SILK-STOCKING POLITICAL CORRECTNESS...

March 11, 2005

THE PROSPECT OF MICHAEL IGNATIEFF AS LIBERAL LEADER

John Chuckman

There are noises about the Liberal Party's considering Michael Ignatieff as a possible future leader.

It would be hard to think of a more depressing political prospect for Canada.

Early in Canada's history, the Conservatives often served as the voice of Canada's interests and independence vis-à-vis the United States. That is certainly no longer true with Mr. Harper actually having gone so far to the other extreme as forcefully supporting Canada's joining in the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Today, this role is quietly understood by many Canadians to have been inherited by the Liberals (with occasional pushes from some brave hearts in the NDP). Pearson stood up to a ferocious Lyndon Johnson to avoid joining the massacre in Vietnam. Trudeau was often eloquent and pointed about Canada's interests and its differences with the United States. Chretien made an important decision about avoiding Iraq.

Mr. Ignatieff as leader would literally represent a dead-stop to this role for the Liberal Party. He is totally temperamentally and intellectually unsuited. His views on world affairs are in many aspects those of the "respectable wing" of the Republican party. While he often uses words like human rights and democracy to reassure listeners, the actual thrust of much of what he has said in recent years serves to defend the policies of dangerous extremists and ideologues.

Mr. Ignatieff preaches - and preaches is the right word for much of what he says and how he says it - about not indulging in anti-Americanism, because you will "pay." He never carefully defines what he means by "anti-Americanism," and doesn't seem to understand that what is called anti-Americanism often is legitimate criticism of an overweening imperial power or even the cries of those hurt by its bloody actions.

Ignatieff also seems incapable of understanding that Americans actually often admire principled stands, despite grousing and bellowing their disagreement. It is historical fact that despite the stands and views of politicians like Pearson and Trudeau, the United States enjoyed a long period of cooperation with Canada, perhaps reaching its height with the North American Free Trade Treaty. It is simply wrong to make the kind of dire statements Mr. Ignatieff makes, and these statements are not advice that is in Canada's best long-term interest.

Actually, Mr. Ignatieff is one of those scholars who rarely tells us anything we already didn't know. I find little fresh or intriguing in his thinking. He makes polished speeches and lectures, but after hearing them you find yourself thinking, yes and so? Much of what he says goes not much deeper than the polish. He puts nothing on the line except generalities virtually all of us accept about human rights. He truly represents a kind of articulate, silk-stocking political correctness.

Yes, Ignatieff is a professor at Harvard, but please recall that the list of Harvard luminaries includes Timothy Leary, distinguished advocate of taking LSD, McGeorge Bundy, architect of much of America's holocaust in Vietnam, and the institution's current president, and Mr. Lawrence Summers, who has publicly announced his conviction that women lack the intellectual skill necessary for science.