage change in a nation's gross domestic product (GDP)." I cite it not because I think the Fraser Institute folks are weirdos but because whatever their sharpest critics might find to dispute in this book, they'd get to the substance used for the binding before picking on this line. Why?

I'm not against wealth and gadgets and should confess up front that I currently own the coolest car, and phone, I've ever had. My current vehicle is cooler than all the other cars I ever owned put together. So is my phone, now that I come to think of it. And my laptop.

If gains in wealth bought as much happiness as you'd expect then people in the Middle Ages should all have been so miserable they'd have committed suicide if anyone had rope.

But if money could buy happiness it should have by now. King Henri IV of France supposedly said he hoped to see the day when every peasant had a chicken in the pot on Sunday. Fine. They do. What is the aspiration nowadays that requires us not simply to preserve what we have but to keep stuffing fowl into the pot until it bursts?

There is a legitimate national security impulse to have more and better stuff than your enemies. And dynamic growth will probably bring medical advances that matter enormously to those they affect. But not, surely, quality of life elsewhere. Must every book we get for Christmas be bound in Corinthian leather? Do we need cell phones that let us levitate and beam holographs to distant planets? When is enough enough? And if the answer is never, then what good is more?

I can see important arguments for preserving the way of life we now have, so that as people move through the cycle of establishing themselves, accumulating wealth, having families and eventually downsizing as they age, they can capture their special moments with a 2-megapixel cell phone shot rather than daubing them on a cave wall in France with a sheep's foot dipped in gunk. But we have that now. So why does everyone think we must always have more?

Possibly because public authorities have burdened us with an array of social programs whose incentives are as perverse as their financing is unsound, so our only hope is to outgrow our own stupidity and they do not want to focus discussion on the matter and we don't want to either. I'm just saying.

Or maybe everyone is convinced that a free market economy must either expand or die. But I've never seen this case coherently argued and Adam Smith didn't believe it so it's a bit weird that even people who hate him now seem to.

When you get right down to it, how much turkey can a man eat?

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Is that scandal stalking Barack Obama before he is even sworn in? Senate seats for sale in Illinois; a federal grand jury investigating political donations to his choice for commerce secretary... Is he already tarnished? Hardly. First, there is nothing scandalous about staff of a Democratic president-elect holding discussions with the Democratic governor who will fill the Senate seat he just vacated. It would be surprising if they had not. And while we do not know the content of those discussions, and an internal Obama check clearing everyone tells us little, we do know the governor of Illinois directed a string of unimaginative expletives at Mr. Obama and his advisors which suggests they were not receptive to his schemes.

Decency compels us all to admit here that many honest people have unwittingly spoken to a crook at some time in their lives. Especially if they are in politics in Illinois, where three of the last seven governors have done time and dozens of Chicago city councillors have been convicted of corruption since 1971. (As John Barber recently wrote in the Globe and Mail, the vigour with which Illinois prosecutes political corruption makes its perpetrators look stupid as well as crooked.)

History shows that a person can emerge from such a milieu not only smelling but actually being clean. For instance Paul Douglas, a distinguished economics professor who enlisted in the Marines at age 50 in 1942, got himself assigned to combat and won a bronze star and two purple hearts at Peleilu and Okinawa, and represented Illinois for three blameless Senate terms ending in 1967. And Harry Truman rose in Missouri politics with the backing of the Prendergast machine in Kansas City, yet was a man of unimpeachable personal honesty although, it turned out, in the White House he lacked judgement about the integrity of those to whom he felt loyalty.

Such blindness to the flaws of friends may not be directly scandalous. But it fulfils all its essential functions, as it did for Ulysses S. Grant and Warren Harding, neither of whom entered office with visible warning signs of scandal ahead. But if Barack Obama has issues respecting associates they concern not corruption but the disquieting radicalism of men like pastor Jeremiah Wright and former Weatherman Bill Ayers.

That is not to say that having friends, political associates or views that upset partisan opponents is inherently scandalous. While few elections have equalled in vitriol that of 1800, plenty of presidents have entered the White House to a chorus of abuse about their alleged extremism, including Ronald Reagan, who scandalized opinion but was not scandalous because he actually thought the West could win the Cold War.

Nor is it scandalous to face specific accusations, however serious or widely believed, that aren’t true. During the 1828 campaign at least one newspaper called Andrew Jackson the mulatto son of a British soldier’s whore, scandalous only to those who printed it. Charges that “Old Hickory” was occasionally criminally violent had better foundation, but where he was from such conduct was normal.

Even when charges have some factual basis it is important to distinguish between personal and political scandal. In 1884, Republicans taunted Grover Cleveland with “Ma, ma, where’s my Pa?” because he confessed to fathering an illegitimate child, possibly to protect a married friend who was sleeping with the same woman. In any event he won (prompting the counter-chant “Off to the White House ha ha ha”), then sustained as president the reputation for clean government he acquired as mayor of Buffalo. Philandering may be morally repulsive but it did not seem to diminish the political effectiveness of, for instance, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

There is a blurry line between the personal and political when it comes to another popular vice. In 1853 Whigs ridiculed Democratic candidate and former General Franklin Pierce, as “the victor of many a hard-fought bottle” and alcoholism did diminish his already feeble performance in the White House, while one shudders to think of Richard Nixon answering the hot line while pickled. But fondness for strong drink has marked many successful incumbents as well, while some notably abstemious presidents were duds, so opinion is legitimately divided on the relevance of such personal vices to politics.

You wouldn’t expect it to be when someone enters the White House dragging the chains of legitimate political scandal. For instance when Bill Clinton, dangling Whitewater, his wife’s futures trading foray, and enough sexual and other escapades to tag him as “Slick Willy”. But ahead of him stand two presidents whose entry into the White House was obviously and instructively tainted.

First, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes notoriously won the 1876 election on the basis of brazenly false returns from three former Confederate states, Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina, leading to an ugly bargain that Democrats would accept his election in return for the end of Reconstruction and federal pork for the south. His reward was one undistinguished term as “Rutherfraud” Hayes. More ominously, though rarely mentioned in polite company, every single Democrat elected to Congress from the south and every Democrat who became president with southern electoral votes from the end of Reconstruction through the 1960s is contaminated by the flagrant violent racist exclusion of blacks and Republicans from the polls secured by the bargain of 1876. This includes Woodrow Wilson and FDR.

The second relevant example, prominently featuring Illinois, is John F. Kennedy. In his memoir With No Apologies, Barry Goldwater insists he gathered enough affidavits to prove JFK stole the West Virginia Democratic primary but the attorney general failed to follow up. In any event Kennedy definitely won the close election of 1960 through electoral fraud by Richard Daley Sr.’s machine in Cook County and Lyndon Johnson’s in Texas (where Johnson also clearly won his first, narrow Senate victory in 1948 by out-cheating his adversary). Yet no taint attached to Kennedy, then or later, possibly through widespread elite feeling Richard Nixon was the sort of man who needed to have elections stolen from him. If you want real scandal, look no further.

In any case don’t look at Barack Obama. Unless surprising new facts emerge, he enters the White House untainted, directly or indirectly, by the fact that a lot of other politicians including ones from his home state are dumb crooks.

[First published on Mercatornet.com]

Exit left, pursued by shoes. Judging by editorial cartoons, hastily created on-line games and other reactions, that's how George W. Bush is leaving office and apparently it serves him right.

Might I object that this reaction is more than a little juvenile?

Muntazer al-Zaidi, or maybe I should call him "Shoe Man Threw," is apparently a hero in Iraq, at least to a lot of people with whom many Western journalists seem to sympathize. But the mature response is to note how dramatically Iraq has improved since 2003. Try such a shoe-throwing stunt under Saddam Hussein and his henchmen would throw your feet back at you. Followed by your soft bits. Then your head. Then parts of your relatives and, for good measure, chunks of the residents of your home town and maybe the next village as well, plus your old schoolteacher and a guy who just happened to be passing by and looked the wrong way at Uday.

Iraqis must know this. They live there. They must understand that George Bush and the "Coalition of the Willing" have made their country safer for dissent, and that the people most likely to butcher you savagely for daring to contest their opinions are the same people most determined to drive the stinking infidels out and get back to dropping people into plastic-shredders, torturing Olympic team members who underperform and gassing dissident ethnic groups.

The response of Mr. al-Zaidi and his Iraqi supporters is nevertheless understandable, if not logical. It's exhilarating, and not always in a good way, to be freed of obnoxious restraints.

And while of course all cultures are equally vibrant and wonderful, it is a tragic fact that in societies where free expression and personal liberty are suppressed, the capacity for responsible self-control tends to atrophy and the public mood is alternately sullen and explosive. The French Revolution is a dismal illustration of this problem, and things are far worse in most of the Middle East than they ever were in France.

The Globe and Mail declared haughtily that journalists who behave in such a manner jeopardize the working conditions of their colleagues. Which might be misinterpreted as narcissistic: Invade a country, overthrow a brutal dictator, attempt to bring in democracy and openness and some clown goes and does things that might jeopardize our precious access to political insiders. Still, I do agree that journalists have a responsibility to their colleagues and their craft.

I frequently meet politicians whom I despise and, Canada being an open society, they generally know or guess it. I expect they despise me right back. Yet we treat one another with courtesy. Whether they do it out of an obsequious impulse to curry favour or from professionalism I cannot say, but I attempt to do it primarily from the latter motive.

I get access to politicians not so my inner child can throw tantrums, footwear or both. I get it as part of the process of free exchange of information in an open society. If I abuse such access, it is more likely to create employment-related problems for me personally than for my colleagues generally.

But it would also bring shame upon me. For as frustrating as Canadian politics often is, and legitimate as some complaints against the press may be, it is a privilege and a responsibility to take part in an open political culture. And the more you know about history, the dreadful harm that results from closed political and social institutions, and the enormous risks people have taken to establish our own superior system, the less right you think you have to indulge petty grievances at the expense of the informal rules of civility and fair play without which the formal ones are mere, well, formalities.

We really ought to tell that Iraqi journalist we understand how exciting it is to throw shoes at authorities and survive. But then we should urge him to grow up and set a better example. What would Iraq be like if everyone who didn't like what someone else said immediately did something profoundly offensive and physically dangerous? Exactly. You already know. You used to live there. It's not easy to develop habits of political self-control. But considering the stakes, it's worth making the effort, and making it fast. Including prompt, thorough investigation of allegations that Mr. Al-Zaidi was tortured in custody.

In North America we have none of the excuses Iraqis could make in the first heady flush of freedom. As with the obnoxious habit of "pie-ing" politicians, the impulse to hurl objects at George Bush, or to laugh when someone else makes him grimace and duck, is childish and ignoble even when it is not so widespread as to become dangerous.

Self-government is for grownups.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

So that was a pretty good week in politics. We got rid of Stéphane Dion and Mario Dumont. True, we also got Michael Ignatieff ... but we shall see. The departure of Mario Dumont is welcome because he was a walking, talking satire of contemporary politics, including his prolonged masquerade as an alternative to it. Handsome, smooth, politically obsessed since childhood, head of his own breakaway party since age 24, he believed in nothing, passionately. He didn't even know if he was a separatist, let alone where he stood on market economics, social issues or anything else.

He almost won the 2007 election on a wave of popular willingness to try free market reforms in a drastically over-governed province. But at the last minute he found the courage of his lack of convictions, backed off, and tumbled. Now he's gone, squeaking comically about how "there has to be a life after politics." Well, yes, and ideally before it as well.

Mr. Ignatieff got that part right. After a successful career as an annoying student activist, he became a public intellectual, and only returned to politics, and Canada, in his late 50s. The question, though, is what desirable qualities he brings to the job.

Supposedly he is sexy. And one Citizen commentator praised his eyebrows, saying they'd be effective in Question Period. But at the risk of appearing picky, I'm hoping for something a bit more substantial.

Here's the question I want to ask him: Your party has not won a majority with an Anglophone leader since William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1945. I wasn't born then and neither were you. It also hasn't won a majority of seats in Quebec since 1981, which you maybe missed because it was during your nearly three decades abroad. But what, exactly, is it that you've got that will reverse this pattern? Other than cool, ironic brows?

My question does not reflect standard media obsession with political tactics. Rather, to the considerable annoyance of many of us, the Liberal party long defined itself, and won elections, as the party that knew how to keep Quebec happy within Confederation. But the days are long gone when it was enough to get you labelled a statesman if people in English Canada believed, however implausibly, that you appealed to Quebec (or, in Joe Clark's case, if you believed it all by yourself).

For that reason it is disquieting that Mr. Ignatieff doesn't even seem very clear on whether he supports the coalition Mr. Dion foisted upon his hapless party. It's bad enough not to know what he thinks about socialist economics. But surely he has an opinion on separatism.

His hesitation and silence are touted by his supporters as proof of his depth. But they might instead reflect timidity or malleability, especially given that on other important questions like "Is he for or against the Iraq war?" the answer is yes. (Ditto whether or not Israel is guilty of war crimes.) When, indeed, has Mr. Ignatieff ever taken a strong stand against prevailing opinion, or stuck to one when the popular mood changed? Aren't real intellectuals eager to challenge conventional wisdom rather than channel it? Even Pierre Trudeau, hardly the iconoclast the herd of independent minds took him for, staunchly and courageously opposed ethnic nationalism when it was trendy.

So where does Mr. Ignatieff stand on Quebec's place in Canada? It's the core issue raised by this coalition, whose partisans manifestly consider Quebec separatists more legitimate political players than people who despise Quebec separatists. Does Mr. Ignatieff agree, disagree, or need more time to answer the question?

I said months ago that a real Social Democratic Party would be good for our politics. But while such a thing would resemble this coalition in many important ways it would differ in three essentials: a) it would not contain people who want to destroy Canada b) it would be one party with policies, not a coalition with attitudes and c) citizens would be told about it during an election, not afterwards.

Is Mr. Ignatieff prepared to approach his coalition partners including the Bloc to discuss forming such a party? And if they refuse, is he willing to govern with them anyway? The question is not simply a partisan jibe about what happened to the Liberals as the party of national unity. It is a way of seeing whether Mr. Ignatieff is a man of ideas, or just enjoys the reputation.

At least Mr. Dion had his Green Shift. After two years we do not know why Mr. Ignatieff wants to be prime minister. Does he know? Or is he just an older Mario Dumont?

Don't raise an eyebrow at me, sir. It's a fair question, and yours need plucking.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Stephen Harper's cunning trap is closing on the hapless opposition parties. The Governor General's decision to prorogue Parliament until the January budget gives them more time to squirm. But no outcome now favours them.

I know, I know. Early commentary said the prime minister had set his own head on fire. But it is increasingly clear that his adversaries are the ones in a nasty spot. I'm not even sure what to call this bizarre combination of the Bloc, NDP and Liberals? Bl... ND... ral... The Blunderals? The Blendables? But with doubtful constitutional legitimacy and no popular mandate, it is unlikely even to serve the shallow ambitions of its key members no matter what happens next.

If the coalition dissolves in unseemly squabbling between now and late January, or backs down ignominiously on the budget vote, its members end up looking both weak and stupid. If instead they go ahead and vote the government down over the budget, they give the Governor General a constitutional problem that does nothing to alleviate their own political headaches.

The constitutional problem is not what it appears. This is no undemocratic coup attempt by a cabal. The prime minister babbled on Tuesday that "The highest principle of Canadian democracy is that if one wants to be prime minister, one gets one's mandate from the Canadian people and not from Quebec separatists." But in this country we do not elect governments or prime ministers. No such choice appeared on your ballot.

Under parliamentary self-government we elect individual members of Parliament. And a ministry holds office as long, and only as long, as it commands the confidence of the House of Commons that results. That's why I don't think the Governor General should have agreed to prorogue. Given genuine doubts about the ability of Her Majesty's first minister to face the House, she should simply have insisted that he make the attempt. In January he will have to anyway.

The problem is that if he loses that vote it would not be appropriate for Madame Jean to invite Stéphane Dion to form a government.

She should dissolve Parliament and call a new election.

I'm not even sure the Blunderal coalition could win a confidence vote in January either; some Liberal and NDP MPs must be finding this deal repellent or at least very ill-advised. But we could settle that question on the floor of the House.

The real reason we would need an election if the Harper government falls is much deeper. It is the fundamental constitutional principle that while a ministry must enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons, the House must enjoy the confidence of the populace. And there is precedent here. On two occasions, in 1784 and 1834, a monarch dismissed a British ministry supported by the Commons then dissolved Parliament and put the question to the public. In the first case the new Parliament sustained the King's action and in the second reversed it. Both times the result was conclusive.

Now consider Canada in 2008. No sane person cast a ballot in the last federal election unaware that Conservative members would favour the Harper ministry while Liberal, NDP and BQ members would not. But no one knew this coalition was even a possibility, while its hastily-cobbled-together program lacks key planks from each of its members' election platforms (the Green Shift for the Liberals, a corporate tax hike for the NDP and sovereignty for the Bloc). I respectfully submit that a House thus chosen has a mandate to bring down the Harper ministry if it chooses, but not to install the Blendable Blunderals. For that an appeal to the country is necessary. And it seems most unlikely this coalition could survive one.

Of course the Governor General might disagree and invite Mr. Dion to form a government. It wouldn't help. Even if the coalition somehow holds together for a year or two, its members must still one day face the electorate to defend a backroom deal deeply offensive to the West and many non-Tory Canadians' sense of fair play, headed by a bumbler who led his own party to its worst ever popular vote (26.2 per cent), allied to another party that has never reached 21 per cent of the popular vote and a third that wants to destroy Canada. Do you suppose Michael Ignatieff wants to face the nation in 2010 wearing this soiled garment? But leading a revolt to keep the hated Tories in power sounds ugly too.

If Mr. Harper didn't have most of this worked out in advance he's amazingly lucky. With no other way to get a majority, and unable to govern without one, he tricked his foes into a greedy, shameless lunge for power, baffling and offensive to the public.

Game set and match to Mr. Harper. Oh, and nice trap. Subtle, elegant and lethal.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Apparently the Carleton University Students Association won't refuse to raise money for cystic fibrosis after all. Remarkable what they sometimes end up teaching in schools, isn't it?

Not including the "fact" that cystic fibrosis (CF) primarily affects white men. Although it was the basis of the CUSA's quickly-reversed decision to cancel the annual fall Shinerama CF fundraiser, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CCFF) swiftly explained that this disease afflicts men and women equally and strikes non-whites significantly, though at a lower rate than whites. The lesson: Politics and science are not natural allies.

Campus political correctness is in the news lately; you probably read about Queen's University hiring six student "dialogue facilitators" to eavesdrop on discussions in quest of intolerant remarks. But supposedly it's not meant to intimidate or punish; rather, said an assistant dean at Queen's, "If there's a teachable moment, we'll take it." So in the spirit of inclusiveness, let me do just that.

I have no doubt the CCFF spokeswoman had her facts straight. But her response offers a splendid opportunity to discuss whether it would be wrong to raise money for CF if in fact it did mostly affect white men. For bonus points, would it be OK to object to raising money for diseases that mostly affect women or non-whites? The lesson: It's still bigotry if you hate men, white people or both.

The original motion justified itself in part because "all orientees and volunteers should feel like their fundraising efforts will serve the their (sic) diverse communities." But surely a genuine commitment to diversity and openness would encourage non-white non-men to raise money for diseases that affect mostly pale males, and vice versa. Whereas the ultimate logic of the CUSA motion would be to assign every fund-raising student a disease that predominately affects people of the same sex, race, sexual orientation, age, ethnic group, religion, height, weight and eye colour, or even a disease they personally have, and we'd all wind up in separate, hostile enclaves, bitterly refusing to help one another in the name of community. The lesson: Calling something tolerant and inclusive is no guarantee of its being so.

This last lesson is especially important because the original CUSA motion would have had some merit if medical fundraising were primarily done for, and by, straight white men with nicknames like Biff and Chet. But it's not.

Consider the fundraising clout of AIDS. Could it be connected with the fact that more celebrities and affluent North American progressives know people with AIDS than with malaria, a very treatable scourge of Third World children? And then there's breast cancer. This disease seems to have no difficulty arranging high-profile fund-raising campaigns -- on campuses and involving men -- and I'm not being snide when I point out that the gender impact of breast cancer is far from neutral. (It does occur in men, but as you guessed it is very rare.) Where is the massive prostate cancer effort with its own coloured ribbons and high sociological status?

It is also remarkable that those who passed the original CUSA motion did not realise it would be controversial, let alone that it ought to be. The lesson: Student politics is frequently dominated by childish, hothouse radicalism.

It's not confined to campus. The authors of a $2-million report on youth violence for the Ontario government, a former Liberal speaker of the Ontario legislature and a former Conservative attorney general of Ontario no less, just concluded that "Racism is worse than it was a generation ago, while there are fewer resources and structures to counter this great evil than existed in years past." After all that has been accomplished, often at great personal risk, against bigotry in the last 40 years such a conclusion is not merely absurd but irresponsible. The lesson: Not all student politicians grow up.

To close on a more positive note, author and former Chrétien aide Warren Kinsella discusses this issue on his blog and describes a serious mistake by CUSA executive when he was its president in 1983-84, concluding "it is my hope that the ill-informed kids at CUSA also learn from their experience -- because that is what your university days are supposed to be all about. In politics, as in life, it is not making a mistake that matters so much. It is what you make of that mistake. That is what makes us better people, and the world around us better, too."

Not everyone will learn them, of course. But it seems they do offer life lessons at university. Wow.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]