In 1935, a lone Canadian official in Geneva called a dictator’s bluff. His government’s response was a betrayal that helped doom the League of Nations.
Thanks for researching and writing this. Moral clarity requires others to care about something larger than themselves. I don’t blame people. It takes a lot of courage to do that and you must try to park as much as possible.
That point about courage is backed up by the numbers in the Canadian House of Commons. We track how often MPs break ranks to vote with their conscience. It almost never happens. The strict rules of "party discipline" force MPs to vote exactly how their leader tells them. Analysis of recent sessions shows that dissent happens in less than 1% of votes. The system actually discourages the type of moral clarity you described.
Now if this kind of history was being taught in schools rather than angry denunciations & smears of Sir John A Macdonald, perhaps Canada wouldn't be sliding into totalitarianism.
What really gets me is how Riddell understood oil was the pressure point but bureaucratic timidity won out. Mussolini later admitting he'd withdraw in a week with oil sanctions makes this one of history's clearer counterfactuals. I've seen similar patterns in modern sanctions debates where decision paralysis allows bad actors to calcualte around the threat.
Thanks for researching and writing this. Moral clarity requires others to care about something larger than themselves. I don’t blame people. It takes a lot of courage to do that and you must try to park as much as possible.
That point about courage is backed up by the numbers in the Canadian House of Commons. We track how often MPs break ranks to vote with their conscience. It almost never happens. The strict rules of "party discipline" force MPs to vote exactly how their leader tells them. Analysis of recent sessions shows that dissent happens in less than 1% of votes. The system actually discourages the type of moral clarity you described.
Now if this kind of history was being taught in schools rather than angry denunciations & smears of Sir John A Macdonald, perhaps Canada wouldn't be sliding into totalitarianism.
What really gets me is how Riddell understood oil was the pressure point but bureaucratic timidity won out. Mussolini later admitting he'd withdraw in a week with oil sanctions makes this one of history's clearer counterfactuals. I've seen similar patterns in modern sanctions debates where decision paralysis allows bad actors to calcualte around the threat.