{"id":338,"date":"2008-08-27T22:21:13","date_gmt":"2008-08-28T02:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=338"},"modified":"2008-08-27T22:21:13","modified_gmt":"2008-08-28T02:21:13","slug":"the-idiot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/the-idiot\/","title":{"rendered":"The Idiot"},"content":{"rendered":"

St\u00e9phane Dion is a 21st Century Canadian version of Dostoyevsky\u2019s Idiot, Myshkin in his novel, The Idiot. Admittedly, \"\"Dion only exhibits one side of Myshkin\u2019s personality: a naivety that renders him incapable of dealing with or understanding the world, particularly a fallen world. An unusual quality for a politician. Regrettably, Myshkin\u2019s finer qualities \u2013 his saintliness \u2013 are absent in St\u00e9phane. In fact, his ignorance of worldly matters seems to be exceeded only by his nescience \u2013 perhaps in a rather charming way \u2013 with things of the spirit. He was recently interviewed by Michael Coren; here are some observations on the interview from the National Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

He was, for example, anxious to \u201creconcile people with God\u2019s environment\u201d and was committed to the planet \u201cgiven to us by God.\u201d Which is somewhat surprising. The deity is not a popular debating point for Liberal leaders. Actually, the Supreme Being is mentioned by ambitious Liberal politicians about as often as Brian Mulroney\u2019s good points. So I was rude enough to ask Mr. Dion if he was doing this \u2014 sounding religious \u2014 because he had been told that the station on which my show appears each night, CTS, was faith-based. Frankly, I expected him to deny, obfuscate or simply lie. It says a great deal about the man\u2019s integrity as well as his innocence that he replied on air with a simple, \u201cThis is true.\u201d A pause, then, \u201cI have been told that this is important to the people who watch this show.\u201d<\/p>\n

His words seemed so naive, so vulnerable to critique, so \u2014 forgive me Mr. Dion \u2014 callow and such a product of inexperience. Goodness it\u2019s hard not to like him but it\u2019s equally hard to imagine him being tough with our enemies and careful with our friends. He listens to well-meaning but weak advice and then admits that he\u2019s been moulded for the moment. Canadians generally expect more from their political masters and that God chap expects more \u2014 even from Liberals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can\u2019t see how someone like this could run a country \u2013 even one like Canada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

St\u00e9phane Dion is a 21st Century Canadian version of Dostoyevsky\u2019s Idiot, Myshkin in his novel, The Idiot. Admittedly, Dion only exhibits one side of Myshkin\u2019s personality: a naivety that renders him incapable of dealing with or understanding the world, particularly … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[307],"tags":[2227],"class_list":["post-338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-fall-of-the-west","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}