WHATEVER LOLA WANTS, LOLA GETS
No more teasing: Rachel
Marsden has announced
that tomorrow she will a commence a twice-weekly column in
the National Post. Poor Liz
Nickson must be spinning
in her grave.
Marsden (left) in her office in the newly-redesigned National
Post
editorial department: 'Falling in love again...'
Kevin
Michael Grace, 12.07 p.m., 31 May 2005►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
[Mark] Steyn is not an
American; he is a Canadian. Or is he? The fact is that
Steyn’s nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual
orientation, and name have always been ambiguous—an
ambiguity he has deliberately cultivated over the years.
His authorial persona as a radically free self,
unconnected with any concrete identity or roots, perhaps
explains his popularity among today’s rootless,
democracy-mad American conservatives...
Knowing and caring only about
the mantra of freedom and individual rights, today’s
conservatives have no sense of a society that has its own
value above and apart from the rights and desires of the
individuals belonging to it. These conservatives turn
their country—and themselves—into an abstraction,
“individual rights,” and that abstraction then
proceeds to dry up all the real qualities of the culture
and people that gave birth to it.
—Lawrence
Auster
Kevin
Michael Grace, 12.02 p.m., 31 May 2005►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
What is true of conservatives
politically is true of conservatives ecclesiastically:
they are always fighting the same and usually losing
battles with their supposed friends. I was one of many
Catholics, for example, who tried to "convince"
Pope John Paul II not to destroy the theology of service
at the altar by approving the novelty of female altar
servers (referred to by Father
Kenneth Baker of the Homiletic and
Pastoral Review as "girl
altar boys"). The late Father
John A Hardon, SJ, had me track down via
telephone the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who was in
Hong Kong at the time, to request her in March of 1994 to
telephone the Holy Father to convince him not to approve
altar girls.
Mother Teresa agreed to call
the Pope, saying that "This will be a disaster for
the Church" if the Pope, who had reportedly assured
her that there would never be altar girls as long as he
was pope, went back on his word to her, she told me.
Petitions were sent to the Holy See. Articles were
written. Entreaties were made by various priests. All to
no avail. The "conservative" Pope rewarded the
revolutionaries. And this is only one example of such
battles fought during the twenty-six years, five and
one-half months of Pope John Paul II’s long reign.
—Thomas
Droleskey
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.25 p.m., 30 May 2005►
SINGLE WHITE FEMALE
Doubtless it is a result of my rapidly advancing age
that I can no longer read the news without fearing I am
losing my mind. Case in point: the teaser headline today
on Pierre
Bourque's site: "Rachel Marsden
Joins NatPost's Punditocracy..." A visit
to Marsden's website produced no confirmation of
employment at the National
Post, just another tease:
"NOTICE: Rachel will be taking a
couple of weeks off, sort of. She'll still be researching
and writing—just
not publishing. But starting June 1st, 2005, watch for TWO
COLUMNS, every single week. Rachel is really psyched
about that!"
Searching Google
for an image of the
lovely Miss Marsden with which to adorn
this post, I was mystified to discover that the
second hit was a "wallpaper" of
the lovely Miss Julia Roberts, lolling on a chair.
More mystifying still, after I scrolled down the page,
I came across an image (from the home
page of a superannuated website) of La
Marsden, lolling on the same chair that had previously
borne the divine weight of Miss Roberts's delicious form.
It would seem that, in addition to a shared taste in
interior decoration, Roberts and Marsden share the same couturier,
hair stylist and cobbler. Whatever can it all mean?
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.41 a.m., 30 May 2005►
JERKED MUTTON
Post-WWII apartment buildings are invariably ugly
(especially mine), and I always snigger when the developer
has attempted to salvage some dignity by gracing his
monstrosity with an evocative name. I took a long amble
last night and took some snaps documenting this
phenomenon. Behold the concrete-block horror below:
The "Caribbean," is it? Can't you just smell
the spices and feel the heat coming off it in
waves?
Further along Fort Street, I came across a building
less offensive to the eye but where the pretension was
even more egregious:
The sign in front proclaims it to be the
"Rembrandt." Damndest thing, but I was instantly
transported to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam:
And so the pride of little
men
The burghers good and true
Still living through the painter's hand
Requests you all to understand
Kevin
Michael Grace, 3.41 p.m., 29 May 2005►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
I
beseech you, my lord, that, with patience of mind, you
will endure some little advice, which, by the grace of
God, which is never ineffectual, will contribute to the
salvation of your soul and to my acquittal. Difficulties
beset me on every side; even tribulation and difficulties
have come upon me, who am placed between two most grave
and fearful alternatives. When I say between two most
fearful alternatives, I mean a dangerous silence on the
one hand, and admonition of you on the other. If, on the
one hand, I am silent, it will be death to me, and I shall
not escape the hands of the Lord, who says, "If thou
cost not warn the wicked from his wicked way, and he shall
die in his iniquity, his blood He will require at your
hands." If, on the other hand, I admonish you I fear,
which God forbid, that I shall not escape the wrath of my
lord. And I trust that it may not befall me, according to
what the wise man says, that when a person sends to
intercede or to admonish a person who is not pleased
thereat, it is to be feared lest, becoming angered, his
mind may be provoked to do what is worse. What, then, am I
to do? Am I to speak, or am I to be silent? In either
alternative there is danger, no doubt. But inasmuch as it
is safer to fall under the indignation of men than into
the hands of the living God, trusting in the mercy of the
Most High, in whose hands are the hearts of kings, and who
will induce them as He shall think fit (and I trust that
He will, to take the better part), I will speak to my
lord, inasmuch as I have once begun so to do.
—Saint
Thomas Becket
Kevin
Michael Grace, 12.17 a.m., 28 May 2005►
A CCTV MAY LOOK AT A KING
Perhaps a previously undetected egalitarian streak is the
reason for the delight I have taken in Conrad Black's latest
humiliation, but I am inclined to discount
this explanation. Jealousy or a desire for vengeance would
seem insufficient as well. I don't begrudge rich men their
money, and Black has
never harmed me personally.
Certainly I detest Black's self-importance and am
appalled by the ingratitude with which he has repaid Canada
and Britain
for his good fortune, but the real reason for my delight
is that I can't abide bullies. It is bad enough that Black
reflexively accuses his critics of bad faith, but then he
routinely compounds this brutishness by issuing writs.
Bullies are often said to be cowards, but this has always
struck me as ridiculous. As I once wrote
of Black's nemesis Jean Chrétien, "On the contrary,
a bully is someone prepared to use violence while others
dither." In the latter respect, I was terribly
disappointed that Toronto Life settled
with Black over Robert Mason Lee's profile,
but I had better say no more lest Black sue me too. To do
so would be reminiscent of the old Lenny Bruce joke about
the man so stupid he kidnapped junkies, but one cannot be
too careful.
Men may be classified by many binary divisions, but
surely one of the most useful is that of those who sue for
libel and those who don't. I am not a lawyer, but after
Black's intemperate
attack on the saintly Fred Henry, Bishop of
Calgary, it seemed to me that calling a Catholic prelate
"a prime candidate for an exorcism" was prima
facie (as they say) actionable. One can only imagine
the questions Black might have been asked under discovery
and the answers he might have given, but, again, this line
of speculation is better left unexplored. Perhaps it would
it best if we all spent less time ruminating over slights
and more time contemplating our immortal souls.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 10.24 a.m., 27 May 2005►
NORTH OF 80
What's a "redneck"? This question has
initiated a fascinating discussion
on a Chronicles discussion board. As we all know, Thomas
Sowell has argued
that the parlous state of American blacks should be blamed
on redneck contagion instead of old standbys the
"legacy" of slavery (d. 1865) and systemic
"racism" (alive and kicking, apparently). I find
this "root causes" argument profoundly
depressing, suggesting as it does that blacks are rather
like Mohicans—improving their lot is self-evidently
beyond anyone's capacity now. Steve
Sailer found Sowell's argument wanting, but
scholar Clyde Wilson found
it (and Sailer) insulting:
[Sowell's] idea is so
ludicrously false in a hundred different ways that it
could never have been put forth except in a society that
was pre-conditioned not only to believe the worst about us
rednecks, but actually to blame us for everything
that goes wrong in America.
"Us," huh? Wilson prefaced his Chronicles
essay with an epigraph, leading one respondent to claim,
"There are very few rednecks that quote Byron."
Wilson didn't answer this gibe, and while he is certain
what redneck is not (cognate with Scots-Irish or
"Celtic"), he is uncertain as to what it
actually is.
Like many polemical terms,
"redneck" owes its power to having no real
definition. It merely raises negative connotations in the
minds of "respectable" people who are afraid of
Southerners and working Americans and who like to think of
themselves (inaccurately) as superior.
What kind of Southerners, Prof. Wilson? The denizens of
suburban Atlanta? Of Arlington County? And "working
Americans" is a category even more amorphous than
"working class," whatever the latter might mean
in America today.
So what does redneck mean? Chronicles
readers have had a bash at constructing a typology. Some
claim it is cognate with liking NASCAR, motorcycles,
monster trucks, rodeos, country music, pro wrestling (at
least before Vince McMahon applied his dirty mind to it)
and big, dumb domestic movies—and disliking ballet,
BMWs, pretentious foreign films and snootiness of all
kinds
Other claim it is somehow related to a sense of
place—or least divorced from the sense of being rootless
and proud of it. But again, which place? According to Sean
Scallon (who hails from Michigan, I believe), "There
are no rednecks North of I-80":
If one refers to rednecks as
those of rural white backgrounds in general rather than
ethnicity, then the rural Norwegians, Germans and Poles
that I live around would be insulted if you called them
rednecks. That's a term that they would view a putdown,
just as Clyde Wilson sees it as well. Just because you
play with bikes or trap shoot hardly makes one a redneck.
And definitely not North of 49:
No Albertan or Manitoban
would let you dare call them a redneck.
That certainly took me back. It would appear Scallon
was not a subscriber to Alberta Report. Ted
Byfield, its founder, subtitled his 1998
collection of essays (introduced by David
Frum, no less) "Epistles From an Unrepentant
Redneck." I always thought Ted's claim to redneck
status sprang the from same spring that nourishes Prof.
Wilson:
I think I am on the side of
those who choose to adopt the intended slander as an
emblem of pride.
"There's no such thing as an Anglican
redneck," I used to joke. Of course when Ted switched
his allegiance to Russian Orthodoxy, the joke became even
funnier. And then there is the matter of his antecedents.
Ted's mother was famously grand, and his grandfather was,
as I recall, mayor of Toronto. Among Albertans, coming
into the world via T.O. is regarded as the mark of Cain,
as I learned to my own cost. Ted's son Link, who succeeded
him as editor and publisher of AR, was a more
likely redneck—flamboyantly disheveled, he lived on a
country acreage, loved bonfires kick-started with gasoline
and even chewed tobacco. But Link, a Catholic convert, was
also a thoughtful man, more so than his father in my
opinion. His unusual moniker and reactionary opinions led
to the sobriquet "The Missing Link," but I can
reveal to the world that his given name (which remains his
legal name) is Eric. Actually, the real redneck of the
Byfield clan would be Link's brother Mike, a genuine
cracker-barrel philosopher (or saloon-bar Napoleon, as the
British would have it).
It was another transplanted Ontarian, Paul Bunner, who
decided that Alberta Report should defiantly
proclaim itself the rednecks's tribune. Paul was executive
editor of the magazine in 1994, and he drove a pickup
truck—along with half the males in North America. He was
also something of a lefty at the time, but his idea for a Redneck
Chic cover story was a good one. It was
well written by Peter Verburg, a Dutch Calvinist of
considerable personal refinement, and generated much good
publicity. (As opposed to the bad kind the mag usually
got.)
Rereading the story after a decade confirmed my memory
that our campaign was a bit of a fiddle, albeit a
diverting one. Who were we trying to impress? Our
subscribers? The Byfields grew weary of my pronouncement,
"Rednecks don't buy magazines that don't have naked
women in them," but I was right, as subsequent events
proved. In the event, the story demonstrated that
"redneck" (which was not to confused with
"racist" AKA "Albertan") was
synonymous with "politically incorrect," a
worthless concept even in 1994. ("I know this may be
very 'politically incorrect,' but don't you think it's
time the politicians in [insert capital city here] stopped
talking about the 'rights' of criminals [dramatic pause]
and started talking about the right of decent men and
women to be free from crime?!" Hell yeah, etc., etc.)
Prissy,
effete Dave Rutherford, the Calgary
talkshow host, "wears his redneck identity openly and
proudly," we learned. Comically supercilious
Stockwell Day, the future Canadian Alliance catastrophe,
said that "If a redneck is 'someone who is
hardworking and self-reliant and gets his values from the
land, I guess I'm in that camp.'" Pretty rich,
considering that Day is Newt Gingrich without the college
degrees, another man who hails from "nowhere."
And Rutherford reported that "Modern rednecks include
university-educated suburbanites who earn healthy
salaries"; as an example we were introduced to
"Brad Mix, a 30-year-old businessman who drives a
Jetta." A Jetta, huh? Or as Hank Hill once bitterly
observed, "Sure, everyone's a Texan. Change planes in
Dallas, and you're a Texan."
So what does "redneck" mean, then? To me, a
redneck is a man whose worldview is primarily reflexive,
based on prejudices. We couldn't live without prejudices,
of course, and most of them are more sensible than the
shibboleths that have replaced them. But pace Clyde
Wilson, to the redneck the unexamined life is the only
life worth living.
So I consider the word an insult. And yes, I've been
called a redneck many times. Even though I greatly prefer
the snooty to the plebeian, am ashamed to eat at
McDonald's and won't drink beer that isn't microbrewed or
foreign. Even though I am more than bored by NASCAR; I've
never possessed a driver's licence and would sooner watch
anything on PBS than suffer through another Star Wars
installment. For heaven's sake, I have a portrait of Arnold
Schönberg on my living room wall. So if I'm
a redneck, then the word truly is meaningless Us-Them
booga booga.
The awful truth (and note Alban Berg operas at bottom
centre)
Kevin
Michael Grace, 7.04 a.m., 26 May 2005►
OBITER DICTA
Estimates of the turnout at Monday’s anti-"gay
marriage" rally
in Toronto ranged from 2,500 to 20,000. A paltry number,
to be sure, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they’d
mustered 200,000. Masood Khan, representing something
called the United Front for Pakistani Muslims, claimed to
speak "on behalf of over one million Muslims in
Canada" when he declared, "I can assure you we
will not accept this crap." If Khan wants a country
where popular
sentiment counts for anything, he should
move back to Pakistan. Hey, don’t take my word for it,
ask "Mitch" Raphael.
Raphael, editor
of FAB, "a Toronto gay
magazine," explained to the National Post (no
link) why "few gays show up to protest in favour of
same-sex marriage." Ready, folks? Here it is:
"It's been such a done deal, and people don't care.
The gay rights movement is a handful of lawyers in Ottawa
working for this bill."
The mask of affected suffering slips, and the truth
spills out. Let’s run through that one more time, shall
we? What constitutes the "gay rights movement"
in Canada? "A handful
of lawyers in Ottawa."
Does everyone now understand how "democracy"
works in this doomed country?
Kevin
Michael Grace, 6.41 a.m., 25 May 2005►
CUI BONO?
Watching Neil Cavuto’s show on Fox News yesterday, I
heard the most extraordinary thing. Cavuto’s panel was
discussing the real
estate bubble, and the speaker was one Scott
Bleier, described as "president and
founder of HybridInvestors.com":
Let people make money. Stop
fighting this. At some point people are going to lose
money. It's called speculation. It's good for the economy.
Bleier did not explain how, as a general principle,
speculation is good for the economy. I don’t understand
how this can be true, but Bleier spoke in the manner of
one delivering a dogma. It is even more mysterious to me
how higher real estate prices benefit the economy. They
are obviously beneficial to realtors, banks and Ditech.
And higher property taxes benefit governments. But to most
people, real estate is their largest fixed cost besides
taxes. No one needs shares in Google or any other
speculative enterprise, but everyone needs a home. It
seems a truism to me that the more money people are forced
to spend just to secure a place to live, the less money
they have left to save, invest or buy goods and services.
The real estate bubble is good for successful
speculators, so long as they own more than one house.
Those who don’t are forced to trade their houses for
condos or become renters or move to cheaper neighbourhoods
or cities in order to realize their profits. The real
estate bubble is said to be good for Ditech’s customers,
who have traded their "equity" for cash. But
home equity loans are just that, loans
and not profits. And unless these borrowed
monies are invested in productive activities, they can
hardly benefit the economy. Perhaps the Chinese economy
but not ours.
Such were my initial thoughts, but then I gave my head
a shake. My foolish assumption had been that when Bleier
said "good for the economy" he meant good for
the American people. I had forgotten that the
"economy" is now an absolute good in itself,
that it has become the LORD our god, which brought us out
of the land of societies, out of the house of bondage and
that we shall have no other gods before it.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 5.37 a.m., 25 May 2005►
POETRY CORNER
Clerimont’s Song
Still to be neat, still to be drest,
As you were going to a Feast;
Still to be powd'red, still perfum'd:
Lady, it is to be presum'd,
Though Arts hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.
Give me a look, give me a face,
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, Hair as free:
Such sweet neglect more taketh me,
Than all th' Adulteries of Art;
They strike mine Eyes, but not my Heart.
—Ben Jonson, from Epicoene, or The
Silent Woman
Kevin
Michael Grace, 2.02 a.m., 25 May 2005►
WEIRD SITE METER/GOOGLE
SEARCH STRING OF THE DAY
"mandatory
of Colgate toothpaste"
Kevin
Michael Grace, 2.12 a.m., 24 May 2005►
OH, PUT A SOCK IN
IT
If Time magazine can
name Rick Santorum, a lifelong Roman Catholic, as one of
the top
25 evangelicals in America, Santorum is
happy to extend the ecclesial mix and match to President
Bush, whom he calls America’s first Catholic president.
Santorum’s remarks about
Bush are not new, but are revisited in “The Believer,”
an 8,200-word
profile by Michael Sokolove that appeared
in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.
—Douglas
LeBlanc
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.57 a.m., 24 May 2005►
DESPERATE HOUSEWIFE
Can someone explain to me why the
President's wife is in Asia? Over to you,
Mrs Bush:
It really came out of my
office and from Liz Cheney, because of—Liz Perry,
because of the World
Economic Forum. And of course, the
President wanted me to go, as well, to go talk about
democracy in the—spreading of freedom in the Middle
East. All the steps—my speech will be specifically about
education of children and women and women's right [sic]
in the Middle East and worldwide.
Well, I've never heard of "Liz" Perry,
whomever she might be, and, last time I checked,
"Liz" Cheney was the wife of the Vice-President
and thus had no statutory authority. According to the Christian
Science Monitor, Mrs Bush is the "softer
face of Bush diplomacy." Funny, I must
have missed the confirmation hearings that preceded her
appointment as Ambassador Extraordinary and
Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to
Instruct Lesser Breeds on the Education of Children and
Women and Women's Rights in the Middle East and Worldwide.
You might recall that when Mr Bill appointed
Hillary Rodham Clinton to chair his Task Force on National
Health Care Reform in 1993, the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
spluttered in outrage. Rather late in the day for the
Republicans to discover the Constitution, I thought, but
better late than never. Perhaps the Limbaugh Nation will
now extend its apologies to Bill and Hillary —either
that or turn on pushy little librarian Laura for having
ideas above her station. While there's breath, there's
hope.
At the time of the Health
Care fiasco, I made a modest proposal for
Constitutional reform. Eliminate the middleman: the
President's running mate should be his house mate—or
"wife" as this position was formerly
called in Ontario. Now I've had another
inspiration: Laura is the obvious GOP candidate to head
off Hillary at the polls in 2008. Giuliani,
McCain, Frist, Gingrich, Allen: can any of
them match Mrs Bush's foreign policy experience? I think
not. Have any of them addressed the World Economic Forum?
And nominating Laura would solve the War Wimp problem at a
stroke. Unlike her husband, she can boast one confirmed
kill during Vietnam. Sure, it
happened in Texas, but we must all agree
that those were crazy, crazy times.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 10.38 p.m., 23 May 2005►
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
With bars in places like
Chelsea and the Castro filling with healthy men, and the
continual migration of new people in search of a more open
life, some men began to wonder, What’s so bad about HIV?
It’s a treatable disease. Pharmaceutical companies ran
ads depicting HIV-positive men as rugged and virile. At
first, such advertisements seemed necessary, to insure
that people realized that the new treatments could help
them return to a normal life. But some ads went far beyond
that. Impossibly active men were shown climbing mountains
or racing sailboats, and though the ads may have been
unrealistic, they played into the growing medicalization
of America. Pharmaceuticals have become a basic part of
the lives of millions of people in the United States, who
routinely take pills for depression, cholesterol and blood
pressure, to help pay attention in class, to sleep and to
cure sexual dysfunction. The fact that tens of thousands
of people were undertaking a battery of anti-HIV
medications didn’t seem unusual.
—Michael Specter, "Higher
Risk," the New Yorker, 23 May
2005
Kevin
Michael Grace, 12.52 a.m., 23 May 2005►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
There are no
boundaries of class or party among those who sense, or
know, that British society is in profound trouble. Yet the
consensus that this anxiety has created remains largely
unexpressed. Politicians dare not tell the whole truth
about it for fear of adding to public alarm, and losing by
it. Complaint over the quality of public provision, or
about the education system, or about the statistics of
violent crime regularly break surface, but in fragmentary
fashion. Those who specialize in intellectual evasions
even deny the facts of civil society's disorders; many who
have pointed to them have retreated from the scene. In
1994 I wrote The
Principle of Duty; I would find it
difficult to get published now. In the book I argued that
limits must be set to selfish individual entitlement if
our free social order is to be preserved. Today,
libertarians of every stripe command public debate and
such argument is increasingly perceived as reactionary
rather than enlightened.
The blame for the disabling
of previously existing moral assumptions about the right
management of our affairs is widely shared. All three main
parties have offered to a disintegrating body politic the
same kinds of vacuous notions about "choice,"
"value for money," improved "delivery"
of public (and privatized) services to the
"customer" or "consumer" and other
related market ideals espoused in freedom's name: the same
notion of liberty
which, in the 1840s, Carlyle
dismissed with scorn.
—David
Selbourne
Kevin
Michael Grace, 10.23 p.m., 21 May 2005►
WEIRD SITE METER/GOOGLE
SEARCH STRING OF THE DAY
"Is
Sarin dropped by a dust cropper?"
Kevin
Michael Grace, 9.48 p.m., 20 May 2005►
THE MEMORY HOLE
Early this morning, as I completed the somewhat
incontinent homily printed below,
I spent a frustrating half-hour or so searching for a link
to Paul Martin's "funeral oration"—the address
he gave directly after having won the confidence vote. It
was an extraordinary performance, not so much for what he
said—the usual prattle about how the continuation of
Liberal dictatorship meant that children could smile
again, trees would again grow tall and proud, light would
finally reach the Dark Continent, etc.—but the manner in
which he said it. This was a rant worthy of Hitler. Not in
the sense that Martin desires to invade Poland or invoke
the Final Solution but in the sense that Martin was wholly
incontinent. He appeared to be in the grip of some demon
as he screamed rather than spoke, and no doubt the first
row was showered with spittle.
I have previously noted that our courtier media hid
from us the unpleasant fact that Jean Chrétien could not
speak English. Now it has apparently
decided it is not for us to know that Paul Martin sounds
like a maniac when he gets excited.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.58 p.m., 20 May 2005►
THE LAST LAUGH
The Harlot's Funeral, William Hogarth
There was no dignity in this death.
The soul was long departed, and the body, long moribund,
was dispatched by a feckless
groupie and a gum-chewing
hippie. The gravedigger, Paul Martin,
delivered the funeral oration; his Liberal jackals
shrieked in triumph and gnawed the corpse. At the wake,
groupie Belinda pouted and preened and dreamed of fresh
tricks and cosmetic surgery. Hippie Chuck was absent,
having slunk back home, himself to die—appropriate, and,
appropriately enough, in Surrey,
the national anus.
There is a great deal of ruin in a nation—but not an
infinite amount. And by 19 May 2005, it could no longer be
denied that Canada was used up, sucked dry, finished. On
this day, the Liberals effaced the last vestige of Parliamentary
sovereignty and destroyed thereby what
little remained of Canada's legitimacy, legal and moral.
On this day, the Liberals revealed the condition to which
they—and their Mulroneyite Conservative allies—had
reduced Canada. After this day, it can no longer be denied
that ours is a gangster
state whose sole animating principles are
bribery, blackmail and theft. Whose sole remaining purpose
is to continue pumping the lifeblood that provides
vampiric sustenance to the Liberal Party, its oligarchic
masters and its parasitic rainbow coalition that marches
to the polls on election days, delighted to have traded
our birthright for a mess of social programs.
Let the Liberals laugh. They'll be crying soon enough.
That they have defiled everything noble about this country
is of no account in English Canada, but the Québécois
nation, a once phantom polity fomented by Liberal cynics
as the
most successful of its bribery-blackmail schemes,
has become a real nation and has developed a self-respect
that English Canadians can only envy. The Québécois
will not forget Adscam;
they will not forgive their humiliation
at the hands of capo Chrétien and capo
Martin. The Parti Québécois will be returned
to power by 2008. It will call a third and
final sovereignty referendum: neither money,
the ethnic vote or the furious efforts of
the quisling federalist class will prevent a Yes vote this
time.
And that will be the formal end of Canada. The Liberals
will demand we weep, but those of us who knew and loved
the Old Canada will have no tears left. We wept when the
Liberals—and their Mulroneyite Conservative
allies—traduced, then trashed our British tradition.
When it was demanded we "forget the Plains
of Abraham."
We wept when Canada was declared first bicultural,
then multicultural.
When millions
of fractious colonists were imported here,
when it was it demanded we change our ways to protect
their feelings,
when New Canadian became synonymous with Better Canadian.
When millions of native Canadians were made
strangers in their own land, and official
discrimination became the price of being a
member of the visible majority. When terrorism
was introduced here and when our politicians rushed to succour
the terrorists.
We wept when Lester Pearson established robbing
Peter to pay Paul as the highest—indeed,
the only—Canadian value. When rural Quebec and the
Atlantic Provinces were reduced
to helplessness thereby. When the middle
class everywhere was beggared to pay for
statist folly, then excoriated as greedy for daring to
complain.
We wept when Pierre Trudeau turned the meaning of
Canadianism on its head, then proscribed dissent, when he
abolished our common law and the rights of free
speech and association
and delivered us unto the tyranny
of judges. When he turned our Members of
Parliament into "nobodies"
and instituted the dictatorship of the Prime Minister's
Office.
We wept when our Supreme Court ruled
that Canada's birth was illegitimate and that therefore an
enormous yet undefined part of this country is somehow
owned by its Indians.
We wept when Canada was put up for
sale to the highest bidder and our
brightest men and women forced
to move south in search of advancement.
When every American social inanity was adopted as a
defining Canadian characteristic. When all our political
leaders traveled to New York City to grovel
after an American calamity. When American bureaucrats
dared to determine the
limits of Canadian sovereignty, and none of
our leaders dared to disagree.
We wept when successive Canadian governments and courts
declared war
on the family, when marriage was stripped
of its privileges, when the slaughter
of the innocents became first a right, then
a sacrament.
When abortionists were granted the perquisites
once given to priests and pastors.
And we wept when Canadians lost the protection
of the Cross and were directed to worship
instead the symbol of Liberal despotism, the
maple leaf. When the alien idea of
separation of Church and State was first imported, then
perverted into a positive commandment to mock
God and His Creation.
We wept, while the Liberals—and their Mulroneyite
Conservative allies—laughed. But we shall have the last
laugh, when the New Canada dies and the Liberal Party of
Canada, which exists in symbiosis with it, dies with it.
Of course the Liberal Party will not really die, as
evil is never wholly vanquished in this world. It will
reconstitute itself, much as the Communist parties that
oppressed Eastern Europe have reconstituted
themselves. But the Old Canada, that
beautiful country, will not die either. It will live on in
our minds and our hearts, and with God's help we shall
strive to reconstitute it in the new Canadian countries.
And what a glorious prospect that is.
The Last Laugh, F W Murnau
Kevin
Michael Grace, 2.58 a.m., 19 May 2005►
DAMNED DAMNED DAMNED
I'm watching CTV's coverage of the Budget vote, and I
can't believe what I'm seeing and hearing. Strike that. I
can well believe it. It is entirely typical of this doomed
country. What is at stake this afternoon is not the
budget, nor are the partisan consequences of vote
particularly important. The issue here is whether
Parliamentary government will survive in Canada. And no
one—not Lloyd Robertson or fellow zombie Craig Oliver,
nor any of the meat puppets they've selected to smirk and
nod their heads, Deb Grey, Joy McPhail, Stan Keyes—gives
a toss about this.
The Liberals lost a confidence vote. Actually, they
lost several. It was their clear
duty to call another immediately or resign.
They did neither. If the Liberals win, then there are no
longer any restraints on the dictatorship of the Prime
Minister's Office.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 2.54 p.m., 18 May 2005►
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
We have the numbers in the
Lower Mainland of British Columbia. We are increasing at a
much faster rate than the traditional Caucasian population
...That's the crystal clear message Indo-Canadians,
Chinese-Canadians and fellow visible minorities have to
send to the the majority Caucasian or White people who
currently control the reigns of power.
—Rattan
Mall, Editor, Indo-Canadian Voice, 9
August 2003
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.01 a.m., 17 May 2005►
POETRY CORNER (SPECIAL BELINDA
STRONACH EDITION)
What dire offence from am'rous causes
springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things,
I sing—This verse to Caryl, Muse! is due;
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view…
Think not, when woman's transient breath
is fled,
That all her vanities at once are dead;
Succeeding vanities she still regards,
And tho' she plays no more, o'erlooks the cards.
Her joy in gilded chariots, when alive,
And love of ombre, after death survive.
For when the fair in all their pride expire,
To their first elements their souls retire:
The sprites of fiery termagants in flame
Mount up, and take a Salamander's name.
Soft yielding minds to water glide away,
And sip with Nymphs, their elemental tea.
The graver prude sinks downward to a Gnome,
In search of mischief still on earth to roam.
The light coquettes in Sylphs aloft repair,
And sport and flutter in the fields of air.
—Alexander Pope, The Rape of
the Lock, Canto
I
Kevin
Michael Grace, 2.32 p.m., 17 May 2005►
PISS OFF, YURI!
Here it is, Voting Day, and I’ve had nothing to say
about the British Columbia election. Why? Because the
Liberals were always going to win, and that’s that. Why?
Because if they lost, that would prove God hates BC.
’Course when I saw that poll last week suggesting the
New Democratic Party was only five points behind…
I’m not going to bother voting. Why? 1. I didn’t
get a registration card. I could always swear in at the
polling station, but I’ve done that before, and I really
don’t like being reminded how rife electoral fraud is in
this province (and country). 2. Vancouver Island is
returning to its NDP roots, and the Liberal incumbent in
my riding of Victoria-Hillside is going to get thumped.
The only two Liberal signs I’ve seen nearby were first
defaced, then destroyed. 3. My opinion of democracy is not
a million miles away from that of angry teen lesbian Tammy
Metzler (see
below).
But what really sealed the deal is that Elections BC
tried to twist my arm. To that end, it appealed to the
highest authority Canada's déracinés recognize:
the immigrant scold. A TV spot called "It Doesn’t
Matter" (which you can watch here)
opens with two rednecks sitting at a lunch counter.
Redneck 1: Ah, it don’t
make any difference whether I vote or not. It’s always
the same old, same old.
Redneck 2: I hear ya. Yeah,
if I have time I’ll vote, but I’m not going to lose
any sleep over it.
Redneck 1: One vote don’t
make a difference, right Yuri?
Then we see, behind the counter, Yuri, playing the part
Liam Neeson didn’t get because he wasn’t hulking
enough and was too much of girly boy. Yuri glares
balefully and intones with such overseriousness you’d
think he was recounting about when times got so tough back
in Yakutsk he was reduced to eating human flesh.
Yuri: Ten years ago, I became
a Canadian citizen. I moved my entire family here at great
peril and expense, just for that one vote.
The rednecks are suitably abashed, and then we get the
payoff:
Announcer: Make sure you vote
in the May 17th general election and referendum
on electoral reform.
So immigrants come to this country because they want to
vote, do they? What a pantload. And if Yuri so
high-minded, why does he complain about the expense of
moving his family? Who dares put a price on democracy? I
would also suggest that the Elections BC copywriters spend
a little more time listening to demotic speech. No real
redneck would say "whether I vote"; he
would say "if I vote."
The planted axiom in this ad is that our liberty
depends upon the right to vote. And that’s just
sinister. The rights of Englishmen (and Canadians) were
established long before the advent of universal suffrage,
which has coincided with a relentless reduction of
freedom. As Ray Davies sings,
"Got no privacy/Got no liberty/’Cause the 20th-century
people/Took it all away from me."
One of the long-established rights of Canadians is not
having to give a good goddam about politics. If Yuri don't
like that, he can go back to Russia. Or haul his commie
ass to Australia.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 4.41 a.m., 17 May 2005►
(S)HE WHO
SAYS A, MUST SAY B
Although unmarried herself,
she is not against the institution of marriage.
—Kate Saunders, review
of The
Meaning of Wife by Anne Kingston,
London Sunday Times, 27 February 2005
Jerry
Maguire, that cinematic Petri
dish of romantic pap.
—Anne Kingston, National
Post, 14 May 2005
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.21 a.m., 17 May 2005►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Love is
often nothing but a favourable exchange between two people
who get the most of what they can expect, considering
their value on the personality market.
—Erich Fromm
Kevin
Michael Grace, 12.51 a.m., 17 May 2005►
WELCOME FELLOW SISYPHEAN
LABOURERS
My great and good friend Lorne Gunter is already a busy
fellow, what with his work as an Edmonton Journal
columnist and editorial board member at the National
Post, but now he has a blog,
which you should all make a habit. Lorne is one of the
funniest men I know but has heretofore obscured this
aspect of his personality. He knows well (as Richard West reminds
us) that any columnist who makes jokes
risks all manner of abuse from witless readers, but I'm
told that this Intranode thingy allows, even encourages,
greater freedom in this regard. So let 'er rip, Lorne.
I don't suppose that Lorne Gunter has much in common
politically with Antonia Zerbisias, who has also started
an in-house (Toronto Star) blog.
Zerbisias is the best Canadian "media
columnist," but that is not much of a compliment,
given that her competition is largely content to rewrite
press releases: "Tonight on Joey, a blow-up
sex doll arrives at the apartment, and no one will fess up
to having bought it! Hijinks ensue!" (Actually, Alex
Strachan at CanWest is pretty good when he puts his mind
to it.) Better to say that Zerbisias is a journalist with
a good mind and a nice style who has taken the media as
her subject. And she induces seizures in Damian Penny,
Charles Johnson and that miserable ilk, which is all to
the good.
Two further additions to my "blogroll" are Iain
Benson and Evan
McElravy: Benson because of his fight
against Canada's judicial tyranny (and because he sent me
a friendly note despite my harsh words about his role in
the Scott Brockie case) and McElravy because he seems a
decent cove.
I have long admired R
J Stove and was greatly pleased to know
that he likes my stuff. His name first appeared in the
column to your right a couple of months ago, but I
neglected to introduce him, an oversight I delight in
having rectified. Rob is the best Australian journalist I
know of (that damnable faint praise again) but is more
than just a hack, being an organist and composer.
Not that I've ever heard his music, but "the main
influences on his style have been Hindemith, Walton,
Honegger and Reger" —an intriguing mixture of the
sour and the sweet, no? He is a charming fellow, as I
discovered in a recent conversation, wherein we discussed,
among other things, the farewell concert in Sydney of Crowded
House, an event that seemed to me to take
on the characteristics of a national holiday. Even as we
spoke, Paul
Hester was fastening a noose around his
neck in a public park not far from where Rob lives in
Melbourne. This anecdote is apropos of nothing at all,
merely another example of the "lattice
of coincidence" that makes life so
agreeable, even if ultimately not agreeable enough to suit
poor Hester.
Here endeth the "blogrolling." But not the
gushing. After Auberon Waugh died, I claimed A N Wilson as
his successor, and his columns are a continuing source of
wonder—and a rebuke of my own modest talent—even as I
continue to lament his apostasy from religious orthodoxy.
His most recent Telegraph column,
an analysis of Philip Larkin's final poem "Aubade,"
explains how it sums up the spirit of his age yet
concludes that this spirit is wanting.
What is
extraordinary in this poem is the way Larkin makes such
beautiful music out of such hell. "Meanwhile
telephones crouch, getting ready to ring/ In locked-up
offices, and all the uncaring/ Intricate rented world
begins to rouse."
Compared with
this poem, Housman seems positively benign. Yet Larkin
spoke, surely, not just for lonely old bachelors in the
North of England, but for millions. To that extent he,
more than the later Hughes, was really the laureate of the
sad generation we are now burying. It's an ignoble vision,
though, and makes me feel I'd rather see what life there
was left in the "musical brocade" that nourished
Betjeman and George Herbert.
Wilson's latest Evening Standard column
(subscription only, sadly) invokes Larkin to condemn the
Labour Party's efforts to abolish the law that limits
Britons to a 48-hour workweek:
Editorials
in newspapers all gravely say that it is only Britain's
ability to work people more than 10 hours a day which
helps us with our "competitors" in India and
China.
Exactly
the same arguments were advanced in the 1840s when Lord
Shaftesbury objected to women and children working long
hours in pits and mills. To interfere with the blessed
freedom of the capitalist masters would mean Britain
falling behind in its competition with the slave-owning
Americans and the impoverished peoples of India.
Do
we really want to "compete" with China, which
still uses slave labour?…
Behind
the whole ridiculous debate, of course, lurks the hideous
puritan belief in work as a virtue in itself. As far as
manual labour is concerned, eight or nine hours are easily
enough for most men or women…
As
far as office work goes, the number of hours in which you
can be useful is much, much less. We all know that those
who work from home get far more done than their office
colleagues; they do it in half the time…
Home
is where life is. What poet Philip Larkin called "the
toad work" is a narcotic to numb the difficult
questions of how we want to live and what we are here for
on this strange planet. It is silly to work so hard.
Why
do we do it? The answers we give—because we want or need
more money, or promotion, or a particular status—are all
codes for saying we don't want to face up to life itself.
We
would be a saner society in Britain if we worked during
the morning, all had a jolly good lunch with a couple of
glasses of wine and then called it a day.
The irony is that Wilson exhibits a work ethic that is
positively Stakhanovite. His recent production was
summarized here,
but since then he's published another novel, his 19th,
A
Jealous Ghost, a gloss on Henry James's
The Turn of the Screw. One can't help thinking that
Andrew has some "life issues" himself.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.54 p.m., 16 May 2005►
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
The dysfunction of Blair's
Britain is not confined to the sink housing estates, which
are factories of yobs who are so incapable of connecting
deed with consequence that they do not realize that a
baseball hat is a sartorial synonym for violent imbecile.
The disconnection is so ubiquitous in British life as
almost to be one of its defining features. In London, two
policemen shoot an unarmed, middle-aged man carrying a
table leg, and the High Court overturns
an inquest verdict that the killing was
unlawful. One of the police marksmen is now a chief
inspector.
—Kevin
Myers, London Sunday Telegraph, 15
May 2005
Kevin
Michael Grace, 6.34 a.m., 16 May 2005►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
[SPECIAL ELECTION EDITION]
Who cares about this stupid
election? We all know it doesn't matter who gets elected
president of Carver. Do you really think it's gonna change
anything around here: make one single person smarter or
happier or nicer? The only person it does matter to is the
one who gets elected. The same pathetic charade happens
every year, and everyone makes the same pathetic promises
just so they can put it on their transcripts to get into
college. So vote for me, because I don't even want to go
to college, and I don't care, and as president I won't do
anything. The only promise I will make is that if elected
I will immediately dismantle the student government, so
that none of us will ever have to sit through one of these
stupid assemblies again!…Or don't vote for me! Who
cares? Don't vote at all!
—Tammy Metzler, Election
(Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor)
Kevin
Michael Grace, 7.07 a.m., 16 May 2005►
