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Long Live the new Post

This Magazine Staff

It has been less than a week, but I’m in love with the National Post, under new editor Douglas Kelly. Their coverage of the NHL cancellation today is outstanding, and overall the Post is absolutely destroying the Globe and Mail in every area, except Arts coverage. (The Post’s Arts section remains iredeemably trashy.) It can’t hurt that they have Dianna Symonds on board as associate editor.
Two good pieces in the op-ed section (now called Issues and Ideas), although both are a bit late to the game. For example, Don Martin gives the Headwaiter a “dither rating” on a handful of files. I seem to recall running a ccntest on this a few months ago.
Meanwhile, William Watson has a good piece on the absolute hypocrisy of the federal approach to Kyoto. His basic point is sound: If the feds are as concerned about global warming as they claim to be, why on earth is it being left to Rick Mercer to exhort us to act?
I made this same point in Saskatoon last week. During question period after my Rebel Sell talk, a student asked me what was wrong with individualised forms of consumerist political action. The problem, of course, is that it permits the moral to be exploited by the immoral. Sure, you are a good person and buy fair trade coffee. But what about the thousands who don’t care? Why are issues of profound political importance being left up to individual discretion?
Imagine if, instead of making discrimination on the basis of race illegal, they simply hired a Luba Goy to do an ad exhorting whites to treat blacks with respect. It would be outrageous. Yet somehow, the Liberals seem to think that global warming is my personal responsibility — I need to meet the One Tonne Challenge.
Stephane Dion claims that stopping global warming is a matter of utmost urgency. So why is it being treated by the Liberals as the moral equivalent of Participaction?

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