The Gods of the Copybook Headings

"It is marvellous in our eyes."

 

According to legend when Queen Elizabeth I was told of her accession to the throne, she fell to her knees and quoted Psalm 118: "This is the Lord's doing: it is marvellous in our eyes."

To the shock of virtually everyone the British voter has told Brussels and the whole blasted edifice of the Eurocratic state to go stuff themselves. I am beside myself with delighted shock. My schedule of late has made regular blogging very difficult for me. Yet this is one of those moments where I simply had to say something. This is History with a big capital "H." This is politics with an grand and elongated "P" dominating the surrounding text. This is not simply athwart history yelling stop, this is actually stopping history and telling the teleologists of European Federalism to go take an extended walk off a very short pier.

It has been the opinion of this site - since what seems like time immemorial - that Charles de Gaulle was correct on two points: Opposing the Nazis and opposing Britain's entry into what was then called the Common Market. In blocking Britain's initial application in 1963 he famously observed that Britain does not think or act like a continental nation. To which we say in a rousing response: Thank Goodness!

While the instinct of good Anglophiles through out the world is to sing Rule Britannia and There Will Always Be An England, it is at moments like these that caution must be exercised. The EU is much like a street gang, albeit with somewhat better sartorial tastes. It's easy enough to join the Brussels Bloods or the Strasbourg Crips, it's somewhat harder to leave. The European Union rules not through brute force - only two of its members, now down to one, has any credible military power. Nor does the EU rule through popular consent. Instead it rules through bureaucratic entanglement. 

At this moment the continental Sir Humphreys are plotting to keep Britain in "Europe." They will point to the close margin. They will point to the complexity of the exit negotiations. They will point to Britain's shaky economy. For the moment they will point to the crashes in international markets as proof that Brexit is a disaster. It's all rubbish and those responsible patriots within the British state must keep pushing forward. The referendum is not the beginning of the end, it is only the end of the beginning. The Eurocrats will fight well polished tooth and manicured nail to prevent British independence. They understand - perhaps more clearly than most Britons today - that the United Kingdom remains the arbiter of Europe. 

So long as Britain is free, Europe might be free. Those who have sought to build a single European superstate - the Bourbons, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hitler, Stalin - understood that this strange fog bound island off the coast of France is not merely Airstrip One. It is a nation that invented punching above its weight and overcoming absurd odds. Doing impossible and mildly eccentric things is the British way. Merciful a small majority of the British electorate still understands that.

My suspicion is that many of the 48.1% who voted Remain did so out of fear. The fear that modern Britain is too weak to stand on its own. I doubt very much that any significant portion of the electorate - outside the international business class and the Guardian wielding intelligentsia - thinks of itself as "European." They look upon the EU as a clumsy though basically utilitarian machine to facilitate travel and trade. When it is demonstrated that Britain does not need the EU, it will be the death knell of the European project.

It is possible that - if only out of desperation - the Eurocracy may perform a volte face and create a genuine single market, that the whole of the EU might be turned into a free marketing free trade zone from Lisbon to Latvia. In that we would rejoice. The odds however are very slim. The continental European is too addicted to statism and collectivism to accept the rigours of liberty. Given a choice between the benefits of market capitalism and the illusions of welfare statism they will choose the latter every time. The British are hardly immune from these temptations, though they at least show persistent signs of penitence. Any other country would have voted James Callaghan back into office in 1979. Any other country would have turfed the Tories in 2015 in favour of the blandishments of Milibanian Labourism. The British muddle through, mostly in the right direction. In a fallen world that makes them an inspiration.

I would like to take this opportunity to give a personal thanks to David Cameron. He has never been my favourite politician. I have nothing against an Old Etonian - quite the contrary - but an Old Etonian who pretends he doesn't know any Latin is far too much. Much of his career has been a series of fragile pretensions around the questions of class and ideology. A pseudo-Thatcherite who attempts very clumsily to project a matey charm. Considering the moral corruptions of the Blairite years these are comparatively petty complaints. He is almost wholesome in the light of his immediate Labour predecessors. Beside John Major he doth bestride the world like a Colossus. It is only next to That Woman that he seems like a little boy in short pants.

Yet all that said and said again he has kept his promise. There has been a referendum, the side he campaigned for vigorously lost by a small but clear margin and this morning he did the honourable thing and resigned after only six years in Downing Street. Can you imagine Barack Obama, Justin Trudeau or Gordon Brown doing the same thing? Not the smallest chance. Credit where it's due. He'll almost certainly be made a peer after a discreet interval. May he continue to serve his country in the House of Lords with distinction.

The question now turns automatically to succession. Just as this referendum was no ordinary vote, so his successor can be no ordinary man. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove are the most commonly touted names. We shall see what shakes out during the Tory leadership campaign that will dominate political headlines until October. What is clear is that the next Prime Minister must push through with Brexit at full speed. While the million niggling details may take years to sort out, the big stuff is easy enough. Parliament should immediately pass a kind of declaratory act asserting its supremacy and that of British law over and above any European laws or regulations. Any EU laws that remain on the books do so temporarily and at the grace and favour of Parliament. This places any further negotiations in a clear and stark light: We're in charge of this process and we're leaving no matter what. 

Once this is done a set time table must be established. If negotiations fail with Brussels on a particular point, Parliament will then be free to act unilaterally. A parallel set of laws and institutions must be quickly established and made ready to replace any useful and necessary functions that have - since 1973 - been outsourced to the EU. Momentum is absolutely vital. Any hesitation over the next few months would spell the end of Brexit.

Be joyful my friends. But be wary and strong as well. 

Brother Can You Spare a Billion?

Paul Godfrey goes begging for tax dollars:

Media supremo Paul Godfrey wants the federal government to subsidize the flagging newspaper industry. It’s not a new idea. Ottawa has been in the business of quietly helping Canadian publications for more than a century.

But it raises two questions. First, is it a good idea for the press to go hat in hand to Ottawa? Second, would the proposed new subsidies work?

Godfrey heads Postmedia, the biggest newspaper chain in the country. It’s a chain that’s unapologetically conservative in its politics.

I'm afraid Thomas Walkom - the author of the above piece - has a poor grasp of what conservative actually means. That's not very surprising coming from a Toronto Star columnist. That Paul Godfrey has no idea what the word means is sadly not surprising at all. Establishment Canadian Conservatives make American RINO squishes look like Ayn Rand heroes.

As Walkom explains at length in his piece the Canadian media has been whoring itself out to the government since John A was in knee pants. That's not a joke. Pre-Confederation governments were notorious for providing indirect subsidies to friendly newspapers through government advertising contracts. For decades Ottawa has subsidized the mail delivery of subscription magazines. During the First World War even the British government was partially subsidizing the newswire service Canadian Press. 

As Brian Mulroney was fond of observing: There's no whore like an old whore. Canadian newspaper journalists are very, very old whores.

The long and the short of it is that no one wants what the newsmen and newswomen of Canada are selling. People don't want journalism they want celebrity news, sports, lifestyle blather and the weather report. The average reader doesn't give a damn about the comings and goings on Parliament Hill or any of the ten provincial legislatures. They will not pay money for journalism good, bad or indifferent. This has probably been the case for decades, a dark reality masked because for a very long time newspapers were a comparatively efficient way for private individuals (the classifieds) and large business (full page ads) to reach consumers. The internet has blown that all to hell. What's left is kitty litter lining. 

Whatever the intrinsic merits of newspapering and other forms of reasonably hard journalism, the people of Canada have spoken: They don't care. Paul Godfrey is handing out buggy whips in the middle of a superhighway and expecting the taxpayers to reward his futile efforts. However sad, tragic or unjust it's a simple commercial reality. It is not the business of government to bail out journalists from their obsolescence or readers from their militant ignorance. 

 

 

Rebel Without a Drink

There are some things so stupid only a Canadian politician could rationalize them:

His name is Gerard Comeau, though his lawyer calls him “Joe Canadian.” A retired steelworker with a taste for beer and a frugal streak, he’s the unlikely face of a revolt.
And yet a shopping trip by Comeau to pick up 15 cases of beer in 2012 -- some 354 bottles and cans -- triggered a legal fight that shook the ground on which rest many of Canada’s arcane inter-provincial trade rules.

Comeau’s penalty for illegally bringing alcohol across a provincial border was tossed out last month when a judge ruled such bans were unconstitutional. While Comeau’s lawyer says the case is a victory for small brewers and could hurt giants like Anheuser-Busch InBev SA and Molson Coors Brewing Co., the case goes far beyond beer and is spurring a renewed push to overhaul Canada’s complex web of internal trade barriers that add another drag to an economy already grappling with an oil-price shock.

These laws have been on the books for nearly a century, yet only recently did a Canadian judge rule them unconstitutional. Keep in mind the constitution these laws are flagrantly violating is the original 1867 version not the Trudeaupia 2.0 version dropped on us back in 1982. The judge also defended his decision by citing original intent. Much to my shock - and no doubt yours - there are justices on the Canadian bench who from time to time believe in originalism. These are people who actually give a flying damn what the Fathers of Confederation were trying to accomplish.

Give me a moment. I'm almost giddy.

For our American readers let me clarify: Most Canadian judges believe in a living constitutions. Actually I'm underselling it. For them the Canadian constitution isn't just living, it jumps and jives its way through life not giving a tinker's damn about silly old fashioned things like its actual text. In fact if you'll bear with me for a moment our constitutional jurisprudence imagines our founding document as a tattooed and pierced activist marching around Parliament Hill waving a placard. It's often remarked by American conservatives that to the Left the US Constitution is whatever the Supreme Court says it is. That's a bitter joke in America. With Section One of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that ain't a joke, it's business as usual.

As Martha Stewart was fond of saying, this decision is a Good Thing. The power of the state has been curtailed and the freedom of the individual expanded. Yet I'm left with a certain sense of being overwhelmed. This is but one example of an unconstitutional trade barrier. There dozens upon dozens of varying degrees of absurdity. As with supply management these barriers are blatant money grabs, an arcane way of gouging Canadian consumers and reducing competition. There is not even a fig of justification. These laws survive because the ordinary Canadian shrugs his shoulders and repeats our national mantra: "What ya gonna do about it?"

We sometimes mock the Americans for their overheated political rhetoric. If they are too aggressive in their political life we are by comparison far, far too timid. 

 

That Which Survives

When the spirit has left, what remains are the sterile urges for mere survival:

But when the Church of England advertised for two new leaders to help guide potentially thousands of worshippers who believe they may be “called” by God to the priesthood, faith, it hastened to say, was not necessary.

Red-faced officials have now made an embarrassing climb-down after inadvertently inviting atheists and members of other religions to lead a major new clergy recruitment drive intended to help secure the Church of England’s future.

I love the word "inadvertently." For decades the idea of atheist vicars has been something of a running joke. The Church of England - along with its once formidable mainline Protestant competitors - has been trying to remain "relevant" for so long that the whole of Christianity thing often gets overlooked. Long-time readers will know that I'm an infidel in good standing, an old fashioned scoffer at the church door. However I find the decline of the C of E  fascinating from a sociological standpoint.

The decline of Christianity as a cultural force has left a Mack-truck sized hole in the spiritual and intellectual life of the Western world. Over the last century that hole has been filled by various political ideologies and more recently by a revitalized Islam. The Roman Church has - more or less - stood athwart modernity yelling stop. It's large institutional competitors have decided to go along for the ride, jumping onto political and cultural fads, only to be left flat footed when everyone else moved on. Having compromised with the world so thoroughly the Anglican Church thought nothing of handling its evangelizing work over to non-believers.

Man makes plans and God gives a very, very bitter laugh. 

With Conservatives Like These...

Meanwhile in Ontario:

Maintaining a low profile seems to be part of his plans as the Liberals slide deeper into voters’ dog house: Wynne is the least popular premier in Canada with a personal approval that hovers around 20 per cent. A Forum Research survey indicated the Tories could come close to a majority government if a snap election were called. Brown’s personal approval is stronger than Wynne’s at 27 per cent, though 48 per cent of Ontarians still know little about him. That figure doesn’t bother him: taking time to rebuild the party, crafting a palatable platform and building ties to voter groups alienated by previous PC leaders takes precedence over photo ops for now.

[...]

Brown envisions a new “pragmatic conservatism.” If powerful union interests contributed to the demise of his predecessors, he’ll build bridges. Firefighters and police unions were first, and his work on coverage for post-traumatic stress disorder has bolstered that effort.

So John Tory without the irritating smugness. 

The voters of Ontario have spoken with one voice: They love free stuff! One day - in the not so distant future - the bond market vigilantes will make their return and punish the voters very, very harshly. But that's tomorrow. We've had a thirteen year spending spree on the part of the Dalt-Wynne Dynasty. If not for the absurdly low interest rates of the last decade the party - in both senses - would have been over a very long time ago. But so long as the credit is cheap, the voters are greedy and the crown prosecutors kept at bay, the party will continue. 

The leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives understands this simple reality. He knows that to gain power he must pass himself off as Kathleen Wynne without the stench of corruption and abuse of power. Brown will promise voters all the Free Stuff they want, except with a shiny youngish face rather than the haggard lying face of the current Premier of Ontario. If contemporary politics sounds like meaningless rhetoric and non-essentials that's because it is. There is an iron-clad consensus - socialists of all parties - that the purpose of government is to bribe voters with the money of the Rich. What constitutes "rich" is left undefined because - inevitably - the rich will have to include anyone still foolish enough to hold down a regular job. 

There are somethings which cannot be taught. They must be experienced good and hard. My suspicion is that Patrick Brown - who spent nearly a decade as a back-bench nonentity on Parliament Hill - isn't clever enough to realize that Ontario is on the verge of fiscal collapse. He cannot see past the next election cycle and is driven purely by a desire for power. Virtually the whole of his adult life has been spent either holding or pursuing elected office. Patrick Brown is that most lamentable of creatures: The professional politician. 

Après moi, le déluge is what Louis XV is suppose to have said. If Patrick Brown does become Premier in 2018 he will learn its meaning in both official languages.  

 

Princess of Trudeaupia

The Trudeau Family makes itself comfortable:

Speaking in Quebec City earlier this week, Ms. Grégoire Trudeau bluntly said she and her current assistant can’t manage the number of demands that come from being a high-profile, bilingual and much sought-after speaker. Various groups and charitable organizations regularly invite Ms. Grégoire Trudeau to promote their causes, but the constant requests are proving impossible to address under current circumstances, she said.

“I’d like to be everywhere, but I can’t,” Ms. Grégoire Trudeau said in an interview with daily newspaper Le Soleil. “I have three children at home and a husband who is Prime Minister. I need help. I need a team to help me serve people.”

If you really want to serve the people go work as a waitress. 

There is no job called "First Lady of Canada." Until somewhat recently - Margaret Trudeau incidentally - the wife of the serving Prime Minister was hardly ever mentioned in public. Laureen Harper spent nearly a decade in the role without bothering anyone and with minimal support. The office of British Prime Minister has been in existence for nearly three centuries and even specialist historians would be hard pressed to name more than a handful of Prime Ministerial wives. There is nothing in the laws, customs or traditions of our system of government that regards the spouse of the PM as anything more than a bystander to the functions of the state.

But that was then. As we are continually reminded: It's 2016!

Justin's father dispensed with the hum-drum limitations of his role as First Minister, creating the modern Imperial Prime Minister who rules with a rod of iron. It was under the elder Trudeau that ministers became clerks and back-benchers so much parliamentary cannon-fodder. The thing about absolute monarchs - or sandal clad philosopher kings - is that there is no limit to their purview. All things fall under their sway. Consequently those who serve under the New Sun King's remit must wield great power as well. To suggest otherwise is the gravest example of lèse majesté.

Because Justin Trudeau is important so must every member of his entourage, including those who have no official capacity. Mrs Trudeau - we're old fashioned here at GCH and refuse to Ms anyone - is arrogating to herself the prerogatives of a Queen. Her mere presence is now necessary to the proper functioning of the Canadian state. One begins to wonder how anything was done in Canada in the 148 years before her arrival at 24 Sussex Drive. Yet somehow we muddled along in this old Dominion of ours. 

At the centre of this whirlpool of conceit is this remarkable example of self-absorption on the part of Mrs Trudeau:  

“It’s hard to choose, because it’s touching when people ask for your help. People really lay out their suffering in some of the letters that I receive. I tell myself: ‘I’ll try to send a message that will reach as many people as possible,’” Ms. Grégoire Trudeau told Le Soleil.

Mrs Trudeau is not a trained psychiatrist, counsellor, medical expert or technical advisor of any sort. She has a degree in communications and once worked as a personal shopper for Holt Renfrew. Her resume is so thin it makes her husband look like George C Marshall. Like her husband she is the child of upper class Montreal privilege. What actual help such a being could provide to the "people" of Canada is hard to define. Perhaps a pep talk on the importance of being born rich and beautiful and marrying well. 

The voters demanded change last October. We replaced a flawed man of substance with a man-child as Prime Minister. Not surprisingly Canada's new "First Lady" is as useless and vain as her predecessor was accomplished and professional. 

 

Deliverology

Corporate speak comes to Trudeaupia:

For the time he was available, Mr. Mendelsohn explained how, in a nutshell, his results-and-delivery role is about ensuring departments are clear on their goals, that they have their operations structured in such a way to achieve stated objectives, and that measurements are regularly taken to assess progress.

“It includes being really relentless about measuring progress in your success and seeing whether you are achieving your goals or objectives or purposes, and recalibrating or readjusting if you’re not,” Mr. Mendelsohn said.

Those of us who have worked for large corporations - especially those poor bastards who have worked at HQ - will feel their skins crawl at such mindless chatter. When we on the Right talk about introducing a greater private sector mentality into government operations this is not what we mean. When Justin's "Deliverology" guru speaks this way he is importing the worst aspects of private enterprise into government: Inane office politics. 

The point of corporate speak isn't to communicate information, it's to spin information in a manner pleasing to the executive leadership. In other words it's importing the worst aspects of government into the private sector. What Mr Mendelsohn is doing isn't "delivering results" but pretending to deliver results. Most likely Comrade Gerald realized that while ordinary Canadians were enamoured with Justin's luscious locks and superb boxing skills, they will eventually realize the Prime Minister is an immature lightweight who has never held a real job. 

Part of the image making process is spinning against your weaknesses. Margaret Thatcher was perceived as soft and incapable of leadership simply because she was a woman. Her handlers skillfully trained her voice, dress and manners to seem just a little more masculine without her coming off as butch. Stephen Harper was perceived as a heartless accountant ready to crush the poor underfoot - if only - so they dressed him in fluffy blue sweaters and forced him warble out Beatles hits on an old piano. Since Justin Trudeau is Zoolander without the intellectual subtly and depth, his handlers are desperately trying to portray him as the second coming of Frederick Winslow Taylor. 

It will fail. Miserably. But between now and then will be an eternity in Canadian politics. 

Saying that you are "relentless about measuring progress" is meaningless in politics and government. All organizations establish some type of metric to evaluate their success at achieving designated goals. These are however internal metrics. A CEO might very well establish a series of metrics in order to make the organization "lean and mean." Whether those metrics have any relation to objective reality is not consequent on the employees having met the metrics. A organization is successful if it's clients think it has met their needs properly. Since this is rather complicated - and often takes years to do well - many CEOs just fake it and hope to make it. They establish impressive sounding goals and high sounding metrics, while on the backend manipulate the calculations to produce the desired results.

I have worked for corporations where the key metrics were - for all intents - utterly random. At first I assumed that I was missing something, that there was some hidden method in the madness. And so there was. The method was not to properly evaluate the performance of employees, but to create an arbitrary process which could be interpreted any which way the managers and executives wanted. Star performers could never consistently meet their goals and so never get a good bonus. Utter incompetents would have brilliant quarters followed by terrible results, which in turn would require more "coaching" resources from other departments. Since it was impossible to accurately predicate anyone's results the managers could promote, fire and punish almost with impunity simply by cherry picking the random results. As most of the employees were fairly daft and cowardly none of this metrical legerdemain was ever tested in court. 

I doubt Team Trudeau is intelligent enough to establish something so cynically clever, yet it gives you an idea of how pointless most metrics truly are even in the private sector. The only metric that matters in business over the long run is profits. Any activity which cannot be directly linked to the bottom line is a waste. By creating a series of false metrics the executive leadership can muddle the issue to hide their failures and incompetence. The key difference is that the private sector is subject - more or less given our highly regulated mix economy - to the discipline of the market. Government is subject only to the whim of a largely disengaged, over taxed and poorly educated electorate. Deliverology is Trudeaupian kabuki theatre without the pretty costumes. What remains is the ugly lie of modern government and its cynical operators.

Tories In Dark Places

I am shocked, shocked to find Conservatives at the CBC:

A member of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's board of directors has resigned from his position to seek the presidency of the Conservative Party of Canada, The Tyee has learned.

Brian Mitchell, a Montreal lawyer, confirmed that he resigned Sunday after eight years on the government-funded broadcaster's board of directors and its pension board of trustees.

So yes there are Conservatives at the state broadcaster, they just have nothing to do with broadcasting. But you knew that already. We had a Conservative government for nearly a decade and that government dutifully appointed loyal party hacks to the board of directors. So far as anyone can tell it didn't have the slightest impact on either the quality or political slant of the broadcaster. Yet through out that decade we were told repeatedly that the Harper Tories were undermining the independence of the Mother Corp. That myth persists well into the neo-Trudeaupian era: 

Polling conducted for Friends of Canadian Broadcasting by Nik Nanos last September showed 49 per cent of Canadians feel the prime minister's ability to appoint members to its board gives the government too much influence over the CBC.

But what's the alternative? Allowing a crown corporation to act independently of any parliamentary oversight is a betrayal of responsible government. Those receiving government  funds - or operating under the special grant or leave of the government - must be under democratic control. A state sponsored entity beyond the control of elected officials is by definition a rogue agency. In other words if you think the CBC is broadcasting Toronto centric, self indulgent leftist twaddle, imagine what they'll get up to without Parliament at least pretending to monitor their operations. That doesn't even get into the featherbedding and cronyism for which the Mother Corp is notorious. 

What the CBC's few remaining advocates miss is the essential contradiction in the idea of state sponsored journalism. The great value of journalism is its ability to hold powerful institutions in our society to account. When the most powerful element in any society - the government - is paying for journalism there is always an inherent threat to the independence of the journalists. 

As a result the history of state sponsored journalism through out the world has swung back and forth between two extremes: Toadying and exaggerated hostility. Either the state journalists become flacks for their political masters, or they acquire the manner and status of tenured professors allowed to indulge their personal views. In Canada the latter attitude has mostly prevailed. The CBC's journalists are able to engage in their own private wars because no federal government since Pearson has had the guts to rein them in. Woe betide the MP or cabinet minister who dares question the impartiality or accuracy of the Mother Corp's minions. The Choir Invisible of the Canadian Left will scream censorship and portrayal their colleagues in the CBC as latter day Galileos. 

Private journalists are ultimately accountable not to their editors or publishers but to their readers and viewers. If they produce journalism no one wants to read, that journalism dies. This is why so many journalists are fond of state broadcasting. So long as their political views align with those of their employer, the readers and viewers are irrelevant. Whether the CBC is watched by millions or dozens it receives exactly the same sum from the federal coffers. They can write or broadcast ludicrous and even defamatory pieces against their personal enemies with few repercussions. Years ago The Rebel's Brian Lilley wrote a book detailing some of the CBC's abuses of journalistic power. It contained only a small fraction of the known instances where the Mother Corp has played fast and loose with the facts.

This leads to a powerful but often overlooked truth: Public broadcasting is an essentially Orwellian phrase. It means the exact opposite of what the words are suppose to mean. It is not journalism dedicated to the public interest but journalism expressly designed to defy desires of the public as expressed by the workings of the market. It is state journalists twisting the news to met their personal agendas - far more than large corporations - that present the true threat to good journalism in modern Canada. 

 

Adulting

I must gentle readers plead ignorance. It was only this week that I discovered a new verb had been added to the English language:

Adulting (v): to do grown up things and hold responsibilities such as, a 9-5 job, a mortgage/rent, a car payment, or anything else that makes one think of grown ups.

Used in a sentence: Jane is adulting quite well today as she is on time for work promptly at 8am and appears well groomed.

MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour...

New words emerge to describe new things. Apparently behaving as 99.9% of the human race behaved until the day before yesterday is something worthy not only of comment but also verbification. When adjectives become verbs a special idiocy is loosened upon the world. I first saw this new word in that venerable publication of the mildly zany Left, Slate:

When the researchers controlled for route, seating class, time, and date, women’s savings attributable to early planning shrunk to $17 per ticket, about 2 percent of the airfare. (The men might have chosen more expensive seats and more convenient times, making them culpable for their higher prices in more ways than just their procrastination, but the report doesn’t address that possibility.) In a large, multinational organization with 21,000 employees taking four trips each per year, the authors estimate, women would save the company more than $1 million a year just by booking earlier than their male counterparts. Or, to look at it another way, the men would cost the company an extra $1 million by waiting later to book their flights.

That long and winding road came from an article with the title "Women are great at Adulting." Apparently women are better planners or something. Well that or men are more likely to hold down sales and executives positions where travelling is very time sensitive. That would be the obvious point to make, a point which most adults engaged in actual "adulting" would have made as a matter of course. Having however fallen down the rabbit hole of "adulting" I soon came across a website and a book. The book description is a little glimpse into hell:

Just because you don't feel like an adult doesn't mean you can't act like one. And it all begins with this funny, wise, and useful book. Based on Kelly Williams Brown's popular blog, ADULTING makes the scary, confusing "real world" approachable, manageable-and even conquerable. This guide will help you to navigate the stormy Sea of Adulthood so that you may find safe harbor in Not Running Out of Toilet Paper Bay, and along the way you will learn:

-What to check for when renting a new apartment-Not just the nearby bars, but the faucets and stove, among other things.
-When a busy person can find time to learn more about the world- It involves the intersection of NPR and hair-straightening.
-How to avoid hooking up with anyone in your office -- Imagine your coworkers having plastic, featureless doll crotches. It helps.
-The secret to finding a mechanic you love-Or, more realistically, one that will not rob you blind.

From breaking up with frenemies to fixing your toilet, this way fun comprehensive handbook is the answer for aspiring grown-ups of all ages.

This is why Islamic terrorists think they can win. They survey what's left of Western Civilization and see a race of man-children guarding the battlements. Sure we have smart bombs and WiFi but tools - however sophisticated - in the hands of children cease to be tools. Flipping through some of the book's advice I was appalled. So much of this was obvious to me - and virtually everyone I knew - when I was finishing up elementary school. Then again my father thought Oprah was a cynical fraud playing to the worst elements of feminine vanity and weakness. In having bred a race of snowflakes and moral weaklings we come to the logical endpoint: A race of adults where the concept of being an adult is so alien that a new word must evolve in order for them to cope with this outlandish turn of events called growing up. 

When confronted with these little gumdrops of the approaching apocalypse, I ask myself one question repeatedly: Did these people have parents?

In the strict biological sense the answer is yes. A man and woman at one point had sex and produced a human being. As to the trickier part of being a parent - preparing their young wards to survive beyond the confines of the parental nest - the answer is very much no. At some point in the aftermath of the 1960s it was assumed that everything old was bad and everything new was good. That whatever your grandmother believed must be false not through logic or observation but instead by the date on the calendar. The rules, principles and practices that guided the West from hunter gatherer to superpower were just old fashioned superstitions to be ditched with yesterday's hemlines. It is now very plain that this was no great insight, no glimpse of what might be, it was instead old fashioned hubris pure and simple. 

Toynbee's famous observation about civilizations committing suiciding rather than being murdered is about right. There is something about success - about being so very successful for so very long - that makes even whole nations think that the laws of gravity no longer apply. That this time it really is different. This thing we call Western Civilization has been on one hell of ride for the last few hundred years: Renaissance, Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, Parliamentary government and pizza delivery to your doorstep. Had to end sometime. We end not with a bang as expected but with a long pathetic whine as we run out of toilet paper. 

 

Pork By Any Other Name

Because if the federal government didn't do it...

Whitehorse, YT – Office of the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Minister responsible for the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency (CanNor)

Today, the Honourable Minister Navdeep Bains announced a three year investment of $305,000 to three northern Francophone community associations that are working together to support the recruitment and retention of Francophone workers to Canada's North.

The Association franco-yukonnaise, the Conseil de développement économique des Territoires du Nord-Ouest, and Carrefour Nunavut are developing and executing a strategic recruitment plan to attract Francophone workers to northern communities in the territories. This initiative will help fill positions in business sectors with identified labour gaps, while strengthening Francophone communities in the North.

How is it necessary for the unity of the nation to ensure that the French go where the French have no interest in going? 

Orange Leap

How shall we speak of the NDP, Angry Tom dismissed? 

Alberta’s premier has some choice words for a new NDP policy document that made waves at the party’s national convention last weekend in Edmonton.

Among them: naïve, ill-considered and tone-deaf.

The so-called Leap Manifesto has not been adopted as party policy. Far from it, actually. But Rachel Notley told the West Block’s Vassy Kapelos this weekend that the manifesto’s stances on pipelines (no new ones should be built) and the oil patch (it needs to be phased out) could be disastrous for her province.

You don't say. Now it takes a certain special kind of wacky to get under Rachel Notley's socialist hide. When the other inmates in the asylum are calling you crazy, a point of no return has been reached. That point is called the Leap Manifesto. Conjured up from the dark recesses of the hard-core Canadian Leftist Establishment, ushered into the limelight by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis, the Leap is not so much a call to action as a cry for help. The desperate pleading of a deranged group of individuals who have lost touch with reality and embraced a comforting delusion:

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has acknowledged shocking details about the violence of Canada’s near past. Deepening poverty and inequality are a scar on the country’s present. And Canada’s record on climate change is a crime against humanity’s future.

These facts are all the more jarring because they depart so dramatically from our stated values: respect for Indigenous rights, internationalism, human rights, diversity, and environmental stewardship.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is piece of political theatre far more than a historical search for truth or an emotional quest for resolution. Anyone with a passing familiarity of the Residential School system has been aware of its defects and sins for many years. Anyone with a passing familiarity of how most schools of that era were run would not be shocked or surprised by the grisly accounts now circulating the media. 

In my travels across the Imperial Capital I've met more than a few people who graduated from the Toronto public school system before World War Two. Their recollections of abuse, discrimination and cruel violence were harrowing. It was an unpleasant thing being an aboriginal in the Residential school generations ago. Being Italian, Irish or Jewish in the Toronto of the pre-war era was hardly a picnic either. As for poverty and inequality, these things exist in modern Canada. They are however pale shadows of what came before.

It is a recurring theme of this site that modern Canada - for all its cultural decadence and decay - is in material terms a wonderland. For the first time in all history grinding poverty, systematic bigotry and widespread fear of disease are distant memories. If we were to summon John A from his slumber and show him his creation - ten times richer and more populous than when he left us - he would gap in amazement. The gleaming cities, the astonishing technologies and our valour at arms. These noble things are nothing to the Leapers. Their Canada is not the Canada the rest of us live in, it is a Canada of nightmare phantoms and piteous horrors. Their tale is a socialist penny dreadful for those still faithful to the Old Cause. 

Yet it is a truism of the evangelist trade that after you have shown the faithful hell, you must give them hope with a glimpse of heaven: 

We could live in a country powered entirely by renewable energy, woven together by accessible public transit, in which the jobs and opportunities of this transition are designed to systematically eliminate racial and gender inequality. Caring for one another and caring for the planet could be the economy’s fastest growing sectors. Many more people could have higher wage jobs with fewer work hours, leaving us ample time to enjoy our loved ones and flourish in our communities.

Excepting the bits about renewable energy and fighting bigotry this is an old story, so old that Karl Marx preached it. Nothing dies harder than faith. Nothing dies harder than faith in a God that failed so very badly. Instead of rejecting their initial assumptions they embrace them with even greater zeal. There is little point arguing how "caring for one another" is not a program for economic growth. It's a childish delusion. But that's what the NDP is now in the business of selling. In dumping Tom Mulcair they have signalled a retreat from being a serious party, a party that might one day form a national government. They have instead returned to their origins as a party of dreamers.

Note that I do not say visionaries. An actual visionary lays out a practical program. The Leapers instead treat us to such wild assertions as:

Technological breakthroughs have brought this dream within reach. The latest research shows it is feasible for Canada to get 100% of its electricity from renewable resources within two decades; by 2050 we could have a 100% clean economy.

Even if such things were technically feasible, their likely cost would exceed any practical benefit. Instead of carefully weighing costs and benefits of different proposals we are treated in the Leap Manifesto to a grand sweeping fantasy, a list of toys and delights grounded in nothing more than an earnest desire to seem good and righteous. This is not a manifesto, it is a Christmas list for those who do not believe in Jesus but still believe in Santa Claus. 

In the early twentieth century the mainline Protestant churches began their long terminal decline, a decline accelerated when their ministers ceased to preach the transcendent and the moral and instead became socialists in vestments. When socialism failed that same class of people - the earnest paternalistic WASPs and liberal minded Jews - turned toward environmentalism. In time it too will fade. In due course modern technology will create a cleaner and more prosperous economy, using the unglamorous mechanisms of the market. Historians yet unborn will note ruefully the passing of another pernicious fad that for a time retarded the economic progress of the human race. 

Forget the ideas, forget the absurdity and focus on the people. Every creed calls more urgently to certain kinds of people. For those who see themselves as the Elect and the Righteous - the guardians of the public morality whose great great-grandparents once locked up school children for playing on Sunday and banned the sale of alcohol - the point isn't solving the problem, the point is having problems to solve. The point above all is being one of the managers of problems, crises and panics. There is a certain psychological thrill in being a busybody and a puritan, a certain delight in being special among the common herd. The lust for power and vain desire for perfection are intoxicating for those who look outward rather than inward for peace and truth. This deep need some people have is why - despite decades of evidence to the contrary - the socialist and environmentalist creed is still among us. A modern religion in which modesty has been struck off the list of virtues and placed on the list of sins. 

 

A Quantum of Farce

The Boy King plays at being smart:

What is quantum computing? It seems Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has at least some knowledge of the burgeoning technological field.

Before going into politics, Trudeau taught at the elementary and high school level in Vancouver, studied engineering and started a master’s degree in environmental geography. On Friday morning in Waterloo, Ont., Trudeau reached into that background in dealing with a reporter’s question about quantum computing.

I should not have eaten breakfast before watching. If you listen to the very beginning of the video a reporter is questioning Trudeau about Canada's response to ISIL. Not wanting to answer an actual question related to his job, the Son and Heir quickly pivoted to an earlier question about quantum computing. The video - as they say - has gone viral. The reaction of the world media has been grotesquely fawning: Handsome and smart is the new consensus opinion on JT. The actual explanation that Trudeau the Younger provided was rather less impressive:

“A regular computer bit is either a one or a zero, either on or off. A quantum state can be much more complex than that, because as we know, things can be both particle and wave at the same time and the uncertainty around quantum states allows us to encode more information into a much smaller computer.”

If you watch the video our current Prime Minister sounds like an overly excited fifth grader reciting lines in a school play. It was clearly memorized and very clearly rehearsed. The crowd burst into wild cheers after Trudeau completed the monumental feat of being a mouth piece for those smarter than himself. For someone who has so much practice at being a mouthpiece the surprise is how unnatural the performance came off. The reaction of the audience is also a fascinating glimpse into Trudeaumania 2.0. The Prime Minister spoke like a school child and the reporters responded like delighted parents. Look at our darling boy! Look at how clever he is! Look at how far he's come! He only stuttered once!

Those of us with adult attention spans will recall the Harper Era and what an actual Prime Minster sounds like. For all his many failings the Badly Coiffed One would never have tried explaining quantum computing. This is not because he was less intelligent than his successor - even the most ardent of Trudeaumaniacs would be hard pressed to argue that their boy is smarter than our man - but because Mr Harper understood that his job did not entail playing science teacher to the Press Gallery.

I can see Stephen Harper explaining the economic and social benefits of quantum computer - and how the federal government under his leadership would respond - but that's as far as it goes. Rather than playing at being smart he was smart, smart enough to know that a Prime Minister's job is politics and public policy. That was the old vision of governance now rapidly fading from view. The prospect before us is of an overly eager child playing at a game. The public is amused by his charm and eagerness but in time the novelty will wear off. When the real crisis comes the vacant rhetoric, the carefully crafted memes and the solidly staged sound bites will melt into air.

Gertrude Stein famously said of Oakland that there was no there there. That is the political epithet of the second Trudeau Regime.  

White Power

The NDP admits what we've always suspected: They're racists:

The president of the New Democratic Party thinks her party needs to aggressively diversify its ranks in order to better reflect Canadian society.

"I think the party's too white, I think all parties are too white. But so are we, and so let's start doing some better outreach and acknowledging that, so we can change the look of the folks around the table," Rebecca Blaikie said in an interview with host Chris Hall on CBC Radio's The House.

The key word is "look". Not think or act but look. The only diversity that Rebecca Blaikie - daughter of former NDP MP Bill Blaikie - gives a damn about is the kind that's a few millimetres thick. Now you know and I know that black people can be just as economically illiterate as white people. Brown people just as immune to logic as Scandinavians. So from a practical standpoint a less white NDP will still be - you know - the NDP. Leaving aside the irony of people who call everyone else racists admitting that they're racists too, there's the deeper glimpse we're getting of the Dipper soul.

Beyond the rhetorical flourishes the Left's essential message is a return to collectivism, that view of the human race that had dominated history until the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. While they talk about being "progressive" each of their ideas calls for a return to a traditional form of social arrangements that retarded the human race for millennia. Chaps like Edmund Burke are often called "conservatives", yet in the grand sweep of history Burke was a radical defending the comparatively progressive social and political arrangements of Hanoverian Britain. In its proper sense the Rightists are the progressives and the Leftists are the reactionaries trying to fight genuine social progress.

Like Baskin Robbins collectivism comes in more than 31 flavours. There's your old fashion feudal collectivism, theocratic collectivism, Marxist collectivism and the ever popular racial collectivism. That last one Ayn Rand famously described as "barnyard collectivism" as it was based on so non-essential an attribute as people's physical appearance, something obvious to any fool strolling through a barnyard. Even the Marxists - butchering bastards that they were - had the intelligence to sort people by the abstract category of class. With that in mind we can see that the NDP is taking us all back to the barnyard, back to the most primitive type collectivism imaginable. Having failed to convince the world of the necessity of class struggle, the NDP will instead preach a doctrine of racism.

Forget about how the NDP looks. They way they talk is repulsive enough.

Looking Good

Trudeaupia 2.0 bares its soul:

“Very, very few” of the thousands of Syrian refugees who have come to Canada came from refugee camps and most had been living in rented apartments in Syria’s neighbouring countries, a senior CBSA official told Parliament in February.

Conservative are now accusing the federal government of conveying a false perception to Canadians that refugees were selected from refugee camps. But the government says it has never said all Syrian refugees came from refugee camps and that it chose the most vulnerable refugees and those who did not pose a security threat. And another expert says the living conditions in some of the apartments are worse than the camps.

This is a reminder - should one be needed - that liberalism isn't about doing good in the world, it's about feeling good. Whether it's the social disaster of social assistance, or the economic chaos breed by government regulation, liberalism is the ultimate way of going through the motions of life. The number of refugees which Canada and the other western democracies admitted - Germany excepted - was pitifully small given the scale of the humanitarian disaster in what is left of Syria and Iraq. Helping a few hundred thousand out of tens of millions in the region was never about solving a crisis, it was about pretending to solve a crisis. That a few hundred European women and girls got raped was the unavoidable collateral damage of liberalism's good intentions. 

The Western powers will do very little of anything practical. They will preen, cajole and launch an occasional air strike. This may tip the balance between two or three very dreadful alternatives, at least for a brief while before the cycle of violence reasserts itself. Beyond moral posturing our actions will come to naught. The root of the humanitarian crisis is tyrannical government. The root of tyrannical government is a collectivist mindset. Until the Arab nations leave their instinctive tribalism behind them and accept individualism as their lodestar, the horrors we have seen in recent years will repeat definitely. 

The West has two options in regards to the Middle East: 1) Do nothing and wait for the Arab nations to enter modernity or 2) Directly or indirectly reimpose colonial governments on the region until it reaches something like a civilized level of development. Not Switzerland on a long weekend mind you. If they could do India on an average Tuesday it would be massive improvement over what they have now.

Neither is going to happen. If we do nothing the nations of the West will feel guilty. If we do something useful we must commit ourselves to a generations long project of social redevelopment that will likely costs trillions of dollars and thousands upon thousands of lives. The modern West lacks the courage to look away or the courage to tackle the problem head on. Instead we engage in a kabuki theatre of moral vanity, a conceited display of our rhetorical intentions. For all the hypocrisies, errors and sins of the British Empire you could never say about the red coats traversing the plains of Africa or India that they lacked guts. 

The one thing no one will every say about Justin Trudeau is that he has guts.

 

A War By Any Other Name

The Boy King plays semantics:

The militant group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has claimed responsibility for both incidents.

Trudeau, who made his comments during a CBC Radio interview, and Dion — speaking Wednesday in the House of Commons foyer — both said the conflict with ISIL does not fit the true definition of war.

"A war is something that can be won by one side or the other and there is no path for ISIL to actually win against the West," Trudeau said.

"They want to destabilize, they want to strike fear. They need to be stamped out."

Since 1945 political leaders across the world and the ideological spectrum have been hesitant about using the the W-word. Harry Truman famous called the three blood-letting in the Korean peninsula a "police action" rather than an actual war. Strangely this did little to dissuade either the Red Chinese or the North Koreans from killing millions of allied soldiers and Korean civilians. The comparatively recent hesitancy to use the term "war" to describe the organized killing of human beings is partly politics and partly legalese.

An official declaration of war typically requires the full machinery of the state to be engaged. The national legislature must pass some type of enabling statute. The Geneva convention starts to kick in. It's a big thing that limits the flexibility of the executive in prosecuting their military and political objectives. By pretending that a word doesn't mean what it actually means the world quickly becomes your oyster. The United States Supreme Court has been doing it for nearly 80 years. If anything the politicians were slow on the uptake when compared to their black robed brethren in government. 

Knowing the Boy King and his minions it's unlikely the legality was very high on his mind when he avoided calling the war against ISIS a war. Papa Trudeau was the constitutional scholar, junior is a snowboard instructor and amateur thespian. While he understand very little he feels quite well. He has what the psychologists call "emotional intelligence." The regular old fashioned intelligence is good at spotting patterns in nature. The new fangled intelligence is about "reading" people's emotions. Call a war a war might hurt Canadians feelings. It conflicts sharply with the Trudeaupian self-image of Canada as a nation of peacekeepers and Dudley Do Rights. Americans do war. We do peace.