Our Selfie Prime Minister

In one very important way Justin Trudeau is nothing like his father.

Whereas Pierre Trudeau confronted and decisively defeated a terrorist movement, Justin seems quite prepared to let another flourish and offer a dangerous example to a precarious world. While the dead and wounded were still being counted in Paris, Trudeau the younger was posing for selfies at a G20 conference. Elsewhere at that same conference the British Prime Minister and the American President were plotting - so it is hoped - to finally destroy ISIS.

We have a elected a man-child to lead us. This is the consequence. While the West is confronted by the gravest challenge it has faced since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the leader of a G7 nation engages in literal solipsism. Nero is supposed to have played the lyre as Rome burned. Perhaps Justin will be performing parlour tricks when terrorism again reaches Canadian shores. 

That the leader of Canada is a not a serious man has been shown quite clearly by his record. He seems to function at the level of a moderately bright adolescent, complete with offering sophomoric explanations of the problems of the day: Blithely dismissing the Russian conquest of Crimea and making a puerile comparison of our air force to phallic symbols. This is what immature people sound like when try to be clever. 

Canada is a bubble nation. We have so long been at peace, so long been rich and free, that much of the world beyond our borders is akin to another planet. The working assumption of the Canadian Left - Justin very much included - is that Islamist terrorism is the product of some grave misunderstanding. If only we were to constructively engage with those who oppose us peace would be at hand. All we need is a chance for dialogue and our graduate school acquired "conflict resolution skills" would restore humanity and decency. This is among the gravest misconceptions of our age.

Trudeau the Elder considered both the FLQ and the PQ threats to Canada's survival. Yet his response to each was radically different. Terrorism was beyond the bounds of legitimate democratic discourse. Force must be met with force. He explained this with great care in his speech justifying the invocation of the War Measures Act. It shows a statesman - however deeply flawed in other areas of public policy - fighting to sustain a democratic government against violent usurpation. The speech is also a stark and sobering contrast to his son's juvenile pronouncements. 

Yet PET took a very different approach in dealing with democratic separatism. The PQ - however obnoxious and cynical - was a legitimate democratic force. When the Pequistes formed their first majority government in 1976 the response from Ottawa was to argue, cajole and bribe. The usual instruments of a democratic state. It would have been thought absurd and utterly unCanadian to have dispatched federal troops to arrest Rene Levesque and his cadre of petty ethnic nationalists. 

Pierre Trudeau could only occasionally distinguish between bad and outright evil. He could crush the FLQ and then saunter off to Cuba to play sing-a-long with a mass murdering tyrant. Though at least at that point in history Fidel Castro was hardly a threat to world peace. Trudeau's 1976 trip was a morally repugnant though not a dangerous act. 

Islamist fanatics are very much a threat to the peace of France, Canada and the world. In his first test as an international leader Justin has shown a dangerous inability to differentiate between bad and evil. Since Canada is a smaller player in a big world that might not matter very much in the short-term. Yet sooner or later this evil will come to Canada and the man charged with our defence has shown himself to be pathetically inadequate to the challenge. 

 

Comments

[Mark Collins]

At twitter:

"@Mark3Ds 1
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Mark
Ottawa

[John Chittick]

The Jihad is once again in ascendancy, likely not since the Turkish genocide of Armenians has there been this much Jihadi action. Terrorism is a tactic and as such is meaningless in describing the threat.

The progressive west in general is not up to the task of even defining the threat without weasily modifiers. The Spawn is not even that clued-in. "Islamist terrorism" is itself a redundancy as terrorism is inherent in jihad which is a duty for practicing Muslims. I realize that only a relatively small percentage of Muslims engage in kinetic Jihad but it is my contention (and one supported by polling) that a more significant percentage looks on in quiet approval. They can play the long game to dominance through demographics. Islam is a global supremacy doctrine not a religion of peace.

The west will not survive the long game by expending blood and treasure in fighting Jihadists in the ME. This is an ideological battle and unless the ideology is properly identified appropriate measures can't be taken.

The Spawn's hasty plan to import 25000 "Syrian Refugees" is a greater threat to Canadians than ISIS as it's a virtual guarantee that Jihadis will be embedded in the mix.

[Cytotoxic]

Trudeau elder's actions in response to the FLQ were far more dangerous to Canadian freedoms than the FLQ ever was. The WMA was a wildly inappropriate response and was probably enacted so Trudeau could live out his strongman fantasy. I'll take the immaturity of his son over the 'strength' of his father or Harper, as would all who value freedom at all.

"The Spawn's hasty plan to import 25000 "Syrian Refugees" is a greater threat to Canadians than ISIS as it's a virtual guarantee that Jihadis will be embedded in the mix."

It's a virtual guarantee that a lethal accident will occur somewhere in this province but it won't stop me from driving.

[TheTooner]

Cytotoxic, accidents are accidental, and you have the choice to avoid driving accidents by not driving. A terrorist attacking you is for now a much less likely thing statistically, but it won't be an accident, and you have no effective choice whether to present yourself for random selection as a target or not.

The comparison of the Prime Ministers Trudeau in their effectiveness in dealing with a terrorist movement should not be made without comparing the terrorist movements, lest we give the elder too much credit. The FLQ was a tiny and by Islamic jihad standards mild-mannered bunch of dilettantes. He found in his French identity enough reason not to go fight the Nazis, I think like today's progressives and leftists he would find excuses for Islam.

[Jim Whyte]

My father and Pierre Trudeau were born nine years apart. Not exact contemporaries, but it will do to compare. One was a railwayman's son; the other a millionaire's son. One left school at 16; the other went to U of M, Harvard, and Sciences Po. One went halfway around the world to fight the Nazis; the other motorcycled around Montreal in a coal scuttle helmet. One fought the Communists in the trade union movement; the other dined with Fidel.

The Mark Steyn analysis is correct: on the two big ideological questions of the 20th century, Trudeau chose the wrong sides. Another man, more obscure, and without Trudeau's advantages of birth, chose the right ones.

It's hard, therefore, to analyze Trudeau's motives in suppressing the FLQ. I can appreciate the decisiveness, and I don't wholly agree with Cytotoxic that the imposition of the War Measures Act -- which to this day some bozos still conflate with a proclamation of "martial law" -- was that harmful to our liberties (I was there). But the separatists were also a direct challenge to his political power base at a time when the Liberals needed Quebec to maintain a majority government (a problem that grew more acute in 1972). Good ends, yes, but Trudeau had his motives too.

The Dauphin seems too callow even to have motives. No, he's not like his father. Broken record time: he's like the people that voted for his father.

It has been our good fortune, but also our bad fortune, to live in the protected bubble of the North Atlantic for the last two centuries. Its anthem is an old song, crooned by Sen. Dandurand in the '30s, about how we live in a fireproof house. Compound that with '60s peace-love-dope fatuity, to which the Dauphin is an intellectual (perish the thought!) heir, and you get the particular strain of Canadian pacifism that we have to fight today. (Eric Cartman, my lodestar in these matters, called it "tree-hugging' hippie crap", and I can offer no better.)

Good fortune, because we grew and prospered and industrialized while other countries took the brunt of the world wars. Bad, because the good fortune has lulled many of us to sleep. You could argue the most direct threat to Canada were Cold War missiles over the pole, but even that didn't get a great many Canadians off their pacifist asses.

But that fireproof house? Not so much, not no more, and paries cum proximus ardet. Cue Justin and his lyre.

[Jim Whyte]

Not to mention all the other lyres in the Liberal party. Ba-dum.