And it's Kathy Shaidle!
I know it is difficult for conservatives to criticize each other. One of the problems is that liberals (and the Liberal Party) are so obviously alien to us, that it simply becomes an "us vs. them" thing. But, I will try to provide constructive criticism here.
Kathy Shaidle's pugnacious activism can be a good thing - she managed to write a book because she got into trouble for her very freely expressed opinions (and loose adjectives).
Still, I suppose this is nothing new with conservative (especially women) writers. There is Girl on the Right who has a similar style to Shaidle's, and the rather cryptic Small Dead Animals. In the U.S. there is the abrasive style of Michelle Malkin, the bizarre blog that Debbie Schlussel maintains which is part rants part movie reviews, and the much more sophisticated but equally harsh Ann Coulter.
Maybe this kind of style is necessary, and we do need activist-style national attack dogs (or cats - no Warren Kinsella has no bearing here), but in the process of attacking, these messengers either distort, or fail to convey their messages.
Back to Shaidle, now a vocal spokesman for Canadian conservatives. How did she react in the following situations?
- As a retaliation to the Human Rights Commission's attempt to stifle freedoms of expression, she co-wrote a book to detail the many incidents that have already occurred under this Commission. But she stopped there. Wouldn't the next logical step be to try and disband this Commission altogether, or at least support and write about groups who do? She has nothing more on this besides publicity for her book on her blog.
- She got into an internet "fight" with the rather pathetic Liberal adviser Warren Kinsella over an invitation to be a guest on a panel at TV Ontario. She was supposed to talk about atheism in Canada. But it was clear she hadn't researched the subject, as revealed by her inability to answer one of Steve Paikin's simplest questions: "Have secular humanists have already won the war?" She gave an ill-thought out, generic answer of "fifty-fifty", without any explanation as to how she got to that answer, and I was left thinking, "she hasn't even prepared for this panel." (You can listen to it around the 51:46 point in the downloadable podcast).
So much for the fight with Kinsella. He might have been right after all to contest her presence on that panel. Unfortunately, this is how she appears on many other panels, including the Michael Coren show, and Behind the Story.
- Despite her aggressive, and at time bellicose, vocabulary she is surprisingly lenient towards these very groups she attacks. The famous "BBQ cats in Chinese restaurants" joke by her Liberal rival Warren Kinsella resulted with an almost apologetic reaction from Shaidle towards the Chinese. In fact, this whole silly episode just strengthened the Chinese community which demanded an apology for this harmless comment from the Liberal Party.
- In an interview with Robert Spencer about Muslims, she never put him to task about what to do with the Muslims that seem to bring out so much of her ire. I got the impression that she was more concerned with not ruffling Spencer's feathers than finding solutions to the Muslim problem.
And this is exactly her problem. What are the solutions? Constant vitriol reaches its limit after a while. But then, that is the problem with conservatives in general. They are obsessed with reacting to liberal follies, writing about them ad nauseam, jeering along with their fellow-conservatives about liberals’ stupid ways. But when put to task to discuss the real dangers of atheism, or who exactly are these Muslims, or what to do when ethnic minorities start asking for special interventions, they are at a loss. Simply because they haven’t studied the problems deep enough, and are just happy to skim the surfaces and let their indignations flow. A lazy form of journalism.
This is no way to be a conservative. Nor is it any way to make any changes. Their sources simply becomes another illegible blog or newspaper article. And the danger is that these conservatives begin to ignore or abandoned true conservative values, having by-passed the deep-seated issues. They then start to behave like their liberal nemeses.