Quotulatiousness

April 22, 2024

Canada’s Governor General is supposed to be above politics, not immersed in it

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Colby Cosh says — quite correctly — that the issue with the Governor General indulging in partisan politics isn’t that people noticed and objected:

Mary Simon, Governor General of Canada on a visit to London in June, 2022.
Detail of a New Zealand Government official photo via Wikimedia Commons.

All week I’ve been thinking about the sheer number of people who must have known about this event and who apparently didn’t anticipate a potential constitutional problem. Hey, what could go wrong? Surely no Liberal cabinet minister would show up, press the flesh all day, head back to the office, and plunge moronically into auto-campaign mode, sharing snapshots of how “we discussed … our Online Harms Act“ at the palace over oolong and scones.

The GG’s own materials describing the event are careful to characterize it as a fundamentally sociable get-together with no relationship whatsoever to a government agenda. Attendees to the event insist that legislation now before the House of Commons wasn’t explicitly discussed by any of the speakers.

As Colleague Sarkonak pointed out in her hair-raising Tuesday column on the scandal, the symposium included a panel discussing “Emerging Solutions for a Safer Digital World”. In any other setting it would be weird and surprising to have such a discussion without involving any “solutions” that are legislative in nature. But maybe the attendees were careful to talk exclusively about technological and social solutions to online abuse: such a thing is certainly possible. Those of us whose invitations were lost in the mail are left to make maximally charitable assumptions.

It’s just that, logically, we can’t be charitable to both the Governor General and Justice Minister Arif Virani in this case. Their stories conflict, in a direct and consequential way.

Anyway, none of the excuses being made really cut much ice. It’s true that a governor general has some freedom to engage in philanthropy, oratory and social organizing that have no visible partisan aspect. It’s also true that if a GG’s social agenda coincides awkwardly with the House of Commons order paper, you’re playing Russian roulette with the Constitution. On Tuesday the government introduces a bill outlawing soda pop; by the end of the week the Gov-Gen is inviting diabetics and nutritionists to chat about their “lived experience” of Mr. Pibb addiction. And, most likely, when anyone at all objects, you get a familiar barrage of “conservatives pounce” stories.

April 11, 2024

All the ways A few of the ways Canada is broken

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

In The Line, Andrew Potter outlines some of the major political and economic pressures that prompted the formation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867, then gets into all the ways some of the myriad ways that Canada is failing badly:

It is useful to remember all this, if only to appreciate the extent to which Canada has drifted from its founding ambitions. Today, there are significant interprovincial barriers to trade in goods and services, which add an estimated average of seven per cent to the cost of goods. Not only does Canada not have a free internal market in any meaningful sense, but the problem is getting worse, not better. This is in part thanks to the Supreme Court of Canada which continues its habit of giving preposterously narrow interpretations to the clear and unambiguous language in the constitution regarding trade so as to favour the provinces and their protectionist instincts.

On the defence and security front, what is there to say that hasn’t been said a thousand times before. From the state of the military to our commitments to NATO to the defence and protection of our coasts and the Arctic to shouldering our burden in the defence of North America, our response has been to shrug and assume that it doesn’t matter, that there’s no threat, or if there is, that someone else will take care of it for us. We live in a fireproof house, far from the flames, fa la la la la. Monday’s announcement was interesting, but even if fully enacted — a huge if — we will still be a long way from a military that can meet both domestic and international obligations, and still a long way from the two per cent target.

As for politics, only the most delusional observer would pretend that this is even remotely a properly functioning federation. Quebec has for many purposes effectively seceded, and Alberta has been patiently taking notes. Saskatchewan is openly defying the law in refusing to pay the federal carbon tax. Parliament is a dysfunctional and largely pointless clown show. No one is happy, and the federal government is in some quarters bordering on illegitimacy.

All of this is going on while the conditions that motivated Confederation in the first place are reasserting themselves. Global free trade is starting to go in reverse, as states shrink back from the openness that marked the great period of liberalization from the early 1990s to the mid 2010s. The international order is becoming less stable and more dangerous, as the norms and institutions that dominated the post-war order in the second half of the 20th century collapse into obsolescence. And it is no longer clear that we will be able to rely upon the old failsafe, the goodwill and indulgence of the United States. Donald Trump has made it clear he doesn’t have much time for Canada’s pieties on either trade or defence, and he’s going to be gunning for us when he is returned to the presidency later this year.

Ottawa’s response to all of this has been to largely pretend it isn’t happening. Instead, it insists on trying to impose itself on areas of provincial jurisdiction, resulting in a number of ineffective programs — dentistry, pharmacare, daycare, and now, apparently, school lunches — that are anything but national, and which will do little more than annoy the provinces while creating more bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the real problems in areas of clear federal jurisdiction just keep piling up, but the money’s all been spent, so, shrug emoji.

What to do? We could just keep going along like this, and follow the slow-mo train wreck that is Canada to its inevitable end. That is is the most likely scenario.

March 29, 2024

“Constitutional monarchy, such as we have, is a gift not to be ignored”

Filed under: Cancon, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Line, Graeme Menzies makes a pitch for a renewed royal presence in Canadian affairs:

The role of the Crown in Canada has been given a particularly cold shoulder by Trudeau. He’s first in line at the funerals and wedding parties, and quick to boast of his lifelong friendship with members of the royal family, but of all Canada’s 23 prime ministers Justin Trudeau is the one who has done his best to erase them from Canadian cultural identity. His record appointing governors-General suggests he’s been actively doing his best to tarnish that office.

Trudeau was the first prime minister not to approve the traditional Jubilee Medal for her late majesty Queen Elizabeth II — Canada’s loyal and beloved monarch for over 70 years. Under his watch, the anticipated Canada 150 Medal was also quashed. Later, under pressure, he agreed at the very last minute that a medal should be issued to celebrate the Coronation of King Charles III; but other than a couple lines about it in a news release last May, nothing has come of it. Not a single medal has been produced or issued.

This is where a post-Trudeau government must really seize the day. The monarchy is a great gift to Canada. It’s probably the single most important thing that distinguishes Canada from the United States. Take it away and we’re just Puerto Rico — another American protectorate, waiting for the day it gains statehood and a star on the flag.

It is foolish to think any serving prime minister will ever command the respect and affection of the majority of citizens; but Queen Elizabeth often did and there’s no reason to think King Charles cannot do so as well. The past visits to Canada by William and Kate, the future King and Queen of Canada, have been nothing short of sensational.

But the next prime minister will have to act on this. Constitutional monarchy, such as we have, is a gift not to be ignored. It is to be embraced and folded fully into a forward-looking vision of a new, proud, strong nation. To begin with, the next prime minister should ask the King, or the Prince of Wales, to visit Canada annually. The presentation of Orders of Canada should be timed to coincide with these visits. I would even go so far as to suggest Canada reinstate knighthoods. If Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney can be knighted then why can we not have Sir Randy Bachman and Dame Joni Mitchell?

The King of Canada can also play an important and useful role toward Canada’s reconciliation efforts. Trudeau and his radicals have done much to make it seem the Crown and Indigenous peoples are incompatible but a closer review of history books would suggest otherwise. It wasn’t the King who came up with the Indian Act — our elected political leaders did that. The statue of Tecumseh in Windsor is marvellous, but there should be another in Ottawa and it should be unveiled by the King. Same for Chief Maquinna who, apart from a likeness chiselled into the exterior of the British Columbia Legislative Library Building, has no statue, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts he is virtually unknown to most Canadians. That should be changed.

Most Canadians would rather see the King unveil a statue like that than the current, or the next, prime minister. When a prime minister is involved, it’s political. When the monarch does it, we can all get behind it. It’s unifying.

March 23, 2024

Ireland’s Varadkar heads for the showers

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

In Spiked, Brendan O’Neill discusses the “shocking” — but not actually shocking — resignation of Ireland’s Taoiseach (prime minister):

Leo Varadkar and Rishi Sunak
Composite image from extra.ie

“I am no longer best man to be Irish PM”, said a BBC headline this week, summarising Leo Varadkar’s resignation speech. The truth, Leo, is that you were never the best man to be Irish PM. He was never elected by the people to be taoiseach, instead securing that seat of power by appointment and backroom dealing. And once there, once he’d been gifted the highest office in the land by his allies in Dublin 4, he wielded government not for the people, but against them. He bent Ireland to what was essentially a vast real-time experiment in social re-engineering and thought control.

An unelected ruler using his power and clout to correct the country and improve the people? There’s a word for that. And it isn’t “democracy”.

Varadkar announced his resignation on Wednesday. In an emotional speech he said he was stepping down as leader of Fine Gael immediately and will step down as taoiseach once his successor has been chosen. His “shock departure” followed the people’s crushing defeat of the twin referendum he put forward. Overwhelming majorities rejected his proposals to alter the Irish constitution to update its definition of “family” and to fix what Varadkar damned as its “very sexist” reference to a woman’s “duties” in the home. No thanks, said the electorate, in the biggest ever referendum loss by an Irish government.

Even the fact that Varadkar’s stepping down is widely seen as a “shock move” speaks to the haughtiness, the outright unworldliness, of his political kind. To many of us it makes perfect sense that a PM would bugger off after suffering a historically unprecedented bloody nose from voters. But it seems the Varadkar clique thought they could ride it out. “No biggie” was their view. Until his “shock departure” on Wednesday, reports the Guardian, “the political fallout from the [referendum] debacle had widely been expected to be limited”.

Who expected that? I’m sure those voters who gleefully seized the opportunity of the referendum to give the middle finger to Varadkar and the rest of the establishment didn’t expect the impact of their discontent to be “limited”. It is a testament to the arrogance of technocracy, to the chasm that has emerged between Ireland’s rulers and Ireland’s ruled, that the Dublin establishment thought it could shrug off the largest drubbing it has ever received from voters.

In the end, tellingly, it seems it was disgruntlement from within his own party ranks, rather than the disgruntlement of the oiks, that convinced Varadkar to go. He was facing “increasing discontent within Fine Gael”, with some party bigwigs worried he’s an “electoral liability”. Everything you need to know about the man is contained in the fact that he essentially shrugged when the masses rose up against him but bolted when his fellow clerisy members criticised him. To the technocrat, the disapproval of their dinner-party circle carries far more weight than the discontent of ordinary people.

If Varadkar was edged out by the tut-tutting of movers and shakers, it would be a fitting end to a career that always owed more to the intrigue of political insiders than to the enthusiasm of the electorate. It is an unremarked upon truth that Varadkar was never installed into power by the people. He first became taoiseach in 2017 when then taoiseach Enda Kenny resigned as leader of Fine Gael. Varadkar was elected new party leader and became taoiseach on the back of it. So he became PM of Ireland on the back of the deliberations of 25,000 party members, not the ballots of the people.

Actually, even members of Fine Gael weren’t especially enthused by him. Varadkar’s opponent in the 2017 leadership contest – Simon Coveney – won almost twice as many votes from party members: 7,051 to Varadkar’s 3,772. But Varadkar won more votes from members of the parliamentary party – 51 to Coveney’s 22 – which meant Fine Gael’s weighted electoral college ruled in his favour rather than Coveney’s. From the get-go, Varadkar’s rule of Ireland was more an accomplishment of elite patronage than democratic keenness.

March 20, 2024

QotD: Ancient Greek tyranny

Filed under: Europe, Government, Greece, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The normal expectation for Greek tyranny is that the system works like the Empire from Star Wars: A New Hope, where the new tyrant abolishes the Senate, appoints his own cronies to formal positions as rulers and generally makes himself Very Obviously and Formally In Charge. But this isn’t how tyranny generally worked: the tyrant was Very Obviously but not formally in charge, because he ruled extra-constitutionally, rather than abolishing the constitution. This is what separates tyranny, a form of extra-constitutional one man rule, from monarchy, a form of traditional and thus constitutional one-man rule.

We see the first major wave of tyrannies emerging in Greek poleis in the sixth century, although this is also about the horizon where we can see political developments generally in the Greek world, still our sources seem to understand this development to have been somewhat novel at the time and it is certainly tempting to see the emergence of tyranny and democracy in this period both as responses to the same sorts of pressures and fragility found in traditional polis oligarchies, but again our evidence is thin. Tyrants tend to come from the elite, oligarchic class and often utilize anti-oligarchic movements (civil strife or stasis, στάσις) to come to power.

Because most poleis are small, the amount of force a tyrant needed to seize power was also often small. Polycrates supposedly seized power in Samos with just fifteen soldiers (Hdt. 3.120), though we may doubt the truth of the report and elsewhere Herodotus notes that he did so in conspiracy with his two brothers of whom he killed one and banished the other (Hdt. 3.39). I’ve discussed Peisistratos’ takeover(s) in Athens before but they were similarly small-ball affairs. In Corinth, Cypselus seized power by using his position as polemarch (war leader) to have the army (which, remember, is going to be a collection of the non-elite but still well-to-do citizenry, although this is early enough that if I call it a hoplite phalanx I’ll have an argument on my hands) expel the Bacchiadae, a closed single-clan oligarchy. A move by any member of the elite to put together their own bodyguard (even one just armed with clubs) was a fairly clear indicator of an attempt to form a tyranny and the continued maintenance of a bodyguard was a staple of how the Greeks understood a tyrant.

Having seized power, those tyrants do not seem to have abolished key civic institutions: they do not disband the ekklesia or the law courts. Instead, the tyrant controls these things by co-opting the remaining elite families, using violence and the threat of violence against those who would resist and installing cronies in positions of power. Tyrants also seem to have bought a degree of public acquiescence from the demos by generally targeting the oligoi, as with Cypselus and his son Periander killing and banishing the elite Bacchiadae from Corinth (Hdt. 5.92). But this is a system of government where in practice the laws appeared to still be in force and the major institutions appeared to still be functioning but that in practice the tyrant, with his co-opted elites, armed bodyguard and well-rewarded cadre of followers among the demos, monopolized power. And it isn’t hard to see how the fiction of a functioning polis government could be a useful tool for a tyrant to maintain power.

That extra-constitutional nature of tyranny, where the tyrant exists outside of the formal political system (even though he may hold a formal office of some sort) also seems to have contributed to tyranny’s fragility. Thales was supposedly asked what the strangest thing he had ever seen was and his answer was, “An aged tyrant” (Diog. Laert. 1.6.36) and indeed tyranny was fragile. Tyrants struggled to hold power and while most seem to have tried to pass that power to an heir, few succeed; no tyrant ever achieves the dream of establishing a stable, monarchical dynasty. Instead, tyrants tend to be overthrown, leading to a return to either democratic or oligarchic polis government, since the institutions of those forms of government remained.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: How to Polis, 101, Part IIa: Politeia in the Polis”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2023-03-17.

March 4, 2024

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.

March 2, 2024

Get your new election narratives! Hot off the press!

Filed under: Books, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Chris Bray isn’t impressed with two new political books hitting the bookstores at the moment:

It’s an election year, so get ready. Two astonishingly dullwitted books arrived in bookstores this week, on the same day, as their dreadful authors hit the airwaves to promote them. One was White Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, about the breathtaking stupidity and backwardness of rural whites, who are destroying America. Taking care to be subtle, the publisher gave the book a cover that features a pick-up truck with an American flag and a Trump sign, leaving out only the weird kid with the banjo and the dude who shouts, “Squeal, boy! Squeal like a pig!”

And then there’s the wonderfully nuanced title Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America, by Obama-era US Attorney Barbara McQuade, who is now a law school professor after being asked to resign by Orange Hitler — though apparently a law school professor who is unfamiliar with the text of the 6th Amendment, thinking it exists to confer a right upon the public to have people put on trial right away.

[…]

The cover of McQuade’s book is somehow more obnoxious than the cover of White Rage:

See, it’s a giant clenched fist rising out of Middle America. Get it? Get it? It may take a moment.

These books: If, one day, by some bizarre chain of weird accidents, these are the only remnants of our civilization, no one will have the slightest idea what actually happened while we were alive. They’re miscategorized fiction. Every paragraph is full of obtuse faked reality; if you hold it up to the real world, it doesn’t even sort of match. Go click on the Amazon preview for McQuade’s book, if you’d like to see this for yourself […]

Onward: “Much of the American right glamorizes assault weapons, based on the absurd claim that the Second Amendment protects not only the right to bear arms but also the right to overthrow our government.”

My goodness, where would anyone get the claim that a founding-era American document meant to describe citizens as having a right to overthrow their government?

The Declaration of Independence, the literal founding statement of the nation that gave McQuade a government job:

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government … But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Thomas Jefferson thought Americans had a right to “throw off” their government; Barbara McQuade finds it an “absurd claim”. Which one do you think understood the topic?

February 20, 2024

Rome: Part 3 – The Expansion of Roman Power

Filed under: Europe, History, Italy — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

seangabb
Published Feb 18, 2024

This course provides an exploration of Rome’s formative years, its rise to power in the Mediterranean, and the exceptional challenges it faced during the wars with Carthage.

Lecture 3: The Expansion of Roman Power

• The Conquest of Central Italy
• The Gallic Sack of 390 BC
• The Conquest of the Greek Cities
• Relations with Carthage
(more…)

February 9, 2024

Rome: Part 2 – Consolidation of the Republic

Filed under: Europe, History, Italy — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

seangabb
Published Feb 8, 2024

This course provides an exploration of Rome’s formative years, its rise to power in the Mediterranean, and the exceptional challenges it faced during the wars with Carthage.

Lecture 2: Consolidation of the Republic

• The Roman Revolution against the Kings
• How Brutus put his own sons to death
• How Horatius kept the Bridge
• Scaevola and Lars Porsena
• The Roman Constitution: an Overview
(more…)

February 5, 2024

Sitzkrieg on the southern border

Filed under: Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds on the stand-off between Texas governor Greg Abbot and President Joe Biden over the flood of illegal immigrants coming across the US-Mexican border:

So the war over the border between Texas and the Biden Administration is now in the “Sitzkrieg” stage. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has essentially declared war on illegal immigration. He invoked Article I Section 10 of the United States Constitution, which forbids states from declaring war except when “actually invaded” (or in such imminent danger as to admit of no delay) and, by implication, allows them to declare war when that happens. He also invoked the Guarantee Clause of Article IV, which requires the federal government to protect the states against invasion.

Abbott’s legal argument is that since he’s being invaded, he’s entitled to respond, and since the federal government is defaulting on its obligations it has no business – it’s basically stopped from – complaining. There was a lot of huffing and puffing at the time, with members of Congress calling on President Biden to federalize the Texas National Guard and the like, but basically, nothing happened. The Supreme Court vacated an injunction forbidding the Border Patrol from cutting the barbed wire that Texas had installed along the border, but – contrary to many media reports – didn’t rule that what Texas had done was illegal, or order Texas to stop policing the border.

Now not much is going on. The big complaints about immigration are mostly coming from outside Texas, places like New York City where illegal immigrants beat police with impunity, being released without bail after being arrested. (The usual endgame for this sort of thing in other societies has been death squads, organized either by police or by police-adjacent groups, taking out those whom the legal system cannot or will not control; we’ll see what happens in New York City.)

But next month Texas’s law allowing the state to apprehend and effectively deport illegals will go into effect, and that’s when the sitzkrieg is likely to end. Following are my (very) preliminary thoughts.

To me what’s astonishing is how unpopular with everyone the immigration policies of the Administration – and a good chunk of the GOP – are. Open borders are unpopular with blacks, whites, rural and urban voters, and, really, just a vast bipartisan majority. But like “climate change”, another priority of the ruling class without matching popular support, the borders stay open.

Why? Because our ruling class seeks, in Bertolt Brecht’s famous phrase, “to dissolve the populace and elect another”. As Elon Musk tweeted:

Musk’s comments met with the usual outrage, but Democrats have pretty much touted this as the plan for years. Indeed, it goes back to Ruy Teixeira’s “Emerging Democratic Majority” strategy, though it’s been accelerated in recent years. (And Teixeira himself has retreated from that plan). Sure, naturalization takes years – though they may speed that up, as it’s just a matter of statute – and there have also been some moves to allow non-citizens to vote anyway. Think that’s unlikely? Maybe, but how many things are happening these days that seemed impossibly unlikely a few years ago? And it’s a long game; a bunch of Democratic voters in 5 or 6 years will suit them fine.

January 27, 2024

Flashpoint: Texas

Filed under: Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Theophilus Chilton wonders if you’re ready for a full-blown Constitutional crisis:

I’m sure that by now, we’re all aware of what is continuing to take place down in Texas. Far from backing down in his standoff with FedGov over the seizure of Shelby Park in Eagle Pass and subsequent expulsion of federal agents, Gov. Abbott has directed the state’s National Guard to continue interdicting illegal immigrants. Indeed, in response to the recent SCOTUS decision allowing the Feds to dismantle the razor wire Texas installed, they’ve simply installed more, in direct defiance of the wishes of the Regime. The Regime has now responded by giving Abbott and Texas an ultimatum — restore control of the park to the Federal government by the afternoon of January 26, or … well … something. Whether the governor ultimately continues to tell the Feds to get bent remains to be seen, but so far the trend is looking pretty good.

Of course, it helps that — for once — Republicans across the country have actually found a little courage to support doing what’s right. As of writing this, the Republican governors of 25 other states have all issued statements of support for Texas’ position. Hence, there are now an outright majority of states whose executives (who control their various National and State Guards) are publicly backing Texan efforts to secure our border. Many of these governors have explicitly cited the Biden administration’s continued abandonment of the federal government’s constitutional duty to protect the several states from invasion and the constitutional right of the states to act in their own defence as sovereign entities in their own right.

Needless to say, this is a constitutional crisis that would not have been conceivable even twenty years ago (well, except for this one movie that seems to have been amazingly prescient). Since 1865, the doctrine of absolute federal supremacy has been in force and the balance of power between the state and national governments has inexorably trended in Washington, DC’s favour. Occasional spurts of opposition to the contrary, most of the previous incipient talk by states about “reining in the federal government” generally proved to be all words and no action. On a few things (e.g. marijuana legalisation), the Regime allowed states to “oppose” federal policy if these were policies that the Regime wanted to change anywise but couldn’t “officially” at the federal level. But on anything that was a true Regime priority, FedGov brooked no dissent. So it is now, but the calculus has changed. What would have been impossible in 2003 is now on the verge of happening in 2023.

This all highlights the fundamental illegitimacy of our current federal government. There is no moral or legal case to be made to justify the actions of the Biden administration. The federal Constitution both enjoins the federal government to protect the states from foreign invasion (which being overrun with millions of foreigners breaking our laws most certainly counts as) and also grants the states the right to protect their own borders and sovereignty. Instead of doing this, the Biden administration has been purposefully inviting hordes of migrants to enter this country. Indeed, this is being encouraged in contravention to statutory federal law as well. Further, if Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is correct (and he almost assuredly is), the administration has even been partnering with criminal cartels to smuggle illegals into this country. All in all, there is absolutely no justification to be credibly made for the Regime’s actions and anyone who supports them are in opposition to the Constitution, the laws, and the people of this land.

Despite the fevered ravings of various progressive “Christians” on social media, the moral argument for allowing the Regime to throw the gates open is nonsense. Indeed, the whole attempt to craft a “biblical” argument for open borders is simple-minded and ignorant of the relevant scriptural and historical context. Simply put, the Bible’s approach to “the stranger” falls into line with common ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean modes of hospitality that were meant to “tame” the foreigner and integrate him into a society, thus preventing him from causing disruption to that society. If that couldn’t be accomplished, then the “inhospitable foreigner” was either to be expelled or eliminated. Needless to say, this applied only to individuals or small family groups — large masses of foreigners attempting to enter an ancient country would have been rightly recognised as an invasion and dealt with accordingly.

However, the illegitimacy of the current Regime and its actions alone can’t explain why the Republicans have closed ranks so precipitously. After all, Republican politicians are not exactly known for their intestinal fortitude when faced with opposition of any kind. Yet, even Northeastern moderate squishes like New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu have signed onto supporting Texas in this. Something changed that has caused the GOP, almost as a whole, to support this, either openly or tacitly.

January 25, 2024

By invoking the Emergencies Act, “the government unjustifiably violated Canadians’ constitutional rights”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Andrew Lawton reports on the Federal Court decision that ruled against Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act to break up the Freedom Convoy protests in 2022:

For those whose bank accounts the government froze, those who remain on trial for trumped up charges, and those who were pepper sprayed, tear gassed, or zip tied while protesting for freedom, this week’s news might be too little to late.

Even so, the aforementioned people have all been vindicated.

The Federal Court ruled Tuesday that Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act – both the decision to apply it and the measures he used it to impose – were illegal.

In other words, there was no “national emergency” rising to the wartime levels intended by the act. And even if there had been, the government unjustifiably violated Canadians’ constitutional rights.

The decision was handed down, coincidentally, on the two year anniversary of the Freedom Convoy’s launch from Delta, B.C.

When Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, he assured Canadians that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms would be respected. His evidence was thin: the guarantee that Charter rights would be protected was seemingly predicated only on the fact that the law says Charter rights must be protected. I’d call it circular logic but even “logic” seems a bit of a stretch.

As I remarked then, if you have to pinky swear to Canadians that you’re upholding their rights, you aren’t. A well-respected judge on the Federal Court now agrees.

While the Freedom Convoy was an unprecedented demonstration (globally, not just by Canadian standards), Trudeau’s response put Canada on the map in all the wrong ways. It was condemned the world over, even by the Chinese Communist Party and Iran’s former president. Not that I put too much stock in what they think, but when you go too far for even the dictators, you should probably reassess.

The crackdown illuminated the authoritarian impulse in Canada’s “sunny ways” government. The convoy was a response to Covid restrictions, but also an increasingly divisive and vindictive approach to politics by Trudeau that vilified people based on their vaccine status and ultimately their political views.

Unfortunately for Trudeau, his denigration of convoy supporters as a “fringe minority” with “unacceptable views” ended up being taken up as a badge of honour and reclaimed by the very fringe he tried so hard to marginalize.

The court ruling is not a full exoneration of the Freedom Convoy. It’s still possible that Tamara Lich and Chris Barber could be found guilty on their mischief charges. It’s also possible that convoy organizers could lose the lawsuit filed on behalf of Ottawa residents. The decision isn’t a declaration that the convoy was a purely lawful protest, but it does say there was no “threat to the security of Canada” as per the CSIS Act, which Trudeau has spent nearly two years pretending there was.

January 2, 2024

Nobody will like the new rules

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Bray points out just how bad the “new rules” are going to be … and not just for the Bad Orange Man:

The danger is that you concede an argument about a personality or an event, then find at some future point that you’ve accepted new systems and structures that are far more broadly applicable than you noticed at the moment you accepted the new rules. Everyone of every political persuasion should see the weapon on the table, because it’s going to be pointed at you and yours: libertarians, anti-war leftists, populists, paleocons, others too weird to name. Outliers. If your votes and your views fall outside an extremely narrow band of corporate-state “centrism”, what follows is about you.

So.

Bill Mitchell, a media figure and DeSantis supporter, doesn’t see the big deal:

The problem is that Trump is “super toxic”, so whatever. Orange Man is bad, so the things you do to Orange Man are unobjectionable. Of course you can take him off the ballot — he’s a jerk. That’s, like, the Constitution.

But the constant background music for me in these discussions is that the government of Canada construed a peaceful protest against vaccine mandates as a national emergency, on par with a foreign invasion, and started freezing bank accounts and mobilizing force for mass arrests. A “Western democracy”, hearing dissent, started turning off the dissenters’ money, which means that government took away the ability of peaceful protesters to pay for things like housing and food. The patience of the global political class for disagreement is narrowing, fast and hard. (Cf. e.g. Ardern, Jacinda.)

So see what’s happening in the United States, and see where it points. On January 6, thousands of protesters turned into maybe hundreds of rioters; many people at the Capitol were peaceful and calm, while some weren’t. Almost none were armed, none used guns, and the question of law enforcement infiltration, provocation, and entrapment remains open.

But no one published a manifesto calling for the violent overthrow of the United States government, and the crowd didn’t line up at the Capitol with rifles and homemade bombs to launch waves of armed attacks on Congress. Compare: here’s Bernardine Dohrn of the Weather Underground declaring war on the United States, and announcing on the radio that “our job is to lead white kids into armed revolution”. Find me that moment on January 6, the explicit declaration of armed revolution aimed at the destruction of the federal government. No one has been charged under the Insurrection Act because no one has violated the Insurrection Act. The “insurrection” is a political construction, not a legal case.

So a riot can be an “insurrection”, in the complete absence of insurrection charges and convictions, if Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D-Longhouse) feels like an insurrection happened. She can “rule” on that.

Lone officials can unilaterally declare that American citizens are ineligible for participation in elections, because the activities of [insert name of bad people here] can be politically construed as insurrectionist — in the absence of due process and a jury trial.

December 29, 2023

QotD: The Hanoverian “reverse takeover of the British monarchy by the Germans”

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Why, though, did Germans feel such a special affinity with “die Königin“? The most obvious reason is that the Royal Family is, to a great extent, of German extraction. The connections go back more than a thousand years to the Anglo-Saxons, but in modern times they begin with George I and the House of Hanover. This reverse takeover of the British monarchy by the Germans transformed the institution in countless ways. They may be summarised in four words: music, the military, the constitution and Christmas.

Music was a language that united the English and the Germans. The key figure was, of course, Handel — the first and pre-eminent but by no means the last Anglo-German composer. Born in Halle, Georg Friedrich Händel had briefly been George I’s Kapellmeister in Hanover yet had already established himself in England before the Prince Elector of Hanover inherited the British throne in 1714.

In London — then in the process of overtaking Paris and Amsterdam to become the commercial capital of Europe — he discovered hitherto undreamt-of possibilities. There he founded three opera companies, for which he supplied more than 40 operas, and adapted a baroque Italian art form, the oratorio, to suit English Protestant tastes.

His coronation music, such as the anthem, “Zadok the Priest”, imbued the Hanoverian dynasty with a new and splendid kind of sacral majesty. But he also added to its lustre by providing the musical accompaniment for new kinds of public entertainment, such as his Music for the Royal Fireworks: 12,000 people came to the first performance.

Along with music, the Germans brought a focus on military life. Whereas for the British Isles, the Civil War and the subsequent conflicts in Scotland and Ireland had been something of an aberration, war was second nature to German princes. Among them, George II was not unusual in leading his men into battle, although he was the last British monarch to do so.

Still, the legacy of such Teutonic martial prowess was visible in the late Queen’s obsequies: uniforms and decorations, pomp and circumstance, accompanied by funeral marches composed by a German, Ludwig van Beethoven. Ironically, the German state now avoids any public spectacle that could be construed as militaristic, yet most Germans harbour boundless admiration for the way that the British monarchy enlists the ceremonial genius of the armed services.

Even more important was the German contribution to the uniquely British creation of constitutional monarchy.

Each successive dynasty has left its mark on the monarchy’s evolution: from the Anglo-Saxons and Normans (the common law) to the Plantagenets (Magna Carta and Parliament) and Tudors (the Reformation). Only the Stuarts failed this test, at least until 1688. Even after the Glorious Revolution, the Bill of Rights and other laws that conferred statutory control over the royal prerogative, the constitutional settlement still hung in the balance when Queen Anne, the last Stuart ruler, died in 1714.

Coming from a region dominated by the theory and practice of absolute monarchy, the Hanoverians had no choice but to adapt immediately and seamlessly to the realities of politics in Britain, where their role was strictly limited. Robert Walpole and the long Whig ascendancy, during which the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty embedded itself irrevocably, could not have taken place without the acquiescence and active support of the new dynasty.

George III has been accused of attempting to reverse this process. The charge is unjust. Rather, as Andrew Roberts demonstrates in his new biography, he was “a monarch who understood his extensive rights and duties under the constitution”. He still had the right to refuse royal assent to parliamentary bills, but in half a century he never once exercised his veto (the last monarch to do so was the Stuart, Queen Anne in 1708).

At a time when enlightened despotism was de rigueur on the Continent, the Hanoverians were content to participate in an unprecedented constitutional experiment in their newly acquired United Kingdom. It was neither the first Brexit, nor the last, but it happened courtesy of a Royal Family that was still very German.

Daniel Johnson, “Why Germany mourned our Queen”, The Critic, 2022-10-30.

December 10, 2023

“The peasants are revolting!”

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Chris Bray says we’re back to aristocracy:

What do Americans think of vitriolic language directed at government?

Remember that Superior Court Judge William Fahey has just tentatively ruled, in a First Amendment lawsuit over the decision by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to forbid public comments on its social media posts, that the county has not engaged in viewpoint discrimination, because the public is yucky:

Comments were closed to the public because many were “extreme” and vitriolic; therefore, no First Amendment violation has occurred. Government cannot discriminate against your viewpoint if your viewpoint is extreme, or if it’s expressed too strongly; the First Amendment only protects inoffensive expression.

The lowest-hanging fruit for the counterargument is all in New York Times Company v. Sullivan, in which a quite liberal Supreme Court repeatedly and very clearly spelled out the American standard for the criticism of government. Justice Arthur Goldberg, in a concurring opinion: “In my view, the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution afford to the citizen and to the press an absolute, unconditional privilege to criticize official conduct despite the harm which may flow from excesses and abuses”.

This is how the Supreme Court showed up in 1964 to start thinking about a case involving the limits of speech about public officials; as Justice William Brennan, Jr. wrote in the majority opinion, “we consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”

Compare that conclusion to the argument that government has not engaged in viewpoint discrimination, because it banned comments only in the context of being addressed with vitriol. We didn’t say we didn’t didn’t like their viewpoint; we just said that their opinions were too extreme.

But here’s the important thing about New York Times Company v. Sullivan: it’s a history lesson. The majority opinion quotes James Madison and John Stuart Mill, and examines debates over public speech in the early republic. Looking at the national past and its political sources, they saw only the idea that government officials may properly be addressed with whatever degree of firmness citizens choose to apply. American politics were never polite, and were never thought to be. The tumult of a democratic republic, Tocqueville wrote, “begins in the lowest ranks of the people”, storming the seats of government to shout their disapproval:

“… if he happens by chance to become heated”. That wasn’t pathology or exception; a French observer touring America thought that heated denunciations of government were signs of … a weekday. A scholar of early American politics has written colorfully about the way national officials limited the aggressiveness of attacks on their character: they shot each other, or threatened to.

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