Monty Python And The Meaning Of Canada

In The Australian, Mark Steyn explains yesterday’s Canadian election results and Stephen Harper, Canada’s new Tory prime minister to those readers Down Under:

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John O’Sullivan, a former editor of National Review and Thatcher’s long-time adviser, observed that post-war Canadian history is summed up by the old Monty Python song, “I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK”, which begins as a robust paean to the manly virtues of a rugged life in the north woods but ends with the lumberjack having gradually morphed into some transvestite pick-up singing that he likes to “wear high heels, suspenders and a bra” and “dress in women’s clothing and hang around in bars”.

I’m not saying Canadian men are literally cross-dressers – certainly no more than 35, 40 per cent of us are – but nonetheless a nation that in 1945 had the fourth-largest armed forces in the world has undergone such a total makeover that it’s now a country that prioritises the secondary impulses of society – government health care, government day care, rights and entitlements from cradle to grave – over all the primary ones.

As I said, Scary Stephen’s no Ron or Maggie. But as a young man in the ’80s he was spurred into politics by his clear understanding – unlike most so-called Canadian “conservatives” – that his country had missed out on Thatcher-Reagan economic liberalisation. Essentially, he’s a political economist with a libertarian streak: he thinks that if you leave taxpayers with more of their money they’re more likely to spend it in ways that do more social good than letting the government disburse it.

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My kind of guy–though I don’t want to know what he wears under his Brooks Brothers suit!

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