Of Persians and People Power

In politics as in so much else, talk is cheap; it is deeds that have coinage. This has been one of my key criticisms of US President Barack Obama since the spring of 2008, when the luster of his political ascendancy began to fade in my eyes as his gaseous campaign rhetoric burrowed deeper and deeper under my skin. I looked askance as his handlers and speechwriters set him up in one vainglorious set-piece after another—promising to “heal the planet” and “slow the rise of the oceans” after the last Democratic primary, speaking in front of a row of ridiculous Roman columns at the Democratic National Convention, and so on. Windy rhetoric in politics has never sat well with me, no matter how young, intelligent or charismatic the politician.

Even less am I impressed by the idea that oratory alone can move mountains; hence the skepticism with which I greeted Obama’s “race speech” in Philadelphia last year and his speech at Cairo University earlier this month. America’s perpetual “conversation on race” has not made any readily obvious progress since March 2008; and as for the claim that Obama’s address to the Muslim world has won over many hearts and minds throughout the umma, well, seeing is believing.

On the whole, eloquent oratory that is untethered to any concrete, effective action is worse than useless in my book. Highfalutin words are best backed up with meaningful deeds; when nothing meaningful can be done, silence—or careful circumspection, at any rate—is golden.

This is why I look with contempt at the flak President Obama is now taking from the Right over his refusal to openly support the Iranian opposition in its current confrontation with the mullahs in Tehran.

Iran’s clownish and hateful President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was credited with victory in the theocracy’s recent elections by an absurd margin. (According to www.someecards.com: “The unrest in Iran makes me proud to live in a country where corrupt politicians are smart enough to keep rigged elections close.”) Ahmadinejad’s chief rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, promptly demanded a revote while his supporters took to the streets of Tehran in multitudes, objecting to this naked affront to the will of the Iranian people. The country has been roiled with protest ever since, prompting widespread speculation about the potential consequences for the regime’s longevity—not to mention the more, shall we say, controversial elements of Iran’s foreign policy, namely its nascent nuclear program and its support for terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

President Obama has so far taken the wisest of all available tacks with regard to Iran. He has expressed his skepticism about the election results and his disapproval of the Iranian regime’s thuggish crackdown on dissidents. Yet he has been careful not to go too far in denouncing the regime or in endorsing Mousavi or his supporters—a smart strategy on both counts. The mullahs and their flunkies, after all, are still armed to the teeth, and can brutally crush this largely unarmed uprising at any time, Tiananmen-style. Mousavi, for his part, has not called for an end to the regime’s nuclear ambitions, to its sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah or to its enmity with Israel. It remains unclear whether his supporters seek to overthrow the Shi’ite theocracy altogether or merely to replace one mullah-approved marionette with another. This is not the kind of horse on which Obama would be wise to bet.

The last negotiating partner the US needs is an Iranian regime flush from the victory of flattening an internal insurrection—and incensed at the President’s endorsement of that revolt to boot. In such a scenario, Obama could no longer expect to get the mullahs to beat their uranium centrifuges into ploughshares—and forget about convincing them to rein in Israel’s terrorist tormentors. With the odds already stacked against that success even in the absence of the current strife, President Obama is in no mood for his plans to be disrupted by the events in Tehran.

Nonetheless, a growing chorus of mostly conservative critics has been braying for President Obama to bless the Iranian protestors with just a touch of his oratorical magic, in the name of democracy. It would be foolhardy for him to take their advice, for the United States has no leverage over Iran at present. Armed intervention is out of the question with American troops still bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Economic sanctions would only supplement the largely ineffectual ones already in place, and it is ordinary Iranians who would probably feel the pinch. A US-sponsored coup d’état is no option; the country’s Islamist theocrats are eager enough to blame the unrest on Yankee interference as it is. In any case, the US and Iran have already gone down that road once before, in 1953—with miserable results for everyone involved.

Given the limited options available, why pillory the president for exercising caution? How can the same conservatives who, like me, were happy to deride Barack Obama’s treacly cant not so long ago demand even emptier rhetoric from him now? Why vociferously denounce the mullahs’ skullduggery when the US can do nothing to back it up? Of what use would such inspiring words be without commensurate deeds?

In August 2008, President Bush’s strong objections did not stop Russia from manhandling tiny Georgia. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush’s public musings that the Iraqi people should overthrow Saddam Hussein led to a bloodbath, when the Kurds and Shi’ites proved too weak to finish off Saddam and the US refused to help them get the job done. In 1989, the world watched helplessly as China’s Deng Xiaoping bloodily shattered the Tiananmen Square protestors’ dreams of democracy in a country that called itself a “People’s Republic”. Poland in 1981, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Hungary in 1956, East Germany in 1953: on goes the long, tragic list of popular uprisings that failed because tyrannical regimes had the muscle to suppress them and the will to use it—and because the US had no way of stopping them.

Displays of “people power” such as the current one in Tehran never fail to thrill and inspire; but their chances of success depend on how well organized and well armed—and how ruthless—both the people and their rulers are. If the latter are mightier, and neither the US nor any other outside benefactor is in a position to step in to level the playing field, the rulers will likely win out, at least in the short term. The Iron Curtain was rent in 1989 primarily because Mikhail Gorbachev refused to use Soviet might to prop up the Eastern European Communist regimes any longer. South African apartheid began to crumble the following year because the regime eventually wilted under the international community’s ostracism. These rulers caved partly because they lacked the bloody-mindedness it took to keep locking up or gunning down their opponents.

Only time will tell whether the mullahs will similarly lose their nerve. If not, then they will probably win this confrontation. It would be treacherous for President Obama to egg the protesters on if he cannot have their back if and when the crackdown begins in earnest. Fortunately, whatever his shortcomings, Barack Obama is not the treacherous type.

Comfort and Dependency

I will never forget the surprise and disappointment I felt as a child when I first discovered that the word used to describe opponents of Quebec sovereignty was “federalist”. Even at the tender age of ten, I was dismayed that as Canada teetered on the brink of dissolution, this dry, wishy-washy term was the best its principal defenders could do. “Federalist”? Nothing more stirring, such as perhaps “loyalist”? Not even merely “unionist”? “Federalist”?

What poor ammunition this made for the NO forces in the near-death experience that was the 1995 referendum! Against the YES campaign’s appeals to Quebecers’ fierce pride in their identity and heritage, against the onslaught of Lucien Bouchard’s embittered yet seductive demagoguery, against stirring separatist slogans like “solidarity” and “independence”, Canadian unity revolved around a bloodless geopolitical abstraction like “federalism”. What kind of cause was that, I asked myself. Where was the passion there? Where was the pride? Where was the patriotism?

I eventually learned with great chagrin the reason for this flaccid anti-separatism: that Canadian patriotism per se is lost on most francophone Quebecers. Several years ago, pollster Maurice Pinard found that only about 12% of Quebec francophones self-identify as “Canadians”. Approximately 30% identify as French Canadians specifically; more than half of the rest call themselves “Québécois” and nothing else. This rings a bell; my Québécois acquaintances’ attitudes towards Canada generally range from shrugging indifference to outright hostility. Whatever patriotic fervor they feel is reserved strictly for Quebec. I cannot but agree with journalist Richard Gwyn that culturally and emotionally, most of Quebec effectively separated from Canada long ago.

Hence the age-old federalist focus on Canada’s capacity to accommodate Quebec’s autonomy, while noting that one can be both a proud Quebecer and a proud Canadian. Since so little passion for Canada beats in the average Québécois breast, the federalist case of the past three decades has also included a less high-minded dimension. I refer to the essentially mercenary argument against sovereignty—that it would endanger Quebecers’ access to unemployment insurance, family allowances, old-age pensions and all the other strands of Canada’s bounteous social safety net. “You may not love Canada exactly,” the federalists tell Quebecers, “but you know where your bread is buttered.”

Sovereignists have spent three decades bemoaning the effectiveness of this cynical federalist pitch. Denys Arcand’s 1981 cinematic polemic Comfort and Indifference, for instance, blamed Quebecers’ bourgeois comforts for their reluctance to fly the Canadian coop. I used to dismiss this lament as so many sour grapes from separatist sore losers. Arcand’s footage of interviews with ordinary Quebecers during the 1980 referendum campaign made me think twice. A former Radio-Canada employee asked PQ minister Claude Morin what would happen to 5,000 CBC jobs in Quebec. A taxi driver worried that the price of gasoline might double after a Yes vote. A group of retirees fretted over the fate of their old-age pensions, and a middle-aged homemaker wondered whether the loonie’s value might plummet. “Do you bite the hand that feeds you?” asked an elderly film librarian. All of this reminded me of the dire predictions I heard as a child during the 1995 referendum campaign—e.g. then-Finance Minister Paul Martin’s warning that separation would jeopardize up to a million Quebec jobs.

Though they helped avert the separatist threat, these fears troubled me deeply. These fine folks did not resist the Péquistes’ blandishments out of love for Canada; they were simply afraid that their province could not hack it on its own. Was there no way to keep Quebec in Canada without exploiting its dependence on the Canadian social-welfare crutch? Was Canada worth preserving if the task required such Machiavellian tactics?

This cold-blooded realpolitik has elicited justifiable accusations of fearmongering from sovereignists for decades. Yet the separatists deserve little sympathy, for they have brought this on themselves. They have wrapped Quebecers in the embrace of a welfare state so generous that Quebec could never finance it alone without raising its already onerous tax burden—even now the heaviest in North America. This leaves Quebec City heavily dependent on equalization payments from Toronto, Edmonton and Victoria, relayed by the very Ottawa the separatists so despise. Small wonder, then, that Quebecers have twice balked at the sovereignist offer. Indeed, they know where their bread is buttered—with a maple leaf-engraved knife.

Given its strident insistence that Quebec can handle its own business, the Parti Québécois’ history of relying on Canada’s largesse to shower Quebecers with social programs is downright hypocritical. The Péquistes actually have more reason than anyone to try to wean Quebec off of its dependence on Ottawa’s fiscal charity. Quebec would likely suffer a punishing fiscal crisis in the aftermath of secession due to the loss of transfer payments from Ottawa—one of the main fears impeding Quebecers from taking the sovereignist plunge. To rectify this, the Péquistes must either persuade Quebecers of the need to be less dependent on government to prop them up (what a tall order!), or prepare Quebecers for the even higher taxes the province would need to finance its lavish nanny state by itself.

Otherwise put, the sovereignists have a vested interest in nudging Quebecers towards greater self-reliance, either individual or collective. Either course would require great sacrifice on Quebecers’ part; but to reject both would perpetuate their fear of striking out on their own. Many Quebecers find sovereignty appealing, in the abstract at least. They have yet to seize it because too few of them prize independence highly enough to be willing to pay a price for it. To break that logjam, the sovereignists will have to tackle the very culture of entitlement they have nurtured in this province for generations—the mentality that holds that Canada owes Quebec a living.

When the Péquistes eventually return to power, with or without the “winning conditions” for another referendum, they will be wise to begin building the substance of true independence—the willingness and ability to provide for oneself—if only to prepare Quebec for eventually acquiring its trappings.

In Comfort and Indifference, a succession of YES voters lamented the trepidation that led almost six of every ten Quebecers to reject sovereignty in 1980. A voluble carpenter from Daveluyville diagnosed the malady thus: “You want to know who screwed us? We were screwed by Quebecers—by people who don’t take their responsibilities!” Another artisan from Saint-Jérusalem lamented Quebecers’ bourgeois insecurities: “When the time comes for us to stand up and be counted, the first thing people say is, ‘What’ll it cost us? It’s too expensive!’” Retired boxer Réginald Chartrand, after soundly thrashing his federalist opponent in an exposition bout, proclaimed, “I wanted to show Quebecers that they must take risks. Nothing has ever been given to us for free.” He went on to say, “The only path in life is the difficult path. The easy path is for imbeciles. We Quebecers don’t have the right to choose the easy path, sitting in our slippers, waiting…”

If only the Parti Québécois were as hardy as these fearless militants!

Ain’t No Respect in the Heart of the Campus

As a recent graduate of Princeton University, I am occasionally treated to e-mail messages from Princeton Pause, which styles itself as “a monthly e-greeting that brings Princeton closer to Princetonians everywhere”. In short, the university tries to avoid becoming too distant a memory in the minds of its departed students, partly in the hope of eliciting generous alumni donations to its Annual Giving program. The latest such Valentine I received featured a short video clip of a speech by the estimable Anthony Grafton—a former History professor of mine—on “what makes Princeton unique”.

This question has crossed my mind often of late. On the whole, I enjoyed my time at Old Nassau, and will forever cherish the memories and hopefully lifelong friends I made there. In just the past several weeks, I have been pleasantly reminded of the key role my Princeton experience has played in my personal development by sporadic visits to campus, encounters with former classmates and attendance at various alumni gatherings. Yet not until I recently learned of a despicable episode at the University of Massachusetts did I begin to approach answering the question of what makes Princeton unique.

The episode in question concerns the appearance of conservative columnist Don Feder on UMass’ Amherst campus on March 11th of this year. Feder opposes hate crimes laws as a criminalization not only of acts but of thoughts and beliefs—“hate” being a state of mind rather than a form of conduct, or so the argument goes. This viewpoint predictably incurred the wrath of most of UMass Amherst’s student body. The result was that Feder’s speech, which was sponsored by UMass’ Republican Club, was systematically disrupted and derailed by a swarm of left-wing student protestors. As shown in a video posted on YouTube by a group of the protestors themselves (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJPmv1vTbjc), the students hissed and booed Feder. Some noisily reversed their chairs to turn their backs to him. One student loudly interrupted his speech with a statement about one victim of an allegedly racist and homophobic hate crime. The harassment mounted to a fever pitch, until Feder finally gave up protesting this unseemly treatment and left the podium.

The case against this disgrace is obvious—and virtually unassailable. Whatever Feder’s detractors might think of his views, it is beyond dispute that he had a right to express them without intimidation or disruption. Feder’s speech was to be followed with a question-and-answer session in which his student opponents could have critiqued his position as extensively as they liked. They denied themselves that opportunity, however, by effectively running him off the stage. “This is free speech,” cried one young woman in defense of the students’ shenanigans. It seems not to have occurred to her that Feder’s speech deserved to be as “free” as hers and her schoolmates’.

Are there any circumstances under which the protestors’ actions may have been justified? The only such case I can imagine would be if Feder had engaged in what the US Supreme Court’s free speech jurisprudence has described as “fighting words”: speech that deliberately incites violence or other forms of criminal conduct. Had Feder taken the stage to advocate acts that would have qualified as hate crimes, that would have been a different story. Yet he did no such thing, merely arguing that violent crimes committed for bigoted reasons should be punished in exactly the same way as all other violent crimes. There may be a mountain of sound, rational arguments to make against this thesis. Not one of them was heard at UMass two months ago.

This, unfortunately, was not an isolated incident. Such nonsense has become more and more common on college campuses across the US in recent years, as political polarization of the American electorate has set in and the American academy has drifted further and further leftward. On at least two occasions in the past several years, African-American advocate Ward Connerly met a similar fate when he took his campaign against affirmative action to the University of Michigan campus. This unseemly behavior, of course, cuts both ways on the ideological spectrum. I still remember with unease the war fever that gripped the US before and during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the widespread intolerance for the expression of opposition to the war that came with it. New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, for instance, was forced from the stage by protesters during his commencement speech at Rockford College in Illinois after criticizing the war. Conservative pundits in general were as likely to applaud as to protest such shameful conduct.

The relevance of these incidents to Princeton’s virtues is no doubt obvious by this point. I have heard of at least one case in Princeton history in which jeering protesters discombobulated an appearance by a speaker deemed controversial by much of the student body. On March 5th, 1970, during President Richard Nixon’s brief expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, almost fourscore antiwar students at an ecology conference in Jadwin Gym heckled Interior Secretary Walter J. Hickel to distraction while then-University President Robert F. Goheen looked on furiously. As far as I know, however, such cases have been mercifully rare within the Orange Bubble.

In all my time on campus, I recall no such foolishness taking place. From the “Frist Filibuster” in the spring of 2005, to the running battle over abortion waged in the letters section of the Prince throughout most of 2006, I cannot remember any incident on campus in which one or more parties to a debate found themselves bullied into silence. I remember attending a presentation in the spring of 2007 at which anti-abortion advocate Dr. Charmaine Yoest of the Family Research Council gave a speech entitled “How Abortion Harms Women”. Sponsored in part by the Woodrow Wilson School—it was hosted in Bowl 16 of Robertson Hall—this event, as hot-button as its topic was, proved a model of civility. Dr. Yoest’s speech was followed by a Q&A session in which the students—a mostly pro-choice lot that included Sara Viola ‘08, then head of Princeton Pro-Choice Vox—subjected the speaker to rigorous scrutiny and criticism of her views. Through it all, not a sentence was cut off, not a personal attack made, not a voice raised in anger.

During my time on campus, I heard countless complaints about how politically jaded, complacent and apathetic Princetonians were, at least as compared with their counterparts at, say, Columbia. This criticism was well enough taken by me; but I hope Princeton never travels so far down the road of political activism as to become another UMass or University of Michigan.

Is it too much to ask that all students at all communities of higher learning show a similar tolerance and respect for opposing viewpoints? Am I to believe that only elite institutions like Princeton can hold their students to this same standard? Surely—hopefully—not. However, if civility and rationality in public (and especially political) discourse, and the free contention of a hundred or more schools of thought, are to remain primarily the province of America’s top-notch universities, that makes me that much more grateful to have attended one of those schools. There are many advantages to a Princeton education, most of which are obvious enough that I need not regurgitate them here. One that usually receives far less emphasis than it deserves, however, is that Princeton is the kind of place where neither Don Feder, nor Ward Connerly, nor any of their ilk would ever find themselves muzzled by an unruly mob—no matter how abhorrent their views might be to the bulk of the student body.

This does not make Princeton “unique” in the strictest sense of the word—ours is hardly the only university whose students behave so civilly and intelligently. Yet in these politically polarized times, Old Nassau may find itself approaching this kind of uniqueness asymptotically. And you know what? That’s good enough for me.

Star Wars Episode VII: Missile Defense

So President Barack Obama has delivered yet another stirring speech to a vast crowd of European well-wishers, this time in Prague, Czech Republic, on April 5^th. This time, however, he threw his fans something of a curveball. President Obama made clear that he would not scrap the ongoing development of a nuclear missile defense shield. “As long as the threat from Iran persists,” he declared, “we will go forward with a missile-defense system that is cost-effective and proven.”

At this, the raucous crowd fell largely silent. Missile defense rubs Europeans entirely the wrong way. I, however, was pleased to see the president prick his transatlantic pep squad’s bubble. The sooner Obama’s fawning foreign acolytes—and America’s overseas enemies—learn that he will not conduct a “kum-bah-yah” foreign policy, genuflecting constantly before the altar of the United Nations, the better.

That said, though I am sympathetic to missile defense in principle, I am unconvinced of its desirability in practice.

The policy as we know it originated with President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI (derisively nicknamed “Star Wars” by its detractors). The primary purpose SDI served was to flummox the Soviet Union. The Russians feared that their entire nuclear arsenal would be rendered obsolete by Reagan’s proposed anti-nuclear umbrella, while they would remain vulnerable to America’s nuclear ordnance. This realization, combined with the pain Reagan brought to the Soviets by funding anti-Communist insurgencies worldwide, helped propel Mikhail Gorbachev to the negotiating table, ultimately lowering the curtain on the Cold War.

It was this use of SDI as a geopolitical bargaining chip that Reagan Administration officials found useful. Reagan himself, however, eschewed this view. What is seldom remembered today is that Reagan personally advocated SDI not only to “psyche out” the Soviets, but also to render obsolete all nuclear stockpiles—including America’s own. To the chagrin of most of his own national security advisors, as well as certain hard-nosed foreign allies like Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, Reagan had come to embrace a seemingly impossible dream, one now espoused by Barack Obama: that of a world without nuclear weapons.

Of course, a generation later, missile defense still has not achieved liftoff, as it were. Nonetheless, Reagan was on to something here. If a Star Wars-style defense shield could be perfected, and could one day be expanded to protect the whole globe, no country need ever again fear being targeted with nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. The best way to dissuade countries from pursuing nuclear missile technology is to minimize its usefulness, and comprehensive missile defense, in theory at least, would do that. For this reason, the principled objections raised by opponents of missile defense—that it wrongfully alienates America’s allies, that it violates the arms-limitation treaties of the past, and so on—leave me cold.

It is the practical objections to missile defense that pack some punch. An article I read in The Economist soon after September 11^th argued that jettisoning missile defense at that juncture would be akin to scrapping one’s flood insurance if the house caught fire. This was the wrong analogy. Pragmatically speaking, pursuing missile defense is more like buying flood insurance for a house in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

What credible threat of a nuclear missile attack against the US or its allies actually exists? The old Cold War doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” remains very much a thing of the present. None of the less responsible nuclear powers—regional rogues like North Korea, hotheads like India and Pakistan or fanatics like the mullahs in Iran—dares ever launch nuclear warheads at anyone, anywhere, for they know the fate that would await them. Even a purely conventional American military response could still bring most nuclear perpetrators to heel.

This is why I scoffed at the chorus of condemnation that followed Hillary Clinton’s election campaign vow to “obliterate” Iran if it ever tried to nuke Israel. The good Senator, if you’ll forgive the expression, was simply keeping it real.

It is also why I do not quake at the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. The worst the mullahs would have the chutzpah to do is use their nukes to deter any potential foreign intervention, enabling them to sponsor terrorist groups like Hezbollah with even greater impunity. Quite frankly, this would not be much worse than the status quo.

The real danger is that Iran (or North Korea, or a Pakistan taken over by Islamists) might relay nukes to terrorists who would not hesitate to use them. In such a situation, missile defense would be worse than useless. No terrorist group possesses the resources or facilities to even maintain nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles, let alone deploy them. An antimissile shield would not stop terrorists from carrying nukes in suitcases or smuggling them in cargo containers. This is likely the principal nuclear menace of the 21^st century—and missile defense would be helpless in the face of it.

Even if the technology is one day perfected, then, it may not be worth the price Uncle Sam will have paid in fiscal and diplomatic capital. The policy has generated as much consternation among America’s allies as among its rivals and enemies. Given this geostrategic disruption, and given its exorbitant expense—especially in this era of industrial bailouts and bloated stimulus bills—how wise an endeavor is this?

On the whole, the technology formerly known as “Star Wars” is a noble pursuit in principle, but a misguided one in practice. It could never rid the world of all nuclear weapons, and the only nukes against which it would protect us are the ones no one would ever have the gumption to launch in the first place. President Obama would do best to heed Winston Churchill’s wise warning in his last address to the US Congress: “Be careful, above all things, not to let go of the atomic weapon until you are sure…that other means of preserving peace are in your hands.”

A Black "Next Great Prime Minister"?

When I was asked to contribute a piece to Concordia University's student newspaper The Link on the role my African-Canadian identity played in my participation in Magna International’s The Next Great Prime Minister competition in 2006, I first remembered a passage from Norman Snider’s 1985 book The Changing of the Guard. In one passage, then Liberal Party leadership candidate Jean Chrétien was accosted by two rank-and-file Toronto Liberals—one of Portuguese roots, the other Jamaican—protesting the dismissal of their ethnic communities’ concerns by the party’s head honchos. “[Can you] sit down and assure us,” demanded the Portuguese gentleman, “that we are going to get a piece, a small piece of Canada for everybody?”

According to Mr. Snider, the problem was not the political parties’ prejudice. Leading Liberals in particular would have been delighted to welcome a Greek, Haitian or Vietnamese rising star into the highest echelons of political power. Unfortunately, the pool of ethnic volunteers for such top-tier positions was painfully small and hence largely untapped. The cultural and social cohesion of ethnic groups in Canada makes even their most qualified members reluctant to enter the political arena, lest they lose touch with their origins. “By and large,” wrote Snider, “multiculturalism meant that Canada’s ethnic communities…huddled in on themselves. To date, their bright young men and women had not taken the path out of the neighborhoods and into the corridors of power. […] After all, such a path successfully negotiated would take a man far from his roots, and few seemed willing to attempt it.” This, it seems, is as true today as it was in 1984.

In August 2005, when I first heard of The Next Great Prime Minister from a friend of my mother’s, I jumped at the chance to submit and defend my own proposals for political reform in the marketplace of ideas. I advocated striking down trade barriers between the provinces and reforming our system of government to elect the Prime Minister separately from Parliament. Good ideas, or so I thought at the time; but they had nothing to do with the peculiar concerns of the Black community. Why?

Years of avid reading had taught me how rarely Canada’s political establishment tackles issues of specific concern to ethnic communities. Earlier in The Changing of the Guard, Mr. Snider noted the paternalistic stance the Liberal Party in particular took towards minority groups—“helping them with immigration matters, giving them grants to maintain their distinctive cultures” and so on. Yet beyond this old time religion, little real political clout accrued to ethnic Canadians from their Liberal loyalties. On those rare occasions when political heavy hitters do address minority concerns, they usually do so superficially and clumsily at best. In one of The Next Great Prime Minister’s preliminary rounds, I was asked what needed to be done to stop the wave of killings plaguing Toronto’s black neighborhoods. As a young black man, surely I would instinctively grasp what drives this fratricidal mayhem, right?

Well, actually, wrong. At the time, anyone’s guess was as good as mine. Yet my questioners seemed to assume that as the sole Black finalist—and quite possibly the sole Black contestant—in the competition, I must be their “go-to guy”, their resident expert on all things pertaining to blackness. I will probably never know whether any of my fairer-hued competitors were asked that question.

It bears notice that beyond Toronto’s murder rate, ethnic issues played no role in the debates around which the competition revolved once I advanced to the final round in January 2006. We focused, rather, on matters such as the health care system, the war in Afghanistan, and Iran’s nuclear program. In truth, that was just the way I liked it. I’m not sure that politicians should be focusing their attention on dealing with specific ethnic grievances. In my view, their energies—and our tax dollars—are generally better spent addressing issues that concern all Canadians, regardless of cultural origin.

Since participating in The Next Great Prime Minister, my congratulators have often gushed that I could be the first Black Prime Minister of Canada. I don’t doubt this possibility, and I refuse to rule it out. Yet I believe that the various branches of the African Diaspora have placed too much emphasis on politics as a means of achieving social equality. Historically, the minority groups that made the fastest rise from poverty and persecution to prosperity and power were those who embraced education and built up their own business and professional classes, as well as those who maintained strong, stable families. Those who prefer to dispatch swarms of politicians to the citadels of government in order to dole out fiscal goodies to their communities, while ignoring aberrant rates of school dropouts and absentee fatherhood and a dearth of entrepreneurial ambition, are doomed to be left behind. Without tackling those problems, even electing a million Marlene Jenningses or Yolande Jameses—or Barack Obamas, for that matter—will never bring us to Dr. King’s proverbial Promised Land.

Race & the Republicans

A friend of mine posted an interesting (if not terribly original) New York times editorial by Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman on Facebook recently:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02krugman.html?ex=1388638800&en=f88eb7c84f5e06c5&ei=5124&partner=facebook&exprod=facebook

As usual, Mr. Krugman is on to something here--just not as much as he thinks. The race-related issue he didn't address was how true racial equality is achievable when so many blacks and other minorities remain so dependent on government charity. While the good professor, like most liberals, doesn't aim to keep Americans dependent on government for its own sake, reducing that dependency is not a priority for him.

Republicans should make building a maximally self-reliant citizenry part of the centerpiece of their future outreach to nonwhite demographic groups, particularly African-Americans. This may or may not work politically, but it's an infinitely more intellectually and morally respectable position than the politics of racial resentment the GOP has admittedly played since the Nixon years.

As for conservative economics being discredited by the financial crisis, Krugman disregards the massive role government intervention played in creating the crisis. Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac were government-sponsored enterprises, remember? But that's a comment for another day...