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Thank you for your kind (and unkind) letters from around the world. Mark reads all mail, but especially enjoys the vicious ones. Each day Monday to Friday we pick six of the best for our Daily Delivery. So drop a line to Mark's Mailbox, and on Friday if you're chosen to be the one and only Letter of the Week you'll join our roll of winners from four Continents and receive a copy of Mark Steyn From Head To Toe. Congratulations to this week's winner:
Letter of the Week
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY? WHAT’S THAT?
Just read your article in Maclean's on the absurdity of the modern nanny state— spot on.
As a lawyer who used to practice employment law, I was intrigued by the part of your column about the Australian who was too stupid to be fired. I say that I "used to" practice employment law, as I no longer do due to the absurdity of the rulings I was getting from the Ontario Ministry of Labour.
I think what closed the book for me was a case I had about five years ago. I was representing a small accounting firm who had fired a junior accountant because he defrauded his employer: he had falsely docketed time for work that he did not do, had told partners at the firm that he was going to clients' offices to meet with them when he really just took off the day, had told partners and clients that he had filed returns and other time-sensitive documents when he did not, etc. The firm lost a major client (and several smaller ones) because of him, and one client had made a complaint to the accountants' governing body because a bill issued to them had been falsified in that it contained charges for the phantom time billed by the junior.
All of these actions were admitted by the employee, and he acknowledged that he had defrauded his employer dozens of times over the course of about two years (he really had no choice, as there was an extensive paper trail). Nonetheless, he lodged a complaint to the Ministry with a claim for severance pay… which was awarded at first instance, and then upheld on appeal. The Ministry ruled that the employee should have been given a warning that he should not defraud his employer and their clients and given a second chance.
One of the arguments that I had made on the appeal was that the circumstances were similar to a situation where a cashier in a store was caught stealing from the register, and that no one in that case would argue that such a person should not only be fired, but charged criminally. Well, the Officer hearing the appeal told me that, in such a case, it would depend on the circumstances (without explaining what would justify criminal behavior in one's employment).
Apparently, in Ontario at least, committing a criminal act against your employer is not sufficient cause for termination. The age of perpetual victimhood and zero responsibility is upon us.
But keep up the good work, Mark— you're fighting on behalf of all of us who look around and continually shake our heads.
David Brooker
Thornhill, Ontario
THEY DIDN’T START THE FIRE… BUT THEY MIGHT AS WELL HAVE
I read with interest your reference to the problem of burning and electrified roofs foisted upon us by Australia's green ratbags, and while it is all true, you have missed an even bigger— and far more deadly— example of the kind.
Last year in February, the state of Victoria was hit by a spell of hot, dry weather which prompted several weeks of horrific bushfires. Some 173 people died, most on a single afternoon, when one of the biggest blazes swept through a slice of outer suburban Melbourne called Kinglake. Kinglake has a local council dominated by Greens who enforced with draconian penalties any clearing of trees— and even banned the collection of fallen limbs from the side of the road and the cutting of native grasses. People could not flee because the roads were lined with flames 90 meters high from all that fuel and their homes went up one after the other. Of the 173 people who died, some 140 lived in the Kinglake area.
But that was not all. The council actually paid people to uproot non-native trees— oaks, elms and the like, which do not burn readily— and replace them with eucalypts (tinder, essentially). Furthermore, they encouraged residents to make the trees shade their homes to lower cooling costs and the reduce carbon emissions from the air conditioners. One plant they encouraged, burgan, is known as "petrol bush" because it practically goes up in flames if you look at it the wrong way.
The environmentally-aware state government accepted and gazetted all these local government by-laws, which produced a vegetation mix that was (a) dangerous and (b) nothing like a natural mix and (c) overran areas that were pastures and orchards only 40 years ago. Yet the same state government, because it took the power of self-defense away from local residents, proved utterly useless at protecting its citizens. Fire command centers argued amongst themselves about who was in charge of which zone while the people they were supposed to be protecting perished.
Australia, Victoria in particular, is one of the world's three worst fire zones; it has burned repeatedly and the perils of the burning bush are well known. There is nothing new about the fire threat, so you would think we would be good at coping with it by now, like Americans are with tornadoes. Instead, one of the smaller fires in the state's history (in terms of area burned) claimed the largest number of lives— by far.
The state's multi-million dollar warning system failed. Its emergency bureaucrats didn't know who was reporting to whom or who was in charge of what. All this has been proven by the testimony and preliminary findings of a royal commission, which continues to uncover evidence of official incompetence on a daily basis.
The icing on the cake? When it came time to apportion blame, the politicians and local council and academics were in agreement: It wasn't their fault, it was the doing of— you guessed it— global warming. Therefore, they say, more effort must be put into making the bush even thicker and more heavily loaded with fuel in order to store atmospheric carbon.
You would laugh if so many people were not dead.
J T Bosco
Australia
BURNING THE MIDNIGHT BED
Re: Peter Garrett and the burning eco-insulation:
Perhaps this is too easy, but Midnight Oil's biggest hit was called “Beds are Burning,” a song about giving Australia back to the Aborigines. Can this be coincidence?
The time has come
To say fair's fair
To pay the rent
To pay our share
The time has come
A fact's a fact
It belongs to them
Let's give it back
How can we dance when our earth is turning?
How do we sleep while our beds are burning?
Well?
Peter Wilson
Cambridge, Massachusetts
HELP US OBI WAN STEYN, YOU’RE OUR ONLY HOPE
I am a long-time reader and even a former “Letter of the Week" winner (the book I received has pride of place on one of my bookshelves). I have not written for several years, but your "Why's He Doing It?" article prompts me to write now. You are so right (sadly) when you assert that if Obamacare gets in, it's here to stay… and for that, I think you and your colleagues must bear some of the blame.
How is it I have never seen a single article from any conservative columnist— nor have I heard a single radio or television program— actually calling for repeal of any social legislation? Why do all our writers and pundits— our brain trust, as it were— spend their time on the low-hanging fruit of mocking democrats or the New York Times? It appears that some gentry conservative pundits would rather waste their time reacting to liberals (and thereby conferring legitimacy on their nonsense) than advancing our own politics. Articles foster debate, which fosters law. Our GOP politicians will never call for repeal of anything if our conservative writers and commentariat don’t lead the charge.
Granted, it doesn't happen overnight. A smart GOP president would not dismantle (for example) the Department of Labor overnight; he would cut a small percentage from its budget in the first year, then the next year another percentage, and so on. The public has to be weaned off of bloated government, not simply removed all at once. But the weaning process begins by constant and sustained promotion of repealing existing law, and as one of the most widely read and respected conservative commentators, the obligation must rest upon you to be the leader.
David Francis
SEPARATE FIRST NATIONS?
You write in “A Missed Opportunity for Diversity”:
“In this respect, the First Nations’ contempt for Canadian authority is most instructive. As Mohawk Grand Chief Mike Delisle explained to CTV, ‘We don’t consider ourselves Canadians.’ Well, except for the purposes of federal welfare. And top billing at the Olympics ceremony.”
So I ask, Mark: What do you think of the idea of putting the First Nations into a Foreign Aid status? Rescind all welfare payments, all government programs. Treat these self imposed non-Canadians as the foreigners they claim they are. I like the idea that… After all, he who pays the piper calls the tune.
Lorimer Rutty
Burlington, Ontario
THE WHITE MALE HIERARCHY STRIKES AGAIN!
In this Macleans article, you bring up several issues around diversity that we struggle with in Canada (and elsewhere). But who said respecting and understanding diversity was easy? People are complex, Mr Steyn; our world is complex. Only in homogenous countries— and let’s face it: there are fewer and fewer of those— can a people ignore the differences that exist and let the opinion of the dominant group (often Euro-descent, heterosexual, Caucasian males) rule. Get over it!
Jeanne Martinson
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