As we have to expect of Andrew Coyne his Satruday National Column brings some much needed clarity to the Ballistic Missle Defense debate in Parliament.
...To be sure, the MPs involved believe there are important issues at stake. The Liberal Women’s Caucus, for example, plainly considers this to be a “women’s issue,” as it pleases them to believe that women are blessed with a higher commitment to peace than those testosterone-addled men. This is supposed to be feminism. It is in fact in the best 19th-century traditions of “womanly virtues.” A hundred years ago the same people would have been temperance campaigners. Aside from that, it’s hard to see what their complaint is. One MP justified her opposition on the grounds that she was a “pacifist,” which is surely a novel interpretation of pacifism: If attacked, apparently, not only are you obliged to throw away your spear, but also your shield. Remember, this is missile defence we are talking about. The United States is not proposing to use high-tech weaponry to zap defenceless foreign cities from the air. It wants, rather, to knock out incoming nuclear missiles, before they can destroy its own cities.
