Appropriate.

I had a chuckle while browsing the bookshelves of a local Coles bookstore. Mark Steyn's America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It was shelved beside a book entitled Hot Air, which I found very appropriate. It likely wasn't intentionally shelved like that to mock Steyn, as the book Hot Air is about how Canada might deal with climate change and is co-written by Jeffrey Simpson. Of course Steyn is no more a fan of dealing with global warming than he is of Muslims, so he probably wouldn't find Hot Air appealing anyways.

The copy of America Alone on display was the new paperback edition, which features the note "Soon to be banned in Canada" on the cover, most certainly intended to appeal to Steyn's fanbase by portraying him as a potential martyr to so-called political correctness.(And which will no doubt lead some future readers to believe the book was banned in Canada when it was not.) It also has a new forward, which I thumbed through for a minute or so. Even doing that allowed me to spot a flawed argument of Steyn's, in which he discussed the 17 supposed Muslims currently on the Brussels city council. The problems with the commentary on this are obvious, starting with Steyn's implication that all these supposed Muslims share identical viewpoints and will vote as a monolithic block. One would think Steyn would have sufficient knowledge of history to recognise this is exactly the same sort of argument antisemites use regarding Jews, that they're all a hive mind in service of "the conspiracy." He's also assuming they're all Muslims because of their names, and apparently never considers the fact that if they anger the voters of Brussels they'll get voted out in the next election. And this is just one comment of Steyn's. I can only wonder how many other flawed ideas I'd find if I sat down and subjected America Alone to critical analysis.

Confirmation.

This may come as old news to some visitors to this blog but I'm going to write about it anyway.

One thing I'd noticed of late visiting the magazine area of the Saskatoon Public Library is that a new issue of the right wing news magazine Western Standard hadn't turned up in a bit. I finally got around to checking out my suspicions today and sure enough publisher Ezra Levant announced October 5th that they would be going over to a strictly digital format. Frankly I wasn't hugely surprised. There had been talk for a good while that the magazine wasn't doing well, especially after they sent out an e-mail to various folks asking for unpaid volunteers who might be interested in working on the magazine.

Looking for the website on Google I came across a few comments on Western Standard's demise. There were of course the expected nonsense about horrible socialists and left wing media. The more sensible comments generally said things I agreed with. Most obvious is the problem of starting any sort of magazine in our increasingly online oriented age. There was also the suggestion that some of the big media outlets have drifted right and undercut the market for an openly right wing magazine in Canada. You can see that with Macleans, the Canadian equivalent of Time. In the past while it has gotten more right wing in its editorial stance and choice of contributors, such as the signing on of Andrew Coyne as national editor and columnist.

I also wonder if perhaps the magazine wasn't Canadian enough. I was never a big fan of Alberta Report, the right wing magazine that expired in 2003 and for which the Western Standard was intended to be a replacement for. But to me at least it seemed to have a lot more Canadian flavour to it. Western Standard had too much syndicated American stuff in it. I remember one issue I thumbed through had a column by some American pundit that had little relevance to Canadian readers. There are differences between Canadian and American culture and politics, and you just can't lazily assume discussion of elements of one automatically apply to the other.

Poor Jimmy.

I had assumed we'd heard the last of Jim Pankiw, former MP for my riding. Wrong! He had a letter in today's Saskatoon Star Phoenix. As per much of his political career it was about those horrible nasty Indians out to get everyone. Pankiw describes as "chilling" a statement by Doug Cuthand in his regular SP column that "All Saskatchewan politicians know that they can't ignore the First Nations vote and expect to get elected." Sounds like common sense to me. Would Pankiw find it "chilling" if Cuthand had said "the agricultural vote?" He's also upset that the current birthrate among Saskatchewan's Indians means we could eventually be "overrun" in the future by people with a "race based agenda." Paranoid much?

Pankiw was first a Reform Party MP, and then a Canadian Alliance MP. But its telling that while other members of the Democratic Representative Caucus, a short lived splinter movement from the CA of which he was a member, were eventually brought back into the party he wasn't. Nor was he accepted when the Alliance and Progressive Conservatives became the Conservative Party of Canada. And this is the party that accepted as members such perceived loose canons as MP Myron Thompson. Pankiw was obviously too much of a risk, and a letter like this is a good example why.

Let's Do The Same Sex Tango Again!

Stephen Harper wants to hold a free vote on same sex marriage. It's pure politics as far as I'm concerned. There's no indication that the vote will be much different than the last time, and the courts likely would quash an anti gay marriage law anyways. But Harper can tell his conservative supporters he tried. And Conservative candidates in the next election who think their potential voters oppose gay marriage will have some ammo to use against opponents who supported same sex marriage.

Some people complained that under the current situation government appointed marriage commissioners might be forced to marry same sex couples despite their opposition to such marriages. But the obvious question is how far such commissioners should be allowed to go in refusing to marry someone. After all there are probably still people out there who oppose interracial or cross religion marriages. Should marriage commissioners also be free not to marry those people? Like gay marriage such marriage are perfectly legal under Canadian law, and marriage commissioners are acting as agents of the state.