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[Cigar_Guy]

His most recent piece in the Western Standard is here (I must apologize that it is behind a free registration. However, I've been registered for a few years now and have yet to get any spam or anything frmo them. ): http://www.westernstandard.ca/website/index.cfm?page=article&article_id=1606

I'm a big fan of Steyn an am wondering if I'm the only one. Any guys who enjoy this piece are due for a free beer from me, and I'll ask to marry any girl who likes it.

Of course, any relationship might be difficult given the amount of flames I'm sure to draw for this, but oh well.

[Alias]

Might have read this one, could you post the text for us lazy people?

[Cigar_Guy]

Yes--given your request and the total lack of replies so far, I figure it's worth risking a copyright lawsuit and reprint the thing here:

Shirking Class Hero

At the CBC, the Canadian idols are all moral narcissists

Mark Steyn - April 24, 2006

Is the Pope Catholic? Alas, so--despite The New York Times' best efforts to land the gig for a more "moderate," less "divisive" figure such as Ellen DeGeneres or Rupert Everett.

But is James Loney Catholic? I don't mean the whole gay thing. As Doug Pritchard, co-director of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, explained a propos his decision to play down the homosexual angle vis-a-vis his kidnappers, "It's a sad fact that around the world gays and lesbians are more vulnerable to attack than straights."

"Around the world," you understand. Not any specific bit of the world in particular, we hasten to add. Just "around the world" in general. Fortunately, the hostages were seized by the famously gay-cool Swords of Righteousness Brigade in Baghdad and not by, say, a cell of homophobic Stephen Harper advisers in rural Alberta. Still, best not to take any chances, so they felt it politic to hush up the gayness.

But put aside the issue of whether a homosexual activist can be a "devout Catholic," as Mr. Loney's colleague Kathleen Kern described him--whatever the boring judgmental doctrinal stuff says, to the media it's no big deal. Instead, consider the other components of his "devout Catholicism." Mr. Loney is a sometime columnist and, though scrupulously non-judgmental when it comes to Sunni Triangle head-hackers, he's positively breezy in his judgments on almost everything else:

"I avoid prayer like the plague--the kind where you stop, sit or kneel, do nothing but be, even if for only ten minutes. It's agony-in-the-garden every time; the easiest thing is to let the cup pass. The thought of fasting nauseates me, and as for Sunday mass--that weekly spiritual reboot and virus check--well, let's just say I've accumulated a significant inventory of mortal sins."

Er, okay. So he's a Catholic who doesn't go to mass, reckons prayer is the plague, and is nauseated by the thought of fasting rather than by doing any. Oh, and he dismisses faith as "that tired platitude of Sunday sermons," and as he skips those it's no surprise that he doesn't have any. As he beseeched "St. Philip"--Philip is not a saint in the agonizingly nauseatingly platitudinous canonized sense but a left-wing pal of his--"Help thou my unbelief."

So James Loney is a non-praying non-churchgoing non-believing Catholic. What does he believe in? Well, he believes in himself. As he wrote a year ago:

"As it started to sink in, little by little, that I'm okay, loved and accepted right now--just as I am--my appetite for spiritual striving and self-discipline has diminished in corresponding measure."

If you're as high in self-esteem as Mr. Loney, why engage in the fruitless task of chasing after God's? Even by the standards of the media's shaky grasp of theology, this "Christianity" seems a little unconvincing. If a guy who didn't believe in Mohammed or the Koran, never went to the mosque and never prayed set himself up as a Muslim Peacemaker Team, how seriously would the Arab press take him?

As it happens, I find Mr. Loney by far the most agreeable of the "released" "Peacemakers." He was certainly the least graceless when it came to thanking his rescuers, singling out the British SAS commando who freed him from his shackles. But fortunately, when the general surly ingratitude of the CPT became known, one man leapt in to reclaim their reputation. Step forward Tony Burman, editor-in-chief of CBC News:

"Most of us not only felt genuine relief and happiness about the rescue but, more profoundly, saw in these 'peacemakers' something that was quite admirable, courageous--and classically Canadian."

Now he mentions it, there was something familiar about the whole Christian Peacemaker smug self-absorption routine I just couldn't put my finger on. But he's right. Even though one of the four is dead, and another's British, and a third's moved to New Zealand, in its preening self-absorption there is indeed something quintessentially Canadian about the CPT.

Oh, wait. That's not what he meant by "classically Canadian"? As Mr. Burman continues:

"A desire to get involved. To help out. To make a difference even if it involves real personal risk. That's what Canadians do, in very real terms." No, they don't. In fact, you couldn't find more "unreal terms"--even by the standards of narcissistic maple boosterism--for the status of Canada after a decade under M. Chrétien's leadership. We're the country that talks about getting involved rather than getting involved, to the point where even Bono finds himself pointing out what a phony blowhard Paul Martin is. The people getting involved and helping out and making a difference at real personal risk are the brave soldiers who rescued the "classically Canadian" poseur peacenik. All over Iraq, you'll find brave individuals taking great personal risks to help Arabs and Kurds, Shia and Sunni build the first functioning free society in the Arab world. Canada's contribution to that has been chiefly distinguished by its absence. Thanks to Mr. Loney, it's momentarily distinguished by its active opposition. If his action was "Canadian," it was so only in the shrivelled Canadian sense that it was an exercise in moral vanity in which the Brits and Yanks wound up having to do the heavy lifting.

Mr. Burman's remarks would be unexceptional if he were an Anglican bishop or some CanLit professor. But he's supposed to be a newsman. And at a point in the story when a real journalist might have displayed some elemental curiosity about who these "Peacemakers" are and what do they really believe, the head of our national news broadcaster was wafting James Loney up to cloud-cuckoo land on a bed of marshmallows:

"I think many of us saw in the actions of this group--at least with the two Canadians--something that was part of a history of peaceful Canadian involvement in the world. Not military conflict or conquests, but peacemaking and peacekeeping. Perfect? Of course not. But constructive and honourable? Yes."

Oh, for Pete's sake. Mr Burman is entitled to his opinions, though whether he's entitled to have Canadian taxpayers conscripted into paying for them is another matter. What's revealing is not that he admires these "dupes of jihadism" but that simple approval is not enough, they have to be upgraded into exemplars of "the Canadian idea":

"'Thank you, Mr. Loney,' I would have said. 'Thank you for being part of the Canadian idea that this world will become a better place only if each of us does our bit in the best way we can. And you certainly did that. Welcome home.'"

Some of us agree that there are Canadians out there doing their bit to make the world a better place, like the Princess Pats in Kandahar. Some of us are glad to see Canadians taking a leadership role in the world, as Mr. Harper did in announcing, ahead of America or Europe, that Canada would not fund the new Hamas regime. But it seems only ineffectual self-regarding no-good do-gooder posturing ever gets elevated into "the Canadian idea." That said, when one reads personal stories from the Great War, tales of conscientious objectors can be very inspiring. I personally would find extremely inspiring a movement of conscientious objectors withholding that proportion of their taxes that goes to fund Mr. Burman and his CBC colleagues. Maybe it's time for him to experience some of that "real personal risk" from which decades of state employment have so insulated him.

James Loney belongs to a kook group way out on the fringes. But it's the likes of Mr. Burman who provide the conduit to widespread respectability. If his lazy assumptions were to become universal--that, in a week when both James Loney and Private Robert Costall are in the news, it is Mr. Loney's self-infatuation that is admirable and honourable rather than Private Costall's sacrifice; that it's the CPT and not his rescuers who are the "heroes" "making a difference"--if such a view were to prevail, this world would become a worse place, dangerous and dark and lost. Loney can strut and preen on the world stage only because he is protected by a thin line of brave men--American, British, sometimes even Canadian--that he cannot even see. A society in which James Loney is a hero is a society whose faith in itself is as dead as Mr. Loney's is in Catholicism.

[Alias]

One of his more "self-loathing Canadian" articles.

P.S- People post articles here all the time, never have to worry about copyright.

[thepeel]

Steyn is an amazingly clever and entertaining writer. I very seldom read articles from the Left or Libertarians that are a funny as his.

As for the "self-loathing Canadians" comment. I don't know if criticizing our nation or the eggheads at the CBC is loathing our nation. Canada, contrary to popular superstition, can be separated from the Liberal establishment (meaning the CBC, Federal and Provincial Liberal parties and the 300,000 strong federal bureaucracy ).

Kinda related to the OP. I once saw Steyn in an interview on C-Span. He speaks with a British accent, despite being Canadian by birth and an immigrant to the USA. Also, he never went to college. Got his start working as a DJ at some radio station.

[Alias]

He was part of the right wing "ashamed to be Canadian" crowd back in 2003 when Canada didn't participate in the Iraq war.