Great Expectations

So, how many people out there were bothered by the Quebec student riots today? How many people think masked goons harassing students who were just minding their own business is crossing a line?

I bet lots of people thought so. Lots of Liberal voters here in Ontario picked up their Toronto Star like they do every single day, read the editorial page, and sniffed, "Quite so, quite so! Thank Dalton we don't encounter this sort of nonsense in prim and proper Ontairy-airy-airy-o!"

Except; screw you, you have no right to be bothered. None.

The Quebec student riots are the direct consequence of what happens when you condition people to expect the government to take care of them. This wasn't some weird one off. This is what happens.

Every time.

You don't avoid it just because you speak a different mother tongue than Quebeckers. Or Greeks, or Italians, or the French, etc.

If we do not have people rioting to protect their entitlements, it is because those people don't feel entitled enough to riot. Yet.

So yeah. Dalton is marginally less statist than Jean Charest. He only does stuff like cut university tuition by 30% after it rose for a few years. He doesn't have a full on "Ontario model", though you can be damn sure he would like to have one.

Remember how a few months ago everyone was quietly cheering on the Occupy Movement? Remember how they were so cool and how they meant so well? How this was the beginning of a new awakening for the left that lazy journalists could cover on Twitter from the safety of their newsrooms? Bet they never saw this coming!

Now, if we were all Conservatives like me instead of socially acceptable Liberals, we would look at this debacle and the people that were harmed by it and conclude that no, no matter how all-powerful and all-legislating the government is, it can't really protect people!!!

And we would stop expecting it to protect people. But that's the problem here, isn't it? Expectations have been created. And now they must be met. And when they aren't met, the highly educated youth of Quebec lose their collective minds. Pun intended.

Is there a Liberal out there with enough courage in his or her convictions to say that they support these rioters? While that would be horrifyingly dumb, it would convey an understanding- of which most Liberals are bereft- that you can't have it both ways. Either you accept that government should control everything and that people should expect as much and react as much, or you don't.

Oh wait. No. That's too black and white. It's not that simple. It's really about what causes less harm. Right guys? Sure these riots are bad, but it's not as bad as how it would be under an activist right wing government that dispensed with the notion of government services altogether. Except the only reason why people look at things that way is because they've been conditioned to expect goverment services for "free" in the first place!!!

Oh yeah. When riots like this become commonplace, it's not going to be because of us. Far from it. Trying to impose fiscal discipline is tough, but it's only tough because people have been promised a world free of want by people like Dalton.

I can only hope that people will one day realize that what they should be bothered by is the fact that by swallowing Dalton's bait, they are making things worse, not better.

Again. If you don't like the way these Liberal governments are going, you only have one choice. And that choice is the PC Party of Ontario.