Brian Pallister should have been an actor. Judging from his performance last Thursday he would have been much better in that career than in his chosen profession of politics. Granted, prior to this year, he did a fairly decent job as premier of the province of Manitoba. He was certainly a major improvement over his predecessor, Greg Selinger of the NDP, although that is setting the bar of comparison extremely low. This year however, faced with the true test of leadership, a crisis manufactured by the irresponsible news media and the even more irresponsible medical profession, he failed that test big time. His tear-jerking, emotional-laden, speech on Thursday may very well indicate that he has missed his true calling, the stage. His timing, however, needs some work, for the performance would have been much more convincing had it come in March. Adjustments would have had to be made, of course, as it would have made little sense to talk about stealing Christmas in the middle of Lent. An emotional appeal to Manitobans to follow public health guidelines would have been much better received if he had led with that, however, instead of tacking it on after nine months of arrogant posturing, threats, and bullying.
Pallister’s speech came a couple of days after the release of an Angus Reid Institute survey that indicated that his approval rating had dropped to the lowest of all premiers in the Dominion. Although he had been asked to comment about this on the day the poll results were released and gave a brief answer it is generally understood that his remarks on Thursday were his real response.
He claimed that he understood why do not like him. “I understand that, I totally do” he said. Certainly, he seemed to be aware of the reasons:
I’m the guy who has told you that you cannot shop…I am the person who has told you you can’t go to work. I am the premier who has said you can’t run your business because we have the toughest restrictions in Canada, and it affects people who put their lives into their businesses. I am the person who has come before you and said you can’t go to church, you can’t see your friends, you can’t travel. I’m that guy.
While some dispute this explanation for his drop in approval – Wab Kinew, the current NDP leader, and his butt-kissers in the media think it is due to his having re-opened the economy, which, except for the fact that he shouldn't have closed it in the first place, was the one thing he did right this year – these all seem to be fairly good reasons for disliking him. It would appear that being aware of the reasons does not actually translate into understanding them, however, because from this starting point, Pallister launched into a bunch of self-justifying hocus pocus about the difference between being liked and respected, illustrated by a story from his school days about being disciplined by the principal for being late and told by the headmaster “You don’t like me right now, son, and that’s okay. I want you to respect me in ten years.”
Does he seriously think that lesson applies here?
A teacher who disciplines a child for being late does so to prevent the bad habit of tardiness from forming. Tardiness is a habit which hurts people both professionally, because employers don’t like to either hire or advance people who are tardy, and socially, because, formal occasions where it is fashionable to be late aside, people do not like to be kept waiting by their friends, dates, etc., all the time. Like all bad habits, it is easier to break when it is just forming than when it is fully developed. The principal who yells at a student for being late is, indeed, doing him a favour, and so the line from Pallister’s anecdote does indeed apply in that situation.
What Pallister is doing is completely different.
To tell people that they cannot go to work or run their business is to do the very opposite of what the teacher who tries to discipline tardiness out of his student does. Rather than correcting behaviour that is bad and harmful it forbids behaviour that is both good and necessary. Rather than helping people it is hurting them. There is nothing in what Pallister is doing that deserves respect, either now or years down the road.
He, of course, justifies what he is doing on the grounds that it is “saving lives”. He said:
I will do what I believe is right, and right now I need to save lives.
We have been hearing this from him for quite some time. It is, however, utter nonsense.
It is only ethically permissible to hurt Person A to save Person B under certain very limited circumstances. If Person A pulls a knife on Person B with the intent to kill then we are justified in harming Person A to prevent Person B from being killed. In this scenario, however, the action of Person A which threatens Person B will definitely have the effect of the death of Person B if not prevented and is done with malicious intent. Neither of these things is true with regards to the lockdown scenario. If Person A opens his store there is no certainty that anyone will die from the Wuhan bat flu as a result. Indeed, when we consider the survival rate of the disease, who the people most likely to die from it are, and the circumstances pertaining to their contracting it, it is, in fact, extremely unlikely that anyone will die as a direct result of Person A opening his store. Furthermore, there is no malicious intent, no mens rea, in Person A’s opening his store. His intent is quite good and honourable, to earn a living for himself and his family, by selling people goods that they want or need rather than to be a burden on the public purse. There is nothing wrong with what he is doing, unless, of course, he is selling nuclear waste to children or some such thing. Finally, that forbidding Person A from opening his store will harm him is certain, the only uncertainty being the extent of the harm, whether it completely destroys his business and drives him into bankruptcy or not. The lockdown scenario simply does not meet the standards of when it is ethnically permissible to hurt Person A to save Person B.
Immediately after that self-justifying prattle about saving lives Pallister said the following:
If you don’t think that Covid is real, right now you’re an idiot.
What an interesting remark from someone who claims that he is doing the right thing and hopes we will eventually respect him for it. In the same sentence he completely misrepresents the views of those who oppose him and insults them. To say that someone does not think that Covid real is to say that he questions the existence of either the SARS-CoV-2 virus or the sickness it can produce with symptoms ranging from shortness of breath, fever, and cough to a life-threatening, organ-damaging, severely painful, pneumonia. I think very few of those who oppose the lockdown question the existence of either of these things. Opposition to the lockdown is based upon the fact that lockdowns do a lot of very real harm - they devastate the economy, load future generations with piles of debt, damage the fabric of society, dissolve communities, and create mental health problems that themselves result in many fatalities that would not have occurred sans lockdown - and only a small amount at best, of questionable good. The most informed opposition to the lockdown is also based on the fact that the government imposing what amounts to a total suspension of our constitutional and prescriptive basic freedoms for the supposed sake of keeping us safe from a disease with a survival rate higher than the seasonal flu for otherwise healthy people under the age of 65 and with which the average age of those who die is higher than the average lifespan of Canadians is a giant leap away from civil freedom and towards totalitarianism.
If Mr. Pallister really wants to do the right thing and be respected for it then he had better learn to himself respect the Common Law, the constitution, and the limits these place on his powers as First Minister of the Crown in this province, for until he respects these he is a disgrace to his office.
His speech culminated in an emotional appeal to Manitobans to stay apart at Christmas, full of self-pity about having to be the Grinch that steals Christmas from us this year to keep us safe, so that we will have plenty to celebrate next year.
Well, it was a good performance, but to return to the point made at the beginning, it would have been a lot more persuasive if it had not followed ten months of ordering us around, telling us to snitch on neighbours who don't do as their told, threatening us with punishment, calling us names, setting obscenely high fines for breaking very petty rules, and wasting a million dollars that would have been put to better use hiring extra hospital staff and opening extra beds on contracting a private security organization to help enforce his draconian rules.
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