Political Insanity

…and you’re gonna be in trouble,

hey yeah

hey yeah

PolSpy‘s back!

Babbling Brooks hosts this edition of the Red Ensign Standard, and provides us with as artful a rendition of true Canadian patriotism as I have ever had the pleasure to read.

Well done indeed, and thank you.

This is the eleventh edition of the Standard, and the second to be Instalanched. I believe we are the first Canuckophile blogging group to publish in this fashion, and certainly the first conservative-libertarian internet organ on the Canadian right. Reading my fellow Ensigners, I feel I have taken the pulse of Canadian conservatism. Obviously I have no idea whether the Conservative Powers That Be pay any attention to our maple-flavoured navel gazing–but if they are not, they are missing out on exactly the kind of thoughtful creativity that the Tories so desperately require.

…and that’s really saying something.

I found this thanks to Tim Blair. His headline is perfect. I’ll just excerpt the first couple of lines…

Women more at risk from climate change: Canadian at UN conference

04:42 PM EST Dec 15

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) – Severe weather caused by global warming can pose greater physical danger to women than men, a Canadian attending a UN conference on climate change said Friday.

“For instance, often women don’t know how to swim, so in a flood situation that can lead to a higher instance of death or injury,” Angie Daze, a program manager with a Canadian group called Reducing Vulnerability to Climate Change, said.

because I’m pretty sold on this guy too.

Hope my wife (or, as she describes herself, my first wife) doesn’t take this whole thing too hard.

…because now I can legally marry this guy.

Okay, so I wouldn’t enjoy the sex, but the pillow talk would be hilarious.

A few days ago I posted on an exchange of letters in the NatPost regarding the choice of one Ontario physician to relocate to the USA. I highlighted a question raised by one writer, a Dr. Klimek: do we want Canadian physicians to serve the collective goals of a publicly funded health care system? The unstated “or” in that question, which was obvious to me, is: the collective goals of a publicly funded system OR, instead, each of our own personal goals as a patient?

Several commenters have lamented the recent drift of the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper, including Occam’s Carbuncle and Shenanigans (not to mention Mark Steyn in my latest copy of the Western Standard). I agree that it is disappointing, in an ideological sense, that the CPC is not offering a rigorous intellectual defense of a conservative/libertarian philosophy. But I think that politically speaking, the dismay of Occam et al is misplaced. In fact, in my opinion, Harper is finally (thank goodness) learning how to game the Canadian political system.

I have written before–mostly amidst the shards of my post-election dysthymia–that the Canadian electorate is different from the American. “We” are not generally motivated by ideas; instead, Canadians (chiefly Ontarians and Atlantickers) are a safety- and status-quo-minded people. Westerners are not, nor are Quebeckers, but it is Ontario and the East Coast which has elected the Liberals the last 4 times.

Well, I have been well and truly refuted. I have been mashed into a little ball of goo and wiped up with a damp cloth. I have been incised and drained. I have been disimpacted. I have been… well you get the idea.

A couple of days ago I ragged on The Nutcracker because (a) I think it’s a dumb idea to give a child a kitchen utensil as a Christmas present, and (b) I don’t particularly like ballet.

It took a couple of days, but now tiny steaming bits of me have been circulated about the Canadian blogosphere on a silver platter.

A few days ago, the post ran a letter from an Ontario doc who was leaving Canada to practice medicine in the States. He argued that government interference with and limitations on medical practice made it impossible for him to work in Ontario.

A reply followed a day or two later from a Wendell Fulton, making the oft-repeated claim that this southbound MD should be made to reconsider, given that the public had subsidized his medical school education through provincial taxes. As an aside, is this argument ever made for ANY OTHER PROFESSION IN CANADA? ANY OTHER AT ALL? [insert sound of crickets here].

Morgagni was in some respects the father of the modern autopsy. I came across this quotation while doing some reading today:

Those who have dissected or inspected many bodies have at least learnt to doubt; while others who are ignorant of anatomy and do not take the trouble to attend it are in no doubt at all.

Doubt and caution are important contributions to debate. Physicians have a word (“idiopathic”) to describe a condition for which there is no known cause. It is not a flaw to say “I don’t know”. In fact, it may be only through the most sophisticated and careful analysis that one may come to that point. To say “this is unknown, and potentially unknowable” is to say ” I have considered and rejected all other possibilities” That’s a big job.