I don't agree with Jonathan Kay very often. But in yesterday's National Post he wrote:
The most shocking thing about the government’s 2012 changes to the Interim Federal Health Program is that, despite its Scrooge-like spirit, they haven’t actually saved any money: The cost for treating people simply was downloaded to charities, pro bono doctors, community healthcare organizations and the provinces. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that this move was made mostly for other reasons — i.e., to show voters how tough the Conservatives are in sticking it to a politically unpopular group of medical patients.
What the changes did reveal was an extraordinarily mean spirited sense of righteousness:
If moral relativism was the defining sin of the left, its intellectual opposite — punitive, obsessive, politically cynical moral absolutism — has become the hallmark of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.
It was punitive moral absolutism which was behind the witch burnings in Salem and the American invasion of Iraq. Mr. Harper supported the invasion of Iraq. One wonders what he would have done if he had lived in Salem.
