Deep Thought

I never thought Helicopter Ben would need such a big helicopter.

The economics profession is totally in the tank to the financial industry. You should know that, American taxpayer.

Update: In fairness to the profession, here is a letter from economists opposing the bailout.

On this ROC we have built... (Bibilical themes in contemporary English Canadian nationalism)

I'm not sure that the rhetoric of national covenant (based on the original precedent at Sinai) played a huge role in the development of English Canadian identity. Sure, Protestants everywhere talk like that when they are being irritable, and we all know how irritable the original Canadian Protestants could be. But the over-arching original conception was of Britishness expressing itself in a non-British space. It probably owed more to Rome than to Jerusalem.

If we then look at the post-WWII need to reconceive Canadianism (provoked by the termination of the British Empire, the extreme power of the US, and the threat of Quebec nationalism), the key biblical rhetoric comes from the Babylonian captivity, not the establishment of the covenant. Grant laments for an ideal that he insists was impossible from the outset.

Our lamentation, unlike Jeremiah's, is not caused by disaster and ruin, but by uncertainty and loss of purpose. It is more comfortable, and therefore harder to take seriously. But with an ironic inflection, we arrive at a deutero-Isiahian synthesis. Our god, like Israel's in the captivity, can no longer be located in his home. But, as with Israel in the captivity, this homelessness makes our god all the more powerful. Our uncertainty becomes our weapon against the Americans and against the Quebec nationalists: they can never truly be liberals because they have identified themselves with too concrete a substantial liberalism. We can be faithful to liberal modernity because our loyalties are negative (not-American not-Quebec).

Of course, our anxiety does not solve the fact that someone (albeit someone invisible) must continue to negotiate an accommodation with all the substantial nationalisms -- American, Quebecois, aboriginal and new Canadian. Just as a corporation is a placeholder for all the contracts it negotiates with others, so too the ROC ("Rest of Canada").

Upon this ROC, though, someone built something. We will have to explore what at a future time.

Whither Socialism?

In his first term, George Woodrow Bush made the world safe for democracy. As a lame duck (and to bipartisan support, again), Clement W. Attlee has nationalized the commanding heights of the economy.

Big financial firms going bankrupt isn't scary. Somebody can pick up those assets and do better with them -- and greed must be leavened occasionally with fear.

Big financial firms not being allowed go bankrupt -- that should induce fear.

While McCain is still more sensible on economics than Obama, his response of supporting the ban on short selling is troubling.

There's a lot of ruin in a nation, and no nation has more ruin in it than the United States. The financial crisis itself will be no big deal. But the response is disturbing.

Derivatives Exempted from Bankruptcy Laws

Well, that was a bad idea.

Who Should Win the Election?

I am a bit on the fence. (My actual voting behaviour is already determined, since I think my local MP, who is a Liberal, is a mensch and ought to be re-elected.)

Harper is right on Afghanistan. He probably ultimately has good impulses on economics, although I have seen scant evidence of it in the last 3 years. Arguably, the Liberals would grow government more. Certainly, there is a risk of a unionized, one-size-fits-all universal daycare program, which is immeasurably worse than Harper's baby bonus. Harper should also get credit for selling a symetrically decentralized federation to the soft nationalists in Quebec.

On the other hand, Dion's plans are actually broadly economically sound. He wants to shift taxation to negative externalities which is good both for Pigovian reasons and because the long-run elasticity of demand means it will shrink the tax take. Harper's GST cut was unwise.

Finally, the election call itself is such a cynical breach-of-promise that I can't help but hope it backfires.

But while I hope that the Liberals win a plurality, I don't expect it. My prediction is the Conservatives back with an increased plurality, based primarily on gains in Quebec, but no majority. The Liberals will collapse in Quebec, and lose some ground to the NDP in their urban Anglo strongholds.

Was Justice Cromwell Appointed to the SCC or Not?

The process for replacing Justice Michel Bastarache for what is widely regarded as the Court’s “Atlantic” spot, has been contentious. Initially, a Supreme Court Selection Panel made up of two MPs from the government and one from each of the opposition parties was to come up with a shortlist. However, the Opposition objected to the government’s nominees being cabinet ministers and, according to the government, refused to “consider substantive business”. The Prime Minister unilaterally nominated Justice Thomas Cromwell of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal, subject to questioning before another ad hoc committee after the federal election.

Harper’s actions are a bit constitutionally presumptuous – if the appointment is conditional on Justice Cromwell’s appearance before the ad hoc committee, then it has not been made. But if it has not been made, then Harper can only “announce” that Justice Cromwell will be the one on the assumption he will be Prime Minister after October 14 – an assumption one would think a politician facing the electorate should be cautious about.

As I write, a few days into the 2008 election campaign, it remains to be seen whether any of this will be an election issue. Newfoundland and Labrador’s Justice Minister has angrily announced that Harper treated his province with “disrespect” by not considering a judge from his province – suggesting a punitive motive arising out of Harper’s conflict with Premier Danny Williams. Ideological, as opposed to regionalist, attacks seem less likely, since Justice Cromwell is widely-respected within the liberal legal elite, and was appointed a Court of Appeal judge by Jean Chrétien.

What Should the Governor General Do?

It is now universally acknowledged that Prime Minister Harper will soon ask the Governor General for a dissolution of Parliament. Patrick Monahan argued in the Globe on Saturday that when he does, she has no choice but to give it to him. I think this is wrong. She should accept his resignation, but she should not dissolve Parliament until M. Dion has been offered a chance to form a Ministry and meet Parliament and has either (a) refused the Governor General's invitation or (b) accepted, and then lost the confidence of the House or been denied supply.


The dissolution of Parliament is a Crown prerogative, vested in the Governor General by Letters Patent of George VI in 1947 ((reproduced in R.S.C. 1985, App. II, No. 31). Legally, she can dissolve Parliament or not at her wish. This power was retained by Bill C-16, which created fixed election dates, and indeed it was confirmed that the dissolution of Parliament was 'at the Governor General's discretion."


Of course, responsible government implies the convention that -- in general -- she will only exercise her powers at the "advice" of the Prime Minister. The extensive legal powers of an appointed Governor General are only acceptable in a democracy because she almost never uses them.


However, as the King-Byng and Whitlam-Kerr crises show, and as the Supreme Court of Canada recognized in the Patriation Reference, the general rule that the Governor General must do what the Prime Minister says (whether or not she agrees) is subject to limits. Democratic legitimacy and responsible government are the basis for the rule, but they are also the basis for exceptions. It is only because the Prime Minister presumably enjoys the confidence of the House that the Governor General should listen to her, rather than to someone else.


If Mr. Harper tells Mme. Jean that Parliament is "unworkable", then that amounts to saying that he can't work it. He does not think he enjoys its confidence, at least if he wants to do what he feels he must. She has no business in going behind this statement. If the electorate think he is really motivated by a desire for a tactically-favourable election date, it is up to them to punish him.


However, by saying that he can't work with this Parliament, Harper also ceases to have the legitimacy of responsible government behind his "advice." If there is even a remote possibility that someone else can form a Ministry, then that person should be invited to do so. There are innumerable examples from before the modern party system calcified of Parliaments long outliving Ministries.


Before the fixed date amendments to the Elections Act, it could be argued that whether the failure of a Ministry implied the failure of Parliament was a matter of political judgment. Therefore, it was said, the Governor General should only disregard the Prime Minister's advice when it was clearly abusive (for instance, if it occurred very soon after the election). However, it seems to me that the fixed election date changes that. Parliaments are presumed not to fail until their time expires -- it is only if the Governor General has exhausted potential ministries that she should go to the people.


The Liberals have never had a chance to try to make this Parliament work. They could decide that it isn't in their interest to do so -- and if they did it would be harder for them to slam Harper politically for going sooner than Bill C-16 suggests is normal. Or they could bring forward a budget and legislation based on their green tax proposals and dare the (now) opposition to bring them down. But they should get the chance.

Obama's Speech

Obama's speech was competently written and delivered. No more, no less. It was also doctrinaire Democratic Party liberalism. There was nothing McGovern or Mondale could have disagreed with. It will be interesting to see if America has changed enough that an overtly social-democratic platform can win a national election.

Governor Palin seems like a good choice in theory. Whether she will be up to the rigours of national politics is not something I claim even Internet-rules expertise on. Who knows?

Offer NATO membership to Georgia - (South Ossetia + Abkhazia)

And back it up with nukes.

Choice of Biden Insane

HRC was the obvious choice. It was folly to pick anyone else. But "anyone else" would have been better than Biden.

Veeps may not matter, but terrible judgment matters.

Pelagians for McCain!

Some careful readers may have detected a preference on my part during the primaries. And despite my pretence of careful neutrality as one of Her Majesty's subjects, I must say I was generally pleased with how things worked out in both major parties.

The general election is a bit tougher. I'm more with Obama on foreign policy (excluding trade) and more with McCain on domestic matters. My ideal world would probably have Obama as President and Republican control of Congress -- but that is not going to happen. In light of his age and the opposition's control of Congress, McCain would be a very weak president generally -- which is doubtless a good thing.

But theological issues are primary. And on those issues, McCain shows just what a crazy heretic he is. It is really unfair to Manicheans and Pelagians to compare them to him. Here's Obama's answer to the question of the existence of evil at the Saddleback Forum:

Evil does exist. I mean, I think we see evil all the time. We see evil in Darfur. We see evil, sadly, on the streets of our cities. We see evil in parents who viciously abuse their children. I think it has to be confronted. It has to be confronted squarely, and one of the things that I strongly believe is that, now, we are not going to, as individuals, be able to erase evil from the world. That is God's task, but we can be soldiers in that process, and we can confront it when we see it.

Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for to us have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil, because a lot of evil's been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil.

REV. RICK WARREN, SADDLEBACK CHURCH: In the name of good.

OBAMA: In the name of good, and I think, you know, one thing that's very important is having some humility in recognizing that just because we think that our intentions are good, doesn't always mean that we're going to be doing good. `

Perfectly orthodox, and perfectly sensible. Here is McCain's demonic nationalist answer:

WARREN: How about the issue of evil. I asked this of your rival, in the previous debate. Does evil exist and, if so, should ignore it, negotiate it with it, contain it or defeat it?

MCCAIN: Defeat it. A couple of points. One, if I'm president of the United States, my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get bin Laden and bring him to justice. I will do that. And I know how to do that. I will get that done. (APPLAUSE). No one, no one should be allowed to take thousands of American -- innocent American lives.

Of course, evil must be defeated. My friends, we are facing the transcended challenge of the 21st century -- radical Islamic extremism.

Not long ago in Baghdad, al Qaeda took two young women who were mentally disabled, and put suicide vests on them, sent them into a marketplace and, by remote control, detonated those suicide vests. If that isn't evil, you have to tell me what is. And we're going to defeat this evil. And the central battleground according to David Petraeus and Osama bin Laden is the battle, is Baghdad, Mosul, Basra and Iraq and we are winning and succeeding and our troops will come home with honor and with victory and not in defeat. And that's what's happening.

And we have -- and we face this threat throughout the world. It's not just in Iraq. It's not just in Afghanistan. Our intelligence people tell us al Qaeda continues to try to establish cells here in the United States of America. My friends, we must face this challenge. We can face this challenge. And we must totally defeat it, and we're in a long struggle. But when I'm around, the young men and women who are serving this nation in uniform, I have no doubt, none.

For McCain, evil is totally external. It can be defeated temporally, and by the nation state. In any well-ordered society, the Holy Office would say so and hand him over to the secular arm. The Applause just shows that many American evangelicals actually worship the state.

Update: The Lutheran Zephyr makes many of the same points, but better. It's spooky.

In memoriam: Literatus on the Murder of Shirley Case and Jackie Kirk

A missive from the literatus:

The thing about atrocities, colleagues, is that they tend to harden observers' political positions; there is an angry I-told-you-so component to each possible interpretation of an event like this.

So I got angry on the news; not just righteously angry at the Enemy and his jackals, but pissed at the Talib excusers, pacifi-fundamentalists, and Quiet Lifers, the whole fellow-travelling fuckin' pack of 'em, our ideological opponents, for whom any international action beyond well-digging, school-building and child-vaccinating is too inappropriate to consider, even while the unabashed Enemy poisons the water, burns the classrooms, and shoots the doctors in the face.

There's been little talk from these misbegotten left-internationalists, I notice, about the moral necessity of a UN role in Iraq since August '03. Which was when, you'll recall, the great guarantors of multi-lateral understanding established their Baghdad mission, whereupon the Enemy immediately murdered them all. (RIP, Sergio de Mello, and RIP your gentle, hopeful, sophisticated way of thinking.)

It is the same Enemy that executed our fellow-citizens in the Rescue Committee convoy, I think we agree, comrades...? (I capitalize the E 'cos I acknowledge that the jihadi is essentially one man -- the arsonist and exterminator of Allah's staff, Mohammed's wingman and butcher, get it --? In all his many manifestations.)

The peculiar response from Stopland on this matter is not to recommend the hunting down of these killers of women, nor the extirpation of the permanent threat they pose to Afghanis, women, Shia Moslems, Pakistanis, homosexuals, Israel, Western idealists, etc., etc... naw, near as I can tell, the massacre's political meaning, over in Leftland, is this:

It's the West's fault. Ottawa and CIDA and the Forces should guarantee the safety of every Canadian, esp. aid workers, who steps into the 'Stan, voluntarily or not, and should be held civilly liable, ie vulnerable to lawsuits, if any civilian Canuck should get killed by the Enemy, or by accident. I ain't kidding.

I cannot see that as a reasonable response to the machine-gunning of our Sisters of Mercy, frankly. I suppose a better person than me might try to find forgiveness, somewhere in the nobility of the human spirit, for the understandable frustration of the marginalised post-colonial subject who bashed in the IRC car's window with the butt of a cheap machine gun and blew away a nice lady named Shirley who was culturally sensitive and wanted to help the poor. Probably he shot her to death mostly for being female.

Well, he was Taliban; they say they'll do such things, they do them, and if they live, then they do it again. What is the point of forgiveness and dialogue, under such circumstances? The massacre proves, underlines, demonstrates, clarifies and establishes beyond a doubt that the Enemy must be destroyed wherever he is found. Doesn't it?

I could argue with some of the Manichean phrasing. But I don't feel like it.

Update: There seems to be some confusion on the subject in the comment box, so I should clarify that I am not the literatus. He is an old character in these parts, and one I usually argue with. My brief description is "a right-wing bastard sickened unto death with the leftist pieties usual among Canadian writer types".

But while intending no endorsement, I do share an impatience with people who can muster a lot of indignation about "overbroad generalizations" and stereotyping that they can't seem to summon for murdering do-gooding unarmed middle-age women.

Free Speech Then and Now

The Supreme Court of Canada overriding a jury verdict of seditious libel against Jehovah's Witnesses saying rude things about the Roman Catholic Church back in 1950:

There is no modern authority which holds that the mere effect of tending to create discontent or disaffection among His Majesy's subjects or ill-will or hostility between groups of them, but not tending to issue in illegal conduct, con­stitutes the crime, and this for obvious reasons. Freedom in thought and speech and disagreement in ideas and beliefs, on every conceivable subject, are of the essence of our life. The clash of critical discussion on political, social and religious subjects has too deeply become the stuff of daily experience to suggest that mere ill-will as a product of controversy can strike down the latter with illegality.

The Supreme Court in 1990:

In applying the Oakes approach to legislation restricting hate propaganda, a meaningful consideration of the principles central to a free and democratic society requires reference to the international community's acceptance of the need to protect minority groups from the intolerance and psychological pain caused by such expression.

A decline of style and substance. What will 2010 bring?

Why are Muslims Becoming More Liberal?

The Pew Global Attitudes Project has tracked a consistent decline among Muslims in support for Al Qaeda, and an increase in support for liberal democracy since 2001. Different countries vary a lot, and there are still millions of people who think Bin Laden is great. And you don't need a lot of people to form a terrorist threat (although the bigger the base the easier that is). Moreover, there is a lot of belief that 9/11 was a fake, that Muslim economic woes are the fault of imperialism and so on. But everywhere, things seem to be going in the right direction.

I don't think left or right would have expected this. Certainly one of my main reasons for opposing the Iraq war was that it would make these numbers worse. And Muslims didn't like the invasion and occupation of Iraq any more than I thought they would. The neoconservative hope that grateful Iraqis would make everyone else think the US was wonderful did not -- to put it mildly -- unfold as expected.But even though "George" and "Tony" are never going to be fashionable names for Muslim boys, things have not gotten worse since 2003. The direction of these results also casts doubt on the view that illiberalism is inherent in Islam, a view that seems more common now on the right than it did back when W. was popular.

So why is this happening? Is Fukuyama right after all?

Double Standards Department

Ethiopundit makes the excellent point that what Mugabe had done over the last few months is materially identical to what Meles Zenawi and the EPRDF did in Ethiopia in 2005. Bob Geldof made a bit of a stink at the time, but that was about it. And of course, the communist EPRDF quickly became a key ally in the War on Terror.

McCain is right about Viagara and Birth Control (Even if He Doesn't Know Why)

The lefty blogosphere has been trying to give McCain a tough time about voting against mandating that health plans that include Viagara must include birth control as well. One can't expect them to understand economics, but even if you don't, surely both products are equally valuable to both parties in a heterosexual couple? I suspect some age bias.

Here is what I said at Ta-Nehisi Coates' (very good) blog:

I sort of doubt that birth control vs. Viagara is a man vs. woman issue. It's more of a generational issue. Heterosexual women with older partners benefit from Viagara as much as heterosexual men with younger partners benefit from birth control.

The legitimate argument for McCain's stance is the following. We want birth control (and Viagara)to be as cheap as possible. Mandating that birth control be part of a health insurance plan doesn't (necessarily) make it cheaper. You now have to add the costs of administering the insurance claims to the manufacturer's costs and profit.

Liberals tend to think, "Ah, but if it is insured, the employer pays for it instead of the employee." That's actually wrong. Benefits are just part of your overall compensation. If the costs of drug plans go up, then (all other things being equal), your take-home pay is going to be less. So you pay, one way or the other.

I suppose birth control could be part of a publicly-funded universal drug benefit. It isn't in Canada or anywhere else that I'm aware of, so I don't think this is reasonable.

But what about Viagara? Why should it be insured? I would object to a mandate there too, but it's at least possible that there is an overall gain to insuring it. Erectile dysfunction is a risk that only happens to some people (although it is pretty common at a certain age). So maybe employees as a group are better off spreading this risk across the group, even if it means higher unit costs.

Anyway, neither Viagara nor birth control should be mandated, since that just means paying more for sex.

How McCain could still win

I realize it's chicken to hedge your bets so soon, but maybe Maliki has given McCain a way out. The Iraqi government is asking for a date certain for withdrawal of US and allied forces. McCain said a year or so ago that if that happened, of course the US would leave.

So now McCain can leave while declaring victory. Iraq has uninspiring elected politicians instead of psychopathic fascist ones. The price in resources and lives is difficult to justify, but, being human, Americans will be inclined to do so -- as long as they know they are getting out.

As I've argued before, "victory" and "defeat" are category errors in Iraq, so McCain would have the benefit of having a position that is logically equivalent to Obama's while being psychologically superior.

McCain Calls Social Security a "Disgrace"

It's over. We can all obsess about something else.

Is Knowledge a Type of Belief?

When I was an undergraduate in philosophy, everyone knew that knowledge was a kind of belief. The only issue was what kind of belief (was it "justified, true belief" or something else. "S knows that p" entails "S believes that p", although not the other way around.

The interesting blog Experimental Philosophy has a result that suggests many people intuit otherwise. Apparently, people given a scenario about a corporate chairman causing damage to the environment are more likely to agree that the chairman "knew" harming the environment was wrong than that the chairman "believed" harming the environment was wrong.

Is this just a bias, like when we are told that Sandra is a strong feminist and are asked to evaluate which is more likely, "Sandra is a Christian" or "Sandra is a liberal Christian". People will say the latter is more likely, contrary to fundamental axioms of probability.

Or do people have a different conception of knowledge?

Come on baby, get in the road

I agree with Yglesias that the recent Republican attacks on Obama for being a "flip flopper" and moving to the right will likely count as one of the biggest own-goals in the history of American politics. The centre (or "center") is where it's at. McCain could have won this thing on one strategy alone: he's in the middle (not like those other R's) and Obama is a crazy radical with nice speeches.

If Obama is a normal politician who will pander however he needs to, then the median American voter will be relieved. It's time to give the Dems a try. It might be interesting to have a black guy who writes books. McCain's old. But that same median voter has (reasonably enough) some lurking suspicions about this dude. McCain and the Republicans telling you he is just an opportunistic office-seeker like all the others will just reassure those suspicions.

And could we end the "Rove proved that you don't need the centre" crap. First, that is not really how either 2000 or 2004 worked. Second, to the extent that Rove tried a mobilize-the-base strategy, how did that work out for the GOP? One voter switching in the middle is worth two on the edges deciding not to vote or vote for a third party, and there are more voters in the middle.