In Canada, Conservatism means Confrontation. It's not about respect for institutions or the rule of law. It's not about wise economic management. It's about focusing on "the other" and destroying him or her. Lawrence Martin writes:
It’s not just Mr. Harper who equates conservatism with confrontation. There’s his new Defence Minister. Many commentators, myself included, have written flatteringly about Jason Kenney over the years; super smart, tireless worker, more inclined to fact than fiction. But more recently, he has come across as a gaffe-prone grandstander. His office has made unsubstantiated charges about Russia confronting Canadian warships in the Black Sea. He tweeted a photo purporting to show Muslim women in slavery that proved to be nothing of the sort. He wrongly accused the NDP of opposing every overseas military deployment in Canadian history. He also got his facts wrong about the Liberal record on defence spending.
There are yahoos in the party -- Larry Miller comes to mind -- who have no clue about the meaning of the word the party takes for its logo. But there are others -- like Chris Alexander -- who you would expect would not throw words about carelessly:
Mr. Alexander has had experience as a diplomat – in Afghanistan, no less. But you’d never know it. Last week, he listed the hijab as a face covering that has no place in the citizenship ceremony. The problem? It’s a head scarf, not normally used to cover the face. “Hey, before you send a race-baiting e-mail,” tweeted Liberal strategist Gerald Butts, “at least know the difference between a hijab and a niqab.”
Like the Cowboy from Etobicoke, the Conservative Party of Canada is a fraud. Call it the Confrontation Party. Call it the Know Nothing Party. Call it the Harper Party. But don't call it the Conservative Party.
16 comments:
I have often thought, Owen, that Chris Alexander perfectly epitomizes the question asked by Jesus in the New Testament: "What profit a man if he gain the world but suffers the loss of his soul?"
Apparently Alexander thinks he got the better part of the deal.
Like you, Lorne, I've thought for a long while that those who choose to join the Harper Party make a Faustian bargain.
They've got a lock on the stupidest third of the electorate. Together with the greediest of the top 10% of income earners, their own stupidity and shamelessness propel them to power.
I've been intermittently shrieking at various media outlets for years that their use of the word "tory" to describe the Harperian mess is a slanderous insult to the memory of some great Canadians.
They of course are too fricking ignorant and lazy to either respond or change.
With one notable exception - Ed Greenspon and I exchanged some very civil emails on the subject back when he was still editing the G&M, before the G&M took such a hard right turn and morphed into Crawley's vanity project.
I'm sure Crawley and Greenspan didn't see eye to eye on a number of things, Dana -- which is why he was unceremoniously dismissed.
Greenspan never backed away from a snow job.
That's their formula, thwap. Unfortunately it's worked.
Like Dana I've corrected anyone that uses the term "Tory" in my presence to describe the CPC, as it insults the honourable heritage of an honourable political legacy/culture in this nation, and many others for that matter. However, this is also one of those things you can in part thanks the NDP for helping create, whenever they trotted out that "Lib Tory same old story" meme in the past decade to equate for their partisan ends they have also helped normalize in the minds of many that the CPC really is just more Toryism just in a different name/cloak, and that has been a major aid to Harper appearing to be more mainstream/centrist than he and his party really is.
I've called it the CPC from day one, I know what Toryism is, and this isn't anything close to it. I even understand the more conservative Conservativism that originated in Canada and this isn't it, although it masks closer to it for a lot of its supporters, but I know what we actually have in the Harper CPC is Straussianism and worse, radical extremism in terms of the American right wing, which is far further to the edges of the extreme edge than is at all true for traditional Canadian Conservativism in all variants.
This is not the Conservative party, save in formal name only, and doesn't even deserve to be given that much. CPC, and members are CPCers, that is the formulation I use and will continue to use so long as this wing is the driving force within it.
Before he died, Scotian, Dalton Camp invested a lot of space in trying to make the point that Harper's Reformers were no Tories.
Unfortunately, Peter Mackay and Camp were working at cross purposes.
Can I buy a vowel, Dana? Because you were speaking of the Globe and Mail, I thought you were referring to Eddie Greenspon of Cote des Neiges, not Eddie Greenspan of Niagara Falls.
Certainly Greenspan had no patience with Harper's anti-crime agenda. He and Anthony Doob left it naked in a couple of pieces they co-authored for the Toronto Star.
That makes two days in a a row where I misidentified a person. I'm slipping. Thanks for the correction.
Say what you want about Mulroney, but he did a hell of a lot to protevt our Great Lakes; curbing acid rain, limiting phosphorus, etc. Conservatives used to care about the environment.
That's because they were true Conservatives, Anon.
Lorne there is no such thing as Hey-Zeus it is a made up fantasy sorry to break the bubble.
Now that being said this so-called religious creep called Stephen Joesph Harper is making the world more miserable.
So much for his believe in his phoney god or was that dog or kitty cat?
Mogs...
Todays Conservatives like their Repuplican Brothers south are pure facists. That nothing new. Who do you think was running the place when the Native People in the USA where ethnicly cleansed. Remember slavery. Nothing has changed except the facade.
Same people, but they've migrated to a different party, Steve. It was Abraham Lincoln's Republicans who ended slavery.
Owen, the ending of Slavery was a political decison by Abe. I believe he really did not care. I also think its very clear he was the first Gay president.
I agree that the Emancipation Proclamation was a shrewd political move, Steve. I haven't read anything about Lincoln's sexual preferences.
But I think that there is a huge difference between the Republican Party of George W. Bush and Teddy Roosevelt -- just as there is a catastrophic difference between the Progressive Conservative Party of Robert Stanfield and Stephen Harper's Conservative Party.
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