Cole, Thomas. The Course of Empire: The Savage State. 1834. Oil on canvas, 39 ½ x 63 ½ in. Collection of The New-York Historical Society, New York City.

Cole, Thomas. The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State. 1834. Oil on canvas, 39 ½ x 63 ½ in. Collection of The New-York Historical Society, New York City.

Cole, Thomas. The Course of Empire: The Consummation of Empire. 1836. Oil on canvas, 51 x 76 in. Collection of The New-York Historical Society, New York City.

Cole, Thomas. The Course of Empire: Destruction. 1836. Oil on canvas, 39 ½ x 63 ½ in. Collection of The New-York Historical Society, New York City.

Cole, Thomas. The Course of Empire: Desolation. 1836. Oil on canvas, 39 ½ x 63 ½ in. Collection of The New-York Historical Society, New York City.

A must-see is the superlative ExploreThomasCole online exhibit, a collaboration of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, the National Park Service and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  The highly informative section on The Course of Empire has many fascinating insights, including a “decode” option highlighting significant aspects of each work, and commentary on the series gleaned from correspondence of the painter himself.

Great powers and empires are, I would suggest, complex systems, made up of a very large number of interacting components that are asymmetrically organized, which means their construction more resembles a termite hill than an Egyptian pyramid. They operate somewhere between order and disorder — on “the edge of chaos,” in the phrase of the computer scientist Christopher Langton. Such systems can appear to operate quite stably for some time; they seem to be in equilibrium but are, in fact, constantly adapting. But there comes a moment when complex systems “go critical.”

…Whether the canopy of a rain forest or the trading floor of Wall Street, complex systems share certain characteristics. A small input to such a system can produce huge, often unanticipated changes — what scientists call “the amplifier effect.” A vaccine, for example, stimulates the immune system to become resistant to, say, measles or mumps. But administer too large a dose, and the patient dies. Meanwhile, causal relationships are often nonlinear, which means that traditional methods of generalizing through observation (such as trend analysis and sampling) are of little use. Some theorists of complexity would go so far as to say that complex systems are wholly nondeterministic, meaning that it is impossible to make predictions about their future behavior based on existing data.

– Ferguson, Niall.  “Complexity and Collapse: Empires on the Edge of Chaos.” Foreign Affairs 89.2 (March/April 2010): 18-32.  Print.

Mr. Ferguson goes on to tilt with the ghosts of Spengler and Toynbee (and their contemporary successors), arguing that “the proximate triggers of a crisis are often sufficient to explain the sudden shift from a good equilibrium to a bad mess.”  Looking beyond more immediate and obvious causal factors, to mine distant decades for a longer-term cause is “what Nassim Taleb rightly condemned in The Black Swan as “the narrative fallacy”: the construction of psychologically satisfying stories on the principle of post hoc, ergo propter hoc.”  I can’t imagine Ferguson will make many colleagues happy with assertions like those, but—assuming one accepts his primary argument for a more chaotic, less deterministic reading of history—his paragraph-length illustrations of rapid imperial decline are fascinating.

But what if fourth-century Rome was simply functioning normally as a complex adaptive system, with political strife, barbarian migration, and imperial rivalry all just integral features of late antiquity? Through this lens, Rome’s fall was sudden and dramatic — just as one would expect when such a system goes critical. As the Oxford historians Peter Heather and Bryan Ward-Perkins have argued, the final breakdown in the Western Roman Empire began in 406, when Germanic invaders poured across the Rhine into Gaul and then Italy. Rome itself was sacked by the Goths in 410. Co-opted by an enfeebled emperor, the Goths then fought the Vandals for control of Spain, but this merely shifted the problem south. Between 429 and 439, Genseric led the Vandals to victory after victory in North Africa, culminating in the fall of Carthage. Rome lost its southern Mediterranean breadbasket and, along with it, a huge source of tax revenue. Roman soldiers were just barely able to defeat Attila’s Huns as they swept west from the Balkans. By 452, the Western Roman Empire had lost all of Britain, most of Spain, the richest provinces of North Africa, and southwestern and southeastern Gaul. Not much was left besides Italy. Basiliscus, brother-in-law of Emperor Leo I, tried and failed to recapture Carthage in 468. Byzantium lived on, but the Western Roman Empire was dead. By 476, Rome was the fiefdom of Odoacer, king of the Goths.

What is most striking about this history is the speed of the Roman Empire’s collapse. In just five decades, the population of Rome itself fell by three-quarters. Archaeological evidence from the late fifth century — inferior housing, more primitive pottery, fewer coins, smaller cattle — shows that the benign influence of Rome diminished rapidly in the rest of western Europe. What Ward-Perkins calls “the end of civilization” came within the span of a single generation.

So it was, says Ferguson, with the Ming dynasty in China, Bourbon France, the 20th century Ottoman Empire, post-WW2 British Empire, and Soviet Union.  All went from initial calamity to complete collapse within the span of a single lifetime; usually just a decade or two following the initial catalytic event.  More often than not the catalytic event was (either itself or tied to) a financial crisis.  But these are all hors d’œuvre to the central message, which is that this arrangement of circumstances should sound very familiar and more than a little alarming to our southern brethren living here and now in the 21st century.

America’s debt is blossoming in a less-than-careful fashion; a few decades down the road, it would not take much—maybe just (as Ferguson posits) a negative rating by a creditor agency—to fatally undermine domestic and foreign investor confidence.  This is the road to oblivion; great nations die when citizens lose faith in their vitality.

Finally, a shift in expectations about monetary and fiscal policy could force a reassessment of future U.S. foreign policy. There is a zero-sum game at the heart of the budgetary process: if interest payments consume a rising proportion of tax revenue, military expenditure is the item most likely to be cut because, unlike mandatory entitlements, it is discretionary. A U.S. president who says he will deploy 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and then, in 18 months’ time, start withdrawing them again already has something of a credibility problem. And what about the United States’ other strategic challenges? For the United States’ enemies in Iran and Iraq, it must be consoling to know that U.S. fiscal policy today is preprogrammed to reduce the resources available for all overseas military operations in the years ahead.

Defeat in the mountains of the Hindu Kush or on the plains of Mesopotamia has long been a harbinger of imperial fall. It is no coincidence that the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in the annus mirabilis of 1989. What happened 20 years ago, like the events of the distant fifth century, is a reminder that empires do not in fact appear, rise, reign, decline, and fall according to some recurrent and predictable life cycle. It is historians who retrospectively portray the process of imperial dissolution as slow-acting, with multiple overdetermining causes. Rather, empires behave like all complex adaptive systems. They function in apparent equilibrium for some unknowable period. And then, quite abruptly, they collapse. To return to the terminology of Thomas Cole, the painter of The Course of Empire, the shift from consummation to destruction and then to desolation is not cyclical. It is sudden.

This prospect should concern Canadians because without America, Canada would not exist.  Upwards of eighty perecent of our trade goes to America, and an impoverished America is one that cannot afford to buy Canadian goods, unless they will be sold at fire sale prices.  Because of our tight economic integration, a debt-ridden, cash-poor America must also mean an impoverished Canada—unless of course we suddenly and miraculously shift the bulk of our exports to other foreign markets.  But that is not all.

Canada is a wealthy nation in terms of actual and potential resources, but despite those riches, we defend ourselves very lightly.  Our military forces today do not possess adequate equipment, doctrine or personnel to successfully defend the remotest resource-rich areas of the country; the small, highly constrained CF today is clustered around the major population centres.  In a world without the protective umbrella of overwhelming American military force, Canada’s possession of her northern reaches could not long survive.  The decline of American forces to a strictly constabulary or garrison level, able to defend only CONUS, would have disastrous consequences for us, too.

As the Arctic region is further developed for commercial transit routes and petroleum extraction, some ambitious people will regard it and wonder why, given its light defenses, they should not secure those resources and revenue for themselves.  It doesn’t matter much who decides to take it, much as it didn’t really matter whether it was British or French pirates (not to mention their merchantmen and navies) that sapped the lifeblood of Spain’s far-flung colonial empire.  The point is that the putative owner will be displaced in favour of a more ambitious and persistent rival.  I would expect that within this century, at least one island in Canada’s Arctic archipelago will fall from our orbit, and we will have little capacity to do anything but grimace and bear it.  Or, like 19th century China, we may be compelled to sign a deleterious treaty, granting foreign powers the right to traverse our waters, extract our resources, and set up logistics facilities and communities abiding by the dominant power’s civil and criminal laws.  It may end up like the Caribbean, with the islands becoming a cornucopia of foreign-owned outposts, once the big fish in the pond determine that we do not have the capability or national will to hang onto it.

One hopes these potential outcomes remain far-fetched, and that America never becomes too enervated to enforce the Monroe Doctrine.  But it’s worth remembering that Canadians too have a vital interest in ensuring America’s health and prosperity.

A C-17 Globemaster III waits for an air crew going on an air delivery mission at an air base in Southwest Asia Feb. 2, 2010. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Angelita Lawrence)

Tech. Sgt. Kevin Owen sits on the ramp of a C-17 Globemaster III while flying over the mountains of Afghanistan after an air delivery mission, Feb. 2, 2010. Sergeant Owen, a 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron loadmaster, and the crew delivered 34 container delivery system bundles to a base in Afghanistan as part of a combat re-supply mission. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Angelita Lawrence)

Helen Guergis (right), Minister of state for Status of Women, stands beside Lisa Raitt, Minister of Natural Resources, as they take part in a Walk For The Cure event on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Sept. 17, 2009. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

On February 19th, junior minister Helena Guergis lost her cool after she arrived late for her flight, and was directed through the usual gamut of security screenings.  She proceeded to throw a tantrum, treating security screeners and airline personnel in an abrasive manner that would have had her barred from the flight, if she were anything other than a Minister of the Crown.  The details were unveiled in an anonymous fax sent to Prince Edward Island MP Wayne Easter (Liberal-Malpeque).

(I apologise in advance for quoting its entirety, but the letter ought to be read to be fully grasped.  No media account I have seen thus far manages to convey all of the details as soberly as the original author does.)

On February 19th at the Charlottetown Airport, Air Canada Jazz staff was informed via telephone that a certain “V.I.P.” would be late arriving for Air Canada Flight #7677 to Montreal.  The flight was scheduled to be in the air at 1725hrs with a flight load of thirty two passengers.

At 1720 hrs thirty of the thirty two passengers had already boarded the plane.  The two remaining passengers, Conservative MP and Minister of State for the Status of Women Hon. Helena Guergis and her aide Emily Goucher were at the Air Canada counter being so difficult and rude to Air Canada representative Alan Bagley that he almost refused to allow them to board to spite their “V.I.P.” status.  They berated him loudly and treated him in a most condescending manner after he told them some of their excessive bags were too large to be carry-on and should be checked.  At one point the Hon. Helena Guergis told Mr. Bagley that she “….knew Ron McKinley”. Apparently she wasn’t aware that as Minister of Transportation Mr. McKinley was not in charge of carry-on baggage, more’s the pity.

At 1720 hrs. inside the preboard screening area, five minutes before the time when the flight was scheduled to be in the air, Air Canada representative Sonja MacMillan paged both Hon. Helena Guergis and Ms. Goucher over the P.A. and after having waited considerably for them already, proceeded to the aircraft with her paperwork.

At 1725 hrs., flight time, Hon. Helena Guergis and Ms. Goucher started into the preboard area to be screened by the security staff.  When asked to remove her overcoat she compiled, but refused to remove her blazer, and when informed that her footwear might set off the walk through metal detector, she refused to remove them as well.  After proceeding through the metal detector, she alarmed it and was screened by Screening Officer Melissa Murnaghan.  She was asked to sit down and remove her footwear at this point due to the fact that they had caused the alarm.  At this point the Hon. Helena Guergis took a seat and huffily started to remove her footwear, upon their removal she slammed her boots into the bin provided by Ms. Murnaghan and then the Minister of State for the Status of Women said to Ms. Murnaghan, a single mother working to support herself and her son, “Happy Fucking Birthday to me!  I guess I’m stuck on this hell hole!”  Ms. Murnaghan, in a credit to her professionalism, did not reply to this comment, nor did the other screening staff on duty; Donald Wood, John Birt, Andrew MacEwan, Wanda Chinery, or Andrew Williams.  Ms. Murnaghan then put the footwear through the X-ray machine.

As the footwear cleared the X-ray conveyor, Hon. Helena Guergis then shouted at her aide Ms. Goucher to “Get those for me! I’m not walking around here in sock feet!.”

Having then cleared mandatory security screening without further incident, and having been handed her boots by her personal servant Ms. Goucher, Hon. Helena Guergis then attempted to force open the locked door that separates the preboard seating area from the apron, upon which Air Canada flight #7677 continued to wait.  Screening Officer MacEwan, closest to her, informed her that the door was indeed locked and that she would have to wait for the Air Canada representative (Sonja MacMillan) to return.  Hon. Helena Guergis then shouted across preboard to Mr. MacEwan “Well, can’t you call her or something!?”  Mr. MacEwan replied that no, he had no way of contacting the Air Canada representative while she was airside and that she would have to wait.  He also told her that passengers were normally requested to be at the airport at least two hours before flight time.  The Hon. Helena Guergis then shouted back across preboard to Mr. MacEwan “I don’t need to be lectured about flight time by you! I’ve been down here working my ass off for you people.”  Taken aback by this unnecessarily venomous response, Mr. MacEwan decided to end the conversation on his part.

Hon. Helena Guergis and her aide Ms. Goucher then decided that the best course of action would be to go to the eastern end of the preboard screening area and attempt to get Ms. MacMillan’s attention by screaming and hammering on the sound proof tinted glass that separates preboard from airside.

At this point, Sonja MacMillan returned from the plane, and being unaware of the commotion caused by the Hon. Helena Guergis and her aide Ms. Goucher, she processed them without further incident and allowed them to board Air Canada Flight #7677 to Montreal.  As they were being processed and allowed to board, Air Canada representative Alan Bagley entered preboard to see what the yelling he had heard way out at the counter was about.  Screening Officer Andrew Williams, during a security sweep of preboard, discovered two passports and tickets belonging to Ms. Goucher and Hon. Helena Guergis and gave them to Mr. Bagley who then returned them to Ms. Goucher and the Hon. Helena Guergis as they were finally headed towards their flight.

It is most unlikely anyone involved in this incident will be able to give statements or interviews “on the record”.

Due to the likely termination of current employment; Anonymous

– Anonymous letter to MP Wayne Easter.  Attached to report by O’Malley, Kady. “Helena Guergis’s Adventures on Prince Edward Island.” CBC News, 25 February 2010.

Mrs. Guergis has since realised what poison this is for her reputation, and apologised to Air Canada staff in particular and the people of PEI in general.  Take note that in her apology and public statements, she has not contested the details of the account.  Opposition MPs and assorted outraged citizens are calling upon Mrs. Guergis to resign, while the Prime Minister has said that he is satisfied with her apology, and that ends the matter.  Knowing the Prime Minister, however, I am sure the matter is not ended; he remembers it when people fail spectacularly—hello, Maxime Bernier!  No doubt the PM will recall this incident at the next Cabinet shuffle, and out will go Mrs. Guergis.

I’m not particularly upset over her behaviour unbecoming a minister, as it is a role with almost no substance whatsoever.  Before being granted the “Minister” nomenclature, it was known as Secretary of State (Status of Women), and the office-holder was in essence a glorified Parliamentary Secretary—neither sitting in Cabinet nor being a member of the Cabinet’s real centre of gravity, the far more influential Treasury Board.  This so-called “junior minister” portfolio carries with it the whopping bureaucracy of three staff, and no executive authority beyond that of a normal MP.  And as we have seen, it doesn’t even exempt one from having to go through the same meaningless security theatre as the plebs.

I understand that people will lose their cool every now and then; this is human nature.  But neither do I condone an absence of consequences.  If the Hon. Helena Guergis were an ordinary citizen, she would have been bounced from her flight, possibly detained by airport security, and (if they had any sense at all) informed by Air Canada that her business was no longer welcome, and they would be refusing any subsequent bookings by her.  Alas, the time for the first has passed, although there may still be time to file petty charges and have the airline declare her persona non grata.

If I were the Prime Minister, however, I would make it clear that Mrs. Guergis would indeed keep her job, but since she could not be relied upon to conduct herself appropriately at an airport, she must be relieved of the burden of going through airport security screening.  For the remainder of the government’s term of office, therefore, she would be placed on Transport Canada’s Specified Persons List and prohibited from setting foot aboard any kind of aircraft, civil or military.  In order to travel to her engagements, Mrs. Guergis could enjoy the leisurely pace of the railroad or—to go where the rails do not—Greyhound bus.

I’m sure my approval rating would skyrocket overnight.

But alas, I cannot think of any Prime Minister of the Dominion who would ever have the guts to do it.

“My first five years of life we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse,” Palin said during a speech in Calgary on Saturday. “Believe it or not — this was in the ‘60s — we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse. I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse and I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada.”

– Canwest News Service (with files from Jason Markusoff).  “Sarah Palin’s Canadian health care link has critics sick.”  Calgary Herald, 8 March 2010. [Emphasis mine]

Some excitable journalists and commentators are trying to insinuate the stink of hypocrisy and covering the story like it’s a giant contradiction, but what it really tells us is that they have no deductive reasoning capability whatsoever.  I am no Palin apologist (my impression is that she is an earnest but incompetent politican, like Stephane Dion or John Tory), but surely the woman can not be called a hypocrite for an act she could not have influenced in any way, shape or form.

Let the record show that Sarah Louise Palin (née Heath) was born in 1964.  At the end of the 1960s she would be five years old.  Hands up, everyone who had the authority to select a sibling’s trauma treatment facility (in lieu of their parents doing so) at the age of five.  If you are guessing that Mom or Dad Heath was responsible for sending her brother to Whitehorse for treatment, you’re correct.  Now, hands up everyone whose parents made a decision in your formative years that you now, as an adult, find disagreeable.

Canada’s publicly-funded health care system was initiated by some provinces in 1961, but key federal legislation (the Canada Assistance Plan, 1966, and the Medical Care Act, 1966) did not come into force until 1968 (see timeline).  Yukon Territory set up a hospital insurance plan with federal cost sharing in 1961, and a more general medical insurance plan with federal cost-sharing in 1972.

It will not surprise you to learn that in that time, non-Canadians were not eligible for our publicly-funded health insurance, so the American Heath family would have paid for any medical services that were provided.

Palin’s father said his family probably boarded the train for the Whitehorse hospital only twice — once when a daughter had rheumatic fever, and once when his son, also named Chuck, severely burned his leg and an infection set in.

“We much preferred to use our facilities because my insurance didn’t cover anything in Whitehorse. And even though they have socialized medicine, I still had to pay the bill, being an American citizen,” Heath said.

Heath worked part-time for the White Pass & Yukon Railroad and had a pass allowing him and his family to ride for free.

– Markusoff, Jason.  “Sarah Palin heads north. Er, south. Er, to Calgary.” Calgary Herald, 7 March 2010.

If you want to drag Mrs. Palin over the coals about why the details of this story are eerily similar to another one told previously (where her brother burned his foot and went to Juneau, Alaska for treatment), you may have firmer ground to stand on.  It’s okay to dislike a pandering politician; I dislike lots of them.  But hypocrisy?  Please.  Palin was a five-year-old girl, at best, not the parent who decided where their children got treatment.  If there’s a contradiction here, it’s why a non-story is garnering so much breathless media attention.

Slaughter-Fly To The Angels
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Terry Cordell: You can’t expect to dodge the police indefinitely, George. Wouldn’t it be smarter to go to Cochrane and get this thing out in the open?

George Steele: Just about as smart as cutting my throat to get some fresh air.

– Crack-up.  Dir. Irving Reis.  Perf. Pat O’Brien, Claire Trevor, Herbert Marshall.  1946.

Do you consider your father a fanatic? “He’s not a fanatic,” says Mr. Yousef. “He’s a very moderate, logical person. What matters is not whether my father is a fanatic or not, he’s doing the will of a fanatic God. It doesn’t matter if he’s a terrorist or a traditional Muslim. At the end of the day a traditional Muslim is doing the will of a fanatic, fundamentalist, terrorist God. I know this is harsh to say. Most governments avoid this subject. They don’t want to admit this is an ideological war.

“The problem is not in Muslims,” he continues. “The problem is with their God. They need to be liberated from their God. He is their biggest enemy. It has been 1,400 years they have been lied to.”

– Kaminski, Matthew.  “‘They Need to Be Liberated From Their God’.” Wall Street Journal, 6 March 2010.

Mr. Yousef has certainly cut to the heart of the matter.  And he is correct that governments have shied away from addressing fanatical ideology, even though it is the causal factor that breeds homegrown and international Islamism.

A couple of months ago, a young Muslim woman wrote to me in response to a previous post on Islam and women.  She argued that Christianity and Western nations also had a fairly horrible track record with regard to equality of women, and that this really only began to be addressed quite recently, in the late 19th and 20th centuries.  And she would be correct insofar as that goes; I readily conceded that point.

But the focus of that post was not that Christianity (nor any other religion) had a perfect, spotless record when it came to women’s dignity and equality—it doesn’t.  My point was that unequal and second-class treatment were built into the example of Islam’s founder, Mohammed.  I confined myself to reviewing notable misdeeds in Mohammed’s history which have no parallels in Christ; in this I hoped to foster an understanding of why other religions may self-improve and refine their doctrines dealing with women, but Islam cannot.

At its best, religion reconnects us with the Divine and broadens our perspective beyond the parochial self.  It civilises us, sanding down our rough edges; a benefit for individual believers, certainly, also one for our families, friends, neighbours and colleagues.  But all religions are also—in varying degrees—at odds with certain aspects of human nature, so individually and collectively, humans are constantly falling short of the mark.

Islam is unique, however, in some critical areas.  Instead of exhorting us toward better behaviour, it can also be used to give licence—via the example of Mohammed himself—to some of humanity’s worst impulses.

• Sex with children (Mohammed’s third wife Aisha bint Abu Bakr was either nine or ten when her marriage was consummated).
• The rape of captured civilian women (wives Rayhana bint Zayd ibn ‘Amr and Safiyya bint Huyayy) after the torture and killing of their husbands and fathers mere hours beforehand.
• Murder of political/religious opponents (Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf).
• Permission to lie in service of the faith—the precursor to Shia taqqiya doctrine (Muhammad ibn Maslamah, commissioned to lie in order to murder above-mentioned Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf).

Not too many religions have founders who sought and were granted such wide latitude to commit violent acts without repentance.  Violence is an integral part of Mohammed’s example, and this is what will make radical strains of Islam so very difficult to eradicate.  This aspect of the ideology will have to be acknowledged and combated; to place it off-limits is to prematurely concede defeat.