The Visitor

hey domtar!
i like your impressions!

Umm, yeah, Ignatieff isn't in the same league as Gandhi. thanks for clearing that up for us Domtar. The point isnt that iggy is gandhi. Its that the attack ads are brain dead. Peter Worthington, Andrew Coyne and Rex Murphy, that troika of Trotsyites agree

It isn't bigoted to want a leader that cares about your country for reasons other than personal glory. If Iggy screws up here he can just go back to Harvard. Harper can't do that without leaving the only home he has ever known.

Were the many Liberals who thought this was a big deal in 2006 being absurd? Bigoted? Offensive?

As to the comparison - clearly Gandhi cared about India and the plight of Indians in South Africa - what did Ignatieff do for Canadians while abroad?

It is indeed bigoted because it implies that anyone who has lived outside the country or in fact not lived here all their lives is not qualified to be Prime Minister. The implication is very clear. And according to the Conservative the "Indians" in South Africa were NOT Indians because they had left India. But you were completely wrong about Gandhi's political work in India before 1928 so it is not clear you really know about Gandhi's history.

By the way bigotry is evident in your very posting. You say Ignatieff "can just go back...." This what racists say about immigrants: "they can just go back to their own country" they say. But Ignatieff is a Canadian citizen with all the rights and privileges therein. I am not a Liberal nor an Ignatieff supporter, but the implications of this ad campaign are profoundly dangerous.

Uh I am not saying that immigrants (I think immigration is a good thing) shouldn't be able to be Prime Minister. Heck, I am a Canadian living abroad. I do think you should live in Canada for some amount of time though.

I don't think "immigrants should go back to their own country". I think one of the best tools for accountability we have is the fact that crappy PM's become pariahs, derided from all quarters (eg. Mulroney).

Ignatieff doesn't have deep roots in this country, and could avoid...

...that same fate. His kids grew up elsewhere, as did his wife. He has many friends abroad (and probably would lose few by moving back to Harvard). Iggy has less to lose by being a crappy PM than say Stephen Harper.

Kirby, you are putting words in my mouth. Indians living in South Africa for a few years are still Indians. When they refer to South Africa as their country, and say they only really care about the Taj Mahal anyway they are not really Indians.

When they fight for the civil...

rights of Indians living in South Africa (as Gandhi did) you have an entirely different kettle of fish.

You need a parallel of a leader who lived abroad for at least 30 years, who did nothing for his home country in those 30 years, and who started running for PM two years after returning to his birth country.

George I is probably the best example I can think of.

As I said from the beginning, such comparisons are not meant to demonstrate exact parallels. And the roots of these ads are steeped in ugliness, bigotry, pettiness, and do not constitute real political discourse. Diane Ablonzcy was born in the US and lived out of the country for years. I used to live in her riding but would never had made an issue of her geographical history. I still contend that the "he can go back" comment demonstrates a bigoted root in all of this.