So apparently there's this new Robin Hood movie that proves Russell Crowe's accent is as bad as his temper. The critics seem to feel it couldn't split an arrow at one pace, and I'd sooner fight Little John with a quarterstaff on a narrow bridge than go see it. But first let me cudgel the film for trying to steal from our heritage to give to political correctness.

The problem is the old canard that Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor. The New York Times once called Fidel Castro "The Robin Hood of the Caribbean", but in his lawless use of state power to reward those he liked, Castro was, and remains, a Prince John. Robin Hood did the opposite. He took back from the rich and powerful what they had stolen from the poor and meek. His standard was justice, not envy. He did not practise class war and he never stole.

Quibblers may object that he did nothing, period. In university I took a fascinating "Legend, Myth and History" course in which the professor demonstrated to my satisfaction that King Arthur did exist a bit but Robin Hood did not.

I mean intellectual satisfaction, not emotional. I like Robin Hood.

I also like Arthur. I'm glad he existed and I like the core of the legend, if not the dreadful purple prose of Parsival or subsequent literary and cinematic manglings. The historical Arthur seems to have been a Celtic leader whose valiant resistance halted the tide of Saxon barbarism for half a century. In that sense he's the last hero of Roman Britain rather than a forerunner of the Albion we know and love.

Since the Saxons laid the foundations for the only functioning system of self-government the world has ever seen (after they settled down a bit and became Christian), Arthur's defeat was not as bad as it seemed at the time. But he remains a magnificent emblem of a cause so lost that history has even misplaced Mount Badon where he won his great victory. And lost causes have a special romance because those who go down in such a manner defy the maxim that "might makes right." Arthur tells us an important truth we all know anyway, and it's a conservative one.

So does Robin Hood. This makes him an icon, irresistible to today's imaginatively bankrupt filmmakers to appropriate an aura they can no longer create. See "Bond, James: endless sequels" for more on this theme. But note also that Robin's romance has more to do with Bond than Arthur. For despite his technical non-existence, he is not the emblem of a lost cause. He is the emblem of Magna Carta triumphant.

In the classic stories he personally fades away or perishes through treachery to preserve the adolescent atmosphere of the Merry Men. But no, it doesn't mean they were all gay. Not even the Sheriff of Nottingham tried to transvalue Robin Hood and we shouldn't either. Sometimes an arrow is just an arrow. And Robin is a straight arrow who would never steal, because theft is wrong.

Robin Hood stood for legitimate authority. Unlawfully deprived of his own inheritance as an act of bigoted injustice, he fought the tyrannical regent Prince John while waiting for the rightful King Richard Coeur de Lion to return and set all right.

Here we must admit history has been split by a willow shaft.

Richard was a wretched wilful king entirely miscast as just and noble. John on the other hand is a villain straight out of central casting. Despite occasional rehabilitation efforts, and brief Protestant enthusiasm for a king who defied the Pope, the last word on my wretched royal namesake goes to historian Christopher Brooke: Given John's generally odious family "some have wondered whether John was really any worse than his father or brothers. To this it can only be answered that contemporaries clearly thought that he was... Precisely what was wrong with John is very hard to say. But men did not trust him; they refused to fight in his company; they sought to exact unusual promises from him."

Maybe it was that bit where he murdered his nephew in a drunken rage, attacked ancient liberties, lost the crown jewels in a river and was generally vile, brutal, liquored up and incompetent.

In short, a classic tyrant, the eternal enemy of British liberty.

Against him, eternally, Robin Hood is a conservative hero in every way. Dedicated to the rule of law, brave, resourceful, cheerful in adversity, loyal to his friends and his sweetheart, chaste before marriage, a true Catholic, and faithful to the spirit of the Second Amendment in taking up arms against tyranny. He's even a die-hard constitutional monarchist.

In short, he's ours and you can't have him for your nasty left-wing causes, no matter how bad your accent or your temper.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Egad. I think I've found a less popular position than my proposal to quintuple MPs' office budgets. It is that the auditor general should not examine their spending, for managerial, political and constitutional reasons.

Let us start with the constitutional because it is most fundamental. The central function of Parliament in our battered system of self-government is to control the executive. Its central tool is control of the purse strings. And the central defect of our governance today is that legislators are unable even to figure out where the executive is spending, let alone what to do about it.

Arguably MPs and senators do not wish to spend time scrutinizing the "estimates" or reviewing spending because it offers neither professional nor personal satisfaction. It is scandalous to read that legislators gave up their power to approve government borrowing in the 2007 budget and didn't even know they'd done it. And the Liberal excuse for allowing a further shocking erosion of Parliament's authority in the latest massive omnibus, nay juggernaut budget bill, that they want to oppose the budget without bringing down the government, certainly underlines MPs' complicity in their own neutering.

So yes, there's a lot rotten in the state of Parliament. It doesn't mean we should make it worse and hope it helps. It means we need to get back to basics.

Here's one now. The auditor general is an officer of Parliament whose function is to assist legislators in understanding Executive branch spending so they have some hope of doing something about it. For her instead to devote her time to scrutinizing Parliament is not under present circumstances simply beside the point; it is directly contrary to it. What's out of control is executive, not legislative, spending.

At this point the political objection becomes pertinent. I recognize that MPs are currently held in shockingly low public regard for which, as with their powerlessness, they bear much blame. But clearly everyone including lazy journalists hopes if the AG turns her searchlight around 180 degrees we'll get juicy scandals involving expensive meals, fancy junkets and if we're really lucky busty hookers or embezzlement.

We don't need that and we don't want it. The executive branch already has the legislative on the ropes and the last thing we need is further manufactured outrage to reduce legislators from puppets and clowns to vaguely comic slime.

Of course I'm not trying to help legislators misuse or misappropriate public money. Honesty in public life is extremely important and Canada is very fortunate in that corruption in government is so rare here while citizens react with genuine, sustained outrage to any hint of it. But, despite what you read in the newspapers, we have safeguards in place here.

MPs are subject to rigorous rules about spending. And the House of Commons board of internal economy scrutinizes their spending, audits it thoroughly, and publishes the results on its website, by member (see www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/boie-e.htm). If we like, voters can insist that MPs offer more detail or face electoral defeat. But it's no defence against fraud. That's what real audits are for. And the board of internal economy already does those while the auditor general isn't trying to.

Thus the managerial issue. Despite what many commentators seem to be implying, the AG isn't offering to track down lavish or illegal spending. She's offering a "performance audit" to discover whether Parliament spends in ways that seem effective to people who teach business administration.

I would not devote one cent of public (or private) money to such flow-chart gooblahoy. It is just more illusion of technique. And I can already tell you the answer: Parliamentary spending is completely ineffective because there isn't nearly enough of it.

MPs have a basic office budget of under $300,000 with which to track a million times that much executive branch spending. That budget hires at most four employees: two in the riding, one buried in administrative work, and one hapless overloaded underpaid young person doing all the policy research while desperately hoping one day to become a weakly supported MP instead of weakly supporting one. (Legislators also get help from the diligent but overloaded Library of Parliament and committee staff).

A U.S. Senator has from two- to five-dozen staffers and an important congressional committee has more than 100. There you can have a long, prestigious, well-paid career keeping legislators informed on one important issue. That's value for money. But you don't figure it out with flip charts and bullet lists. You use common sense.

MPs do many annoying things. But they are not evading financial scrutiny and they are not trying to. So don't be mad at them, or me, on this one.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

The old Roman advice to beware Greeks bearing gifts would probably run you onto the shoals of political correctness today. But doesn't this giant EU bailout for Greece call to anyone's minds that big wooden horse outside the gates of Troy?

There's actually a B horror flick quality to the scene in the Odyssey where the Greeks have been besieging Troy for 10 years and then one day they've all gone away and there's this big wooden horse and the Trojans don't suspect anything.

But then, isn't this Greek bailout thing one of those news stories that should have you barring the gates and doubling the guard on the walls before you're even done with the headline?

Or imagine you're there on the couch after midnight and Jim Flaherty solemnly assures people this rescue plan is "comprehensive and credible." The hair on your neck should already be rising as you anticipate, correctly, that the article will go on to tell you "Details remain elusive as to how the $1-trillion U.S. scheme will eventually unfold." Then politicians promise prudent and responsible reforms as soon as we've done this absolutely stupid and reckless thing with a dollar sign then a one followed by 12 zeros and newspapers describe how maybe the EU will enforce its own fiscal rules for real, this time for sure, or centralize power in a real functioning federal government.

If this were a B movie the audience would all be shouting "No, no, the elite is sneaking up behind you" at the hapless dopes on the screen. Thus Gordon Brown's crumbling, repudiated Labour government just put taxpayers on the hook for "at least £13 billion of debt held by other European governments" in the giant euro bailout and, the Daily Telegraph reported Monday, they "had no choice but to surrender because the decision was taken under a Lisbon Treaty 'exceptional occurrences' clause that stripped Britain of its veto." In theory Britain ducked an even larger £624 billion package, but if you believe that I have a big wooden horse for you that surely doesn't contain any Greek warriors.

The New York Times credited Barack Obama with tricking the German Chancellor into going along with this incredibly big, expensive, reckless and complicated fiscal schmozzle. Which is something the Americans have some experience with after their housing market meltdown and then their stimulus package and $1.4 trillion federal deficit. If there were two horses out there I'd suggest the Americans had put the second one in place, knowing their own public finances are in such a colossal mess that they need the EU in financial flames to make sure nobody has anywhere to flee from the U.S. dollar. More probably Obama is a dupe rather than a conspirator. But again, if European voters don't like it, they can't vote him out of office. I'll tell you one thing that's not in this horse: democratic accountability.

Do you think that any of these central bankers and finance ministers assuring us rubes that top men have worked it all out would wheel this horsie into their own homes? Would they put 10 bucks of their own at risk here? Hoo hah. But they're happily pulling it into the Treasury because they'll be home in bed when it goes up in flames. One Citizen story reported that "Markets have run wild since a debt crisis triggered in Greece spread to euro neighbours including Portugal, Spain and Italy -- with speculators accused of running for cover from euro currency and bond markets." Hey you speculators, wait for me. No, wait, I forgot, taxpayers can't run for cover. Politicians won't let us.

In Germany, voters actually punished the pseudo-conservative ruling Christian Democrats for making a sacrificial offering of £19 billion at the horse; in regional elections on Sunday they deprived Chancellor Angela Merkel's party of its majority in the upper house. But the result, the Daily Telegraph reports, is hardly encouraging: "The election defeat means the German Chancellor has lost control of the legislative process, allowing Social Democrats and Greens to block reforms aimed at cutting Germany's high public spending."

This apparently perverse result actually makes sense. A German government that doesn't even think Greece really ought to cut down a little is clearly not ready to reform its own spending.

In that sense this crisis is not the Greeks' fault at all. They're just playing the same game as everyone else, with less shame and less skill but to general applause. That's why they ran out of pretend money first and rolled a big horse up to the walls of central banks, insisting it has that special air of solemn responsibility that will convince everyone there's no danger. But why did they get so much help building it from inside the city?

Not even the Trojans were that dumb.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Now that the chalk dust has settled let's draw a few lessons from the ruckus over sex education in Ontario. First, write on the blackboard 100 times that, having been thrown out the schoolhouse door due to public outcry, this sexually radical curriculum will sneak back in the window. The modern progressive agenda is relentlessly committed to sexualizing childhood and, while the Ontario government may be claiming it's going to back off, we know by now what commitments from the McGuinty regime are worth, including, most recently, that the HST won't increase the tax burden.

Second, Dalton McGuinty furnishes dramatic proof that a dull, prosaic, suburban exterior offers excellent camouflage for virulent partisanship and ideological radicalism. Some defenders of the new curriculum portrayed it as an innocent excursion into biology, as though it were possible innocently to describe sexual mechanics to people below the age of puberty. But others admitted frankly that the plan was to create a New Sexual Person to replace the untutored and vulgar cretins who had to this point cluttered up planet Earth.

Thus the Globe and Mail editorialized: "A new sex-education curriculum in Ontario treats homosexuality as a normal part of life, and so it should, in a country in which gay marriage is legal." The editorial went on to ridicule the idea that "children may choose homosexuality because of what they learn in school," while insisting that children will choose tolerance because of what they learn in school. It then said "even young children" already know the term gay "may be used as an insult. It does no one any good to leave the children on their own to make sense of it all."

Note the key assumption that unless schools step in children will be left "on their own." It would be true if they had no parents or, alternatively, if parents were manifestly unfit to teach morals or manners acceptable to Globe editorialists. Since I dimly recall from my own sex ed classes that children tend to have parents, it must be the latter.

Dalton McGuinty openly agreed, which is why he initially supported the new curriculum. Children, the premier gurgled, "are going to get this information. If we can provide (it) in a format and in a venue over which we have some control or they can just get it entirely on their own and be informed by potentially uninformed sources, like their friends at school. So why wouldn't we recognize that we live in an information age and why wouldn't we try to present this information in a thoughtful and responsible and open way?" The obvious answer is "because it's their parents' job." But equally obviously, Mr. McGuinty, despite his boring Father Knows Best persona, has no time for such ignorant talk in this "information age."

The National Post quoted one American advocate who was really excited by the Ontario curriculum. "Then when I saw they changed their minds, I thought: 'Oh great, why don't you just move down here.' That's what we do in the States, kow-tow to parents' groups and religious leaders instead of sticking our feet in the ground and saying, 'We are the educational experts.' We certainly don't have parents deciding whether or when or how to teach math ..."

Actually I think schools teach math because parents want them to. Now pardon me while I go hunt a mammoth.

Another lesson is that when sex meets ethnicity, political dishonesty soars to new heights. The newspapers beat the usual drums about opposition to this curriculum change coming from wretched know-nothing Christians. But surely much of it actually came from Muslim parents. And since multicultural ideologues are committed to the notion that all cultures are relentlessly vibrant and quaint but have no substantive differences, the prospect of imams weighing in publicly on teaching grade school kids that gay is good terrified them into an abrupt tactical retreat.

Snobbery also made an appearance. The Citizen's Elizabeth Payne opined that "For all its cosmopolitan airs, Ontario is not so far removed from the days when ladies' auxiliaries, county fairs and church suppers were an essential part of the fabric of life and when public debate centred on worries about the corruption of minors." Now it seems to centre on concerns that the state isn't doing enough in this area; Payne went on to say "sex ed circa 2010 is very much aimed at promoting tolerance and openness about sex -- a positive move" and that "'... masturbating ... is common and is not harmful ...' is how teachers are prompted to answer questions about what is normal."

So the key lesson is that this episode was about schools telling children what's normal instead of parents. Public authorities may look like boring liars but underneath they're panting social engineers. Memorize it, because it will be on the test.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

I don't know what effect defenders of our historical tradition are having on its enemies, but by God they frighten me.

Consider Andrew Cohen's column supporting renaming Wellington Street for Sir John A. Macdonald. And he's president of the Historica-Dominion Institute, "the largest, independent organization dedicated to Canadian history, identity and citizenship." So what's he doing whiting out our past? (Uh, sorry, kids, a pre-computer reference about as relevant to you as Harold Godwinson's offer to King Harald of Norway.)

His most revealing argument was that having a street named for the Iron Duke reflected "the insecurity of an adolescent nation trapped in its neo-colonialism." Actually, adolescents are those who cannot bear to be in the presence of their parents because they yearn to be independent but lack the capacity. Hence Mark Twain's comment "When I was 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years." Adults may not always like where they came from, but they don't pretend it's not there.

Consider that it's now been almost as long since Vimy as the 102 years between Vimy and Waterloo. Andrew said getting rid of Wellington Street "would be a natural step for a country that has been vigorously asserting itself in political, social and constitutional ways since Vimy Ridge in 1917." But do you think the men who made Canada a nation on that ghastly battlefield were embarrassed to stand in the line from Drake to Marlborough to the Iron Duke? Would they have taken the ridge if they had been?

Likewise, many accounts of D-Day have soldiers calming their pre-invasion jitters by recalling Shakespeare's Henry V's pre-Agincourt speech about how "gentlemen in England now a-bed/ Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,/ And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks/ That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day." To soldiers approaching Juno Beach these weren't just pretty words. They were a reminder of their heroic past.

Then there's this week's ruling by Commons speaker Peter Milliken that the executive branch may not refuse a parliamentary demand for documents. "Before us," he said, "are issues that question the very foundations upon which our parliamentary system is built. In a system of responsible government, the fundamental right of the House of Commons to hold the Government to account for its actions is an indisputable privilege and, in fact, an obligation."

These foundations were not laid 28 years ago, or 143. Nor even in the 17th-century quarrels with the Stuarts. They were laid before the Normans came to Hastings and if they are undermined or left to crumble, the building erected on them cannot stand. A paradox of trying to "Canadianize" our history is that the heroes of this endeavour, other than Trudeau, were fully aware of this fact.

There was a revolting touch of adolescent self-absorption in Lester Pearson telling a farewell banquet in England in June 1941 he was pleased "to be a Canadian, with a line of national development stretching 'from the Magna Carta to the Sirois Commission'." (I quote Andrew Cohen's biography.) Frankly, I should expect the Sirois Commission to hold its manhood cheap whilst any speaks of Magna Carta. But if even the guy who ditched the Red Ensign was proud of that line it may prove hard to erase entirely.

Suppose we did try to take seriously the concept of Canada as having no historical antecedents, as having sprung full-grown from the brow of Sir John A. That his is generally regarded as the boozy brow of a hack isn't exactly inspiring. But it's also not fair; Macdonald thought seriously about the British foundations of our liberty. It is disingenuous to try to purge British influence from our capital in the name of a man whose final campaign slogan was "A British subject I was born, a British subject I will die."

And what will students say when they learn that he prefaced this sentiment with: "Under the broad folds of the Union Jack, we enjoy the most ample liberty to govern ourselves as we please and at the same time we participate in the advantages which flow from association with the mightiest empire the world has ever seen."

I do not think we elevate ourselves by doing to Wellington symbolically what Napoleon could not do in fact. I'm reminded of Chesterton's line "It requires real courage to face the past, because the past is full of facts which cannot be got over; of men certainly wiser than we, and of things done which we could not do." Like saving freedom by defeating Napoleon. It takes real courage to face Wellington at Waterloo, and the men he commanded. But if we are a grown-up nation, I'm sure we can do it.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Once in a while you hear an idea so remarkable you can’t believe you didn’t think of it. The light bulb (Edison), telephones (Bell), telephone soliciting (Satan), teaching grade six kids vaginal lubrication (Dalton McGuinty). But the one I’m currently kicking myself for missing is Canadian Anglicans’ plan to cope with declining membership and revenue by soliciting corporate advertising. Why didn’t Jesus think of the Sermon on the Billboard? Yea, verily. Michael Valpy wrote in Tuesday’s Globe and Mail “The Anglican Church of Canada is inviting corporate sponsorship of its national convention this year, selling space for brand logos on delegate documents, advertising signs in its meeting spaces and a private lunch for executives with the church’s senior archbishop. It’s the first time in its 117-year history that the Canadian church made its governing synod available for a mess of pottage... Asked about the genesis of the sponsorship idea, Vianney Carrière, the Anglicans’ national director of communications and information resources, said: ‘The genesis is the need for money.’... The synod agenda is described as ‘timely, relevant and important and includes debates, resolutions and presentations on major global issues such as poverty, human sexuality, the rights of indigenous peoples and the care of the environment.’”

OK, that’s a tough sell. But I still think turning religion into an advertising rather than a spiritual venture has enormous untapped potential that not even Bruce Barton recognized when he depicted Christ as the world’s greatest ad man back in the 1920s.

Start with ancient Egyptian religion. Among the advantages here is it won’t offend anyone because no one worships Ra any more (at least I don’t think so; I suppose I could steal one of Dan Brown’s ideas and write a thriller about a journalist pursued by a secret Ra cult because of a sacrilegious column but I’m going to get so rich with this other stuff I won’t have to bother). Now you may think a lack of adherents limits the commercial possibilities even if the whole justification for the Anglican initiative is that they, too, are running out of parishioners. But Horus, Isis and that crowd offer a spectacular advantage unrelated to bodies in pews: pyramids.

That’s right. Pyramids. A marketing dream beyond compare. First of all, they’re famous and evocative. Just as writing a “vampire-themed” book where the vampires aren’t evil, smelly or allergic to sunlight still rips off the mystique painstakingly crafted by Bram Stoker et al., so pyramids automatically entrance people.

Secondly, they’re really big and obvious. The great pyramid at Giza was the tallest building in the world for almost 4,000 years and progress has yet to surround it with ugly cement or glass-and-steel boxes. What a spot for a billboard.

Following the Anglican inspiration to try to squeeze money out of companies that already do business with the church, I suppose you’d start trolling for pyramid sponsors among embalmers or goldsmiths. But since no one knows much about ancient Egyptian religion anyway (I mean honestly, who even in Cairo has much of an opinion about Osiris today) I expect you could hawk breakfast cereal as well. “Ptah says start your afterlife with barley bits!”

I realize some people think the pyramids were built by aliens with a strange sense of humour. But since I’m not too worried about them returning in wrath or for five percent of net revenue, I think a few cute ET-type product spokesmen are also a strong possibility.

As for the sphinx, why should it sit there mute and mysterious when it could be dressed up as everyone’s favourite hamburger clown? Talk about product placement. OK, the Anglicans might consider it in poor taste as they’ve sort of gone off salt of the earth. But hey, even the best idea involves some challenges.

Like marketing with Osama bin Laden types. Other than “blows up real good” it’s not obvious what a jihadi values in an airplane, building, car, pair of shoes or person. A belief that attractive clothing on women leads to earthquakes is a godsend to cartoonists but a nightmare for marketers. But there’s already an Easter Island statue Kleenex dispenser and I’m sure those babies could also push headphones or pillows. And let’s use all those smiling buddhas to peddle enticing terrestrial pleasures not boring spiritual calm. Fancy microwave entrees, say, or skin care products.

Now we’re all rich, I have one final wacky idea for you Anglicans. Ordinarily you seem content to dwindle and vanish in a comfortably sanctimonious, socially just manner. But if you’re desperate enough to consider advertising, why not try using your convention, churches and social groups to sell people this “Bible”, the dead Nazarene carpenter and salvation in return for virtue?

Nah. Too crazy.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

[First appeared on Mercatornet.com] Whatever happened to Britain? I realize a map of Europe still shows it sitting off the north coast of France. But what happened to the land of Kipling, Drake and Horatio Nelson, and for that matter Edward Coke and William Blackstone?

This melancholy thought was underlined for me the other day by a Raffles story. Raffles, for those of you not familiar with second-rate vaguely seedy Victorian crime writing, was a "gentleman thief" created by Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law E.W. Hornung, whose escapades are narrated by his faithful sidekick "Bunny." (No cheap shots about public schools please.)

One might find the stories morally as well as aesthetically disagreeable. But they are permeated by a special kind of Britishness, an assurance of cultural strength and resilience so profound that elegant misconduct by a superficially respectable member of the elite merely added spice and depth to British life. This atmosphere of effortless excellence lingers as late as, say, the mid-20th-century's The Avengers or James Bond. But it was dissipating fast even then, and seems to me to be all but gone today.

This feeling has been growing on me since I had a chance to walk around London two years ago. The evocative magic of Marble Arch, the Albert Memorial, Trafalgar Square and Big Ben remain. I was inspired, even transported, just to be there, gazing at statues of real historical heroes from Wellington to "Monty". But I was also brought almost to tears by the powerfully peculiar sensation of walking among ruins that had not fallen down.

After Rome fell, one could see the broken buildings, the toppled columns, the shattered facades, and sense that something great had been destroyed. But at least the Romans, even in their terminal decay, insisted that barbarians take the trouble to knock the place down. Somehow Britain succumbed to dry rot instead. London remains the heart of a great empire, but what happened to the body? Where are the limbs, the brains, the blood?

I am tempted to blame the Labour Party, whose rise to power starting in the 1930s seems to coincide with Britain's tumble from insouciant magnificence into shabby ruin. But it would be unfair for two reasons. First, in the period of Labour ascendancy the Conservatives have generally been no better, accepting decline if not actively promoting it and, despite Mrs. Thatcher's efforts, deceiving voters with the shadow but not substance of a real alternative.

The revelation that the current Labour Party deliberately allowed mass immigration precisely to alter the character of the electorate so as to rub the noses of Tories in multiculturalism is exactly the sort of thing I mean. Of course there was a small outcry among the usual suspects. But the Parliamentary Conservative party didn't have the guts to make a major issue out of it and, one suspects, they didn't so much lack the courage of their convictions as suffer a massive deficit in both areas.

When Bertold Brecht suggested dissolving the electorate and electing a new one in the 1950s, it was considered the height of villainous communist arrogance and social engineering. When Labour was caught doing it 50 years later, no one really cared enough about the old one to object.

Thus my second reason for not concentrating too much on the Labour Party is that the persistent habit of electing socialists who seem ashamed of their country is more likely to be a symptom than a cause of decay. It reflects on voters and citizens more than on politicians.

I am not inclined to list the sort of yobbish behaviour now too evidently on display as a cause of the decline. Possibly it is not even a symptom. There has always been a drunken, rowdy side to the British character that was, I think, part of the strength of the Empire. Upper-class twits may have commanded the regiments, but rough-edged Cockneys and Highlanders and Ulstermen formed the infantry squares and furnished the redoubtable sergeant-majors who made the redcoats what they were. The distressing impression I have formed, however, is that somehow all the mortar has been washed away, leaving the building blocks scattered in a disorganized fashion.

It may seem absurd, and offensive, that such a small foggy island should have played such a large role for so long. It may be particularly offensive that Britons had cultural habits that let Britannia rule the waves when her population was smaller even than that of various European rivals, let alone those enormous portions of the globe whose combined resources could not fend off a "butcher and bolt" expedition or even a gunboat.

On the other hand, recall that one of the most famous gunboat incidents involved the Royal Navy shelling the palace of the sultan of Zanzibar until he agreed to end the slave trade... and then billing him for the expended ammunition. This episode reminds us that when Britannia ruled the waves the British were a mighty force for good in the world even if they were at times insufferable about it. And the critical problem seems not to be that foreigners resented this special quality of Britishness, but that somehow the inhabitants of Albion themselves began to do so.

For many years the British, broadly speaking, were convinced that they would somehow find a way through any difficulty. That conviction was not itself the foundation of their success; the British really did a lot of things much better than other people, from creating wealth to tolerating dissent to fighting. But when it disappeared, when it started to seem somehow gauche to think Britain was different from other cultures and should be, it all went to wrack and ruin.

Now it may also be argued that, for all this decline and despite the Labour Party underfunding and overstretching their military in a way not even our governments can match, Britain remains the second-most-powerful country in the world. After the United States, no one can project force like the British and, moreover, no one else is as likely to do it for generally good motives.

I should also note the argument by Niall Ferguson in his book Empire that what finally broke Britain as a world power was throwing everything the Empire had left into the struggle against Hitler which, in his view, justified everything about the Empire including its less attractive features. And undoubtedly World War II took a lot out of Britain. But so, surely, did the long struggle against France from the 17th century through the final defeat of Napoleon, which only inspired Britons to new greatness.

For that reason I find the contrast between Britain just a century ago and Britain today both sad and scary. Nobody conquered them. Nobody took away that special feel and the extraordinary results it generated. They just seem to have gotten bored and demoralized and tossed it aside. As far as I can see they did it to themselves.

If that's true, the same thing could happen to us. In fact I think it is. So next time you're in London ask yourself: As recently as the 1940s it inspired the inhabitants to sing that there'd always be an England. And now it's only true geographically. It's enough to make Nelson jump off his column.

Two years ago, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal aptly called former U.S. President Jimmy Carter "an international nuisance who aspires to be a menace." But it is curious how often the current president, despite all the powers his office gives him to do real harm, seems to be stuck merely being annoying.

Consider Barack Obama's new nuclear doctrine. He claims the United States would not retaliate with nuclear weapons against a nation that attacked it with chemical or biological weapons but was in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This assertion probably isn't even true. But it's certainly worrisome.

It is made worse, not better, by its misleading veneer of good sense. The ostensible idea is to give nations an incentive to comply with the NNPT rather than go about providing terrorists with radioactive material. The goal is appealingly rational: Nobody wants terrorists to have nuclear devices except terrorists and their more deranged sympathizers. And the method looks rational, too: It relies on incentives rather than exhortation.

The difficulty is that it only affects people who are seriously considering attacking America with weapons of mass destruction. And the only change from their point of view is that if they pick the right WMD, they supposedly face far less devastating retaliation than before. So making such an attack now appears more attractive while not making it looks just the same.

I say "appears" advisedly. This so-called policy doesn't even really help the bad guys, because a major biological attack on the United States by an identifiable government is just as likely to provoke a nuclear response as before the president's fatuous babbling. But it might trick them into thinking otherwise. So all it really does is marginally increase the risk that thousands of Americans and then thousands of non-Americans will die. Not exactly a win-win policy, is it?

I must not call making it more tempting for evil regimes to try to slaughter millions of the citizens Obama is sworn to protect "stupid" in the technical sense. Obama is many things, but he's not dumb. Indeed, I think what really lies behind this policy is a very bad idea held primarily by smart people.

I believe the real conceptual basis of this gesture is the notion that tension in the world is due, in large part, to fear of the democracies and their bullying foreign policies, so measures to reduce that fear by softening both the tone of American foreign policy and the military capacity behind it will make aggression against the West less rather than more likely. Again, one cannot properly label this policy "stupid" because it is held by large numbers of intelligent people, just as it was in the 1930s, the 1900s, and indeed the 1970s. But it is a very, very bad idea.

So is the just-concluded gabfest about better control of nuclear material which, again, had a dangerously misleading coating of good sense about it. Its goal was not irrational. Nobody except maniacs favour careless handling of things that could atomically go boom. Nor is the method stupid; it cannot hurt for decent governments to pay more attention to where they put dangerous radioactive stuff. But can anyone show me an example from history where real, stupidity-class carelessness in the handling of potentially dangerous material played a major role in letting the villains strike at the good guys?

No. The real dangers are quite different. What has encouraged aggression since recorded history began is, first, a pervasive and consistent reluctance to accept the existence of evil in the world and, second, an even more pervasive and consistent reluctance to deal with evil once you have been forced to notice it. A relatively trivial, but revealing, example is the Canadian proposal to impose an oil embargo on Italy after Mussolini attacked Ethiopia in 1935. This proposal got people's attention, because it would really have hurt, and was promptly repudiated by all the democracies including, humiliatingly, Canada's own.

The result, naturally, was to embolden evil. It tipped the bad guys off that we knew they were bad, but assured them we were currently unwilling to do anything important or painful about it so they should arm fast and strike hard before we recovered our wits and spines. Which very nearly led to Hitler conquering the world. And, again, everybody knew Hitler was re-arming Germany in violation of its international obligations. It was their unwillingness to act on this knowledge, not careless handling of tank parts, that led to the blitzkrieg.

For Barack Obama to expend time and effort and enlist the prestige of his office on initiatives that distract us from the need to acknowledge and confront evil is certainly irritating. On reflection, I'm inclined to find it scary as well.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]