Paul Taylor, an angry Alberta journalist, calls for Liberal Members of Parliament to be lynched. While he advocates hanging for most of them he also suggests, in a moment of clemency, the possibility that some may only be forced to walk the plank for the years of corruption and thievery that they have wrought on Canada. I call this kind of talk irresponsible.
It is the duty of every honest Canadian in this time of moral re-examination to propose punishments for errant legislators that would really put the fear of God into them. Hanging or drowning in shark-infested waters are threats that are far too mild for the likes of the Shawinigan Strangler and his scurvy gang. Having endured years of Sheila Copps, these are hardened characters indeed, much in need of more imaginative ways of ending their criminous careers.
In that spirit then I advance the following methods of execution, drawn from historical examples with an eye toward both ingenuity and multiculturalism:
• Being stamped on by elephants. This was a favourite at the courts of Indian rajahs and has the advantage of providing employment for the pachyderms and mahouts left unemployed by PETA-bankrupted circuses.
• Death by carpet. Mongol law forbade the shedding of royal blood so princes who fell afoul of the khan were placed between thick rugs which were shaken up and down until the victim inside was reduced to jelly. Reviving this custom might do much to revive the Quebec textile industry, hard hit by cheap imports.
• Flaying alive. The Turks were wont to celebrate victories over the infidels by removing the skins of captured leaders and stuffing the remains with straw to provide a life-like trophy to send back to the sultan. An entire Hall of Shame at the proposed Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg might well be designated for these effigies.
• Execution Mohawk-style. Canada's First Citizens were no shirkers when it came to taking delight in the death-throes of their captives. Liberal cabinet ministers could test the fruits of their aboriginal policies and, at the same time, provide meaningful jobs for natives by subjecting themselves to the genocidal Iroquois tortures traditionally meted out to Jesuits and Hurons.
With a little thought and planning Canadians could pioneer whole new sporting ways of dispesnsing with failed and corrupt politicians. There are great television possibilities here and I can't wait for our media entrepreneurs to take this idea and run with it.