The Gods of the Copybook Headings

Scenes from the Imperial Capital

 

Remembering In Flanders Fields

 

IN FLANDERS FIELDS

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

 

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.

 

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

 

I memorized the poem, many years ago, as I'm sure you did. It is a ritual of Canadian childhood. While achieving acclaim in America, it never become indelible in the American mind. Through out the Empire and Commonwealth it achieved iconic status, spurring the creation of the poppy campaigns seen every November. The poppy somewhat confuses Americans. For the Chinese it has other connotations. 

The reading of the poem, the solemn viewing of grainy film, the occasional visit by an aged veteran - in my case a Canadian participant in the Great Escape - is part of the catechism of Canadianism. Why did they die? For freedom. Why did they suffer? For Canada.

It was all a very earnest attempt, by ernest teachers, to impart, as best they could, the nature of a war few of them experienced. They - unlike most of us - knew someone who was there. An uncle, a father, a grandfather. The names chiselled on walls that were only names to us, were to them family names and off-tint photographs.

To most of us, the students, the ritual, however much we wanted to feel what we were suppose to feel, was largely empty. There can be no places further apart, in mind and feel, than Flanders in 1917 and Canada today. We were much too lucky to understand. There was no personal connection. The odd student had escaped from a far away war-torn country, but was often too young to recall or understand. Most our families had not fought in the war. Our ancestors were buried elsewhere and for other reasons.

The war became real to me, as far as it can to someone like me, when attending the University of Toronto. It was the same school that John McCrae attended, more than a century before me. His name is inscribed near Soldiers' Tower. The names that had been inscribed at my elementary school were names from along ago, from people who were adults. They were two steps removed.

The names at Soldiers' Tower had been my age. They had walked the same halls. The difference between myself and them was only the accident of time. Most of the names were those of officers. In addition to all the burdens of war, these early twenty-somethings had the burdens of command. Imagine yourself at that age, trying not only to survive but to lead others into life and death. Only chance separated myself and them, as it had separated the survivors and those on the wall.

For all our secularism, and professed multiculturalism, we are still at root a Christian country. Except in the very early years of Canada there has always been, at least in English Canada, a fairly strict separation of church and state. The rhythms of our culture, as of most Western literature and art, however are Christian.

When the word sacrifice is used in remembrance ceremonies its origin, and echo, is Christian. It is Christ on the Cross. Just as He suffered for us, they the soldiers suffered for us. To the believer, then, November 11th has a double meaning, as it would have to those who first marked Armistice Day nine decades ago. Even a comparatively secular contemporary writer, Rudyard Kipling, infused his short short The Gardener with Christian allusion and allegory.

For good, and ill, Christianity is no longer the living religion it was then, or even thirty or forty years ago. It is seen today as a weekend hobby, resorted to in times of crisis, and then pushed to back of mind. Little, arguably nothing, has come to replace that living force in our culture. David Warren alluded to this in a recent column on Faith and Freedom. You can deny, as I do, that freedom requires faith. It does require, however, some sort of system of belief and value. A nation driven by whim and will is not a nation that will long be free. The Founders of both Canada and America understood this fact. They deferred, to a greater or lesser extent, to religion to provide that moral backbone for society.

While the message of sacrifice lingers in modern Canadian culture, the existence of evil is denied. There is no evil, we are told, only misunderstanding and reaction to suffering. This is why Remembrance Day has become only a ritual. Its meaning is lost, not only because of time, but because the spirit of that age is gone.

They who built the Cenotaphs and Soldiers' Towers believed in suffering, in redemption and in evil. Re-read the poem above, that last jarring stanza. "Take up our quarrel with the foe." The message delivered by those earnest school teachers is the pointlessness of war. That is not, however, what John McCrae believed. Like most of his generation, like most of those thousands of Canadians who lie buried with him in northwestern Europe, they believed in evil. More than this, they believed they fought for something good and against something evil. War was horrible, yes, but it was sometimes necessary to fight evil. 

We all die, some of us die in great pain. From disease, from famine and from natural disaster. What separates death from natural causes, however horrific, and war is morality. War is a product of human thought and action, and so can and must be judged morally. That is why we remember and must, because of the moral dimension of war. We do not honour suffering for its own sake, we honour it because of what they sought to preserve. Let me close by quoting another poem, one that would have been familiar to John McCrae and his fellow officers:

Then out spake brave Horatius,

The Captain of the Gate:

"To every man upon this earth

Death cometh soon or late.

And how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds,

For the ashes of his fathers,

And the temples of his gods,

 

And for the tender mother

Who dandled him to rest,

And for the wife who nurses

His baby at her breast,

And for the holy maidens

Who feed the eternal flame,

To save them from false Sextus

That wrought the deed of shame?"

It's from Macaulay's The Lays of Ancient Rome. Churchill memorized the poem while at Harrow. It was a standard text for generations of schoolboys. It faded from the curriculum in the years after the First World War. Macaulay was a Christian memorializing the feats of Roman pagans. While their creeds separated the stoical Romans from Victorian Englishmen, the themes of honour, duty, family and values worth fighting for crossed that divide. That we modern Canadians cannot understand Macaulay, and cannot understand that last stanza of In Flanders Field, is the unacknowledged tragedy of the last century. 

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

 

Wednesday Night - Bach

Letters from Mother

She still remembers. From the Telegraph:

Everywhere you look in downtown Toronto skyscrapers are rising. This new landscape of chrome and glass, unrecognisable from a couple of years ago, disorientates me as I try to find the ferry terminal. When I eventually make it across to leafy Toronto Island, I'm rewarded with a view back to the mainland of the perfect North American pop-up city, seemingly growing before my eyes.

[…]

Briefly in the Sixties it had a tantalising brush with Bohemia as a hub for draft dodgers, but it's only in the past few years that the place has let its creative communities lead the way. This new confidence can be seen everywhere: in a crop of new luxury hotels, an innovative dining scene, and pioneering art galleries and design studios.

While it's always nice to see that the British still pay attention to us, this review is so glowing I kept wondering what city they were talking about. I've lived here for thirty-plus years, and even I don't think so well of the Canadian Imperial Capital.

Scenes from the Imperial Capital

The Good Life on the Left

Damn! It's fun to be an NDPer:

According to recently released House of Commons records, the NDP leader and his long-time wife, Chow, who is MP for Trinity Spadina, charged Canadian taxpayers about $1.16 million in MP expenses last year for running their offices, living in Ottawa and paying for associated travel costs.

“Yes, it is (a lot of money) and we appreciate the compensation that's been established . . . but it is a lot less than the leaders of two of the other political parties,” Layton, who is MP for Toronto Danforth, told the Toronto Star.

Yes, but Stephen Harper is Prime Minister, and Lord Iggy is Leader of the Opposition. You lead a quasi-socialist rump that will likely never win power (we pray). The job of the NDP is to whine petulantly that more money should be spent to help the poor, the sick, the unionized and the overeducated. Do you really need $1.16 million to beat Canadians over the head with your begging bowl?

Torontonians with long memories will recall that, twenty years ago, Jack and Olivia were outed for living in government housing, while making a combined six-figure income. That should have ended their political careers, but Toronto is not just the center of the universe, it's sucker central too. Tell upper middle class Hogtowners that you feel for the wretched of the earth, and you'll be excused a lot of things we, the profit minded, could never get away with.

As a result of this embarrassing incident, Layton and Chow are understandably touchy about being queried on living expenses. Now I know what you are thinking, fair minded and gentle reader, that Old Publius is just doing some partisan NDP bashing. True, giving a political kick to Canada's First Comrade Couple is very tempting. Since I'm funding their fun, I think I'm entitled to mock their sense of entitlement. It's a semi-free country. Unless Jack actually becomes Prime Minister. 

There is a wider principle here - as there so often is in these posts. The NDP loves to bash fat cats (private business people) for living high on the hog - their tired metaphor. This news story is just sauce for the gander - my tired metaphor. Those fat cats, typically, are living high off private hogs. The public hog is what concerns us, and Jack and Olivia have been on it for many, many years.    

My objection is not so much that the leader of a major political party should have an appropriate income, and proper staffing to do his job, it's that said leader becomes outraged when heads of large corporations get the same thing. When the capitalist class spends money they've earned, it's an example of the cold heartless nature of modern capitalism. When Jack Layton spends money other people have earned, well he's just doing his job.

 

Tuesday Night - Handel

Vox Olbermann

Too funny:

MSNBC host Keith Olbermann was put on indefinite suspension Friday after bosses at the cable news network learned that he had donated to three Democratic candidates, including one who had appeared on his show on the same day, in violation of the network's rules.

"I became aware of Keith's political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay," Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC, said in a statement.

Right. Contributing a few thousand dollars - chump change in modern politics - to three candidates is a violation of company policy. I get that. It's MSNBC's show and they make the rules. One assumes, however, that this policy is designed to help maintain an air of impartiality.

Thing is that no one who has ever had the displeasure of watching Keith Olbermann rant would assume he was impartial. He is an obviously biased political commentator. Again, nothing wrong with that. It's what he's paid to do and, for a dwindling number of people, it's something they are wiling to watch.

But if it's inappropriate to kick over a few thousand dollars to Democratic candidates, in a few tight races, then what about the millions of dollars worth of free air time Olbermann has given over the years in mouthing DNC talking points? What is more obviously impartial, a private donation, or public cheerleading for one part of a two party system?

Scenes from the Imperial Capital

Sell Out

So here is your genial correspondent, shaking off the jet lag in a hotel in Southern California. At my door a complimentary copy of the Wall Street Journal. Glancing over the headlines two words jump out: Canada and Potash.

There can be nothing less sexy in the world of international business than Canada and fertilizer. Boring sensible Canadians making a boring and sensible product. So, why the front page treatment? In the American business newspaper of record, no less?

Well Tony Clement, you may remember him as an ex-member of the Mike Harris Common Sense posse, is now the federal Minister of Industry. Last week Mr Clement, who this past summer saved Canada from the authoritarian scourge of the long-form census, decided to violate the property rights of thousands of his fellow Canadians, as well as many assorted foreigners.

Hell. I leave the country for a few days and we've become a maple syruped Venezuela.

Follow.

The players in our drama:

Potash denotes a group of potassium compounds, the most well known being potassium oxide, which is extensively used to make fertilizers. Historically, commercial potash was obtained from the ashes of burnt trees and other vegetation. Today, it is usually derived from underground salt deposits. Canada is the world's leading producer and, as you can guess from Brad Wall's agitated behaviour in recent months, Saskatchewan is where most of the potashing is done in our fair Dominion.

The Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan was set up in 1975 as a Crown corporation from the remnants of the private, but heavily subsidized and American owned, potash industry. In the late 1980s the firm was privatized and is now a widely held, publicly traded producer of fertilizer. It is the world's largest potash producer.

BHP Billiton is an Anglo-Australian mining giant. Seeing rapid global population growth, and urbanization, over the next few decades, the Melborne based firm wanted to increase its exposure to the agricultural sector. Being a resources kind of company, it made sense for them to purchase a potash purveyor. Since potash is mined, and BHP is a mining company, there was a strong likelihood of that much loved B-School term: synergy.

Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of Canada, former President of the National Citizens Coalition, a "conservative" think-tank. Mr Harper is widely regarded - by the editorial board of the Toronto Star - as a right-wing demagogue plotting to transform Canada into a snow-bound version of Texas, or at least the dystopian view of Texas many Canadians have.

A staunch advocate of small government, unless it threatens his chances of obtaining a long dreamed for majority government, Mr Harper joined the conservative movement when Pierre Trudeau crippled the Canadian oil industry via the National Energy Program (NEP). Despite the word "national" the program's real intent was to subsidize oil consumption in Ontario, by shafting oil producers in Alberta (pardon the pun). This horrible act of statist injustice spurred Stephen of Leaside to become a free market version of Batman. Until the whole free market stuff began to test poorly with focus groups.

Last week Canada's two leading producers of fertilizer, the Potash Corporation and our political class, intersected in the wake of BHP Billiton's attempted takeover. Despite offering $38.6 billions dollars, the bid was rejected by the Potash board in August. BHP pushed ahead, making a direct offer to shareholders - a hostile bid in effect. The whole thing landed on Minister Clement's desk in October. Last Thursday the honourable member for Parry Sound-Muskoka told BHP that its bid provided "no net benefit" to Canada.

Well, that's the minister's opinion. Unfortunately his opinions, indeed even his whims, are the law of the land. In the national interest, of course. There is certainly a nation called Canada, there is no person or being called Canada. It is a political abstraction. There are thirty-four million Canadians, each with his or her own interests and beliefs.

What Tony Clement has done is violate the private property rights of those Canadians who own shares in Potash Corp, to benefit other Canadians who, in his belief, would not benefit from the sale of Potash Corp to BHP. In other words, Tony has decided that selected Peter is to have his property partially nationalized, in order to help out collectivist Paul. It's not theft exactly, since the shares have not been expropriated, it's instead something akin to vandalism. Just as a vandal reduces the value of a property by damaging it, so Tony Clement, with his economic nationalist spray paint can, has reduced the value of Potash shares. 

Patriotism, as Dr Johnson observed, is the last refuge of scoundrels. Since most politicians are scoundrels, or for practical purposes should be assumed as such, we find them frequently wrapping themselves in the flag. No matter how craven the methods, the goal is always the "national interest." There is such a thing as a national interest. A free nation losing a war to a dictatorship would not be in the former's national interest. Beyond that sort of big and obvious stuff, the "national interest" is just a pretty bow, too often tied to some very ugly things.

As is abundantly clear to most political observers, Mr Harper and Mr Clement ejected their political principles, such as yet remained, because they were afraid of Brad Wall, the Premier of Saskatchewan. Why? Because Mr Wall is quite popular at the moment. This is in part because he has proven to be more competent as Premier than his immediate predecessor, Lorne Calvert. More recently Mr Wall's popularity has grown because of his energetic opposition to the BHP buyout.

Why is Mr Wall opposed? Because it is possible, perhaps likely, that a foreign owned Potash Corp would close down certain operations in Saskatchewan. This has caused great anxiety among those afraid of losing their jobs. Which is understandable. There is also a very strong likelihood that a foreign owned Potash would pay less taxes into the provincial coffers. It's a nice piece of the action, and the political-bureaucratic class in Regina isn't going to give it up without a fight.

The national interest here is really the interest of those in Saskatchewan who would stand to lose by this deal. Most of the opponents of the deal stand on no great principle. It is not quite self-interest either. By signalling to the world's capital markets that Brad Wall and Tony Clement have hired Hugo Chavez as their economic advisor, those money men are now going to steer a wide berth from the Canadian Prairies. Blocking the BHP bid is short-term pandering for long-term pain. After campaigning for election on the theme that Saskatchewan is open for business, Brad Wall has now clarified how business is to operate in the Canadian heartland.

Tony Clement has made a popular decision. Brad Wall has lead a popular crusade. They have, for the moment, won a political victory. The electorate of Saskatchewan may reward them for their pandering. Politicians pander for a very simple reason, it works very well most of the time. 

We can dream of an electorate well-read on their Hayek, Smith and Rand, but such a thing has not yet come to pass. What is shown by this Potash protectionism is more than economic illiteracy, heck that's par for the political course. Wall and Clement have been craven, but no more so than their voters. The politicians have been great hypocrites, but that is to be expected. The people have shown themselves to be hypocrites just as great, which is far more tragic and dangerous.

Globalization showed itself in the BHP bid; the possible downside of living in a global economy. One day you are the buyer, the next day you are being bought out. The Wheel of Fortune sometimes turns against you, sometimes for you. Most of those who opposed the Potash deal have benefited from globalization. They have purchased cheap Chinese goods from Wal-Mart, that were once made in Quebec. They have phoned into Indian call centres, that were once located in Toronto or Mississauga. They have sold their wheat, their oil and their potash to China and India, markets which scarcely existed twenty years ago.

When the voters of Saskatchewan were faced with the risks of globalization - seeing their jobs shipped overseas and their tax base reduced - they ran to government to protect them. Thirty years ago a young Stephen Harper quit the Liberal Party because Pierre Trudeau, for political reasons, favoured Ontario over Alberta. Last week Stephen Harper and Tony Clement showed themselves every bit as politically craven as Pierre Trudeau and Marc Lalonde. Becoming what you hate is an old cliche, like most old cliches it has the strong ring of truth.

 

Blogging Will Be Light This Week

WIll be travelling to the Great Republic. Publius shall return next week, with his usual mixture of sarcasm and historical arcana.