Conrad Black,
CANADIANS DON’T SEE THE KAVANAUGH EPISODE FOR WHAT IT IS
Some readers lightly chastised me last week for not commenting on the fracas in the United States about the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of that country. I write for the National Review Online (New York) and the American Greatness site in Arizona, whence I am widely posted on and often reprinted in RealClearPolitics and the New York Sun, and Canadian readers interested in my views on American affairs can find them there.
I generally avoid that subject here. Canadians have access to the U.S. media, and there are normally plenty of Canadian subjects that only the Canadian media will cover. The other reason I tend to avoid U.S. politics here is that most Canadians, though I can deduce from the emails I receive that the exceptions are more numerous than generally believed, are simply incapable of grasping what is happening in the political life of the United States. They like to feel superior to the U.S. and the incumbent president reminds them of every proverbial “Ugly American” they have ever met. He is a buffoon, a bully, and a windbag, and don’t confuse them with the facts, such as that he is a very successful president.
These complainers were annoyed that I had written about the impending election in Quebec of an unheard of number of professed separatists instead of the big Kavanaugh story. Still, a couple of minor episodes this week persuaded me of the wisdom of addressing the Kavanaugh situation.
I spoke with my friend Professor Joe Martin at the law faculty of Queen’s University in Kingston on Monday, as we urged against removing Sir John Macdonald’s name from the law faculty building. As the discussion unfolded with about 60 or 70 very courteous students and others, about 15 people were screaming outside on the sidewalk against my complicity in genocide, along with that of the founder of our country “Conrad Black and John Mac…” they shouted, before descending into extreme obscenities. A couple of questioners at Queen’s asked how we could consent to abuse free speech by speaking under the title of “Sir John A. vs. the PC Brigade.”
On my way back from Kingston, while listening to the Quebec election results, I saw an email of a friend expressing pride because a friend of his was at Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s side as counsel, when she testified against Kavanaugh at the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 28, and sarcastically asking me if I was supporting my friend Faith Goldy in her campaign for mayor of Toronto. And on Wednesday, I happened to see a minute of Canadian news comment on Manitoba’s objection to the federal carbon tax: all commentators objected that this might imperil Canada’s ability to fulfil its commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016.
More than at any previous time, I had the disconcerting sensation that this country really is in a fantasy land that has only a tenuous relationship with the rest of the planet that those trying to impose their absurd carbon tax claim to be saving.
Kavanaugh is a perfectly well-qualified occupant of the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court and will be confirmed to that position. (Indeed, he may have been before the printed version of this column is read). President Trump’s enemies
in the beleaguered American political establishment that he has denounced as corrupt and incompetent — the Never Trumpers in his own party (Republicans) and the Resistance of the Democrats and their allies in Hollywood, Wall Street, the national media, Silicon Valley and the special interest lobbyists — fell in with all their force and influence behind the allegations of attempted rape in the early 1980s against Kavanaugh by Dr. Ford. The Democratic strategists held Dr. Ford’s letter to the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, as they held the Billy Bush tape of Trump’s lewd remarks about groping women for 11 years and released it just a month before the 2016 election. After the Kavanaugh hearings were over, and apparently contrary to Dr.
Ford’s wishes, they made her claim public, and hearings reconvened.
Despite mentioning a number of corroborating witnesses, all of whom denied under penalty of perjury any knowledge of the alleged incident, Dr. Ford became the instant heroine of the militant, emasculative, MeToo feminist movement and its vast cheering section. This gallery includes the legions of pre-emptively self-emasculated males who believe that the allegation is proof, denunciation is conviction, and any recourse to due process is mealy-mouthed prevarication designed to deprive outraged womanhood of its rights.
No one not present can know what happened decades ago, but the Democratic strategists undoubtedly believed that this president, whose tendency to unwisely provocative comment is notorious, would say something that would enflame even moderate female opinion and deliver at least the House of Representatives to the Democrats in the midterm elections on Nov. 6.
Practically nobody in Canada saw this entire episode for what it is: the combined fourth and fifth rounds in Trump’s war to evict the entire political establishment of both parties. He won the first three rounds (nomination, election, gaining control of the Republican congressional delegations), and this is the fight to gain control of the Supreme Court for constitutionalists opposed to wide reinterpretation of the Constitution, and to solidify Trump-Republican control of the Congress.
The Democrats thought they had the wave of public indignation to stop the Supreme Court confirmation and gain back control of the Congress, preventing Trump from further incursions on their long incumbency. They rushed into the cul-de-sac of demanding an FBI additional background check. It was expeditiously conducted, and though the results are confidential, apparently provided no corroboration of any claims against Kavanaugh, so the Democrats have moved next on to deeming the review insufficient.
The past few weeks have been entirely the creation of the Democrats, with Dr. Ford’s unsubstantiated claim supplemented by wildly implausible followup allegations, one that The New York Times could not substantiate despite desperate efforts to do so, and one by Stormy Daniels’ egregious counsel, alleging Kavanaugh’s drug-crazed participation in serial gang-rapes. (Stormy herself is a savvy businesswoman
who should have a better lawyer than Michael Avenatti, a groupie of failed Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel.)
The organized resistance to Kavanaugh now amounts to some remaining fanatical opponents, surely outnumbered by the civilized majority of Americans who demand some evidence before people are convicted of grievous misconduct, especially 35 years ex post facto. I confirm my prediction that Donald Trump will win these rounds, and see off the Never Trumpers to boot, and be only the third president since the Civil War (Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson were the others) to control the Congress and have a Supreme Court in sympathy with his views also. (George W. Bush’s lobbying for Kavanaugh illustrates Trump’s absorption of the Bush Republicans.) Thus is Trump rewarded for producing four-per-cent economic growth, a full-employment economy, shrinking energy imports, the revival of serious nuclear-arms control, a reduction of illegal immigration, and a Western Alliance that isn’t just a league of pickpockets.
Canadians will eventually learn that free speech is not as much offended by calling those who accuse John A. Macdonald of genocide the “PC Brigade” as it is by calling him (and me) genocidists; that denying the right to debate to Faith Goldy is an outrage; that the Paris Climate agreement is the fraud Trump has called it, and that the carbon tax is just a sleazy attempt to raise taxes while claiming to save the Earth. The political intelligence of the United States is in a better condition than ours, and the U.S. is better served by its media than we are by ours, Fake News notwithstanding. Canadians are in no position to disparage the comparative effectiveness and accomplishments of the present U.S. administration.
THIS COUNTRY REALLY IS IN A FANTASY LAND. THE POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE OF THE UNITED STATES IS IN A BETTER CONDITION THAN OURS, AND THE U.S. IS BETTER SERVED BY ITS MEDIA ... — CONRAD BLACK