Romney’s search for a fresh issue

“Okay, fellas, what can I talk about that’s more outrageous than Obama’s mediocre economy?

“How about leading from behind in the Middle East, Governor? You could use your stuff about faith and free markets, our genius at starting bipartisan wars and at fixed things everywhere. You could hammer him about Egypt and Iraq’s monthly unemployment reports too!

“Gosh, I could look him in the eye and say: ‘They were dancing in the streets four years ago; but are Muslims feeling better today?’”

This transcript is incomplete; it’s only rough literary non-fiction. And it isn’t intended to slight Romney’s promise to protect Medicare and close any remaining gaps in the American social safety net—the one that tens of thousands of bleeding-heart sociologists and nutritionists have overlooked since the invention of the national census. It’s just one of those telling moments Bob Woodward hears about and then uses to explain big history for each fall’s bestseller’s list.

Nevertheless, for the first time since Ronald Reagan started reading speeches about markets, conservative strategists actually seem to be running away, not from one of their own mistakes, but from their own faith that the economy is their issue.

For a generation it didn’t matter if Democrats talked more about workers and consumers. Republican abstractions about tough management and tax cuts were supposed to be better for the economy and that’s what grown-ups had to vote for. However, is Obama’s "likability" outside of Washington and those tax-exempt shelters for faith-based politics now killing the economy as the issue for Mitt Romney? That’s the conclusion of economic historian neo-con Niall Ferguson.

“The economy's in the tank, yet Romney can't seem to gain an edge. One thing's for sure: this election is about personal likability. It's not the economy, stupid.”

Ferguson's logic is impeccable: it excuses his followers and questions the intelligence of everyone else.

Obama isn’t that likeable. The problematic elephant in the Republican war-room in Boston is not that the people are stupid or dazzled by the President. The problem is that the Republican economic alternative makes them nervous.

Obama’s uninspiring speech at his convention simply told Americans: he would guard their interests. He didn’t promise to transform anything or even to sweat like a business executive. He’s up nearly five points in the polls.

Qualifying free speech to protect Canada’s brand?

Erna Paris has won numerous awards in the free-wheeling genre of literary non-fiction. However, she’s hardly free-wheeling about freedom of speech.

The Canadian Supreme Court is being asked again to determine whether freedom of speech can be restrained in order to restrain hateful public attacks on minorities and their beliefs. There’s no dispute that being free to express yourself doesn’t include libel, slander, and incitement to attack other individuals violently. However, a growing number of Canadians worry whether it’s possible—and proper—to limit freedom of speech in order to protect other public virtues.  

Paris isn’t squeamish about this task. She sees freedom of speech as one “public interest” that can be qualified in order to respect others. Her claim that freedom of speech should pay obedience to the “Canadian zeitgeist” of respectful, harmonious discourse would, however, transform an individual right into nothing more than another good thing in our basket of collective virtues.

Paris singles out writers Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn as “free-speech extremists.” Amazingly, she elaborates by saying “Both these authors have tried to shift the Canadian consensus by normalizing previously unacceptable levels of speech.”

This is velvet totalitarianism. The Canadian consensus in Erna Paris’s head—and conceivably in the heads of a winning majority of fellow citizens—is not in the Constitution or should not be the business of the Supreme Court.

Free speech, itself, is an extreme idea and is practiced everywhere to shift the consensus of the day. Levant and Steyn may be singleminded about insisting that Muslims suck it up and accept Mohamed doesn’t govern on this continent or prescribe the liberties of Canadian women and magazines of opinion.

Paris’ op-ed starts by making this radical assertion: “Given Canada’s multicultural fabric, it’s naïve to assume that our mythologized consensus over tolerance can’t be easily eroded by hate speech.” She concludes her op-ed piece by saying:

“It has been more than 20 years since our Supreme Court last wrestled with this issue, then upheld Canada’s hate-speech provisions by ruling (narrowly) that James Keegstra, an Alberta teacher who quizzed his students on their “knowledge” of his anti-Semitic views, was wilfully promoting hatred of a Canadian minority. The Canada we live in today is considerably more fragile than it was in 1990. Freedom of speech must be balanced with freedom from the destabilizing effects of public hatred in this, the world’s most heterogeneous society.”

Click on: www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/there-are-limits-to-free-expression/article2216380/

Setting aside the arguable proposition that our society is less fragile than it was in 1990, this concern for social harmony is reactionary and ironic. One of the reasons Canada and the United States are the most popular destinations in the world for minorities and eccentric is that their governments don’t use the term “harmony” and “respect” to silence, arrest and persecute those who thumb their noses at official ideologies and gods.

Canada is multicultural because it’s a safe place to be free to be yourself. It’s crazy to suggest we need to be less free to remain a heterogeneous society.

Maybe Immigration Canada should add something like this to primers for prospective immigrants: “In Canada, you are free to practice your religion and traditions and spread your beliefs. However, you must be prepared even to be laughed at by others who think you’re ideas are wrong.”