Ignatieff is as much a patriot as he is a defender of human rights.
Which is to say, not at all.
He is a repulsive opportunist.
After spending his days speaking on behalf of America's brutal imperialism, he just returns to the land of his youth to have a go at a second career as prime minister.
Note I didn't say "returns home" because his past words and actions make it abundantly clear he does not regard Canada with warm feelings.
As much as I dislike Harper, and that is a great deal, Ignatieff is the worst possible alternative to be found on the planet.
He is actually a surprisingly small-minded thinker in many respects, he is overwhelmingly an admirer of American hegemony, he is a defender of torture and bloodshed, and he is putridly smug about himself.
His is a genuinely poisonous presence in our political life, much like having a mole from the CIA running a national party. Indeed, one suspects that that is exactly what he is.
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The stuff above about Canadians rejecting an intellectual is uninformed rubbish.
As to Ignatieff's being better able to succeed in Europe, again rubbish. He has a wide-spread reputation there as "neo-con lite."
The writer must never have heard Ignatieff at any length.
Ignatieff truly is the equivalent of the Walt Disney organization's notion of an intellectual.
That is undoubtedly why he served a stint as a BBC presenter, that broadcast organization in recent years having been reduced to a mere shadow of itself while serving the aims of the likes of Tony Blair’s government.
There is no fierce independence of thought in Ignatieff, the indispensable requirement to wear the laurels of intellectual.
Indeed, quite the opposite.
There are no striking views or original ideas associated with his name. None.
There is no great defense of the little guys of this world, the downtrodden, the abused, the victims, the underdogs of any circumstances that is associated with great intellectuals and with great writers, the kind of thing Graham Greene considered indispensable to the title of writer.
There is a great deal of wordiness, much of it rather mannered, stylized, dry, much like a costly garment wrapping around nothing.
