Ignatieff unmasked

It's because we could use a distinguished academic in Ottawa that we've got to say no to Michael Ignatieff, an apologist for the worst imperial excesses of our time.

An article I wrote for this month's issue of The New Internationalist -- you should read it! (scroll down a tiny bit for the link) -- exposes Ignatieff's egregious thought, from his strange admonition that a "liberal society cannot be defended by herbivores," to his manly savvy that "imperial power requires controlling the subject people’s sense of time, convincing them that they will be ruled forever," to his now famous insistence that

defeating terror requires violence ... indefinite detention of subjects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war.

The single thread of continuity that ties Ignatieff's incoherent ramblings together is the worship of power. Since the build-up to the Iraq war this was obvious to readers of his journalism, and became more and more disquieting as time passed and his position become ever more aggressive. His love of power has manifested itself anew in Canada, where he arranged to be undemocratically parachuted into an Etobicoke riding; he is now praising Chrétien for staying out of Iraq, recanting everything he stood for -- aggressive American imperialism -- as recently as this past summer.

Intellectuals serve us when they prioritize deep learning and difficult knowledge over spin and expediency. They should demonstrate careful, considered thought and they should work hard to challenge the lies of the powerful. After all, tenure does give them job security the rest of us dream of. In other words, they must speak truth to power. As Rick Salutin recently wrote in the Globe, Ignatieff does the opposite, he speaks power to truth.

Last week, we heard about Ignatieff's cosmopolitan discomfort with Ukrainian nationalism. Now, we must raise much more important and uncomfortable questions about his true political colours. This is a man, after all, who not only uses the word 'we' repeatedly when discussing the United States, but who wrote in Granta,

I loved my own country, but I believed in America in a way that Canada never allowed. I was against the [Vietnam] war because I thought it betrayed something essential about the country. I marched [against the war] because I believed in Jefferson and Lincoln. [...] The power of American scripture lies in this constant process of democratic reinvention. [It is] the only country whose citizenship is an act of faith, the only country whose promises to itself continue to command the faith of people like me, who are not its citizens.

Elect Ignatieff to office, and at the very least we'll save the White House having to pay for an American ambassador. I doubt they can find one more eloquent on the wonders of the Homeland.