Mark Steyn, writing in Maclean's in 2006 about the new "Canadian" politician, Mikey Ignatieff:
I've met him just once, a decade or so back, at a dinner party in London for Canadian expats. He left early, telling me he found all this talk of Canada frankly rather parochial. I wonder how he feels after two months on the campaign trail. For all his banshee wailing, he at least spent the last decade trying to persuade the dessicated Western left to confront the realities of our time. He won't be doing much of that as our Trudeau-in-waiting. It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the world, but for Etobicoke-Lakeshore and a mid-level cabinet post?Until this last month, when the intellectual colossus downsized himself to Liberal talking points, the Ignatieff low point was widely agreed to be his performance in the wake of the Princess of Wales' death. "Twenty-four hours ago I couldn't imagine I would say this," he choked up to British TV viewers. "A light has left the world." That's how I feel about Ignatieff: a light has left the world to flicker instead over a party that explicitly rejects the moral doctrine he's formulated and, indeed, regards morality as no more than self-congratulation: feeling good about feeling bad. Goodbye, England's rose. Hello, Ottawa's narcissi.
Via Jack's Newswatch