There is definitely a case for supporting pro-market, right-of-centre publications. But in order for you to do that you would have to acknowledge that the pro-market view is legitimate and is a part of our country. We, at least in the intellectual sphere in this country, we don’t like to think that. We don’t like to think about reality. The reality is that this is a market-driven country. We, including the intellectuals and the bureaucrats and the professors and everybody else, we are extremely well off at this moment and by we I mean everybody who is working anywhere near a good salary is extremely well off. We are the richest generation of Canadians ever. And we believe somehow that markets and manufacturing and enterprise have nothing to do with this.
I think we subconsciously believe that capitalism is there to be sheared. Its purpose is to be taxed. It doesn’t need our help. It doesn’t need our enthusiasm. It doesn’t need our encouragement. And it certainly doesn’t need approval and we’re not going to give that approval because we don’t really like it. That the collective view, I think, that we don’t like capitalism although most of us live by it, I guess all of us live by it.
Once in a while, here and there, I write pieces that argue about how you can’t have freedom without capitalism or something like that and how capitalism makes our life possible. And I get letters from people who are astonished that anyone would hold such an old fashioned, crazy, conservative notion. They just don’t want to look at the reality.
(…)
I think that a Canadian producer who is trying to deal with international struggles, international conspiracies or clandestine activity between different governments, a Canadian producer won’t say Well I’m going to go after Saudi Arabia because the Americans are doing that. I’m not going to after Islam because the Americans or the British are doing that. So who am I going to after? I think they quickly look south and they say Hey the Americans are kind of evil. Everybody says they’re evil now. Everybody says George Bush is evil and they’re the Evil Empire now so we should go after them. This year we had, as I mentioned, four big productions made by or for the CBC where a couple of them were really brilliantly made, there’s no question about that and a couple were very clumsy, but they all seem to say the same thing: Those Americans you’ve got to watch them. They’re a bunch of scoundrels! They’ll come and steal your water.
***
Indeed: compulsively making anti-American movies while beligerent Islam is poised to kill is like shouting “theatre” in a crowded fire.
