Which is worse?  Justin Trudeau, the closet separatist, or Justin Trudeau, the smug jerk?

The controversy over Justin Trudeau's remarks continues.  As you probably know, Little Trudeau got into some hot water when he said that Quebec ought to leave "Stephen Harper's Canada", and thathe would go with it:

In a French-language interview with Radio-Canada on Sunday, the Liberal MP, whose father Pierre Elliott Trudeau fought sovereigntist sentiment, said he's enormously sad about where Canada is heading, and that if he ever believed Canada was Prime Minister"Stephen Harper's Canada," he would think about sovereignty.

"I always say that if ever I believed Canada was really Stephen Harper's Canada - that we were heading against abortion, against gay marriage, that we were going backwards 10,000 different ways - maybe I would think about wanting to make Quebec a country."

Funny, but "Stephen Harper's Canada", whatever you think that is, will come to be because of an election forced by the Liberals, an election which saw the Liberals crash (for the third election in a row), and which saw Canadians in just about every part of the country vote to deliver a strong majority to those same Conservatives led by Stephen Harper.

What part didn't tip Conservative blue?  Quebec, which managed to render itself politically irrelevant by votingen massefor the NDP in an election that resulted in a strong majority for the other guys.

But democracy be damned.  If Quebec doesn't like the result of the vote, then Quebec will just pack up and leave.

If only.

Normally the oft-repeated threat of separation is as tiresome as it is insincere and unoriginal, what I find refreshingly new isthe smugnessthat accompanies it:

"When Quebec is not involved in the governance of this country, this country moves too much toward the right," he said in the radio interview."It's not necessarily that Canadians don't have the same values as us Quebecers. It's that there's a way of seeing social responsibility, openness towards others, a cultural pride here in Quebec that's necessary for Canada and it saddens me a great deal (to see what's happening now)."

Here we go again.  Canadians outside of Quebec are emotionally-stunted knuckle-draggers who ought to be grunting out their thanks for Quebec for all "Quebec culture" brings into Canada, assuming those emotionally-stunted knuckle-draggers had the minimal amount of cerebral capacity to realize how lucky they were.

Is that all Quebec brings?  Well, yeah, pretty much.  Something like $7 billion flows into Quebec from the rest of Canada in "equalization" because of a formula that categorizes Quebec as a have-not province.  That money, taken out of the pockets of the emotionally-stunted knuckle-draggers, pays for the Quebec lifestyle that enjoys heavily-subsidized government-managed services, presumably enabling Quebeckers to spend more time yammering about social responsibility and cultural pride.

I might like to spend more time talking about social responsibility and cultural pride, butI work for a living, when I'm not busytaking care of my kids. 

I wonder how long that smugness would last if Quebec was cut off from the Canadian gravy train.  I bet a lot of Canadians -- real Canadians -- would be very curious to find out.

I think, though, that in a few years we'd end up with another corrupt and bankrupt economic basket case like Greece, but this one just next door, and who would want that?

So for now, we have to put up with Justin Trudeau and his ilk, telling us how lucky we are that Quebec is willing to put up with the rest of Canada. 

My real question, though, is this:  Do you think Justin Trudeau really believes what he is saying, or do you think he knows, deep down, that Canadians outside of Quebec are just as happy to see Quebec vote itself into political irrelevance (a strong Conservative majority with nary a seat from Quebec) so we can have governance in this country that is not held hostage by Quebec?

So go ahead, Justin.  Tell us how lucky we are to have Quebec.  Tell us how we ought to be more like you.  Whatever makes you feel like you count for something.  But don't be surprised if we don't take much notice.

We're busy.

Barack Obama describes his Christian faith in front of an audience, in part to justify his high-tax class-warfare policies.

But in case you had doubts, he assures you his Christian-inspired policies are right because other religions teach the same thing.

Um, that's not quite how faith is supposed to work.

When President Obama made an address at the National Prayer Breakfast, he explained that his class-warfare policies were rooted in his religious faith.

Does Obama have faith?  He says he does, and apparently it's quite the show sometimes:

He added: "I have fallen on my knees with great regularity since that moment [upon meeting with the Reverend Billy Graham] -- asking God for guidance not just in my personal life and my Christian walk, but in the life of this nation and in the values that hold us together and keep us strong."

Falling to his knees?  With great regularity?  Maybe he really has discovered his Christian faith.

But then again, probably not.  The problem is that while singing "Hallelujah!" and quoting the Golden Rule, the true Obama peeks through:

"I know that far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years, and I believe in God's command to 'love thy neighbor as thyself,'" Obama said. "I know the version of that Golden Rule is found in every major religion and every set of beliefs -- from Hinduism to Islam to Judaism to the writings of Plato."

He sounds like a toothpaste commercial. Three out of four major religions recommend the Golden Rule to their adherents.

The problem is simply this.  If Obama were truly wearing an authentic and deep Christian faith on his sleeve, he wouldn't bolster his argument by comparing Christian teaching with other faiths.  A person of faith doesn't need the agreement of other faiths to know that what he is doing is right.

It's simple really.  Did Mohammad put the Golden Rule into the Koran?  Who cares?  If you pointed out a passage in the Koran that read like the Golden Rule in Luke 10:25, would it make me think that the Golden Rule must therefore be more significant than I had previously thought?

No more so than how my appreciation of Shakespeare would be enhanced if you showed me a quote fromHamletthat had been produced bya monkey labouring for years at a typewriter.

Which is to say, not at all.

In both cases, the correspondence is a product of random chance.  On the one side is a divinely-inspired edict for how to live a good life and a quote from the greatest playwright of the English language, and on the other side are words that happen to look the more or less the same -- by accident.

And before the fatwa machine gets revved up, let me be absolutely clear.  I am not drawing a parallel between Mohammad and a monkey.

I am drawing a parallel between Mohammad and a monkey with a typewriter.

OK, we can move on.

Back to Obama.  On the one hand, he tries to ingratiate himself with the predominantly Christian audience (and by extension, the American electorate) by describing the Obama Revivalist Jamboree.  But then he assures his left-wing supporters that really, he treats all religious beliefs as morally equivalent, and by inference, equally irrelevant, just like they do.

A person of faith wouldn't ever do that.

A person with no particular faith might, but then the clever ones wouldn't be switching back and forth in front of the same audience.

Thomas Mulcair, a candidate for the leadership of the NDP and so the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, won't give any consideration to the discomfort many Canadians feel regarding Mulcair's dual citizenship.  That other citizenship?  It's French.  Why did it have to be French?

Let's be brutally honest here.  The news that NDP leadership candidateThomas Mulcair would retain his dual citizenshipshould he ever become prime minister is generating a lot of discomfort, aggravated by the simple fact that his other citizenship is French.

Yes, that's the politically incorrect elephant in the room.

But for a lot of people, there is something in French arrogance that makes them particularly suspicious of people like Mulcair who have actively pursued that citizenship (as opposed to being French by an accident of birth).

Imagine a Prime Minister Mulcair engaged in delicate negotiations with the French President.  The French President is trying to sway Mulcair to his side, away from a position that aligns Canada with the United States regarding this hypothetical crisis.  So the French President leans over, and says, "Thomas, this is silly.  We both know I am right on this.  The Americans are cowboys who think life is like a comic book. You know this to be true.  But you and I, we know how the world works, because we are French."

Am I being silly?  Substitute "because we are New Zealanders" for "because we are French", and the whole thing sounds ridiculous.  No Kiwi would ever say such an absurd thing.  Only a Frenchman thinks the French are blessed with some sort of unique sophistication that puts them above other mere mortals.

I'm not imagining this.  Recently, a French attempt to use the EU to run roughshod over the sovereign nations of Europe was vetoed by the British, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy made it clear that he thought the British weren't merely wrong, but that they lacked the intellectual capacity tounderstand"the subtleties" of the EU in the way the French can:

French president Nicolas Sarkozy launched an astonishing attack on Britain's attitude to Europe last night.

The furious French leader was branded the 'new de Gaulle' after claiming the British can't comprehend Europe because we are 'an island'.

'You come from an island, so maybe you don't understand the subtleties of European construction,' he snapped at BBC Newsnight's economics editor Paul Mason.

Mr Sarkozy had been asked whether it was right for the European Union to be attempting to block an EU referendum and install a coalition government in Greece.

Imagine Sarkozy stroking Mulcair's ego, appealing to him as a fellow Frenchman, commiserating on how exhausting it must be for Mulcair to have to deal with so many of the unsubtle Anglos.

None of the other dual-citizenships likely to be held by a Canadian prime minister (British-Canadian, Australian-Canadian, Jamaican-Canadian, and so on) makes me imagine a situation in which that appeal to the "natural superiority" of the Brit-Aussie-Jamaican-whatever makes any sense.

Just the French.  Arrogance from their ruling elite comes as natural as breathing. 

Hey, maybe there's a reason why Mulcair would hold on to that French citizenship despite the political damage it is likely to inflict on him in English Canada.  I suppose if there's a chance that I might be caught withmy Polanski showing, I would like to know that I could run to the extradition-proof safety of France where that sort of thing doesn't bother the ultra-sophisticated French.  For Thomas Mulcair's sake, I hope his intransigence over the issue ofCanadianswanting aCanadianprime minister, no ifs or buts, is rooted in something less unseemly.

Then again, I'm English, so of course I can't be expected to understand the subtleties.