"Just Watch Me"

_{(Reposted from Best of the Fray - DrNo.)}


You think a liberal can't be tough on terrorism? You think a liberal can't have a spine of steel and balls of iron?

Just watch this, probably the most famous, and infamous, televised interview in my country's history. Even Jack Dallas, I'm sure, weeps at such lack of spine in American politics. _{Read the "Did You Know" for a brief history.}

'Polo below thinks Bush is setting-up America for martial law. He may be right. But Bush is an amateur, a dilletante compared to the toughest iron-assed liberal in the history of western democracy.

"The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation," once said he, and removed from federal legal statutes puritan blue laws.

He embraced the counterculture of the late '60s, early '70s, but with a finely-honed intelligence and catholic Catholic eye. He sported a rose in his lapel, dated famous actresses and singers, preceded Nixon to China (earning Nixon's eternal enmity), married a flower-child, once performed a mocking hand-above-head pirouette immediately behind the Queen, in Buckingham Palace. He repatriated the British North American Act.

He was a suave lady's man to put Clinton to shame, an intellect to put every U.S. President he ever met to shame. Nixon called him an asshole, LBJ didn't know what to make of him.

He was everything you'd expect of a liberal, but when his country was threatened by terrorists, he was the meanest bastard ever to wear that label, and the terrorist threat ended there and then. He declared Martial Law, invoked the War Measures Act, and guns and troops and tanks occupied every corner of suspected insurgency. It was the most Draconian measure he could possibly take, but take it he did, and to this day many hate him for it. But the terrorism stopped. Immediately.

Tanks on the cobblestones of old Quebec City! Armed troops on Montreal streets! Thousands arrested with no charges! And in the end, massive injustice to many, but threat quelled. "The price of freedom," quoth the great Liberal.

And when he died thousands clamoured just to touch that slow rail cortege from my country's Capitol to his home, Montreal, just to have a fleeting moment of intimacy, a connection, a last goodbye. They cried, they saluted, entire towns emptied just to lay a finger, a palm against the railcar carrying his body.

I'm not here advocating such extreme measures for America: rather, suggesting strength and intelligence combined can accomplish wonders without destroying that which it seeks to protect. America's present administration seems to lack half that equation.

It's not the party; it's the person, people. Character, strength, will, core goodness, core belief system most matters, think I, and those qualities are not exclusive to any party.

Please remember this when you vote, America.

Trudeau | Liberal | Fighting Terrorism | Martial Law | Canada | October Crisis | DrNo