There is little that is surprising but so much that is disappointing in the newly-released Romanow Report on the future of the Canadian health care system. Despite his plea that "we do not confuse means with ends, and that we do not prematurely stake out rigid positions" the report seems to have done those very things. That a socialist premier from the province that pioneered Medicare should wish to see the public system injected with yet more billions of tax dollars is no shock, but Romanow’s failure to propose anything else of substance -- no innovation except even more ways to spend our money -- is a sad testimony to the utter intellectual poverty of the Left. This sclerotic rigidity reflects a world-view unchanged since the 1960s when a belief in the healing powers of government spending was unchallenged and when naive idealism propelled to power a perverse misanthrope named Trudeau.
I am somewhat surprised by the results of a National Post series of polls on questions of rights and freedoms. Canadians, we are told, favour the return of prayer to public schools by the huge margin of 68% to 28%. This would seem to run counter to the principles of political correctness that have guided educational administrators for years but those who think that here is an indication of deep support for religious liberty should note another finding. Those same citizens who opted for prayer also wished to restrict the rights of faith-based schools. 63% said a religious school should not be allowed to ban same-sex couples from school dances and 71% agreed a religious school should not be allowed to avoid hiring a homosexual teacher if the teacher is otherwise satisfactory. This confirms my belief that in the eyes of my compatriots sexual freedoms are more highly-ranked than all others, especially in religion.
Unsurprising is the decision by the Royal Canadian Mint to conduct its annual campaign to promote the sale of their expensive metallic knick-knacks in the absence of that offensive word “Christmas”. Spokesbeings for that pc institution explain this as a cunning plan to "position coins as a great gift for the holidays for whatever faith." Perhaps. But what explains the decision to omit a 2002 version of their “Christmas Ornament”?
November 30 is Saint Andrew’s Day and so we salute the patron saint of Scotland and Russia and note that his feast day marks the end of the year on the Christian liturgical calendar. November 30 is also the birthday of Winston Churchill and Mark Twain and the anniversary of the death of Oscar Wilde.
For Winston Spencer Churchill I have nothing but praise. The greatest Briton of his era (and of all time according to a BBC poll which placed Princess Diana third, far ahead of Isaac Newton and William Shakespeare) he saved civilization at the cost of the British Empire. He assumed office as the Allied position in the west was collapsing and the French government and army were too intent on speed-reading their German phrase books to defend their country. But herein lies a salutary lesson for those who think that the events of 1940 prove that Gauls are, by nature, cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Antony Beevor’s monumental new history Berlin: The Downfall, 1945 notes that in the final few days of World War II, when Hitler lay dead and the survivors of the Nazi hierarchy were scuttling like rats out of the ruins of Berlin, the last Axis defenders in the city were Frenchmen. These remnants of the SS Charlemagne Division fought on in the wreckage of the Third Reich until they were overrun by the Red Army.
Mark Twain is little appreciated outside of the United States and for good reason. Next to Walt Whitman he is the most insufferable of American writers and next to Herman Melville the most unreadable.
There was a lot that was insufferable about Oscar Wilde too. He continually betrayed a loving wife and found furtive pleasure on the bodies of shoe-shine boys and rancid young aristocrats. He made almost an entire career of far-too-artfully polished apothegms (“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.”) and a smirking inversion of received truths (“As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possible admire them.”) He brought his sad end upon himself but for the sake of his children’s stories Oscar Wilde will be forgiven much. Requiescat in pace.
- posted by Dexter Castor