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But demand that your democratic representatives don’t facilitate the killing of innocent people, and the problem is you. For opposing the government’s proceeding with a $15-billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, for protesting its subsequent loosening of the controls that the deal violated, and for noticing that it conducts itself so appallingly while boasting about its international leadership, you have exposed yourself as both an adorable idiot and a self-righteous nag.

On the matter of your hopeless naiveté: You are, it is said, out of touch with the real world. This may come as some surprise to you, as a cursory glance at the real world reveals some strong government opposition to such arms sales among Canada’s allies. Yet this month the Globe and Mail urged us to “be realistic about weapons sales to countries that are not our enemies.”

A dose of reality, then. The Dutch parliament voted to ban arms sales to Saudi Arabia while somehow managing not to get sucked into whatever parallel fantasy universe people are thought to inhabit whenever they respect international treaties and law. Sweden pulled the plug on a defence agreement with the Saudis in 2015 and may decide to consider a country’s democratic status before selling arms. And the head of the Flemish government rejected one Saudi application for an export license and in January declared it “very unlikely” that future sales will be approved to the Kingdom.

Now – having established that reality does not compel governments to approve weapons sales to whoever is most likely to abuse them – about your self-serving moralizing. It’s true that this is a moral issue. Killing people generally is. The accusation, then, isn’t so much that your moral standards are prudishly high, but that you have any standards at all.