John English set out to write a book about Pierre Elliot Trudeau -a
man English regards as a great Canadian. Unfortunately the facts
about Trudeau do not lend themselves to the "great man" thesis that
English uses. While long, the book is shoddy and filled with
dubious conclusions.
English writes that Trudeau read Franz Neumann's BEHEMOTH in 1945
and "realized the horrors Hitler had wrought". But BEHEMOTH (1943)
is not about the murder of 6 million Jews and millions of other
civilians, so that cannot be the "horror" that English refers to.
English tries to sidestep the issue of Trudeau's anti-semitic play
DUPES by pointing out that there were others who, if not
anti-semitic, were uncharitable to the Jewish people. English also
notes that Trudeau in a 1938 trip to New York City went to a
performance of "American Jewish comedian Ed Wynn". So I guess that
excuses the anti-semitic play.
English defends Trudeau's miserliness by saying that he appeared to
be "indifferent to money -and understandably so, given that nearly
all his youthful friends,...lacked it". People who lack money are
never indiferent to it. At the time, Trudeau had a trust fund that
generated $5000 a year, which English notes elsewhere was more than
the average yearly salary of a doctor or lawyer.
Trudeau, after visiting Moscow during the cold war and stating that
the Soviet police and the army were too busy exchanging salutes "to
have the time to terrorize the population" has been shown to be
entirely wrong. But English lays the blame for Trudeau's Soviet
blind spot on American Senator Joseph McCarthy (ah the tragedy of
McCarthyism) and Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis.
English also claims that Trudeau and others championed the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but the "natural law" basis
of the Declaration was never acknowledge in any words spoken by
Trudeau in the book. The idea that limits should be placed on
property in the name of economic efficiency (a Trudeau position) is
compatible with socialism but not with the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
English is impressed with Trudeau's "bravery". English writes "When
the Catholic Church and Senator McCarthy excoriated and pursued
Communists with terrifying and destructive zeal, he [Trudeau] had
dared to visit Russia and China and to declare himself a
socialist". Trudeau visited China in 1960. McCarthy, an American
Senator, died in 1957. In addition, I cannot find any information
that would support English's contention that the Catholic Church
exhibited "terrifying and destructive zeal" in excoriating and
pursuing Communists.
Trudeau was able to visit Moscow because, in addition to being a
socialist, he was also a millionaire. English does not take us
through the thought process that Trudeau must have used to arrive
at the intellectual positon of being a "millionaire socialist".
Perhaps Trudeau became a soclalist because he didn't want other
people to end up as rich as him.
Trudeau was a very intelligent man who was blessed with an
exceptional memory. This allowed him to triumph in the Quebec
educational system at the time. It is probable that very few of the
teachers who taught Trudeau up to the time he graduated from the
University of Montreal with a law degree had advanced degrees in
the subjects they taught. Trudeau was not, therefore, a world class
or even a second tier, thinker. This explains many of the
contradictions that make up Trudeau's intellectual positions. He
supported "rights" but only to the point of making them privileges
i.e. Canadians had "individual rights" but only to the extent that
these indivdual rights did not infringe on undefined "cultural
rights".
The shortcomings of Pierre Elliott Trudeau are the reason why John
English cannot make a credible case that Trudeau was a Canadian
giant or a world class intellect.
J. L. Granatstein asked the question, "Who killed Canadian
History?" With books like John English's, one can only say: "Better
dead than read".