Mr. Gore's Movie

An Inconvenient Truth won the Oscar for best documentary feature last Sunday night. The film deserved the award. We watched it a couple of weeks ago with our youngest son, who had seen it in school and wanted to see it again at home.

As a presidential candidate, Al Gore just seemed to lack spark. But he was clearly more qualified for the job than the man who won. And historians will be debating for a long time how the world could have been different if he had been elected by the popular vote instead of the Electoral College.

In the end, however, Gore and his travelling road show may accomplish much more than he ever could have accomplished as a Democratic President confronted with a Republican Congress. Unlike Stephen Harper, Gore has not come to the environmental cause lately. And, until recently, he gained no political points when he advanced his cause. The film features a clip from the 1992 presidential campaign with George Bush Sr. -- in high dudgeon -- claiming that Gore "is so far out in the environmental extreme, we'll be up to our neck in owls and outta work for every American. He is way out, far out, man."

That is a sentiment with which Bush the Younger -- despite a 2000 campaign pledge to curb carbon dioxide omissions -- would appear to agree. But that was also seven years ago. Much has changed -- including the weather. The hurricanes -- particularly Katrina -- of the last two summers and the winter storms which have turned roads in Texas into skating rinks have begun to garner public attention.

And, as Gore makes clear in the film, even though the data has been around for almost two generations, we now have the before and after pictures. Most striking, perhaps, is the now almost non-existent snow on top of Mount Kilimanjaro. And the huge chunks of ice which are slipping into the Arctic Ocean. And the drowned polar bears, which have been unable to find their ice floe refuges, which they and we have taken for granted for thousands of years.

If Victor Hugo was right, and there really is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come, then perhaps Al Gore's time has come, too. After working for over thirty years to solve the problem of global warming, perhaps his efforts are beginning to bear fruit. There are those who say that he could accomplish so much more if he were president. And those people are calling on him to enter the 2008 campaign. But he would be wise not to follow that siren song.

In her book, The March of Folly, historian Barbara W. Tuchman defined folly as, "the pursuit of policy contrary to the self-interest of the constituency or state involved." A chief cause of folly, Tuchman wrote, was "woodenheadedness," which she explained, "consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs."

In North America, we have been ignoring the contrary signs for a long time. Gore says that it is not too late. But, having recognized the contrary signs, we have to act now; and several small but carefully planned policy changes can make the difference, if we have the political will -- particularly the international political will -- to make them. I suspect that he understands that, ironically, he can accomplish more outside the tent than in.

It would be one of history's even greater ironies if the man who was accused of being "wooden" when he ran for president, managed to break through the woodenheadness of his own time. Al Gore may have lost the presidency. But he may yet win the battle for the planet.

The Banker at the Schoolhouse Door -- Part 2

Readers of this blog will note that I received my first comment last week. And operating on the principle of full disclosure, I must announce that "Anonymous" is really my son, who was posting his comment from Seoul, South Korea. He raises three very good points: 1) the dollar value of the fees mentioned in the piece are not equivalent; 2) the more university degrees granted the less value each has; and 3) not everyone needs to or should go to university.

Let me address each of these points. Consider the first, that tuition of $585 in 1965 is not equivalent to $5555 in 2006. Absolutely true. But, if one considers the growth of inflation during those years, the rising cost of a university education becomes clear. According to the Bank of Canada Inflation Calculator (www.bankofcanada.ca/en/rates/inflation calc.html) the average annual inflation rate from 1965 until 2006 was 4.65%. That means that, if tuition increased with inflation, a freshman entering Trent University in 2006 would have paid $3733.68. If that is our new base, it means that tuition has increased by an additional 48% beyond inflation. Remember this increase has occurred as the number of students has increased. According to Trent, its student population has gone from 4977 in 1999 to 8207 in 2005. (Incidentally, I am indebted -- pun intended -- to our other son, the U of T graduate, for directing me to the Bank of Canada's Inflation Calculator. This is turning into a conversation between the generations.)

Just as Trent's student population has increased, the general student population at all Ontario Universities is expected to grow. The Ontario Council of Universities claims that "The 18 to 21 year old population will grow by 53,000 from 2006 to 2014 according to the Ministry of Finance." The Council also claims that the demand for post graduate professional education will be even greater: "Ontario's 22-29 year old cohort -- the pool the community professional and graduate programs draw on -- is projected to increase in size by 200,000 by 2021."

And, when one compares inflation and the cost of professional education over the last thirty years, the cost of a graduate education between now and then is placed in stark contrast. The $780 which Dalton McGuinty paid to go to law school in 1976 would be equal to $2,828.86 today. At $8,500, the cost of a ticket to law school at the U of O has tripled, even when one takes into account the inflation of the ensuing years.

Why? Well, again referring to figures compiled by the Council of Ontario Universities, "On a provincial government funding per capita basis, Ontario has been 10th of 10 provinces for over 10 years. While the gap narrowed as a result of the Reaching Higher plan [the $6.2 million the McGuinty government injected into higher education two years ago] it is estimated that it would require a further $950 million to reach the 2004-05 funding level of the other nine provinces." The simple fact is that the provincial government has not been investing in higher education in a manner which matches its rhetoric. As the university population has gone up, grant based government funding has gone down; and students have been caught in the squeeze. Thus, tuitions have risen to meet the shortfall.

And, assuming that students have about twelve weeks to work between the spring and fall semesters, they will never make enough to handle tuition costs. If they manage to squeeze in sixteen weeks of work at, say, nine dollars an hour, they'll earn $5760 before taxes. That's not enough to cover tuition and books, let alone the cost of room and board, if they are living away from home. Is it any wonder that they own a mortgage when they graduate?

As for my son's second point, the consequences of flooding the market with degrees, there are two sides to that coin. Yes, a Bachelor's degree in some fields has become the equivalent of a high school diploma two generations ago. On the other hand, just as a high school diploma was the ticket of admission into the new industrial economy, the bachelor's degree has become that same ticket into the knowledge based economy. And, just as some high school diplomas were awarded in the face of little effort, sadly some Baccalaureates have been granted for surprisingly little work. C's and D's still pass.

Moreover, if the Bachelor's degree is now the new high school diploma, then one could argue that, just as full public funding was eventually extended to all high school students, the same should be true for university students. And, once upon a time, it was. Back in the 1960's, students in California's state university system paid no tuition. That policy changed when Ronald Reagan became governor.The likelihood of that policy's resurrection is, however -- well, I think you can intuit the answer.

Which brings us to my son's third and last point, whether or not everyone should go to university. The obvious answer is no. However, there are all kinds of knowledge. By the time a millwright or an electrician completes the class time and the training time to get his or her ticket, the time and money spent are equivalent to an undergraduate degree. But once again, the burden has shifted to the student. Gone are the days when organizations supported training programs where they would take in a predetermined number of apprentices every year to meet their present and future needs. These days, students have to shop around their skills to various organizations -- a policy that is pretty much hit or miss.

There was a time when education was seen as an investment -- an investment which benefited not only the student but society in general. If an economy was to grow, it needed trained people to support increased productivity. And productivity growth, in John F Kennedy's words, "raises all boats." In the last thirty-five years there has been a change in perspective. Education is now a cost; and, for a generation, governments of all stripes have been downloading costs to the people down the next rung on the ladder. Students are at the bottom of the ladder. These days the rising tide of productivity, in one wag's words, "raises all yachts." The small craft have been beached.

I now return to the task of insuring there will be enough money in the bank to pay for our third -- and last -- son's education.

The Banker at the Schoolhouse Door

Last week, Ontario Premier Dalton McGunity found himself the target of student protests. The issue was university tuition. Perhaps he was surprised. After all, he is the father of three sons who are attending university and he faces the same tuition bills as the rest of us, times three. Moreover, his government injected 6.2 million dollars into higher education two years ago. And the Liberals also froze university tuitions for two years, only lifting the freeze this September, when tuitions increased 4.6%

But, as Carol Goar pointed out in the Toronto Star this week, student enrollment in Ontario universities is running twenty-three percent ahead of government projections. Students were listening when they were told that seventy percent of Canadian jobs now require some form of post secondary education.

The real problem is that the cost of going to university has increased astronomically in the last forty years. When I entered university forty years ago, my tuition and fees amounted to $585 a year. At Trent University, from which one of our sons graduated last year, incoming freshmen paid $5,557.55 this past September. It's a little cheaper at the University of Toronto, from which our oldest son graduated almost four years ago. There, incoming freshmen paid $5,176.30 this past September. If you live in a small rural community, as we do, the cost is considerably more, given what it costs to live away from home.

But, if your children plan on attending a post graduate professional school, the costs are absolutely stratospheric. Goar points out that when McGunity attended law school at the University of Ottawa back in the late seventies, he paid $780 a year in tuition. The same program now costs $8,500 a year. And that's a bargain. This year at Osgoode Hall, the law school at York University, tuition will set you back $13,966. Next year it will cost you $15,116. At the U of T this year, tuition in the Faculty of Law is $17,280. And if you want to get an MBA at Toronto's Rotman School of Management, tuition is $27,000 a year. At Queens, it costs $2000 to apply for an MBA, then an additional $28,000 a year.

One assumes that these tuition fees are predicated on the certainty that the graduates of these programs will be earning top salaries as CEO's or their equivalents. After all, as Senator Jim Webb of Virginia recently pointed out, the average CEO now makes in a day what it takes his or her average employee over a year to make.

What has happened? Well, as Bob Rae noted in his report to the Ontario government, the expansion of higher education in Ontario occurred before Medicare. Since then, the health system has been draining off money which used to go to colleges and universities. Rae suggested that more student aid be made available in the form of loans. The government would underwrite the loans; but, essentially, the private sector would be given an opportunity to expand its loan base.

This is a departure from the policy of direct investment which Ontario governments used to make in higher education -- when Mr. McGunity went to school in Ottawa and I went to school in Montreal. And it has not been just universities which have seen a decrease in direct investment from the government. One of the major "reforms" which the Mike Harris government brought to Ontario's education system was the elimination of grade thirteen in high schools. Up until then, students could attend grade thirteen and get a general degree after attending university for three years. It is more than just a little ironic that these reforms were made during the stewardship of an education minister who dropped out of high school in grade eleven to first work for and then run his father's waste management company.

All of this is of a piece. And it is a policy which has been aided and abetted by governments of all stripes. The mantra for some time now has been, in Ronald Reagan's words, " Government is not part of the problem, it is the problem." Thus, government has left it to the private sector to fund what it used to fund. And the trade off has been lower taxes. But twenty-five years of such "enlightened" policies have led to the wealth gap, which I have written about in previous posts. What that means for university students of modest means is that they will graduate with a large mortgage over their heads.

When I went to graduate school, my father cosigned for a loan which represented 13% of my annual income before taxes. When our son graduated from graduate school, his accumulated debt amounted to 107% of his annual income before taxes -- this despite roughly $65,000 in scholarships and over $50,000 from us.

I do not begrudge the costs. Luckily, we were able to pay them; and scholarship money was available. Still, he had to borrow alot of money, for which he is now on the hook. And someone is very happily adding to his or her company's bottom line because my son wanted an education. What about those other hard working folks who want their children to succeed -- or the children themselves -- who don't have the financial resources to get them in the schoolhouse door and then stay there?

Higher Education has always been a privilege. The problem is that it is increasingly only available to the privileged.

Everything New is Old

It has been interesting to watch the Harper government's two pronged strategy as it tries desperately to clothe itself in green. But, like the St. Patrick's Day Parade, where everybody claims to be Irish, it's a momentary extravaganza. Wearing green doesn't make you Irish; and claiming to be the Green Party doesn't make it so.

Cynicism abounds in the nation's chattering class. On the right, perhaps the most interesting take on the Conservative make-over comes from columnist Andrew Coyne. He's buying none of it. Says Mr Coyne, "Having allowed the issue to fester for eight months while it tried to decide what if anything to put in place of the Liberal programs it had scrapped, the government has now put itself in the position where nothing it does will be seen to be sufficient, or even sincere."

On the left, James Travers writes that, while the Harper government knows something about politics, it knows very little about policy -- something that troubles the mandarins in the civil service. "The effectiveness of public policy is proportional to the depth of analysis," he writes. It is becoming more obvious with each passing day that what Jeffrey Simpson calls "the Harper Party" is long on conviction and short on analysis.

The evidence to support this conclusion rests on the fact that Harper's green platform is essentially the old Liberal platform. And, while the Conservatives trot out different elements of that platform each week, they run television ads showing clips from the Liberal leadership debates claiming the Liberal record on the environment amounted to nothing -- a charge that contains a lot of truth -- and that "Stephane Dion is not a leader." That's the strategy: Recycle old policies and attack the new leader.

The strategy isn't about the environment at all. Harper revealed that the other day when he said that you can't expect Canadians to radically change their lifestyles. Technology, he said, will save us from ourselves. The truth is that technology offers us hope, but only we will be able to save ourselves. And Mr. Harper cannot conceive of a government which shapes public policy to encourage people to act in favour of the planet. The guiding star in his firmament is the principle that, first and foremost, people act in favour of themselves.

What he can conceive of, with laser-like precision, is a majority government. That -- not the long term future of the planet -- is what he is focused on. Everything he has done in the last year has been in support of that objective. Policy for Harper is a path to power; the long term efficacy of that policy is irrelevant. Whether it be placing Michael Fortier in the cabinet as the unelected Minister for Montreal, or the Quebec is a nation within a nation resolution, or his green light on the road to Damascus environmental policy, it's all about power -- gaining it and maintaining it. If anyone doubts this, note that it is Harper who makes every substantive policy announcement, while his ministers stand in the background, nodding approvingly.

In that Mr. Harper is like most other Prime Ministers -- Conservative or Liberal. There is nothing new in any of this. Actually, he has a lot in common with Mordecai Richler's Duddy Karvitz. Duddy knew exactly what he wanted -- and he got it. But he only got it because his victims allowed him to manipulate them. All except his grandfather. One can only hope that Canadians, like Duddy's zeyda, can spot a con man when they see him.

The First and the Last

Two interviews with two of the key players in the Iraq War debate offer some insight into why the American decision to go to war has turned out so disastrously. The first interview, with Vice President Dick Cheney, underscores the old adage that the first casualty of war is truth. The second interview, with Senator Chuck Hagel, reminds us that Dr. Johnson might have been wrong in his definition of patriotism; but he understood precisely how it could be abused.

The first interview, with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, illustrated how invested the Vice President is in this war. When asked if his credibility had been damaged by the blunders in Iraq, Cheney's response was, ". . .I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash." This from the man who claimed that Americans would be greeted by Iraqis as "liberators," and who claimed a year ago that the insurgency was "in its last throes."

When pressed to explain the many successes Cheney claimed were America's unappreciated bleesings to Iraqis, he said, "There have been three national elections in Iraq. There's a democracy established there, a constitution, a new democratically elected government. Saddam has been brought to justice and executed, his sons are dead, his government is gone. And the world is better off for it." All of this, of course, conveniently ignores the original rationale for the war, which was self defense. Remember those weapons of mass destruction? The rationale for the war shifted when the facts on the ground proved inconvenient. Throughout the war, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld have ignored facts on the ground when they proved inconvenient -- as they continue to do, now that Iraq is embroiled in a civil war. "Stuff happens," Rumsfeld said. All of this "stuff" is merely the work of "deadenders." The troika at the top have been loathe to admit the failure of their enterprise -- perhaps because to do so would be the equivalent of declaring moral bankruptcy.

Chuck Hagel has a completely different take on what is happening on the ground. In an interview in this month's GQ, Hagel says, "The administration likes to point to these bench marks -- the Iraqis wrote a constitution, they had an election, they elected a unity government. The administration takes great pride in saying, 'It's now a sovereign nation. They're in charge of their own affairs.' It's completely untrue but they say it anyway."

How does one account for such differing perspectives? The personal history of each man tells the story. Hagel is used to looking at war from the ground up -- from a place where it is hard to ignore facts. Hagel says, "When I got to Vietnam I was a rifleman. I was a private, about as low as you can get. So my frame of reference is very much geared to the guy at the bottom who's doing the fighting and dying. Jim Webb and I are the only ones in the Senate who had that experience." He does not disparage the experience of others, like John McCain or John Kerry. And he has "never doubted the motives of those who wanted to go to war so badly." The problem is that none of them had the experience of war, certainly not from the perspective of a rifleman: " . . . President Bush served a little time in the National Guard. Secretary Rice never served. Wolfowitz never served. Feith never served. Cheney had five deferments."

When asked about those five deferments at an earlier confirmation hearing, Cheney claimed that he had "other priorities at the time." When asked about a congressional resolution expressing opposition to the administration's plan to "surge" another 21,500 troops to Iraq, Cheney declared, "It won't stop us. And it would be, I think, detrimental from the standpoint of the troops." Hagell's take on the surge is straightforward: "I am not willing to sacrifice more young men and women for a policy that isn't working."

Cheney claims that people like Hagel and Webb don't have the "stomach" to finish the job. Given the bottom up experience of both senators -- both of whom were wounded in Vietnam -- it's not hard to understand the thinly veiled contempt they have for the vice president and his boss. And, when the President and Vice President question the patriotism of those who do not support their vision, it's easy to see why Dr. Johnson believed that patriotism is "the last refuge of a scoundrel."

Webster's by the way, defines scoundrel as "a mean worthless fellow."

As the Ships Sink

On November 7, the day of the American election, E.J. Dionne wrote in the Washington Post: "The Republican Party no longer has a coherent governing philosophy. Republicans who care about advancing a consistent set of ideals are already at each others throats and are likely to stay there." This past Saturday, Andrew Coyne, writing in the National Post, concluded that, "After a year of Conservative rule it is now clear, conservatism isn't just dying -- it is dead. And it's the Conservatives who killed it." From both left and right, from both north and south of the border, a consensus is forming. The Great Conservative Reawakening of the past generation is about to be buried; and the authors of its demise have been so called conservatives themselves.

I have argued in this space that the Great Conservative Reawakening was never a conservative phenomenon: that its main proponents -- Hayeck, Strauss, Freidman, Thatcher, Reagan and all of their disciples --were really libertarians, not conservatives. This was no great insight on my part -- the late Dalton Camp recognized the trend early for what it was; and until his dying day he railed against what he called the "neo liberal" and rampant individualism which corroded the foundations of social stability. For Camp, an evolving but stable society was the bedrock of true conservatism. He believed that the last Canadian conservatives were Progressive Conservatives. The son of a Baptist Minister, Camp understood that the new conservatism of the Reform Party -- which eventually hijacked the party to which he had devoted his life -- was more akin to a religion, wedded to dogma and convinced of its own moral rectitude.

How does one account for the shipwreck that is now taking place? Well, all governing coalitions get stale; and, as this happens, its members tend to choose incompetent leaders. By 1980 Americans, while acknowledging that his heart was in the right place, came to the conclusion that Jimmy Carter's head wasn't. They saw him -- quite simply -- as a man who was not up to the job. As a result, the old liberal consensus built by Franklin Roosevelt gave way to a man who had been inspired by Roosevelt but whose policies were, in many ways, diametrically opposed to what Roosevelt stood for.

In Canada, Paul Martin met the same fate. Widely viewed as an excellent Minister of Finance, as Prime Minister he was nicknamed "Mr. Dithers," an appellation which stuck. Canadians, too, concluded that he wasn't up to the job.

Which brings us to George W. Bush and Stephen Harper -- two would be allies. As was clear from last night's State of the Union Speech, the American public has figured out that George W. Bush is not up to the job. The two critical policies of Bush's presidency -- the War in Iraq and his response to Hurricane Katrina -- have been unmitigated disasters. And, when faced with the consequences of those policies, Bush's response has been to forge ahead, insisting that no change in course is the mark of strong leadership.

Harper, on the other hand, has proved that he can turn on a dime. Whether the issue is luring the recently elected David Emerson into his cabinet, reversing his campaign pledge on income trusts, declaring that "the Quebecois are a nation within Canada," or hurriedly borrowing the very environmental policies he disparaged in the last election, Harper -- for all his apparent rigidity -- does not have his feet set in concrete.

For true believers, like Andrew Coyne, this amounts to "selling the conservative soul." For ordinary Canadians there is the distinct odour of Brian Mulroney's government. It is worth remembering that Canadians gave Mulroney the largest electoral majority in history. But when his party was finally tossed out the door, they retained two seats in the House of Commons. Mr. Harper was celebrating his party's first anniversary in power two days ago. But there was a skunk at the party.

The skunk is the public's suspicion that they've been had -- that they've been victims of a classic bait and switch. They bought the line that they were electing conservatives when, as Dalton Camp knew only too well, they were being sold a pig in a poke. The public --not quite as early as Camp -- but, nonetheless, like him -- have figured out that the so called conservative ships of state are sinking. And that's as it should be.

MacArthur in the White House

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have now informed us that -- despite the results of last November's election, the consistent results of polls for the last two years, the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and congressional opposition from both parties -- they will go ahead with their troop surge.

In the face of such opposition, Mr. Bush likes to see himself as another Harry Truman -- someone reviled in his own day but admired by historians after the dust has settled. In that regard, it is instructive to read what Truman wrote about Douglas MacArthur in his diary on June 17th, 1945, long before Truman fired him on April 11, 1951: "Mr. Prima Dona, Brass Hat, Five Star MacArthur. He's worse than the Cabots and the Lodges -- at least they talked with one another before they told God what to do. Mac tells God right off."

Mr. Bush has told the people, who clearly disdain his war, that -- as long as he is "the decider" -- their opinions will not influence his policies. The problem is that instead of working for the White House, MacArthur now sits in the Oval Office; and he knows that he and Mr. Cheney cannot be fired. Now, with the hubris one is accustomed to see in a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy, they insist that they know better than the people who elected them -- and, who most recently, passed judgment on their policies.

Clearly, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney's judgment has been appalling. Consider the record: They were wrong about Iraq sponsoring the 911 attacks; they were wrong about Saddam possessing chemical and biological weapons; they were wrong about Saddam having a nuclear weapons program; they were wrong about sending enough troops to Iraq; they were wrong about Iraqi oil money paying for the war; they were wrong about being greeted as liberators; they were wrong when they insisted that Iraq was a secular society; and, therefore, there would be no fracturing of the country along religious lines; they were wrong about de -Baathification; they were wrong when they disbanded the Iraqi army; and they were wrong when they proclaimed that there would be no insurgency.

They readily admit that their surge is a gamble. But, they insist, there will be a bloodbath and global instability if they do not make one last attempt to impose a military solution before the Iraqis get down to the business of finding a political solution. However, even their surge is a mere shadow of what was originally recommended. In their original proposal, Fred Kagan and retired General Jack Keene suggested that, to be successful, their proposal would require at least thirty to fifty thousand troops. Bush claims that those other troops will come from the Iraqis.

But three months ago, Bush's own head of the Security Council, Stephen Hadley, wrote a memo to his boss claiming that Mr. Maliki was an unreliable partner because he will not do what he has promised to do. When the memo leaked, Mr. Maliki stiffed Mr. Bush and did not show up for their dinner meeting in Jordan. Mr. Bush has decided to sit down at the roulette table and put all his chips on number 21, 500 and on a guy who Bush can't trust to keep a dinner appointment.

The question is, with the track record Mr. Bush has racked up over the last four years, would you put your life's savings in his hands? And, even if you told him you wanted out of the game, what would you do if his response was, "You're in. . .?"

Much fanfare has been made of the fact that Mr. Bush is the first MBA president. And, in homage to his alma mater, Mr. Bush has made much of the fact that Mr. Maliki and his government will now be held to strict performance appraisal standards; or else, "they will lose the support of the American people." It seems to me that what is fair for Mr. Maliki is only fair for Mr. Bush. The only difference should be that, instead of Mr. Bush holding Mr. Maliki accountable, the American Congress should hold Mr. Bush accountable.

There is precedent. On September 1, 1970, Democratic Senator George McGovern and Republican Senator Mark Hatfield offered an amendment which would have cut off funding for the Vietnam War in fifteen months if the situation did not improve measurably. The amendment was defeated that day; but eventually funding for the war ended after Nixon was told by a bipartisan delegation that unless he resigned he would be impeached. Nixon resigned and the war ended when the senior senator from Arizona led a delegation to Nixon which told him his time was up.

Today the senior Senator from Arizona favours the surge. And no one is suggesting that Mr. Bush resign. But congress ultimately has the power to shut Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney's operation down. However, that will only happen if Democratic and Republican statesmen with the gravitas of Barry Goldwater have the courage to bring the Iraq war to an end.

Those who say that such action is folly have it backwards. Bush's policies are not the solution to the chaos in Iraq; they are the cause of the chaos. There is a conflagration ahead. But Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney only know how to start a fire. Other --wiser-- men (or women) will have to find a way to put it out.

It's Not Easy Being Green, But. . .

Stephen Harper's second attempt at cabinet making was an interesting exercise. Give the man marks for shrewdness. Perhaps cunning is the more appropriate word. Certainly, those who write him off as being politically dense do themselves and the country a disservice. But the distance between politics and policy can sometimes be a chasm.

Harper's removal of Rona Ambrose from the environment portfolio was no surprise. But, in fairness, the problem was not so much Ambrose as it was Harper's Clean Air Act, which was nothing more than a lot of hot (and dirty) air.

The appointment of John Baird was -- politically -- a masterstroke. If the old adage about the best defence being a good offence is true, then Harper put the right man in the job. First in Ontario and then in Ottawa, Baird has proved himself an able parliamentarian. And he has the political smarts to deal with his critics. The problem is that his critics are right. A government which, despite its brand, is really libertarian is philosophically ill equipped to deal with the problem of global warming.

Conservatism, as practised in North America in the later part of the last century and the beginning of the new one, takes its philosophical bearings from people like Friedrich Hayek and Leo Strauss, refugees from European Fascism and Communism. While they considered themselves classic liberals --Hayek applied the term to himself -- they were really libertarians, as Hayek's fellow faculty member at the University of Chicago, Milton Friedman, aptly described their guiding principles.

Believing that individual self interest and the operation of free markets are the best tools to solve political problems, they disparaged collective action as hopelessly confused and ultimately ineffective. In practise their influence has meant the dismantling of several instruments whose purpose has been to increase global security and stability, starting with the United Nations and its various agencies.

Harper has bought into this school of thought; and, besides Harper, its best salesmen have been Harper's Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, and his former Minister at Treasury Board -- John Baird. And therein lies the problem. A libertarian government finds it very hard to think in global terms. All solutions are ultimately a matter of individual choice. So, for instance, Mr. Harper has said that the Kyoto treaty is not the appropriate instrument for dealing with the problem of global warming; and to justify Canada's not meeting its Kyoto targets, he asserts that individual Canadians would not agree to heat their homes "one third less of the time."

What he fails to mention, however, is that only twenty-five percent of carbon dioxide emissions come from individuals. The other seventy-five percent comes from industry and government operated power plants.

And it is here that the powers that be need to be confronted. Instead of using government to encourage research, to mandate fuel and emission standards -- and the tax system to provide incentives for green policies -- Harper and his allies are focused on reducing government influence in the lives of Canadians. If these "conservatives" were in office during the Great Depression we would still be there.

What the Great Depression and the Second World War taught us is that some problems are so large that only government action -- and sometimes international cooperation -- can solve them. The environmental crisis is -- in its scope -- similar to the Great Depression. Canadians understand that. The Liberals, when they elected Stephane Dion to lead the party, signaled that they understand that.

Harper's appointment of Baird indicates that he understands where his weaknesses are. Whether or not he knows how to develop policies to deal with the most important challenge we face remains to be seen.

Fueling the Fire

The report from the Iraq Study Group had a short shelf life. It commanded public scrutiny for about a week. Then it disappeared. Of its seventy-nine recommendations, the only one to live on after the report's debut was that of a "surge" of troops as a prelude to withdrawal. Fred Kagan, of the American Enterprise Institute, and retired General Jack Keene picked that one up; and, in an article in the Washington Post, later reprinted in the Weekly Standard, they suggested that an additional thirty thousand troops could secure Baghdad and give the present government time to solidify its position. "The key to success is to change the military mission," they wrote. "[I]nstead of preparing for transition to Iraqi control, the mission should be to bring security to the Iraqi population."

Sounds like an excellent idea. And it was an excellent idea three years ago. If Mr. Rumsfeld and company had bought it then, the conflagration in Iraq would probably not have occurred. After all, there was historical precedent. When the British went into Mesoptamia back in 1917, they did so with four hundred and eleven thousand troops. At that time, the population of the region was one third what it is today; and, even then, the British encountered considerable resistance. During the first Gulf War, the first President Bush assembled a coalition of over five hundred thousand troops and those troops did not march on Baghdad.

The problem is that the situation has changed. American soldiers now find themselves in the middle of a Civil War -- something Mr. Bush and his advisers still refuse to recognize -- and, to make matters worse, the people of the Middle East are staring into the abyss of a much wider regional war. The mission is no longer bringing security to the Iraqi population.

Moreover, the surge proposal ignores the logistical and personnel problems associated with adding an additional thirty thousand troops. In an article in The American Prospect, Lawrence Korb, a former Undersecretary of Defence in the Reagan administration and Max Bergmann, of the Center for American Progress, argue that Kagan and Keene's plan is "unrealistic and dangerous" for a number of reasons. To begin with, they say, "there are no active or reserve army combat units outside Iraq and Afghanistan that are rated as combat ready." They do not have the equipment needed to train for such a mission because all of that equipment is already in Iraq. Other equipment could be scrounged from places like Korea and National Guard units in the United States; but,"this would leave the country dangerously exposed, without sufficient force strength to deter adversaries from possible aggressive action."

Finally, say Korb and Bergmann, the surge proposal ignores the reality on the ground. They point out that when the British entered Northern Ireland in 1972, to put an end to sectarian violence there, their troop to population ratio was equivalent to having 750,000 troops on the ground in Iraq. To those who claim that people like Korb and Bergmann don't understand the consequences of failure in Iraq, they say, "they have it backwards. Those who opposed the war from the outset understood the difficulty and scope of the task at hand, while the war's architects are the ones only now coming to grips with the catastrophic implications of a possible civil and regional war." Adding thirty thousand troops at this point will only add fuel to a growing fire.

The Iraq Study Group pointed to a rather messy way out of Iraq. But it requires looking at a much larger canvas. It requires diplomacy. It requires dealing with one's enemies; and it requires building large and diverse coalitions -- all things which the present occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has difficulty with. He has refused to build coalitions at home, insisting that only legislation which has the support of "a majority of the majority" come to the floor. He has won elections by finding enough votes in strategic states to tip the balance in his favour -- like targeting areas in Iraq with more troops. He claims that dealing with the nation's enemies would be tantamount to abandoning his principles. But he forgets that Ronald Reagan, for all his talk about "the evil empire," dealt with Gorbochov; Roosevelt and Churchill formed an alliance with Stalin; and Nixon went to China.

The recent death of President Ford has reminded us that there was a time when differences of opinion did not call forth the response that "they know what they have to do before we deal with them." The simple truth is that the most powerful man in the world does not play well with others. Things will only change when Mr. Bush grows up -- or when another grown up sits in his chair.

A New Year's Wish (2007)

I have heard and read a lot of New Year's salutations over the last few days. All of them are full of words like "health," "happiness," and "prosperity" -- the usual suspects. And while I do not question the good intentions of the well wishers, it strikes me that in all my fifty-nine new years, no one has ever wished that I would receive more of something I obviously could use -- "wisdom."

So, as we enter 2007, what I wish for all of us -- from our small corner of the world, to the outer edges of the planet -- is more wisdom.

To begin with, I wish that my children's generation will possess and apply more wisdom to their environment than my own has. I wish that they will practise the wisdom of "we" as opposed to "me." I hope that they will reject an economic system which rewards the concentration of wealth and power, and that they will recognize that, in the long run, it is in their own self interest to share whatever wealth and power they acquire.

I hope that we all will recognize that we are connected to every living organism on the planet and that the choices we make for ourselves radiate outward, like the ripples in a pond, and touch everyone and everything. That knowledge should not cripple our ability to act -- even boldly --but it should lead us to do things for the general welfare, not our own.

I pray that all parents will teach their children wisely and well -- and when they fail in that task -- that there will be someone there to take it up. If there is hope, that hope always rests with the next generation.

And I pray that we stop demonizing those who don't look like us, who don't speak our own language and who don't believe as we do. Not because those differences have no significance -- they do -- but because, when we see evil incarnate in others, we cannot see what we share in common; and there can be no progress until we recognize our common needs.

Finally, I wish that we have the wisdom to learn from history. If nothing else, history explains how we got from there to here. And, because situations tend to repeat themselves, it is wise to know how the understanding of and reaction to those situations affected future generations.

Wisdom does not ensure a good outcome. Like King Solomon, we can begin well and end badly. And, as I have said elsewhere, possessing a string of academic accolades does not immunize one from folly. But the century we just left behind us provided more than enough folly to cover all of human history. One can always hope that this century will take a wiser, better course.

To Banish Ignorance and Want

My wife and I attended a performance of A Christmas Carol at our son's school last Friday evening. It was a production which took itself seriously -- which is what all productions of Dickens' classic should do. Something else it did, which many such productions choose not to do, was to present on stage the two orphan children cowering under the Ghost of Christmas Present's robes -- Ignorance and Want.

While everyone takes joy in Scrooge's redemption, many of us miss the significance of those two orphans. They are always there; they follow the Present throughout his journey. And, in truth, they will always be there. They are there because they are the incarnation of what Marley tells Scrooge was the ghost's -- and what should be -- Scrooge's "business."

Christmas exists for many reasons -- the laughter of children, the gathering of family, the memory of He whose birth we recall. But the holiday should never pass without all of us recalling that "mankind is our business." It was so in Dickens' day, as it should likewise be in our own.

Strangely enough, Scrooge has a distinctly contemporary ring these days. In fact, when he asks, "Are there no prisons, no workhouses?" he seems to be advocating the kind of social policies many Western democracies have adopted over the past twenty-five years. History does have a way of repeating itself.

But history does not have to repeat itself. Dickens' message is all about renewal -- even at the last minute. We still have the opportunity to redeem ourselves and redirect our lives. Christmas reminds us the that it is everyone's business to help banish Ignorance and Want. If we dedicate ourselves to that task, we can share Tiny Tim's wish that God will bless us -- everyone.

"O, You Are Men of Stones"

There were echoes of King Lear last week when George Bush broke down during a speech at an event to honour his son Jeb, who is retiring as the governor of Florida. The Elder Bush was recalling Jeb's first run for the governorship -- which he lost -- when his father broke down, weeping, while his son came to his father's side.

No doubt there will be some who will conclude that the old man is entering his dotage, because his reaction was so out of proportion to the facts. After all, Jeb ran a second time and was then re-elected to a second term. On the surface, the story is about redemption, making a comeback and triumphing over adversity.

But, while the incident was all about loss, George H. W. has not lost it. At this stage in his life, there must be greater losses on his mind than that of Jeb's first electoral defeat. Perhaps he was weeping as he recalled his defeat at the hands of Bill Clinton. It must have been a particularly bitter pill. After all, he had executed the first Gulf War successfully, calling on his United Nations and CIA experience to build an international coalition to achieve a limited objective -- which most of his allies paid for.

Then there was his establishment of the Resolution Trust Corporation, which cleaned up the Savings and Loan debacle, something Ronald Reagan left him as he walked out the Oval Office door. The Savings and Loan mess was a horrendous and complicated swamp which required a large injection of public money to drain and reclaim. But Mr. Bush persuaded his countrymen that, although it was costly, it was a worthy cause.

Then there was the problem of breaking his "no new taxes" pledge. Given the deficit he was facing, raising taxes was in the nation's long term interest. It was a policy that his successor followed -- and which cost him the House and the Senate -- but, as time would prove, led to the first budget surpluses in nearly forty years. And what did this foresight earn Mr. Bush? He was lambasted by the radical right wing of his own party. Mr. Bush had made mistakes -- to begin with, he never should have made the no new taxes pledge -- but if, like Lear, he felt "more sinned against than sinning," that sense of betrayal was understandable.

Or maybe the first President Bush was thinking of the second President Bush -- a man whose chief motive for seeking office seems to have been to right the wrongs done to his father. He appears to have gone into Iraq to finish the job his father started and to get the man who, in George W.'s words," tried to kill my dad." That kind of plot makes for a good novel, or an even better play. Unfortunately, as is now abundantly clear, it makes for disastrous foreign policy.

In the very week George the Elder was honouring Jeb, the Iraq Study Group delivered a report to George the Younger which came to the conclusion that the second President Bush's foreign policy was just that -- a disaster. Beneath the carefully worded consensus, the bottom line of the report was that "the way forward" lay in retreat. The basic premise behind the group's seventy-nine recommendations is that the United States has lost the second Iraq War. It is a conclusion which -- the polls tell us -- the American people have already reached.

It would appear that Mr. Bush and his advisers refuse to accept that conclusion. Retreat is not a word that this Bush administration is going to use. And, even if there is a retreat -- Mr. Bush is quite capable of changing his mind, as witness the departure of Mr. Rumsfeld. The suspicion of many is that the retreat will be long and slow.

Frank Rich, in The New York Times, (see The Sunshine Boys Cannot Save Iraq) recently reminded his readers that, when Lyndon Johnson refused to run, stopped the bombing of North Vietnam and began peace talks with the Viet Cong, some twenty thousand American soldiers had died in Vietnam. Five years later, when his successor -- Richard Nixon -- decided to leave Vietnam, the number of dead American soldiers had grown to over fifty-five thousand. Such was the price of what Nixon called "peace with honour." All of those fifty-five thousand names are etched in that black marble wall in Washington.

Perhaps George Sr. was weeping for George Jr.'s lack of experience. For, while it is true that both father and son flew military aircraft, the Elder Bush was shot down over the Pacific. Bush the Younger has never faced that kind of hostile environment; and his flying was within the boundaries of the United States. The experience of personally being a victim of an enemy attack, I suspect, encourages one to carefully weigh the consequences of military action.

When one looks at Bush's advisers and cheerleaders -- starting with his own vice president and moving on to Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, Richard Pearle, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol -- one cannot but be impressed with the fact that none of them knew anything about combat. And, therefore, none of them knew anything about what could go wrong. They simply assumed that, with the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States possessed the military might to work its will wherever it chose. They forgot -- or failed to heed -- the bitter lesson which forced President Johnson from office -- that, given the right circumstances, what Johnson called a "raggedy-assed country" could defeat a colossus.

The first president Bush has learned a lot in his eighty odd years. And the son, who sits in the chair his father once occupied, has not benefited from -- nor asked for -- any of his father's wisdom. For that, the father has just cause to weep, both in public and in private. In fact, we all do.

Stephane and Stephen

Surely, when historians write about last weekend's Liberal leadership convention, they will note that both the Prime Minister and the man who would replace him share the same name. Linguistically, the difference between them is a matter of accent. A bilingual Canada wouldn't have it any other way. Of course, the differences between them run much deeper than that. But more about that in a minute, because there is something more important than what divides these men.

What was most notable about what happened this weekend was how many of us didn't see it coming. What we missed was a generational shift in Canadian politics. Mr. Harper, Mr. Dion and the man who catapulted Dion to the leadership of his party -- Gerard Kennedy -- are at the tail end of the baby boom generation. Unlike Mr. Ignatieff, Mr. Rae and this writer -- who were born immediately after the Second World War -- Mr. Harper was all of eleven years old, and Mr. Kennedy was a year behind him, when the October Crisis occurred. And Dion, at fifteen, had not yet graduated from high school. They were all even younger during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The issues which seized our imaginations are not the issues which seize theirs.

For them, the crisis they face is, in Mr. Dion's words, " no less than the reconciliation of the people and the planet." The threat of nuclear annihilation is still out there; but, for this generation of Canadians, the threat of environmental meltdown looms much larger. I have argued in an earlier post (October 25th) that Stephen Harper doesn't see the threat. Perhaps this week's events will focus his attention. But, given what appears to be his libertarian core, I have my doubts.

So, as one generation cedes power to another, the issues change. And both men share more than a name. Both work from a foundation of non-negotiable principles. For Harper individual autonomy is paramount. Government is a threat in most areas of human activity; and most people should be left to fend for themselves. Dion believes in a united Canada -- or at least in the principle that if Canada is divisible, then Quebec is, too. And rather than leaving people to fend for themselves, Dion believes that government needs to invest in people, not simply deliver cheques to their mailboxes.

They also share significant weaknesses. It would appear that both lack people skills -- a surprising fault in a politician. And both apparently find it hard to compromise, another surprising weakness in men who seek to lead a country which has been built on compromise.

So where does that leave us? Well, to begin with, the next election may actually be a policy driven election -- an election about ideas rather than the cynical manipulation of images and sound bites. It could also be an election about the future rather than about the follies of the past -- although that, perhaps, is too much to hope for. Or it could be an election which solves nothing. It could replace one minority government with another; or it could simply reaffirm the present minority government for a second volatile term.

It's hard to predict the outcome. At the moment, Canadians are waiting to see what develops.

Fools Parade

On November 27th, the House of Commons voted on a resolution proclaiming that "the Quebecois are a nation within a united Canada." The vote was overwhelming --266 in favour, 16 against. Both the resolution and the vote are deeply problematic.

From the moment he entered office, Stephen Harper has displayed a breathtaking ignorance of the province of Quebec, even though he intends to solidify his and his party's future by finding enough votes in la belle province to win a parliamentary majority. To those of us who grew up in Quebec, who were there during the October Crisis and who voted in the 1980 referendum, Harper's motion ignores that history and lets loose all the centrifugal forces that have threatened this country since its inception.

Harper and his supporters claim that the resolution is essentially meaningless because Quebecers are given "nation" status "within a united Canada." They claim that the latter phrase negates the former and that the resolution is essentially a sleight of hand (or, more precisely, word.)

However, the word "nation" -- in either French or English -- has profound connotations in both the context of Quebec history and in international law. One need only recall Quebec political parties of the past -- the Union National and the Bloc National -- and their platforms, to understand what the word means. And when Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois cheerfully support the resolution that, in itself, should raise red flags. Clearly, when Duceppe and his allies read the resolution, what they read is "the Quebecois are a nation within a united Canada for now."

And that is the point. The long term consequences of the resolution are catastrophic. For, not only will an increasing majority of Quebecers demand their sovereignty as a nation, the door will be open for others to make the same demand. Canada's First Nations have already complained about being left out of the resolution -- although no one should be surprised at this oversight -- given the fact that the Harper government scuttled the agreement which Paul Martin signed with them over a year ago.

And, in some ways, perhaps no one should be surprised at this turn of events. As Jim Flaherty's recent economic blueprint makes clear, the Conservatives have a radical vision for Canada. If they get their way, theirs will be a Canada which rewards individual initiative, not group accomplishment, which downsizes government, eschewing government investment in national infrastructure in favour of private investors and which leaves social policy to the provinces or -- as they would prefer -- to individuals. In short, they are bent on breaking the ties that have bound these disparate entities north of the 49th parallel together. In truth, they are not Conservatives at all. With the same linguistic sleight they displayed in Monday night's resolution, they have camouflaged the fact that have no wish to conserve Canada. They are really radical Libertarians. The late Milton Friedman would be gratified.

What is even more disturbing is that a majority of the Liberal members of the House and all of the New Democratic members apparently cannot see through this sleight of hand. Without careful analysis, and with eyes that only see as far as the next election -- probably in the spring -- they are afraid to rock the boat, oblivious to the storm which awaits them. Apparently only sixteen members -- one of whom is Michael Chong, Harper's Intergovernmental Affairs Minister -- have the courage of their convictions.

Harper, we are told, graduated at the top of his high school class. Like Jacques Pariseau before him, he has proved that the possession of several academic accolades does not immunize one from folly. Harper is a fool. Two hundred and sixty-six members of the House of Commons followed his lead this week. Democracy may be rule of the people and rule by the people. But there is no guarantee that it is rule for the people. Sometimes it is merely a fools parade.

Economics as Theology

Milton Friedman died last week. His was a remarkable story. Born in Brooklyn, of Hungarian immigrant parents, he earned a scholarship to Rutgers and a doctorate in economics from Columbia. Like his chief academic rival, John Kenneth Galbraith, he worked for the Roosevelt administration, helping draft and implement many of its New Deal policies. Both men became public intellectuals, with Galbraith taking up long term residence at Harvard, while Friedman found a home at the University of Chicago.

In later years, unlike Galbraith, Friedman rejected the theories of John Maynard Keynes, and found salvation in the theories of the founding father of the dismal science, Adam Smith. He moved from Liberalism to Libertarianism, convinced that the lot of man would be greatly improved if government kept its meddling fingers out of the lives of all folk, particularly the common folk.

His chief claim to fame was that he correctly predicted the period of stagflation of the early 1970's; and for his work he was -- deservedly -- awarded the Nobel Prize. His policies were, in large measure, adopted first by Margaret Thatcher in Britain and then by Ronald Reagan in the United States. And they worked. By following Friedman's dictum that the only economic lever a government should possess is control of the money supply, both leaders started long periods of economic growth; and they wrung -- after much pain -- inflation out of their economies.

In the process, Keynesianism -- and its chief proponent in North America, Galbraith -- were relegated to the Museum of Irrelevant Luminaries. Galbraith saw economics at the centre of history, power and human nature. And, when it came to human nature, he tended to agree with Mark Twain that "the closer you get to the human race the more you find layers and layers of nonsense." This nonsense he labeled "the conventional wisdom." Never far from his boyhood on a southwestern Ontario farm, he referred to classical economics as "trickle down," where the economy's principal assets were introduced at the front end of the cow and what remained for the common man was what came out the back end.

Galbraith believed that the function of government was to establish "counterveiling forces," so that what came out at the back end was at least of more value and more quantity than the classical economic model allowed. Government could mitigate the traditional boom and bust of economic cycles and thereby create some equity between citizens -- so that the cow's digestive system produced more value for the common man -- and put an end to "private wealth and public squalor."

These views were heretical in the 1920's; but the Great Depression forced western democaries to give heresy a try; and for forty years the prescription worked. But in the 1970's, in reaction to Israel's victory in the 1967 War in the Middle East, Arab oil producing states formed OPEC and established a monopoly on oil prices, which increased from a dollar and a half a barrel to thirty-four dollars a barrel. The result, in the West, was that ecomomic activity ground to a halt. Interest rates soared to a high of eighteen percent in 1980. Unemployment also hit new highs. Keynes policies no longer seemed to work.

Up until the oil shock of the 70's, Friedman was what Keynes had been a generation before -- a pariah. But, just as extreme conditions in the '30's forced a re -examination of the conventional wisdom, Friedman's prescriptions became the order of the day and -- like Keynes theories a generation before -- dogma. Essentially, the Friedman dogma held that, if an economy was to work well, Galbraith's counterveiling forces had to be dismantled in the name of freedom. If Galbraith viewed human nature skeptically, Friedman viewed the nature of that human institution -- government -- skeptically. His has been the prevailing economic paradigm for the last thirty years.

The problem in this new century is, however, that -- once again -- the policy is not working. Just as Keynes had never factored in a global oil cartel, Friedman's thought did not make room for globalization. In the Friedman paradigm, individual central banks exercise control over separate national economies. But now those central banks are, to some degree, hostages to international economic forces. They certainly are hard pressed to deal with a world where capital crosses international borders at the spead of light and the economic shifts which the flow of captial cause can be just as swift and brutal. Workers can lose their jobs as quickly as capital moves. Finding new and similarly remunerative employment takes a long time -- if such employment can be found at all. One simple lever is not enough to deal with a globalized economy. Once again, the cow is eating well; but not much of either quantity or quality is coming out the back end. Or as Jane Yellen, the president and chief executive of the Reserve Bank of San Francisco put it in a recent speech," much of the gain for macroeconomic performance has gone to just a small segment of the population -- those already in the upper part of the distribution."

In other words, while Friedman's policies encouraged economic growth and low inflation, they also encouraged tremendous economic inequality. According to Executive Paywatch, an AFL-CIO website, the pay differential between executives and their employees went from 80 to 1 in 1980 to 411 to 1 in 2005. And during this time, Yellan says, not only were many low wage jobs eliminated by technology, but "wages in the middle not only rose far more slowly than those at the top, they also rose more slowly than those at the bottom of the distribution." The folks who have felt the inequality most are the folks in the middle.

That record needs to be set alongside the thirty years from the beginning of World War II until the Great Downturn of the 1970's. According to Richard Parker, the author of a recent biography on Galbraith, from 1940 until 1970 median household income (adjusted for inflation) doubled, while from 1970 until 2000 the growth in the economy "made for a radical income and wealth distribution, as the fortunes of the rich increased, the poor stagnated, and the middle class suffered through the longest drought of real income gains since the Great Depression."

What all of this suggests is that it is dangerous to turn economists into high priests who speak eternal truths. Both Friedman and Galbraith are dead now. But, considering their humble origins, this development is more than a little ironic. Both men had far reaching influence in their time -- although Friedman's libertarianism returned us to a more brutal universe. However that may be, the point is that times change and dogma doesn't. Dogma is an appropriate subject for theology. But it has no place in economic theory. Once economics becomes theology, we are all in trouble. To find solutions for our times, we would be wise to begin looking to today's economic heretics.

If Ye Break Faith

This past Saturday, I listened yet again to In Flanders Fields at eleven o'clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It is a poem which I have heard, read and taught for over fifty years. And still, after all that time, I choke up when I get to the last three lines:

If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields

"We are the Dead", John McCrae wrote, unable to foresee his own fate, while admonishing us not to forget his and his contemporaries' sacrifice. But, it seems to me, if we are not to break faith with the dead, there are a few things which we need to remember about the nature of War and its consequences.

First, all wars are cloaked in soaring rhetoric. McCrae's war was the "war to end all wars." The American Civil War was fought to ensure that "government of the people, by the people and for the people [should] not perish." The French Revolution was all about, "liberty, equality and fraternity." However, as Wilfred Owen -- McCrae's poetic ally -- recognized, whatever the slogan, it is an "old lie."

Second, it is a lie because wars are not fought for ideals; they are fought for strategic resources. Land (living space, Hitler called it), opium, oil -- the list is almost endless. But, however long the list, these resources are presented to the public as the equivalent of oxygen. They are the things upon which the survival of the combatants depend. Take them away and we -- however "we" define ourselves -- will cease to exist.

Third, those who lead the charge on both sides suffer from terminal certitude. They are incapable of performing that "trick" which Atticus Finch, in To Kill a Mockingbird, calls "getting inside a man's skin and walking around in it." Once one looks at the world through the eyes of one's enemy, it is impoosible to demonize him. We can only kill those we truly don't understand.

And, finally, most wars have something to do with revenge. World War II had a lot to do with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, just as present conditions in Iraq have much to do with centuries old rivalries between Sunnis and Shias. On the other side of the ledger, much of the suceess of Western Europe can be traced to the path the Allies pursued after The Second World War and the implementation of the Marshall Plan.

There is a moral imperative every November 11th to remember those who, in Lincoln's words, gave "the last full measure of devotion." But we do the dead no honour if we forget the nature of war itself. It is, as William Tecumseh Sherman -- one of Lincoln's generals -- said, "hell." Anybody who tries to sell it as anything else is selling snake oil.

The Voice of the People

If you are a Republican, there was little to celebrate last night. Unless, like certain classic conservatives, you understand that the folks who claim to wear Ronald Reagan's mantle are actually Richard Nixon's illegitimate children. And, if you are a Democrat, there is some reason to hope that the agenda will change -- if your party can ignore its own centrifugal forces and not listen to those voices who claim that the President -- like Saddam Hussein -- should be hanged.

As things stand this morning, the Democrats have firm control of the House; and they might just control the Senate. What does that mean? It means that Americans have rejected the neo-conservative vision of a benevolent Pax Americana, where America makes the world, in Woodrow Wilson's phrase, "safe for democracy". The concept was foolish when Wilson, with the best of intentions, articulated it in 1919. It was equally foolish when the folks at the Project for the New American Century rearticulated it in 1996. As the twentieth century proved repeatedly, democracy and safety do not necessarily go hand in hand.

What Ronald Reagan, like his hero Franklin Roosevelt, understood is that -- in the end -- fear leads a nation to a hole in the ground. A nation can accomplish great things if it "has nothing to fear but fear itself;" or if its citizens believe it is "morning again in America."

The present occupant of the White House, supported by his Vice President and his Secretary of Defense, like Mr. Nixon, functions in a constant state of paranoia, suspecting that his enemies are everywhere. But there is a big difference between suspecting who your enemy is and seeing who he is. The difference is the difference between Osama Ben Laden and Saddam Hussein. It is the difference between victory and resignation.

This administration's response to their situation has been, like Nixon's, to claim executive privilege and extra constitutional authority. What they have failed to understand is that the erosion of presidential authority after Watergate, a phenomenon they lament, was a direct response to abuse of that authority. They also have not understood what Roosevelt, Reagan and Bush the Elder understood: that political success is about building political coaltions, both domestic and international which, taken together, are greater than the sum of their parts.

Bush the Elder has what Bush the Younger lacks -- a sense of history, combat experience and experience at the United Nations. Until now he has resisted giving his son advice. Now would be a good time to change that policy.

The question is, has the present administration heard the voice of the people? Recent interviews have suggested that Mr. Cheney is deaf and is committed to more of the same. But, ultimately, the ball is in Bush's court. Now would be a good time to have a serious talk with his father.

No Sale

Mercifully, this American election cycle is just about over. What that means for those of us who live on the northern shores of Lake Ontario is that the deluge of political calumny that thunders like Niagara from television stations in New York State will soon come to an end. With the help of professional consultants, modern political candidates have discovered that the way to win elections is to plaster the airwaves with wall to wall negative propaganda.

Joe Kennedy is said to have told his son John, before he won the presidency, "It's not who you are that's important. It's who people think you are." That advice seeems to have morphed into the corollary: "It's not who you are that's important. It's who people think the other guy is." And the other guy is always someone who, as Hugo Chavez said of George W. Bush, leaves the distinct whiff of sulphur whenever he exits the room.

I noted with sadness that the Ontario Liberal Party invited James Carville to its annual conference this past weekend to offer advice on how to win the next election, which is now about a year off.

I also saw the ad which the Republican National Committee is running against Harold Ford in Tennessee -- the one in which the blonde, shot from the shoulders up, appears to be in her natural state, and asks Harold to give her a call. Some naive commentators suggest that her invitation is a comment on Ford's religous hypocrisy. Those of us who have spent some time in the South know that the accusation goes much deeper than that.

Politics has never been a polite profession. And my own generation has not made it any politer. George Bush and Bill Clinton represent the schitzophrenic face of baby boomers. We split on the war, on the counterculture and on civil rights. And we tended to view our heroes and foes as characters from a comic book world. They were either virtue or evil incarnate. And, frankly, it was easy to think of them in such absolute terms when Geroge Wallace proclaimed, "Segregation then, segregation now, segregation forever!" and Richard Nixon informed us that, "when the president does it, it's not illegal."

But both men are dead now. And, to his credit -- before he died -- Wallace admitted the error of at least some of his ways.

It is time to admit the errors of our ways. Barak Obama is right. It is time to move beyond the catagories of the sixties. It is time to stop fighting old battles. There are enough new battles to occupy us.

The first sign that we have moved on will be when the deluge of negative ads dries up. The next sign will be when political hopefuls stop calling on folks like James Carville to offer them professional advice. The third sign will be when we actually have a debate between candidates, rather than television events where reporters pitch questions and the audience waits to see if the batters can hit them out of the park. And, finally, we'll know that we live in a functioning democracy when every candidate knocks on every door in his or her riding and talks to at least one person behind every door.

A pipe dream? Probably. But what we have at the moment is a nightmare. And if nightmare scenarios are all we can generate, how many citizens will continue to vote?

The Canute Complex

There was a time when all Canadian school children studied British history. That was a long time ago; and I would hazard a guess that most students do not look back on the experience with a great deal of fondness. However, there was one incident which I am sure any student of British history remembers vividly. That is the story of King Canute's attempt to stop the ocean dead in its tracks.

According to legend, Canute had his throne bearers transport his throne -- with their master seated atop it -- to the seashore, for the purpose of providing his subjects with a demonstration of his divinely anointed status.

Sitting on the throne and raising his hand, he commanded the waves to cease and desist. Unfortunately, they had the audacity to ignore him. In the short term, Canute's failure didn't do his public image a lot of good. In the longer term, it did nothing to enhance his career prospects. In fact, the story is usually considered one of the first steps on the road to the Magna Carta.

I remembered Canute the other day when I read a small story in the Toronto Star. Stephen Harper had agreed to appear on the Mercer Report. But when the Harper team discovered that Mercer and Company had hired Dave Chan, a photographer who has worked for The National Post, The Globe and Mail and other newspapers for twenty years, they insisted that Chan be dropped from the project. It seems that during the recent evacuation of Lebanese Canadians from Beirut, Mr. Chan had offered the opinion that, if all media personnel were banned from the Prime Minister's plane, that ban should include the Prime Minister's personal photographer. After all, if the purpose of the ban was to clear as many seats as possible for the refugees, the PM's picture taker could fly back to Canada using other means.

Besides, said the Prime Minister's Office, they could provide the CBC with all the pictures they required. In fact, this strategy is part and parcel of the Prime Minister's press operation. Earlier in the year, Harper's office insisted that it had the right to choose, before any press conference, which reporters and which questions it would deal with. When the Parliamentary Press Gallery refused to operate by these rules, Harper simply stopped answering their questions.

The assumption that the Prime Minister's Office has the right to control the flow of information to the public is particularly arrogant. Behind the assumption is the conviction that if you keep feeding the public the same line, they will eventually believe it. But in this age of rapidly expanding communication technology, it is also a profoundly foolish assumption. If you shut down one method of communication, another will take its place.

Harper need look no further than his neighbour to the South. The Bush Administration has tried mightily to control the information coming out of Iraq and the government bureaucracy. And for awhile they succeeded. They refused the press's request to photograph the flag draped coffins of soldiers being shipped home for burial. And they leaked information to reporters from Time Magazine and The New York Times in attempts to silence critics of the war. But as Bob Woodward's new book, as well as recent books like Fiasco, by Tom Ricks and Cobra II, by Micheal Gordon and Bernard Trainor illustrate, trying to control and restrict information is like trying to control the oceans. The information always finds an outlet, even when it has been pent up for a long time. It either trickles out or bursts its levees in a flood of destructive proportions.

The new breed of conservative seems to operate in a fact-free universe. In such a universe, the act of articulation is tantamount to telling the truth. Saying so makes something true; and commanding that a policy be implemented gives it legitimacy. That seems to be the thinking underlying The Clean Air Act, a particularly Orwellian title, given the fact that, under its provisions, the government will not set standards for industrial pollution before 2050. As the late Senator Daniel Patrick Monahan said, in response to a senatorial colleague who stood steadfastly on his right to hold to his opinion, "You have a right to your own opinion; you do not have a right to your own facts." Likewise, Mr. Harper has no right to ignore the facts. King Canute tried that 1300 years ago. Like Canute, Mr. Harper's career prospects get dimmer with each passing day.

Say What, Steve?

Stephen Harper's recent observation regarding the bias of Liberal leadership hopefuls against Israel is so patently absurd, as well as demonstrably untrue, that one wonders what the man is really up to.

While it is true that a liberal backbencher was recently censured by his colleagues for his strong criticism of Israel, and while it is also true that Micheal Ignatieff's unbalanced comments about Israel's actions in Lebanon suggest that the Liberal front runner is not ready for prime time, to paint all the Liberal leadership hopefuls as bigots is -- well -- stupid. Or maybe there is some cynical calculation behind it.

The last twenty-five years has seen the rise of wedge issue politics. The idea is to use issues and policies as wedges to split your opposition. The political strategists calculate that such an approach will destroy old voting blocks and peel off enough support to build functioning majorities. The Harris government used this approach in Ontario during the 90's and the present American administration continues to use it in the current election cycle. It does not take a lot of imagination to see Mr. Harper's musings as a transparent attempt to siphon off the votes of Canadian Jews, who in the past have overwhelmingly preferred the Liberal Party to the Conservative Party.

Such a strategy also has the advantage of making its proponents look like people of principle who are not willing to sell their souls for the sake of a few votes.

But when you read Mr. Harper's statement, and his refusal to rethink what he said, you have to wonder just what principle he is standing on. In fact, his statement is all of a piece with what appears to be his election strategy. Having calculated that he can garner no more support in Ontario and the nation's larger cities, Harper has decided to troll for votes outside the island of Montreal, thus gaining enough seats in Quebec to achieve a parliamentary majority.

What is wrong with that calculation is that even in Quebec's rural ridings many of Harper's policies won't fly. Rural Quebec is miles away, both geographically and politically, from rural Alberta. His refusal after the Dawson College shooting spree to dismantle the long gun registry -- despite Jean Charest's opposition to just such a move -- shows how out of touch Harper is with the political landscape of Quebec. And, if his much touted environmental policy matches what he sold the country in Vancouver last week, Quebecers will quickly conclude that he is not one of nous autres.

The truth is that if Harper wants to win a majority government, he will not only have to appear to move to the left, he will actually have to do so. The problem with Harper's recent remark is that it fuels suspicion that, when the rubber hits the road, these folks are what their forebears in the Reform Party were perceived to be -- hard right Conservatives. And, as I've suggested in a previous post, (see The Right Man) centre right -- even more so, hard right -- coalitions are just not viable in Canada.

The late Dalton Camp went to his grave railing at the fact that Canada's new Conservative Party had been purged of its Red Tories. I suspect that, come the next election, the majority of Canadians will side with Camp.