Commentary
Even now he thinks they’re “games.” After all the warnings about the Chinese Communist Party’s sinister intentions and methods, our prime minister told a news conference: “Unfortunately we’re seeing that countries, state actors from around the world, whether it’s China or others, are continuing to play aggressive games with our institutions, with our democracies.” If these manoeuvres are “games,” the state actors are playing for keeps. We don’t seem to be.
As with dismissing objections to one’s domestic policies as “partisan games,” it’s not serious language. But Justin Trudeau’s tongue works this way because his brain does. And his prattle, when finally forced to move beyond his infamous 2013 praise for China’s dictatorship, reminds me of historian Arnold Toynbee’s maxim, “Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.” Which I was alerted to by Mark Steyn, who called Toynbee’s “A Study of History” “his now mostly forgotten work on the subject.”…