Time Immortal

It’s all over but leadership race(s).

The final total gave the Conservative Party of Canada a tough-nut-to-crack minority with 143 seats, nearly double what the Liberal Party of Canada managed to win (only a mere 77 seats). Not quite the result my wife and I were hoping for, but not bad either. If nothing else, it would seem to be a vote of confidence on the part of the Canadian people — confidence in the Conservative Party’s plan for the country, in the direction they’ve led it in, and in the man at the helm. That’s the lowest level of popular support that the Liberals have had since…uhm…the formation of Canada, actually. That’s not something that Stephane Dion can survive, I would suspect…although it would seem that Dion expects to stay on as party leader.

I have to admit: I’m kind of hoping that Dion stays on in the role, or at least attempts to. Such a move would fracture the Liberals, probably irreparably. But I really can’t see him surviving long in the post: his party just lost 26 seats, mostly to Jack Layton’s NDP, and I’m pretty sure that the knives are being sharpened. There will be a leadership race soon enough, and the Liberals will put someone more…well…competent at the helm. I hate to frame it in such terms, but there it is: Stephane Dion was not an effective leader for his party, and it has cost them dearly. It could well be time for Michael Ignatieff to finally take over the party leadership. Then again, Justin Trudeau just got himself elected, and I could see Pierre’s boy throwing his name in the hat in a leadership race. Jay Currie has his money on Bob Rae.

Please to cringe now, good Reader.

Of course, the Liberal coffers are basically empty at the moment. This puts a very interesting spin on things, both in terms of the future prospects of the party itself, and on the tone that the Harper minority will set when Parliament resumes. It was the case, with this last election, that the Liberals weren’t well-equipped financially to fight an election. They’re in an even worse position now, and so will have to think very carefully about undertaking any voting effort which would see the Conservative government defeated on a confidence motion. The last thing they can afford is another election, no matter how badly they might want another shot at power.

I very much doubt they even have the money to hold a leadership race at present. That presents its own problems, given that Dion simply cannot stay on as leader if the party is to survive and recover. So what to do? We saw the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada die a couple of elections ago — could we be seeing the end of the Liberals as well?

That’s certainly one possibility — one hope, I might even say. As far as this election goes, the bleak future of the Liberals is one of the more interesting outcomes. As Jay Currie notes, they’ve basically been reduced to being the Toronto Party — that’s never a good sign.

There were a few notable upsets, too. Local to Edmonton, Rahim Jaffer lost the Strathcona riding to NDP candidate Linda Duncan, which came as something of a surprise (both CTV and the CBC had called that riding in Jaffer’s favour as of the time I went to bed). The big surprise for me was Garth Turner losing his seat — that was unexpected, but nice to see all the same. Karma’s a bitch.

(More than a few people were happy about Garth’s defeat. I also note that others observed, as I did, that the Elections Canada website went down — hard — yesterday evening.)

I’m not at all impressed with the fact that the NDP made some gains, although I suppose it was inevitable that it would happen. As Grace remarked to me last night, progressive Liberal voters wanting to flee from Green Shift and Dion were a shoe-in for the Dippers. That such people don’t have the best interests of Canada at heart is a side discussion. Still, it’s consoling to remember that Jack Layton’s people are still the fourth-place party in Canada; the Bloc Quebecois picked up more seats than them. I doubt that there will be a leadership race in the NDP as a result of this election…but one can always hope, can’t one?

Now, I mentioned that the stronger Conservative majority was a vote of confidence in the Conservative Party’s leadership and performance thus far, and I definitely stand by that opinion. At the same time, though, it should be noted that it was also a vote in favour of the status quo. It’s not likely that anything will change in the wake of the latest Harper victory, at least not in terms of shoring up the strength of the human right to freedom of expression. Section 13 of the CHRA will likely remain “on the books,” although there is some hope that the Young Offenders Act will be made more harsh.

Now, the only question that remains is how long this latest government will stand. A year? Two years? Longer? It would be strange to think that any minority government would survive the full legal duration of a term in office, but I suppose it’s possible. With the Liberals all but crippled — financially and at a leadership level — the Conservatives will have what amounts to an effective majority, though not an actual numeric one. That’s a condition that is not likely to clear in any expedient manner, either. I’m thinking it’ll be at least 30 months until the next election, if not 36.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

After being branded as an anti-Semite and a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, former Liberal Party of Canada candidate Lesley Hughes is back in the news (or rather: back on the blogs) in an attempt to deny the claims made against her.

The Canadian Jewish Congress seems to have assumed that I am one of those who subscribe to a bizarre conspiracy theory that the world’s Jews were responsible for 9-11, a ludicrous idea I have never supported. As a result of the Congress’s assumption, I have been slandered as an odious anti-Semite, a claim accepted by the prime minister, by the leader of the opposition, and the nation’s media. I have also been labelled an extremist nutbar who has promoted, rather than investigated, the possibility that 9-11 was an inside job.

It should be noted that it was the Liberal Party itself which was the first to really label Hughes’ claims as anti-Semitic in nature, and who went to the CJC with them. Once that happened, the outcome was pretty much assuredly not going to be in Hughes’ favour.

Jay Currie, who basically broke and ran with this story, has this to add:

That said, it was not just a single article. You appeared with Troothers on a number of public occasions. Given that your name appears in the Troother’s publicity material it is a pretty clear that you have gone beyond the “just asking questions” stage. Something which, frankly, needed to be exposed to the voters of Kildonan-St. Paul.

There is a not-all-that-fine line between “investigating the possibility that 9-11 was an inside job” and bending/distorting extant facts to fit a narrative that assumes, from the get-go, that it was. Hughes’ writings fell, I think, into the latter category.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Jay Currie writes in with a comment about this article.

My born again virginity will come as a bit of a surprise to my three boys…

These guys can’t even be funny without being cliched.

Jay

That’s one other thing that I didn’t bother to mention in my article, but which is worth commenting on, because the comments of Scott Reid and Andrew Potter demonstrate that they — and much of the media, of which they are representative — are rather alarmingly out of touch with the concept of blogging, its fast pace, and its methods.

The dismissal of bloggers as basement-dwelling, laptop-wielding, mouth-breathing virgins is just a charicature, and then not a very accurate one. One recalls how Andrew Coyne live-blogged the Mark Steyn/Maclean’s “trial” in front of the BCHRT — at times from his BlackBerry (I also submit that Coyne is probably not a “mouth breather,” likely not a “basement dweller,” and almost assuredly not a “virgin”). My own blog, in like manner to Twitter, is set up to receive blog posts from my cell phone, just in case I’m on the road and have something to post. As yet, that hasn’t happened…but hey, I was a Scout: Be Prepared! (Shut up, Scar from The Lion King…)

Yes, many bloggers use their laptops, but not all of them do. As mentioned, I do about 90% of my blogging from a desktop PC (and then one that is not situated in a basement). Realistically, I do almost all of my blogging from whatever computer my USB key full of portable applications is plugged into, be that a laptop or a desktop.

Other bloggers I know use email to post messages to their sites (I do that at times as well), and it’s even possible to blog from one’s iPod these days, what with the advent of the Web-capable iPod Touch (the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not The iPhone“). If one has a cell phone, one can blog, from anywhere one gets reception…and many people do just that. Hence mo-blogging plugins for e.g. Wordpress. Hence Twitter.

Speaking of iPods:

And then we get into the business side of things. Some bloggers can almost live off of the money they bring in due to advertising on their blogs (sadly, I do not fit into this category either), and many have at least turned their site into a source of supplemental revenue. That takes at least a measure of business savvy. Companies like Amazon.com add to a blogger’s ability to generate revenue, by offering “affiliate”-type programs which award revenue-generating links with a percentage commission of resultant sales.

In short, blogging is not the realm of pimply-faced basement dwellers; the most successful bloggers are, in many respects, the exact inverse of that sort of person. And more generally, bloggers are “everymen” (and “everywomen”). They are married…or single. They live alone…or with someone. That someone might be their parents, but is more likely a roommate, or a spouse. They might use a laptop…or they might use any other piece of Web-enabled technology. They might be funny…or serious. They might have kids…or not. They might be virgins…but most probably aren’t. They might be religious…or they might not be. If they met each other on the street, they’d probably strike each other as…normal people, going about their respective lives. They might hit it off and have a beer, or they might not ever notice each other at all.

I think it’s these last points that really terrify the media, that scare the likes of Reid and Potter. In their day, these men would have been the voices of national opinion, and would have been the people to whom others looked when attempting to form their own opinions. When all there was to spread the news was the print media, radio, and television (all fields which it is not easy to get into), such men as Potter and Reid would have been near-kings, and powerful to a certain extent.

Now?

Well…not so much. Now anybody who wants to can articulate his or her opinion and have that opinion read by people as far as half a world away. (Time Immortal’s top five visiting countries are, in order, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, and Sweden.) And other people, who agree or disagree with that opinion, can respond, sharing their agreement or disagreement with the writer through the use of comments forms or contact pages. Massive, sweeping dialogues can occur, opinions can be formed, shared, dissected, and re-shaped, and real-world changes can occur…without anyone having to do anything so old-fashioned as picking up a newspaper, reading an article therein, and firing off a letter to the editor.

And that, I think, must just burn Andrew Potter’s ass.

But he doesn’t understand this “new media.” And when he tries to insult it, he comes off sounding…well…every bit as lame and as old-fashioned as many bloggers tend to think that the print media actually is.

Jay Currie has been busy, and deserves a ton of credit for breaking this story. Assists, as I understand it, go to Dr. Dawg and The Black Rod.

Briefly, what has transpired is this. Yesterday, Jay broke the story of Liberal Party of Canada candidate Lesley Hughes, who had for years been publishing Twin Towers conspiracy theories of an anti-Semitic nature on the internet. In one such writing, she asserted that Jewish businesses vacated the World Trade Centre in the days prior to the 2001 attacks.

(The “Jews were Warned!” meme is a fairly common one in the circles of those who insist that the most devastating act of Islamic terror perpetrated yet in North America was, in fact, an inside job or the work of the Israeli Mossad.)

Not twenty-four hours later, after initially defending his candidate and refusing to take action, Stephane Dion asked for, and received, her resignation from the electoral race in the Manitoba riding of Kildonan-St. Paul. This was a story that emerged, and was carried, almost entirely in the blogosphere — the mainstream media has been struggling to play catch-up.

And in a somewhat ironic twist, the Liberal Party’s “Team BC” website yesterday ran a story about an NDP candidate who is also a “troother” (e.g. a 9/11 conspiracy theorist), one Bev Collins by name.

Methinks that Jay has opened himself a rather large can of worms here. If you ever needed to see a quick demonstration of the power of the blogs, O Reader, look no further than this example.

Also: very sweet…I haven’t used the “Conspiracy nonsense” category in a while!

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

That would seem to be Mr. Kinsella’s contention, at any rate. Or, rather, his contention would seem to be that because immature youth of today scrawl Nazi symbols on the walls of public bathrooms, MP Dr. Keith Martin should withdraw private members Bill M-446 and all the rest of us in Canada should just not worry about the HRCs or their mission of Censorship.

To be fair, I actually agree with Warren on one point:

That look like a useful contribution to the marketplace of ideas, to you? Perhaps Keith Martin and the editorial-writers at the Globe, Gazette and Post think it is, but I sure don’t.

No, I don’t much think it’s a useful contribution to the marketplace of ideas. But, equally, so what? So it’s a useless contribution to the marketplace of ideas. Again, so what?

Usefulness is a dangerous criteria to begin to use in determining what constitutes acceptable vs. unacceptable speech in any ostensibly free nation, much like wantedness is a dangerous criteria to use in determining whether it is acceptable, morally or under the law, to terminate the life of a human being prior to the point of natural birth. That is because usefulness, like wantedness, is a side issue, a distraction, a dodge that would-be censors can use in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

No, scrawling “White Power” and two swastikas on the bathroom wall is not a useful contribution to the marketplace of ideas, anymore than drawing a picture of a penis on the same wall would be. Strangely, I don’t hear Mr. Kinsella arguing that depictions of human anatomy should be outlawed. I mean, he makes the point of mentioning that the scrawlings he took a picture of* are at “a kid’s eye level**” — if this is all about “the children,” then one would think that Mr. Kinsella, and all decent people, would be every bit as up in arms over grotesque depictions of the human anatomy on bathroom walls as Mr. Kinsella is over this bit of Nazi-eqsue rubbish. Why should some scrawlings be allowed and others disallowed, if in fact all of them send poor/bad/hurtful/disgusting messages to the children?

The beauty of the marketplace of ideas is analogous to the beauty of the actual open-air market, of the sort that one finds all over places like, for example, Greece. At a food market, you can tell within seconds when rotten meat is on display, and react with appropriate revulsion to it. In the marketplace of ideas, the same principle applies; when rotten ideas are aired, the rest of us can react — almost immediately — with the appropriate levels of revulsion. We can hear these ideas and make the conscious choice to reject them.

When ideas are suppressed, even distasteful ideas, people will go in search of them, because curiosity is a part of the human condition. That alone is sufficient argument against the imposition of censorship through the human rights commissions. That those who would seek to maintain the imposition of censorship are reduced to taking pictures of bathroom scribblings to advance their cause is just icing on the cake, I suppose.