In my latest commentary for the National Post I say it’s shabby political theatre for the Liberals to release “secret” bureaucratic documents that echo administration talking points defending selling armoured personnel carriers to the repressive anti-Western Saudi regime.

In my latest National Post commentary I argue that superficially attractive Liberal commitment to “responsible conviction” in foreign policy may well mean nothing… as usual.

It's great news that New Zealanders have voted to keep their flag instead of adopting an ugly empty substitute. And revealing news. At first the traditional flag seemed doomed, partly because it was the traditional flag. Why, it even had the Union Jack, and the usual suspects were saying New Zealand couldn't be all grown up until they dumped their heritage and... what? Got a new one?

Oddly, the incoherent answer there, as so often here in Canada, was implicitly if furtively yes. The other ugly options with ferns were somehow meant to represent the real New Zealand, which didn't spring from the Anglosphere but by some strange coincidence had all its virtues while being trendily postmodern, inclusive and amorphous or something, And typically it was the "centre-right" party that was pushing the change.

Unsurprisingly it was veterans' groups who spearheaded the opposition early on. And possibly people with taste. And in the end the politicians managed to make the whole thing sour and skewed, and in the aftermath people are going after PM John Key, claiming that by intruding his own preferences for a new flag he prevented the people from voting the old one out in favour of a blank space into which some false new traditional emblem could later have been easily inserted.

It's one thing to be sensitive to failings in our past and determined not to repeat them. And, to be fair, to worry that your flag looks too much like Australia's, as some New Zealanders did. It's quite another to reject the past but deviously, substituting an ersatz one instead of owning up that you really don't like the place as it actually evolved and want to get a new better one. And when consulted, people with a heritage worth keeping will reject the latter every time. As I very much imagine Canadians would have done if given a vote on whether to ditch our Red Ensign for a logo in the Liberal Party's colours back in 1965.

I don't think it's coincidence that the traditional New Zealand flag is actually nice to look at and the various replacements were not. They had that focus-grouped-logo look, smooth, manipulative, contrived and off-putting. And in that they accurately reflected the deeper impulse behind the move to replace the traditional emblem and the tradition itself with something artificial and uninspiring.

Anyway, congratulations to New Zealanders for keeping the old flag flying. And not just, I hope, on the flag pole.

My colleague Kelly McParland writes perceptively that Prime Minister Trudeau's new Senate appointments have attracted less notice than they should have. I should confess first that I was once again not on the list and second that Kelly quotes me approvingly in the piece that the list is so predictable "it might have been selected by an affirmative action random-elite-candidate-generator.". And now I want to return the favour by quoting him approvingly.

"Would it have been too much to include just one new senator who doesn’t see government as the answer to every problem? An entrepreneur? Someone who’s been required to meet a payroll or risked their own money on an idea?"

Apparently it would. Which is why we need to fix the constitution including creating a Senate that is truly legitimate because it is elected, is independent of the Prime Minister and yet effective, and represents the provinces without paralyzing Parliament.

Yes it can be done. Australia does it. And in our upcoming documentary we'll give a lot more detail on how to make it work. Including why it's especially troubling to see former senior public servants become legislators. The fusion of the upper reaches of the public service and the legislature into a fourth branch unknown to constitutional theory is not good for our democracy.

In my latest commentary for the National Post I argue that the EU-Turkey “deal” on Syrian migrants proves yet again that once you have paid him the Dane-geld, you will never be rid of the Dane.

In my latest Rebel media commentary, I welcome Bulgaria achieving independence in 1878 as a result of the Russo-Turkish War. But I warn that geopolitical vacuums, like the one created as the Ottoman Empire crumbled, are dangerous to international stability even when they have many good results. https://youtu.be/rNFT0TqtGyc

My latest Rebel piece: February 18 is the anniversary of the “bloody Sunday” at the Boer War Battle of Paardeberg in 1900, when the British and Canadians took 1,100 casualties including 280 dead. At the time a huge number, it would rapidly be eclipsed by the “accomplishments” of the 20^th century from Loos to the Somme and on, because of the new deadliness of modern smokeless powder firearms artillery that could have tipped us off to what progress would soon bring.

https://youtu.be/U-Wh1hbCpac

In my latest National Post column I say that Britons' choice between the EU and self-government shouldn't be hard.