{"id":6025,"date":"2010-10-25T09:04:46","date_gmt":"2010-10-25T13:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=6025"},"modified":"2010-10-25T09:04:46","modified_gmt":"2010-10-25T13:04:46","slug":"in-praise-of-sir-wilfrid-laurier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/10\/25\/in-praise-of-sir-wilfrid-laurier\/","title":{"rendered":"In praise of Sir Wilfrid Laurier"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the few Canadian prime ministers I can admit a genuine fondness for, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, gets a bit of recognition<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Last May in a casual dinner conversation with Canadian libertarians in Vancouver, I named the better presidents and prime ministers, respectively, of the United States and Great Britain. It suddenly occurred to me that I couldn\u2019t name a single Canadian counterpart.<\/p>\n

So I asked my dinner friends, \u201cAmong Canada\u2019s political leaders, did you ever have a Grover Cleveland or a William Ewert Gladstone, a prime minister who believed in liberty and defended it?\u201d<\/p>\n

One name emerged, almost in unison: Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Embarrassed by my ignorance, I had to admit I had never heard of him. Never mind that he\u2019s the guy with the bushy hair on the Canadian five-dollar bill; I just never noticed. Now that I\u2019ve done a little research, I\u2019m a fan.<\/p>\n

Laurier\u2019s political resume is impressive: fourth-longest-serving prime minister in Canada\u2019s history (1896\u20131911, the longest unbroken term of office of all 22 PMs). Forty-five years in the House of Commons, an all-time record. Longest-serving leader of any Canadian political party (almost 32 years). Across Canada to this day, he is widely regarded as one of the country\u2019s greatest statesmen.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not his tenure in government that makes Laurier an admirable figure. It\u2019s what he stood for while he was there. He really meant it when he declared, \u201cCanada is free and freedom is its nationality\u201d and \u201cNothing will prevent me from continuing my task of preserving at all cost our civil liberty.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Laurier was the last Liberal leader who actually believed in “classic” liberalism, not the warmed-over socialism of later and current Liberal thought. We could use another Laurier today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the few Canadian prime ministers I can admit a genuine fondness for, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, gets a bit of recognition: Last May in a casual dinner conversation with Canadian libertarians in Vancouver, I named the better presidents and prime ministers, respectively, of the United States and Great Britain. It suddenly occurred to me […]<\/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":[6,25,84,7,10],"tags":[320,612],"class_list":["post-6025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-economics","category-government","category-history","category-liberty","tag-freetrade","tag-wilfredlaurier"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1zb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6025","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=6025"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6028,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6025\/revisions\/6028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}