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So Thomas Mulcair may have been a bit of a tease, stringing two parties along before he settled down with one. Isn’t this exactly what the NDP has always needed? A little more self-interested pragmatism, a little less self-righteous principle?

Sure, it’s always possible that Mulcair is of that most peculiar self-righteous and principled type — the type who strides off the picket line promising his abandoned comrades that he’s going to “take down the system from the inside,” and who really, truly believes his own lie. More likely, he’s of that most conventional type — the type who has his price.

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But when is political loyalty a virtue and when is it a liability?

Since the sparks have barely settled from Canada Day, we might start by considering political loyalty to the nation. Public holidays notwithstanding, there’s something embarrassing about nationalistic panting, about the dogged flag-wavers’ sputtering whenever it’s gently put to them that their country may not, in fact, be The Greatest Nation on Earth. The type who reduces a country to its imaginary standing at the top of an imaginary list usually ends up being the same type who reduces national identity to a sport that a minority of citizens play and to dubious victories on a battlefield that even fewer citizens care about — in other words, the type who currently holds the title of Canadian Prime Minister.