Hey Jim,

Actually, I didn't cite government protection and rescue as the root of the problem. I cited the greed of bankers and high-profile investment agencies as the root of the problem. I implied that the very wealthy people at the top of the food chain who engineered the conditions of the collapse, escaped the harm of it by continuing to collect their 'performance bonuses' while taxpayers bailed out the institutions their performances had destroyed.

Ironically, countries which more highly regulate their banks' behaviour, such as Canada, side-stepped the worst fallout of the global economic collapse. Most of the negative economic affects in Canada have been due to having an economy so closely entangled with the US, whose economy was eviscerated by unchecked financial adventurism.

The banks had assumed the risk in a largely unregulated market -- by most other responsible nations' standards -- and ignored the possible negative outcomes in favour of massive profits. In fact, several large ones collapsed out right at the beginning of the whole mess. However, faced with total economic armageddon, the US government made a pragmatic choice: bail out the banks and other financial institutions, or sink the whole ship.

How stupid do you have to be to have forgotten already that the current financial crisis was created almost whole cloth from a combination of two factors? Those two factors? Military adventurism in Iraq with the sole intention of furthering American hegemony in the Middle East. And, more significantly, economic adventurism by the the wealthiest sector of our society, who were in turn protected -- even rescued -- from the consequences of their greed.

Instead, Steyn meticulously and maliciously trots out conservatism's favourite whipping boys: the poor, gays, environmentalists, climate change, Islam, unions. Particularly transparent is the all-too prevalent practice of blaming the global victim: the poor. If we divide our rlatively wealthy and powerful Western society into the sectors of rich, middle-class and poor, then only one sector is growing (the poor) and only one is growing richer (the rich), both at exponential rates. Moreover, the poor are getting poorer, and the rich fewer.

I'll make just one specific point, because Steyn himself so belabours it in this hack job of journalism Macleans deems to be an op-ed: the most essential external possession of a person seeking work, seeking a way out of the hell-hole of poverty, is a telephone number. Do I need to spell it out for you, then, Mr. Steyn, why a homeless person would have a cell phone? Or are you too stupid even to understand that?