Real Sleaze on Slime-Green Benches

The Monarchist reported about eight months ago on the entry of the High Tory Gerald Warner into the pages of the Daily Telegraph, with Is It Just Me?, after the apparent sacking from Scotland on Sunday.

Gerald Warner did have a Scotland on Sunday column at the end of last June, and the Warner column occasionally ran until November. Since November 16, however, whilst blogging at the Daily Telegraph is going strong, Scotland on Sunday has been running a Warner column without exceptions. The column has been revived.

Writes Gerald Warner this Sunday:

The Lords are more representative than the scoundrels down the corridor

THE controversy over alleged corruption in the House of Lords has provided an excuse for MPs to parade their hypocrisy, clapped-out modernisers to revive the canard of "Lords reform" and commentators to display their consummate ignorance of everything to do with the institution of the peerage.

Clearly, the allegations against the four peers must be investigated and, if well founded, punished. Otherwise, the issue is fogged in spin and stupidity. This is not House of Lords sleaze, any more than l'affaire Jonathan Aitken was described as Commons sleaze: it is Labour sleaze. It is typical of Labour, having ejected hundreds of hereditary peers of impeccable character and replaced them with its own nominees, when the latter sully the reputation of the Upper House to condemn the institution instead of the perpetrators. Sleaze allegations in the Lords are rare: can the same be said of the sanctimonious Commons?

Real sleaze can be found on Parliament's slime-green benches

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The Philosophy of Loyalty

Contrary to popular assumption, "loyalty" is not a dead virtue. It may have evolved from the ancient feudal notion of fealty and homage towards kings, to the now well-established idea of a "loyal opposition", but it is still - and will always be - our most important virtue.

HOLINESS, THAT HIGHEST OF HIGH TEMPLE VIRTUES, is nothing without loyalty. If the very definition of loyalty is faithfulness and devotion to a cause or being, then what is holiness or sanctity if not loyalty to God, after all?

Truth is a high temple virtue too, so is honour. But truth only triumphs inasmuch as one is loyal to it; honour, inasmuch as one is loyal to the code. Loyalty is the cardinal virtue because it makes the other virtues possible. It is virtue enabling.

For example, what is love without fidelity? What is hope without faith? What is charity without fealty or obligation? What is respectfulness without deferance? What is duty or service without allegiance? What is perseverance if not faithfulness and devotion to the end? And what is responsibility if not loyalty to our families, our careers and our communities? Personal responsibility. Corporate responsibility. Civic responsibility. Duty and commitment. It all comes down to loyalty.

One could go on and on about the interconnectedness of loyalty with virtue. Is justice not just adherence to a common belief in fairness, is morality not just cultural allegiance to a virtuous set of principles, ethics and values? As the American philosopher Josiah Royce postulated in his Philosophy of Loyalty (1908), "Loyalty is the fulfillment of the whole moral law. You can truthfully centre your entire moral world about a rational conception to loyalty. Justice, charity, industry, wisdom, spirituality, are all definable in terms of enlightened loyalty." He called his grand ethical theory, "loyalty to loyalty", defending the unifying virtue as the supreme moral good.

Once you appreciate that loyalty is the greatest human virtue, you understand that betrayal is the greatest human vice. The old evils of blasphemy, venality, cowardice, avarice, gluttony and sloth were all interpreted as betrayals of one form or another. Self-treachery can lead to any number of personal follies, since betrayal can empower all matter of sins. In Shakespeare's own immortal words, that Colossus of English literature, "self-love my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting". Shakespeare understood that there is nothing beneath betrayal in the whole catalogue of sin.


And yet loyalty has often been misconstrued as a vice, and disloyalty sometimes misconstrued as a virtue. The "virtue of disloyalty" as put forward by Mark Twain and Grahame Green argued against giving in to the demands of loyalty in order to best protect the individual from those who exploit it, fearing it could potentially be used as a means to pursue unethical conduct on a grand scale. And indeed who could deny the idea has considerable resonance after bearing witness to history's murderous crimes under the fanatically loyal regimes of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia?

But as it is with any other virtue, loyalty does not ask for us to suspend our moral judgements. Conscientiousness and sincerity may be directed to unworthy objects, but conscientiousness and sincerity do not for that reason fail as virtues. Does the corruption of courage, by which we mean foolhardiness, prove then that courage is not a virtue? Obviously there is a point at which virtue becomes not a virtue at all, for confidence can be corrupted into vanity, generosity into extravagance and loyalty into complaisance and servility. The trust that tends to accompany loyalty need not encompass gullibility and credulity.

It was Aristotle who described every virtue as a balance point between a deficiency and an excess of a trait. The point of greatest virtue lies not in the exact middle, but at a "golden mean" sometimes closer to one extreme than the other. Virtuous loyalty then is just the golden mean between fanatical disloyalty and fanatical loyalty. The mean between treachery and subserviance.

Society may be somewhat off its golden mean these days (we no longer worship virtue), because the needs of liberty have (over)entrenched the practice of limiting loyalty. The ancient fealty towards kings has progressed into the well-established idea of a "loyal opposition", since we have come to Whiggishly accept that for loyalty to be virtuous there must be openness to corrective criticism on the part of both the subject and object of loyalty. The "corrective" qualification is important, for not any opposition is permissible. A loyal opponent is not just an opponent, but one who remains loyal, and that entails the opposition to stay within bounds that are compatible with the well-being or best interests of the object of loyalty.

Predominantly speaking, a loyal opposition will not advocate rebellion or revolution or even radical change, for the latter would endanger the object of loyalty and perhaps replace it with an undesirable alternative. Perhaps it is the commitment to opposition within the prevailing structures that has led some radical critics of loyalty to see it negatively as a conservative virtue, or not to view it as a virtue at all. It is conservative because it involves a commitment to securing or preserving the interests of its object, an object that has come to be valued for its own sake.

Nevertheless, the existence of a loyal opposition does not preclude the possibility that a more radical opposition might and indeed should subsequently be mounted. If the loyal opposition proves incapable of "reforming" the object of loyalty, the exit option might be taken. In such cases it could be argued that the object of loyalty was no longer worthy of its claim to it. It is only if we mistakenly or misguidedly think of loyalty as making an absolute claim on us that a derogatory charge of conservatism (for those who see conservatism as derogatory) against a loyal opposition will have any traction.

We can limit loyalty but we cannot eliminate it altogether, nor should such a thing ever be desired, for that path leads to anarchy and destruction. Suffice it to say that no person, no profession, no culture and no country can survive long without it. Loyalty is the glue of society, the gospel of reason and the creed of nations. As part of the natural order, loyalty is the cardinal virtue and the whole cornerstone of Tory philosophy. It is absolutely critical to our existence.

It goes without saying that The Monarchist holds it in the highest possible regard.

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A Whig's Perspective

Good day to all you fine, discerning gentleman and ladies here at the Monarchist. I am a new scribe here, and I have written this article as a way of introducing myself. You may call me Gladstone. Not only that, but I would like to introduce my beliefs in this article, so that none of you excellent Tories will be surprised by my decidedly Whig perspective.

I am a Progressive, a Leftist, a Liberal, and a Whig. With all that, you'd expect that I'd be firmly against Her Majesty the Queen, correct?

No. No, I am a most loyal Canadian subject of Her Majesty the Queen. In fact, I sing God Save the Queen every day while going about my morning routine. I have been this way since a young age (though some would argue I am still at a young age, but I digress). If I could have Red Ensign bed sheets, I probably would. If I could change the Canadian anthem from the overly neutral O Canada to the more patriotic Maple Leaf Forever, of course I would. I love Her Majesty, and I love my English heritage, and I love my Canadian homeland, and I love this great British Commonwealth of which we all belong.

So how is this so? You will find many Whigs these days to be odious republicans (The political belief, not the American political party, of course). Hopelessly idealistic egalitarians, or staunch democrats who can't stand the mere idea of having a dignified part of government, set above the unwashed masses. The heirs of Woodrow Wilson, the Great Idealist himself. Many of them are just Dennis Skinner-type working class buffoons with no reverence for the Crown that has lasted for nearly a thousand years. Proletariats rising against their, quote-unquote, “oppressors”, Marx would be proud. On a related note, Dennis Skinner is one of my all-time most hated MP's ever. I will tell you why. It's because, despite my leftism, I am a proud and unabashed elitist. As the eloquent scribes here at the Monarchist put it: “Equality be damned!”

Oh, I am no racist, nor sexist, nor homophobic. My elite is not based on things that do not matters, not based on things a person has no control over. The noblesse, to me, are those who strive to do better than their peers. And we will always have those people, who elevate themselves and their families above the unwashed masses. Hereditary titles, like the noble Peerage of the United Kingdom, are continuing honouring of a man's deeds, by acknowledging those descent from him. Her Majesty, our fount of honour, is a living acknowledgement of William the Conqueror's prowess and ambition. That is my elite, not based on any race, gender or sexual preference, but on your quality and that of those who came before you. Is that elitist? Indeed so, and I embrace it.

This is why I support Her Majesty and the House of Windsor. They are the dignity of Britain and it's Commonwealth. In addition to the great services they provide as a national symbol (far superior to any mere flag), a unifying force, as diplomats, in the case of the Princes, soldiers, and the historic British championing of minority rights, they are the source, the fount of honour, of dignity in government. Pomp and splendour, they lend magnificence to matters of government. Can anyone truly compare a Presidential inauguration motorcade to Her Majesty's coronation? I think not. The pros they provide far outweigh the cons, or the possible pros of discarding them. Some other nations tell us to 'grow up' and force Her Majesty to abdicate. How is it grown up to reject a magnificent tradition? Is the mindless rebellion of an angry teenager throwing a fit against his or her parents 'grown up'? Most would say no. Then why is it grown up to discard a tradition that has done nothing but good for Britain and the Commonwealth? I say: God Save our Queen, God preserve the Windsors, and the Maple Leaf Forever!

-Gladstone

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W.E.H. Lecky – Brave Critic of the New Age

Five score and five years ago today, October 22, 1903, William Edward Hartpole Lecky passed on from this world. Lecky was a historian, a political philosopher, and a Member of Parliament at Westminster for Dublin University. The new age was rising, and against it stood W.E.H. Lecky. In the words of William Murchison, he chose to write – and fight.


Writes William Murchison further in the introduction to W.E.H. Lecky's Democracy and Liberty:

Democracy was the late Victorian age's great passion – a concept not just to profess but to translate into reality. The democracy professed was less radical than that of the French revolutionaries who, in Burke's day, had cried "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality!" – and then decapitated thousands of their free and equal brethren. Democracy to the Victorians, meant something relatively high-minded – government by the majority for the benefit of the majority. The principle was amiable enough, certainly. It was in the practical application that things began to go wrong, as Lecky and a few others easily discerned. The implications of democracy for good government, for liberty – for precisely the values that democracy was meant to assert – were deeply disturbing.

William Murchison describes Democracy and Liberty further:

The argument of the book is the incompatibility of two concepts which, in the late 20th century, are regarded virtually as twins – democracy and liberty. The one might seem, at first glance, to reinforce and invigorate the other. But it was not so, as Lecky proceeded to establish in detail.

Murchison continues:

What had worked best for Britain, so far as he was concerned, was the electoral system that prevailed from the Reform Bill of 1832 until the Reform Bill of 1867. In 1832, the middle class had been enfranchised. The change had, at the time, split the country asunder, but it had worked. This was because, in Lecky's view, it had admitted to power a class of men solid, trustworthy, educated, and hard-working. Their merits, not their abstract “rights,” qualified them for the franchise. It was different with the millions granted the vote in 1867 and 1884. Sheer numbers was what mainly seemed to commend them as voters.

Murchison goes on:

What Lecky feared was that his country's government would pass out of the hands of gentlemen and “into the hands of professional politicians” – like those to be found in the United States.

Further Murchison writes:

Lecky was concerned, accordingly, that gentlemen should continue to govern. He was concerned especially for the future of the House of Lords, which fast was coming to be regarded as a feudal relic, occupying a “secondary position in the Constitution.” “Man for man, he wrote, “it is quite possible that (the Lords) represents more ability and knowledge than the House of Commons, and its members are certainly able to discuss public affairs in a more single-minded and disinterested spirit.” The peers' “superiority of knowledge” was “very marked.” They were more than ornamental; they contributed, along with the Throne, to the kingdom's “greatness and cohesion.”

Lecky was a Privy Councillor and was bestowed with the Order of Merit.

W.E.H. Lecky blamed the rebellion in the American colonies largely on the encroachments of Parliament on Royal Prerogative.

Of the American Electoral College Lecky wrote:

In this manner it was hoped that the President might be elected by the independent votes of a small body of worthy citizens who were not deeply plunged in party politics. But, as the spirit of party intensified and the great party organisations attained their maturity, this system wholly failed.

Of President Andrew Jackson Lecky wrote:

The modern system of making all posts under the Government, however unconnected with politics, rewards for party services was organised, in 1829, by Andrew Jackson. This President may be said to have completed the work of making the American Republic a pure democracy, which Jefferson had begun. His statue stands in front of the White House at Washington as one of the great men of America, and he assuredly deserves to be remembered as the founder of the most stupendous system of political corruption in modern history.

Of democracy and regulation Lecky wrote:

In our own day, no fact is more incontestable and conspicuous than the love of democracy for authoritative regulation.

Of the House of Commons Lecky wrote:

Of all the forms of government that are possible among mankind, I do not know any which is likely to be worse than the government of a single omnipotent democratic Chamber. It is at least as susceptible as an individual despot to the temptations that grow out of the possession of an uncontrolled power, and it is likely to act with much less sense of responsibility and much less real deliberation. The necessity of making a great decision seldom fails to weigh heavily on a single despot, but when the responsibility is divided among a large assembly, it is greatly attenuated. Every considerable assembly also, as it has been truly said, has at times something of the character of a mob. Men acting in crowds and in public, and amid the passions of conflict and debate, are strangely different from what they are when considering a serious question in the calm seclusion of their cabinets.

Of the worship of majorities Lecky wrote:

He will not, if he is a wise man, be reassured by the prevailing habit, so natural in democracies, of canonising, and almost idolising, mere majorities, even when they are mainly composed of the most ignorant men, voting under all the misleading influences of side-issues and violent class or party passions. The ‘voice of the people,’ as expressed at the polls, is to many politicians the sum of all wisdom, the supreme test of truth or falsehood. It is even more than this: it is invested with something very like the spiritual efficacy with theologians have ascribed to baptism. It is supposed to wash away all sin. However unscrupulous, however dishonest, may be the acts of a party or of a statesman, they are considered to be justified beyond reproach if they have been condoned or sanctioned at a general election. It has sometimes happened that a politician has been found guilty of a grave personal offence by an intelligent and impartial jury, after a minute investigation of evidence, conducted with the assistance of highly trained advocates, and under the direction of an experienced judge. He afterwards finds a constituency which will send him to Parliament, and the newspapers of his party declare that his character is now clear. He has been absolved by ‘the great voice of the people.’ Truly indeed did Carlyle say that the superstitions to be feared in the present day are much less religious than political; and all the forms of idolatry I know none more irrational and ignoble than this blind worship of mere numbers.

Democracy and Liberty, a two-volume work, is indeed refreshing reading, now even more than a century after its publication. We honor the memory of William Edward Hartpole Lecky. May he continue to rest in peace.

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"Reactionary Prophet"

IF THE DEVIL WROTE A POLEMIC ON GOD, it might faithfully reflect Christopher Hitchens' grudging respect of Edmund Burke. Begrudging because use of the label "reactionary" is meant to be pejorative and a political epithet; respect and even praise in that "prophet" is an admission that Burke's prophetic indictment of what would become of revolutionary France proved almost eerily exact.

"Reactionary Prophet" is no shamelessly self-promoting screed against Mother Teresa, but in actual fact a fairly balanced critique of Burke by a modern day Paine - Hitchens at his least repugnant. As delightful as it is to read fellow Burkeans such as Russell Kirk and Roger Scruton praising the philosophy and prescience of Burke, it is criticisms by the unconverted that are the more fascinating, and even more so if the unconverted are utterly godless talents like Christopher Hitchens. For here is an unrepentent Trotskyte declaring victory over the patriarch of traditional Anglosphere conservatism, and castigating him for dismissing the ideals of the Enlightenment as nothing more than the "vulgar, base and profane language" of the mob. Burke may have been right early on but he was wrong in the long run. The revolution in all its parts had indeed succeeded, eventually devouring the whole of the West in its ravenous wake.

To which the Burkean answers why yes, why yes it has, but just how, pray, is that a good thing, exactly? Just how is our increasingly anti-monarchist, anti-Christian, hyperliberal, suprastatist, politically correct and amusement-sodden dystopia an improvement over the more stoic values and ordered liberty of yesteryear? Please point to us the virtues and general worth of leveling modernity. Todays glories and wealth can be summarised with a Trollope: "But the glory is the glory of pasteboard, and the wealth is the wealth of tinsel". Somewhere along the way our character and majesty got reduced to plastic and tinsel, and some of us are not very happy about it.

I fervently hope this is not what Hitchens the anti-theist and neo-imperialist wants to export to the rest of the world. Burke was prophetic alright - vulgar, base and profane everywhere you look. But hey, the republicans have their priorities. It's the Queen that must come to an end.

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We all want to be Cavaliers

Roundhead Values, Cavalier Tastes: The Euroskeptic Tory, Daniel Hannan MEP, explains why he migrated from Cavalier to Cromwellian. Not a big leap considering the differences between Tories and Whigs are so small nowadays that they can safely be deferred to the other side of the grave.

Picking Sides, by Daniel Hannan, MEP

"The only thing I want to know about a man," said the Edwardian Liberal Isaac Foot, "is which side he would like his ancestors to have fought on at Marston Moor".

These days, it seems, we all want to be Cavaliers. So badly has the Good Old Cause fared that a new television drama will "raise eyebrows" by casting Kenneth Branagh as a sympathetic Cromwell.

I realise I'm going to alienate most of my natural constituency when I write this, but here goes. Thank Heaven Cromwell won.

Many contemporary Tories imagine, without giving the matter much thought, that they would have fought for the King. They are almost certainly wrong. The causes they hold dearest personal liberty, small government, parliamentary supremacy, patriotism, localism, Euro-scepticism would in fact have inclined them to Old Ironsides.

Much of the confusion arises, I think, from our tendency to look at history teleologically. Even now, more than a century after the debunking of the Macauley-Trevelyan interpretation of the period, we tend to believe that the British constitution developed by stages to its present condition, and this makes us think of the Parliament Men as progressives.

The description would have thrown them completely. In their own eyes, the Roundheads were conservatives, preserving traditional English liberties against the dangerous innovations of a foreign-influenced court. As Robert Ashton showed in his brilliant study The English Civil War: Conservatism and Revolution 1603-1649, the parliamentary cause was rooted in the defence of local freedoms, property rights and English particularism. Its advocates believed, with justice, that they were fighting to protect a way of life against the absolutism that was then spreading on the Continent.

It took me a while to see this. When I first studied the English Civil War, I was a paid-up Cavalier. My Lower VI history teacher, an inspirational man called Richard Wilkinson, was deeply Whiggish, both in his historiographical approach and in his political sympathies. Once, when telling us about Charles I's approaches to the Scots while imprisoned at Carisbrooke, he used the word "treacherous". I swelled up with the assured indignation that only a 16-year-old can manage: how, I asked, could he apply such a term to a monarch dealing with subjects in open revolt?

Twenty years later, I have come round to his point of view. Every generation fights a battle against the abuse of power. If the Roundheads were around today, they would see a Europhile elite busily selling its people's birthright. They would see the abuse of Executive power and the sidelining of Parliament (albeit in the form of quangoes rather than the Star Chamber). They would see the beliefs of the majority scorned and traduced by those in office. They would conclude that the country needed a dispersal and democratisation of power.

The Daily Telegraph is currently campaigning for precisely this. When the localist manifesto, Direct Democracy, was first published in this newspaper two years ago, its authors admitted their debt to the Civil War Parliamentarians. Their tract was subtitled "An Agenda for a new Model Party", and called for politicians to take a "Self-Denying Ordinance" to the exercise of state power. The localists described our weakened House of Commons as the "Barebones Parliament" and summarised their manifesto as "The Ten Propositions", echoing the 1641 document by which Parliament had demanded control over executive and judicial appointments.

Of course, if you believe that the experts should be allowed to run things without needing to worry about public opinion, if you think that the European Commission is staffed with wise and disinterested public servants, if you are happy for the country to be administered by quangoes and human rights judges, none of this will have much appeal for you. But if you have any spark of sympathy with the democratic cause, the chances are you would have lined up with Our Chief of Men.

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Dismissal? Case Dismissed!

An Oxford Professor seems to be making an issue out of the fact that the Sovereign can dismiss the Cabinet. This is said to be undemocratic, and it is apparently an argument against the monarchy.

Let us recall what William Edward Hartpole Lecky told us in his Democracy and Liberty:

Of all the forms of government that are possible among mankind, I do not know any which is likely to be worse than the government of a single omnipotent democratic Chamber. It is at least as susceptible as an individual despot to the temptations that grow out of the possession of an uncontrolled power, and it is likely to act with much less sense of responsibility and much less real deliberation. The necessity of making a great decision seldom fails to weigh heavily on a single despot, but when the responsibility is divided among a large assembly, it is greatly attenuated. Every considerable assembly also, as it has been truly said, has at times something of the character of a mob. Men acting in crowds and in public, and amid the passions of conflict and debate, are strangely different from what they are when considering a serious question in the calm seclusion of their cabinets.

Whilst I am not of a kind who thinks one size fits all, I believe that a mixed government monarchy is a good form of government, and that the British monarchy once upon a time was a good implementation of such a mixed government monarchy.


There are no absolute guarantees in it. Not in the way it is guaranteed that an apple will fall to the ground if you drop it. However, there is no similar guarantee that privately owned property will be taken better care of than publicly owned property. This notwithstanding, privately owned property tends to be taken better care of than publicly owned property. Similarly, few government systems, if any, have absolute guarantees, but some tend to work better than others.

It is long since we entered the age where, to paraphrase a son-in-law of Edward VII, King Haakon VII of Norway, monarchs are only allowed to poke their noses in their handkerchiefs. The powers of Their Lordships of the United Kingdom were reduced to suspensive veto already in 1911. We live now in the age of government of a single, omnipotent, democratic chamber and its executive committee, the Cabinet.

While the powers of those democratically elected have grown, with the size and reach of government, liberty has decreased. While it needn’t be so, it is so. While who governs and how it is governed are two separate matters, there are tendencies in who governs that influence how it is governed.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a Professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He has contrasted monarchy and democracy as privately and publicly owned government respectively. He says:

The Whig theory of history, according to which mankind marches continually forward toward ever higher levels of progress, is incorrect. From the viewpoint of those who prefer less exploitation over more and who value farsightedness and individual responsibility above shortsightedness and irresponsibility, the historic transition from monarchy to democracy represents not progress but civilizational decline.

While there is nothing to guarantee that you will buy something when that something’s price goes down, demand tends to increase when prices fall.

While there is nothing that guarantees that a temporary caretaker will do worse than a permanent owner, there are tendencies that make it so in general. While there is nothing to guarantee that a system where one can buy votes through offering “welfare” for other people’s money will give an ever growing “welfare” state, there are tendencies that make it so in general. While there is nothing to guarantee that a system where “anyone can be President” will have the worst demagogues rise to the top, there are tendencies that make it so in general.

While the enlightened monarchy may be the best government, there is no guarantee that he is enlightened.

While we have been warned by thinkers and philosophers of an oppressive majority being worse than an oppressive minority, history too has recorded excesses of monarchs.

It is thus fully understandable that monarchical absolutism was reacted against (no endorsement of outright revolution given). Medication was given, but the problem that the medicine was meant to remedy is long gone, and we see the side effects of that medication. These side effects have proven to be worse than what was meant to be remedied.

The late and great Austrian monarchist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn told us:

There are totalitarian and monolithic tendencies inherent in democracy that are not present even in a so-called absolute monarchy, much less so in a mixed government which, without exaggeration, can be called the great Western tradition.

The British system was once upon a time such a mixed government. Today’s “mixed government” is a mere shadow of what it once was. There are those who believe that today’s system is well balanced of the “three estates.” It is tempting – with all due respect – to ask how many decades they have been on the moon.

The French Baron of Montesquieu modeled his constitutional monarchy on the British model. Montesquieu’s model of constitutional monarchy gave considerable more powers to the monarch than Walter Bagehot’s rights to warn, encourage, and be consulted. Montesquieu’s model was a mix of monarchy, democracy, and aristocracy.

We are told that if the Sovereign can dismiss the Cabinet, that is undemocratic. It is not how it should be done in a democracy. We need no more justification? What the people want is right? You don’t even have to say it? It’s implicit? Might makes right?

What about bureaucracy and the modern managerial state with its “welfare” etc.? In many ways people are less free today than in the regimes that the world knew prior to World War I. Do we just say: it’s democratic, that’s how it should be done in a democracy?

What about war? If the people or the popular representatives want to go to war, and that costs millions of lives, do we just say: it’s democratic, that’s how it should be done in a democracy?

What about Hitler? If the people want him in power, do we just say: it’s democratic, that’s how it should be done in a democracy?

Hitler was put in power by a democratically elected Parliament.

Today is July 28. It is the 94^th anniversary of the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war on the Kingdom of Serbia. Let’s say His Britannic Majesty had been convinced to dismiss the Cabinet in 1913, the year before that fateful summer of 1914 that was to turn the world upside down.

Now, I am not too optimistic about what the opposition would have done differently if in power, but it is quite clear that a rather different policy in Whitehall and Westminster in July and August of 1914 probably in the long run would have been better for the British Empire and the world.

The most radically different policy would arguably have been not to intervene. Barring non-intervention, refusing to help President Wilson in his crusade to “make the world safe for democracy” by contributing to pushing the Old European Order out would have been another helpful alternative option.

But if a Liberal government with its policies is what the people wanted, we should just say it’s democratic, and that’s how it should be done in a democracy?

H.L. Mencken told us:

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

It has been said that in a democracy the people get what they deserve. It would be more precise to say that in a democracy the people get what the majority deserves.

While the history of the rule of kings suggests that kings should be checked, the history of the 20^th century indeed shows that the rule of a single, democratic chamber needs to have at least as many checks – to say the least.

It is said that the vote is a check. It is, however, food for thought which effect is mightier; the proof of support from the masses the votes give, or the one vote in several million one can use to protect one’s liberties.

In this age of democratic absolutism, Royal intervention cannot be expected to happen any time soon. However, locking the vault door and dropping the key to the bottom of the ocean does not sound like a good idea.

It is so often that we hear that the Sovereign should not intervene because it is not democratic, without any supporting arguments. If a case is brought forward that the Sovereign should not have the prerogative to dismiss the Cabinet, arguments must be provided.

Case dismissed!

God save Her Britannic Majesty! Long may she reign!

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For Liberty and Livelihood

I can appreciate the misgivings many have with Dave the Chameleon's style of politics, his "modern compassionate conservatism" con job, his excessive attention to image and public relations, his seeming want to purge the Tory Party of Thatcherism and turn it into a "New Modern Compassionate Green Globally Aware Party", to quote Lord Tebbit.

But come on, it's not all bad, ladies. For example, he wants to scrap the Human Rights Act and replace it with a Bill of Rights that is based on British traditions, he would do away with state identity cards, which is a violation of our ancient English liberties, but most of all, the Old Etonian wants to overturn the ban on foxhunting and bring back our countryside way of life. I'm not particularly enthused about his leadership, but he is at least making some of the right noises. Should we not be partially grateful?

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Whatever Happened to Britain's Conservatives?

This is the most devastating critique I've read so far, not because it's particularly devastating, but because it's looked upon with something approaching sorrow and pity from someone who has had it in for the Tories all of his political-commenting life.

THE KINDER, GENTLER TORY PARTY

by Christopher Hitchens

Britain's obituary pages are almost designed to bring back memories of a lost or forgotten world, but the news on Monday about the death of Earl Jellicoe was remarkable, at least to me, for recalling an utterly vanished time that elapsed a very short while ago. The late earl was one of those men who used to make the Tory Party formidable: a solid member of the ruling class with a strong sense of his family's obligations. His father had commanded the British Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland in 1916 (being described by Winston Churchill, then at the Admiralty, as "the only man on either side who could have lost the war in an afternoon"). That's where the original earldom had come from. George, the first earl's eldest son, had succeeded to the title as he was about to go to university and had gone on to earn several military decorations in the Mediterranean theater in World War II. Before entering politics, he had served as a diplomat in many capitals, including Baghdad, where he'd been secretary to the short-lived "Baghdad Pact," under which Britain and the United States had attempted to shore up a version of constitutional monarchy in Iraq.

Continue weeping through Whatever Happened to Britain's Conservatives?

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New British Holiday on Queen's Birthday?

THE Queen’s Birthday will become a national holiday under Tory plans to create a sense of “True Britishness”, David Cameron tells The Sun.

I do think it's a nice idea for the UK honour HM in this way, her Majesty’s realms have been having public holidays for Her Majesty’s Birthday since 1952…

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Roundhead Values, Cavalier Tastes

The Edge of England’s Sword nails it. Unfortunately I can't link to Ian Murray's blog anymore as the domain no longer exists, but suffice it to say that he coined the phrase nicely to capture the essence of his personal philosophy. As anyone who knows the history of the English Civil War, Cavalier is the word that preceded the term Tory, which was used to describe the Royalists who supported King Charles I in the war against Parliament. The bad connotation of that word (in uncapitalised form) still survives as something denoting arrogance and haughtiness, a self-important inconsiderate who cares more for his personal glory and vanity than for the welfare of his fellow man.

But Cavaliers didn’t see themselves as swaggering gallants, and in the main, weren't: The chaplain to King Charles, Edward Simmons, described a Cavalier (from the French word, chevallier, meaning knight) as a “Child of Honour, a Gentleman well borne and bred, that loves his king for conscience sake, of a clearer countenance, and bolder look than other men, because of a more loyal Heart.” It was meant as a derogatory and vulgar term, but the flamboyantly dressed, well-groomed and long-haired Royalists quickly adopted the title as a badge of honour.

“Roundhead”, on the other hand, was the pejorative and contemptuous term the Cavaliers gave to the plainly clothed and hair cropped Puritan, who backed Parliament against the undivided powers of the Catholic-minded king. Their efforts, as we all know, led to the beheading of Charles, and eventually to the adoption of a mixed constitution and a more limited monarchy. For better or worse, in the titanic struggle between King and Country, the country prevailed, and Sir Robert Filmer's defense of one-man rule in The Natural Power of Kings, forever received its death knell.

And so I like the phrase. Roundhead values means we celebrate freedom and true progress, and recognize the inate dignity of every human being. Cavalier tastes implies that we continue to hold reverence for our traditions, heritage and institutions, while showing our disdain for those who attack these. In the old meaning of the word it also implies that we reserve our contempt for the tasteless: the ill mannered, insufferable gasbags of this world, and take on those who offend our sense of self-respect and personal dignity. There is no contradiction here. We hold that society, for all its egalitarian and proletariat rhetoric, could still use a little class.

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The Radical Tory Manifesto

We, the undersigned, unite together with burning concern for the future of our country, with firm loyalty to her institutions, and firm hope for our future.

With burning concern, we note the state into which our country has fallen. We see the breakdown of family life, the loss of confidence in our institutions, the decay of public and private virtue, and the attack by an ideologically driven and squalid oligarchy on the common good. We refuse to swim with the tide, taking our stand instead on the solid ground of the Permanent Things, to which we pledge ourselves, and from the foundation of which we defy and transform our culture.

We recognise the inate dignity of every human being, as God-given, from conception to natural death.

We strongly affirm the integral place of the natural family in our common life, affirming marriage and family life as the foundation of society. We consider that the natural family, and the marriage which binds it together, is entitled to the highest consideration and the protections of the civil government.

We declare our allegiance to custom, convention and continuity, even in reform, and joyfully receive the rights of free Englishmen guaranteed us by Her Majesty our Queen, under Magna Carta and the Act of Settlement. We affirm that the civil and religious rights guaranteed by them lie at the heart of our national life.

We deny the vapid utopianism of our political masters, recognising that human beings are imperfectible. We further recognise the variety of social conditions in human society, affirming that true equality is only possible before the Courts and before God. Thus, we oppose government-driven attempts at levelling, while affirming our desire to seek Justice.

We uphold the role of the pillars of social order; that is, Her Majesty the Queen, the Police, the Armed Forces, and the other agents of the civil government in its proper, limited sphere. We uphold the institutions of civil society and moral order, such as the Church and the voluntary institutions which make up the Community, and deny the impulse of the collective.

We recognise our duty to each other, and reject moral and social individualism. We recognise the need for restraints upon power and passion, and therefore support the balanced Constitution and the rule of law.

We, who stand at the cusp of the Third Christian millennium, are the inheritors of the trust of our ancestors, who spilled their blood in defence of freedom and our Most holy faith. We who have received the burning torch from them, will not let it die, but will pass it stronger and brighter to those who will come after us. We will strive to be worthy of their trust.

In token of which, and with trust in God, we have this day set our names.

William Pitt the Younger (originally posted by Pitt here)

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The Reincarnated Whiggish Rabble

I made a New Year’s resolution to be less partisan on The Monarchist blogspot, to take the high road as it were and to avoid the excessive rants of a die-hard Tory. Because it is true that monarchy today cuts across the political spectrum, that it naturally finds support in every party grouping and every walk of life. That monarchy itself, as the sovereign representative of the people, presides over the politics and remains above the stray. As is obvious, there’s no politics, where there's no power.

But we also know that certain political parties and their leaders are patently antimonarchist in their tendencies, be they Helen Clark’s Labour in New Zealand, the rampant republicanism of Australian Labor, the devine right of Liberal rule in Canada and the sovereignty undermining Labourite Europhiles of Great Britain. These parties are the Whigs of our times, the natural successors of 1679 and all that, who follow in the long tradition of weakening the Royal Prerogative whenever the opportunity avails itself. It continues even to this day: the Conservatives as the inheritors of Toryism are still the party most supportive of monarchy and the Liblaboury are still the Whiggamores wittling it all away. Whig or Tory, same old story.

In the heyday of Whig-Tory competitive politics, when the two-party political system really took off (circa 1780s), it was the Tories under the stewardship of William Pitt the Younger who stood foursquare against Charles James Fox (photo above left), the radical Whig leader who flirted dangerously with the ideas of the French Revolution to the horror of his fellow Parliamentarians, not least of whom was Edmund Burke, the principled Whig who crossed the chasm most abruptly to stand with the Prime Minister. We are the Commonwealth inheritors of Pitt's legacy, of the British Parliamentary heritage that still survives. The two oldest political parties in the world changed their names as we evolved from a Parliamentary aristocracy (Whig and Tory) to a Parliamentary democracy (Liberal and Conservative), but the political culture is still there. The traditions and sentiments persist. The institutions exist even as we have evolved. Because, and this is the key part: The monarchy goes on.

So it is up to all of us that this continues to hold true. To fight the political descendants of Charles Fox and stand foursquare against the reincarnated Whiggish rabble. As Burke said, all that is required for the undesirable to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Well, we're doing something here. All principled Whigs are invited to join. To keep alive the legacy of Pitt.

(Originally posted by Beaverbrook here)

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Tipping Point - Part II

I am a relative newcomer to the “blogosphere”, and as such I have been amazed by the reaction to my earlier article, “The Tipping Point”. Clearly, I am neither the first nor the only Canadian who has “crossed the chasm”. There is obviously a large and vibrant community of patriotic, concerned and intelligent men and women of principle out there, within Canada, coast-to-coast, and even abroad; that has been driven to the same conclusions that I have reached. What has struck me particularly is that general disgust with the Liberals - and the havoc they are wreaking with democracy in Canada - crosses not only provincial and even national frontiers, but to a certain degree at least, ideological lines as well. There is a natural tendency for political libertarians also to be economical libertarians, and hence to reside on the right side of the ideological spectrum; but belief in democracy and freedom is not the exclusive preserve of the right. I have always admired and respected certain adherents of the left: those who are devoted to and principally animated by a concern for the welfare of their fellow man. I believe that there can and should exist, a natural and healthy discourse and dialectical tension between the constituencies that I will call “the true right” and “the true left”. The former consistently press for policies and measures that nurture and defend democracy and democratic societies, but that also allow the free economy to flourish – while often devoting great measures of personal time and resources to private charity. The latter push for public and corporate responsibility for social welfare, but recognize that social programs can be paid for only by a healthy and vibrant economy, which in turn can be maintained only by energetic and free enterprise. Both share a belief in true democracy – one in which all men and women are free to think, to discuss and to express their views, and to come to their own conclusions; one in which all such views and conclusions are given fair and equal weight; one in which the informed and principled beliefs and actions of others are respected, even where they are in opposition to one’s own; and one in which lies, deception, coercion, bribery and theft have no place.

All that being said: it is clearly the “true right” that is most completely appalled by the historical and most particularly by the recent conduct of the Liberal government. This is because, in their case, it is both the specific outcomes of recent parliamentary events, as well as the manner in which they were achieved, that run counter to their principles. The “true left” is less affected because while they may consider the method employed to be abhorrent, they support the specific and immediate outcomes. This was the essence of the NDP’s “deal” with the Liberals. I read, for example, yesterday in the Ottawa Citizen, a letter to the editor which stated, in effect, that parliament “had worked” because the basic outcomes of the May 19th Commons votes - no near-term election, passing the “reformed” budget, etc. - were supported by the majority of Canadians.

But beware: when you have to hold your nose to get what you want; when you feel the need to wash your hands after shaking those of your allies; when you find yourself using the phrase “deal with the devil” after the fact; loud alarm bells should be ringing between your ears. Even supposing that this letter writer was correct in his or her assumption of majority support for these near-term outcomes – which I would dispute – he or she is still wrong, as is the entire “true left”, in not sharing the right’s utter horror at how these outcomes were achieved. Because the truth is this: in democratic government, process not only matters, it is central. It matters more than anything else; more than any specific outcome that it might produce. The “true left” should understand that it is not simply that a corrupted process that worked against the right - and the West, and Quebec - this time around; might well work against them the next time. They should understand that faith in a process that is open, fair and consistent - i.e., in a government that is representative and responsible - is the only thing, other than tyranny and coercion, which can hold a society together for any length of time. Free men will consent to submit their wills to those of others only when they believe that they do so as the outcome of a process in which they have been heard, on a fair and equal footing, along with all others; and - most critically - that that same process will turn their way, if and when they come to command majority support. Nothing will dissolve the bonds and restraints that make a democratic society function – presuming, of course, that the society is composed of men and women who retain the capacity to be affronted by insult and injustice – faster than the discovery, by any semi-defined and quasi-permanent constituency, that the process is rigged against them.

Through a consistent and deliberately irrational vilification of their opponents – witness the recurrent “hidden agenda” absurdity, which they substitute for reasoned and specific objections to their opponents’ policies and beliefs - the Liberals have sought to constrict free and open debate for at least the past decade. But what they have just demonstrated is that even when their opponents are able, in spite of all the obstacles mounted in their way, to achieve several successive, majority victories against them, they will simply refuse to acknowledge the defeat, for as long as it takes to bribe or coerce enough “support” to their side. The short time that they needed to do so with Belinda – less than a week – obfuscates the illegality of their stonewalling in this case, even making the delay appear reasonable to many. But the second-order tragedy of Belinda’s shallowness mitigates neither the magnitude of the primary outrage, nor the depth and consequence of the reaction to it that we will now begin to see in those parts of the country where it comes as a full and final slap in the face.

David Warren has used the term “permanent disenfranchisement” in reference to Western Canada, and the term is not too strong. This idea is ridiculed by the Liberals, and discounted by many, if not most, Ontarians and Quebecers – even those of good will, who have simply not given the matter sufficient thought. How, they ask, can people who elect the same number of members to parliament per capita as Ontario and Quebec, be disenfranchised? The answer is that there are, for better or for worse, differences in beliefs and priorities, which follow demographical – and, consequently, geographical - boundaries, which for many years have placed the West outside what the Liberals, and with them many Ontarians and Quebecers, call “the mainstream”. It would be quite beside my point here either to highlight that the magnitude and character of those differences are obviously and grotesquely exaggerated, manipulated and propagandized by the Liberals; or to say that Westerners in general and Albertans in particular – those crazy “prairie preachers” as the Globe and Mail was calling them only last week - are quite irrationally vilified by the Liberals, in a manner that would not do injustice to Karl Lueger. To date, Western Canadians have borne these insults, and lived with life “on the outside”, with patience and resolution, even though their net cash exchange with Ottawa - as decided by governments almost uniformly not of their choosing - has been permanently stuck in the red. But the following should be clear. The realization that, even when they have patiently and diligently built a party from scratch, a party that took as its mantra that “the West wants in” to Canada; that when that party finally achieved a majority consensus vote in Ottawa, that that victory was simply ignored by the Liberal power, and their party criticized by citizens throughout Central Canada for having had the audacity to attempt it; that realization will change something - solidly, permanently and quite justly - in the hearts of Western Canadians. Unless I miss my mark, from now on, the Liberals, Ontario and the rest of Canada will discover that Western Canada has just checked out, and will begin asserting itself – and be damned what the Liberals, Central Canada or anyone else might think.

And make no mistake: this will rapidly escalate into full-scale political war. For, as several respondents to my last article, including Left Handed Right, MSD and WL Mackenzie, reported in comments or in their own blogs; the Liberal power structure is based on control and manipulation that cannot be exerted over a province or region that is financially independent. The oil money that is now flowing in a torrent into Western Canadian coffers represents a quite lethal threat to the Liberals, unless they can divert control of it away from the Western provinces and into their own hands. So, Alberta, Western Canada, be warned: the Liberals are coming for your money. You can bet the ranch on it. The flurry of Liberal shots about “illegal” health care privatization in Alberta represents the opening skirmish: do not mistake the real aim here. After all, Quebec is undertaking even greater such privatizations; but Quebec is relatively poor and already dependent on Ottawa and the Liberals, so the Liberals do not bother to object to it. This is all preparatory to a frontal assault intended to grab your money and make you subservient, and for the Liberals, this fight is life and death. I can only exhort Albertans and all Western Canadians to resist this attack. Resistance will not be difficult if you are resolved. After all, the Liberals have no army to send against you – they have destroyed the one Canada used to have. All they can do is refuse to send you money. If you have enough of your own, and if you can resist their attempts to grab it, you will be utterly beyond their power to coerce. Just declare that from now on you are keeping your money, that you will decide how to spend it yourselves, and that the rest of Canada can do whatever it likes, but from now on with its own money - and watch the Liberals go apoplectic. Western Canada: you have the power to break the Liberals, and in your case, outright separation from Canada is not even required. I beseech you: for your sake, for all our sakes, do not let the opportunity slip.

Quebec is the other primary casualty of the recent Liberal disgraces. But Quebec is a different story from Western Canada, as, again, the various readers of my last post have rightly pointed out. Quebec’s disaffection with Canada has different origins than the West’s, but it is no less real and genuine. From the rise to predominance of Upper Canada, Quebecers were treated like second-class citizens in their own country. Any Quebecer audacious enough to attempt to rise in the world inevitably found his path blocked at that point when his accent was heard by Torontonian ears – and it was not even necessary for him to leave his native province to fall victim to this prejudice. Certainly, this discrimination no longer exists, but let us be clear that while it may be history, it is not ancient history; and that Quebecers’ reactions to it, and the sense of isolation and difference from all other Canadians that its very causes underscored for Quebecers, legitimately motivated the cause of Quebec separatism through to 1995. That Quebecers have not, to date, actually opted for separation, is due to the fact that these real stimuli of separatism have been in true and real recession. Today, however, Quebecers must face a new affront to their collective dignity, and this affront is of purely Liberal creation. Quebecers have woken up to the fact that their legitimate voice in this country has been subject to Liberal attempts at subversion through manipulation, deception, graft, and bribery. In short, they have been disenfranchised - note the recurring theme. Quebecers are confronting the realization that the Liberals would not simply offer them good, honest reasons to remain in this country, and then stand back respectfully and let them make up their own minds, although all other Canadians were prepared to do – in fact, thought they were doing – just that. They must now decide whether they can reconcile their dignity with these insults by continued participation in Confederation. Unlike Western Canada, Quebec is not rich, although it has made considerable economic advances over the past twenty years. It is already dependent on Ottawa to a degree that, I would guess, makes Quebecers feel ashamed in their heart of hearts. So it cannot simply refuse to play Ottawa’s game, as the West can and will do. Quebec must decide outright to stay or to go. And this time around, many fewer Canadians will be able to look Quebecers in the eye and tell them that they should do themselves the favour of staying. Too many of us would now rather see Quebecers become our neighbours, proud masters of their own house; than continue as the fellow subjects of Liberal outrages and insults.

So it will be the West, Quebec, or both; that will now proceed, along different paths, to the destruction of the Liberal order that the latter consider to define Canada. This is hardly revolution, as at least one blogger has accused me of seeking to inspire. It is simply – dare I use the famous pamphleteer’s phrase - common sense. And decent Canadians in all provinces and regions will benefit enormously from the changes so wrought.

Walsingham

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The Tipping Point

As our readers will by now clearly understand, the Monarchist and I are devoted Anglophiles and supporters of the Commonwealth, and loyal subjects of Her Majesty. But we are also – like most others of our ilk – intense admirers of the United States. This twin devotion may appear paradoxical to those with a weaker grasp of history, but of course there lies therein neither contradiction nor riddle.

As William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, insisted at the height of the American Revolution, the Americans were not traitors to England; rather, they revealed England’s betrayal of herself. It was the Americans who demanded the continuance in fact, and refused the relegation to the theoretical, of the fundamental principles of liberty and parliamentary democracy that Britain had so painfully brought into the world. For the Americans, liberty was not a buzz word or a punch line. It was not something that they would see diluted or bought off with creature comforts or temporary personal advantages. It was the core, the fundamental, the irreducible basis of how they intended to live their lives and to structure their government and their society. Give me liberty or give me death, they said – and they meant it. They say it, and mean it, to this day.

With the events of the past two weeks, I have finally come to understand why the American people, whom I so admire, are so despised by so many in Canada. It is because people of principle and courage are bound to be despised by those who can claim neither. I have also come to understand, on a visceral level, what I have so far appreciated only on an intellectual, theoretical basis. I have always marveled at how the great Americans of their revolution – men like Washington and Adams, who were men of the greatest integrity, and possessed of the most irreproachable personal virtue; men for whom loyalty was a core quality – came so precipitously and violently to shift their allegiances. I now understand that it was because they encountered what exists in all things: a tipping point; a point of no return. It is precisely those of the greatest character, whose very integrity and loyalty most retard their progress toward it, who cross the chasm most abruptly. Adams and Washington had attempted as far as possible to reform the nature of British dominion over America. They had resisted as long as possible the idea that such reform would never happen. But, as if on cue, they recognized all at once that they had been wrong: that reform would never, ever come; that radical measures were, in fact, required; that continued prevarication was futile and only demeaned them; that to overthrow that which had evolved to become the opposite of what it claimed and ought to be would be virtue, not sin.

I am not so arrogant as to set my personal qualities, and my thoughts and actions, on a plane with those of Washington and Adams. But I will say this: with Thursday’s votes in the House of Commons, capping what are surely the two most disgraceful weeks in the history of the Canadian Parliament, I have reached my own, personal tipping point. I have abruptly come to see – with the force and clarity of a thunderclap – that the Canada that I have defended and loved no longer exists, and cannot be retrieved. And with that realization, I say that as of now, I believe this: what Canada has become not only is not worth perpetuating; it should be euthanized at the earliest opportunity.

What exactly have we witnessed over the past two weeks? We have witnessed a parliamentary government of the British Crown and tradition, faced with a protracted and clear demonstration of a loss of majority confidence, refuse to adhere to the most fundamental tenets of responsible government by submitting itself to an immediate and declared confidence vote. We have watched that government instead suspend democracy until its bribes and enticements to the characterless could bear fruit. We have watched a blonde Judas cross the floor, oblivious of how ephemeral her new friendships will prove; casting the will of her constituents - and with it, the core mechanism by which the will of the people is translated into the reality of parliamentary power - into the dust; for obvious, crass and fleeting personal gain. And we have watched the chief architect of this farce declare, with a straight face, that he had secured the renewed confidence of the House and assured the future of a united Canada.

As this tragedy concluded, I listened to some around me, here in Ontario, actually declare their relief that they would not soon have to make another trip to the ballot box. And in that moment, I reached my tipping point. I realized that a people unprepared to devote a single hour – without sweat, cost or blood – to the enforcement of democracy, to the assurance that they might be governed by decent and responsible people of their actual choice; that a people too selfish and shameless to care whether their countrymen felt respected and represented under the common roof; that a people too brain-dead to understand how deeply their traditions of democracy have been compromised, and how dangerous a precedent has just been set - were not worthy of my allegiance.

The Liberals believe that they have saved Canada. It is stupefying that they cannot see, that they cannot even imagine; that saving Canada and saving themselves are not the same thing. Because they can be bought and sold, they cannot conceive that a Canada that is anything other than a hollow and worthless shell might not be. But above all, they suffer from that greatest of delusions: they imagine that the universe is static. This is Canada, they think; this is how it works. Elections are decided in Ontario and Quebec. Quebecers are sleazy and stupid: just throw them some bones, and try not to get caught. And no one else matters. Those westerners are crazy; they are dangerous; they are not reading the script. So just take their money and ignore them. Things have always been thus, and always will be. The Liberals, and with them much of Ontario, just cannot conceive that all this could ever change; that this grand order of theirs might one day soon be turned on its head, and cease to be.

But it could – just ask George III. And unless I am much mistaken, the events of the past two weeks have virtually ensured that it will.

I am not a Quebecer. I have not spent much time in Quebec, nor do I identify personally with Quebec’s culture and history. In short, I do not readily identify with Quebecers; I do not naturally walk in their shoes. But over the past several months, as Gomery has dropped bombshell after bombshell, I have found myself quietly and steadily becoming outraged on their behalf. And I have been inspired to behold the rise of their quite righteous indignation. I have been encouraged by the resolution and grit of Gilles Duceppe and his party, as they have stepped up to refuse, on behalf of all Quebecers, to be tarred by the Liberal manure. And I was proud to see the Conservatives join with them in an attempt to bring this disgrace of a government to the ground. Belinda Stronach accuses Stephen Harper of siding with separatists. I would say, rather, that the Conservatives chose to side with men and women of integrity and honour, against those who lack both, and that Belinda went where she belongs. Duceppe and the Bloc represent their people faithfully. Martin and the Liberals represent only themselves, and a view of how a country should function that no decent person can share. So from now on I say: Quebecers, save yourselves; take your birthright, take your beautiful land and heritage, take your pride and your self-respect, and go. I will be cheering you from the other side: cheering your courage and character, and cheering the death blow you will be delivering to the rotten structure that Canada has become.

To Albertans, and indeed to all Western Canadians, I now say: what are you waiting for? Can you now doubt that Ontario will never, ever, give you a seat at the table? Your money is taken from you, year after year, and not only have you no say in the matter, but under the current order, you never will. Make no mistake: with the new precedents of irresponsible government just set, what has been true in the past will be even truer in the future. And dissecting the events of the past two weeks, this has become clear to me: that the Stephen Harper who so closely represents you, your beliefs, and your aspirations for your future in Canada, is hated in Ontario precisely because he represents you, your beliefs and your aspirations. What does that tell you? This is the outcome of your twenty years of work in building a party, a platform, a cause that would bring you into Canada. This is the answer to “the West wants in”. So I now truly hope that the West will want out. Really, what is there here for you? Do you really want to continue to be taxed without representation, especially when so much of what you pay is handed over to others? Do you really want to continue to be despised and mocked? Do you really want to continue to elect senators who will go nowhere while Ontario Liberals send hacks of their own to the red chamber to “represent” you, and laugh in your face?

The Americans speak of “the spirit of ‘76”. This is the spirit of righteous indignation, the spirit of self-respect. It is the spirit that made the gentle and loyal farmers of the colonies conceive as their banner a coiled rattlesnake over the words: don’t tread on me. It is the spirit that brought ordinary men from their hearths and homes into the fields of Lexington and Concord, to stand against the soldiers of the greatest armed power on earth. It is the spirit that led the great men of an age to cast aside everything they had known and served, to build something better, something greater, something that they could reconcile with their beliefs, their integrity and their dignity. Will a “spirit of ‘05” now arise here? I believe it is already stirring. The Liberals, with much of Ontario in dumb connivance, have sown the seeds. They do not understand what they have set irretrievably in motion. It is far beyond their sphere of recognition to see that far from saving Canada, they have destroyed it. A Canada worth preserving might just have been revived had this government fallen. But the very factors and forces that prevented that fall have now pointed the future in a very different direction. And I say: so be it. The chasm has been crossed. The tipping point has been reached.

Walsingham (originally posted here, along with over 100 comments. Was described as "seminal" in the Ottawa Citizen)

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In the name of God, go

In the long history of the British Parliament, few occasions have rung with greater drama than the Commons debates of May 7, 1940. In the aftermath of the debacle of the Norwegian campaign, and with the British nightmare of the ages - of continental domination by a hostile power - fast crystallizing into reality, the house of cards of Baldwin’s and Chamberlain’s 1930s “policy of peace” came finally and fully crashing to the ground. As real fear at last broke upon Britain - a visceral realization of the enormity and gravity of the crisis, and how badly it could truly turn for the nation - Parliament was suddenly baying for the government’s blood. Churchill himself tried valiantly and selflessly to shoulder the blame, at least for Norway, but no one was having it. It was all too obvious that Churchill was not the villain but rather the man of the hour, for it was exactly his prophecy - urged for years in the face of scorn and abuse - that had now become fact; and exactly his remedy – to fight, come what may – that was now so obviously recommended. Indeed, Lloyd George remarked that Churchill “must not allow himself to be converted into an air-raid shelter to keep the splinters from hitting his colleagues.” No, the anger of desperation fell exactly on target: on Neville Chamberlain and his ilk, whose true guilt lay not in any mishandling of the Norwegian campaign, but in their misguided and irresponsible rule over many years that had brought the nation, one step at a time, to this point. No actions or words of theirs could by then redeem that guilt. The mortal blow was delivered by Leo Amery, who in his speech to the Commons quoted Oliver Cromwell’s words to the Long Parliament: “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

Recalling this brings two things to front and centre of mind. First: that anger at mismanagement and misconduct tends, generally and ultimately, to be directed at the proper point, and tends to be greater and less susceptible to mitigation the more protracted and constant the offence. And second, that there is only one truly workable correction to a condition of persistent ineptitude and unpardonable or even criminal mismanagement; and that is for those guilty of such misconduct to step down and disappear, and to leave the business of governance to others. With that in mind, on the morrow of Paul Martin’s television address to the nation pleading for understanding and more time in office, and reflecting on the palpable mood of the country in the face of the now overwhelming evidence of Liberal misconduct, I can scarcely do better than to echo Cromwell and Amery. You Liberals have been here long enough, for any good you have done; in the name of God, go.

It is obvious at this point to everyone - except, apparently, to Martin and his Party - that the Liberals are no longer in a position to govern, and that nothing they can say or do, with the possible exception of spending some contrite time in Opposition and reforming themselves from bottom to top, can now alter that fact. Presuming that the current national mood survives until Election Day, whenever that may be - as all reason, honour and sanity demand it must - the Liberals’ eviction from the government benches is now certain. What remains to be established is the exact scale of the damage they have wrought upon our country.

For the catastrophic legacy of the past odd-decade of Liberal rule is to be measured not only in the damage directly attributable to Adscam, which is breathtaking enough. No; as in the case of 1930s Britain, the real rot runs deeper, has been longer in the making, is greater in its impact and its consequence; and therefore, is now all the more unforgivable and compelling of change.

Where does one begin the litany? How about with health care, the sacred cow that the Liberals invariably trot out as the Alamo only they can defend? We do indeed still have a public health care system in Canada, but it is obvious to anyone who attempts to use it that it is failing badly, costing ever more money, and delivering ever poorer service, ever more slowly. I would wager that not a single Canadian, coast to coast, would assert that our health care system is in better condition today than before the Liberals took power. Yet the Liberals instantly and self-righteously quash any attempt to explore any means of improving the system, of raising the return to Canadians on the vast sums of money they invest in it. The Liberal attack on such attempts always begins with the word: “privatization”, uttered with mock horror. That a large measure of private payment already exists within our system, in the form of pharmaceutical, dental, and “supplementary medical” coverage, the Liberals never mention. Nor do they admit that most other countries with public health care systems raise not the slightest objection to private payment for virtually any service – indeed, they are glad to see the burden on the public system eased. Nor are the Liberals honest, or intelligent, enough to see or admit that something this profoundly broken, needs some kind of a fix. No, the knee-jerk attack against anyone bold enough to consider out loud alternatives and changes to our obviously failing system constitutes too easy and self-serving a weapon for the Liberals to discard.

No matter. The provinces will, as they must, go their own ways on health care and find sustainable solutions, no matter what the Liberals say. They will be lead by Alberta, which has already declared – explicitly – its complete indifference to the federal Liberals’ opinion on the matter. Indeed, Albertans’ indifference to the federal government is now pretty much absolute and across the board. Long gone are the days when “western alienation” was the hot anger of the few; today, it is the profound and probably irreversible indifference of the majority. The Liberals have, for better than a decade, confirmed on every occasion their contempt for Western Canadians, and for Albertans in particular. In the run-up to the Second Gulf War, the Liberal government went out of its way to mock Albertans’ views on the idea of Canadian support for the effort, dismissing those views out-of-hand as “un-Canadian”. Western Canada has struggled for twenty years to gain a greater voice in Ottawa, one in fairer proportion to – if nothing else – its financial contribution to the country; whether through Senate reform, or through the Reform Party, which Westerners built from the ground up. But in truth, at this point, particularly with a torrent of oil money flooding in, they really no longer care. The latest Liberal slap in Western Canada’s face: Martin’s appointment of two Liberal hacks - probably the last two people Albertans themselves would have picked – as Alberta’s newest “representatives” in the Senate, in quite deliberate spite of Albertans’ democratic pre-selection of two candidates; didn’t raise much of a fuss, for it came as anything but a surprise. Albertans, and with them many other Western Canadians, have simply moved on. I do not know exactly where this new breed of western alienation will lead, but it cannot be anywhere that would warm the heart of any Canadian federalist.

Western Canadians as a whole, and Albertans in particular, have long been accustomed to seeing their net cash exchange with Ottawa stuck deep in negative territory. So too have they long been aware that most of their money ends up in Quebec. But with Adscam, the Liberals have accomplished something truly remarkable: they have managed, through a criminal destruction of taxpayers’ wealth, to shock and insult Western Canadians and Quebecers in roughly equal measure – and all in the name of national unity! For Western Canadians, Adscam is insult added to injury, and confirmation that the cesspool of Liberal immorality and corruption runs much deeper than even they had imagined. For Quebecers, the scandal carries the further sting of disillusionment. It reveals, suddenly and shockingly, in what fantastic contempt the Liberals hold them, that the Liberals consider bribes, kickbacks and dirty appointments to judicial posts to constitute business as usual in the province. As Stephen Harper put it last night, the Liberals have offered Quebecers a choice between separation and corruption. Quebecers’ reaction so far to Adscam makes clear what, between those options, they are apt to choose. Again, I do not know what the ultimate fallout will be, in terms of Quebec’s future in Canada, but again, it cannot be anything good from a federalist’s perspective. What is crystal clear is this: that if anyone can restore Quebecers’ faith in and respect for the federal government, it is not the Liberal Party of Canada.

I cannot think of a single way in which the Liberals - who claim to hold as their central principle a commitment to a federal Canada, underpinned by a strong and useful national government - have helped rather than injured the federalist cause. Indeed: the one policy sphere that has historically and universally motivated, required and justified the very existence of a national government – foreign and defence policy – the Liberals have more or less declared irrelevant and meaningless, in addition to making a hash of it for more than a decade. From every perspective, our most important foreign relationship is with the United States, and our relationship with that country is at its lowest ebb in living memory. I believe that the people and government of that country have never held Canada and Canadians in lower esteem. This is something for which Canada will pay a heavy price in the years to come, and the situation has come about not because we came to hold opinions different from the Americans’, but because our Liberal government could not be bothered to get past a childish smugness, and actually put some adult thinking into those opinions. On the supreme geopolitical questions of our time – the war in Iraq, the global war on terror, ballistic missile defence - the Liberal government has behaved with incredible – but, incredibly, perhaps calculated – incompetence and apparent indifference. The Liberals have consistently declined to devote any meaningful thought to these issues. Instead, the Liberals point to polls that ask trite questions along the lines of: “should we spend money on health care or on weapons and death”, as “proof” of Canadians’ support for their policies. It is a breathtaking abdication of responsibility, as if the executives of a major company were to cease the hard work of formulating and executing strategy, and instead just divvy up the cash and give everyone a year off – because “that’s what the people want”.

The list goes on and on. Our once respected Armed Forces have been attrited and abused to a point from which they may never be able to recover. Our tax burden has never been higher, and our federal bureaucracy has never been so bloated. Our economic productivity growth last year actually hit zero.

There is little else for Canadians to now say. You Liberals have been here long enough, for any good you have done. In the name of God, go.

Walsingham (originally posted here)

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Blair's Folly

Tony Blair is a man whom I have come to respect and admire greatly since September 11, 2001. Indeed, I have since that date considered him to be a living testament to a central underpinning of the enduring greatness of Great Britain: namely, that any man who rises to the top of the political heap in that country - particularly one who arrives at the summit in time for a moment of great crisis - apparently cannot but possess certain admirable qualities. Those qualities include: an understanding of history and its great lessons; an ability to distinguish friend from foe; the possession of a rational and manly loyalty to the one, and an equally rational and manly willingness and determination to fight the other; the intelligence to realize that a necessary war against a serious, determined, intelligent and ruthless enemy cannot be waged without loss, sacrifice and mess; the courage to lead and be unpopular where that is required; and the ability to think and speak clearly. It is the mark of Britain's greatness - a mark shared with that other great bulwark of freedom and liberal Christian civilization, the United States of America - that leaders with these qualities seem almost invariably to surface when the moment truly requires them. (A more vivid contrast with and condemnation of the Canadian political system and caste I could not invent, but I shall leave that discussion for another occasion.)

The clarity of thought that underpins Blair's determination to join President Bush's war against radical Islamic terrorists, and the regimes and systems that foster and breed them; and the courage and determination to act boldly in that war's prosecution that Blair has displayed; make him in an important respect a true inheritor of his Royal and parliamentary predecessors who so valiantly resisted earlier mortal threats to British freedoms and civilization. This makes one thing all the more baffling: why on earth is this man determined to push Britain all the way into the cesspool of continental European "integration"?

For the life of me, I cannot think of one single net positive likely outcome of this effort. Britain has, throughout its history, been secured as the constant incubator of civil liberties, parliamentary democracy and liberal economy; by the distance which it has physically enjoyed, and which it has strategically, politically and militarily nurtured; from the continent of Europe. What circumstances have changed, that should conspire to direct Britain's core interests and decisions in precisely the opposite direction from the compass north it has observed throughout its entire history, I know not. In this respect, I ask the exactly same question as Sir Winston Churchill in his speech of March, 1936 to the Conservative Backbench Foreign Affairs Committee. In that speech, Churchill pointed out that throughout the course of almost four centuries, and in the face of four successive mortal threats to its free security from a rising and belligerent continental power (Philip II's Spain, Louis XIV's and Napoleon I's France, and Wilhem II's Germany), Britain always chose the hard but correct path of steadfast opposition to the power which - animated by principles vastly different from those of liberal Britain - could and would, in victory and in the achievement of hegemony, only diminish or destroy Britain's essence. Churchill asked: what has changed, that we should, in 1936, regard our proper response to the rising power of Adolf Hitler's Germany in a different manner?

The answer was, of course, nothing at all; and that Churchill was able to persuade his fellow countrymen of that fact, changed the course of history for the immeasurably better.

What was true in 1936 is, in my view, true today. That is not to suggest for a moment that there is any country or power on the continent of Europe today, which constitutes a belligerent and militaristic threat to Great Britain in the classical sense. Most European countries are today, at least nominally, liberal democracies. I suppose it is this very fact which leads Blair and his ilk to think that the magnetic north pole of Britain's strategic self-interest has moved, and that that move justifies a submersion of Britain's hard-won independence and long-evolved institutions, into a European institutional hodge-podge without history, accountability, checks and balances, or record of performance.

Yet the risk he runs - on behalf of all Britons and, by extension, all Commonwealth subjects - should be self-evident from this description. What I find truly confounding is that there is nothing whatsoever that I can see to justify taking this risk, even assuming that integrated Europe should somehow acquire an effective, representative and responsible government. Britain already has one of those. So, too, does it have free trade and free flow of goods, workers and other economic constituent components and forces, between itself and its European neighbours. What, then, is the point? Is it really possible to suppose that whatever integrated Europe could ever evolve from the cesspool of unrepresentative and irresponsible corruption, of anti-American, anti-Christian, weak-at-the-knees bureaucratic paralysis, that currently defines its governmental apparatus; could possibly be better for Britain, than what Great Britain has evolved for itself over the course of a thousand years?

Mr. Blair, you called it right in casting your geopolitical lot with your American friends - with that America with which your country and countrymen truly do share a common bond, nature and interests. Do not dilute or destroy the benefit of that action by continuing to push Britain down the unnecessary and destructive path of greater political integration with continental Europe.

Walsingham (originally posted here)

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