Why the NDP's effort to create a Trudeau-like Layton cult will ultimately fail

Canada's New Democratic Party is a the manifestation of a political movement mired in obsolete radicalism that the major countries in the developed world have rejected. One needs only to look at their leadership of Libby Davies, Joe Comartin, Brian Topp, Paul Dewar, to see irrelevant middle-aged white people who have clasped on to union-driven, "make the rich pay" vapid sloganeering which has been shunned by a world that continues to embrace "The Third Way."

Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Jean Chretien led a wave of blending liberal social policies with conservative economics that created stability and prosperity for their countries and is an approach that has been embraced by the majority of voters in most of the world's major democratic nations.

The NDP, with its regressive policies, was nonetheless able to score an increase in its vote in part due to the personal popularity of its recently deceased leader, Jack Layton. But the NDP surge was even more due to the inept political skills of Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, whose party's collapse provided virtually all of the NDP's gains.

With Layton gone, the NDP realizes they have no one comparable to replace him, but to cling on to the momentum that Layton's death has given them, they are being shameless in their attempt to replicate a Canadian phenomenon. 

At the end of his political career, Pierre Elliott Trudeau was intensely unpopular. He resigned his seat rather than face Brian Mulroney in an election he knew he was going to lose. Trudeau had earned the enmity of western Canada for the contempt he showed them and was unpopular in the rest of the country for the poor economic leadership of his government. Indeed, much of Trudeau's political success is due to his having the good fortune to face the least charismatic opponents in Canadian political history in the persons of Bob Stanfield (twice) and Joe Clark.

But a funny thing happened after Trudeau resigned. His popularity increased about a decade later, as some people's nostalgia helped them forget how badly he mismanaged the country. He also benefited from a generation of students who were taught that the multicultural policies he imposed were visionary and about the genuine vision he had in his achievement of patriating Canada's Constitution and creating a Charter of Rights. From this nostalgia emerged a Cult of Trudeau that the Liberal Party had been able to use to its advantage until 2006, and still has adherents.

The NDP, as out of touch as they may be, are not completely absent of observational skills, and seeing the sympathy that has been expressed over Layton's death to cancer, think they can ride that sympathy into the creation of a Layton legend and cult that will continue.

But the NDP brain trust forgot a few things. The sympathy for Layton has a lot to do with him being likable and people being naturally empathetic to a public figure dying, almost literally, before their eyes. Layton was as little like Trudeau as he was like Bobby Kennedy. Sixty-one is early to die, but it can only be considered young if you're a Galapagos tortoise. Layton wasn't martyred for his beliefs, he died of a disease that takes thousands of other Canadians every year in circumstances that are no less tragic for the loved ones of those involved.

Patriation of Canada's Constitution

The major difference between Trudeau and Layton that will prevent the Layton cult the NDP hopes for from sticking is that unlike the NDP leader, Mr. Trudeau had accomplishments.

There is no lasting legacy that the NDP can point to for Layton. Whereas Trudeau did have the Constitution, Charter, and multiculturalism, as well as exhibiting strong, determined leadership during the October Crisis. Trudeau helped maneuver Canada's foreign policy towards being more independent and he fought off the greatest threat to the separation of Quebec when it was led by the independence movement's most dynamic and intelligent leader ever, Rene Levesque.

Not the least notable difference between the two men is that unlike Layton, Trudeau actually earned the title of Right Honourable by being elected Prime Minister.

The NDP may be riding high for the moment on Jack Layton's ashes, but with an election more than four years away, the distant memory of a likable guy who didn't really do much to affect Canada will pale in comparison to the issues of the day in 2016. It's the Liberal Party, with its stronger roster of capable politicians and history of national leadership that stands the most to gain from the NDP's loss of Jack Layton.

88 year old first-time debater, Henry Kissinger kicks butt at Munk Debate

The poll of the audience at last night's Munk Debate over the proposition, "Will the 21st Century belong to China?" was split right down the middle prior to the debate. The ballots showed that 39% agreed  and 40% disagreed with 21% being undecided.

The debate subject was a bit odd in that it required the participants to prognosticate and as Yoggi Berra said, "It's tough to make predictions. especially about the future."

Nonetheless, debaters David Daokui Li and Niall Ferguson for the pro side and Henry Kissinger and Fareed Zakaria for the con, despite presenting opposing positions, were all very convincing about their ability to see into the future as far as China's role in the world is concerned.

Doug Donderi's and my debate for the Head-to-Head contest won us seats on stage, a few feet from Kissinger, who as Munk Debate moderator Rudyard Griffiths informed the audience, was participating that night in his first public debate ever at the age of 88.

The audience was clearly there to see the legendary former Secretary of State, but if the debate had a star, it was Harvard professor and Kissinger biographer Niall Ferguson. Combining a remarkable command of information about the extent of China's global economic reach he also hilariously beat up Kissinger and Zakaria with quotes from their own works where they predicted China's global dominance.

Kissinger, famous for leading the move to establish relation between Communist China and America had a special insight into the evening's subject.  His view was that the political upheaval that China has in store from a growing middle class that will demand more political rights and freedoms combined with the shift from a rural to urban population, will keep China too busy internally to capitalize on its current economic trajectory.

The evening had a bit of an intimidating moment in the form of a warning from Professor Li. He cautioned the West that China is growing stronger and stronger and it would not tolerate interference in its interests from the outside. Ferguson revelled in that moment, using it as an example of growing Chinese confidence and power. I just found it kind of scary.

It wasn't until the end of the debate that I was convinced that China may indeed be the world's single dominant player for the bulk of this century until Ferguson made a concise and fascinating point. He discouraged the idea of thinking of democracy in American/Western terms. Democracy has different, yet functional approaches through the world, and he suggested that the Chinese model would look like a giant Singapore.

That swayed me. But I was in the minority among the audience. It was Fareed Zakaria's emotional  'mom and apple pie' closing appeal to the audience not to give up on the free west, free markets and free societies that won the argument for the con side.

The event itself was quite an evening with a number of notable attendees. Former US Defense Secretary William Cohen was in the audience and posed a question during the debate. Brian Mulroney was there as was Canada's current Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird.

Very Attractive
American Academic

Poor Mr. Baird was minding his own business, having a night off, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to accost him to ask what he thought about The Sea Hitler. He's intelligent and good humoured, and I could practically see the thought bubble appear over his head saying. "here we go...on the clock again." But he was adamant in his distaste for the effort by Canadian Islamists and radical leftists to break Israel's arms embargo of Gaza. I referred to them as silly and he corrected me, calling them `dangerous` and added a few other choice words.  But I had brought a very attractive American academic I met at the Worldviews Conference on Media and Higher Education to the debate with me and Baird quite sensibly redirected his attention to her.

With Friday`s debate and the previous one with Tony Blair debating Christopher Hitchens over religion, the Munk Debates series has established itself as one of Toronto`s premier intellectual happenings, and whatever the next one offers should be fascinating.

Tony Blair on Making Muslim Integration Work

We have to nail down the definition of the problem. There is no general failure to integrate. In the U.K., for example, we are not talking about Chinese or Indians. We are not talking about blacks and Asians. This is a particular problem. It is about the failure of one part of the Muslim community to resolve and create an identity that is both British and Muslim. And I stress part of it. Most Muslims are as much at ease with their citizenship in the U.K. as I am. I dare say that is true in other European nations too. 

However, some don't integrate. But when we talk about this in general terms, without precision, for fear of "stigmatizing" Muslims, we alienate public opinion and isolate the majority of Muslims who are integrating and want to be as much part of our society as any other group. Then, because we won't identify the problem as it is, a subterranean debate takes the place of an open one, and that debate lumps all Muslims together. So in the interest of "defending" the Muslim community, we actually segregate it by refusing to have an honest debate about what is happening.


Full piece here

At The Christopher Hitchens/Tony Blair debate over the resolution "Religion is a force for good in the world"

The pre-debate survey indicated the majority of the crowd agreed with Hitchens' opposition of the resolution. Given the ample ammunition to support his position, Blair was on the defensive for most of the night in front of a crowd in liberal downtown Toronto. In fact, Blair spent a lot of time reiterating that while religion is responsible for a great deal of the world's ills, it does not mean that all people of faith are bad, or that faith in of itself need be an evil.

Blair acknowledged that the scriptures themselves are a source of a great deal of the evil perpetrated in the name of religion. It is a source of concern to him and one that requires great introspection from organized religion. As an analogy for the closed-mindedness of some religious people, Blair relayed how a Labour party member came up to him after an election loss and said, "We've had four elections and the public has voted against us four times. What's wrong with them?"

Speaking of closed minded people that don't get it, the single disappointment of the night for me was the imperceptible presence of James Clark's deceptively-named, "Toronto Coalition to Stop the War" who failed to turn out in noticeable numbers at an outdoor protest.

Read the whole thing at The Propagandist

UPDATE: Here's me beside Hitchens

Link to debate videos here.

Marxist/Islamo-fascist alliance to attempt to disrupt the Blair-Hitchens debate

Canada's supporters of terror are upset that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power in Iraq, murdering Kurds by the tens of thousands, having prisons being used as sex-slave dungeons for his friends and private army, playing cat and mouse with the US and British Air Forces in the no-fly zone, and trying to acquire more and more dangerous means of posing a threat to the world.

These people support terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and want to enact policies that would give the Taliban a free rein to repress women in Afghanistan while hiding behind deceptive names like "Toronto Coalition to Stop the War." Their idea of "stopping the war" apparently is a combination of surrender to al Qaida and launching missiles at Israeli civilians.

And they're really, really mad at Tony Blair because he's one of the guys responsible for there being one less bastion of terrorism in the world in Iraq. So they plan to protest his appearance at the Munk Debate in Toronto next week where Blair will be debating Christopher Hitchens on the resolution "religion is a force for good in the world".

Some of them think they might get close enough to actually lay hands on Blair to make a citizen's arrest for "war crimes." According to their facebook group, they even consider Hitchens an accessory to "war crimes" for "humanizing" the Iraq war.

Psychiatric assessments aside, these people are not only deluded but potentially dangerous, and I hope security is tight at the event.

It's too bad things have come to this, but there are a lot of nuts in the world.

Featured comment from reader Hortensio: "A debate between Hitchens and Blair must be particularly insulting to them, seeing the anti-Galloway and the toppler of Saddam sharing the same stage. Hitchens once said of this sort of faux pacifist that they aren't anti-war, but pro-war for the other side. They probably haven't got over the stinging accuracy of that comment yet."

UPDATE: "Toronto Coalition to Stop the War" isn't a very accurate description of James Clark's supporters of anti-western terrorists and warmongers. Feel free to post your suggestions for a better name in the comments section.

"Coalition to stop the war unless it kills Canadians, Americans, Brits and Jews"  is more accurate but less catchy. Let's see what we can come up with.

Win front row tickets to see Christopher Hitchens debate Tony Blair on November 26

The semi-annual Munk Debates series is featuring its most high profile event ever.

On Friday, November 26, Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens will be debating the proposition,

"Be it resolved, religion is a force for good in the world."


I'm sure you can guess who is taking the pro and who the con.

This event, which will occur at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, was sold out immediately upon becoming available and tickets are very, very highly sought after.

But you and a friend could end up in the front row. If you have a friend (or enemy) with whom you want to debate the same proposition, go to the Munk Debates website and you can create your own head-to-head debate using the website's technology.

Each week, between now and November 25, one debate will be selected to win front row seats to the Blair/Hitchens debate. You can enter the contest through this link.

Tony Blair's strange middle-aged sister-in-law takes up the veil, or hijab, or something and finally finds a way (so far) to stop drinking alcohol

Lauren Booth, half-sister to Cheri Blair, which makes her a half-sister-in-law to former British PM Tony Blair, has recently converted to Islam and wrote about the experience, where else, but in The Guardian?

One is left to wonder whether her conversion is based on religious conviction, or is her version of an extreme form of AA after a number of failed efforts when she writes, "In the past my attempts to give up alcohol have come to nothing; since my conversion I can't even imagine drinking again." (ed. OK, We'll see how long that lasts.)

Her new found warmth in the sisterhood has led her to the employ of Iranian fuhrer, Mahmood Ahmadinejad, where she works at Press TV, the Iranian state-controlled media organ that also employs bellicose ex-British MP George Galloway.

Evidently there is some history of mental instability in Ms. Booth's family. She is related to John Wikes Booth.

Heather Mallick: Stupid, Crazy or both?

You decide.

"Wasn’t Blair a big liar, a Bliar? Reading his fascinating, appalling autobiography is exactly like this. The reader slips in and out of moral consciousness.

Blair’s still shifty, his face on the cover foxlike and even devilish-looking. I grew to loathe him soon after his election in 1997 such that I began boycotting Britain and vacationing in France instead. Along came Nicolas Sarkozy, the most unprincipled politician in Europe, so I take it we will be holidaying in Algonquin Provincial Park or possibly Tristan da Cunha, wherever people are honest and true. "

To be fair to Mallick, she's not the only nutcase at The Star.

It appears that with the Globe and Mail moving further to the left, the Star wants to try to compete for the ultra-leftist reader with rabble.ca.