If Jason Kenney is so bloody perceptive, and so amazingly intelligent, then why is it that every time I write to the man (usually challenging his assumptions...), the impentrable depth of his silence is deafening? Oh wait a second - perceptive and intelligent doesn't mean that he can debate issues and recognize other positions - that would require that he also be articulate.
I've often thought Calgary Southeast MP Jason Kenney has by far one of the best intellects -- meaning he has a deeply perceptive rather than simply an intelligent mind -- in the House of Commons.
As I read further in Mr. Jackson's column, I can only conclude that not only is he similarly unable to engage in literate debate, but that between him and Jason Kenney, historical revisionism is alive and well in Canada's Riech Wing...
This is what Kenney said on the Liberal record: "It was the Liberal party that imposed the infamous head tax on Chinese immigrants, created a racist immigration system with the Exclusion Act, interred all Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, rejected Jewish refugees before and during the war, imposed martial law in 1970, permitted holocaust denier Ernst Zundel to run for its party leadership in 1968, eliminated constitutionally guaranteed rights for religious confessional education, and preached moral equivalence during the Cold War and with Communist China today."Lessee - as I recall, one would have to point out the silence of the Conservatives (or whatever they called themselves in WW II) with regards to the Japanese internments. The Conservative party, in its various incarnations, has had its share of nut-cases involved and prominent. I don't need to point out that much of the deficit that we spent the 1990s digging out from underneath was generated under the Conservative Government of Brian Mulroney. Those living glass houses should not throw stones...
While the history books have yet to be "closed" on the FLQ crisis, it seems to me unlikely that you could argue much more than the fact that the government's reaction was disproportionate to the actual threat. However, if one looks at the PATRIOT act in the US, and the kinds of measures that Conservatives in Canada have argued for in the wake of 9/11, I can only conclude that the current Conservatives would likely have reacted to a similar terrorist action in Quebec in much the same way that Pierre Trudeau did. (Possibly even more severely)
Jackson further argues:
The Liberals -- and the Liberal-Left, both here and in the U.S. -- have insidiously stage-managed a huge charade that they are the parties of conscience and Conservatives are callous. In truth -- and in this case recorded history really does speak the truth -- it is just the opposite. Conservatives have been at the forefront not only in righting the wrongs of the past (Often orchestrated by the Liberal-Left), but in leading the way to advances on social issues, and protecting not only individual rights, but the security of free nations.I don't accuse Conservatives today of being callous - merely of suffering a severe failure to recognize that equality cuts in all directions, not just that of their typically WASPish little view of the world. Mr. Jackson, in his sneering condescension continues to accuse people of being somehow lesser than he and his disciples simply because we may choose to disagree with him.
Where Mr. Kenney is concerned, if he is unable, or unwilling to respond to communications from his constituents, then he is doing democracy itself a disservice. No matter how intelligent he may be, he is failing to carry out his elected duties, in favour of carrying forward a narrow, partisan and politically opportunistic view of the issues before this nation. The man is an embarassment to the notion of representative democracy.
4 comments:
You know, I stopped reading Mr. Jackson's column when he counted Switzerland as part of NATO. I see I'm still not missing much.
JN
www.nishiyama.tzo.com/jweb/blog
Re: Paul Jackson praising Jason Kenney: I suppose a gnat would think that a grasshooper is a powerhouse. To those of us in the human realm, neither come off as particularly noteworthy.
I've often wondered about rabid neocon pundits (Paul Jackson in Canada, Ann Coultier in the USA for example) - how much of the bile-filled rhetoric is honest, and how much is invented for the sake of the audience. I'm sure some of them really are foaming at the mouth paranoids who think their children are going to catch the gay, but how many others view the exercise as performance art?
Quixote
http://www.livejournal.com/users/quixote317/
Ordinarily, I don't read past Jackson's headlines. However, when I saw Kenney's name, it was the intellectual equivalent of an auto wreck - I had to see what the messy bits were...
Whether PJ's tantrums are performance art a la Mlle. Coulter, I'd hate to guess. From what I've seen over the years, I'd have to guess that PJ believes his own BS. Coulter I'm not so sure of.
Is Jackson **INSANE** or just deluded in thinking that he has a future as a comic? Perhaps he is a little unclear on the use of sarcasm?
Grog, you owe me a new sweater as this one was ruined by the coffee spouting out of my nose upon reading your blog - expecting an intellectually interesting entry instead I am greeted by the loud proclamation that Kenny is an intellectual heavyweight in the Conservative party.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am willing to concede that perhaps Jackson DOES have a point. Perhaps when he compares Kenney to the rest of the party that Kenney DOES come up looking brighter than the rest of his cronies (Anderson and his ilk). Or, perhaps it is a comment about Paul's OWN intellectual development when you consider that the question of intellect is generally based on one's own basis of comparison. Much in the same way that a child in grade 3 looks like a genius to the child entering grade 1 - they can read Dr. Seuss all by themselves, spell their own name, add 16 + 19 and even tie their own shoes!
Yes, Mr. Kenny - I believe that you CAN read Dr. Seuss all by yourself, that you can spell your own name, that you are capable of adding 16 + 19 (you DO have a calculator in your office, don't you?), and that you are even capable of tying your own shoes! Bravo! You deserve a gold star on your report card!
But isn't claiming "Intellectual Heavyweight" just a little over the top?
But, then again - aren't we all part of the same generation as our cousins to the south who claimed that Kerry was "too much of an intellectual" instead opting to vote for movie stars and... well, just get me a new coffee - and you had better make it REALLY strong if THIS is the "brave new world" that I have to face on a Friday morning.
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