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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1981-02-18, Page 2 /0-77:N. 1872 Brussels Post BRUSSELS Established 1872 519-887-6641 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community Published at BRUSSELS, ONTARIO every Wednesday morning by McLean Bros. Publishers Limited Box 50, Brussels, Ontario NOG 1H0 A Andrew Y. McLean, Publisher Evelyn Kennedy, Editor Pat Lang lois, Advertising ' Subscription rates: Canada $12 a year (in advance) outside Canada $25 a year (in advance) Single copies - 30 cents each ABC Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association and The Audit Bureau of Circulation. A helping spirit A family in Belgrave lost its home and everything else in a fire last week and if you've wondered about the neighbourly spirit, it certainly isn't missing in Belgrave and area. Service clubs, organizations, churches and individuals rallied together to make sure the Scotts could be quickly provided with the essentials of food, clothing, money and housing and a benefit broomball game was held at the Blyth Arena on Sunday to raise money for them. That's one nice thing about living, in a rural area. That spirit of neighbour helping neighbour in times of trouble still prevails as it has for so many years. Competitive education To the editor: There is an unwanted sense of fear in the back of immature parents' minds that, should mandatory education of the young be ,,,hed, this civilization would very well • •verse and we would end up back in tug .11es and caves of our distant ancestors. Bare feet, mud pies and every- thing- just great for kids. But for adolescent, over-educated adults. hooked on technological goodies, ownership prestigeinationalistic prides and self-esteem no civilization ever equalled abanish the chilling thought! With everybody and their cousins fighting for or demanding their exclusive rights, everybody that is, except those "under age", who, to become certified citizens, must first be taught the.., R's- reading, 'riting and rivalry; how to break the golden rule and, get away with it; how to become virtual slaves to a crop of governing idiots in the developed world where the onus is on automation, expansion, exploitation of fel- low man and nature, ideological warfare, perpetuation of greed and other suicidal practices. Unfortunately, Canada is richly endowed and over stocked with fortune hunters ready to sell their citizenship (again) if the price is right. Such is the kind of lifestyle our young are academically and religiously forced to adapt to and who in their right mind would blame them (the young) for objecting. Don't, deny them that right! They are Canada's only hope! With general elections occurring more frequently, it may be well to remember that opposing political parties do not struggle for the good of the people, but for the position of • having dominance over them. Much like teachers have over pupils. Forced competitive education has a way of contributing to mutual aggression and diminishing brotherhood. W. Stephan Listowel It's extremely difficult, as any columnist knows, to please all of the people all of the time. In fact, if this column had done so, it would be extinct. Half my readers get so mad at me that they can't wait to read the next column, so they can get madder. The other half sort of enjoys it, forgives my lapses and looks forward to what the silly twit is going to say next week. In the last couple of weeks. I've had some letters from both sides. A' Manitoba editor is thinking of cancelling the column. Reason? "Too many columns dealing, with personal matters." I quote bits from his letter: "While it is' understandable that family members are dear to Bill Smiley. . . I feel our readers might tire of too much wife name-calling and how the grandboys are behaving. Once or twice a year would be sufficient." should be so lucky. You are quite right, sir. Once or twice a year would be sufficient, for the grandboys' visit. But I have never called my wife a name, unless you, consider The Old Battleaxe or The Old Lady to be p ejorative. You should hear what some men call their wives. And from Vancouver, a young mother writes to say, "Keep on writing about your family and grandboys. I love these columns." The editor was fair. He added: "Columns, other than family-related, are good and have received favorable comment from our readers." Thanks. get letters from religious people who accuse me of• being: the right-hand man of the Devil, when I jestingly remark that God must have been out to lunch when he was drawing up the menu for this year's winter. I get letters from other religious people who send me dreary tracts and letters full of Biblical references, with the hope that I will print the lot. And I get letters from still other religious people, mostly clergy, who enjoy quibbling with me over a point but urge me to continue writing as I do, to make people think. I get letters from Tories who accuse me of being a Liberal because I don't think Joe Clark is the Second Coming (there I go again.) And I get letters from Liberals who swear that I'm a blatant Tory simply because I don't believe the Second Coming has already come, in the form of Petit Pierre. But on the whole, it is not exactly a dog's life. I remember receiving a fairly vicious editorial blow from a weekly editor who said. I wrote too much about teenagers, because I am a school teacher. I retorted with a bit of tongue in cheek. In high dudgeon, he cancelled the column, It's still going. I wonder if he's still editor of that paper, deciding what his readers can read. (Had a number of letters from his subscribers supporting me, none supporting him.) I receive letters from places like Baker Across the province these days thou- sands of idealistic people are offering themselves for political office. It's a sad reality that a majority of the legislators who come out of the election will likely be• battle-hardened political realists; cynics, many might say. There are those who go into politics because they want to wield power, They like the idea of being able to wheel and deal with the power of the government behind them. Such people have made a lot of headlines over the years: the Spiro Agnews, the current scandal among U.S. legislators ready to be bribed, the Skyshop scandal here in Canada. But the vast majority of people who run for government do so for all the best reasons. They want to make their country a better place in which to live. But the decision to run for a party's nomination is when idealism begins to die, or the candidacy begins to die. Compromise slowly creeps in to temper idealism. First off, if he or she hopes to get elected, the candidate must first accept the discipline of a political party. Few independents ever get elected. There may be many policies of the party the candidate doesn't agree with but if he expresses opposition to these during his nomination speech he's not likely to get the party nomination. He may solve his conscience by saying to himself he'll work for change from inside a party and that's the first tiny self-deception. If a novice politician can accept the belief that he will be able to change things from working inside the system then he may be able to convince himself to make his choice of party not so much on principle, but on which party he's most likely to find success, with. After all, if you're going to have to' work to change the policies of the party you're running for anyway then you might as well work for the party that's most likely to win. MORE COMPROMISE Our idealist wins the nomination of his party and more compromises must follow if he hopes to win the election. There may be policies he feels strongly about but the public just wouldn't understand; things like, say, official bilingualism for the province so people in areas with significant French- speaking populations can have government services in their own language. The corn- flakes-box bigots of many parts of Ontario will turn on a candidate who supports bilingualism. So our candidate, if not at least disavowing his belief, will do his best to avoid discussion completely. He'll stick to Lake, N.W.T., excoriating me for talking about the tough winters down here, which to them is almost the deep south. And I get a letter from my kid brother, retired and living in Florida, with pictures of the house, flowers, pool and an outline of his day: coffee and morning paper, walk down the beach with the dog, etc. The swine. Wait till the Florida flies get to him in July and he wants to come north and visit for a month. No room at the Smiley inn, little Smiley. On the whole , the letters I get are delightful. A typical example came in the other day from Bill Francis, Moncton, B.C, He says such nice things about the column A sincere "th ank you" to the residents of Huron and Perth Counties who, once again, have supported the work of Christmas Seals in the 1986=1981 Campaign. We are encouraged by Conitriunity re- sponse and will be able to carry on expanded service programs and research in Lung Disease. safe topics, motherhood issues many call them: the greatness of Ontario, the freedom we enjoy, the beauty of the province, the need for more jobs. Our idealist may want to accent the positive and forget about the negative but he soon learns that he is expected to accent the negative, to go for the jugular of his opponent. He may not have to fight dirty but he's got to fight. And now our idealist finally fights his way through. He's elected.,Now, he thinks, I've got elected, I can go on to do the things really feel strongly about, to change the things that need changing. Ah but now he is a backbencher. Now the party leadership and the experts in the backrooms decide what policies the party will support or reject. Our idealistic backbencher may have some input, but in the long run the decision belongs to others. He is expected then to toe the line of party policy, to support the party whether he believes in the party's policy or not. He may choose to rebel, to make his stand for what he believes, but if he does he's most likely cutting off his chances of moving up in the party, and with it his chances of being able to make the kinds of changes he wants. So most likely he compromises, deciding it's better to sacrifice this one thing than give up his dreams of building a better country. If he can make these compromises long enough, be faithful enough to the party, he may win the chance to move to the front benches, to the cabinet of the government side or the shadow cabinet of the opposition parties. HARD CHOICES But still the compromises continue. There may be hard choices to be made that will affect the county 10 years from now. It may mean hardship in the short run to make gains in the long run. The problem is that if the short-run hardship is too great his government likely to be turfed out by the , voters, who aren't patient enough to wait for the long-run gain. The new government will likely throw out your plans anyway so maybe it's best to water down the things you know are right, so you can get yourself re-elected and continue to work for the long-range goals. And so our idealist is in power, but somehow he's not our idealist anymore. He begins to look like the same conniving bums he set out to replace. Too many compromises have killed the idealism. Oh it doesn't happen to all our politicians. A few manage to keep their idealism as they advance. The problem is if they do, they usually get branded either naive or unbend- ing by all of us. that I blush even to read them, and would never put them in print. But more to the point, his letter is witty, informative, alive. He's no chicken, a W.W. I infantry private. I'll quote a bit. "Though obviously, a man of sound common sense, I wonder how, in your youth, you got involved in flying a fighter plane, let alone risking combat in one. (Ed. note: me too!) I remember during those war years, watching a young fellow land his old Avro Anson like a wounded pelican in the middle of our freight yard and walk away from the wreck looking a little sheepish. Soon after, and nearby, another boy flew his Harvard trainer at full speed into a grove of trees one foggy morning. He didn't walk away from that one." Speaking of education, he says he attended five different schools and doesn't Please turn to page 3 There is still time to' answer your Christmas Seal letter. "Lungs Are For Life" "Use Christmas Seals-- It's a Matter of Life and. Breath." Mrs. Beryl Dunsmore, Executive Director, Huron Perth Lung' AsSociatiOri P was Alp tern heir 0 Wai pres 01 S the Ser Fet exp Fec exti con plat fan' mot sub den bas shit was Cor Del On jud shit was Cor Der On jud) shit bus shit wit the Hal prop Het 3,5( des con 11 fart con peo Fo C( A homt ago, v think '4 new toda! sun wont vast stray: being Hi beca cons rema 4: ! .j leath !i nu ml , prof ,•:. Bil good inStrl :radio At ,i, ' : ,.... Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston Those compromises. Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley Any columnist knows, no accounting for taste To the editor: Lung Association says thanks