The Dog Days of Summer Are Here

I am a rather discouraged blogger this first day of summer. For a while there reality was more weird than even my somewhat fevered imagination. Accordingly, all I had to do to write a scintillating post was to peruse daily developments at the Gomery Commission into Liberal malfeasance, or tune in to fellow Red Ensign bloggers to find out about exploding toads in Germany, which is not to be confused with Germans exploding Frogs, which is a different matter related to a German pastime during last century. But I digress.

The last few weeks have been relatively quiet. Disturbingly so.

Prime Minister Martin is strongly suggesting that he may keep parliament sitting through the dog days of summer in order to push through the same-sex marriage bill. This is a tactical move designed by the Liberals to take advantage of the very weakened political position in which the Conservative leader Stephen Harper finds himself as a result of testimony before the Gomery Commission sponsorship scandal pertaining to massive Liberal fiscal mismanagement and fraud, including reports of the mob (the Sicilian variety, not the rabble in the streets variety) running the Liberal party in Quebec, or is that running Quebec for the Liberal party. It is so confusing.

Because it is so confusing, if you are a Canadian reading this, I know you are probably going to vote Liberal in the next federal election because Stephen Harper is scary and has a HIDDEN AGENDA. That is simple. If you not a Canadian and are puzzled by the above statements I really cannot help you out by making sense of it for you. You must simply accept what I say on faith. I understand that in many countries faith is still allowed. Unlike me, you may be lucky enough to reside in one of them.

Okay, that latter bit was a bit of hyperbole. Our prime minister is a devout Catholic. Don't ask me for proof, ask him. He will tell you it is so and if he forgets, his flacks will ensure compliant main stream media reporters will slip his Catholic devoutness into news stories on a regular basis. Do I actually have faith in his faith? Well, as a Catholic myself, I am reluctant to judge anyone's piety level.

I will say this. In my experience, devout co-religious would allow themselves to be torn asunder before describing themselves as devout. It would be the spiritual equivalent of taking on airs and no one in my Catholic circle tolerates spiritual snobs. The one thing you may not do in the Catholic Church is describe yourself as being in the least bit holy. I know fine Presbyterians who would say there is a good reason for this.

Frankly, I just wish Paul Martin was less devout and more faithful. Yes, I know we Catholics do go on about Dogma. Not Paul Martin though. He is the sort of man who has made it be known he never lets Dogma stand in the way of his political responsibilities. Not for him any reliance on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. He takes the broader view, as infallibly defined by the justices of the Supreme Court of Canada.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote that for a Catholic the one thing the road to Hell could never be paved with is good intentions. I know my Presbyterian friends who are reading this are nodding their heads in solemn agreement, ... about Papists believing that I mean, not about it being true. At any rate our prime minister had better pray that Chesterton has more insight than the Presbyterians about the road to Hell, or he'll be in a very awkward spot one day. A person may well be able to buy their way into the Liberal cabinet, but there's no way you can buy your way into Heaven. At least, there isn't since Martin Luther put the old kibosh on the selling of indulgences in the sixteenth century.

Not that Mr. Martin would be opposed to the buying and selling of indulgences on principle. His principles appear remarkably flexible and as a service indulgence selling would be subject to the federal goods and services tax. And we know how Liberals lust for taxes, don't we.

The fact is that Canadians and Swedes stand together against all the nations of the world in believing that taxes are a virtue and not a damnable vice. It is the source of our northern attitude of moral superiority. I know, given all that I've written above, that this latter fact is just too weird for most of you accept right now, so we'll leave that odd story for another day.