This time of year, more than previous years, is making me feel a bit nostalgic.  At the end of August, and at the start of September, Summer starts to wind down, the wasps seem to proliferate everywhere, and the Toronto International Film Festival kicks off.  Over the years, I never went to any of the film festival parties or anything, because I think it is disgusting how much actors get paid to play let’s-pretend in front of a camera.  (I’ll always be a punk rock snob, I suppose: I also generally hate any popular culture that gets too popular.)

Anyway, I digress. This time of year is the time when I would start heading over to the Liberal Party headquarters – federal and provincial – on St. Mary’s Street, off Yonge.  In 2003, in 2007 and 2011, we’d take up residence in that crummy old building, and spend hour after hour campaigning under the leadership of Dalton McGuinty and Don Guy.  In 2003 we won big, in 2007 we won big, and in 2011 we won almost as big – just one seat, a few hundred votes – shy of another majority.

Everyone knows, pretty much, what happened after Dalton resigned.  It happens whenever a long-serving leader leaves, and his or her successor scrambles to depict themselves as “brand-new” and “an agent of change.”  It rarely works.  You’re there for the good as well as the bad.  The moment the media and the Opposition see you trying to frantically distance yourself from what went before, they’ve got you.  Martin learned that the hard way, Wynne hopefully won’t.

But that’s not the point of my nostalgic post.  The point is this: the people I served with on those campaigns – Don Guy, Brendan McGuinty, Laura Miller, Chris Morley, Dave Gene, Aaron Lazarus, Christine McMillan, Gerald Butts and many others – were my political family.  They were, and are, some of the finest people I know.  I will stick by them and defend them, always.  Just like I did and do with Jean Chretien, Bruce Hartley, Randy McCauley, Jean Carle and a few others on the federal scene.

I do not think I am particularly intelligent, and nor do I think I have any special skills, in anything.  The main thing I am proud of, in my political life, is loyalty.  Not loyalty when times are good – that’s not loyalty: that’s easy.  Loyalty when times are tough, like they were for Chretien’s political family in 2004-2005, and like they are now for McGuinty’s political family.  That’s not so easy.

I’m not uncritical in my loyalty, of course.  One friend of some 30 years lied full-on to my face about something important, in the past year, and if I don’t ever see him again, it’ll be too soon.  Another one was never, ever there during some very tough times.  He voted with his feet, so I did too.  See ya.

But those McGuinty folks? They are good and decent people, and I don’t believe one scintilla of the bullshit being said about them by the media or their detractors, inside or outside the Liberal Party.  (Those kinds of people are just cowards: sucking up to those with power, making big bucks lobbying or whatever, and then disappearing when the going gets tough. I call it the Dominic LeBlanc Syndrome.)

You shouldn’t believe the bullshit, either.  And you should also believe me – if you are in a campaign, or if you are contemplating one – when I say this: in politics, all that counts is loyalty.  That is what matters most, more than winning or losing.

So, that’s what I’m thinking about, a bit wistfully, as I contemplate TIFF, the wasps, and some great times in that run-down old building on St. Mary’s Street.

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Dear Men:

Good God Almighty.

I’ve given up on swimming, starting right about now.  You?

Sincerely,

Warren

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…on his new book.

As someone who has written seven books, I am always gratified to hear about newcomers like this “Stephen J. Harper” fellow.

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I plan to write more about this in my Sunday column. But, as the debate heats up in Congress today, here are a few reasons why I feel we are compelled to take action, in no particular order. Comments welcome.

1. Morality: More than 1,400 were killed by Assad’s Sarin gas, many of them children. We cannot allow that to happen again. This is a profound humanitarian crisis. We have a collective moral and legal responsibility to prevent further use of chemical weapons.
2. Red Line: Obama said a year ago that the use of chemical weapons was a red line – he cannot back away from that now. U.S. credibility – particularly in Israel and with pro-U.S. Arab states – is at stake. (And, as Obama noted this morning, it’s the world’s red line.)
3. Terrorism’s arsenal: If Assad is permitted to use such weapons with impunity, there is every reason to expect his allies – Iran, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda – will seek to do likewise. Assad will reward them with chemical weapons for their support in the nearly three-year war.
4. Proliferation: Chemical weapons, as I wrote in my first book, are cheap and easy to produce. They radically change the way in which war is waged. Their increased use will make the Middle East (and therefore the world) a much more dangerous place.
5. Stronger Assad: If his targeting of civilians with chemical agents remains unpunished, his stature is increased, and the rebels’ predicament gets increasingly dire. Iran, Hezbollah and others benefit.
6. Allies onside: Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Turkey – all of them are advising to strike now, and ensure that Assad is driven out. They are in the region; their perspective is highly relevant. We must listen to them.
7. No more waiting: Those who said waiting would work were wrong. The situation has gotten dramatically worse – a massive refugee crisis, and more than 100,000 dead. Action is needed, now.
8. Others are watching: North Korea et al. are watching closely. A failure to act will only encourage them.
9. Consensus: While Bush Sr. didn’t wait for Congress with Kuwait – and while Clinton and Chretien didn’t wait for the U.N. in Kosovo – Obama has sought bi-partisan congressional support. He is getting it. Most Western governments are onside. That matters.
10. Public onside: An NBC poll found that a clear majority favour action if (a) Congress approves and (b) U.S. allies are with Obama and (c) the engagement is limited. Conditions (a) and (b) will be met; condition (c) is what Obama has promised.

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If Syria’s regime is permitted to continue gassing its own citizens to death – and, rest assured, it did just that last week, killing hundreds of men, women and children – then George W. Bush and Tony Blair share some of the blame.

Already, the effects of Bush and Blair’s ill-advised war in Iraq are being seen. Western efforts to cobble together a military response to the use of chemical weapons by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad are falling part, in Britain and elsewhere – because of Bush and Blair’s disastrous quest for non-existent “weapons of mass distraction” in Iraq a decade ago.

Late in the week, Britain’s Conservative government was obliged to dilute a Parliamentary resolution authorizing military action against the Hitlerite Assad. Skittish Labour Party members – as well as Conservative MPs – now insist on United Nations approval first. That effectively means all that Assad will be facing, for the next while, is stern words.

The civilized world’s approach to the Syria crisis has devolved into tragedy and farce. When Assad can gas children to death with impunity – contrary to every known international law, contrary to whatever human decency is left – then all of us share in the blame.

Bush and Blair, as noted, can lay claim to a greater share. Their WMD misadventure has given too many faint-hearted legislators – on the Right as well as the Left – the excuse they need to delay and deny firm action.

The outcome will be more slaughter – more than 100,000 are believed to have been killed in Syria’s ongoing conflict – and, likely, more use of chemical weapons by an emboldened Assad.

Barack Obama may choose to go it alone, as Republican leaders in Congress have favoured military intervention in Syria for many months. If chooses discretion over valour, however, he runs the risk of reducing his international reputation to tatters. His fabled “red line” will be rendered a joke.

In order to remain human, the novelist Graham Greene once said, one must choose sides.

It is time to choose military intervention in Syria, as limited as possible. Barack Obama and David Cameron are right to push for it.

George W. Bush and Tony Blair were wrong to start a war over weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.

But it is manifestly worse to use Bush and Blair’s mistake to justify doing nothing now in Syria. Inaction in the face of such a calamity, per the truism, is complicity.

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Took this up at the cabin, as we were preparing to leave. Summer is truly over, isn’t it?

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In the fall of 1936, as the plague of Nazism continued spreading across Germany, Oldenburg issued a decree.

The northern German district had decided to order the removal of crucifixes from public buildings, and even from Catholic schools. For equivalency, Oldenberg’s fascist leaders also ordered that pictures of Martin Luther be taken down in Protestant schools.

While Adolf Hitler had been notionally a Catholic — his mother had been quite devout — his connection to the church was not strong. His interest in churches seemed to be limited to their architecture.

In his treatise, Mein Kampf, Hitler would attack the Catholic Church, denouncing it for being insufficiently concerned by what he called the “racial problem.” While his National Socialist Party charter lamely promoted freedom of religion, Hitler disbanded the Catholic Youth League in his first week as chancellor. Religious education was thereafter discouraged.

When Catholic clergy responded by offering spiritual teaching outside work hours, the Hitler regime prohibited state employees from taking part. And then, in 1936, Oldenberg happened.

A Hitler Youth anthem of the time pithily summed up Nazism’s view: “We follow not Christ, but Horst Wessel; Away with the incense and holy water; The church can go hang for all we care, the Swastika brings salvation on Earth.”

If you are an informed Canadian (generally) and a worried religious Quebecer (specifically), you know where we’re going with this modest history lesson, of course. So let’s get one thing out of the way, right away: Pauline Marois’ Parti Quebecois are not Adolf Hitler’s NSDAP. If you think they are, you’re an idiot.

But when you read about Oldenburg, you perhaps recalled the PQ’s Orwellian-sounding “Charter of Quebec Values.” I know I certainly did.

For the Quebec public sector, Marois wants to ban religious symbols worn by the religious. Proclaiming herself in favour of religious freedom — as the Nazi Party did in its charter — Marois last week declared: “We’re moving forward in the name of all the women, all the men, who chose Quebec for our culture, for our freedom, and for our diversity,” she told a gathering of PQ Youth in Quebec City.

Except that it’s not true. The “charter” will not move Quebec, or Canada, forward one step. It will not advance Quebec’s “culture,” it will strangle it. It will not enhance Quebec’s “freedom,” it will tarnish it. And, most of all, it will not enhance “diversity” — it will, instead, murder it.

As some of us (but not all of us) have written in these pages many times, religions should not run governments — and governments should not run religions. Past measures taken by both the federal and Quebec governments — against Muslims who choose to wear burkas — were a slippery slope, we argued. No less than the Orthodox Jewish leadership in Montreal agreed.

We now know why. Marois’ “vision,” as Quebec’s Jews and Muslims foretold, will create disunity and division. If she figures out a way to get her hateful charter through the National Assembly — where, ironically and hypocritically, a crucifix is prominently displayed — she will stir up sectarian turmoil the likes of which this country has never seen.

Here’s why: To the faithful, religious symbols are not mere ornaments. They are part of their being — literally, part of their identity. To them, Quebec’s intended Charter is the equivalent of hacking off a limb.

Marois should read about Oldenburg. Not for what the Nazis did in the fall of 1936, but for what the people did next. They rose up against the decree against religious symbols. They revolted.

The Nazi Party sent in their propagandists to defend it, but the people of Oldenburg shouted them down. Thousands rallied to end it.

And they did. In a rare defeat for Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party, the Oldenburg decree was rescinded, never to be attempted again.

People power works, then and now.

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To fill a rather sudden vacancy.

Geriatric GTA punks, apply to wkinsella at hotmail.com!

(And, no, this is not the Big Change, but it certainly ranks up there.)

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