When Vic Toews proclaimed this week that those who didn't stand with the government "stand with the child pornographers," Ann Cavoukian -- Ontario's Privacy Commissioner -- responded, "What it showed to me was the weakness of their case."
It was a telling comment. Whether it's the Harper Party's defence of trickle down economics, its push for more prisons -- despite a crime rate which has dropped for forty years -- or its argument that the Old Age Security system is "unsustainable," this government continues to defend the indefensible.
The same pattern applies to the Prime Minister's increasingly bellicose rhetoric on the subject of Iran. Scott Taylor writes that:
No doubt Harper’s ego has been inflated over the accolades and honours bestowed upon Canada for the nominal leadership role we played in the NATO dog pack’s ravaging of a hapless Libya.
As the international community, led by the U.S. State Department, pushes ever closer to a military intervention in Syria, Harper has publicly expressed his disappointment at China’s and Russia’s refusals to sanction a UN mandate against the Assad regime.
In other words, Harper is spoiling for a fight. Going one step further in the case of Iran, Harper has embarked on a one-man fear-mongering campaign to paint the Persian Peril as an imminent threat to world safety.
It matters not that Harper actually believed the Bush administration’s falsified documentation regarding Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Had he been prime minister, Harper would have happily joined the U.S.-led coalition of the willing and invaded Iraq under false pretences.
This time, of course, is different, and although Canada has no independent intelligence-gathering capability inside Iran, Harper is convinced that the CIA has got things right this time.
"The evidence is just growing overwhelming," Harper told Canadian reporters.
When this prime minister claims that the evidence is overwhelming, that's code for the fact that supporting data doesn't exist. The truth is that he and his minions suffer from paranoid delusions. The problem is that the world is full of people who are not like the Harper Party -- and, therefore, these agents of evil are a perpetual threat. It's not enough to defeat "them" in an election. "They" must be destroyed.
That's what happens when you hand the reins of power over to the paranoid.
