Abdication and non-abdication

A few weeks ago, Comrade Bill Rowe took out his crayons and wrote the following for his column in the St. John's Telegram:

...Danny should emulate Jean Charest, but in the opposite direction. Charest left the federal Tories to become leader of his provincial Liberals. Danny should leave his provincial Tories to run federally for the Liberals. He has always been a middle-of-the-road, progressive liberal anyway. Half his problem in dealing with Harper has been his contempt for Harper’s conservative policies...

And what a blessing for this province to have a commanding minister in Ottawa again, exercising supreme brawn and brains on our behalf. [Emphasis added]

"On our behalf".

Yikes.

No surprise from Comrade Rowe there, not even in a province where critical thought and pointed questions are at least venial, and in some political theologies, mortal sins.

Just listen to the Holy Father — no, the other one — and his snide and snotty remarks about certain bloggers, for instance. Or how easily put out he is when opposition members use Question Period in the House of Assembly to... to... to ask questions.

But even as the province traipses la-dee-la-dee-da, blissfully-blithely down the path towards little old ladies being buried with framed pictures of Danny Williams clasped across the breast, it was refreshing to see Comrade Rowe's own outlet issue the following alarm in today's editorial:

...it's easy to pick and choose the evidence when you already know what you want the result to be, and it's easy to justify the abuse of incomplete information when you already firmly believe that your ends are in the best interests of a province or nation.
Unless you've already made up your mind on a political issue - whether it's the idea that the federal government destroyed the fishery or the belief that Confederation has been bad for this province, or even that oil companies are corporate monsters robbing a provincial birthright - you owe it to yourself to ensure that you have the most information possible.

We've lost a lot in this province when we've made decisions without complete information.

We've lost even more when we've let political masters tell us what we're supposed to believe.

It is your patriotic duty as a citizen to question everything, including this advice.

It was bad enough in the 1950s, when people expected Smallwood (Manning, Duplessis, Angus L., Wacky Bennett) to "exercise supreme brawn and brains on our behalf."

In this century, it's not only unforgiveable, it's the biggest single part of the problems that we demand and expect the elected to fix.