I just don't know any more. Everything looks more and more like a set up.
Is it the corrupt and incompetent US administration or is it that the entire US appears desperately to be trying to fix and interfere in my country's politics. Or am I just tired and a little paranoid.
Why else would Harper even be considered as qualifying for the US Woodrow Wilson "prize" for so-called public service. Dana over a the Galloping Beaver refers to the "prize" maybe more appropriately as "the woody"
Now the US organization that hands out this "prize" says it is awarded:
"to individuals who have served with distinction in public office and have shown a special commitment to seeking out informed opinions and thoughtful views. They encourage the free and open exchange of ideas; and rather than basing policies on political expediency, they devote themselves to examining the historical background and long-term implications of important public policy issues."
Isn't that precious. Could it possibly be referring to the neophyte political and public office holder currently spending some time at 24 Sussex Drive.
What a crock.
Have a peek at the passed prize winners (Mulroney is there, of course). The only one on the entire list I'd say, from my illiterate Canadian perspective, who would seem any where near meeting the minimum requirement for the "prize", would be Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
But who would want to accept a "prize" named after Woodrow Wilson anyway. But in the Conservative world of play-acting life and make-believe history I guess it might not matter much just as long as the "prize" is named after some dead US president.
Myself I don't know if I'd be associated with anything bearing Wilson's name - wasn't he a sort of laughable character. John Maynard Keynes observing the great Wilson during the establishing of the Treaty of Versailles, after WWI, mocked him and the part he played.
Here's a part of how Keynes described him:
"The President was like a Nonconformist minister, perhaps a Presbyterian. His thought and his temperament wore essentially theological not intellectual, with all the strength and the weakness of that manner of thought, feeling, and expression.
With this picture of him in mind, we can return to the actual course of events. The President's program for the World, as set forth in his speeches and his Notes, had displayed a spirit and a purpose so admirable that the last desire of his sympathizers was to criticize details,—the details, they felt, were quite rightly not filled in at present, but would be in due course.
But in fact the President had thought out nothing; when it came to practice his ideas were nebulous and incomplete. He had no plan, no scheme, no constructive ideas whatever for clothing with the flesh of life the commandments which he had thundered from the White House.
He not only had no proposals in detail, but he was in many respects, perhaps inevitably, ill-informed as to European conditions. And not only was he ill-informed—that was true of Mr. Lloyd George also—but his mind was slow and unadaptable.
He could not, all in a minute, take in what the rest were saying, size up the situation with a glance, frame a reply, and meet the case by a slight change of ground; and he was liable, therefore, to defeat by the mere swiftness, apprehension, and agility of a Lloyd George. There can seldom have been a statesman of the first rank more incompetent than the President in the agilities of the council chamber.
His mind was too slow and unresourceful to be ready with any alternatives."
The Economic Consequences of the Peace
John Maynard Keynes
1919
So Harper gets an unearned "prize", named after a US political nincompoop from about 100 years ago. Canadian Conservative prime ministers seem to come pretty cheaply.
I don't.
Technorati Tags: Canada, Politicians
