At this point, heady passions broke into the theater. What about poor people? What about Canadians? What about the common man?
It is an adage of life itself that the man who gives away a penny incurs resentment in those who ask why he didn't give away two pennies. And what about the means by which he achieved his surplus in the first place?
As for his fellow Canadians, when Conrad Black announced that he was willing to surrender his Canadian citizenship in order to abide in London with the lords of the realm, impulses of resentment were kindled, and from the tumult one could make out the guttural sound of, "What's wrong with Toronto, my lord?"
This is the moment, perhaps, for a little reflective thought, to the effect that the tragedy is now complete in the matter of Conrad Black. Only he had the courage and the sweep to throw it all away. Leaving, for his friends, just terrible sadness that it should have come to this.
William F. Buckley, Jr. is editor-at-large of National Review, the prolific author of Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography.
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