20 July 2004

Neo-Cons Of The North

The last few years have seen the rise of the Neo-Conservative movement in the United States. For those who aren’t aware of what I mean I will explain. Neo-Conservativism is a subset of traditional political conservativism in which the practitioners seek to reform the current model of government. Where traditional conservativism typically will seek to reduce the size of government and the amount of government impact on the lives of the citizenry, Neo-Conservativism will try to increase the size of the government and increase the impact of government on the lives of the citizenry.

President George W. Bush is a Neo-Conservative. So are Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz. There are others. In addition, a number of these notables are also members of such political think tanks as the Project for a New American Century, which I’ve spoken about before.

Neo-Conservativism has given the citizens of the United States some responses to the threat of Terrorism that can best be described as truly inspired, if you're less interested in securing your nation and more interested in stripping your citizenry of its civil liberties one at a time. As examples I give you TSA and the Patriot Act. TSA does absolutely nothing towards making airports safer while the Patriot Act does nothing except give law enforcement officials a license to abuse the rights of American citizens anytime they want to and get away with it because all they really need to say is that their actions are part of a terrorism investigation and the powers that be will leave them alone and let them get on with their good and necessary work.

Neo-Conservativism has given the citizens of the United States the Iraqi war, which appears to have been less about Weapons of Mass Destruction and more about Finishing Daddy's Mission. It has yet to be proven that Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction at the time of the invasion and it also has yet to be proven that he had any real, tangible link of any kind with the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001.

Neo-Conservativism has been wholly responsible for the closing of the border to Canadian shipments of live beef, and all because one and only one case of Mad Cow Disease was discovered. Since then the industry has been sufficiently reformed to ensure that such a thing doesn't happen again, but still the border remains closed, which forces me to wonder if the closing of the border was less about public health and more about imposing an informal economic sanction against Canada for refusing to participate in the War in Iraq. Apparently this has earned us some enmity in the American Government despite the fact that we sent more troops to Afghanistan as a compensation. The acid test of international allegiance to American interests seems to lie in the answer to the question, “Yes, but will they invade a country with us?” However, that’s a debate for another time, and not what I want to talk about today.

Canada and the United States have been neighbours for over a hundred years, and a number of American cultural phenomenon have migrated across the border to become a part of Canadian cultural identity, but I never in a million years thought that I would ever see the day that I would come to the conclusion that Neo-Conservativism was one of them.

Ladies and Gentlemen I give you Stephen Harper. Young Mister Harper began his political career in the Reform Party and was schooled in the art of politics by Deb Grey, one of the architects of the Reform movement. He has been active in the Reform Party and in the Canadian Alliance, and most recently has ascended the corporate ladder to take control of the Conservative Party of Canada, which is a merging of the Canadian Alliance Party with the Progressive Conservative Party.

Mister Harper is a Neo-Conservative. I say this because he sure as hell isn’t a traditional conservative and I just can’t find any other way to classify him.

The heart of traditional political conservativism lies in a simple concept: Balance the books and keep the government sufficiently small and efficient that it stays the hell out of people's everyday lives. This having been said I feel compelled to admit that the old Progressive Conservative Party wasn't terribly Conservative according to the traditional definition, but they were a hell of a lot closer to the mark than the Conservative Party of Canada.

Since the merger of the Canadian Alliance Party with the Progressive Conservative Party I have noticed something very interesting. The more traditionally conservative voices within the new Conservative Party of Canada have largely been silenced. The only voices you hear from within the party these days come from the more Reform oriented members of the party, the ones who were largely responsible for the splitting of the original Progressive Conservative Party in the first place.

You don't hear much in the way of traditionally conservative politics coming from Stephen Harper and his people these days. What you hear instead are the same kinds of things that the old Reform Party used to say. The West has an important destiny, for example. They're quick to poke holes into everything the past government has done and equally quick to tell the rest of us that we won't recognize our country when they're done with it.

"You won't recognize Canada when I'm done with it." Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that's a terribly Conservative thing to say.

The Conservative Party of Canada is a collection of contradictions. They claim to be Conservatives, but they campaign under and preach of an agenda of reform, which is decidedly anti-conservative, and yet for some bizarre reason they seem to have struck a nerve in Western Canada. For some strange reason, people are not only listening to them and believing them, but they're also voting for them. They're voting for people who are led by a man who has specifically said that he wants to unravel this country one stitch at a time.

Am I the only one who sees this as inherently dangerous? Am I the only one who thinks that putting a man in power who wants to tear the country apart and rebuild it in His Own Image is a bad thing? Stephen Harper is dangerous. The Conservative Party of Canada is dangerous. But people listen to them and people believe them and people vote for them because they're looking for an alternative and right now the so-called Conservatives have the loudest voice and no one in their right mind would ever vote in a New Democrat government.

But the Reform movement is a largely Western creation. That's why the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance never really made any inroads into Eastern Canada. The people in the East are perfectly happy to be at the centre of political power and they don't see anything wrong with that. Nor should they, for them it's just another day at the office. It's in Western Canada where the inequality is more clearly felt, and people seem to think that the Conservative Party of Canada are the people who can reduce that political inequality to something a lot more palatable.

I can understand the desire, even the perceived need for political equality, but how much are people willing to sacrifice in order to achieve it? And before you all storm out and put the weight of your support behind Stephen Harper I want you to ask yourself one little question: what else is Stephen Harper going to do in office while he's giving you the electoral equality that you crave so much?.