Our new "leader" and "The triumph of drivel"

David Warren:

... We are in a new political era

... Now we have “airheads.” The term is perhaps over-colloquial, but I think it best expresses the quality our new leaders share 

... The Trudeau boy is a generation younger.  In addition to snowboarding, his experience includes nightclub bouncer, and teaching high school in Vancouver. ...  the lad was not really exposed to politics until it came into his head, or into the heads of Liberal Party organizers,

... His acceptance speech last night was sort-of sweet; it showed him still quite damp behind the ears.

... I don’t think he is especially malicious. ... has the media savvy of the selfie generation, and can more or less handle the bofferball questions from a sympathetic press. His sincerity shines when it comes to a small range of policy enthusiasms, such as the legalization of marijuana and brothels, and he is visibly convinced that peace is much nicer than war.

... I’m sure he “believes” in the drivel he is mouthing. I expect he will prove more used than using, as his government agenda falls into place.

False prophets

David Warren sees Marxism/socialism, economics and environmentalism as bad parodies of Biblical religion:

Marxism was an elaborate, and really bad, parody of Christian and Jewish teachings. (To say nothing of idolatrous.)

.... in the latest permutations -- "green" ideologies have been replacing "red"

... Marx, Engels, and all the other luminaries of the left, have persistently cast themselves as prophets, pointing the way to this radiant future.

... At Davos, Switzerland, this week, where the world's most self-regarding prophets were assembled for their annual Pentecostal parody, which they call the World Economic Forum, a session was devoted to discussing why economic forecasts always turn out wrong.

... the Messianic prophecy, that "no man can know the day or the hour" -- nor even the angels -- is not a prediction, but a statement of deep fact. It is the way things are. There are more things in heaven and Earth, than economists can dream of, and there is no model that can begin to incorporate all the "geists."

And yet we have constructed vast bureaucracies, that work on the premise that these forecasts will come true. The sheer idiocy of it, takes one's breath away. Centuries of "the triumph of reason," and it comes to this.

All too true.  Friedrich Hayek called it "the fatal conceit".

Update: Speaking of "the fatal conceit", Hunter (in the comments) recommended this rap video:

Happy Dominion Day!

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Update: David Warren expresses some thoughts on "Canada Day" that capture quite well how I feel.

David's example of our politicians and media "updating" the motto making it "From sea to sea to sea" is one I find particularly annoying. Not only is it tampering with our heritage (again!), presumably to be more inclusive, it's ridiculous to assume that the original "From sea to sea" excludes our northern boundaries any more than it excludes the southern one. I wonder when they'll begin pushing yet another "update" to make it "From sea to sea to sea to the USA" just to be sure no one feels left out!

[via Dr. Roy]

The Pope’s Galileo

Pope Benedict was recently prevented from delivering an address at La Sapienza University by Leftist faculty and student protests. They were upset that he was going to deliver an address supposedly defending the Catholic Church’s trial and conviction of Galileo.

David Warren writes about this linking it to "witch-hunting spirit of "political correctness"" prevalent at universities as well as to "Human rights" ... kangaroo courts, free speech, ....

It’s an excellent read. What I found most interesting, though, was Mr. Warren’s update telling readers that the Pope’s address to La Sapienza is now available in English - and it "does not even mention Galileo."

I, & most of the rest of the world media, fell for the imaginings of the
people I compare to "howler monkeys" ...

Of course this doesn’t alter the validity of Mr. Warren’s arguments a bit. And the upside of the whole sad episode of the Pope's being hounded off the campus is that it helps expose the university for the illiberal, post-modern, rat’s nest that it is; and, the Pope’s address will be far more widely read than it would have otherwise.

Update: From Doug Newton in the comments another take from Edward Michael George.

Another Bhutto post mortem

This one by David Warren:

The queen is dead, long live the king. This is the message from Pakistan's "People's Party," founded forty years ago by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as the machine to advance his own political career. ....

... The creed of the PPP -- "Islam is our faith, democracy is our politics, socialism is our economy, all power to the people" -- consists of three calculated lies followed by a howler. A more honest creed might be, "Government of the Bhutto, by the Bhutto, and for the Bhutto." ...

... Those who thought Ms Bhutto the agent of democracy and progress, because she was young and a woman and told them in fluent English exactly what they wanted to hear...

... She was my exact contemporary, and I met her as a child in Pakistan ....at age eight, arriving in a Mercedes-Benz with daddy's driver...This girl was the most spoiled brat I ever met.[...] when she was studying at Oxford. She was the same, only now the 22-year-old version...

... she, a libertine in previous life, submitted to an arranged marriage, because she needed a husband to campaign for office. Stood by him in power only because there was no other political option when he proved even greedier than she was. ...

... In addition to killing a hated symbol of Westernization, they set the mobs not against themselves, but against Musharraf. ... for all his visible faults, Musharraf has been dealing to the limit of his abilities and opportunities with the actual problems of Pakistan.

[via]