Quotulatiousness

March 4, 2024

“Whatever his flaws, Brian Mulroney was a serious person”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In the free-to-cheapskates teaser from this week’s dispatch from The Line, nice words are said in memory of the late Brian Mulroney, former Prime Minister of Canada:

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Mila Mulroney, Nancy Reagan, and President Ronald Reagan at the “Shamrock Summit”, 18 March, 1985.
Photo from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library via Wikimedia Commons.

Brian Mulroney died last week. He was 84.

The first thing you could be forgiven for taking away from the news coverage is how far we have fallen.

Brian Mulroney did big things. Negotiating Free Trade. Fighting Apartheid. Getting the Americans to crack down on acid rain. Comprehensive tax reform that saw the old Manufacturers’ Sales Tax (which taxed productivity) replaced with the GST. Sending Canadians to war in Desert Storm. Striking the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People which led to many of the legal advancements Indigenous communities were able to make through the 90s and into this century.

Even when he failed, as he did at Meech Lake, Brian Mulroney was trying to do something fundamentally transformative in Canadian politics.

And nobody who came after him had anywhere near that kind of guts. Not one of them.

There are things people will gripe about when it comes to Mulroney. Karlheinz Schreiber will be pretty close to the top of that list. Mulroney also tends to poll pretty poorly out west for any number of reasons ranging from a perceived over-emphasis on Quebec via Meech Lake and Charlottetown, to awarding the CF-18 maintenance contract to Montreal’s Canadair after (allegedly) promising it to Winnipeg-based Bristol Aerospace.

Mulroney was not beloved when he left office, to put it mildly. His party was basically annihilated in 1993, and the Canadian conservative movement shattered — it has still, in some ways, yet to fully recover. These are facts about which no one made more, or better, jokes than Mulroney himself. But that fall from esteem was almost never seen internationally. As he watched his contemporaries pre-decease him, Canadians got to see how respected the man was on the world stage. Mulroney was asked to eulogize American presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush as well as British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. In this, Mulroney embodied one of the greatest cultural cynicisms of this country: sometimes, the only way for us to claim a Canadian as one of our own is to first watch them make it abroad.

Mulroney’s great triumph is free trade. Yes, because it meant jobs for millions of Canadians. Yes, because it locked us into an economic pact with the world’s powerhouse economy. But also because, in doing it, he went head-on at one of this country’s great cliches: the idea that reflexive, Laurentian, anti-Americanism was somehow a basis for governing instead of just the hallmark of a deeply insecure cultural elite.

Nobody is picking those fights now. Nobody is taking on the big battles to remake the country. We have been treated to almost 30 years of some of the pettiest, small-ball sniping imaginable. Various wedge issues are dusted off by either side, and hurled like stale buns at their opponents. Culture wars are imported for the purposes of giving our political class something about which they can feign moral outrage. Our leaders are afraid of big things either because they’re hard, or because they are unlikely to pay off in a single four-year election cycle. Mulroney is, arguably, the last Canadian prime minister whose vision of what Canada is, or could be, was not limited by a four-year horizon.

We are a serious country that is not led by serious people. And that is brought into focus when you lose a serious person.

Whatever his flaws, Brian Mulroney was a serious person.

The Line‘s editors say that Mulroney wasn’t well liked on leaving office, but the utter obliteration of the Progressive Conservatives in the 1993 federal election can’t be completely blamed on him. His successor as PC leader, Kim Campbell, went out of her way to alienate western conservatives and libertarians during her brief time in office and during the election campaign that followed. She became Prime Minister with a surprising level of tentative support that she jettisoned in record time, taking her party from a majority in the House of Commons to two (2) seats — only one other Canadian PM has ever been defeated in their own riding (Arthur Meighen … but he had it happen twice, first in 1921 and again in 1926).

“That’s the neoracist Google that Sundar Pichai has deliberately created”

The uproar over Google’s explicitly racist Gemini AI tool illustrates just how deeply DEI ideology has penetrated the core high-tech firms in the United States. The racism wasn’t accidental: it’s very carefully nurtured and targetted:

Gemini’s result when Cynical Publius asked it to “create images of Henry Ford”.

… imagine the kind of Google employee who can rise through the purged, mono-cultural woke ranks to run Gemini. Once upon a time, you might have thought of a pale-faced geek tapping diligently into a screen for months on end. But at woke Google, you get the senior director of product for Gemini Experiences, Jack Krawczyk. A sample of his tweets:

  • “White privilege is fucking real. Don’t be an asshole and act guilty about it — do your part in recognizing bias at all levels egregious.”
  • “This is America where racism is the #1 value for our populace seeks to uphold above all others.”

And the best thing about Biden’s inauguration speech, Krawczyk believed, was “acknowledging systemic racism”. He’s deep, deep, deep in the DEI cult, surrounded solely by people deep, deep, deep in the DEI cult.

That’s the neoracist Google that Sundar Pichai has deliberately created. From a leaked 2016 meeting he presided over, in the wake of Trump’s election victory, a Google staffer urged the entire staff to mobilize against white supremacy: “Speaking to white men, there’s an opportunity for you right now to understand your privilege [and] go through the bias-busting training, read about privilege, read about the real history of oppression in our country”. Every executive on stage — the CEO, CFO, two VPs, and the two co-founders — applauded the employee. The founder of Google’s “AI Responsibility” Initiative, Jen Gennai, said in a keynote address:

    It’s a myth that you’re not unfair if you treat everyone the same. There are groups that have been marginalized and excluded because of historic systems and structures that were intentionally designed to favor one group over another. So you need to account for that and mitigate against it.

This is pure CRT — blatant discrimination on the basis of race and sex — as corporate policy. Six years ago I pointed out that we all live on campus now. Now Google wants us all to live on their campus.

Gemini, like the Ivy League, is centered on hatred of “whiteness” and of Western civilization. Ask Gemini to provide an image of a “famous physicist of the 17th century“, it will give you an Indian woman, a black man, an Arab man, and a white chick with a woke dye job. Ask it to generate images of Singaporean women, and you get four Asian women; but ask for 12 English men, and the rules suddenly change: “I’m still unable to generate images that specify gender and ethnicity. This is a policy decision to avoid perpetuating stereotypes and potentially generating harmful or offensive content.” So it can lie now too — as long as it’s in the defense of racist double standards.

At some level, of course, the revelations of the past week have been hilarious. It would be hard to parody portraying a Founding Father as Asian, the Pope as female, or a Nazi soldier as black. But we’d be mistaken if we think this kind of funny historical inaccuracy is the core problem here. That’s what Pichai wants us to think. But the bias of men like him goes far deeper. For years now, Google has subtly rigged searches of the web to advance the leftism its woke staffers have adopted as an alternative to religion. It’s an invisible way to guide and direct public opinion and information — without having to make an argument or persuade people with evidence. The “emotional labor” that Gemini will save is exponential!

Because critical theory denies the existence of a reasoned individual, independent of his or her race, sex, or alleged power, it doesn’t deploy open reasoned arguments. That would pay liberalism too much respect. It’s why they won’t debate their opponents; because they believe debate is always rigged by power differentials in a white supremacist system. That’s why their preferred methods of advance are either pure power politics — canceling dissenters, demonizing heretics, firing anyone with a different view, shutting down the speech of others — or linguistic deception and manipulation.

Critical theorists, and their useful idiots, deconstruct the very basic words we use to communicate. Think of the word “racist” — how they quietly changed its meaning, deployed it against their opponents willy nilly, and then, when they met a challenge, told their opponents to “go read a book”. They do not bother arguing that the trans experience and the gay experience are exactly the same, because that would require some major intellectual labor; they just refuse ever to separate them as a single part of an “LGBTQIA+” identity, and guilt-trip journalists to copy them.

Woke activists cannot point to actual evidence that race relations in America have never improved in 400 years; so they just resurrect the term “white supremacy” to apply to the US in 2024. They cannot plausibly explain why someone with a vagina and female chromosomes who takes testosterone is exactly the same as a biological male, so they simply scream: “TRANS MEN ARE MEN”.

Japan’s Meiji Restoration, 1868-1912

Filed under: Government, History, Japan — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Lawrence W. Reed outlines the end of Japan’s Shogunate Period and the start of the reign of Emperor Mutsuhito, known as the Meiji Period:

The Imperial Household Agency chose Uchida Kuichi, one of the most renowned photographers in Japan at the time, as the only artist permitted to photograph the Meiji Emperor in 1872 and again in 1873. Up to this point, no emperor had ever been photographed. Uchida established his reputation making portraits of samurai loyal to the ruling Tokugawa shogunate.
Wikimedia Commons.

In the 15 years that followed [American Commodore Matthew] Perry’s venture, the grip of the military dictatorship in Tokyo declined. Civil war erupted. When the smoke cleared in the first few days of January 1868, the shogunate was gone and a coup d’etat ushered in a new era of dramatic change. We call it the Reform Period, or the era of the Meiji Restoration.

That seminal event brought 14-year-old Mutsuhito to the throne, known as Emperor Meiji (a term meaning “enlightened rule”). He reigned for the next 44 years. His tenure proved to be perhaps the most consequential of Japan’s 122 emperors to that time. The country transformed itself from feudal isolation to a freer economy: engaged with the world and more tolerant at home.

In 1867, Japan was a closed country with both feet firmly planted in the past. A half-century later, it was a major world power. This remarkable transition begins with the Meiji Restoration. Let’s look at its reforms that remade the nation.

For centuries, Japan’s emperor possessed little power. His was a largely ceremonial post, with real authority resting in the hands of a shogun or, before that, multiple warlords. The immediate effect of the Meiji Restoration was to put the emperor back on the throne as the nation’s supreme governor.

In April 1868, the new regime issued the “Charter Oath,” outlining the ways Japan’s political and economic life would be reformed. It called for representative assemblies, an end to “evil” practices of the past such as class discrimination and restrictions on choice of employment, and an openness to foreign cultures and technologies.

After mopping up the rebellious remnants of the old shogunate, Emperor Meiji settled into his role as supreme spiritual leader of the Japanese, leaving his ministers to govern the country in his name. One of them, Mori Arinori, played a key role in liberalizing Japan. I regard Arinori as “the Tocqueville of Japan” for his extensive travels and keen observations about America.

The Meiji administration inherited the immediate challenge of a raging price inflation brought on by the previous government’s debasement of coinage. The oval-shaped koban, once almost pure gold, was so debauched that merchants preferred to use old counterfeits of it instead of the newer, debased issues. In 1871, the New Currency Act was passed which introduced the yen as the country’s medium of exchange and tied it firmly to gold. Silver served as subsidiary coinage.

A sounder currency brought stability to the monetary system and helped build the foundation for remarkable economic progress. Other important reforms also boosted growth and confidence in a new Japan. Bureaucratic barriers to commerce were streamlined, and an independent judiciary established. Citizens were granted freedom of movement within the country.

The new openness to the world resulted in Japanese studying abroad and foreigners investing in Japan. British capital, for instance, helped the Japanese build important railway lines between Tokyo and Kyoto and from those cities to major ports in the 1870s. The new environment encouraged the Japanese people themselves to save and invest as well.

For centuries, the warrior class (the samurai) were renowned for their skill, discipline, and courage in battle. They could also be brutal and loyal to powerful, local landowners. Numbering nearly two million by the late 1860s, the samurai represented competing power centers to the Meiji government. To ensure that the country wouldn’t disintegrate into chaos or military rule, the emperor took the extraordinary step of abolishing the samurai by edict. Some were incorporated into the new national army, while others found employment in business and various professions. Carrying a samurai sword was officially banned in 1876.

In 1889, the Meiji Constitution took effect. It created a legislature called the Imperial Diet, consisting of a House of Representatives and a House of Peers (similar to Britain’s House of Lords). Political parties emerged, though the ultimate supremacy of the emperor, at least on paper, was not seriously questioned. This nonetheless was Japan’s first experience with popularly elected representatives. The Constitution lasted until 1947, when American occupation led to a new one devised under the supervision of General Douglas MacArthur.

Lay out Dovetails with Dividers

Filed under: Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Lost Art Press
Published Nov 26, 2023
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QotD: The “ABC” movement in wine

Filed under: Media, Quotations, Wine — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Back in the 1990s when I first got into wine, there was a movement against the growing homogenisation of the world’s wine called ABC: “anything but chardonnay” which handily also stood for “anything but cabernet”. This was at a time when growers from Piedmont to Penedès were planting chardonnay (or cabernet sauvignon for reds) instead of local grape varieties.

There was a worry that in the future all wine would taste the same while the more obscure varieties would disappear. As an ABC enthusiast, I thought it far better and more interesting to drink riesling, or fiano or albariño or esgana cão (a Madeiran grape that means “dog strangler” in Portuguese because of its ferociously high acidity).

Jancis Robinson was also not a chardonnay fan. Recently I’ve been watching her Wine Course made in the 1990s on YouTube. It still holds up well, and the budget by modern standards is mind-blowing; one moment she’s in Burgundy, the next she’s in Australia.

Can we have another series like this again soon please? Each episode is devoted to a grape and in the chardonnay one Jancis (she’s one of the few famous people who it is acceptable to refer to by just her first name, like Britney or Boris) can barely contain her contempt for many wines made from the variety describing them as “sugar water”. She’s also not keen on the world’s second favourite variety, sauvignon blanc, either.

I was with Jancis. In fact, I was with Jancis on most things which points to a possible explanation for my chardonnay conversion. When I started out, I hadn’t developed my own tastes and so I was buying wine that I thought sounded sophisticated — such as Mosel riesling.

But as I’ve got older, I’m now buying bottles purely because I like them. Furthermore, I cook and entertain a lot more than I did when I was in my twenties and chardonnay, especially white Burgundy, goes with pretty much anything. If you don’t know what to order when eating out then a bottle of Mâcon-Villages will cover all your bases (the red equivalent if you’re interested is a bottle of Beaujolais).

But also your average chardonnay has got a lot better since the ’90s, or perhaps I should say that it leans more towards my tastes. I’ve been watching a lot of old episodes of Frasier recently and the chardonnay they drink is nearly orange. This style which is still very popular in the US is based on very ripe, some might say overripe, grapes which are then treated to a pre-fermentation maceration to get colour and body out of the skins.

Following fermentation with a yeast which accentuates tropical fruit flavours, the wine would be perked up with some tartaric acid and then either aged in new oak casks or more likely for cheaper wines have oak chips added.

The finished product would be thick and syrupy with a deep golden colour. Not very chic but a revelation in 1980s Britain when everyday white wine meant Blue Nun or Black Tower. They’re what Oz Clarke called “bottled sunshine” in his colourful slots with Jilly Goolden on BBC2’s Food and Drink programme. Like those loud waistcoats everyone thought were so witty worn with a morning suit or dinner jacket, they were great fun then but a bit embarrassing now.

Henry Jeffreys, “Chard: an apology”, The Critic, 2023-11-14.

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