{"id":40311,"date":"2019-10-09T01:00:22","date_gmt":"2019-10-09T05:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40311"},"modified":"2019-10-08T08:51:11","modified_gmt":"2019-10-08T12:51:11","slug":"qotd-the-long-history-of-elite-canadian-smugness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/10\/09\/qotd-the-long-history-of-elite-canadian-smugness\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The long history of elite Canadian smugness"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 0px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>I&#8217;m reminded that, in 1966, the late, great former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson, reflecting on a long, productive life in the international arena, quipped that Canada, very often, too often he suggested, sounded like &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems\/45535\/ode-to-duty\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">the stern daughter of the voice of God<\/a>.&#8221; It was a reflection of a regrettable Canadian tendency, even in the 1950s when we were more than just &#8220;pulling our weight,&#8221; to preach when we should have been content to practice in silence. He wasn&#8217;t faulting Louis St Laurent or even Mike Pearson, he was simply commenting on the fairly general and unfortunate habit that Canadian elites had, then, and retain, now, towards self congratulatory moralizing.<\/p>\n<p>About all we have done, consistently, for most of the past 50 years is look on and do nothing: we have, mostly, been sitting on the sidelines, doing little except to chide and cast reproving glances at those who are acting. That approach almost certainly makes the Laurentian Elites more comfortable, but I suspect that many, many Canadians are just a little bit ashamed of themselves because of what our government is doing.<\/p>\n<p>Ted Campbell, <a href=\"https:\/\/coloneltedcampbell.blog\/2017\/09\/27\/hypocrisy\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Hypocrisy&#8221;, <em>Ted Campbell&#8217;s Point of View<\/em><\/a>, 2017-09-27.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m reminded that, in 1966, the late, great former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson, reflecting on a long, productive life in the international arena, quipped that Canada, very often, too often he suggested, sounded like &#8220;the stern daughter of the voice of God.&#8221; It was a reflection of a regrettable Canadian tendency, even in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"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":[6,53,41],"tags":[432,480,1213],"class_list":["post-40311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-diplomacy","tag-hypocrisy","tag-kakistocracy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aub","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40311","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=40311"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51618,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40311\/revisions\/51618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}