Oh, Canada!  Oh, delicious!
<p>Stephen Harper, the newly-elected Conservative prime minister of Canada,<br />
is huffing and puffing about Canada asserting its sovereignity over the arctic<br />
waters of the Nortwest Passage.  &#8220;The United States defends its sovereignty;<br />
the Canadian government will defend our sovereignty,&#8221; said Harper at the<br />
end of a news conference, promising to deploy naval icebreakers into the<br />
disputed waters.</p>
<p>The resulting brouhaha is hilarious on so many different levels<br />
it&#8217;s hard to know where to start.</p>
<p><span id="more-254"></span></p>
<p>But let&#8217;s just start by considering all the<br />
wisecracks about the Canadian military to have been made already,<br />
shall we?  True, they&#8217;re about as intimidating as three troops of Girl<br />
Scouts nowadays, but it&#8217;s not really fair to harsh on them; they were<br />
a tough, professional service before po-mo leftism in the Canadian<br />
elite made it national policy that the military could never be more<br />
than a joke.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s much funnier is that the U.S. mainstream media sees Harper&#8217;s<br />
maneuver as an I&#8217;m-not-your-poodle message to George Bush. There&#8217;s<br />
some justification for this; Harper is doubtless playing that card to<br />
stroke Canadian Liberal voters, who indeed do tend to hate Bush almost<br />
as intensely and irrationally as the U.S. press does.</p>
<p>But really! Over a bunch of ice floes on the sub-zero ass-end of<br />
nowhere?  Harper, an ex-libertarian, isn&#8217;t that stupid.  Anybody who<br />
can&#8217;t hear the wink-wink-nudge-nudge in Harper&#8217;s parody of territorial<br />
posturing is tone-deaf.</p>
<p>Harper is doing something much deeper and funnier here.  He&#8217;s<br />
catching the Left in a trap.  If they want to join him in<br />
his anti-Bush polemic, they&#8217;re going to have to stand behind the<br />
principles of &mdash; <em>national sovereignity</em>?<br />
<em>Patriotism</em>?  Rendered idiots by their hatred, many of them<br />
will probably take the bait &mdash; not anticipating that their own<br />
rhetoric is going to come back around to hammer them flat sometime<br />
when there&#8217;s a serious issue on the table.</p>
<p>Harper is such a clever bastard that he&#8217;s setting this trap right<br />
in front of their faces and daring them to notice.  Read that quote<br />
again:</p>
<blockquote><p>
&#8220;The United States defends its sovereignty; the Canadian government<br />
will defend our sovereignty.&#8221;
</p></blockquote>
<p>By invoking Canadian national sovereignity, and justifying it on<br />
the direct analogy with the <em>U.S.&#8217;s right to act as a sovereign<br />
nation</em>, Harper just kicked <a href='http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives_roll/2002_04-06/fonte_ideological/fonte_ideological.html'>transnational<br />
progressivism</a> in the nuts.  But by making it look like an<br />
anti-American, anti-Bush move, he has made it almost impossible for<br />
anyone in the Liberal Party to argue with the anti-tranzi terms in<br />
which he has framed the issue &ndash; <em>because arguing would look<br />
like rolling over to the Americans!</em></p>
<p>It&#8217;s beautiful, I tell you.  Beautiful.  The most adroit political<br />
mindfuck I&#8217;ve seen in years.  My respect for Harper just shot up about<br />
300%.</p>
