Something Dreadful is Afoot

Something dreadful is afoot in the Great White North. Massive numbers of Canadians are giving up on this nation, filled with utter despair that their countrymen and women are not prepared to live as citizens, with all the awful and proud responsibility that word implies.

Rather, all about us we see the hegemony of the cynical political, economic and judicial oligarchy that is rapidly returning us to the dark pre-Confederation days of the Family Compact. The Oligarchs are everywhere victorious in the land because we are a passive electorate, which is both blind to and enabling of, the selfish designs of the Oligarchs.

That so many have recently plunged past the cusp of what bloggers are calling the "tipping point" is distressing in the extreme to me. It ought to be for you too, if you love this country. More thoughtful and loyal Canadians are reaching the tipping point with every passing day and I cannot gainsay them with argument, for the best arguments right now are with those who despair.

We Canadians are rapidly abandoning the verdant constitutional valley of Responsible Government and are embracing something socially sterile and politically arid. You may recall your youthful civics classes in which Responsible Government was our touchstone to a nationhood of a free and prosperous people. It is that no longer. Our elites no longer hold themselves responsibile for their actions and we the people refuse to hold them to account.

Read David Warren's June 26th "Letter to Quebec." Here is a taste:

I am speaking to you from a province that truly doesn't get it. We don't get that you've had enough. We don't get the degree to which you are tired, not only of the corruption, but of the sheer malice of the Liberal Party. They are getting about equally tired in the West. And according to the polls, we, in Ontario, have decided the Liberal Party must stay, for reasons of "national unity."

In other words, the Liberals have become the separatist party of Ontario. In other words, the Liberals have set things up with Ontario, so the only way to shake them off is by leaving the country. Canada's most talented people do that every day; now it becomes the turn of the provinces.

After reading that go read his May 29th article "Oh Canada" in which he says this.

A week ago Saturday I concluded, after a fortnight's disgrace in our House of Commons, that, "The dignity and decency of Canadian life had been leeching away, for so long, that we are now past writing any 'lament for a nation'. The Canada of which I was once so proud now sleeps with the worms."

As I said, it is pointless to continue bemoaning something that is simply lost. Even a mother chimp will abandon the threadbare remains of her deceased babe, after dragging it around for a bit.

To a great degree our nation is the sum of our collective aspirations. What happens then when good, thoughtful and loyal citizens such as David Warren, in their thousands and tens of thousands, give up and cease to aspire?

I am not personally at the tipping point, for as a Catholic I am man of faith and not given easily to despair and my chosen vocation in life is public service. But my Canadian heart is sick at what I see unfolding in my country and the sirens of the tipping point are calling to my soul.