Only Justin Need Apply

“If he can do it, so can I!”

This sentiment has been bouncing around Canadian cultural and political circles lately, as the nation sees Liberal leader and noted lightweight Justin Trudeau installed as prime minister.

Specifically, as the 43-year-old Justin, who can claim no accomplishment other than surviving childbirth, is granted near-dictatorial federal power, decent people in various fields are wondering if they could also wade into politics and attain similar, sudden success.

The short answer is: No, you can’t.

The quickest explanation is that, unlike you, Justin inherited a kajillion dollars and the Liberal Party of Canada and, when he was good and ready, took up his post in the family business.

You couldn’t surpass Justin from a standing start any more than you could run a bigger cable company than Ed Rogers, or a larger grocery chain than Galen Weston, Jr.

Even as a scion of another political family, the son of a successful, recent prime minister, that tack won’t work if you’re a Conservative (Mark Mulroney, please call your office).

We in Canada don’t talk about liberal media bias quite as much, or as loudly, as they do in the United States (nor, as it happens, do we talk as much about individual liberty – and we ought to), but it is nonetheless a reality.

If a Conservative leadership candidate were as dazed and underqualified as Justin, he would be hooted off the stage. Indeed, even if that person were credentialed to the teeth, the media default is to characterize right-wingers as stupid or evil, so we’d get one or both.

So, exhaling in unison, let us agree that we cannot do what Justin just did – at least, not the same way.
Rather, to be successful in anything like the near future, Conservatives must be different from anything we have seen before, innovative, visionary, funny, and engaging. Most important, they must refuse to play by the media’s rules.

If this advice seems Trumpian, it bears mentioning that, so far at least, the approach has worked, albeit in another country. But take the recent presidential debate performances of Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, if you prefer.

Naming the mainstream media’s biases and refusing to accept their assumptions, these men are changing the nature of the national argument.

Gotcha stuff doesn’t work if you refuse to let it. But not an inch must be given. One sniveling apology or craven clarification is like a drop of blood to a school of piranha.

A successful leader of the right must reject the premises of the news media, advocate traditional values eschewed by recent predecessors, take the case directly to the people, and make them laugh (for the right reasons).

You show me a respectable, Conservative Member of Parliament, who has served in various capacities and mouths media-approved pieties, and I’ll show you a loser.

If there is no excitement or pizazz to Justin’s principal opponent, his reign will make Mackenzie King’s look like Kim Campbell’s.

On the left, the response to Justin’s coronation seems rather different and, true to form, denies the obvious reality of how we got here.

Writing in the Globe and Mail, Leah McLaren gives Justin a public tongue-bath, emblematic of the embarrassing, corporate vapidity of that newspaper and its affiliates.

Rather than depict Justin as the life-lottery jackpot winner he clearly is, McLaren carries on as if he were some kind of overachiever. This is how it’s going to be, is it?

As I’ve written previously, Justin is too obviously vacant and not of favoured ethnic background such that we have to pretend he’s a genius, as was the case with Barack Obama. Even so, are we meant to act like Justin becoming prime minister was an accomplishment, rather than inevitable?

Speaking of which, while most readers immediately appreciated the Justin-Obama parallel (and it has been gratifying to see the same, basic column re-published repeatedly under different bylines), a number have suggested that Justin is less Canada’s Obama than its George W. Bush. Presumably, they mean the advantage of a prominent name and infrastructure in federal politics.

Interesting assignment: Seek out the musings of those who characterized George W. Bush as a dunderhead who fell into the family business and got lucky. Do they say anything similar about Justin now?

For those who somehow think the comparison might be unfavourable to the 43rd president, consider that unlike Justin, who did not complete a number of degree programs, Bush actually graduated from both Yale and Harvard and became a two-term governor of Texas before winning national office. As to the competence of the two men in leading governments, we’ll just see, won’t we?

I will say, having met both men, if I had to choose one of them as my partner for a to-the-death game of Trivial Pursuit, that would be my easiest decision of the day.

As to the affirmative action component of the leftist worldview, columnist Anthony Furey opines on the ridiculousness of Justin’s quota-driven Cabinet appointments, noting that Justin himself “rose to power on everything but merit.”

The need to bean-count people by race, gender and, increasingly, sexual orientation is an absurd tic of the left in general, the Liberal Party in particular, and is shared by their closest allies: mainstream journalists.

One reason major Canadian news outlets are so unwatchable, unlistenable, barely readable and gawdawful is that they are the most glaring affirmative action racket in the country, aside from government – albeit prioritizing gender before race.

It’s not that women or members of preferred minority groups cannot perform the required tasks. It’s that those ensconced in prominent positions are there because of identity politics, crowding out more talented, intelligent and, certainly, conservative members of the same cohort.

If you are employed by a large operation, look at your own workplace. You can probably identify young, eager women and people of various colours who could do things better than the sinecured mediocrities above them who are always leaving at 3 to pick up their kid, while simultaneously complaining how sexist life is (and you can perhaps also recognize that the most common obstacle to women rising in the workplace isn’t men – it’s other women).

If you are an employer, you know how difficult it is to hire and retain good people. You are likely bemused whenever you hear some breathless news report about workplace discrimination against women, or a glass ceiling, or what a misogynist racist you probably are. (Incidentally, the irony of that report being read aloud by a 20-something woman with a Media Arts degree and earning six figures for getting the words in the right order is probably not lost on you.)

You know that if you can find a good, competent person who can do the job for a fair wage and will stick around, you don’t care what colour or gender they are (I am addressing these comments, of course, to people who live in the real world, rather than the imaginary villains of leftist fantasies, wherein liberals are always Denzel Washington in Philadelphia, or Dolly Parton in 9 to 5, etc.).

If that person happens to be of a particular sex, hue, or persuasion, such that hiring them keeps the diversity enforcers off your back a little longer, so be it, but this is not your chief concern.

I recall some years ago, being at the home of a prominent Liberal Party member, forming a volunteer committee to deal with some municipal issue. As people put up their hands for various assignments, our host stopped midway, counted the men and women, said he wanted there to be “gender balance” and so started the process all over again.

This is simply how these people talk. They cannot help it, and they know no other way to be.

Similarly, a Liberal female friend of mine, in a casual conversation about racial quotas that I should have known to leap through the window or fake a seizure to avoid, snapped at me, “I DO know, Theo, that things go best when people from different cultures work together.”

I was struck by the finality with which she made the remark, as though she were slapping down the Queen of Spades in a game of Hearts.

Since the Tower of Babel, that has been bollocks on stilts.

Diversity of thought is what matters. The rest is window-dressing at best, and a disaster at worst.

Please remember this when some gimlet-eyed complainer wails about the number of straight, white males on a panel or in a particular profession. By that logic, if you put Justin and, say, Ezra Levant on the same committee, do you suppose it would be lopsided, with both of them saying the same things?

But again, further to Furey’s comments, this touchy-feely, multi-culti, set-aside psychobabble applies to you, not them. As he points out, the Liberals are the only major federal political party that has never had a female leader, even as it lectures the rest of us on what Stanley Kowalski chauvinists we all are. But don’t expect their current boss to step aside in the name of gender diversity.

There is perhaps no more privileged, coddled, entitled person in all of Canada than Justin Trudeau. To be clear, Justin has become the second-youngest prime minister in Canadian history by virtue of being a wealthy, white, male heir of a family business, bearing its brand name as his own, assisted by an ideologically uniform news media, and exempted from the credentialing requirements and professional rigours of any adult reading this column.

In short, Justin is the beneficiary of the precisely the same patriarchal, Old Boy nepotism of which the left incessantly accuses the rest of society.

Which is why, my aspiring conservative compatriots, we cannot hope to achieve success the same way – nor should we want to.
It is not in our nature to divvy people up by skin colour, sex and proclivity. We believe that, at long last, it is time to treat people, simply, as people.

Let us rise or fall, sink or swim, tumble or soar based on our own merits. That is our game. Let’s not play theirs.

If we can meet this challenge with vigour, wit, wisdom and good humour we may yet, to borrow a phrase, take our country back.

Theo Caldwell is taller than he looks. Contact him at theo@theocaldwell.com

Liberals vs. Liberty

What’s in a name?

As Canada is about to rediscover good and hard, “Liberal” has precious little to do with “Liberty.”

You know the story. If there’s someone telling you what you can say, what you should eat, what car you’re allowed to drive and where you can smoke (answer: nowhere, you racist!), chances are they’re a liberal.

It is possible the starry-eyed younger voters who allegedly propelled Liberal leader Justin Trudeau to victory in last week’s federal election might not mind so much, being the generation of playdates and bicycle helmets and having everything planned and monitored for them. Then again, as always with these things, it is a matter of degree, and experience.

Justin’s priorities read like a liberal Luther’s list of approved pieties, with the sanctity of gay marriage and abortion on demand prominent among them. True to leftist form, there is no tolerance for dissent, either within his party or, increasingly, in the country at large.

On gay marriage, one can hear the squeals already: “It’s the law of the land! Don’t tell me who I can love! Go back to Alabama!”

Fair enough. But what is significant about this issue is the revisionist history and totalitarian mindset it represents.

What is most Orwellian is not the redefinition of marriage, but the way in which we are all obliged to pretend this was always the way of things. Twenty seconds ago, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and even Canada’s two previous Liberal prime ministers, Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, assured the public that “gay marriage” was something they opposed.

Now, we are all meant to pretend this was a ceaseless, decades-long struggle for “equality” in which the forces of darkness were, at long last, defeated in the Supreme Courts of Canada and the United States.

That Twilight Zone aspect to the gay marriage debate (as much as there is one anymore) is peculiar enough. But then we get to the liberty-squelching overreach at hand.

What is gay marriage, really, other than the government dictating to religious people and institutions the new terms of their most important sacrament?

Spare me the silly-bears about about “telling people who they can love” (the disingenuousness of that plaint only slightly more grating than its dreadful grammar). Love whomever you like, it says here.

Like most limited government advocates, I concur with Dennis Miller’s philosophy on sexual matters: I don’t care if you enjoy stuffing an armadillo down your pants, just don’t ask to borrow my armadillo.

Indeed, having experienced the bureaucratic nightmare that attends even traditional marriage, I propose that government should get out of the nuptial game altogether. Where are the “separation of church and state” warriors on this one?

Marriage does not belong to government – or at least, it should not – but, in the liberal mindset, everything does.

This is why they gush molten idiocy like, “Government is just another word for the things we choose to do together.” No it isn’t. “Government” is a word for the next thing liberals want to control.

If you oppose, or even question, the liberal agenda, you are plainly corrupted by bigotry, or Big Oil, or the Koch brothers or, of course, the Bible (Incidentally, is the Koran okay with gay marriage? Could someone please check?)

But oh, yeah – “love wins.”

Speaking of which, the Bible comes in for a lot of grief from people who haven’t read it (conversely, the Koran gets Spartans at Thermopylae-type defence from people who haven’t read it, either).

Differ even slightly from politically correct orthodoxy and some liberal theologian with a nose ring will be right there to tell you to keep your Bible off her body.

And yet, there are more rules in a campus conduct code than in the entire book of Leviticus.

Even Moses came down the mountain with only Ten Commandments. Thanks to liberals, there are more than that for putting out your trash.

Jesus had two main instructions: Love God and love one another.

Liberals are at their insufferable, preening worst when lecturing Christians on what Jesus would do. These are people who embrace and proclaim the caricatures of Christians as either paedophile priests or the town elders from Footloose.

Return to the topic of abortion from my previous column, and the comfort of men like Justin and Obama with ending the life of a fully formed baby, or leaving it to die on a table if it survives an abortion attempt.

On whose side do you think Jesus would come down – that of the wealthy, well-fed doctors and their liberal enablers, or the mewling infant, struggling for life?

Jesus was on the side of the powerless. In our culture of victimhood, the powerful are those who can accuse others of bigotry. That option is unavailable to speechless infants, in a world where we are ordered to declare an unborn child’s life is “between a woman and her doctor.”

Justin defends his abortion stance as wanting “to protect people from having the beliefs of others imposed upon them.” But how is ending a baby’s life in the name of extremist ideology not precisely the opposite?

Liberals want to take away every liberty that little person will ever have.

Jesus had a temper, and he hated some things – lies and hypocrisy come to mind (wealthy environmentalists who fly around on private jets while lecturing others on how to live might consider how this is applicable).

But being as they are so often in error yet never in doubt, I swear, if he were around today, liberals would accuse Jesus of not being Christ-like.

To be sure, Jesus loved his fellow man (so much so, he gave his life for them), but that didn’t mean he went about grinning like an imbecile, bro-hugging everyone like a Burning Man hippie no matter what they did.

He didn’t tell the adulterous woman, “Keep up the good work.” He said, “Go, and sin no more.”

But sin, to the liberal mindset, is very much as Obama defined it: “Being out of alignment with my values.”

Nice work, if you can get it: You get to decide what’s right and wrong, both for yourself and, if you are fortunate enough to achieve high office, for everyone else as well.

Speaking of Obama, a mantra of American liberals is that his presidency failed because Republicans fought him on every issue. Lost on them is that this is precisely how the government is supposed to work. Congressional Republicans were also elected, by the half of America who do not share Obama’s worldview.

Justin will have no such institutional impediments, as a Canadian prime minister with a majority is not inconvenienced by the checks and balances of the American system.

Even so, those of us who speak out against him know we will be labelled enemies of “progress.”

Again, liberals are unacquainted with liberty, benighted to the notion that other visions might hold merit, and therefore all opposition is considered insolence, if not blasphemy.

“Conservative” is similarly a misnomer, by the way, albeit less significant at the moment, as Justinian the First takes up the seat of St. Pierre.

We who aver that government should play a smaller role in daily life, colloquially and as a matter of party affiliation, are termed “conservative.”

In fact, rather than wishing to conserve old systems, we are eager to engineer new ones, part of which involves getting government out of things they have controlled for some time (and for many of us, this includes decriminalizing marijuana and ending America’s idiotic “War on Drugs”).

We believe your property should be yours to do with as you see fit, that your words should be your own to speak and defend, that all lives matter, no matter what colour or how small, and that you, as Thoreau articulated, should be free to live the life you’ve imagined and go confidently in the direction of your dreams.

But again, it is liberals, not conservatives, who hold power today. And don’t they know it.

Liberals are the speech police, the diversity enforcers, the abortion absolutists, the peanut allergy pantywaists, the no-smoking scolds, the conformity Cosa Nostra, and the environmentalist goon squad. But they are not champions of liberty.

Theo Caldwell is a quiet man who’s had enough. Contact him at theo@theocaldwell.com

Canada is Over

Nice little country we used to have.

For right-thinking Canadians, election night was about as cheerful as the Red Wedding. Now, as we enter the reign of Justin, First of his Name, we must confront a painful reality: Canada is finished.

This is not merely a political truth. Culture trumps politics.

There is no question a hollow, misguided leader can cause tremendous damage, particularly in Canada where a prime minister with a majority has near-dictatorial power. What is much more important, however, is what it says about a people that they would elect such a leader in the first place.

In an election night musing, CBC’s Peter Mansbridge recalled prime minister-designate Justin Trudeau saying he is always underestimated.

People didn’t underestimate Justin, they overestimated Canadians – specifically, the capacity of the nation’s electorate to know a dimwit when they see one.

I have previously written that Justin is Canada’s Barack Obama. This is true not only inasmuch as both are embarrassing ciphers, but the election of each of these men heralds the end of once-great nations.

To understand this is to comprehend that America, too, is over.

Under Obama, America has taken on more debt than any entity in global history. Nearly 100 million Americans no longer work, and an increasing number of citizens see this as normal.

Internationally, Obama has abdicated the role of leader of the free world on behalf of future presidents.

Culturally, too, the nation is perpetually honked off, divided, and dumb as hell. Again, Obama cannot be blamed for all this, but he both reflects and exacerbates the condition.

Furthermore, electing such a person ratifies political correctness as national policy.

Some have said that racism in America was almost dead until Obama. This is one of those notions that could never find purchase in mainstream discussion. Racism as a concept, business model and organizing principle is alive and well, even as it has been crushed at the individual level.

Socialists love people in groups of a million or more so, while no decent person would behave as or associate with a “racist,” it is constantly claimed that “racism” is everywhere.

Neither you, gentle reader, nor anyone you socialize with would dream of overtly deriding or excluding someone because of their sex or skin colour.

And yet your school, places of employment and worship, your local media outlets and your government do just that as a matter of course.

Certainly, they do so in opposite terms from what we are conditioned to expect – that is, they reverse the targets of bigotry from those portrayed in movies, on TV and in the New York Times – but they are perfectly at ease limiting the number and influence of a particular race (if that race is white, or in the case of college admissions, Asian), and they are utterly unembarrassed to afford special privileges and less demanding standards to races they prefer.

Thus, since 2008, we have been bombarded by the nonsensical insistence that Obama became president despite his race when everyone, with the possible exception of Obama himself, knows he was elected because of it.

In Canada, it is more often gender than race that raises leftist hackles, and Prime Minister Justin promises to continue the Liberal Party policy of set-asides for women.

Taken to its logical conclusion, this would suggest Justin himself should have eschewed the leadership in favour of some distaff colleague, but this disregards a crucial caveat: If you are a wealthy, white, male scion of a political dynasty, and a leftist, you basically have to kill someone to be barred from national office.

This is but one, small instance whereby objective governance will be replaced by political correctness which, as many have observed, is merely totalitarianism masquerading as politeness.

Case in point, in his victory speech, Justin stressed the “positive” nature of his campaign and vision for Canada.

This might seem familiar to readers on the right. By now, you should be used to hearing that if you differ from the statist, politically correct silly-bears of a liberal you are “negative.”

Let’s take a couple issues at random and see how that translates.

On abortion, Justin refuses to say at what stage an unborn child merits some protection and deserves to be respected as a person. In this, he is again similar to Obama who, while an Illinois state senator, repeatedly fought to prevent infants born alive after botched abortions from receiving medical care.

This is “positive”?

Justin has gone so far as to ban anyone with misgivings about abortion at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason, from running as a Liberal Party candidate.

To be clear, for “positive” guys like Justin and Obama, a fully formed baby can be mutilated and killed in the womb, or left to die on a table because, y’know, women.

If this is how you think, you’re not only an idiot, you’re an evil idiot.

Speaking of evil, how about ISIS?

Asked to explain just when he might commit Canada’s military to a cause, if he cannot summon the will to fight these monsters who burn people alive in cages and rape and murder by the thousands, Justin has no answer.

This is because, confronted by true evil, the liberal mind will do almost anything to avoid calling it by its name.

They’ll bandy the word “evil” around, but will only apply it to domestic political opponents like Stephen Harper and George W. Bush, or to people who oppose bike lanes.

A man will convince himself of any number of things, rather than accept an uncomfortable truth. And Trudeau, leftist that he is, believes in nothing but “climate change,” a “woman’s right to choose,” and the indispensability of leave-in conditioner.

We know that in both Canada and the United States, there are many people who share the skewed priorities of Justin and Obama, but they have only recently achieved electoral consequence.

It was bad enough for Justin’s party to choose him as leader. But the Liberals, like the Democrats, have long been a Star Wars bar scene of freaks and nasties. When an entire nation makes the same mistake, however, it’s like volunteering to be Alderaan.

So, when millions of Canadian voices cry out in both official languages, only to be suddenly silenced, you’ll know the reason why.

In Trudeau, Obama will have competition for the title of most politically correct leader in world history. Consequently, freedom will suffer in Canada.

This is because leftist dogma, as embodied by Justin, tolerates no dissent. Moreover, it has an infuriating tendency to declare differing opinions to be illegitimate – even criminal.

It is a worldview in which wanting to keep your own money is “greed,” while confiscating other people’s is not; where Muslim terrorists are not a threat but “climate change” is; where babies’ lives can be snuffed out, subject to the almighty “rights” of “women” – unless those women have the misfortune to live in Syria, in which case they’re on their own.

As with anyone, Justin has mannerisms that are difficult to take, particularly for those of us who are naturally disenchanted by him. For instance, he intermittently hisses “my friends” throughout his speeches, and the sound of him saying “merci” is like someone chewing a banana next to your ear.

But beneath these superficialities lurks the menace of an untrammeled ruler who will grinningly cripple our economy, hasten our capitulation in the war on Islamic terror, and replace what was left of individual freedom and self-sufficiency with fashionable nonsense and government largesse.

And when this Maple Syrup Messiah and his kakistocracy begin to falter, do not expect them or their acolytes to accept responsibility. As Mark Steyn points out, a flailing Justin will blame his predecessor, the competent but monumentally unlikable Harper, as Obama blames Bush to this day.

But there is, for those who care to look, a sliver of hope. Our forefathers forged this nation out of ice and muck and beaver crap. Perhaps, when Justin is done wrecking everything, we can do so again. It will never be the same – a nation never comes all the way back from electing someone like Justin – but we may yet salvage a piece.

Here’s hoping it will be a country where we speak the truth, defend the defenceless, and stand for something once again.


Theo Caldwell is THAT guy. Contact him at theo@theocaldwell.com

Justin Trudeau is Canada's Barack Obama

If polls are accurate, an irredeemable nincompoop is about to be become leader of this nation.

The above sentence might have appeared in any number of newspapers in the United States during the unfortunate autumn of 2008.

Alas, it is written in and of my beloved Canada.

Having learned nothing from the past seven years of American decline under President Barack Obama, Canada is poised to elect its own media-approved, know-nothing dilettante in the person of Justin Trudeau.

Justin’s father, Pierre, was a Castro-snuggling socialist and among the most consequential prime ministers in Canadian history. Justin evinces the worst traits of his father, without any of the senior Trudeau’s qualities; to wit, he embodies an utterly unexamined, leftist worldview, while possessing none of the intellectual heft or professional accomplishment to back it up.

One upside is that with Justin, unlike Obama, you can point out the unmistakeable truth that he is a dimwit without being called, y’know, a racist.

Relatedly, we have been spared the enforced soft bigotry of having to pretend Justin is a genius or a brilliant speaker, as was the case with Obama. As to that last, many conservative commentators consented, Stockholm Syndrome-style, with even the great Jonah Goldberg claiming Obama “constructs cathedrals with his words.”

To anyone with ears to hear and courage to bear the scarlet R, Obama was never a good speaker. From the disingenuous address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention that launched his career, to the dithering um’s and ah’s and grammarless, soul-crushing lectures we have come to know, the man is a self-important bore. Obama’s oratory is like sitar music, in that a certain segment of society supposes it looks good on them to pretend they like it, but no one really does.

His plodding, pseudo-thoughtful cadence is that of the faculty lounge – which is also where his politics originate and end.

Justin, likewise, shows no evidence of understanding, or even having contemplated, any political theory beyond precisely what you would expect from a high school drama teacher.

Case in point, when asked the first thing he would do as prime minister, Justin replied, “Call the premiers together, talk about climate change.”

Children speak this way – perhaps your children, because they hear this kind of nonsense all day long from their teachers. But in the real world, actual adults know this is nonsense.

Even if one believes the direst predictions of Al Gore, David Suzuki and noted thinker Leonardo DiCaprio, the notion that having yet another conversation about “climate change” is the first thing a newly elected head of government should do is mind-bendingly stupid.

Further to stupid, Obama is and always was a dumb guy. To cite a few examples at random: When Charlie Gibson challenged him on capital gains taxes in 2008, correctly noting that lower rates lead to higher revenues and that 100 million Americans paid that tax, Obama responded that he would raise the rate anyway, in the name of “fairness.”

Setting aside your views on tax policy, or even basic arithmetic, it seemed clear from Obama’s tone that on the eve of being elected president of the United States, the concept of lower tax rates leading to higher revenue had never even occurred to him before.

In trying to sell Obamacare (and I could shorten this example to just “Obamacare”), he advanced the scenario that pediatricians, doubling as specialists, were spurred by profit-motive to misdiagnose America’s moppets into millions of unnecessary tonsillectomies.

Finally, as Commander-in-Chief of the US military, no matter how tired you might be or whether it’s written phonetically in your teleprompter, you do not repeatedly refer to a “Navy Corpse-man” if you have any brains at all.

And yet, his capacity for self-examination having been vandalized by guilt-ridden liberals telling him he’s brilliant his whole life, Obama really does think he’s smarter than you.

Justin has no such excuse (or impairment). Even so, as a man of the left, his mouth-breathing imbecility is smoothed over by compliant journalists. So when he expresses admiration for communist China, or claims that deficits are a measure of a country’s success (will this be Greece’s century, then?), or says we must reconsider such concepts as space and time, your betters in the news media give it maybe a day, if they must, before the tongue-bathing recommences.

This is how Obama got elected, and it may well work for Justin. In Obama’s case, cringe-inducing ignorance and unscrutinized socialism (not to mention, decades spent listening to a vicious, race-baiting pastor) were crowded out by silly-bears about “Hope” and “Change.”

For Justin, the subterfuges are his “energy” and “youth.”

Canada’s Conservative Party has unwittingly aided this characterization with their slogan that Justin is “Just not ready.” The misbegotten implication is that Justin will eventually become ready.

Experience is irrelevant if your foundation is faulty. If you’re wrong, being wrong for a long time is no help (Joe Biden, please call your office).

A recent caller to my radio program proclaimed that he would vote for Justin solely because he is “young.” By that logic, wouldn’t Canada be better off choosing a prime minister somewhere in that sweet spot between when Justin believes a baby is too developed to abort (when is that, anyway?) and when he goes to his first hockey practice?

Besides which, as with Obama, there was never anything new about Justin’s ideas.

Command economies, central control, and punitive tax rates have been tried in countries large and small, all over the world, and they have never worked – never mind that the totalitarian impulse and religious political fervour that animate the left have killed 100 million people in the last century.

But explaining this to leftists is like playing a game with a child (or playing golf with Bill Clinton). They always want a do-over.

Even so, one suspects that Justin, like Obama, doesn’t even know this much. He really thinks he is something new, and that there is only one acceptable ideology, having given no more thought to limited government than to chuckle at Republican caricatures on The West Wing.

But even here, assuming Justin knows nothing of the outside world, existing as an intellectual bubble boy sealed off from infectious ideas, his own policies are incoherent.

Consider his plan to increase mandatory pension payments from workers and employers. It should be immediately apparent to even the most average mind that this will reduce the take-home pay of working Canadians, while placing costs on employers and thereby hurting the job market.

It is reminiscent of do-gooder leftists who demand increases to the minimum wage, no matter how clearly you demonstrate that this reduces the number of available jobs, hurting the very people they purport to help. There is no teaching these types. Like Obama being asked about capital gains, they want “fairness” and the facts be damned.

In examining Justin’s tax policies, including his sinister, government-speak euphemism that he will “ask” high earners to pay more (try saying “no” – watch what happens), many suggest that Justin is working against his own self-interest, since he himself is rich. Here, they commit the common mistake of conflating net worth and income.

Justin is indeed rich, having inherited millions of dollars. This has insulated him from a number of things (besides heterodox ideas), including concerns over payroll taxes. At no point in his life would the mandatory increase in pension payments he proposes have affected him at all.

This is why some of the most strident leftists in public life are wealthy – from the House of Commons to the US Congress, from the Trudeaus to the Kennedys. They do not work for a living, and any income they earn is irrelevant to their returns on capital. Even if they were to reduce their own investment income through taxation, the orders of magnitude are such that they would never notice. They don’t know what it’s like to have to reduce the family budget to accommodate a tax hike, but they do know what’s best for everyone else.

Always, I prefer to light a candle than curse the darkness. As of this writing, there remains hope that Canada will come to its senses and return an imperfect, but best-available person to power in Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

But, if current trends continue and Canadians elect an obvious mooncalf to lead the country, no one can say they weren’t warned.

Theo Caldwell is a host on Newstalk1010 Radio. Contact him at theo@theocaldwell.com

Acceptable Imbeciles

In this age of information, with the record of socialism’s consequences readily available, to remain a person of the left is to be, as Cicero described those ignorant of history, “forever a child.”

Not only is perpetual adolescence evident in those on the left and the politically disinterested (for whom cultural leftism represents the path of least resistance), it is often celebrated in their leaders.

For those of us further to the right (for short, let’s call ourselves People With Some Idea of the Destruction Left Wing Ideas Wrought Over the Last Century), this is precisely how we view those on the other side, whether we realize it or not.

Consequently, when we see Justin Trudeau rise in defence of some antiquated idiocy he clearly does not comprehend, or Elizabeth May throw up all over herself in an attempt to be “edgy,” we may kick up a fuss for a few days, but we let it pass since, candidly, we expect no better of them.

First, to May. The Greatest Columnist in the World, Mark Steyn, averred on Toronto radio that the Green Party poobah was not drunk when she issued her recent cringe-inducing, Khadr-praising, profanity-laced diatribe at the Ottawa Press Gallery Dinner, but is simply so cloistered among her juvenile fellow travelers that she thinks this is what passes for wit. Perhaps.

Whether May was topped up on organically brewed firewater or not, is anyone genuinely surprised that she would utter such nonsense, or that she would retain her position after doing so? Of course not – it’s just another leftist leader saying dumb things and facing zero consequences as a result.

Justin, meanwhile, made fewer headlines than he should for telling the House of Commons that “benefitting every single family is not what is fair.” As Liberal leader, and a breathtaking ignoramus even by the standards of his predecessors, Justin prefers to pick and choose who benefits from government largesse, rather than craft the best policy for the nation. Moreover, he is utterly benighted as to the consistent result this approach has achieved.

In the case of both May and Trudeau, these are the acts and ideas of children. Once again, search your heart: Are you surprised?

Thus, the familiar right-wing plaint, “If a conservative did the same thing, there’d be hell to pay” is rendered moot.

Conservatives are invariably the adults in the room. We cannot live down to the puerile level of the left, and an argument that presupposes we might goes nowhere. It’s like the Ray Romano routine about how if your 3-year-old names all her toes, it’s cute, but when Grandpa does it, it’s a tragedy.

If you have some idea what’s going on in the world, and coherent notions about life and human nature, you will be on the right. If not, you likely consider Justin a born leader and think May was “speaking truth to power.”

Of the two, Justin is by far the more consequential. While May is a self-serving sideshow, nominally representing a gaggle of greened-over weirdos and cop-out artists, whose response to difficult policy questions is to retreat behind environmentalist bromides or spew schoolyard inanities, there is a decent chance Justin will be Prime Minister someday.

Whether or not this comes to pass, the fact that it is a possibility is an indictment not only of the left, but of every voter who squanders this country’s cultural heritage by failing to recognize an idiot when he sees one.

And no Old Testament prophet gave clearer signs. Coupled with his remarks, just take an objective gander at his expression. Beneath the veneer of cosmopolitan competence is a pained, confused look like Zoolander workshopping Magnum. Left or right, simply look at this man and listen to his bleatings. There’s nobody home and you know it.

This did not begin, nor will it end, with Trudeau and May. Decades ago, Liberal Sheila Copps, as ridiculous a public figure as Canadian politics has ever produced, was Deputy Prime Minister. None who remember her from those days, or who have heard her policy silly-bears lately (“global warming” continues to haunt her nightmares, Sheila not having been hipped to the updated, CYA, catch-all term, “climate change”) could look to her for rational, grown-up leadership.

Copps remains perpetually aggrieved and animated by befuddled feminism, as though leftist women were signatory to Section 5 of NATO – an attack on one is an attack on all. Yet this absurdity was placed a heartbeat away from wielding benign dictatorship over the nation.

In this way, Trudeau, May, et al., are a continuation of an age-old tradition, of whom Copps was merely a generational marker.

Of course, this phenomenon is not peculiar to Canada. Democrats Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Hank Johnson (who famously worried aloud if excess population could cause Guam to capsize) stand as living testaments to the American left’s tolerance for dimwittedness.

Lenin infamously contended that “useful idiots” in the West would enable the spread of communism. At least Lenin had an agenda (and, tragically, a fair degree of prescience).

Today, the left elevates acceptable imbeciles not out of some ideological imperative but because, like children, they don’t know any better.

Theo Caldwell is a host on Newstalk1010 Radio. Contact him at theo@theocaldwell.com

People Who Won't Be President

We must remember that Democrats are not like normal people. In their world, Barack Obama is a brilliant, inspiring speaker and Joe Biden should be trusted with scissors.

It is within this context that someone like Hillary Clinton, a canker sore of a public figure, is considered a natural, even inevitable, leader. Notwithstanding Mrs. Clinton's recent email fiasco - true to form, it combines Tsarist arrogance with her usual, Exorcist-style projectile vomit of lies - one expects she will run for president. It is her nature.

What would she do with herself if she weren't attempting to run your life? No matter your background, you have always known such people. They are the hall monitors, the student council scolds, the home owners' association snoops. They cannot imagine you could make do without them, and they are fearful to let you try. Mrs. Clinton has to run. She owes you that much.

There are, certainly, other prominent Democrats contemplating a bid for the presidency. Copious press photos of former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley playing guitar in sleeveless t-shirts suggest he aspires to high office. The absurd Elizabeth Warren is often mentioned, having advanced her career by claiming Cherokee heritage, despite her blonde-haired, blue-eyed visage giving her the distinct appearance of one of the Village of the Damned kids all grown up and granted Harvard tenure.

Meanwhile, somewhere, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo searches the skies like Prince Humperdinck tracking a falcon on a cloudy day, hoping for a sign that his time has come.

The upshot is the Democratic nominee for president will almost certainly be one of four people - and Mrs. Clinton counts for three of them.

On the Republican side, in this contest and in life, some measure of practicality is appropriate. News outlets plaster exponential Brady Bunch photo grids across the screen, suggesting any one of dozens of candidates could capture the GOP nomination. Whether this is undertaken sincerely or simply as fodder for panelists, it is monumental silly-bears. One need not go so far as to predict a winner at this early stage (although this column would be unsurprised to see Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker inviting Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush to join him on the ticket next year), but it insults intelligence and beggars belief to suggest that so many pretenders are credible.

Like Cliff Clavin naming three people who have never been in his kitchen, this list is nowhere near comprehensive. Herewith, however, is a primer on Republicans who won't be president:

Ben Carson - A respected neurosurgeon, a reliable proponent of limited government, and an inspiring personification of self-made success, Dr. Carson has a better chance of being elected pope than president. Besides that the American people plainly do not consider the modern presidency an entry-level political position (Eisenhower was given course credit for liberating Europe), Carson lacks the experienced touch and sprawling infrastructure a plausible run requires. He is a good man without a hope.

Carly Fiorina - While she would never admit it, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO must know she is running for vice president. Besides the neophyte knocks applied to Carson, above, Fiorina is not nearly so charming as her supporters seem to think. Her angry woman routine, plainly conceived to show the eventual GOP nominee how well she stacks up against Hillary Clinton, is of limited appeal. Beyond this, her tenure at HP was not an unalloyed success and her unsuccessful run for a Senate seat in California does little to recommend her for the national campaign.

Lindsey Graham - You'd need a jeweler's loupe to find South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham mentioned in discussions of GOP presidential contenders but trust us, he's in there. Conservative columnist Ann Coulter identifies Graham as the only Republican member of Congress against whom it's always okay to run a primary, and this bespeaks his standing on the right. Perpetually imagining himself one speech away from political superstardom, Graham has apparently extrapolated his ability to cling to the GOP Senate nomination in the most Republican state to the belief that he has a national constituency. Even among South Carolinians likely to appear on the national ticket, Graham ranks no higher than fourth - after Governor Nikki Haley, Senator Tim Scott, and the indispensable Congressman Trey Gowdy.

Mike Huckabee - A consequence of involvement in American politics (besides the attention of the IRS, if you're a conservative) is daily inundation of blast emails. For the millions of us who have received endless electronic solicitations to buy heart pills, reverse mortgages, prostate enhancers and so on from former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, it is a stretch to see him as commander-in-chief. Compounding Huckabee's relentless hucksterism are his tendency toward tax and spend "moderation" and the unsettling insincerity of his friendly, cornpone image. This Huck won't hunt.

Bobby Jindal - A political prodigy, former Congressman and current Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has a bright future in someone else's Cabinet.

John Kasich - Rumpled and peculiar, Ohio Governor John Kasich has advised staffers of his inevitable presidency since his days in the House of Representatives. He is the sort of candidate who looks spectacular on paper - experience in Congress, on television, and a two-term governor of a crucial swing state - but unpleasant in person. He is at once sanctimonious and jittery, heaping compliments on himself while scanning the room for quick escapes and weapons of opportunity. Whether they can summon the exact words, Kasich will alert voters to that Confucian axiom: Never trust a weirdo.

Mike Pence - Indiana Governor Mike Pence is the riskiest name on this list, inasmuch as he could be president, perhaps even a fine one, but it is difficult to see his path to the GOP nomination. When asked about 2016 in TV interviews, Pence provides energetic, rehearsed replies, barely concealing his enthusiasm for the top job. It seems he plans to wait for an opening, but that makes him a longshot in a crowded field of eager competitors.

Rick Perry - The longest-serving governor in America, Rick Perry of Texas, is a gentleman but not a scholar (his new glasses notwithstanding). To wit, his infamous "oops" moment in the 2012 primary debates, wherein he forgot the third of three Cabinet departments he proposed to abolish, was not a one-off. Perry knows Texas like the back of his hand but, when it comes to national and international policy, he is desolate. No amount of study can transform a candidate into a plausible president if he does not live and breathe this sort of thing already. Perry is respected and admired by those who worked on his 2012 campaign, but even they can see that he is not made to lead America. You can't put in what God's left out.

Rick Santorum - Having scored a stunning upset in Iowa in 2012, by the skin of his teeth and after cleaning the windows and mowing the lawns of every caucus-goer in Des Moines over the previous year, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum remains hopeful. But none of us is made for all markets, the vast majority of us will never be elected to anything and, in Santorum's case, if he were going to catch a presidential wave it would have happened by now. At 56, with a lengthy Congressional career already behind him, Santorum may go on to do good things. Becoming president is not among them.

Donald Trump - Please.

Of course there is, and will be, much more to say of this race before it is through. Contenders like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, et al. will either earn a spot on the roster above or break through to bear the palm of victory. Meanwhile, Walker is being asked about evolution (always a sign that a conservative is polling well), Rubio is hoping Republicans have forgotten his immigration gambit, and Jeb is raising gobs of money (though this is not necessarily dispositive - President Giuliani, call your office).

But, as the Psalmist said, our days are numbered. One hopes this list helps us make the most of our time.

Theo Caldwell is a host on Newstalk1010 Radio. Contact him at theo@theocaldwell.com

The Future Belongs to Islam

If A Christmas Carol and the Terminator movies taught me anything, it’s that the future can be changed. That said, barring some unforeseeable course correction in Western society, we are going to lose this so-called War on Terror.

Specifically, we will be vanquished by Islam, our government and civil structures overrun, and our vaunted institutions reduced to Ozymandias-style ruin.

This will be accomplished by various means, including demography (as scrupulously documented by columnist Mark Steyn, a long-time harbinger of America’s decline), liberty-squelching surveillance, censorship, and, above all, our disturbing lack of faith.

Having lived too long on the intellectual capital of greater generations, we have no understanding, much less appreciation, of the legacies left to us. To wit, we don’t know who we are, we don’t know what we believe, and that’s why we’re going to lose.

The Charlie Hebdo and kosher market massacres in Paris (and before them, recent attacks in Australia, Canada, Boston, etc.), along with the pusillanimous, politically correct responses thereto, reveal the stunning contrast between our corpulent, complacent culture and the lean, hungry enemy we face.

To Muslim Jihadists, this isn’t just life and death – this is eternal, spiritual, divine.

And what do we believe in? Climate change, micro-aggressions and man-spreading. Do we even know what matters? By “we,” I mean all of us, top to bottom, in today’s culture.

The erstwhile leader of the free world pays lip service to the notion of free speech, while mendaciously blaming its exercise for his foreign policy failures. Simultaneously, his administration contorts itself hideously to avoid calling our pressing danger by its name.

Even the Pope – at a time when Christians are brutalized and murdered in Africa, the Middle East and across Asia, what does he do? He comes out full-bore against global warming.

We brag about our supposed freedoms and the inherent superiority of our systems, but do we believe any of that? Do we even know what it means?

I know the sort of freedoms I cherish, but the priorities of a little guy like me don’t amount to a hill of beans in modern America.

That is, they prevail on parchment, but not in practice. Run down the items in the Bill of Rights and see how many remain intact in our age of speech codes, civil forfeiture, obscene searches and capricious prosecution.

Moreover, if we were to start over again today, is there any chance we would enact such a charter of negative liberties (i.e., things the government cannot do)? More likely, we would weave some interminable, EU-style document infested with such newfangled “human rights” as free health care and transgender bathrooms.

Consider freedom of speech and private property. If our generation sought to build a new society, would we understand that these two rights form the bedrock of liberty?

Most important, where do these rights come from, in the modern reckoning? Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et al. were confident they are endowed by our Creator, nature’s God.

Whence do our rights emerge today? From the Supreme Court? The United Nations? Oprah?

Ask any Obama-voting, Jon Stewart-suckling pajama-boy to name the source of his freedoms and he’ll just stare at you like Cameron gawking at the Seurat in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

And this is why we are going to lose. We believe in nothing, let alone God. As for the Islamists, at least they have SOME god on their side.

As was stipulated in my radio interview with the Godfather of Canadian free speech, Ezra Levant, perhaps 99 percent of the world’s Muslims can be considered moderate. Even if that estimate were accurate, out of 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, that leaves some 15 million – over ten times the number of active-duty personnel in the US military – eager for Holy War.

Numbers aside, survey the culture and governments of Muslim nations, to say nothing of the actions of the Jihadists, and ask yourself what influence such moderates wield in real terms. Is it logical to assume moderates will have more power after the radicals achieve victory over the West?

Again, that’s 15 million willing to kill, and die, for their convictions. As Hyman Roth asked Michael Corleone after the latter saw a Castro loyalist blow himself up rather than be taken alive, “What does that tell you?” Comes the reply, “They can win.”

How does that compare with our side’s prevalent faith systems? Would environmentalists die for their beliefs? Heck, they won’t even live by them.

And so, we will lose. That is, unless we and generations yet unborn find a fortitude and cultural confidence that has not been seen on our side in decades. How likely is that?
Will we, pace Dylan Thomas, continue to go gently into that not-so good night? Or may we yet summon the will to rage, rage against the dying of the light?

Theo Caldwell is a host on Newstalk1010 Radio. Contact him at theo@theocaldwell.com