Barlow’s Canada
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The Inside-Out Country Where We Shun Our Patriots And Coddle Our Usurpers
By Robert Billyard
The other day I picked up a copy of Maude Barlow’s recent book “Too Close For Comfort.” I knew what it was about. I had to ask myself – Do I really want to read this? It is just going to make me depressed. But then along with a developed strain of hedonism goes my masochism. I also reminded myself that in the last while I had read a number of depressing books and maybe I am just a depressing book specialist.
I was also reminded of the author who on winning the Governor General’s Award for poetry a few years back admitted he liked being depressed-It was good for his creativity.
Then too, I probably fell over the edge some forty odd years ago when I read George Grant’s, “Lament for a Nation” and have been in a bad mood ever since.
As I perused the book I turned to the back cover and there across the top was a quotation referring to Barlow as; “Canada’s best known voice of dissent.” Odd, I thought. How can a lady like Maude Barlow who believes so strongly in this country, who has written and spoken so profusely and eloquently about it, be considered a voice of dissent? But then I jarred myself back to reality-this is Canada! By some discombobulated inversion of logic to believe in this country and have a Canadian vision is to be a radical dissident. Canada is the inside-out country where we shun our patriots and coddle our usurpers.
What was also of significant interest was the source of the quote-non other than the venerable CBC. Now if Thomas d’Aquino, CEO of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives had said this it would be understandable! He and Ms. Barlow have some difference of opinion on the exact nature of what constitutes a country. Mr. d’Aquino and his merry band of corporate Philistines see this country as a business transaction, something to be sold off as quickly as possible to the lowest and handiest bidder (Maybe the CBC felt compelled to speak on Mr. d’Aquino’s behalf as he is a very shy and retiring type in the art of acquiescent takeovers and getting hapless politicians to bend to his council’s wishes).
I have to give Maude credit. She issues a cautionary in the Forward: “In some ways this exploration makes bleak reading.’ How many authors are going to admit that before you even start the first chapter?
Ms. Barlow is more accurately one of Canada’s best known nationalists, while Mr. d’Aquino is most assuredly our most brazen seditionist. Where Barlow is concerned with the soul of our nation, d’Aquino is the usurper of national dreams, a con artist, and the shameless bagman in pursuit of the corporate welfare state. In very real terms Barlow is the believer and d’Aquino the dissenter. He suffers the American Dream as a vicarious carpetbagger and might be better advised to move south where he can enjoy the full embrace of his dubious convictions.
Barlow’s book is an authoritative and well documented indictment of how Canada is being smothered, first of all by the assault of imported US neo-conservative values, secondly by the shameless connivance of the Bush administration to use the tragedy of 9/ll to advance its neo –imperialist agenda and consolidate Pax Americana.
Neo-conservatives sing the mantras of deregulation, privatization and the denigration of government. Grover Norquist, a prominent US neo conservative wants to get government down to the size “where we can drown it in a bath tub.” In other words, what he is advocating is the corporate welfare the state- the complete dominance of a deregulated market economy and the servitude of civil society to an authoritarian oligarchy.
If Canadians feel compelled to experience the full brunt of a neo-conservative agenda all they have to do is give Harper’s conservatives a majority. Every move of this government is calculated to dupe Canada’s electorate in granting this majority. Given a majority he will import the rapidly rusting out American Dream to this country.
During the 1990′s a small group of neo-conservatives conceived and fine tuned an agenda that came to be known as the PNAC- Program for the New American Century. It advocated US global domination through serial, preemptive and simultaneous warfare as necessary. Not only would “free trade’ be used as a device for the penetration and domination of foreign economies the military would be used as necessary-ergo Iraq and Afghanistan.
What was lacking to implement this grand scheme was a pretext, and 911 provided that. Not only has 9/11 been used to manipulate and degrade American civil society it has been used to intimidate its closest allies into obedient compliance. Canada has been the all too willing dupe.
Canada’s political and economic elites are drunken party goers who know no moderation as they belly up to the bar of American hegemony drinking deeply- and the drinks, it seems, are on the house- our house. Ironically, this comes at a time when wiser men would have serious concerns about becoming too close to the grasping maw of the empire.
At a time when American civil society is suffering the same assault of abandonment as Canadians, Fortress North America needs to worry less about the threat of terrorism and more about self-inflicted damage at the hands of its political elites- the three sinister amigos.
Barlow’s Canada is an entirely defensible proposition. This country can and must persist even though we exist on the ramparts of the American empire. The problem is that our elites know no moderation, lack imagination and suffer a peculiar deference to American values and self-interest.
Barlow is a true believer, a beacon, in a political landscape fraught with cynical and pernicious collusion. She believes in Canada – a largely extinct quality among our indolent and anesthetized political elites as they practice the politics of denial.
Among others, her book should be required reading for all Liberal leadership candidates and maybe with some sense of shame they might be reminded who pays the taxes and that they are not elected to pander to vested interests, berserk ideologies, or transparent subterfuges.
Among others, her book should be required reading for all Liberal leadership candidates and maybe with some sense of shame they might be reminded who pays the taxes and that they are not elected to pander to vested interests, berserk ideologies, or transparent subterfuges.
Robert Billyard is a writer and artist residing in the bucolic hinterlands of Langley BC. He has an abiding interest in politics and social issues and reads extensively on these subjects. Accused of being a nationalist, a small “l” liberal, a socialist and a boat rocker-as well as a boat builder- he might nod in agreement.
@ May 31, 2006