{"id":9317,"date":"2011-05-14T00:19:53","date_gmt":"2011-05-14T04:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=9317"},"modified":"2013-05-15T10:19:26","modified_gmt":"2013-05-15T15:19:26","slug":"qotd-the-liberal-party-as-canadas-skull-and-bones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/05\/14\/qotd-the-liberal-party-as-canadas-skull-and-bones\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The Liberal Party as Canada’s “Skull-and-Bones Society”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

John Manley strikes me as a shining example of one of the great tragedies of the Liberal Party of Canada: a fine public servant blessed with good sense, but subsumed by the weird rituals of that odd cult. Over the years I\u2019ve been shocked at how many really smart, well-meaning ex-Liberals I\u2019ve met who left the party, and public service, because their skills and talent go thrown under the bus at some point by those hidden party puppet-masters we hear so much about, but so rarely show themselves (I assume they\u2019re in some underground fortress in Rosedale) because it was what the party required.<\/p>\n

Not being a Central Canadian lawyer, I don\u2019t think I can ever understand the sort of strange grip the Liberal party in its prime once seemed to have on people, but it certainly appeared like it was, for a very long time, some kind of skull-and-bones society, promising Canada\u2019s ambitious, young, bright men and women a route to power, but requiring their allegiance till death. I consider sharp, well-meaning guys like Manley, or former Indian Affairs minister Bob Nault, victims of a game they were obliged to play in order to achieve what they wanted. Until the Liberal party\u2019s recent conversion into a yawning, smoldering crater, if you wanted to make an impact in Canada, especially through government, you\u2019d be best to sell your soul to the Trudeausmen — which, ironically, often meant submitting principle, and logic, to the greater good of the party. I can see why Manley had to go along with the ritual, and retain his silence about the peculiar and problematic universe of mini-lobby groups that had grown like weeds within the party itself. Perhaps, like a befuddled Moonie, he couldn\u2019t even see the problems until he broke free of the party\u2019s hold. But then again, it\u2019s also hard to sound credible complaining about structural problems in your party when it keeps winning election after election after election.<\/p>\n

Kevin Libin, “Where was John Manley when the Liberals needed him?”, National Post<\/em><\/a>, 2011-05-13<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Manley strikes me as a shining example of one of the great tragedies of the Liberal Party of Canada: a fine public servant blessed with good sense, but subsumed by the weird rituals of that odd cult. Over the years I\u2019ve been shocked at how many really smart, well-meaning ex-Liberals I\u2019ve met who left […]<\/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":[6,53,41],"tags":[127,86,369,572,908,207],"class_list":["post-9317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-conspiracytheories","tag-criticism","tag-interesting","tag-leadership","tag-liberalparty","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2qh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9317","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=9317"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20287,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9317\/revisions\/20287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}