Canadian Cincinnatus

Mark Steyn, Duck Dynasty and National Review

More fallout from the Duck Dynasty controversy: On Dec 20, Mark Steyn wrote an article defending Phil Robertson in his fight with A&E and GLAAD. He included a couple of gay jokes from yesteryear, one from Bob Hope, another from Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. This article was then chastised by one Jason Lee Steorts, the publisher of National Review. His complaint:

“On the other hand, I can’t agree with Mark that anything of value is lost when derogatory epithets go out of bounds in polite society." 

It seems we have arrived at the point in our society where quoting Bob Hope and Dean Martin can put one “out of bounds in polite society”. Land of the free and home of the brave, indeed. 

“They tend to be bad even for humor, substituting stereotype and cliché for originality.”

Actually, this is false. The best humour often has a nasty, profane edge to it that is designed to offend its target. 

“By way of criticizing speech, I’ll say that I found the derogatory language in this column, and especially the slur in its borrowed concluding joke, both puerile in its own right and disappointing coming from a writer of such talent.”

You know, I have been reading the National Review for nearly 20 years and I have never heard of Jason Lee Steorts before now. I assume this is because he is not a writer of any memorable talent.

Fortunately, Mark Steyn understands that explanations and apologies only embolden bullying cowards (like Jason Lee Steorts), and is not backing down.

My God, what has happened to the National Review? First, it was the John Derbyshire affair, where its most erudite writer was fired by its then-publisher, Rich Lowry, thanks to another specious charge of thought-crime. I met both Steyn and Derbyshire at the 2011 National Review cruise. Now, one is gone and the other is being threatened. But I guess this is what happens when fearless warriors like William F Buckley and John O’Sullivan are replaced by “men without chests”, like Lowry and Steorts.

The one good thing about incidents like the Duck Dynasty controversy is that they allow us to sort out the heroes from the febs. 

Phil Robertson and Paula Deen: a tale of two hate-crimes

By now, everybody knows that Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame won in his standoff with the Arts & Entertainment cable channel. This was a great victory for free speech and a significant defeat for the doctrine of intolerance-in-the-name-of-tolerance that has done so much to squelch free discourse in our society since the 1980’s.

What was Robertson’s secret? Answer: he didn’t explain; he didn’t apologize; he didn’t cave. He stood tough against GLAAD. As a result, his family closed ranks behind him, his many fans rallied around him, and - in facing unapologetic resistance - his tormentors were exposed as hollow men, stuffed men, their heads filled with straw.

To see why Robertson won, we must contrast his fate with that of the Southern cooking show host – and thought-criminal - Paula Deen. The PC bullyboys ambushed her earlier this year because she had admitted to using the N-word 20 years ago. She tried to defuse the matter by apologizing, crying a lot, and explaining that she only used it after she had a gun pointed at her head by a black man in an armed robbery. It didn’t matter. Every explanation, every act of self-abasement only made things worse for her. Accommodations motivated her accusers the way blood attracts sharks. This is because they are bullies. Instead of appreciating her desire to resolve the matter positively, they smelled fear and saw weakness, and piled on even harder. 

But if she had stood firm, would her fans have rallied to her the way Robertson’s fans rallied to him? We know the answer to that question is yes, because they did. In solidarity, they started pre-ordering her upcoming cookbook on Amazon en mass, propelling it to #1 from 1500, where it had been before the incident. In her first public appearance after the incident, she was given a standing ovation. They did this because most people are sick and tired of being told what to say and what to do and what to think by ideological fanatics. The trouble is, if you give up, what exactly do your fans have to rally around? In the case of her yet-to-be-published cookbook, her publisher, Ballantine Books, unceremoniously yanked it (along with 4 other books), in spite of the fact that the preorders had guaranteed a huge profit. In response, Deen did nothing and an opportunity was lost.

She mishandled the situation mostly because she is a genial cooking-show host and not a bare-knuckled, political street-thug like Sandra Fluke. But these days, it doesn’t matter who you are, when the PC clock strikes for thee, you had better be prepared if you don’t want to be rolled.

My only criticism of Robertson is that he should have gone one step further. He should have counter-attacked. He should have accused GLAAD of being an enemy of free speech and free thought. Instead of promoting tolerance, they practice intolerance, he should have charged. He should have spared no effort in painting them to be what they are, the sworn enemy of free expression. In this way, the controversy would have shifted away from an argument about gay rights to a fight for freedom. If he had done that, GLAAD would have come out of this mess looking not just weak but evil, which of course they are.

So to summarize, if you ever find yourself the subject of a Politically Correct Inquisition, here are the three things you need to do:

1. don’t explain,

2. don’t apologize,

3. make counteraccusations.

Be a Phil Robertson, not a Paula Deen.

Dear Christie: Why minimum sentences and mandatory victim surcharges are the least-worst idea

Christie Blatchford has an article out deploring the Harper government’s latest tough-on-crime initiative. As it is full of liberal shibboleths, let’s consider them one by one:

What this is about is the unseemly business of mandatory victim surcharges, the state’s way of characterizing the act of getting blood from a stone.

Why is it ‘unseemly’ to try to get blood from a wicked stone? It may be futile, but it isn’t unseemly.

Like other changes from this government — from mandatory minimum sentences for some offences to doing away with the two-for-one credit for time served as a mere accused person in pre-trial custody — this one curtails the ability of the trial judge, who knows a case best, to tailor a sentence to an offender.

Clearly, allowing a trial judge latitude is better than blindly following a universal decree mandated from above, or rather it would be if we could trust the judges. The problem is we can’t. Too many are liberal appointees (or Conservative appointees who have been marinated in the permissive ideology of the law profession) who are soft on crime and end up prematurely releasing vicious predators. Having tough-on-crime judges, who have latitude in sentencing, as well as the common sense to apply that latitude wisely, would be the ideal solution. But lacking a preponderance of such judges, the least-worst solution is mandatory sentencing guidelines that apply across the board.

The truth in my view is that most offenders don’t belong in prison.

Actually, I agree with this. But the problem is not that we punish people too severely. The problem is we have too many laws. A lot – probably most – of our criminal laws need to go. Gun laws, drug laws, sex laws, money laundering laws, campaign finance laws, most are procedural laws that are designed to punish activities that can lead to crime - i.e. they punish people for things that are not in themselves crimes; or they are just laws against personal vices. However, real crimes with real victims do exist: robbery, rape, arson, murder, assault, stuff like that. Biblical crimes. It is with such crimes where the justice system demonstrates laxity.

Prison is deadening to the soul, destructive, the very admission of societal defeat. It rehabilitates almost no one. It takes remarkable strength for anyone to emerge less damaged than before.

What it does do, reasonably well, is protect the public from the relative few who are violent or dangerous — those who have murdered, maimed, raped, shot up the streets and hurt the vulnerable among us.

Agreed. But at least with regard to vicious predators, what is the alternative to locking them up, given that the possibility of rehabilitation has been investigated for a century and a half with zero success? Unless there is some breakthrough in this field, locking up psychopaths so that they are away from the public is the least-worst option – the deterrence factor of which has been proven by American crime statistics over the past 40 years.

Of course, I have championed alternate - and cheaper - deterrence measures like corporal punishment and capital punishment, but absent political will to enact those reforms, were are back to the least-worst option: incarceration. (And with executions we have the very real problem of how to right wrongful convictions, a problem that I fear is more widespread than the justice system lets on. So at best, capital punishment should be meted out very carefully.)

The problem is [with the new victim rights law], victims don’t belong anywhere near the centre.

The whole reason for the rule of law is to take justice out of the hands of any one of us who might feel wronged or aggrieved and who understandably might be inclined to revenge, to say, as a prosecutor pal of mine once put it, “You burned down my house, so I’ll burn down yours and maybe rape your daughter too.”

Instead, we have all agreed to have these matters settled by a justice system, where trials are meant to be a contest between an accused and the state, not an accused and the state and the victim. The arrangement is supposed to be a straight line, not a triangle, let alone a triangle with victims as a full leg.

What Blatchford says here is half true. She has described the philosophy of our justice system accurately. Unfortunately, it is not the whole truth.

The fact is, leaving the victim completely out of the loop left our justice system too bloodless. This is the reason for victim impact statements: they remind the system of the devastation caused by the crime in question. As I understand it, these are delivered after the verdict has been delivered but before the sentence is handed out. The ideal time! The impact that a crime has had should have an effect on the severity of the sentence. (On the other hand, the victims’ emotions should have no place in the trial itself. The trial should only be about facts and law and nothing else. That part should be as bloodless as possible.)

Blatchford concludes with this statement:

Yet, and this is where I sound like the judge who delivers a thundering denunciation of the offender before him and then gives him a kiss of a sentence, while I agree with Judge Westman and dislike the Conservatives’ vision of justice, Peter MacKay and his colleagues were elected. Judge Westman was not. He should continue to speak out — in my view, judges should be less shy about this — but to thwart the will of Parliament is wrong.

If he wants to make law, in other words, he should run for office. 

Bingo. The place for judges is the interpretation of law not the making of law. The latter just means a tyranny of the judiciary.

Apocalypse Now: Col. Kurtz has died

Col. Robert Rheault died on Oct 16 at the age of 87. His relationship to the fictional Col. Kurtz in the film Apocalypse Now is explained in this New York Times obituary:

‘John Milius, who wrote the screenplay for Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War film, “Apocalypse Now,” told The Times in 1977 that he had based the Marlon Brando character of Walter Kurtz, the mysterious Green Beret colonel who conducts an unauthorized secret war in Cambodia, on both the fictional Kurtz of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and the real-life Colonel Rheault.

Colonel Rheault was “a great man,” Mr. Milius said, adding, “Men like Rheault could’ve helped us win the war.”'

Col. Rheault was a fascinating man because of the moral conundrum he created with his straightforward, unhypocritical approach to the Vietnam War.

‘When the Army charged the Green Beret commander, Col. Robert Rheault, and six of his officers with murder and conspiracy on July 21, 1969, in the secret execution of a Vietnamese spy suspect, it caused consternation on both sides of the growing American divide over the war in Vietnam.

Hawks condemned the charges for what they saw as a Catch-22 military absurdity: the prosecution of front-line troops for killing the enemy.

Opponents of the war portrayed it as proof of American involvement in a secret campaign of terror and assassination, paralleling the combat seen nightly on television.’

Was Rheault some kind of a Lt. Calley-style loser?

‘Colonel Rheault, the son of a prominent Boston banking family, was a rising star in the Berets. Widely thought to be on the cusp of promotion to general at the time of his arrest, he had entered West Point after graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, received a Bronze Star in Korea, earned advanced degrees in international relations and worked for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon before serving his first tour of duty in Vietnam as a Green Beret officer.’

Rheault didn’t behave impulsively or in the heat of the moment. The assassination was the result of an informed, rational decision designed to help the war effort and bring about victory. If you have read anything at all about the history of SOG in Cambodia you know that the locals who the Special Forces worked with included many double agents.

Where are my sympathies, with the war realists, or the war moralists? Honestly, I can’t decide. I can see both sides of the moral question he raised. On the one hand, I naturally sympathise with those who aren’t deluded by pretty lies and choose to operate in the real world with their eyes wide open. On the other, there have to be legal standards or your military will degenerate into a gang of cut-throats. Which is what makes Col. Rheault a fascinating character.

As I have said before, biographical films should be made about some of the characters in Apocalypse Now who are based on real people, such as Kurtz, the Harlequin and Col. KiIlgore. These people are too interesting to be remembered by their caricature.

With the pro-EU Ukraine riots, President Obama could blow another historic opportunity

I believe history will judge President Obama’s biggest foreign policy mistake to be his failure to support the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009. Why? I think the abortive Green Revolution was a cusp in history.

What’s a cusp? Chaos theory teaches us that sometimes there are events, or points in time, where a complex system (like, say, a nation) can, with a small impulse, be shifted from one relatively stable state to another.  I believe the sustained uprising of anti-Islamists in Iran in 2009 was such a point in time. The streets of Teheran were flooded with millions of explicitly pro-Western, heck, even explicitly pro-Israel, anti-mullah demonstrators for many months. A small push, such as, say, a strong endorsement by the US President, backed up by covert CIA assistance to the resistance, could have replaced the largest and most militantly anti-Western regime in the Persian Gulf with a pro-Western ally. But it was not to be. Damn you Barack! You and your blinkered, obsession with appeasement.

General Patton once said that a moment occurs in every battle when both sides know they have lost. The side that continues in spite of this knowledge is the winner. In the case of Iran, the battle in question was the War on Terror, started by George W Bush as a response to 9/11 and fought at great material cost and human sacrifice by the US, and others. By 2009, America’s population was war weary and certain they lost. But, if they had persevered a tiny bit longer, with just a little bit of moral support and CIA assistance, the US could have achieved a near-total victory over the jihadis for a tiny fraction of what they had spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars up until that point. The biggest sponsor of international terrorism would have been toppled, aid for the Iraqi insurgency would have been cut off and Afghanistan would have been transformed into an irrelevant backwater. But it was not to be, only because this last, smallest effort wasn’t made.

I believe the pro-EU riots are another historical cusp, with the largest nation in Eastern Europe tottering between the West (represented by the EU) and the East (represented by Putin’s neo-Soviet Empire). 

Sunday’s demonstration in Kiev, which may have been attended by as many as a million people, was buttressed by demonstrations in other cities around the country. These “EuroMaidan” protests in favor of establishing closer ties with the European Union have been ongoing for the three weeks following Yanukovych’s refusal to sign an agreement with the EU. And while that may have been the initial impetus for the uprising, the protests have become more anti-government in general.

If the Ukraine ends up under the Kremlin’s boot, it will be Putin’s greatest foreign policy victory:

‘The Russian side of the equation is illuminated by Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman. He explains that the demonstrations are “both a humiliation and a threat to Mr. Putin,” because his “main foreign-policy goal is the construction of a sphere of influence for Russia, covering most of the old Soviet Union” and Ukraine “is meant to be the jewel in the crown.”' 

Years of effort might be required to contain him after he has plucked this jewel of 50 million people. Who knows what other Eastern European dominos - currently free and thriving nations - might topple. The stakes are even higher for Putin himself because the Ukrainian demonstrators have inspired his domestic opponents:

‘As The Atlantic’s Brian Whitmore explains, protests in the Ukraine have galvanized Russian opposition to Vladimir Putin’s autocratic rule. Protesters have gathered outside the Ukrainian Embassy in Moscow, and 30 high-profile Russians writers and poets wrote an open letter in support of their Ukrainian counterparts, noting that their demonstrations “would be a sign that in Russia we too can defend our rights and freedoms. We are with you!”’

This is why Putin he has tightened his grip on Russia’s state-run media.

What could President Obama do? First of all, he could say what George Clooney just said:

‘“I wanted to send a message to all of you brave citizens of Ukraine, who are struggling to look forward and not back. We here in the United States have great affinity for those seeking democracy. We have learned through trial and error that true democracy cannot exist without a free and fair and honest election. You cannot have a democracy when you arrest and harm its peaceful protesters.”

Imagine if that had come from the President of the United States instead of an actor. Second, the CIA could give covert aid to the government’s opponents. Third, he can increase American gas exports to Europe to undermine Gazprom. Fourth, consider this:

'Ukraine currently needs $10 billion to avoid possible default, even as the country remains mired in its third recession since 2008. Yanukovych has repeatedly rejected bailout terms offered by the EU’s International Monetary Fund (IMF), but remains enticed by Russia’s offer of financial aid and cheaper energy prices'

One way or the other, Obama could make that $10 billion problem go away. If you counter that $10 billion is a lot of money, consider how much is currently being spent in Afghanistan, for a war that achieved its post-9/11 objective long ago, and whose current purpose cannot be clearly enunciated by anybody.

The Ukraine must be free, and we in the West must do everything to make that happen!

Rob Ford is right about the Toronto Island Airport expansion

According to the Toronto Sun: 

‘Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly said Wednesday he wants to delay the debate of Porter Airlines’ push to expand and fly jets out of Billy Bishop City Centre Airport until the new year while Mayor Rob Ford vowed to try to push ahead at Thursday’s meeting.’

The main airport serving Toronto is the gargantuan Pearson International Airport (Canada’s biggest airport), located outside of the City of Toronto’s boundaries and surrounded by a perpetual traffic jam of brobdingnagian proportions. One of the few indisputable recent improvements in our growing city’s infrastructure has been the rise of the Island Airport as a small and efficient commuter airport located within the heart of downtown. If you want to go anywhere from Quebec City to Chicago to Washington DC, your best choice by far is Porter Airlines at the Island Airport.

Unfortunately, the Island Airport is hated by the tiny island community, composed mainly of noisy, politically connected NIMBY’s. Their protector was Toronto previous mayor, the arrogant and incompetent David Miller. But fortunately, by cancelling the proposed bridge to the airport, he unwittingly ended up giving Porter the contractual penalties they needed to fund their initial aircraft purchase. The island residents are completely unjustified in their opposition to the current airport expansion: modern jets are almost as quiet as the turboprops flying there now - planes that they also opposed when they were first being proposed.

Championing controversial but necessary common sense ideas, like the airport expansion - ideas that the city’s insulated elite oppose, is the reason I support Rob Ford, in spite of his glaring personal problems.

But say, I hear you respond, isn’t Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly also in favour of airport expansion?

‘A city staff report going to the executive committee on Thursday recommends delaying the approval of any expansion plans until at least 2015. It calls for further study of Porter Airlines’ push to expand and fly jets out of Billy Bishop City Centre Airport.

Kelly said he’s trying to “bring along as many people as possible in support of this initiative.”

He denied the deferral was a tactical retreat.

“A tactical manoeuvre, you can move laterally on the battlefield as well,” Kelly said.

Ford said he and Kelly have “different views on Porter. I want to move ahead with it, we’ve discussed this long enough, we’ve debated this issue, we’ve consulted with the public, we’re not dealing with a fly-by-night company,” Ford said. “I don’t see what a deferral for one month is going to do. 

“I’m going to move a motion that we go ahead with it and you’re either onside or you’re not onside.”’

Ford is right. The issue has been debated to death. The opponents of airport expansion are implacable obstructionists, willing to seize on every opportunity to delay or stop the airport – their ultimate and only goal. Kelly is just equivocating. If this much-needed addition to Toronto’s infrastructure is going to happen, strong leadership is required.

Toronto needs its crack mayor back!

Mitch McConnell: success and cowardice

One would think, from looking at the polls, that Mitch McConnell is one lucky man right now. As I write this, the Real Clear Politics gives the Republicans a 2.5% advantage in their “Generic Congressional Vote” polling average. When the GOP closes in on parity with the Dems, it is widely understood that the Republicans will do well in congressional elections. Polling two and a half points above the Dems, it’s a rout and Mitch McConnell should be measuring the curtains in Harry Reid’s office. 

Unfortunately for Mitch, he is beset on all sides. He has strong challengers on the left as well as on the right and he will be lucky to get through the upcoming 2014 midterms unscathed. It is even possible for the Grand Old Party to recapture the Senate while he loses his seat altogether. Why? What went wrong for Mitch?

I don’t think Mitch McConnell is a bad man. I don’t even think he is an incompetent man. By all accounts, he is tactically adept at Senate arcania and knowledgeable about the ways of Washington. Important skills if you want to enact your agenda. But these are revolutionary times in America. Times like these require a leader not a backroom operator. Mitch McConnell’s core problem is that has not mastered the events but has let the events master him. He has looked into the abyss of voter anger and stepped back. He is a coward. 

Right now, what America needs is not negotiation, nor compromise, nor deal-making. It needs a visionary. America requires a leader who can stand in front of the discontented voter, and provide a voice for their discontentment and guide them to victory over the ruling class. No such person has been found yet. The obvious choices, the Republican leaders in Congress, have failed.

As a result, instead of gaining strength from this patriotic anger, they are being consumed by it. Through his dithering and his mealy-mouthed backroom dealing, Mitch McConnell is reaping the whirlwind.

The moment Paul Ryan lost his mojo

Representative Paul Ryan was the darling of conservatives when Mitt Romney chose him as his vice-presidential running mate. Some even compared him to Ronald Reagan, touting youtube videos showing him logically dismantle various Obama functionaries at congressional committees.

But now, not so much. What happened? 

I believe the turning point for Ryan happened long before he began to champion amnesty for illegal aliens. It was the vice presidential debate that did him in. Yes, he was respectful. Yes, his arguments made sense. Yes, he commanded the facts. And yes, Joe Biden’s behaviour was boorish bordering on freakish. 

Ryan’s problem? He didn’t know how to dominate the situation. As a leader, people are looking for somebody who can master events. Since Ryan has not held executive experience, voters want to see evidence of alpha leadership qualities. In an election campaign, they look for instances where the candidate comes out on top in difficult situations the other guy puts him in. Ryan didn’t do that with Biden. He didn’t know how to put Tailgunner Joe in his place. Ryan looked weak. His star began to fall.

What could Paul Ryan have done differently? The way an alpha deals with a yapping Pomeranian is to ignore it initially. When the yapping rises above a certain arbitrary threshold, or when it simply goes on for too long, the alpha quickly switches gears and effectively shuts him up. In this case, Ryan should have initially ignored Joe Biden’s Joker impressions and behaved as respectfully as he could towards his adversary, extended him every courtesy. When it became clear to the TV viewer that Biden wasn’t going to behave himself, Ryan should have suddenly changed tactics and challenged Biden directly. He should have said, “Look, I have treated you with respect throughout this debate. In return, you have shown me complete disrespect.  If you want this debate to continue, you are going to have to start behaving.” And if Biden had responded with anything other than an apology, Ryan should have calmly walked off. 

This is how an alpha male behaves. Don’t believe me? Go watch any Clint Eastwood spaghetti western or Dirty Harry movie. The script is always the same: the punks taunt Clint; Clint ignores the punks; the punks increase their taunts because they mistake Eastwood’s passivity for weakness; the taunts cross a threshold and Eastwood beats them to a pulp or shoots them. This is what an alpha male does. Clint Eastwood’s movies are popular and his character is beloved because he is the archetypal tough guy.

I mention all of this to point out what the Low Information Voter actually pays attention to. As I have long preached, they don’t care about policy. They are not ‘moderates’ in that their policy preferences are midway between left and right. They have no policy preferences. Right wing, left wing, chicken wing. They don’t care. They respond to demonstrations of leadership.

The GOP can thank Ted Cruz for their current rise in polls

Often, the effect of a political action cannot best be measured by the immediate reaction in public opinion polls. The best recent example of this counterintuitive political phenomenon is Ted Cruz’s controversial filibuster of Obamacare in the Senate.

He was roundly criticized at the time for it by members of his own party and there is no doubt that the Republican brand took a big hit at the time, but what he achieved by his oratory was a clear party delineation on this issue: the GOP is against it and wants it abolished; and the Democrats want it to continue. So when Americans receive their health care cancellations in the main – or hear about it from their friends and relations, they know who to blame. All thanks to Ted Cruz. 

It was argued, at the time and since, that the only accomplishment of Ted Cruz’s filibuster was a temporary distraction from Obamacare at a critical time – that if it weren’t for Cruz’s antics, people would be even more hoppin’ mad at Obamacare. This reasoning is, of course, nonsense. Partisan conservatives and liberals had already drawn sides and weren’t about to change. The independents – oops, I mean the Low Information Voters – by definition don’t care about Congress, and political insider baseball stuff like filibusters. But they do care about the their health care, and if it is cancelled, they want to know who to blame. And thanks to Ted Cruz’s filibuster, they know.

But what about the other Republican senators that badmouthed Cruz and distanced themselves from him? Didn’t they negate Cruz’s strategy with their internecine blame?

Partially they did. In fact, I am sure they did, but it remains the case, that when people look for an anti-Obamacare champion, they see Ted Cruz - who belongs to the Republican Party. That John McCain is in the GOP as well, will register more weakly since his position on health care is incoherent. 

Nevertheless, this is a good argument for primarying clueless antiques like Mitch McConnell, who have spent entirely too much time in Washington to remain in touch with reality.