{"id":17296,"date":"2012-10-12T12:24:43","date_gmt":"2012-10-12T17:24:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=17296"},"modified":"2012-10-12T12:24:43","modified_gmt":"2012-10-12T17:24:43","slug":"mcparland-how-about-nobels-for-canada-switzerland-and-costa-rica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/10\/12\/mcparland-how-about-nobels-for-canada-switzerland-and-costa-rica\/","title":{"rendered":"McParland: How about Nobels for Canada, Switzerland, and Costa Rica!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The latest Nobel Peace Prize winner follows a pattern that <a href=\"http:\/\/fullcomment.nationalpost.com\/2012\/10\/12\/kelly-mcparland-hey-nobel-peace-prize-committee-canada-isnt-at-war-either\/\" target=\"_blank\">Kelly McParland<\/a> thinks he&#8217;s identified:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I\u2019m pretty sure the Nobel peace prize committee just bought itself a regular spot on Saturday Night Live. How could it award a peace prize to Europe \u2013 yes, all of Europe \u2014 based on the fact that it\u2019s not at war with itself, and not become a target of satire?<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>Today, the notion of Italy invading Spain, or the Dutch royal family seizing the British throne, is unimaginable. Austria, once one of the world\u2019s great powers, is now a small Alpine nation that\u2019s a threat to nobody. Obviously this is a good thing; being friends is better than being enemies. But is that reason to give it a peace prize? Canada has never started a war with anyone, anywhere, so where\u2019s our prize? Switzerland washed its hands of war a century ago and remained neutral through both world wars. Costa Rica doesn\u2019t even have an army. How about a peace prize for that?<\/p>\n<p>This whole peace prize thing is getting weirder by the year anyway.  In 2009 it went to Barack Obama, for reasons even Obama couldn\u2019t explain. Since then his administration has been picking off terrorists with drones with gay abandon. In 2007 it went to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore, because why? Because alternative energy is peaceful? Because you can\u2019t stoke a nuclear weapon with solar power? Beats me. You get the feeling the committee finds itself facing a deadline, can\u2019t make a decision, and someone says, \u201cThe hell with it, let\u2019s just pick a name out of the hat.\u201d This year some scamp had scribbled \u201cEuropean Union\u201d on a piece of paper and slipped it in with the others, and that\u2019s the slip they drew.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe it\u2019s more complicated than that. But you wouldn\u2019t know it from this year\u2019s winner.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The latest Nobel Peace Prize winner follows a pattern that Kelly McParland thinks he&#8217;s identified: I\u2019m pretty sure the Nobel peace prize committee just bought itself a regular spot on Saturday Night Live. How could it award a peace prize to Europe \u2013 yes, all of Europe \u2014 based on the fact that it\u2019s not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[465,62],"tags":[852,337,332,528],"class_list":["post-17296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americas","category-europe","tag-costarica","tag-eu","tag-nobelprize","tag-switzerland"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4uY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17297,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17296\/revisions\/17297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}