“Why Roman Polanski belongs in prison” –Maclean’s editorial, vs “Reflex lock-Polanski up rants are shocking” –Barbara Amiel.

Your editorial is logical, fair and thoughtful. “ If you do the crime, you do the time”, even if you walk on water.

Not so much Barbara Amiel. I am not surprised that she would defend the bourgeoisie, regardless of faults, but her logic and reasoning does not stand up to scrutiny. She worries about the terror he would have of being sent back to an American prison –which I can readily understand considering her husband horrific experience in the Florida prison he now inhabit. Why, next they might take away his computer and e-mail privileges!

“The definition of childhood depends on the culture” she says. Yes, it does. Childhood brides are common in some third world countries, but last time I looked, America is not a third world country and they have laws against older men having sex with thirteen-year olds, even if consensual, and this was certainly not. Polanski confessed as much.

One can sympathise with his sad experience of having his wife, Sharon Tate, killed by a bunch of crazies, and his mother’s demise at the hands of the Nazis; but that does not give him a licence to rape. If anything, it should have made him more empathetic and caring, and not inclined to drug and rape a thirteen year old defenceless child, and then running away from the law.

In Ms Amiel’s world, one would only jail the stupid, poor and powerless. The elites would dance to a different tune. Her apologetics are about par with Whoopi Goldberg’s. Except that Amiel’s English is more refined –though Whoopi is better looking.

“Thinking about the old Ignatieff” –Mark Steyn

I must be getting more conservative (small “c” please) in my senior years, because I find myself agreeing with Mark Steyn on several issues, and I support his battle with the “Human Rights Commission”. Perhaps it is from reading Tarek Fatah’s “Chasing a Mirage”, or it could be from reading Ezra Levant’s “Shakedown”, with his paean to Steyn’s struggles.

Whichever, I think Steyn has got it right regarding Iggy’s trials and tribulations in the Coliseum or Canadian politics. Ignatief is an erudite and thoughtful person; his writings are intelligent and profound. Not so his stammering political pronouncements. Pace his erudition, Michael Ignatieff is to political mud wrestling as a fish is to dry land –trashing around trying to find his breath.
In today’s political environment, politics and intelligence is an oxymoron, and the politicians bend and sway with the winds of the latest opinion surveys. Thomas Jefferson is credited with saying “the government you elect is the government you deserve”. No politician ever went wrong underestimating the average intelligence of the electorate. As your letter writer Mary Davies of Mississauga so accurately and succinctly put it “A good democracy requires both good citizens and good governments”. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have either.

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