What would Lord Palmerston do?

The violence in Afghanistan that erupted over the accidental burning of the Koran by US soldiers is shocking, but not surprising. What has been really surprising to me is the abject grovelling to the Afghan government that we've seen from US officials, including President Obama. What has happened to our political leaders? In the 19th century, western governments would never have apologized to the head of a neolithic country like Afghanistan. Britain's Lord Palmerston would have known exactly what a situation like this required

In 1847, a Portuguese Jew named David Pacifico (or "Don Pacifico") who was Portuguese Consul in Athens, had his house ransacked by an anti-semitic mob. The local police looked on and did nothing - in fact two sons of a Greek government minister participated in the riot. In 1848, after Pacifico had unsuccessfully sued the Greek government for restitution, he turned to the British government for help, since he had been born in Gibraltar and was thus a British subject. Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston was outraged, and responded by sending a squadron of Royal Navy ships into the Aegean to seize Greek shipping. Eventually the Royal Navy blockaded the port of Piraeus, the main seaport of Athens. Despite considerable opposition in Parliament and a diplomatic fire storm from the governments of France and Russia, Palmerston maintained the blockade for two months until the Greeks backed down and agreed to compensate Pacifico for his losses.

Palmerston gave a famous five hour speech in the House of Commons defending his actions:

"Oh but", it is said, "what an ungenerous proceeding to employ so large a force against so small a power?" Does the smallness of the country justify the magnitude of its evil acts?

Was there anything uncourteous in sending a force which should manifest that resistance was out of the question? Why, it seems to me, that it was more consistent with the honour and dignity of the Greek government that there should be placed before their eyes a force to which it would be no indignity to yield.

I contend that we have not in our foreign policy done anything to forfeit the confidence of the country. I maintain that the principles which can be traced through all our foreign transactions, as the guiding rule and directing spirit of our proceedings, are such as deserve approbation.

I therefore fearlessly challenge the verdict which this House, as representing a political, a commercial, a constitutional country, is to give on the question now brought before it; whether the principles on which the foreign policy of Her Majesty's Government has been conducted, and the sense of duty which has led us to think ourselves bound to afford protection to our fellow subjects abroad, are proper and fitting guides for those who are charged with the Government of England; and whether, as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he would say "Civis Romanus sum" [I am a Roman Citizen]; so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England, will protect him against injustice and wrong.

President Obama is no Lord Palmerston, that's for sure. His administration has now apologized to the Afghan government three times, even as American citizens are being murdered in their offices in Kabul. Obama immediately sent a letter to President Karzai which read:

"I convey my deep sympathies and ask you and the people to accept my deep apologies," the letter said.

"The error was inadvertent; I assure you that we will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding accountable those responsible."

Apologies for what? Four Americans are dead at the hands of Afghan thugs. He should have sent the Marines to arrest Karzai and his cabinet instead. Palmerston would have done it.

Blues for a Saturday Night

Tonight's selection: Sweet Black Angel by Pinetop Perkins.

Is it a hate crime when three lesbians beat up a gay man?

Apparently in Boston it is:

Three women identified by their lawyers as lesbians were arraigned yesterday on a hate crime charge for allegedly beating a gay man at the Forest Hills T station in an unusual case that experts say exposes the law’s flawed logic.

“My guess is that no sane jury would convict them under those circumstances, but what this really demonstrates is the idiocy of the hate-crime legislation,” said civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate. “If you beat someone up, you’re guilty of assault and battery of a human being. Period. The idea of trying to break down human beings into categories is doomed to failure.”

Prosecutors and the ACLU of Massachusetts said no matter the defendants’ sexual orientation, they can still face the crime of assault and battery with intent to intimidate, which carries up to a 10-year prison sentence, by using hateful language.

Well, here we have it folks: the reductio ad absurdum of identity politics. Crime is crime, and attempts to make someone's motive a criminal act in addition to the crime itself makes this kind of ridiculous situation inevitable. Is a violent attack less heinous when it is not motivated by homophobia? Is a heterosexual victim of an assault less victimized? Idiocy indeed.

Blues for a Saturday Night

Tonight's selection: Ball and Chain by Janis Joplin and her band Big Brother and the Holding Company, in a live studio appearance from the early 1960s.

Conservatives: go see The Iron Lady

I went to see the Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady last week with some trepidation. I was expecting the worst from liberal Hollywood and was prepared to be outraged by Meryl Streep's portrayal of the great Thatcher descending into dementia, but I came out with tears in my eyes and a new respect for her legacy. Conservatives should definitely see this movie.

It's difficult to tell the story of a complex larger-than-life figure like Margaret Thatcher, especially while she is still alive and memories of her time in office are still relatively fresh. She is a complicated subject who still provokes strong emotions on both sides of the political spectrum, so making a movie about her must have been a daunting prospect. However I think The Iron Lady does a remarkably even-handed job of portraying the life of this fascinating woman.

Most of the criticism I've read of the movie from conservatives suggests that it is disrespectful to show the still-living Thatcher in her declining years fighting senility. I disagree - I think that telling the story as a series of flashbacks is remarkably effective. We see Thatcher in the present day puttering around her house, confused and dishevelled, having imaginary conversations with her dead husband Denis. Certain things trigger memories - a framed photograph on the mantlepiece, a piece of clothing hanging in the closet - which segue into scenes of the younger Thatcher at various times in her life. We flash back to Thatcher as a young girl during the Blitz, running for Parliament for the first time, assuming the leadership of the Conservative Party, serving as Prime Minister. Key events like the Falklands War, the Poll Tax Riots and the fall of the Berlin Wall are shown through TV footage interwoven with the flashbacks. Critics have complained that the movie is disjointed and confusing, jumping back and forth in time with no coherent plot. I think that is a feature not a fault; given that the character is recalling moments in her past that are brought up by mementos and chance encounters, it is poignant to view her life through the eyes of a once-powerful figure now in decline.

Her husband Denis acts like a Greek chorus throughout the movie as she tries to cope with her declining physical and mental powers. She knows he's dead but has trouble coming to grips with her grief and conjures him up at key moments and they bicker with each other as do many long-married couples. Her conversations with Denis are some of the most moving moments in the film. Her confusion is heart-wrenching to watch. I am having to face the decline of aging parents in my own life, and watching the woman who helped bring down the Soviet Union having trouble with simple tasks like making toast and getting dressed touches a universal chord with anyone who is coping with aging loved ones. Her final farewell to Denis had me choking up with emotion, and I don't often do that in a movie.

Liberal critics complain that the movie is too one-sided and shows Thatcher as a heroic figure without focusing adequately on the negative aspects of her time in office; the riots, the social upheaval and the casualties of war. I suppose that someone who is predisposed to dislike her because she was a conservative free-marketeer will never be happy with any sympathetic portrayal, but I found the movie to be very fair. We are shown news footage of rioting coal miners, IRA terror attacks and Exocet missiles slamming into British destroyers. There are scenes showing her treating loyal cabinet ministers like Geoffrey Howe with rudeness and contempt as her administration unravels. The movie doesn't pull punches - it shows Thatcher warts and all.

The most powerful parts of the movie for me, and I suspect for most conservatives, are the scenes where Thatcher emotionally articulates her political philosophy. I read once that she walked into a meeting soon after becoming leader of the Conservative Party, pulled a copy of F.A. Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty out of her briefcase, slammed it down on the table and said "This is what we believe." There are many such moments in the film. It is astonishing to watch a politician whose actions are motivated by a deeply held philosophy rather than mere ambition or hunger for power. When has there been a leader like this since Thatcher? Politics has been dominated by technocrats, snake-oil salesmen and unctuous bureaucrats for so long that we've forgotten what true leadership is like. Who can now hold a candle to Margaret Thatcher? Certainly not Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Stephen Harper or any of the non-entities now in charge of the slow-motion train wreck that is Europe. Who could you picture now addressing a crowd and solemnly intoning "You can turn if you want to; the lady's not for turning"?

This amazing quality of Thatcher's is on display in scene after scene of The Iron Lady - when, for example, she breaks the coal miners strike or lets the IRA hunger strikers die of starvation. There is a brilliant sequence in the film set during the Falklands War when Thatcher is in the War Room being briefed by the military top brass who want her to make a decision on whether or not to attack the Argentine cruiser Belgrano - she listens to her advisers, points with a bejewelled and manicured finger to a map and says in stentorian tones, "Sink it." In another scene (shown below) she meets with US Secretary of State Alexander Haig who tries to talk her out of attacking the islands, since they're insignificant and sparsely populated. "Just like Hawaii, I imagine" she retorts, and then delivers a lecture to Haig about Pearl Harbor like a school teacher upbraiding a misbehaving student, after which she lifts a teapot and asks "Now, shall I be mother?"



There were times in the movie as I watched Thatcher at the height of her power lecturing the spineless men around her about liberty and the over-reaching power of the state when I pumped my fist a little and said "Yes!!!!" under my breath so as not to disturb the other patrons in the theater. She articulated forcefully and emotionally the core principles of classical liberalism: liberty, property rights, personal responsibility and the relative roles of the individual and the state. Libertarianism has never had as powerful a champion as Margaret Thatcher.

A few words have to be said about Meryl Streep's performance in this film. I sometimes think of her as an acting robot who is programmed to take on characters; she's often more technique than emotion. It's now a cliche that she can mimic any character she portrays and make it seem effortless; think Julia Child in Julie and Julia. That being said, her portrayal of Thatcher in this movie is flawless; she has captured every mannerism, every vocal pattern, every physical tic of Thatcher's. There is no mockery; Streep is not doing a stand-up comic's impersonation to take cheap shots. She inhabits the character; I don't think any other actor could have pulled it off. It is wonderful to watch Streep in action as she moves through the different phases of Thatcher's life, and it was extremely moving to see her poignant portrayal of the warrior in old age, rather like watching King Lear wandering the moors.

I can't say enough about this movie, and I think it stands as a fitting tribute to one of the world's great leaders. Go see it now while it's still in the theaters.

UPDATE: Thatcher advisor and biographer John Blundell likes the movie too - watch this interview from Reason.com:

Blues for a Saturday Night

Tonight's selection: Dani Wilde performs I Love You More Than I Hate Myself, from her debut album Heal My Blues, in a 2008 live performance in Germany.

Blues for a Saturday Night

Tonight's selection: Canada's own Dutch Mason, "Prime Minister of the Blues", singing Sonny Boy Williamson's Nine Below Zero. I had the pleasure of hearing him perform this song live at the now-defunct Albert's Hall in Toronto in the 1980s - he was an unforgettable presence on stage, always singing with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. Dutch died in 2006 but his legendary stature among Canadian blues artists is undiminished.

Clueless in Kingston

Thank goodness we have reporters to analyze things for us. CTV News Montreal Bureau Chief Genevieve Beauchemin stated the blindingly obvious after the verdict was delivered in the Shafia honour-killing trial on Sunday:

Beauchemin said there will be no victim impact statement following the trial. She said that may be because relatives stood by the accused throughout the trial.

Do you think maybe the fact that the victims were found at the bottom of the Rideau Canal having died at the hands of their surviving relatives might have had something to do with the absence of victim impact statements? Just a hunch.

Oops - forget global warming; there's a mini ice age coming

The UK's Daily Mail reports that the Met Office and the University of East Anglia have, "without fanfare", released data showing that there has been no global warming for the past 15 years and that a "mini ice age" may be imminent:

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

You don't say. The UK's Met Office and the University of East Anglia are the chief proponents of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis that has resulted in the hasty implementation of poorly-planned, coercive and expensive "green energy" policy initiatives by governments world-wide. Dalton McGuinty - call your office.

Blues for a Saturday Night

Tonight's selection: the late Eva Cassidy covers T Bone Walker's "Call It Stormy Monday" in a 1996 live performance at Washington's Blues Alley:

Pierre Trudeau: "a run-of-the-mill social democrat"

Don't miss Conrad Black's comments on the late great Pierre Trudeau in today's National Post. An excerpt:

Nor is there truth to the theory that Trudeau possessed any original political ideas. He was a run-of-the-mill 1960s social democrat who wanted big government, the nanny-, know-it-all-state, high taxes, and the confiscation of income from those who had earned it for redistribution to those who had not in exchange for their votes (far beyond what could be justified by the acquisition of votes for federalism in Quebec, where the money transfer was also largely from the non-French to the French).

It was hard to square Trudeau’s professed enthusiasm for civil rights with his friendship with Fidel Castro and other dictators who ruined their countries, such as Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, and his cold-shouldering of Soviet dissidents and other international civil rights advocates, and even the Canadian victims of the Korean airliner the Russians shot down. This was of a piece with his fawning deference to the Soviet leadership and his antagonism to Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and even Richard Nixon, who all regarded him as little better than a communist fellow traveller (and told me so).

His campaign to reorient the Canadian economy away from exports to the United States was authoritarian rather than based on any fiscal incentivization of competition, and was a fiasco. His pursuit of arms control was chimerical; he disarmed Canada, did nothing to reduce the country’s military dependence on Washington, and produced a nonsensical plan for more conferences to agree on the unverifiable “suffocation” of defence spending.

Blues for a Saturday Night

Tonight's selection - Jimmy Smith, the Paganini of the Hammond B3 organ, covering Blues in the Night

Harper's true hidden agenda: promoting gay rights overseas

Matt Gurney of the National Post writes that, for a government with a supposedly anti-gay "hidden agenda", the federal Conservatives sure are going out of their way to stand up for gay rights in oppressive Third World countries. In his op-ed If the Tories hate gays, why are they standing up for them abroad?, Gurney writes:

Yes, it’s true. As part of promoting Canadian values abroad, the Conservative government has been speaking out at international forums, particularly the Commonwealth, against nations that oppress the rights of homosexuals. Embassy magazine, a weekly foreign policy journal published in Ottawa, interviewed a series of experts on global gay rights, and found that the Tories have spoken out forcefully against a series of Third World countries that were considering passing laws that would have made homosexuality illegal, or even subject to the death penalty. And the Tories, Embassy notes, have also made the decriminalization of homosexuality a foreign policy objective.

Nor are they doing it only through back channels. As part of the Conservative effort to draw attention to the oppression of homosexuals, both Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird have spoken publicly against the oppression of gays. This might not get much notice inside Canada — some of the experts Embassy contacted hadn’t even realized the Conservative government was working to help gays abroad — but it is happening. Indeed, if one wanted to look for a hidden agenda, you could almost infer that the Tories are conducting a stealth pro-gay campaign abroad that’s drawing little notice in Canada.

That’s not particularly likely, either, of course. What’s more likely is that gay rights and Conservative ideology have finally aligned in Canada. Many conservative voters, and Tory MPs, may well have moral objections to homosexuality, but they also have a strong, patriotic belief that their country has superior values worth exporting, and those values include such things as equal rights for citizens, even homosexuals. As uncomfortable as homosexual sex may still make many people feel, those same people will have no trouble believing their country’s equal treatment of gays proves its moral superiority. Patriotism, in short, trumps squeamishness.

Gay rights are human rights, and that's the common ground that conservatives who believe in the sanctity of individual liberty share, whether they're gay or straight.

Blues for a Saturday Night

Tonight's selection: a live version of Buddy Guy performing Damn Right I've Got The Blues, with a virtuoso backup performance on the Hammond B3 organ.