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Sunday, January 22, 2006
Canada: Still putting on women's clothing
At the culmination of a campaign featuring a battle between middling visions of Canada, Western Standard cruiser and National Review editor-at-large John O' Sullivan asks an important question:
Are there any lumberjacks left?
Posted by Kevin Libin on January 22, 2006 | Permalink
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Comments
Wow - what a perfect analysis. He says it all. And the question is indeed - is there still a lumberjack under all that mascara?
Can Canada ditch the welfare-state socialist ideologies of Trudeau? My question is - can Canada afford not to ditch them? We are only kept in this cocoon of 'a paycheque every two weeks' by our subsidized economy; subsidized by the US consumer. Without them - we are toast, for we do nothing on our own. We don't invest, we don't develop industrial infrastructures, we don't enable our people to save and invest, we don't carry our weight in assisting the global world to remain free and democratic. Nothing.
Can we afford this backroom isolation? Can we afford our life as a Kept Woman?
Posted by: ET | 2006-01-22 3:35:04 PM
Weak effort at best.
The problem is not with the system of goverance but with the nation's heterogeneous nature. As even J.S. Mill conceded, liberty is founded on homogeneity.
Unlike the US which began as an ethnically and religiously homogeneous nation, Canada was multiculti from the get go. And as Peter Brimelow has long asserted, the development of asymetrical federalism, Quebec appeasement, denied English Canada its natural (WWI or WWII where both French and southern and eastern European minorities resisted participation) conservatism. The default imperative of unity at all costs, allowed Brimelow's 'New Class' (bureaucrats et al)to keep their nose in the trough longer at the expense of the majority English. The then massive unfettered immigraton, from non European origins that has followed over the last 20 years, has taken that asymmetry to a new level. The federal government will not challenge court rulings on abortion or gay marriage because they've convinced minorities, who are not necessarily partial to SSM, to support it because if they don't they will be the victims of some future 'discrimination'.
Heterogeneous nations will always trend to more illiberal governance.
And now it's the Conservative(?) Party that is becoming the party of immigrants. And the results are the politics of exclusion: "non-ethnics" need not apply.
From the Star:
"Punjabi power is flourishing across burgeoning Brampton, where the South Asian population has grown to about 85,000 people — about 21 per cent of the city's residents. By deploying political strategies that appeal to recent immigrants, Punjabi Canadians have emerged to form an almost impenetrable political monopoly across a ring of ridings north of Mississauga.
"In these ridings it's impossible for a non-ethnic candidate to win a nomination now, much less a campaign," says Brampton's Sam Basra, a Fijian of Punjabi descent who arrived in Toronto 20 years ago and ran federally for the Conservatives during the '90s in Etobicoke North.
Basra says that in such a tight-knit community, the nomination process works in favour of Punjabi-Canadians with political aspirations. "They sign up as many friends and family as they need to take out memberships, pay the fee so they can vote, and then they win the nominations.""
Posted by: DJ | 2006-01-22 4:00:04 PM
Nice article ! That certainly nails it, doesn't it ? On Monday jan. 23rd, it's time to get rid of our dress Canada...take back our axes and plaid shirts ! Ha !
Posted by: MarkAlta | 2006-01-22 4:03:09 PM
I think Trudeau's vision of Canada was cooked up with Maggie while she was smoking funny tobacco upstairs in 24 Sussex Drive.
RZ
Posted by: RZ | 2006-01-22 4:17:13 PM
So many people in and around conservative circles seem to understand quite well that the real problem with Canada, at its core, is the terminal rot of welfare statism, whose byword in the blogosphere is "Trudeaupia". Yet they back a political party whose candidates are too gutless to even breathe the words "nanny state", "welfare dependency", or God forbid, "Trudeaupia".
If you think that the government is actually not your Daddy, and that money doesn't grow on trees, it seems like a strange way to go about fixing the problem, to pretend that the only things really wrong with the country are that the government hired insufficient auditors, and that it neglected to maintain adequate funding for defense. To me, this says that the people running the party are either complete idiots, or else they're the kind of blue-tie-wearing moral cowards that Margaret Thatcher referred to as "wets". What's truly sickening is that, apparently, there isn't a single non-wet candidate or advisor in the entire Conservative Party of Canada
Lumberjacks? Haven't seen any. Nobody here but us chickens.
Posted by: Justzumgai | 2006-01-22 6:09:44 PM
Reading this reminds me of a conversation I had with a woman friend , who met Trudeau. ' Why his hands were so delicate, with long , manicured fingernails ' Immediately I had flashes of Mr. Burns on the Simpsons ; it is not a great stretch to visualize our haughty former prime minister , with his immaculate wardrobe and chiseled cheekbones , applying the odd dab of mascara on occasion. Kind of creepy though.. And now we are into gay marriage and polygamy. Who cares that we couldn`t defend ourselves agaist Luxembourg or create a meaningful economy without Uncle Sam`s largesse. Non of that matters as long as we try to convince others of our ' tolerance ' ..as they laugh at us on Conan O`Brien .
Posted by: dave | 2006-01-22 6:50:15 PM
I'm afraid that by misinterpreting Monty Python Mr. O'Sullivan has failed to grasp the national psyche. For remedial reading, I refer him to the Log Drivers' Waltz, by Wade Hemsworth:
If you should ask any girl from the parish around
What pleases her most from her head to her toes
She'll say, "I'm not sure that it's business of yours
But I do like to waltz with a log driver.
Chorus
For he goes birling down a-down the white water
That's where the log driver learns to step lightly
It's birling down, a-down white water
A log driver's waltz pleases girls completely.
When the drive's nearly over, I like to go down
To see all the lads while they work on the river
I know that come evening they'll be in the town
And we all want to waltz with a log driver.
To please both my parents I've had to give way
And dance with the doctors & merchants & lawyers
Their manners are fine but their feet are of clay
For there's none with the style of a log driver.
I've had my chances with all sorts of men
But none is so fine as my lad on the river
So when the drive's over, if he asks me again
I think I will marry my log driver.
Posted by: Vitruvius | 2006-01-22 7:22:41 PM
My family are all lumberjacks. In the traditional sense. Setting chokers every summer from age 12 on. And we are all voting Conservative this election. As usual.
Posted by: Mallard | 2006-01-22 9:35:56 PM
For anyone who has lived outside of metro, especially lived and worked up north, Wade Hemsworth has more than one ditty that resonates.
My grandfather was a lumberjack, and a french-Canadian, who moved his family of 13 kids from the Quebec townships to homestead in Marie-Reine, Peace River country, Alberta. He worked the camps in winter, and planted an incredible fruit tree and vegetable garden in the wilderness. He gave up the stimulating kitchen political discussions with his many brothers that his Jesuit training had prepared him for. He knew what would give his family a better future.
Many Canadians must still have, or at least remember that lumberjack heart of Canadian being.
Ah, now I'm all nostalgic...
Posted by: lwestin | 2006-01-23 8:01:36 AM
Haven't you heard; the far left establishment would have you believe "Brokeback Mountain" is the stuff legends are made out of; thats how in touch with the mainstream they are... and how out of touch us "good ole" lumberjacks are. I'm off to vote now.
Posted by: Richard | 2006-01-23 8:44:35 AM
Bareback Mountain is , of course , another device to grind us down to animal levels , to make us more compliant and to take away hope. Lumberjacks and cowboys epitomize those unnatural drives such as self- reliance, nationalism and pride. There is no room for such heresy in the New World Order of Comrade Martin , Hillary and Kofi . Better to be more ' tolerant ' .
Posted by: dave | 2006-01-23 9:56:22 AM
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