Stories

Nota Bene: Dictatorships and Double-Standards

C2C Journal
November 19, 2012
Why too much idealism in foreign affairs was a mistake in 1979 and a mistake now.
Stories

Nota Bene: Dictatorships and Double-Standards

C2C Journal
November 19, 2012
Why too much idealism in foreign affairs was a mistake in 1979 and a mistake now.
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter

In 1979, Jeane Kirkpatrick, a Georgetown professor and until then, a lifelong Democrat, published a famous essay in Commentary. Kirkpatrick argued that the Carter administration’s policy of undermining autocrats friendly to the West did not, as intended, produce regimes that respected human rights. Instead, we ended up with the Ayatollah in Iran. Thirty-three years later, C2C Journal highlights that essay and with it this obvious question: Are idealistic Western policies and general hopes for the Arab world doomed to disappointment once again?  See  Dictatorships and Double-Standards from Commentary.

Love C2C Journal? Here's how you can help us grow.

More for you

Jason Kenney and the End of All Things (Or Maybe Just a Democratic Vote)

Time was a former political leader’s expected role was to enjoy retirement in obscurity, reappearing at the occasional state funeral or apolitical charity event smiling inscrutably and saying nothing. While former U.S. President Bill Clinton broke this mould and fellow Democrat Barack Obama won’t stop delivering lectures, conservatives generally stick to tradition. Former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, however, just can’t help himself – literally. Collin May probes the curious, maddening and somewhat sad case of a once-respected leader who, having dug his own political grave, now seems to think the way out is to keep shovelling.

On the Murder of Charlie Kirk: The Left and the Loss of the Tragic Sensibility

The brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk was shocking not only for its violence but for the chilling aftermath – the celebrations on the left, the gloating and the calls for more political violence. In searching for an explanation, Patrick Keeney argues that our culture has lost what Western thinkers long recognized as the “tragic vision” of human life – the idea that suffering is inevitable and even central to the human condition. Without that understanding of innate limits, politics no longer is about compromise or making the best of things but becomes pursuit of a utopia where the righteous are justified in demonizing and destroying their opponents. What is now desperately needed, Keeney argues, is a cultural renewal that accepts the tragedy of life and cultivates courage, charity and, above all, humility.

The Law Society of Alberta’s Wokism Will Dissolve the Rule of Law

Lawyers are supposed to defend their clients, the Constitution and the rule of law. But they’re increasingly under pressure from their own regulators to make a political ideology paramount: wokism. It’s a problem across the country, and it’s not limited to the legal profession: teachers, psychologists, nurses and more must now submit to political re-education and push woke principles in their work, while their political speech as private citizens is increasingly policed. This phenomenon is most dangerous in the law: if lawyers change Canada’s “legal culture” to centre woke victimology, they will effectively undermine the law and the Constitution. In this powerful essay, Glenn Blackett uncovers the woke takeover of the Law Society of Alberta and tells the story of the heroic lawyer fighting back: a “recovered Communist” horrified to see the ideological tyranny he experienced as a young man now being applied in Canada.

More from this author

Letter from the Editors:
Happy Canada Day!

Celebrating the fact of one’s country’s existence, its survival through the adversities of history and its positive or uplifting attributes is a fact of life the world over, even in tyrannies and oligarchies. Nearly everyone can find something to love about the place they call home. Yet this is apparently not the case for many inhabitants of present-day Canada, who claim that what was once the self-described “greatest country in the world” has suddenly become a systemically racist hell-hole. Despite such pressure from the woke mob and their elite enablers, however, the editors of C2C Journal find much that is not merely defensible about Canada, but praiseworthy and downright glorious.

Did Canada’s first immigrants fall from the sky?

Aboriginal grievance and entitlement stories made a lot of news in Canada in June. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau renamed National Aboriginal Day as National Indigenous Peoples Day. He also renamed his office to erase its historic link to Hector Langevin, an architect of the residential schools system. And he gave the old American embassy in Ottawa to native groups. Still aboriginal activists weren’t satisfied. So they badgered an apology out of Governor General David Johnston for calling First Nations peoples immigrants. Which left the author of this story wondering, where on or off earth do these insatiably aggrieved activists come from?

The Revolution Eats a Few More of its Own

In 1972 Lou Reed offended conservatives with his hit Walk on the Wild Side, an admiring ode to his transgendered friend Holly, who left Miami as a he and became a she on the way to New York. In 2017 the song has offended progressives as a transphobic example of cultural appropriation. In this article by C2C Staff, the Journal explains what a long, strange trip it’s been from conservative censorship to progressive censorship.