Don't Blame Stephen Harper, Blame Edmund Burke

"If a sociology professor applies a day before a medical doctor, the professor's application gets processed first ... I mean, we don't really need a sociology professor. ".  Jason Kenney

Stephen Harper's recent refusal to call a public inquiry into missing and exploited Aboriginal women, should not come as a surprise to Canadians, given his background and the ideology of the Conservative Movement.

Modern Conservatives do not believe in sociological phenomenons, viewing them as too grey an area, in a world that is black and white, right and wrong, left and right.  Everything in between is simply minutiae, and therefore, not worthy of attention.

Jakeet Singh,  an assistant professor in the Department of Politics & Government at Illinois State University; addressed this issue in an excellent op-ed piece, published in the Toronto Star:  The ideological roots of Stephen Harper’s vendetta against sociology

Singh suggests that the roots of this belief system can be traced to Margaret Thatcher, and quotes her now infamous line "there is no such thing as society".

However, we have to go back a little further than that.

Conservative author and journalist, Yuval Levin, outlines the origins of this thought in his new book:  The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left

The inspiration for many modern political struggles, can be traced to the philosophies of Burke (1729-1797) and Paine (1737- 1809) and their views on revolutions.

The American Revolution may not have taken place, had it not been for Thomas Paine.  Initially, most colonists  viewed the anger over taxation without representation, as an issue for the wealthy elites, who simply didn't want to pay their share.

However, Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, stirred up a passion for liberty.

The pamphlet begins by establishing some principles for distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate rule: that government exists to secure the freedom and security of its equal citizens and that any government that fails to do so is not worthy of the name, regardless of its pedigree. (Levin p. 35)

It's rather ironic that the GOP and the new U.S. Tea Party, see themselves as a direct lineage of the founding fathers, when in fact, America was built on liberalism, in direct opposition to conservatism.

Edmund Burke did support the American Revolution, however,  but only because he was constantly seeking a balance, to avoid tyranny.  He saw the King's refusal to address the legitimate concerns of the colonists, as tyrannical, and suggested that if he continued in his stance, than they certainly had the right to self governance.

He did not, however, see this as a basic "human right", as Paine did, but simply as a solution to a problem.  Burke never dealt with metaphysical distinctions and had no time for anyone who did.

Because of that, he opposed the French Revolution and its philosophical Rights of Man.  An elitist, he believed that the masses were ill equipped to decide who should govern them, but that that task should be left to a chosen few.  Otherwise, decisions would be based on what citizens wanted or thought they wanted, and not on what they needed.

" What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or to medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics." — Edlund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790

In other words, "...  we don't really need a sociology professor. ".

I watched a documentary on Ronald Reagan, and his son told the interviewer that his dad could never really grasp the idea of abstract notions , like "the poor".  Harper is no different.

"These proposals included cries for billions of new money for social assistance in the name of “child poverty” and for more business subsidies in the name of “cultural identity. In both cases I was sought out as a rare public figure to oppose such projects.”  Stephen Harper,  The Bulldog, National Citizens Coalition, February 1997

There is no such thing as "child poverty", but if you see a child who looks hungry, simply feed it. There is no epidemic of murdered and missing aboriginal women, but if you know of someone who murdered them, call the cops. Again, simple solutions to complex problems.

The Starting Point- 1789

In a radio broadcast on April 1, 1933, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, proclaimed it clearly : with the Nazi revolution "the year 1789 has been expunged from the records of history."  It was obvious to all why Goebbels compared 1933 to 1789.  Any contemporary, whether schooled in history or not, instinctively knew that the French Revolution was the measure of things in the modern world. "We want to eradicate the ideology of liberalism and replace it with a new sense of community"  (Foundational Pasts: The Holocaust as Historical Understanding, By Alon Confino, Cambridge University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-52173-632-9, p. 6)

The National Socialist Party of Germany, in 1933, saw a classic struggle between right and left.  They had a visceral hatred of communism and the liberalism that allowed communism to flourish.

And in the Edmund Burke tradition,  believed that only they knew what was good for the German people, and so dealt with those who tried to convince them otherwise.  This meant the expulsion of not only Jews (who they suggested were part of a communist plot to take over the world), but everyone with liberal ideas and "mystical" views of human rights.

They would create a new kind of socialism, in direct contrast to the Marxist or Paine idea of socialism; for the people, but not by the people, and certainly not for all the people.

The French Revolution has been seen as a defining moment in democracy, despite the fact that it failed, only giving power to the Bourgeoisie, and the eventual dictatorship of Napoleon; but it has inspired many revolutionary changes around the world.

The late 18th century public debates between two great thinkers, Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, live on in the conflicting ideologies of today's conservatives and liberals.

The question is, what side of this new revolution do we want to be on?

The one where basic human rights are simply philosophical or one where those rights are achievable and necessary?

One where "poverty" is merely an "idea" or one where the visual, and yes sociological studies, are proof that "the poor" do exist, and society has an obligation to help them?

One where government should only address the needs of the top 1%, or one that addresses the needs of all citizens?

Edmund Burke or Thomas Paine?

Stephen Harper or anyone with a heart and soul?

Conservatives like to quote Edmund Burke:  "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” .  The only problem is that Burke never said that.  If you pick through things he actually said, you could perhaps create the sentiment, but not find the direct quote.

The closest researchers have come to citing the remark, might be to John Stuart Mills, who in an 1867 inaugural address at the University of St. Andrews, said:

"Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."

Mills was a liberal.

However, you can quote me on this ""The only thing necessary for Stephen Harper to continue his ruthless revolution, is for good Canadians to do nothing.”

As good Canadians we can all do something.  Vote him out.

It Was Wrong When Ronald Reagan Did it and Just as Wrong For Stephen Harper

In, albeit not their sleaziest act, the Harper government blanketed the Ontario federal riding of Scarborough-Agincourt with flyers, aimed at the Liberals, for the upcoming bi-election.

Not unusual during an election campaign.

What made these flyers beyond the pale, was their content. Hoping to tap into the abundant immigrant community for votes, they suggest that Justin Trudeau will encourage their children to smoke pot, by making it available in stores.

Says Joan Bryden for the Canadian Press:

In fact, Trudeau argues that legalizing, regulating and taxing pot would help keep it out of the hands of children and starve organized crime of its lucrative marijuana trade.

This is not the first time that Stephen Harper has tried to exploit new Canadians with misleading information.

In 2005, he began attending multi-cultural events denouncing same-sex marriage, telling the crowds that the Liberals were going to force their churches to perform the ceremonies. A lie, but it didn't matter. He was recruiting for his base.

Ronald Reagan and the War on Drugs

Richard Nixon was actually the first to coin the term 'war on drugs', but by the early 1980s, it became as potent as the war on taxes is today. For politicians, you either became a soldier battling drugs, or you were a pusher trying to corrupt children. There was no middle ground.

Ronald Reagan, who had always taken a divide and conquer approach to politics, saw this war as one he could win. Not the actual drug war, but the war against liberalism.

Most conservatives blamed drugs, in particular marijuana, for the conceived ills of modern society. Says Dan Baum in his book: Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure

Conservative parents' groups opposed to marijuana had helped to ignite the Reagan Revolution. Marijuana symbolized the weakness and permissiveness of a liberal society; it was held responsible for the slovenly appearance of teenagers and their lack of motivation. Carlton Turner, Reagan's first drug czar, believed that marijuana use was inextricably linked to "the present young-adult generation's involvement in anti-military, anti-nuclear power, anti-big business, anti-authority demonstrations." A public-health approach to drug control was replaced by an emphasis on law enforcement. Drug abuse was no longer considered a form of illness; all drug use was deemed immoral, and punishing drug offenders was thought to be more important than getting them off drugs.

Politicians began calling for tougher sentences for drug users and abusers, with Newt Gingrich going so far as to draft a bill that demanded a ' life sentence or the death penalty for anyone caught bringing more than two ounces of marijuana into the United States.' (Baum)

So Harper's new Gingrich style crime bills, that include mandatory minimums for Marijuana growers, are not about putting youth on the straight and narrow, but pandering to his anti-liberal base.

But will it work? This is not the 1980s and attitudes toward pot have changed. Those "slovenly teenagers" are now adults, who grew up in an atmosphere of "reefer madness" hysteria, and know that it was more hyperbole than sound judgement.

Cigarette smoking is more harmful to your health than marijuana, and alcoholism just as damaging to families as drug addiction.

Also important to note is that half of the deaths caused by drug overdose, were from prescription medicines, and today's youth are increasingly turning to 'legal' drugs to get high. So will there be a war on big-pharma?

The Conservatives may shoot themselves in the foot with this newest ammunition in their arsenal, but who knows? We've witnessed some of the most bizarre attacks on their opponents and reason itself, yet they're still standing.

Pandering to core supporters with nonsense, while discouraging reasonable Canadians from engaging in politics, is not without it's merits.

When it comes to legalizing and decriminalizing marijuana, let's hope that good sense prevails.

A Half a Century Later and We are Losing Half a Century

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

In researching the conservative movement on both sides of the border, one thing becomes clear.  In the U.S. they don't like to be referred to as Republican any more than Stephen Harper likes to be called a Tory.  They are CONSERVATIVE, and there is a difference.  The Republican Party is only the vehicle on their route to power.

Historian Richard Perlstein, writing of the 1960s conservative takeover of the GOP, says "A right-wing fringe took over the party from the ground up" while the Eastern establishment has been reduced to a "fringe looking on in bafflement". (Nixonland, 2003)

The picture above is definitely worth a thousand words.  Nelson Rockefeller, who should have beaten Barry Goldwater for the nomination in 1964, George Romney and of course Ronald Reagan.

Mitt looks a lot like his dad, and like his dad he could very well be obliterated by history.  George Romney was a moderate who opposed the Vietnam War and supported Civil Rights.  The conservatives had to crush him, and now feel the same way about his son. 
 
This is important for Canadians to understand, because Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada, were born of this movement. 

Ernest Manning* and his son Preston, planned to take over the PC Party in the 1960s, until Robert Stanfield, a Red Tory, won the leadership, and they knew they'd have to wait.  They wrote a book Political Realignment, that called for a definitive right-wing party to challenge a definitive left-wing party, and no soft centre.
 
It's not hard to see how we are being realigned, though I think Canadians may finally be balking as such an unnatural situation in a country that has always been somewhere in the middle.
 
Colin Brown, the man who created the National Citizens Coalition, initially to oppose public healthcare, read Political Realignment, contacted Ernest Manning and together they built the NCC into a voice for corporate interests.  Stephen Harper ran the NCC before running for the Alliance leadership (they kept his position open for four years in case it didn't work out).
 
Gerry Nicholls, Harper's VP when he headed up the organization, was fired for criticizing his former boss.  Not his wasteful spending, though he did publicly denounce it, but because he committed the mortal sin of suggesting that Stephen Harper was not "conservative" enough.  
 
If lynching was legal they would have strung him up.
 
Perlstein tells us that while American Conservatives were devoted to Barry Goldwater, they had their suspicions of Richard Nixon, who had also initially spoke out against the Vietnam War.  It wasn't until a young Nixon aid, spoke to his Conservative allies and assured them that Nixon was only trying to garner support from moderates, that they agreed to back him. 
 
That young aid?  Pat Buchanan.
 
Being devoutly anti-Communist and anti-Civil Rights, Ronald Reagan was never in doubt.  When he ran against incumbent Jerry Brown, as Governor of California, Brown tried to expose Reagan's extremism, that included his ties to the John Birch Society.
 
However, as one Reagan insider told the Brown team: "A Bircher isn't identifiable, but a negro is."  At least they had the "'right' colour" on their side.
 
The conservative movement, as well as the Religious Right, has always been about race, and they appear to be successfully wiping out the last 50 years of tolerance.   One Kentucky Church is even banning interracial marriage.  How long before others follow suit?
 
This week Ezra Levant responded to the Attawapiskat crisis with so many "white people" chants, I was waiting for his Freudian to slip, and he break into a "white power" shout.
 
Richard Nixon and Stephen Harper shared the political expertise of Arthur Finkelstein, but it was the Reagan/Harper guru, Paul Weyrich, who taught them the art of hatred.
 
Harper's decision to cut 31.5 million in funding to Ontario immigrant programs, and his new immigration policies, must have the late Weyrich looking up, cackling in the flames.
 
Footnotes:
 
*Suncor founder, the late J. Howard Pew, gave money to Manning, Reagan, Goldwater and Nixon.  His Pew Foundation now supports many right-wing causes.

Gary Bauer's Focus is the Harper Government's Vision

I Burned my Bra For This? REAL Women of Canada and the Men Behind Them

Another soldier in the war against American women, who helped to the launch a similar war against Canadian women, is Gary Bauer.

Bauer was with the Moral Majority/Religious Right political movement, that helped to run Ronald Reagan's campaign for President. As reward, he was appointed to the Education Department, as the "family policy" czar, and his first order of business was to "usurp the feminists" (1).

With that accomplished, the Department of Education, then directed the effort to crown the fathers. As Susan Faludi said, "If the "pro-family" movement was "pro" anything, it was paternal power". The same has been said of REAL Women of Canada. (2)

To many, the creation of a "family policy" office would suggest an office committed to helping families with things like financial aid, and medical or legal assistance, but that was not the case. Instead they churned out lectures on how the American family should "behave".

And in a further attack against the Civil Rights movement, Bauer told civil-rights leaders: "The values taught on the `Cosby' show would do more to help low-income and minority children than a bevy of new federal programs. . . . a lot of research indicates that values are much more important, say, than the level of welfare payments."

Not everyone could accomplish what the Huxtables accomplished, with a doctor father and lawyer mother, and that includes most white families. However, the Religious Right's attitude on racial issues has not changed since Reagan's time, as witnessed by their latest offspring, the FAMILY LEADER, and their suggestion that slavery was good for the black family.

However, women and blacks were not the only targets of Bauer's office"

[In 1986] President Reagan asked the surgeon general [C. Everett Koop] to prepare a report on AIDS as the United States confirmed its ten-thousandth case. Leaders of the evangelical movement did not want Koop to write the report, nor did senior White House staffers ..... Dr. Koop related to me, "Gary Bauer was my nemesis in Washington because he kept me from the president. He kept me from the cabinet and he set up a wall of enmity between me and most of the people that surrounded Reagan because he believed that anybody who had AIDS ought to die with it. That was God's punishment for them. (3)

Gary and Carol Bauer: Your Typical American Family

Bauer's office promoted the nuclear family, as laid out in a fifty-two-page diatribe, that senator Daniel P. Moynihan, referred to as "less a policy statement than a tantrum."

"The Family: Preserving America's Future" opens with a quote from Teddy Roosevelt: "If the mother does not do her duty, there will either be no next generation, or a next generation that is worse than none at all." The pages were filled with attacks on "women who work, women who use day care, women who divorce", and "women who have babies out of wedlock".

His "recommendations" to save the family included a list of punishments for girls and mothers: "bar young single mothers from public housing; revive old divorce laws to make it harder for women to break the wedding bonds; deny contraceptives to young women". Mothers who stay home, he suggested, should get tax breaks; "the more babies, the more credits".

With such strong opinions you would think that Bauer and his wife Carole, were living this desired family life. But they weren't.

It comes then as a bit of a surprise to learn that Bauer has subjected his own children to this leftist institution—for nine years. (Bauer called daycares "Marxist")

He can explain it, he says. His use of day care was "different" and "better" because he placed his children in "home-based" day care—that is, an unlicensed center run out of a woman's living room. (It's unclear how this is better: a national review of child abuse statistics at day care centers finds that the most incidents of abuse have occurred at such unlicensed sites.) At any rate, Bauer says, a bit defensively, it's not like his kids went directly from the maternity ward to the day care nursery. His wife, Carol, waited "at least three, four months" before she returned to work. (1)

However, wife Carol remembers it differently:

"Actually, I went back to work six weeks after Elyse was born," says his wife ... At the time of her daughter Elyse's birth in 1977, Carol Bauer explains, she was a top assistant to Congresswoman Margaret Heckler; she couldn't just quit.

A lack of federal assistance programs for mothers also played a role in her decision: "There's no set leave policy on the Hill," she points out. Financial considerations entered into it, too: "We had bought a house and we had a mortgage." And then there was that other impulse that she just couldn't seem to squelch: "It wasn't just economics. I enjoyed the intellectual stimulation of the work. I loved work." She laughs. "I mean, when I had Elyse, I literally took my work with me. After I got out of the hospital, I was working the next day at home."

For years, at eight o'clock every morning, the Bauers dropped off Elyse, and eventually their second daughter, Sarah, at day care, put in a full day of work, and then picked up the girls on the way home, usually after six o'clock. The children spent so much time at day care, in fact, Carol Bauer says, that when it came time for Elyse to enter kindergarten, they enrolled her in the school in the center's neighborhood rather than their own. How did the girls feel about day care? "Oh, fine," Carol Bauer says. "They were very happy there. For them it was normal."(1)

Like Beverly Lehaye, one of the founders of REAL Women's inspiration: 'Concerned Women for America', Carol Bauer only felt fulfilled when she was working outside the home. When she finally did drop out of the workforce, Bauer found "nesting" difficult, and was only happy when she spent most waking hours doing volunteer work.

Oh, and that "family values" man, Gary Bauer.

He was alleged to have had an affair with a 26-year-old staffer (deputy campaign manager Melissa McClard), prompting nine members of his staff to quit. He denied that it was an affair, but Charles Jarvis, Bauer's campaign manager, warned Bauer several times "in the clearest possible terms" that he was creating "the appearance of impropriety" by spending "hours and hours and hours behind closed doors with a young single woman."

Canada's "family values" man, Vic Toews, lost his deniability rights, when it was revealed that he had fathered a child with a young conservative staffer, breaking up his 30 years plus marriage.

From Women's Affairs to Foreign Affairs

For Harper, the courtship of the Christian right is unlikely to prove an electoral one-night stand. Three years ago, in a speech to the annual Conservative think-fest, Civitas, he outlined plans for a broad new party coalition that would ensure a lasting hold on power. "The only route", he argued, "was to focus not on the tired wish list of economic conservatives or “neo-cons,” as they’d become known, but on what he called “theo-cons”—those social conservatives who care passionately about hot-button issues that turn on family, crime, and defence.

"Even foreign policy had become a theo-con issue", he pointed out, driven by moral and religious convictions. “The truth of the matter is that the real agenda and the defining issues have shifted from economic issues to social values,” he said, “so conservatives must do the same".

Arguing that the party "had to come up with tough, principled stands on everything from parents’ right to spank their children to putting “hard power” behind the country’s foreign-policy commitments ... " (4)

Gary Bauer continues to work the circuit of anti-feminist, anti-gay conferences, where REAL Women of Canada make regular appearances.

REAL also promotes Bauer's new group: American Values, in his attack on "leftie" judges.

Bauer is associated with Focus on the Family, a group that conservative MPs, Rob Anders and Maurice Vellacott belong to, and who helped Stephen Harper get elected in 2006, on his "anti-same-sex marriage" platform.

But the most alarming activities for Bauer, and indeed most of the Religious Right, is their dramatic shift to foreign policy.

Bauer is a member of the Project for the New American Century, that included neoconservatives like Steve Forbes, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and William Kristol. This group helped to draft the Bush Doctrine.

They have been critical of Obama's decision not to send ground troops to Libya, instead following the UN Resolution, which does not support a "regime change".

The Harper Doctrine has no such limitations, and in fact is very specific that only a regime change will do.

However, even more alarming is Bauer's new pet project: Emergency Committee for Israel's Leadership, an aggressive extension of Christians United for Israel, who support extended military engagement in the Middle East.

Jim Flaherty's pal, Charles McVety, heads up the Canadian chapter.

This group, like most in the movement, are Apocalyptic.

So what does it mean when they not only provide foot soldiers for Harper's war on women, but dictate his foreign policy? Or what Harper himself calls 'putting “hard power” behind the country’s foreign-policy commitments'.

Yet another reason why the media has to start paying attention.

Drop the 'Tory' nonsense, and report from the Neoconservative/Religious Right/Tea Party reality.

Sources:

1. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, By Susan Faludi, Crown publishing, 1991, ISBN: 0-385-42507-4, Pg. 263-267

2. "R.E.A.L. Women, Anti-feminism and the Welfare State, By Lorna Erwin, Resources for Feminist Research, 1988

3. Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, By D. Michael Lindsay, Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-19-532666-6

4. Stephen Harper and the Theo-cons: The rising clout of Canada's religious right, By Marci McDonald, The Walrus, October 2006

Stephen Harper's Perfect Crisis

“Pulling their children from ‘union-run’ schools should be a viable option for all parents.” Stephen Harper

I just started reading Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine and from the introduction, it sets the stage for what a Harper majority might look like.

She begins by discussing Katrina and the horrible devastation the storm caused. But in the midst of the chaos, were the smiling faces of the neoconservative interlopers. They failed to see the human misery, but instead saw an opportunity for profit. Levelled land on which to build a free market empire.

The news racing around the shelter that day was that Richard Baker, a prominent Republican Congressman from this city, had told a group of lobbyists, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." Joseph Canizaro, one of New Orleans' wealthiest developers, had just expressed a similar sentiment: "I think we have a clean sheet to start again. And with that clean sheet we have some very big opportunities." All that week the Louisiana State Legislature in Baton Rouge had been crawling with corporate lobbyists helping to lock in those big opportunities: lower taxes, fewer regulations, cheaper workers and a "smaller, safer city"—which in practice meant plans to level the public housing projects and replace them with condos. Hearing all the talk of "fresh starts" and "clean sheets," you could almost forget the toxic stew of rubble, chemical outflows and human remains just a few miles down the highway. (1)

Leading the charge for God's chosen people, the corporatists, was the late Milton Friedman, a man who has played an integral role in the neoconservative/neoliberal/free market movement.

And he began in an area near and dear to his heart. Privatizing eduction.

One of those who saw opportunity in the floodwaters of New Orleans was Milton Friedman, grand guru of the movement for unfettered capitalism and the man credited with writing the rulebook for the contemporary, hyper-mobile global economy. Ninety-three years old and in failing health, "Uncle Miltie," as he was known to his followers, nonetheless found the strength to write an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal three months after the levees broke. "Most New Orleans schools are in ruins," Friedman observed, "as are the homes of the children who have attended them. The children are now scattered all over the country. This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity to radically reform the educational system."

Friedman's radical idea was that instead of spending a portion of the billions of dollars in reconstruction money on rebuilding and improving New Orleans' existing public school system, the government should provide families with vouchers, which they could spend at private institutions, many run at a profit, that would be subidized by the state. It was crucial, Friedman wrote, that this fundamental change not be a stopgap but rather "a permanent reform." (1)

Friedman had been a regular speaker at the Fraser Institute and has been following Canada's own right-wing revolution.

And Canada's right-wing revolution, includes the desire to 'radically reform the educational system'.

The Reform Party had public education in their cross hairs:

The Reformers gathered in Saskatoon saved perhaps the loudest cheers, whistles, and applause for [founding member William] Gairdner's last shot: 'And my favourite proposal, by the way, is returning choice to education by privatizing every school in the country'. (2)

When Jim Flaherty was finance minister in Ontario, he did "Uncle Miltie" proud. From the National Review:

We don't often look to Canada for inspiring leadership. But Jim Flaherty — the finance minister of Ontario, its largest and wealthiest province — is poised to make his constituency a model of smaller government and respect for individual freedom.

Flaherty is running to succeed premier Mike Harris at the helm of Ontario's governing Progressive Conservative party in the party's leadership election on March 23. His full-bodied, conservative platform of tax cuts, privatization, and school choice has set the agenda for the contest ... Flaherty first caught the attention of grassroots conservatives with his unexpected announcement in last year's budget of a $3,500 ($2,300 USD) per-child tax credit for parents who send their children to independent schools. The measure, according to Laura Swartley of the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation for School Choice, is the most generous education tax credit in North America. It alone has won Flaherty the support of social conservatives and minority religious groups. (3)

The quote at the top of the page from Stephen Harper, was in response to Flaherty's private school subsidy. (Hill Times, 2001)

In his 2007 federal budget, he provided "bursaries" for elementary school students.

The Harper government is giving a tax break to families who send their kids to elite private schools, raising the ire of public education advocates. Under a little-noticed measure in last month's budget, scholarships and bursaries to attend elementary and secondary school will now be fully tax exempt. Finance officials estimate the new exemption will mean "significant tax savings" for about 1,000 students – or, by extension, their parents.

Officials insisted that the exemption applies to scholarships for either public or private schools. But they couldn't supply any examples of public schools – which are funded from the public purse and don't charge tuition fees – awarding scholarships or bursaries.

Entering into his majority, Harper has his Katrina; the "global economic crisis", and a record deficit and debt.

His clean sheet that will provide those very big opportunities that Friedman envisioned. And with Mike Harris lap dog, Tim Hudak, poised to become premier in Ontario, and former student of Tom Flanagan, Danielle Smith in Alberta, it will create the perfect storm.

Education, however, will only be one area, where taxpayer money will build, and the corporate sector will profit.

In New Orleans they laid off all 4,700 unionized teachers, with only a handful hired back, but at greatly reduced wages. And the savings of course were not given back to the taxpayers but into the pockets of the already wealthy.

Milton Friedman is giddy in his grave.

Continuation

Milton Friedman and the Chilean Experiment

Milton Friedman and the Destruction of Argentina

Milton Friedman, the Southern Cone and "Authoritarian Democracy"

Raul Prebisch and Developmentalism

Sources:

1. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, By Naomi Klein, Vintage Canada, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-676-97801-8, Pg. 4-7

2. Preston Manning and the Reform Party, By Murray Dobbin, Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing, 1992, ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, pg. 165-166

3. Looking North: Election time in Canada, By David Curtin, March 18, 2002

Can We Make a Case For Mandatory Voting?

In 1891, Guillame Amyot introduced a private members’ bill on compulsory voting, designed to secure “purity in politics.”

A common practice on election day then, was to not only buy votes, but have others impersonate voters on the list, known to have left the area. It was felt that compulsory voting would limit both practices. Some of the logic may have been flawed, but the intention, I suppose, honourable.

The bill was defeated as infringing on citizens' rights.

In 2004, Liberal Senator Mac Harb, sponsored Bill S-22 in the Senate, calling for the introduction of mandatory voting in Canada. His concern was not corruption but voter apathy.

Senator Harb’s call for the introduction of mandatory voting stemmed from his concern with, in his words, “a rising electoral crisis” in Canada. Voter participation rates had gradually declined over the previous three decades and had experienced a “dramatic drop” in the 2004 federal election when a “record low of just 60.9 per cent” [now lower] of electors voted. As “democracy depends upon the active participation of its citizens” and as “record numbers” of young people are no longer voting, Senator Harb claimed that the time had come for Parliament to adopt legislation requiring all eligible electors to vote. (1)

The feeling was that if voting was treated the same way as mandatory taxes, jury duty and wearing seatbelts, it would become a natural thing.

There's no doubt that Canada has a democratic deficit. Stephen Harper is in power based on the will of just 22% of eligible voters. And yet he has been able to negotiate aggressive trade deals that diminish our sovereignty, control the Senate, and refuse to provide necessary information to Parliament; our elected representatives, whom we pay to hold the government to account.

It's interesting that in a 2005 Conservative press release, suggesting that Paul Martin was abusing his power, it was written: 'Responsibility to Parliament is absolutely key in our system of government. Unlike the United States, we lack checks and balances to constrain the power of the Executive. Parliament is the only meaningful constraint on the Executive and their widespread powers. When this constraint ceases to exist, the Governor-General, effectively chosen by the Prime Minister and likely therefore beholden to him/her, becomes the only check on the Prime Minister. That check is neither realistic nor desirable, let alone democratic or accountable.' (2)

The problem with low voter turnout is that often those who don't show up at the polls, are the ones who suffer the most from government decisions. Statistics have shown that the ridings with the highest voter volume, are those with the wealthiest citizens. So should we be surprised that governments draft legislation, that has the most benefit to that level of society?

The Conservatives, in fact, count on it. They ignore the poor and disenfranchised, because they know they can't count on their vote, so instead count on them not voting at all.

The first time in recent history that this strategy has been applied, was during the Reagan campaign, when his campaign manager was Stephen Harper's bridge to the American Religious Right, Paul Weyrich.

"With [Ronald] Reagan's outspoken opposition to the Civil Rights Act in 1964, Republican strategists knew that they would have to write off the blackvote. But although 90 per cent of black voters cast their ballots for the democrats, only 30 percent of eligible black Americans voted. Republican ... strategist Paul Weyrich stated "I don't want everyone to vote ... our leverage in the election quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down. We have no moral responsibility to turn out our opposition." (3)

It's why Conservatives try to make Parliament toxic. Why they defend their scandals by suggesting that the Liberals did it too, even when that isn't true or grossly exaggerated.

If voters can remain turned off at the polls, they will continue to tune out, and low voter turn out always favours the incumbent. Personally, I don't like the idea of compulsory voting, but do accept that we are now in a democratic crisis. We have to get people voting again. And not only voting but paying attention to what is taking place in their country.

Stephen Harper has shown what happens when we don't.

We become a government of one, where the people no longer have a voice. Canada has gone from first place to last in terms of accountability and openness. Stephen Harper has grown so confident in the knowledge that people won't care what he does, that he no longer acts on the wishes of the people.

Why should he?

We need to find ways to wake up the electorate. This may be the most important election in our lifetime, because our very democracy is at stake. Another mandate for Stephen Harper, or worse still, a majority, will send him the message that Parliament doesn't matter. Democracy doesn't matter. And we don't matter.

Think about that.

Sources:

1. The Debate About Compulsory Voting , By: John C. Courtney and Drew Wilby, The Canadian Parliamentary Review, Summer 2005

2. May 10, 2005

3. Hard Right Turn: The New Face of Neo-Conservatism in Canada, Brooke Jeffrey, Harper-Collins, 1999, ISBN: 0-00 255762-2, Pg. 22

When the Foxes Take Over the Hen House

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Ronald Reagan was a "B" movie actor. By the early 1950's his career was in the toilet and he was reduced to print ads in magazines, and parts in forgettable pictures.

But he had a look and a voice that was homey enough to convince people of anything. And that brought him to the attention of a man named Lemuel Boulware, General Electric's vice president of employee, public, and community relations, who hired Reagan to be his company's spokesperson.

Corporate America was tired of having to give in to worker's demands and wanted to shift public sympathies away from the labour force, to what journalist Murray Dobbin calls "the good corporate citizens".

But first GE had to be seen as the company reaching out to workers.

Over the past few years, few contract negotiations in U.S. industry have been as bitter and bumpy as those between General Electric Co. and the C.I.O.'s International Union of Electrical Workers. With out fail, the I.U.E.'s trigger-tempered Boss James B. Carey peppered the company with shouts of "chiseling," called its offers a "sham" and "an obvious trap." Once, in a crescendo of rage, he bellowed that G.E. was an "aid and ally" of the Communists. Usually G.E.'s negotiator, Vice President Lemuel P. Boulware, gave every bit as good as he got.

This year the script was totally rewritten. After a month of calm discussion, G.E. and the union signed a new five-year contract that made everyone happy. Cooed G.E.'s Boulware: "A splendid settlement." Echoed I.U.E.'s Carey: "A splendid settlement." (1)

General Electric were the good guys. And until his retirement in 1957, Boulware never stopped reminding his workers of how good the company was, and they had Ronald Reagan selling the same notion to the public. This strategy became known as "Boulwarism".

As personnel and press boss at General Electric, Vice President Lemuel R. Boulware, 62, was one of the most controversial labor-relations managers in the history of a new art. A tough, trap-jawed Kentuckian, Boulware was a hard bargainer during contract negotiations and never failed to point out what a company like G.E. did for its employees. Many businessmen considered "Boulwarism" a smart strategy for combating Big Labor, imitated it widely, even though unions bitterly hated it. (2)

The unions began losing the battle for public opinion. And by 1960, when GE had to renegotiate with it's workers it was a whole new ball game. They could afford to be tough because any bad press could be directed at the union bosses.

The milling picket lines, the fire hoses, the club-wielding police were all reminiscent of the bloody strikes of the 1930s. When the International Union of Electrical Workers struck General Electric last week, the company vowed it would keep its plants open for all employees who wanted to work. Both sides knew the vow could lead to violence. It was not long in coming.

The last time G.E. faced a strike of comparable proportions—in 1946—it closed down its plants, but since then it has hardened its policies. Under Vice President Lemuel R. Boulware, who now serves only as a consultant, G.E. developed a broad policy known through the industry as "Boulwarism," in which the company makes an unceasing effort to sell itself to the workers. In bargaining, the company first listens to the unions' demands, then puts all that it is willing to grant in its first contract offer; after that it will make only minor concessions, thus making gains from a strike problematical. (3)

But it wouldn't be enough to simply bust the unions where possible, so they also targeted government, launching a lecture circuit for Ronald Reagan, "as a crusader against big government." (4) The man who had been a liberal all of his life, was now the "spokesman" for neoconservative policies.

So who better to put forward as president when corporate America decided that life would be better if they simply ran the country? Ronald Reagan. The ultimate company spokesman.

And he did not disappoint. In 1981, Congress enacted the largest tax cuts in U.S. history.

GE was one of the biggest winners in the tax cut bill, getting a S283-million tax rebate for the period 1981-83 despite making profits of $6.5 billion. The tax windfall allowed GE to go on a buying spree of other companies, including RCA and NBC. This was a pattern for all the corporate giants as capital investment increased dramatically, with almost all of it going to other countries. In effect, the billions in tax dollars sacrificed by the American people were used to further deindustrialize their own heartland and boost the growth of super-corporations.

And taxpayers would also fund the propaganda that would allow the wholesale dismantling of the industrial infrastructure, because corporations used their enormous tax cuts to buy up media outlets, further shifting public opinion to their cause.

And besides enormous tax cuts to the wealthy, Reagan also allowed CEOs to run the treasury, beginning with Donald Regan, director of Merrill Lynch, who became secretary of the treasury and White House chief of staff under President Ronald Reagan.

In the following video clip, we see Regan bark at the president, telling him to speed it up. Which begged the question. Who was really running the country?




And Merrill Lynch has done very well indeed. When they were "bailed out" by the American people, 75% of the taxpayers' money given to the firm, was used to pay bonuses to their CEOs.

General Electric also represents the new corporate government:

GE has the resources to develop and promote new political ideas and to organize public opinion around its political agenda. "It has the capacity to advise and intervene and sometimes to veto. It has the power to punish political opponents." And its political opponents are usually Democrats, because like most large U.S. corporations GE has consistently supported the party of business ...

GE nurtures its good corporate citizen image with an $18.8-million fund for its foundations (less than half of 1 percent of its net earnings). But even here much of the money is directly self-serving, going to business think-tanks, business associations, and coalitions fighting government regulation. So the Institute for International Economics lobbies for the corporate line on trade, and the Americans for Generational Equity campaigns for cuts to entitlement programs like social security. GE was a key funder of the Committee on the Present Danger, which propagandized for the massive military buildup of the 1980s, and of the Center for Economic Progress and Employment, which, despite its name, is a front group of industry giants determined to gut product-liability laws.

While corporate Canada always had a voice in political matters, it was Brian Mulroney who first moved lobbyists right into government. And now Stephen Harper has also cut out the middle man.

His first defence minister, Gordon O'Connor, went right from lobbying for military contracts with Hill and Knowlton to helping to decide which of his former clients got to cash in.

Bernard Prigent, the VP of Pfizer, was appointed to the governing council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the federal agency that distributes about a billion dollars annually for health research.

Guy Giorno, Harper's former chief of staff, was one of the most influential lobbyists for the oil and gas industry, and his new chief of staff, Nigel Wright, was with the firm given the sole source contract for our new fighter jets.

And if you don't think that corporate Canada is in charge of the country, why are they getting further tax cuts, while Canadian citizens are being told they will have to tighten their belts?

Fascists no longer wear uniforms. They now wear three piece suits and Testoni shoes.

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini

Continuation:

A Deceptive Democracy: A Confidence Game

Sources:

1. LABOR: The Splendid Settlement, Time Magazine, August 22, 1955

2. PERSONNEL: Boulware Bows Out, Time Magazine, September 23, 1957

3. LABOR: Violence on the Picket Line, Time Magazine, October 17, 1960

4. The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen: Canada and Democracy in the Age of Globalization, By Murray Dobbin, James Lorimer & Company, 2003, ISBN: 1-55028-785-0, Pg. 43-45

Media Manipulation: Journalists or Playwrights?

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

When media mogul Rupert Murdoch, first met Ronald Regan, he was surprised at how old and frail he was. Murdoch had been invited to the White House for a luncheon and Reagan actually fell asleep during the meal. 'The other guests went on eating and the waiters continued to take the plates away'. (1)

Murdoch later described the experience as "awful".

He had backed the Reagan campaign but the man he saw was nothing like the man he had portrayed. How could this be?

In their book Newsmongers, Mary Anne Comber and Robert Mayne, present an interesting theory on election campaigns, comparing them to plays. The stage is set and the actors assigned their roles. It is then up to the media to write their lines, and they rarely allow them to go off script.

Ronald Reagan was billed as the "Great Communicator", and though revisionist history paints him as a much loved man, in fact he was never really that popular, and had a horrible track record. But he could communicate. He knew how to deliver his lines. The media applauded.

A favourite journalistic device is to compare politics to a stage play. Politicians are referred to as actors on the political stage. In any story some politicians have lead roles and others are cast in supporting roles. They give performances and the spotlight tracks them across the political stage. One implication of this device is that it allows journalists to play the role of theatre critic. (2)

Neocons have recognized this and found a way to capitalize on the phenomenon, by creating the characters themselves. They even publish the playbills, also known as "ten percenters".

Stéphane Dion Starring in 'Not a Leader'

When I attended a townhall meeting in Kingston during the 2008 coalition attempt, one of the speakers was a retired professor from Queens University. He had been the head of the political science department and told of how Mr. Dion was one of the most respected men in his field. He was quoted often.

In his book, the Rights Revolution, written in 2000, Michael Ignatieff placed Dion as a leader in the understanding of group rights and multiculturalism. (3) He was also the author of the Clarity Act.

In Losing Confidence, Elizabeth May describes Dion's uphill battle to have the Kyoto Protocol adopted. She reveals how Stephen Harper and Jack Layton colluded to call an election on the exact date of the "opening day of the most important global climate negotiations in history." (4) And simply because they didn't want the Liberals to look good on the International stage.

Forget that it meant that Canada would look good on the International stage. I lost a lot of respect for Jack Layton after reading that.

But despite the ploy, Stéphane Dion would be victorious as a result of the most selfless act of any politician in a very long time.

Dion told the world immediately after the government fell that he now worked for the United Nations. He said he would resume his life as a Canadian politician on December 10, when the meeting was over.

Incredibly, he steered the meetings to the high-water mark of possible objectives, across every issue. I may never have had a happier moment than when the meetings concluded on December 11 at 6:17 in the morning after round-the-clock negotiations. Dion brought down the gavel on the most aggressive possible actions to advance limits in the next commitment period, set to begin in 2013. (4)

Can you imagine Stephen Harper ever sacrificing his own political career for an opportunity to allow Canada to shine?

I may never have been as devastated as when Stephen Harper was elected, knowing he would do whatever he could to stop progress in reducing greenhouse gases. What we didn't see as a further disaster in bringing down the government on November 28 was that it effectively rendered the Montreal negotiations invisible to the Canadian public. The media was off on the typical brainless pursuit of Canadian election as horserace. Policy and science, particularly UN discussions of the climate crisis, were not going to be covered in an election campaign. (4)

And when Dion became the party boss in 2008, Harper immediately went to work, laying out the play's story, and narrowing the dialogue. And despite proving enormous leadership on the world stage, Dion's "character" was that of a bumbling idiot with weak leadership skills.

And Harper, who lacks any real leadership qualities, played the role of the strong commander, who would slay the recession dragon and pull Canadians out of the abyss. One he threw us into.

Benjamin Disraeli once said: “I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?" Harper lacks the skills to motivate and bring out the best in people. He also refuses to share the limelight. He is a one-man show, and those around him, only there for his amusement.

When he was running the National Citizens Coalition his VP, Gerry Nicholls once suggested that there was a problem with a billboard that Harper had designed, but when he shared his thoughts, Harper responded icily "I don't give a f--- what you think." (5)

He feels the same way about us, believe me.

Michael Ignatieff Starring in 'Just Visiting'

After the successful run of 'Not a Leader', our budding playwright was ready for a sequel with the new Liberal leader. And while he needed to downplay Dion's enormous diplomatic success, he now had to destroy Michael Ignatieff's history, as a member of one of Canada's most important families.

So how best to do this? Cast him in the role of a man who only returned to Canada as a matter of convenience. He was 'just visiting'. If he didn't become prime minister he would return to teaching at Harvard, where he headed the Human Rights department.

But in a clever plot twist, despite the fact that most of Ignatieff's career was spent in the UK, where he made documentaries for the BBC, including one that won him a Gemini; worked as a war correspondent, taught at Oxford, Cambridge and the London School of Economics, and wrote 17 books, they had to make Canadians believe that he was somehow an American. So they capitalized on a two letter word 'we', that he used to connect with his audience when working in the U.S. (for only 5 years)

And the audience lapped it up. The media held their flashlights, directing the patrons to their seats, and called the play a triumph. Of course they would. They wrote the lines.

And if any among them gave the play a thumbs down, they were dismissed as Liberal hacks and a promise made that they would "never work in this town again."

Time For a New Play

With an election on the horizon, rumour has it that Harper is working on a new play, the working title: 'The Coalition is a Coup'. It's got pirates and everything.

But personally, I'm not too impressed with his skills as a playwright, so I think it's time that Canadians collaborated and wrote their own play.

'Goodbye Stephen Harper'. Catchy, don't you think?

Order your tickets now. It's guaranteed to be 'Sold Out'.

Previous:

Media Manipulation: Setting Agendas and Shielding Your Bum

Media Manipulation: Conrad Black and the POWER of the Press

Sources:

1. Murdoch, By William Shawcross, Simon & Schuster, 1992, ISBN: 0-671-67327, Pg. 197

2. The Newsmongers: How the Media Distort the Political News, By Mary Anne Comber and Robert S. Mayne, John Deyell Printing, 1986, ISBN: 0-7710-2239-5, Pg. 17

3. The Rights Revolution: CBC Massey Lectures, By Michael Ignatieff, Anansi Books, 2000, ISBN: 978-0-88784-762-2, Pg. 11

4. Losing Confidence: Power, Politics and Crisis in Canadians Democracy, By Elizabeth May, McClelland & Stewart, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-7710-5760-1, Pg. 3-5

5. Harperland: The Politics of Control, By Lawrence Martin, Viking Press, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-670-06517-2, Pg. 12

The Politics of Conceit: "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better"

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In September of 2009, journalist and author, Murray Dobbin, wrote for the Tyee:

It seems irrefutable to me after 20 years of analyzing the career of Stephen Harper that he is incapable of providing democratic governance. Harper arguably shows some traits of what psychologists refer to as malignant narcissism, a dangerously heightened sense of self importance. Otto Kernberg, a leader in the study of personality disorders, describes malignant narcissism as "extreme self-absorption and insensitivity that often result in a trail of victims -- emotional wreckage left in the narcissist's wake." The victims Kernberg refers to are, of course, individuals, but in our case the principal victim is the Canadian nation -- its humanist accomplishments, its art and culture, the foundation of its science, its international standing and its democratic governance. (1)

At the time I agreed with his analysis, but only superficially. Harper's arrogance was revealed in everything he did, but I didn't really view it as a possible illness.

Then I came across a piece by Green Party leader Elizabeth May, that showed Harper's love of self in a different light. She had been acting as Speaker of the House for the Queens University Model Parliament, and had an opportunity to visit the Government Lobby.

The Government Lobby was a frequent work space when I was Senior Policy Advisor to the federal Minister of Environment back in the mid-1980s ... [but] it did not strike me until I walked into the Government Lobby to await my turn as Speaker that I had not been in there since Stephen Harper became Prime Minister. It used to have some paintings on the wall. Past prime ministers, certainly a formal portrait of the Queen. Landscapes. I know there was the occasional photo of current Prime Ministers, but when I walked in this time, I felt chilled to the bone.

Every available wall space had a large colour photo of Stephen Harper. Stephen Harper at Alert. Stephen Harper in fire fighter gear. Stephen Harper at his desk. Stephen Harper meeting the Dalai Lama. Even the photo of the Queen showed her in the company of Stephen Harper. None were great photos. None were more than enlarged snapshots in colour. They didn’t feel like art. The student with me said it was the same in Langevin Block, the Prime ministers Office. Photos of Stephen Harper everywhere. I will advance no theories as to what this means. ... The one thing I know is that it means something. (2)

This was later confirmed in the Ottawa Citizen. (3)

I bring this up often, because it kinda' freaks me out. I'm a fan of shows like CSI and Criminal Minds, and it reminds of a stalker's lair. Only he's stalking himself. Creepy.

I just finished chapter two of Lawrence Martin's new book, Harperland, and while he is doing a very good job at keeping balance, there are some revelations that help to unravel the complexities of Stephen Harper.

And what's interesting is that the most compelling statements come from insiders. People left in the "emotional wreckage [of] the narcissist's wake", but remain for the most part supportive.

Martin says that Stephen Harper has tried to emulate Pierre Trudeau, not politically, but by replicating the things he used to stay in power for so long. He fails to understand that we liked Trudeau in spite of those things, because he was moving us in the right direction. His legacy is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

But even with those whose politics he agrees with, Stephen Harper has always been more concerned with how they achieved and held onto power. In William Johnson's book Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, he speaks of Harper's fondness for Margaret Thatcher.

And yet the story was not "let's study her policies and adopt them". But instead he and his friend John Weissenberger, read all of her election speeches looking for the right phrases to "win". (4)

But there is something else that goes back to the notion of Stephen Harper being the clinical definition of a malignant narcissist.

His friends and colleagues when speaking to Lawrence Martin, used terms like "cold", "He doesn't have human warmth", "sunless", "an emotionless robot". A former classmate called him "aloof" and said that "If there was a social event going on, he'd be the guy in the corner; pen and paper in pocket, looking at us in a kind of condescending way." (5)

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines narcissism as a:

Mental disorder characterized by extreme self-absorption, an exaggerated sense of self-importance, and a need for attention and admiration from others ... narcissism is characterized by an unusual coolness and composure, which is shaken only when the narcissistic confidence is threatened, and by the tendency to take others for granted or to exploit them.

Stephen Harper is his happiest when he's at a photo-op. You can see it. He's not acting, so his robotic nature is gone. He's in his element. All of these people focused on "him". All dedicated to making "him" look good. All paying "attention" and filled with "admiration" for "him". His "unusual coolness and composure" are gone, even if only for that brief moment in time.

And we've seen him "shaken" when his confidence was threatened. Look at how he acted in the House of Commons during the coalition threat. Or when Michael Ignatieff was challenging him and he suggested that he had been pouring over old tapes. His confidence was gone and it was visible. What we witnessed was panic.

And there's no argument that he has a "tendency to take others for granted or to exploit them". A common complaint from insiders. Look at how easily he can exploit religion, or the immigrant population for political gain. A man who is not religious and has referred to multiculturalism as a "weak nation strategy", can turn himself into a supporter so easily. He's like a Chameleon, changing colours to suit the situation.

So while he learned the art of the attack ad from Arthur Finklestein, and was indoctrinated by the anti-liberalism, anti-communist crowd; his real passion is power. The ultimate aphrodisiac for the malignant narcissist.

And with that I've come to realize something else. While he does follow the neoconservative principles adhered to by people like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Roger Douglas, I also sense a bit of contempt.

While all three of those people did a great deal of damage, and widened the gap between rich and poor irrevocably, they also had something else in common. They all failed to finish the job they started.

I think that Stephen Harper believes in his condescending, narcissistic way, that he will win. That he will be the first to reach the ultimate goal. He will no longer be a "follower" of Thatcherism, Reaganomics or Rogernomics. Future neocons will follow him, and "Harperism" will be their battle cry.

He may be delusional, but no one has ever accused him of being sane.

And who knows. Maybe if he can hold onto power long enough ....

Previous:

The Politics of Contempt: The Nixon-Harper Ticket

The Politics of Hate: Where Will it Lead?

Sources:

1. Stephen Harper, Unfit to Govern: Few are thrilled to have another election, but we must put it to good use, By Murray Dobbin, The Tyee, September 10, 2009

2. Model Parliament, By Elizabeth May, Green Party, January 26, 2008

3. Harper gallery leaves MPs speechless: Citizens who really want a national portrait gallery in Ottawa can rest easy. The government already has one, By The Ottawa Citizen, January 29, 2008

4. Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, by William Johnson, McClelland & Stewart, 2005, ISBN 0-7710 4350-3, Pg. 49

5. Harperland:The Politics of Control, By Lawrence Martin, Viking Press, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-670-06517-2, Pg. 8

Accountability, Transparency and Words That Work

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Canada's Access to Information Act was passed into law by Pierre Trudeau in 1983.

Conceived in the late 1970s, drafted and passed into law in the early 1980s, the Act was quite radical in its impact. It created an enforceable right of access for Canadians, subject to limited and specific exceptions, and provided for an appeal process for refusal of access independent of government, first, to an Information Commissioner and then to the Federal Court. Despite ongoing criticism of the legislation, there is no doubt that it has served to slowly but nevertheless effectively strip away much of the natural resort to secrecy which has been one of the less useful legacies to the country of British parliamentary government. In short, the Act established new standards for the release of information which required often reluctant Ministers and bureaucrats to embrace the tenets of open, more transparent government. One cannot pick up a thoughtful editorial, public affairs magazine or throne speech and not find these concepts now heralded as one of the essential bases of the "new", more relevant politics. (1)

The act wasn't perfect but it was a start and has been a useful tool, especially to journalists. It has also been a thorn to many politicians of all political stripes, as they have tried to stall information they'd rather not have made public. But it rarely worked.

Eventually the truth came out, and the fact that they tried to withhold that truth, only made the potential scandal worse.

Then along came Stephen Harper, and he would do more to circumvent the access to information act than anyone before him. But he wrapped it up in language designed to placate a distrustful public. And that language was courtesy of Republican pollster Frank Luntz.

Because while we sought transparency, they instead gave us 'accountability'.

I constantly hear the need for "transparency" coming from members of the financial services industry as well as Members of Congress. But if you asked the American people, accountability is a much higher priority. The fact is, a majority of Americans can’t even explain what transparency actually means. But everyone understands and demands accountability from all sectors of the economy ... and the government. (2)

Those are the words of Frank Luntz and he used the notion of 'accountability' as part of his book: Words That Work. And when I say the notion of accountability, I mean exactly that.

It's interesting that the entire 'Accountability Act', came not from anyone in the legal, civic or justice community, but from a Republican pollster whose job it is to get people elected and keep them in power. And not by being a better or more ethical government, but simply by using words that work. 'Accountability', not 'transparency'.

And it worked for a while. That was until it was determined that this government was the most secretive in this country's history.

Robert Marleau, the information commissioner when Harper assumed power, resigned:

... a few months after issuing a set of failing-grade report cards that blamed those "at the very top" for systematically denying Canadians information about what the government is doing in their name. (2)

And our new information officer, Suzanne Legault, has given the Harper government a failing grade. And while they continue to take Luntz's advice and use the word 'accountability' as much as possible, nothing has changed.

So when David McKie asks recently, the G-20 and G-8 expenses debate, is it really about transparency, we are not the ones to ask. We're not familiar with the term. We've been Republicanized.

What we have recorded to date is about a quarter of a billion dollars. In other words, a fraction of the total bill, which we're told is comprised mostly of security costs born by the RCMP and CSIS. Because of security concerns with those organizations, a detailed breakdown of the remaining costs may never come. If it does, the information, as it was this summer when foreign affairs first released its costs, will be heavily censored. This is not transparency.

You had us until you mentioned the 'T' word David.

Might I suggest you head down to the bookstore or library and pick up a copy of Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear, By Frank Luntz. He's co-wrote everything from our Accountability Act to our Environmental Platform. A must read if you want to translate the language of Stephen Harper.

It'll come in handy when we start the debate on health care in this country, up to now a taboo subject for this government. I can hardly wait.

Sources:

1. THE ACCESS TO INFORMATION ACT: A CRITICAL REVIEW, Minister of Public Works and Government Services 1994, Cat. No. IP34-6/1994E, ISBN 0-662-22683-0

2. This holiday, pity the poor watchdog, By James Travers, Toronto Star, December 24, 2009

Creating a Big Tent Requires Building Bridges Not Burning Them

When Barack Obama was building support for his leadership and presidency, he played it very smart.

He knew that many Republicans had grown weary of George Bush and Karl Rove style politics, so he reached out to them in a spirit of cooperation, and in his case did it in part by invoking the legacy of Ronald Reagan, a man who has become an icon to the GOP.

Now no doubt Obama realized that much of the Reagan legacy is a myth, and while his Republican opponents stirred up images of the Gipper, he could have very easily broken down that myth. But that would have been akin to telling young children that there was no Santa Claus.

So instead of reminding the Religious Right that Reagan legitimized abortion in California, or the no-tax crowd that he was behind what was then the largest tax increase in American history (as president in 1982, just a year after his much better-known rate cut), he instead tapped into the two positives of the Reagan presidency: hope and optimism.

Senator Barack Obama made it clear in early 2008 that Reaganism was playing some role in his thinking as he mapped out his own more progressive route to the White House—but the specifics of what Obama was getting at were open to debate. "Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and a way that Bill Clinton did not," Obama told the editorial board of the Reno Gazette Journal in January 2008. Seeking to elaborate, the Democratic senator said that "we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing." (1)

Obama was not going to be their enemy, even though many of Reagan's policies went against everything he stood for:

More than twenty years after Reagan's presidency, one must dig hard to learn of his failure to connect with black voters or other minority groups, or that he failed to address issues such as AIDS or homelessness in any meaningful way, or the sense that many had in the late 1980s that America had been overrun by greed. (1)

Michael Ignatieff knows that in order to reach out to disgruntled former Progressive Conservatives (like myself), he won't do it be denouncing conservatism. He will do it by only denouncing the policies of this current government that go against the very nature of conservatism, and in many cases, the very nature of Canadians.

NDP insider Brian Topp, has a column in the Globe and Mail, in which he discusses Ignatieff's "big tent" theory:

This spring’s curious debate over the idea of building a single big progressive party highlighted the deep vein of loathing and fear that many in Michael Ignatieff’s Rosedale/Bay Street-centred blue Liberal faction hold for progressive policies and people. As they have made clear both publicly and privately in many venues, they feel closer to the Conservatives than to the New Democrats on many issues.

This being so, even after an election debacle on the scale suggested by these numbers, perhaps Mr. Harper could hope to work out another informal modus vivendi with the blue Liberals, whose party would be returning to the repair shop for another long visit. In which case, on these seat projections, Mr. Harper would govern with a de facto 212-seat majority, much as he is doing now.

I like Brian Topp very much but he is dead wrong. The Liberals have never really been left or right, and in fact throughout the 60's to the 90's, the electorate voted on platform, rather than ideology, because there was little difference between the two major parties.

Stephen Harper suggested this himself, when he said that they must eradicate Red Tories, whom he called "Pink Liberals" from his Reform movement, if agreed to take over the old PC Party. The trick for him, as his then campaign manager Tom Flanagan put it, was to convince Canadians that they were moving to the left when they were not. (2)

The NDP on the other hand, have always been to the left and as a result have made themselves enemies of big business. There is nothing wrong with that and I agree with most of their policies. In 2006 they would have been the ideal party to govern. We had a massive surplus and the economy was strong.

But during an economic upheaval, they are not seen, right or wrong, as the party to be able to handle the financial store. It's a time for realistic options.

I think that both the NDP and Liberals agree that more stimulus is needed, and less money going to prisons and fighter jets. They also both agree that this is not the time to be giving massive corporate tax cuts and they both support maintaining the long from census.

But those on the right will never vote NDP. They still equate them with Communism (which is wrong). But if there is a good centrist party, which I believe the Liberals are, they could support that.

Now I'm not talking about Harper's "base". That small group that poisons the comments sections of on-line publications with attacks on women, gays and ethnics. They are the old pro-Anglo, pro-gun crowd, that have found a home in the Reform movement and are going nowhere.

Topp also brings up the Ontario coalition when Bob Rae as leader of the NDP entered into an agreement with the Liberals of David Peterson, as a precedent to form a government if Harper ends up with another minority.

There is a definitive Canadian precedent. Frank Miller’s Conservatives were handed 52 seats in the 1985 Ontario election. But David Peterson’s Liberals formed a government with 48 seats, thanks to an accord with Bob Rae’s 25 New Democrats.

And it was a good coalition. With the pressure of the NDP Ontario moved forward.

The agenda that Rae demanded was wildly popular with the electorate, and the Ontario economy—recovering nicely, it seemed, from the early eighties recession—was more than able to accommodate the necessary increase in government spending. Environmental laws were toughened, the scope of rent controls widened. Money was spent on child care and affordable housing. Equal rights for homosexuals were entrenched in the province's human rights code. First steps were taken towards pay equity for women. And most important, the Liberals moved to ban extra billing by doctors, an increasingly common practice across the province. The doctors reacted by going on a limited strike. The government stared them down. The strike collapsed. (3)

But look what happened when Bob Rae became premier. The right-wing became his 'Tea Party', especially the National Citizen's Coalition (Harper's old stomping ground) and their spin-off group Ontarians for Responsible Government. They were relentless:

Throughout the government of NDP leader Bob Rae, Gerry [Nicholls. Harper's VP when he was President of the NCC] headed the NCC project group, “Ontarians for Responsible Government”. Among numerous activities this group erected anti-Rae billboards throughout the province. This style of billboard advocacy was imitated nationwide and was featured in Campaigns and Elections magazine. Besides overseeing and co-coordinating the NCC's overall political and communication strategies, Gerry also acted as the group’s media spokesman, edited its newsletters and wrote its op-eds, news releases and fundraising letters. (4)

And Bob Rae actually handled the economy quite well, considering that we were in the middle of a double dip recession:

The National Citizens Coalition put up billboards with Rae and Stalin side by side, and rich stockbrokers led a protest parade to Queen's Park and shouted for Rae's head. He never had a chance. Bay Street and big business shunned him and his government like they were lepers. Still, Rae managed to save the jobs of the Algoma Steel Workers in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., and the jobs of the workers in the De Havilland plant in Toronto. The media was hostile to Rae's government. Today the media keeps talking about his NDP government, but never mention that he presided over the worst Ontario recession since the Great Depression. (5)

These groups would do the same to Jack Layton. What we need is a good centrist party who can work with both sides, and help to move this country forward.

We need the NDP. We need the Bloc. We need the Green. And we even need the Conservatives, those who represent the Libertarian crowd, for balance. They all have so many good ideas and a genuine concern for this country. But we also need Michael Ignatieff as prime minister. I believe that with every fibre of my being.

If you read his Rights Revolution you know where he stands on the issues that are important to us. And he has a very strong caucus, including an astronaut, Marc Garneau, who believes in science. Remember science?

And he will listen to experts. Remember experts?

And he will let his MPs talk. Remember when our elected officials got to talk.

Ah. I can hardly wait.

Sources:

1. Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy, By Will Bunch, Free Press, ISBN: 978-1-4165-9762-9 5, Pg. 20-21

2. The Man Behind Stephen Harper: The new Conservative Party has tasted success and wants majority rule. If Tom Flanagan and his Calgary School have their way, they’ll get it without compromising their principles.
by Marci McDonald, The Walrus, October 2004

3. Promised Land: Inside the Mike Harris Revolution, By John Ibbitson, 1997, ISBN: 0136738648, Pg. 35

4. About Gerry from Gerry Nicholl's blog.

5. Bob Rae would make a great prime minister, By Larry Zolf, CBC News Viewpoint, May 9, 2006