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| …They’re back! Will they never
go away? We are reminded by reports about the protests opposing the World Trade Organization meetings in Washington, DC and in Seattle before, and now on May Day, that socialism didn’t die with the Soviet Union in 1991. It is alive and reorganizing. In Canada, the resurrection of Tommy Douglas, his daughter actor Shirley Douglas, and his grandson actor Kieffer Sutherland (son of Shirley and Canadian-born actor Donald Sutherland) have been mobilized to put an end to any effort to touch in any way Medicare in Canada. Curiously, here in Saskatchewan that cherished institution has for years been foundering under the stewardship of its creators. Does their creation not work? Surely not. The war between liberalism -- which began in, say, 1776 with the American Revolution, and its enemies, who would restore de facto the ancien regime, continues unabated. It’s not that most of the problems which the left identifies don’t have some legitimacy, they do. But both their view of the issues and their solutions are suffused with an illegitimate epistemology posing a real and present danger to all. We may look to the French Revolution of 1789 and the attendant rise of Napoleon as the incarnation of an unprecedented battle between cultures which consumes us still, as human cultures evolve into something new. Most, especially liberals, have confused the ideologies that have competed for minds and lives for two hundred years. Yet while more than a few recognized these errors from the outset -- Beethoven concluded Napoleon was NO champion of liberty -- confusion reigns, aided and abetted by those whom confusion serves. With the left only stunned at Waterloo and in 1848, civilization would fight for its life all through the 20th Century as varied strangling tentacles rose from the deep. Despite the self-congratulatory atmosphere cultivated by some Canadians who define their triumphs mostly by way of anti-American rants, Canada in fact suffers from serious problems. For Canada is a vessel infested with ship worms and dry rot from stem to stern and keel to gunwales: Dry rot is the conservatism once represented by Royal Charters and the Family Compact; ship worms have been in control since Pierre Elliot Trudeau was given the helm in 1968. They have been enjoying a grand party ever since -- ask the Governor General and her friends at one of their glittering soirées. What to do? Better ideas must surely prevail, but perhaps the whole enterprise must first sink beneath the waves before something better takes its place -- baptism changing hearts. |