Between Jack Layton and Gerard Kennedy wanting us out of Afghanistan, the Greens wanting us out of NAFTA altogether, and the Liberals wanting us out of the softwood agreement, are there any international agreements that the opposition parties would like to see Canada honour?
Perhaps next one of the Liberal leadership candidates will declare that Canada should withdraw from the WTO. Why not really go for that brass ring and suggest that we shouldn't support the UN.* Maybe get one of those folks who are always going on about Canada's "honest broker" reputation to declare neutrality so that we can be the voice of moderation in EVERY SINGLE INTERNATIONAL DISPUTE. Who knows? Anything can happen!
Harper's gotta be loving this directionless opposition that is just throwing everything at the wall to see if something can stick. It probably reminds him of when his party had that particular shoe on its foot. What a difference two or three years can make in the political landscape eh?
*Somehow I can't see this one happening. We've made such a fetish out of "UN peacekeeping" that this is the ghost we'll cling to after abjuring all our other responsibilities.
3 comments:
I just can't grasp what's happening to the Left. Wasn't the "moronic 90s" behaviour of the Right enough to scare anyone - ANYone - into learning to not panic and not act like a complete ass, unless you want to lose - repeatedly?
I'm baffled. Seriously baffled.
It's a goofy world. I read a 2004 Krauthammer article the other day for some final revisions to the thesis, and I gotta say that he makes a good point about liberalism post-Vietnam: "an ideology of passivity, acquiescence and almost relexive anti-interventionism."
Sure there's exceptions like Tony Blair, whose interventionist creds are pretty much without parallel among today's world leaders, but when you look at someone like, oh I don't know, Paul Martin, it's hard not to nod in distressed agreement.
Yeah, funny that, considering how opposite their left-ish predecessors were.
Most "leftists" today (who expressly identify as "left") are off the charts of realism, I find.
Which is angering to me. It's a perfectly rational and worthy politics - good enough for some great, great leaders. It shouldn't be abandoned to Jack Layton-types. Or Daily Kos types. Or whomever.
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