Canada’s day, Canada’s era

As the Houses of Parliament adjourn for the summer, Canadians can reflect on the fact that this country is in better condition than all but a few others. And that small group does not include the united States.

The state of American policy is now beginning to transcend even the indulgence of the most tenacious believers in Barack Obama’s statesmanlike aptitudes. The “reset” button with russia has led to a torrent of insolences from the Kremlin, including increased intimacy with Iran in promoting the survival of the Assad regime in Syria. The corrupt Karzai regime in Afghanistan, for which thousands of Americans and their allies (including 158 Canadian Forces personnel) have died and a trillion dollars have been spent, has now embraced Tehran as a senior ally. And Washington itself has convened peace talks that include Mullah Omar’s Taliban, the host to Osama bin-Laden and his lieutenants when al-Qaeda was planning 9/11. In the words of distinguished

Wall Street Journal commentator Bret Stephens, it is “The Age of American Impotence: no peace, no peace process, no ally, no leverage and no moral standing.” President Obama still speaks of arms control while approaching what is now a high probability of an Iranian-led nuclear arms build-up in the Middle east. His strategy is bluster and threat without any follow-up, unless shamed into action (as in Libya by the French and the British).

In Berlin last week, Obama ascribed terrorism to “instability and intolerance,” as if we had gone back to the New Frontier theory of JFK’s Best and Brightest, that Indochinese Communism could be fought by the Peace Corps, and by building schools and roads. American liberals, like the French Bourbons returning in the baggage train of the duke of Wellington’s army in 1815, “have forgotten nothing, and learned nothing.” There is now little likelihood that America will have anything to show for the mighty effort and sacrifices in Iraq and Afghanistan, except the evaporation of its influence in the capitals of the world.

Meanwhile, in europe, including the united Kingdom, only Germany and its Scandinavian, Baltic, Germanic, Czech, dutch and Polish entourage, are not gasping from the after-effects of decades of over-paying danegeld to the working and agrarian classes. Japan has finally, after 20 years of recession and chronic ageing, embraced pell-mell inflation. (It won’t work, especially in a nation with a 20% savings rate.) The russia of Tolstoy and dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky, and even of Solzhenitsyn, is just a gangster-state. China

has falling growth, 600 million rural people living largely as they did thousands of years ago, no social safety net and a completely corrupt system of collective dictatorship with no system of laws or public institutions that command any credence at all. It’s a remarkable developing-country story, but not the stuff of any early claim to world leadership.

This is why Canada has a chance it has never had before to be an influence in the world, not by the traditional methods of arms build-ups, economic superiority or by being the spear of a great and proselytizing idea. The opportunity lies in Canada’s potential to be a respected guide to reform of domestic and international institutions and practices that are not now functioning well.

The united States led the world to the triumph of democracy and the free market, and the world must always be grateful for that, but is not now one of the more exemplary practitioners of either. Canada is a rich and liberal society that has spread the wealth of the country around better than most, but also has gradually become a relatively low-tax country (even if household debt is too high, and economic growth is too slow). We will not attract the world’s attention by sanguinary drama, as the French and russian revolutions, the u.S. and Chinese Civil Wars or the Battle of Britain, did.

The U.S. led the world to the triumph of democracy and the free market. But it is not now one of the more exemplary practitioners of either

But Canada can assume a position of leadership by intelligent acts of policy innovation and proposal of reform of international organizations that will gain adherence and emulators.

I have trod this path before in this space, and so will recapitulate just a few things that we Canadians should do and which would responsibly serve the world.

The currencies of the world are essentially worthless; they are valued only opposite each other, and all are being inflated simultaneously, even in deflationary times as followed the 2008 collapse of the housing bubble. Sixty years ago, a cup of coffee cost five cents and a hair-cut 25 cents. A return to the gold standard would put too much power in the hands of mining engineers and precious metals speculators, but Canada should lead the world in imposing some yardstick of currency value based on a combination of the prices of gold, oil, and a range of essential consumer goods. Other countries would follow, and the inflationary charge would be slowed and turned. We could put a rod on the backs of all the world’s

serious treasuries and central banks to stop ruining the savers and fixed income-earners.

In the temporary vacuum created by the u.S. foreign policy establishment’s sustained malaise, Canada should take the lead in proposing that NATO be transformed into a world-wide alliance of reasonably democratic countries pledged to all-for-one collective defense and security, and in demanding withdrawal of the vote at the united Nations General Assembly from all countries that flagrantly disregard the universal declaration of the rights of Man, until they reach a minimal level of conformity to it. When this is refused (as it will be, by China and russia, among others), it should lead all the countries that meet that standard in the cessation of any funding to the uN, and the establishment of a parallel world organization, until the uN returns to its founding purposes.

Finally, we should re-establish our claim to being a truly liberal state by abolishing incarceration for all but violent offenders and chronic recidivists. It is a practice that continues only because it has always been done and is an easy target for politicians playing on public paranoia and the general respect for the less productive versions of vengeance. I do not believe it is necessary for me to establish my credentials as a commentator on the effects of prison; it was my good fortune to be sent to two of the highest quality prisons in the united States, where I had no difficulties with anyone, in the regime or among my fellow-residents. But I can attest that they are very corrupt, hideously expensive to the taxpayer, do almost nothing to equip people to re-enter society, to deter crime, or even to impart increased hireability to the unskilled labour among the prison personnel. Contributed, supervised, community work would accomplish much more and much more cheaply. And Canada demeans itself and compounds ancient injustices with a policy that leads to the incarceration of an inordinate number of native people.

It is well-known that I generally support the present federal government, but I am concerned, and I know that many others are also, that it too much resembles a competent government of caretakers rather than an administration aggressively seeking to reform what is decayed and lever on Canada’s strengths to be a more effective exemplary influence in the world. There is much cause for pleasure and pride, but none for complacency, this July 1.

Note The Canadian Association of Journalists attempted to reply to my column of last week but has still not told me if its “moderator” has approved circulation of my denial of the libelous comment it sent round to its membership that prompted the column after the CAJ declined to accept my denial. Is it in the defamation business or not?