In the self-hating narrative all too popular and which serves as a substitute for thoughtful historical analysis, the West deserves recent Islamic-based terrorism – or at least – should expect nothing less. We bring such atrocities upon our own heads given our collective history of imposed colonialism, insensitivity to other cultures and willingness to sacrifice all others and our own principles. We do this for black gold to heat our gargantuan homes and fuel our obscene SUVs. This is the bleating apologia from everyone from Michael Moore to the late Edward Said, from New Democrats to the ever-pacifist Bloc Quebecois, from critics at home and abroad.

“The facts of life are conservative” said Margaret Thatcher. Perhaps, but the facts never speak for themselves, which is especially problematic for any Canadian mildly interested in ideas. Too many newspapers have hollowed out their editorial, analysis and comment sections; the number and length of book reviews have been slashed; in both newspapers and on television, investigative reporting is often absent (there is no Canadian television equivalent of John Stossel for example); and the Canadian media is more monolithic than the American media, in part because our smaller population makes diversity in staffing and the sheer number of outlets less possible.

In a strange twist of a double coincidence, Luis M. Garcia was born in 1959, the year of Cuba’s revolution, and in the town of Banes, the birthplace of deposed dictator Fulgencio Batista (born there in 1901). Garcia’s shopkeeper parents, initially supportive of the 1959 revolution, later applied to leave Cuba after they lost their small business in one of Fidel Castro’s nationalization programs. The application to leave meant that from that moment on, the Garcia family were “gusanos” – “counter-revolutionaries” – in the view of the regime.