"Suppose for a moment that a professor of politics and sociology at The Royal Military College, Campus Fort Saint-Jean, was going to be in Alberta accompanying her husband on a business trip and arranged to visit the military families at CFB Wainwright while in the province.
Now suppose the professor's visit was cancelled without explanation by the Harper government.
Now suppose that the professor was Dr. Janine Krieber and her husband was Stephane Dion.
This happened.
What explanation do you think the government might offer for the cancellation were they pressed to supply one?
Do you think the explanation might spring from the same kind of thinking that led the Bush administration to think the exposure of a CIA operative was an appropriate course of political action? Much less severe in nature and effect of course but the same brutally punitive partisan impulse at play.
I am also caused to wonder if there is any other strong-arming of politically non-compliant faculty going on at RMC. I wonder if they're being pressed to de-emphasize the history of military adventurism in Afghanistan, for example. I wonder if they're being demonized as "unpatriotic" if they express views other than those held by Gordon O'Connor or Stephen Harper, for example.
But that's just me, a mere citizen, or I suppose more properly in these times a consumer of government and news. I can afford to be concerned about the direction the country is headed. I have the luxury of thinking that perhaps the kind of brutally punitive partisanship modelled after the tactics of Karl Rove might not have any better an end in Canada than they have in the US.
I'm not a journalist with important stories to file about the latest trials and tribulations of the wealthy, rash and fatuous.
Dana (full name and address not published here)
ps...not a Liberal party member. Ask them."
I expect nothing.
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