Three Words Bob Rae Needs to Say

"Canada's National Interest"

We seem to have two parties of elite opinion in this country. One would have us fight and die for some romantic union of Chosen Peoples - Anglo Saxons and Jews against everybody else. The most rational proponents of this view think they will always enjoy technological superiority. The less rational have read Revelations backwards.

The second party would have us fight and die for universal human rights and reduced carbon gas emissions. We will defeat those who seek to harm us through a special ninja army of earnestness. That will be tres useful in Darfur or whatever other African conflict the do-gooders take interest in (although not enough interest to actually learn anything about it or propose realistic scenarios for what we could do).

I can't support Ignatieff because he seems to combine the worst of both tendencies.

Rae could mark some new ground just by looking at things through the lens of Canadian interest. I suspect there is a lot of hunger for this approach out among the people, who are not really enamored of either George Bush or Kofi Annan.

The trouble is that it goes against Rae's basic instincts. He doesn't like particularistic appeals. The result is that when he opposes Harper/Ignatieff's vision, he comes across sounding like a Grateful Dead groupie.

It's time to ask, "What's in it for us?"