Thomas Mulcair rose in the Commons on Thursday and asked the prime minister, "Will he keep our troops in Afghanistan past 2014, yes or no?" Stephen Harper hasn't answered a question for quite while now. This time he responded with yet another slur:
"Unlike the NDP, we are not going to ideologically have a position regardless of circumstances,” Harper said. “The leader of the NDP, in 1939, did not even want to support war against Hitler.”
Never mind that the NDP didn't exist until 1961. Never mind that J.S. Woodsworth -- leader of the CCF and a Methodist minister -- had long been a committed pacifist. Never mind that Woodsworth was the only member of the CCF who did not vote to go to war with Germany.
Yet Harper's attack was continued the next day, when John Baird rose and proclaimed,
"The NDP don’t support sending troops abroad for anything. Let us look at what the former leader of the NDP-CCF when he said the following. ‘I would ask whether we are to risk the lives of our Canadian sons to prevent the actions of Hitler.’ You know who said that, it was the former leader of the NDP-CCF, J.S. Woodsworth.”
This kind of calumny has become standard fare from these folks, whose most reliable supporters are reportedly Christians. Yet, if anything, the Harperites appear to have a great deal of trouble with a number of the commandments -- particularly the one that deals with bearing false witness.
Those who tell tall tales become laughing stocks. Surely, Vic Toews can attest to that -- the social media skewers phoneys. And, thus, Twitter came alive:
"It is a fact that, at the time, the #ndp refused to support our troops during the war of 1812," wrote Pierre H. Vachon
"Damn you #NDP for not standing up to Genghis Khan!!" wrote Dan Speerin.
And Ravi Gurdial tweeted, "The NDP controls all of England's fruit, causing glasses of OJ to cost up to $16 in some instances." -- an allusion to that glass of orange juice which Bev Oda enjoyed on her recent trip to London.
You know a government is in trouble when anger gives way to mockery.
