If you're wondering why politicians' conduct doesn't appal them as much as it appals us, the sad reality is that it often does.  But with a delayed fuse that only detonates once they're out of the game and ruefully wish they'd tried harder to live up to their ideals.  So life being short, I invite them to do it now.  And yes, I'm talking to you, Liberal MPs engaging in committee filibusters with childish glee and stone-faced hypocrisy.

You aren't the only ones.  But we need to talk, because right now you're in my face including over the vaccine contracts.  And your conduct is hypocrisy, because if you go and look at the 2015 campaign speeches of people with the same names as you, you'll find a lot of talk of Stephen Harper's excessive centralization, control, secrecy and deceit, and of a firm intention to give backbenchers more freedom and respect, let Parliament do its job, tell the truth and so forth.

So let me remind you that you weren't lying to get elected.  You believed it.  And you still do.  Deep down somewhere, albeit set aside due to the exigencies of the moment and the sincere conviction that you've got to keep control.  Not for very much longer.  But in order to do all the good things only you can do thanks to your superior characters and principles.

Don't balk.  It's not me talking.  It's you.  Then and now.  And if I might quote Nietzsche here (I long despised him but have come to appreciate his prophetic insight into the horrible direction our civilization was taking), "'I have done that', says my memory.  I cannot have done that says my pride and remains unshakeable.  Finally memory yields."

It's from Beyond Good and Evil and it pretty much summarizes the conversation you're now having.  But we must go beyond it because, alas, memory has its revenge one day in company with conscience.

You see, the worst part of this rather predictable and even tedious parade, for you at least, is that you will in fact still believe it in three years, or five, or ten, when you are out of office.  And on the day that ambition fades, flees or crumbles, on the day that memory overcomes pride, you will say wistfully that you wish you had stood up to the Maximum Leader, had said what you knew to be true not what you were told was expedient, and had used parliamentary procedure to advance the cause of open government instead of braying like a donkey.  Above all you will regret the silly lies you got away with, the silly lies that lowered the tone of debate long after the specific reasons you told them have stopped mattering.

There are exceptions and, as usual in life, the people most likely to live up to their convictions are the ones you'd most like to see slacking off.  For instance Xi Jinping.  And then there are the politicians who in return for swallowing their principles while in office get lucrative consulting jobs afterward from, for instance, Xi Jinping and never look back.  But you're not one of them, are you?

So we need to talk, and not just about the current vaccination contract filibuster, shabby as it is.  There's your government House Leader Pablo Rodriquez telling the press your party "respects" the independence of parliamentary committees and absolutely did not orchestrate the filibuster that erupted over the WE Charity and held off a reckoning until Trudeau prorogued Parliament on the empty pretext of having a clear and ambitious agenda.

Do you take us for fools?  If so, it might work.  The idea that MPs came up with this high-profile stunt on a vital issue without so much as a nod and a wink from the PMO insults the intelligence.  But the worst thing isn't that you won't get away with it, it's that you probably will.  Until the day that like Jacob Marley you think "What have I done?" and have lost the power to set things right.

Let me not seem partisan here.  I could mention the Tories over the Wright-Duffy affair, and did warn them at the time.  And I could mention many others because what is remarkable about such episodes is how common and how shabby they are.

For instance the governor of New York deliberately concealing the number of COVID deaths in seniors' residences.  Pride says I cannot have sat in meetings defending such reprehensible conduct on such seedy grounds.  If my opponent had done it, I'd have been filled with righteous indignation and rightly so.  And memory says "Uh, that guy sure looks like you."  And like a nasty, dirty fool.

This consideration confirms J. Budziszewski's point that conscience and morality are above all a matter of knowledge rather than feelings.  When we are caught, the most common reaction is "How could I have been so stupid?" not "How could I have been so mean?"  Because we did know better, we knew that we knew, and yet we did stuff that wasn't just wrong, it was bound to make us look like the fools we belatedly see ourselves as having been.  And you do know.

Some day the Trudeau Liberals may not regret the level of spending they engaged in.  But many will regret not tabling a budget and, even more, babbling inanities to justify not tabling one.  They will see the budget process hollowed out, and hostile partisans using their tricks, and realize it's loathsome and bad for self-government.  And memory will say "I have done that" and pride will say "I hate myself for it."

So you know what they say.  Don't hate yourself in the morning.  Sleep until noon.

No, wait.  Someone clever said that one.  But the wise say do the right thing.  Because it's who you think you are, because it's what you believe, and it's what you'll very much wish, some morning, that you had done the night before.

Photo Credit: House Of Commons