In Praise of Flaws

Every time I read David Warren (on my blogroll on the right), I find myself drawing into one of his fascinating intellectual odysseys which prompts thought far beyond the scope of the original article.

Such is his current essay, "In Praise of Slightly Flawed Men:

The essay illuminates the morally-ambiguous acts of three men - good acts performed via means the clucking classes might find odious - and lets you draw your own conclusions - as I hope you will.

The second of the three:

"George Radwanski. I used to hate this guy, but have learned to love him. He was like so many Liberal Party flaks, in and out of public life. Adapted to power, they tend to write the rules by which they are guided, and rewrite as they go along. (This is inevitable in any one-party state.) A career of cynical self-promotion; but mixed, in Mr. Radwanski's unique case, with moments of actual public service. He wrote, for example, two commissions for the Ontario Liberal government of David Peterson (on services, and on education), which were not entirely foolish, and led to some minor improvements.

His very arrogance was put to good use in his job as Canada's Privacy Commissioner, for he had the guts to stand up to the government last year, in the matter of a national biometric identity card. This card could be used to invade our privacy in numerous ways (by data-pooling in combination with communications and video surveillance), while in no credible way improving our defences against terrorism. Mr. Radwanski boldly rang the alarm that it was his duty to ring -- at the cost of becoming a traitor to his class.

And now he is to be investigated by the RCMP, for expense overruns and minor acts of corruption which can hardly impress a student of the coalition of interests that keeps our Liberal Party in power. Let everyone who received a good lunch from this man rise in his defence!"