Our former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney stopped taking his medication and is now talking to the media. Like Richard Nixon, he looks back and feels he got a bad deal from history and wants to do a makeover on his image. Although Mulroney is quite wealthy, the National Post has offered their image making services for free. I feel embarrassed for Mulroney, it is not often that someone is so dumb they lose an argument with a dead guy. There are some serious head issues going on here.
Mulroney has held a long and persistent delusion that Pierre Trudeau ruined Canada and that God himself appointed him to fix it. These delusions of grandeur are not uncommon in politics, but seldom do they run so deep. The main outcomes of Mulroney-to-the-rescue were the Reform Party, the Parti Québécois, the disintegration of the Federal Progressive Conservative Party and the subsequent disenfranchisement of millions of moderate Red Tories. Moderate and tolerant people in the Western Provinces would like to thank Mr. Mulroney very much for turning us over to a bunch of head in ass crazy lunatics. Not to mention ruining TV for ever through the untalented fruit of his loins.
We have more important issues in 2007 than what Trudeau did or didn't do when he was teething. This latest attack is not about Canada or history, it is about Mulroney's easily bruised ego, and his lifelong hobby of seeking revenge on the vast multitudes of those who apparently betrayed him. Lucien Bouchard was a duplicitous separatist? Oh dear, lets write an Opera. Who the hell cares whether Lucien Bouchard is invited to your funeral? I wish Mr. Mulroney a long and healthy life, but when he does die, I hope
this guy gives him equal time.
If I wanted to get dragged back into the absolute moral black hole of the 1980's I would grow my big hair back, re-cultivate the magnum PI porn star mustache, and go looking for those 4 inch wide ties I used to wear. But no, I have no interest in going back to the 80's.
Canada is largely a country that cannot be governed to the satisfaction of any particular group or region. Our history proves this. The fact that we did not get our own constitution until 1982 is retarded and backwards. The fact that
Freedom of Conscience and
Freedom of Religion was not legally enshrined until Trudeau's Charter[1] in 1982 is retarded. The American people got a Bill of Rights in 1789, the British in 1689, the French in 1789, the Finns in 1919 and so on. Clearly, Canada was behind the human rights curve by a long shot. The fact that we have no elected senate is shameful. Liberals should have been at the forefront of the debate from decades ago, yet it was left up to political extremists who view an elected senate as a back door to assert their ridiculous views over Parliament and the rest of us.
No one politician or party is to blame for Canada's long term issues, but at the same time Mulroney did absolutely nothing to fix anything.
Mulroney has no business criticizing Trudeau for opposing conscription. In both world wars it was a debate that very nearly broke up the country. Mulroney is not dumb, he knows that by playing verbal games with the conscription issue he can further divide a country that is conflicted over our involvement in Afghanistan. And he thinks this makes him look good?
Mulroney was much younger than Trudeau, born in 1939. At that time the Mackenzie King Government (Liberal) and the American government (FDR - Democrat) were turning away Jewish refugees from Europe. It is likely that many of those Jewish people died as a result of being forced back to Europe. To me this is a far more serious historical issue than whether Trudeau opposed conscription, but you are unlikely to hear Mulroney talk about it because it doesn't serve as a suitable platform for his vanity. It is debatable whether people in Canada knew about the holocaust at this point, or what our Governments knew about it in the 1930's. To say that Trudeau opposed conscription because he was anti-semitic or didn't care about the death of European Jews seems like a fairly ignorant thing to say.
As a person who as never known war or conscription in my life time, I consider it highly inappropriate for me to pass judgment on those of a previous generation who either went to war voluntarily, or refused to go. If you are not faced with that choice yourself, you are hardly qualified to talk about someone else's character. Mulroney was a baby when WWII broke out, and apparently has not moved forward that much.
If Trudeau said or did things that were anti-semitic, he deserves to have a light shone on it. Antisemitism is a much larger problem in our society than most people will admit. I'm not really sure what Mulroney can claim as his contribution to stopping antisemitism in Canada. Probably just some self-serving rhetoric here and there.
Final word: Mr Mulroney, if you chop the head off a dead man it does not make you taller.
Notes:
[1] The Diefenbaker Bill of Rights in 1960 was a noble document and forward thinking but it was an Act of Parliament and not part of a constitution.
[2] My spell checker does not recognize Mulroney as a word and suggests Moneybag and Melloney as alternatives.)
