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PoliGazette Launches

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 19:40:50 -0800

Over the past few months I have been working with Michael van der Galien to launch a new moderate conservative (or moderate liberal, depending on how you look at it) blog and news site. Well, today it has seen the light: PoliGazette is here! Make sure to read the welcome post here.

Remembrance Day, Veterans Day

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:59:51 -0800

Earlier this morning I was humbled to stand next on stage to Norm Kirby, a Canadian veteran who landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. At the end of the war when he marched into The Netherlands he was at age 19, a platoon commander. Shortly before he spoke I got to deliver my speech, focused on freedom and why we should keep remembering. I give it to you here in its entirety: Today I will take my children to the Remembrance Day ceremonies, just like my father used to take me to the remembrance ceremonies in The Netherlands where I grew up as a child. The memories of those are vivid: a sober ceremony, some music, a speech by the mayor, veterans and survivors placing some wreaths in front of the statue on the square and a silence of two minutes followed by the national anthem. But as opposed to Canadians, our day of remembrance is May 4, the day marking the eve of liberation day; the day Canadian troops liberated the North and West of The Netherlands sixty-two years ago. But there is another more major difference between these two days of remembrance: most of the victims we commemorated weren't military, but civilian. I remember one time, I must have been about ten years old that I was standing next to an older man who was there together with a younger man who I had seen before in our hometown. The younger man was probably somewhere in his thirties with very dark, black hair and, as it seemed to, somewhat mentally challenged. The older man started talking to me and I could not really follow what he was saying as I was trying hard to pay attention to the unfolding ceremony. So, all I did was smile to the man, nodding yes, and in effect politely ignoring him. As time went on it became evident that he was talking about the mentally handicapped younger man standing next to us. He probably had come to the conclusion I wasn't paying any real attention so in order to grab it he all of a sudden cut right to the heart of his monologue and pointed to the younger man. He then said something to me I will never forget: "they made him watch the execution of his parents". Somewhat embarrassed, I turned to the man and immersed myself in the life story of one of the few Dutch Jews who had managed to survive the Second World War. And so it was in many Dutch households, where stories of suffering and survival were kept alive by a generation that had lived through five years of war and suppression. My own family also provided its wartime narrative. There was the story about my grandfather who ended up in Buchenwald after he and a few enthusiastic would-be resistance fighters had naively compiled list of all the members of the team. That typical Dutch effort to get organized ended terribly when the list with names inadvertently fell into German hands. Or how my own father during the last few months of the war was forced to hide in a closet, while the streets were swarmed with Wehrmacht rounding up young men to work in Germany's rapidly collapsing war industry. They were all stories that formed an integral part of the identity of our family, oral history in its purest form, delivered on to the next generation at the dinner table and at family parties. And in the days leading up to and after the May 4 commemorations they were usually recycled, often spiced up with long forgotten details. So, after these Remembrance Day services had ended my father and I would casually stroll back to our house, leaving behind a square filled with floral tributes to the fallen. He would tell me that none of the unborn would ever realize what freedom really meant. In my childlike enthusiasm I firmly rejected this notion, but subconsciously I knew he was absolutely right. Not until you have experienced what it is to see entire families disappear from your street or to sit on a darkened attic for days on end to avoid capture, deportation and death, can one come to realize the true value of freedom. My generation learned to take that freedom for granted, use it, abuse it or at times even spit on it. As the generation of my parents passes on, the ones born in the first few decades after the war will be the last generation to have had some sort of direct link to the world war that ended in 1945. Both in Canada and Europe that generation is somehow tasked with preserving the memory of what it means to lose freedom as best as it can. That is why today I will take my children to Remembrance Day. So that they understand directly why Canadians landed on Juno Beach and why people from both sides of the Atlantic connected through mutual, if very different, experiences of totalitarianism. And yes, they will hear me talk about what happened to their grandfather, their great-grandfather and that poor little black haired man who now most likely will have reached middle age, still tortured by the brutality that he was made to face as a child. There is of course more than just the spoken word, as today we gather around the more physical legacy presented by war monuments. One of the most impressive can be found in Amsterdam where former Dutch resistance fighter and poet H.M. van Randwijk's succinct words immortalized the essence of losing freedom and the importance of remembering:

A people that bows to tyrants Will lose more than life and belongings Then, the lights will go out

The Bush 'Regime'

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 09:08:08 -0800

One of the baffling things about this White House's routine is how it violates one of the most basic business premises which I would summarize as "where leaders go, others follow". However if George W. Bush goes to bed at 10 PM sharp, there aren't many of his staff members following as most are expected to burn the midnight oil, which they unquestionably do. That is a marked difference from the round-the-clock chaotic Clinton years and one wonders how this apparent distance between the CEO and his team does not seem to affect team loyalty.

Early-to-bed, punctuality, simplicity, no alcohol, relentless physical exercise, that sums up what we would call the Bush regime. It is one of the key points from Robert Draper's Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush. Draper's book is an early assessment of this president and it follows its subject from the early days in Texas to the present day troubles of balancing domestic pressures with fighting a war in Iraq. The casual style gives the book the feel as if it is an extended Vanity Fair entry with lots of remarkable anecdotes without answering any real questions the reader might have. Although there are attempts, 'Dead Certain' hardly addresses the deeper motivations of its subject so what we end up is a trove of material making it a book of reference for a real biography that will be written once Dubya has retired at his Crawford ranch. Still it is a very worthwhile read. From a historical perspective there are two chapters that stand out. One describes the pre-nomination battle in the state of South Carolina where John McCain's name and reputation were dragged through the mud by Bush's highly motivated ground troops. Although it does hardly give an insight about the extent of the candidate's involvement in these brutal tactics, it gives a few useful pointers as to how you can turn around the momentum during a primary campaign. The same level of analysis is devoted to Katrina, the aftermath of which is routinely described as if it was one of Bush's own making which it evidently was not. But it does provide an interesting case study of present-day disaster management and how the White House sought to manipulate public sentiment. Throughout Draper's book - which is invariably described as being unbiased - the reader is left with a fairly favorable picture of Bush as a well-meaning, focused if somewhat unprepared leader who is not nearly as conservative as his opponents make him out to be. Draper is creating not any real distance between himself and Bush, but more importantly between Bush and less pleasant events that some believe have the president's imprint on it. Draper leaves the reader feeling that Bush is a well meaning actor, often caught in unfortunate administrative turf wars. Admittedly, I did not like Bush when he launched his campaign in 1999, liked him after 9/11, began to dislike him starting in 2004, but Draper has somehow managed to me taking a liking to the guy again. The somewhat lame conclusion that Bush's virtues are pretty much the same as his vices feels like Draper was in a hurry to get his book to the printer. The material could have yielded a far more thought provoking end. One for instance is that the deferential treatment Bush receives from his team to a point where vital information is not being shared with the boss is possibly one that has created serious dysfunction and some disastrous policy results. The fact that the chief leaves the office at night well before the rest of the team may not appear to be a big deal, but it highlights the fraught dynamics of the Bush White House. If you like presidential history, endless anecdotes, magazine style narrative and an invitation to draw your own conclusions, Draper's book should be yours.

Happy Halloween

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 00:26:02 -0800

Last Week on The Gazette

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:25:12 -0800

There was a lot of comment on my post which dealt with the overreaction by police at both Phoenix and Vancouver airports which resulted in two unfortunate deaths. Excerpt:

It occurs to me that our society's appetite for security and control has given birth to a rapidly growing industry - consisting of both public and private institutions - that is increasingly incompetent in dealing with alleged breaches of security. Giant lapses in security occur without any effective response, while innocent passengers run the risk of being violently subdued in situations where other tools of conflict resolution would undoubtedly have done the trick.

Read the whole thing, and the various comments, here. And yes, China is firmly back on the agenda. The red carpet treatment that the Dalai Lama got at the White House last week deserves applause.

The End of the Affair

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:01:04 -0800

The embarrassing finale of the Hirsi Ali saga played itself out in Dutch parliament yesterday. My thoughts are summarized in my latest column here.

Soldier of Orange (1917 - 2007)

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 22:06:34 -0800

Whenever I am asked about Dutch movies I say without hesitation that the best one ever made was Soldier of Orange (1977). It was at the time the most expensive movie production ever made in Holland and it launched the international careers of both Rutger Hauer and Paul Verhoeven. With this movie Verhoeven - who went on to achieve Hollywood fame with 'Basic Instinct' - brought his unique brand of realism to a larger and international audience. It meant that 'Soldier' was enriched with quite a bit of sex and a few torture scenes that stand the test of time and are as haunting today as they were thirty years ago. But above all it was the script that was able to condense the experiences of the Dutch under Nazi rule into a compelling film built around a hero who waged his own struggle against the brutal German oppressor.

The movie was based on the book written by the man who came to be known as the 'Soldier of Orange', Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema who died in his home on Hawaii earlier this week at the age of 90. The story follows the adventures of a group of rather privileged Dutch college students whose careless life at Leiden University is disrupted by the Nazi invasion of May 1940. The group falls apart during the war, a few side with the enemy, one Jewish member perishes, and some end up in the resistance, notably Hazelhoff Roelfzema. The movie follows his daring crossing of enemy lines across the North Sea to reach the British shores and a subsequent return with Royal Navy assistance to the occupied beaches of the Dutch mainland. In actual life the Dutch hero made about fourteen such crossings which sought to maintain vital links with Dutch resistance forces in the occupied country. After this he entered the RAF as a pilot carrying out some seventy bombing missions over Germany. Towards the end of the war he became the adjudant to Queen Wilhelmina, a role which earned him his nickname as 'Orange' is not only the Dutch national color, it is the royal family's surname. Yet, his life after the war proved to be equally interesting. Of course his efforts and hero status had rendered him totally unfit to return to regular Dutch life and a short spell as a diplomat ended rather abruptly after having spoken his mind about the future of the Dutch East Indies. His passion for this part of the world led him to carry out a few missions on behalf of the Republic of the Moluccas, a rather large part of eastern Indonesia that was counting on independence following the Dutch departure in 1949. That quest was stifled by the international community - notably the US - who had a vested interest in the post-war world to keep Indonesia a unified entity and a bulwark against communism. Of course, his mission failed and Hazelhoff Roelfzema started a new life as an immigrant in the US, holding a variety of jobs, working among other things for NBC and Radio Free Europe. In his biography Hazelhoff Roelfzema makes it clear that he essentially was an adventurer and loved nothing more than writing. It was his second wife who encouraged him to put his Soldier of Orange memories to paper and it became a major bestseller in 1971. It gave Hazelhoff instant celebrity in The Netherlands and as a 'war hero' the small nation got something its own narrative of the Second World War deeply lacked. Hazelhoff himself - by that time retired on Hawaii - never considered himself as such and made it clear that many others had done the same: that what was required under extremely difficult circumstances. He had just been lucky enough to stumble into the limelight. Despite his American passport and passion for the Big Island, he always remained a Dutchman at heart, visiting his homeland regularly, while at the same time realizing that he could not ever live there again. His life is a remarkable one and the movie remains an absolute must see.

"When Irish Eyes Are Smiling"

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 19:03:08 -0800

It has become incredibly popular for today's conservative politicians to invoke Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and in some cases to seek the actual blessing from the now octogenarian Iron Lady. Earlier this week in Vancouver, former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney tried to bring the 1980s back to life in order to sell his recently released book, Memoirs.

It is the sort of sentimental journey that gets a conservative crowd into a feisty mood and when Canadians start applauding the Reagan-name, you know there is something interesting going on. Yet, Mulroney's reach back into history is above all a clear effort to cement his legacy as his record remains mixed at best. Canada's conservative party deconstructed after Mulroney's less than gracious exit from office and the Liberals under Chretien reaped the benefits much in the way Clinton did after Reagan/Bush and Blair after Thatcher/Major. That is what Mulroney is emphasizing. And indeed to his eternal credit, his warm relationship with both Reagan and Bush and his astute awareness of free trade as an engine for Canadian growth resulted in a series of bilateral agreements that continue to fuel both the Canadian and US economies. I am not sure if I have the time to dig through the 1100 pages, but for political junkies it is laden with remarkable anecdotes. Here is a nice one. Mulroney's cordial relationship with Reagan did not always go down well among Canada's left-leaning elites, known for pathological levels of anti-Americanism. After a dinner at a summit in the mid-80s, Reagan and Mulroney, both descendants of Irish immigrants went on stage to sing "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling", from page 369:

Canadians in general loved the Irish duet, but the CBC replayed the clip constantly with commentary that it was symbolic of a humiliating "toadyism" and a sub-ordination of Canada's interests. "I must say, these people really have a serious inferiority complex", said Margaret Thatcher after she saw a replay of such commentary during a visit to Toronto. "I certainly hope they don't go off their medication."

NOTE: This post appeared originally on The Gazette under the title Canada's Conservative Icon. Mulroney continued his book tour in Calgary where he expanded on the Reagan theme by comparing current Canadian PM Harper to the Gipper. Not sure if that comparison works all that well, nor am I convinced that it will help Harper in getting more traction in the center of Canada's political landscape. But if Harper compensates his lack of folksy ease by following Reagan's instincts and implementing his ideas on freedom and the limited role of government, things should be looking up for Canada.

More Doubt Required

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 20:39:18 -0800

As much as I believe in poise, certainty and focus there is as Robert Wright so eloquently puts it in his latest diavlog, no better friend to have than doubt. He's absolutely right and I recommend his regular diavlogs (this week with Joel Achenbach instead of Mickey Kaus) as mandatory material, it is some of the best blogospheric content currently available.

This Week on The Gazette

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 20:34:55 -0800

As most of you are aware by now, I post my political thoughts on The Gazette, some weeks more than others. This week I touched on The Bush Speech, Public Funds for Religious Schools and Jane Wyman's death.

Luciano Pavarotti

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 00:00:02 -0800

One of opera's greatest performers passed away following a long struggle with cancer. There are many ways to remember him today, but this rendition by a younger Pavarotti of one of my favorite arias is surely a fitting one.

And the stars were shining and the earth smelled sweet the garden gate scraped, and a step brushed the sand She came in, fragrant and fell into my arms Oh! sweetest of kisses, oh! languorous caresses, while I trembled as I loosed her lovely features concealed by her mantle! My dream of love has vanished for ever, The moment has passed, and I die in despair! And I never have loved life so much! (E lucevan le stelle, From Puccini's Tosca)

The Power of Alcohol

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 19:28:09 -0800

As we 're inundated with quotes from Robert Draper's revealing book on Bush, I kind of enjoyed this one, on drinking:

Discussing his past battles with alcohol, he says he would never be able to make decision on war if he was still drinking. "Exercise helps. And I think prayer helps," he says. "I wouldn't be President if I kept drinking. You can get sloppy, can't make decisions. It clouds your reason, absolutely."

Wasn't the War on Terror modeled after the struggle against Nazism? And didn't Sir Winston Churchill make a resounding re-entry in the daily lexicon after the events of 9/11? What would the world have looked like if Sir Winston had applied the same rigor to his alcohol consumption as GWB? Here's a clue:

His drinking habits were admirably fetishistic - preferably Pol Roger, served at precisely the right temperature (he was delighted when the gift of a refrigerator from Beaverbrook in 1926 obviated the need to dilute it with ice) and interspersed with much brandy and port. The papers of Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's lend-lease administrator, contain several good examples of the war leader's zealous interest in his own consumption. For instance, Hopkins describes finding Churchill in January 1943 'in bed in his customary pink robe, and having, of all things, a bottle of wine for breakfast'. Viscount Alanbrooke made the same observation, and Eden's diary mentions Churchill taking a 'stiff whiskey and soda, at 8.45 a.m'. A Foreign Office official described a dinner with Churchill as ,a varied and noble procession of wines with which I could not keep pace - champagne, port, brandy, Cointreau: Winston drank a good deal of all, and ended with two glasses of whisky and soda.'

Cheers. UPDATE: A lively discussion about this post is taking place in the comments section at The Gazette where it was posted originally.

Dutch Numbers

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 15:51:49 -0800

Michael van der Galien posted some interesting Dutch poll numbers earlier today. They represent exactly what I have argued a little while ago in my essay called 'Dutch Confusion'. The traditional parties have lost their appeal and new outfits on both the left and right are increasingly able to pick up disgruntled and directionless floating voters. Beware the next election.

Co-Authoring ...

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:39:40 -0800

I have signed on as a contributing author on The Van Der Galien Gazette where I will post some of my thoughts from time to time. My first piece, Diana and the Culture of Death, is up. Enjoy.