Today’s must-read is the main editorial in the National Post. But before you read it, here’s the scoop: the Liberal Party is in disarray today, because they have absolutely no principles whatsoever, no spine, and no moral backbone. Oh and because they have a leader who is bereft of the required intelligence to lead a party, much less a nation, is I think intellectually dishonest, and is I think deceiving Canada and treating Canadians as though they were stupid. And the party is starting to realize that.
All that is not new—certainly not to those of us in the sensible set—it’s just that sometimes it becomes more obvious than other times.
Here’s part of the National Post’s front page article about the story, which I blogged about last Monday.
OTTAWA – A spokesman for Liberal leader Stephane Dion said yesterday the party will “absolutely not” revisit its opposition to extending two controversial provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act despite a potential mutiny that appeared to be shaping up among Liberal MPs.
Spokesman Andre Fortin made the statement amid growing opposition within Liberal ranks, where some see one of the measures as vital to an RCMP probe into the 1985 Air India bombing. Among Liberal MPs citing the Air India case are justice critic Marlene Jennings, Stephen Owen, Keith Martin and Don Bell.
Toronto MP Roy Cullen said he is trying to persuade 30 colleagues to break ranks and side with the government to extend the measures, which allow “preventive arrests” and “investigative hearings.”
This week, four other prominent Liberals spoke out against the party’s opposition to extending the measures, which were introduced by the former Liberal government of Jean Chretien just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and are to expire on March 1.
The four included Montreal MP and former justice minister Irwin Cotler. The others are former public safety minister Anne McLellan; former deputy prime minister John Manley; and Bob Rae, a former rival to Mr. Dion for the Liberal leadership who now co-chairs the Liberal committee that is developing party policy for the next election.
[…]
Unfortunately, the editorial is behind their subscriber-only firewall, so 99% or you can’t read it. And I won’t violate copyright by reprinting it here. But here’s some snippets:
National Post
Published: Saturday, February 17, 2007There is a famous Doonesbury cartoon, published in 1972 on the occasion of Sargent Shriver replacing Thomas Eagleton as the Democratic nominee for vice president in the U.S. presidential election of that year. Mr. Shriver had been a long-time opponent of his party’s presidential candidate, George McGovern, and had rebuffed earlier invitations to be running mate because of ideological differences. The cartoon shows a newscaster asking a Shriver spokesman how long it takes for a man to reverse policy positions he’d held all his life, just to win office? “Oh, about five minutes,” was the reply.
In truth—if Canada’s Liberal party is the yardstick—the answer is about two months. Since Stephane Dion became Liberal leader, his party has completely reversed itself on our mission in Afghanistan. It has found a desire to enforce the Kyoto accord’s emission limits on the Conservative government, even though while in office for Kyoto’s first eight years, the Liberals avoided living up to those same limits themselves. They have brought a motion before Parliament castigating the Conservatives for politicizing the appointment of judges, even though the Conservatives are simply using the same procedures the Liberals employed during their 12 years in power. And this week—the crowning achievement of their hypocrisy—the Liberals vowed to fight against extension of the anti-terror legislation they themselves introduced following 9/11, calling their own laws “draconian,” and seeking to paint the Conservatives as the party responsible for their creation.
We might understand if these flip-flops were merely cynical attempts to win votes even as the Liberals remained cognizant in private of their own intellectual duality. Yet under Mr. Dion, the party appears genuinely unable to recognize that it had ever championed the positions it now opposes. This is astounding given that Mr. Dion is not some newcomer inheriting a blank slate: He was in the Cabinets of both Jean Chretien and Paul Martin. One is reminded of communist history books, in which the past is continuously altered to suit the propaganda campaign of the moment.
[…snip…]
Given this, the Liberal effort to impose such an obligation on the Conservatives is seen by many Canadians as a cynical stunt. Yet to listen to Mr. Dion, one suspects the opposition leader truly does believe that he could implement Kyoto by sheer force of do-gooder will, if only Canadians had the wisdom to elect him prime minister.
Most recently, the Liberals deceived themselves into believing that they are somehow not responsible for the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act, which permits investigative hearings of material witnesses in terror cases, allows non- Canadian terror suspects found in Canada to be detained indefinitely without charges, and permits preventive arrest without bail for 72 hours of anyone suspected of hatching an imminent terror plot.
Former Liberal public security minister Anne McLellan, former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler and former Liberal deputy prime minister John Manley have all denounced their own party’s 180-degree reversal on this important issue. But don’t expect Mr. Dion to listen.
Now that he’s brought the far left of the Liberal caucus to the fore, he acts as though any moderate stand taken by the previous governments of Messrs. Chretien and Martin were the fault of Conservative mind control.
Whatever is currently fashionable in leftist circles—be it pacifism, doctrinaire environmentalism or weakness in the face of terrorism—is now the platform of the Liberals. And any stance the party took in the past that might be at odds with this new fashion is flushed down the memory hole.
Welcome to the new Liberals, same as the old NDP.
Good stuff. And thanks for the added credibility you’ve lent me with regard to the position I’ve taken on the Liberals and liberals generally for a decade.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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