Hold on to your Gravol, because it's time for yet another nauseating edition of everyone's favourite Ontario political timewaster, "Is The NDP Going To Plunge Us Into Yet Another Election"?
You might recall last year's "high-stakes" showdown over the budget when the NDP made a similar show of force before the fact, and then decided to be bought off with a new tax on the rich, and then pretended that they were going to vote the budget down again, and then decided to spend the rest of the year making things difficult for the Liberals with their teacher union buddies. It was an amazing series of reversals made all the more brain twisting by the fact that NDP leader Andrea Horwath emerged with her image as an innocent consensus builder intact. We know Horwath wants to preserve that image because Adam Radwanski is writing columns full of Liberal talking points designed to showcase how generous the Liberals are being and how Andrea shouldn't be a Debbie Vote-Downer and bite the hand that's feeding her.
As far as the Liberals go, not only are they giving away the store to fend off an election, but they are also attacking Tim Hudak's wife in an attempt to change the channel, which is something they keep promising they'll never do and yet keep doing. Doing things they keep promising they'll never do, including pushing the Deb Hutton Panic Button whenever things get heated, has been a defining feature of the Liberals since Day 1, so I can totally see the Liberals contorting themselves into a pretzel to keep their not-real image as consensus builders alive. Consensus builders who attack women, I hasten to add.
If the above two paragraphs make your gorge rise, you might understand, for the briefest of moments, why Tim Hudak and the PCs have declared things unworkable and have signalled for an end to this farce. Then you would read the coming avalanche of columns, tweets, and general derpiness that suggests that by wanting out, Tim Hudak has marginalized himself and isn't working to build a "consensus" (there's that word again). People are going to get really, really mad about how Tim Hudak wants an election in the next few days, just like they did last year, and the reason why they are is because Tim Hudak is making it harder for them to shut their eyes and pretend everything is just hunky-dory in Ontario.
The worst thing you can do, worse than lie about the cost of cancelling a gas plant, worse than bend over for the teachers, worse than bend over for the government, worse than bash someone's wife, is publicly point out that the entire situation is a joke. For the past decade, Ontarians have been putting an insane amount of effort into ignoring the ugly truth; that things have not gotten better since booting out the PC's, that the almighty consensus is brittle and fragile and kept alive with prayers, and that nobody has the stomach to do what needs to be done.
And that is why I believe that despite all the huffing and puffing about how we're definitely going to go this time around, Horwath will once again find a way to save the day by reaching a compromise with the government, where the government gives up a bunch of expensive concessions we can't afford, and she gives up her credibility with her union friends, and everyone learns a lesson about sharing and sharing alike.
Don't get me wrong- I hope we do go so we can break this disgusting stasis, but we've all seen this movie before, and I know how it ends.
Let's have a little talk about the rapidly increasing number of Principled Conservatives who think that supporting Justin Trudeau is the new super-cool thing to do. (I really hate how everything is all about him, everywhere, but the point has to be made.)
Last week, a random musing by Le Petit Prince about how raising tariffs was bad caused the National Post's cup to run over at the prospect of Trudeau reinventing libertarianism. You can almost feel Den Tandt quivering with anticipation. Granted, the Liberals had just got done giving relatively pro-liberty candidate Martha Hall Findlay a crushing 6% of support in the leadership race vs. Trudeau's 80% (which is to say, the Liberal voting base that elected Trudeau wants no part of pro-liberty ideas) but we're not going to let a little thing like that bother us.
I could write this off as a ploy, but that's not going to do a bloody thing here because a) as I've seen, the people supporting Trudeau now will point out that Harper hasn't been exactly helpful on these issues, and b) it's Trudeau, so nobody will care to point out the contradiction, more so than would be the case for your average Liberal.
No, I know what this is; this is intended to give people who would otherwise support Harper because "well, who else is there?" an excuse to stay home. Trudeau is saying, "I'm gonna win anyway, so here's a reason for you to justify your own lack of involvement in the next election."
I must confess, I had wondered why the "backbench revolution" was taking place now....after all the years of relatively quiet grumbling....but I think the reason has become quite clear. :P
Don't expect these people to admit it in a moment of weakness, though. Officially, the explanation is the chickens coming home to roost after years of not being true to conservative principles. Never mind that you could have said the same thing during the Martin years......the Dion years.....the Ignatieff years......the Rae years......
For the record, the NDP is completely hooped as well. What with their base fuming over having jettisoned "socialism" from the party constitution, the post mortem after the coming red-tinged bloodbath is going to be exactly the same. We all just forgot the true meaning of Christmas.
"Oh, but Mr. J, the Quebeckers are never going to go for Trudeau after what his father did, just like all those social conservatives.....uhhhh......well, how about all those libertarians who were outraged at the, uh.....War Measures Act, and, ummmm.....oh! I know! The West! The West will *never* forgive Trudeau for the National Energy Program, even though Trudeau.....supports the Keystone Pipeline.....awww, dammit."
Yup. You see it now, don't you? With single statements, this guy is picking off whole chunks of the voting base. How come Ignatieff never thought of stuff like this? (Probably because he had the wrong last name!) Somehow, people are going to find in themselves a sudden courage to vote Liberal, when they never could before! The waters will part, and we will be led to the promised land!
Am I angry? Am I upset? Nope.
This proves, more than anything any Liberal can do, that we cannot rely on conservative principles to win elections. Because when a Justin Trudeau shows up, Principled Conservatives bolt like scalded dogs. And it doesn't matter whether they're putting principle ahead of party, or whether they're just so mad at Harper that they're relishing this chance to pay him back in kind.
They are banking on the same inevitability of his victory that 80% of the Liberal voting base banked on, so exactly what the hell is the difference between them and the Liberals?
Oh, I am so glad that we can finally dispense with the dreary, pointless debate of Who Is A Conservative, and the attendant debate over conservative principles. On behalf of all the CPC hacks out there, I'd like to say thanks to all these stalwart Principled Conservatives gleefully rubbing their hands together in anticipation of Harper finally getting his for making this possible.
You know what, even the last provincial election makes sense now! When we were ahead in the polls, Hudak was a really principled conservative, and as soon as he lost, we needed to get back to conservative principles! But the only way Hudak *is* ever going to "get back to conservative principles" is.....if he wins! LOL!
OK children, can anyone tell me what Not-so-Silent Bob Delaney, the Liberal MPP for Gas Plant-ville, Ontario, did wrong when he compared the decision to cancel the gas plant to the first attempt to land a man on the moon?
That's right! He should have blamed it on conservatives, by saying that we didn't complain about the cost of Margaret Thatcher's funeral, so we have no right to complain about this.
The coronation of Justin Trudeau has brought several thoughts I've been kicking around into focus.
Up until now I have made the (hopefully) understandable mistake of thinking that the left is interested in things like equality, empowerment of the disenfranchised, justice for those that cannot defend themselves, and the like. They have said they believe in these things and I have believed them, not knowing that in doing so I have allowed them to win the argument before it even got started.
Then I realized that people who loathe conservatives as much as they do- people who sputter at the mere mention of Ford's name, or cheer the death of Margaret Thatcher, or warp reality such that they can be angry at Harper for cracking down on his own MP's for expressing views they find loathsome and would not hesitate to censor themselves- cannot be as worried about any of their stated goals as they are about their actual goal.
What these people want to do is transfer power from us to them. They don't care how it happens and they don't care what they have to do to get it done. Over, under, around, and through.
This is why Liberals have coalesced around Trudeau. His lack of ideas is not a weakness as far as they're concerned, because they don't care about ideas. They care about stomping conservatives back into their holes, and they're more than happy to have a party leader who doesn't care about how he's going to manage Canada. Canada is irrelevant. Power is everything.
How very right she was that day, as she so often was. These people do not care if everyone is worse off, so long as power is kept out of the hands of conservatives.
Hate for the right guides and dominates everything these people do, not concern for the poor or the underprivileged. The venom they hurl at those outside their consensus, the attempts to shut down free speech, the tacit acceptance of anything that limits the power of those in power- it all stems from a blinding hatred of anything we stand for.
And so long as we remember that, their attempts to guilt-trip us have no power.
A few days ago, nutty self professed communist NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice declared that World War I was a "capitalist war" and that the communists of the day were right to oppose it. Clothing himself in the holier-than-thou language of pacifism, Boulerice got everyone to ignore the fact that the only reason that he, and the communists of 100 years ago, opposed the war was because it was a "capitalist" war. He doesn't have a problem with war or loss of life in war per se- he just has an issue with capitalist wars, and capitalism in general. If something is capitalist, it is bad; if something is not capitalist, it cannot be bad. And just like that, Boulerice's moral high ground evaporates.
Let's try it again with something a bit closer to normalcy. The Walkerton water tragedy is often invoked by Ontario Liberals as a reason not to vote PC. Vote PC, they say, and we'll be right back to Harris-era deregulation. But then we remember that the Ontario Liberals hate Mike Harris with fanatical intensity, so much so that it is entirely plausible that they never cared about the deaths in Walkerton at all. They hated the PC's so much that using those deaths to get elected was a lesser evil. Pop! That's the sound of their moral authority deflating.
Why support the thugocracy Chavez created in Venezuela? Why turn a blind eye towards, or excuse terrorism? Why stick their heads in the sand when Obama continues Bush's policies? Because they hate, hate, HATE, conservatives and established power.
I could keep on going forever. Examples abound. For example, what do you think was going through Elizabeth May's mind when she unironically compared Canada to North Korea? Was this the behaviour of someone who hates Harper so much that all distinction between Canada and North Korea disappeared for a moment? I think so.
When you consider the virulent reactions to the Keystone pipeline, or when you look at a website like shitharperdid.ca, or when you read about how the NDP and Liberals need to put aside wide ranging policy differences and unite to beat Harper (because that's the real aim here, not to create a functional party that can govern), you can see that these are not happy warriors or people motivated by love and concern for their fellow human beings. Hate for conservatives comes first.
And it can be summoned at a moment's notice to be hurled in a million different directions, at the same time. That's how they come up with these wonderful logic pretzels. Somehow, Harper is spending too much money and too little money at the same time! Harper is an evil genius and a dumb redneck simultaneously! Gay people who are conservatives aren't really gay people! Women who are conservatives aren't really women! Corporations being in bed with the government is bad, and corporations being completely independent of government is also bad! It's racist to criticize foreign cultures that may themselves have racist features! It's not possible for minorities to be motivated by racism against white people!
How blind I was, not to see it right in front of my own face. But no more. Now I really, truly get it.
Progressives who read this blog may or may not be surprised to learn that we conservatives circulate stories about our encounters with various progressive politicians, like ghost stories around a campfire or discussions about the one that got away.
Here's a story we tell about Kathleen Wynne, Premier of Ontario, and person who likes to talk about having "conversations" with others.
There is a certain venerable veteran of many a campaign, currently residing in a particular midtown Toronto riding who encountered Ms. Wynne at a multipartisan event. As it was a multipartisan event, this wise abbot wore his Conservative Party of Canada colours proudly, with the blue C prominently displayed.
In the seasoned master's version of the tale, Ms. Wynne, upon spying the logo, wrinkled her nose in disgust and said, "How can you support that fascist?" That fascist, of course, was the Prime Minister of Canada. And thus, as you can well imagine, the opportunity for a "conversation" was lost, because the woman who is currently our Premier did not have the tact to muzzle her own hatred for the leader of the CPC while speaking to one of his ardent supporters.
So let it be made absolutely, perfectly clear; When progressives, and most people, talk about having conversations with others, they're not talking about having conversations with conservatives. Because we disagree with the progressive consensus, our views are extremist and can be safely ignored. What we say is not to be taken seriously.
When progressives relate to conservatives, if at all, it is to characterize them either as bumbling fools with kooky, hopelessly naive views, or dangerous ideologues who want to roll back all progress. We are like Disney villains, comic relief and threat at the same time.
That, of course, was Jim Carrey mocking Charlton Heston. But you could really substitute any conservative in there, from Mitt Romney to David Cameron to Sarah Palin.
Now, if these progressives were interested in having "conversations" with us, then they would try to listen to what we said and have something resembling a give and take, because that's what a conversation is. But that doesn't happen, because they are not actually interested in having a conversation with us. Our proper place is either as a punch line, or as monsters under the bed. Sure, we're occasionally interesting to have around, and we might even be useful from time to time whenever we have an idea that can be stolen, but that's as far as it goes.
And it's very important that we remain in that role, because attacking conservatives is socially acceptable. If there weren't any conservatives to make fun of or demonize, then not only would progressives have no outlet for their hateful impulses, but they would have to turn the critical lens back on themselves and realize all the ways their progressive projects are falling way, way short.
For Kathleen Wynne to stay Premier of Ontario, she doesn't have to have a conversation with us. She just has to have "conversations" with Horwath. Horwath can claim legitimacy and hold up the table scraps that Wynne throws her as proof of concessions, and they can both point and laugh at Tim Hudak for rejecting the entire farce.
For my part, I can count on the finger of one hand the number of progressives, or anyone who wasn't already inclined in a conservative manner for that matter, who I've met that were really interested in having a conversation where we exchanged views and learned from one another and treated each other with mutual respect. My views are the basis for humour, or they are threatening, and even in the rare cases that I am able to have something resembling an exchange of views, the fact that I don't grasp the manifest superiority of the progressive position on every single issue is visibly annoying to them.
Because we know it doesn't apply to us, Wynne's call for a "conversation" is disingenuous. Everyone else looks at it and feels touched, but we're not fooled.
And so there will be no "conversation", just the same old communication breakdown that has always existed. Not because we don't want one, but because the people who say they want one aren't really interested in having one. They are just interested in getting what they want.
As it is with us on the right, there are two basic types of progressives- those for whom the goal is a more equal society- the Principled Progressives, analogous to Principled Conservatives- and those for whom power is the only goal.
The first group are the workers who are deeply committed to ideals. They truly believe that it is possible to create a world where poverty, racism, and oppression are no more. And the other group are the ones who pay lip service to these same goals while profiting off the labour of the naïve fools who truly believe.
When lefties look at something like the drama unfolding in Ottawa over the so-called "backbench revolution", they don't quite know what to do with themselves. On the one hand, the prospect of Harper's MP's rising up in rebellion and causing a caucus split thrills them. On the other hand, their progressive ideals (in theory) make it all but impossible to disagree with Harper for cracking down on his party's pro-life faction.
How can any honest progressive not at least nod their heads in agreement when Harper says he isn't going to reopen the abortion debate? These progressives may loathe Harper, but for them their convictions come first. So when Harper is right (for them, on this one issue), he's right.
And yet the other group of progressives have no trouble criticizing Harper for being a dictator and stoking fears of the hidden agenda at the same time. Because for them, anything that embarrasses Harper is a good thing.
Now here's the thing. When the federal NDP has problems with its own caucus- such as Lise St. Denis and Claude Patry quitting for the Liberals and the Bloc, or Bruce Hyer sitting as an independent- these are not stories. (Did you go, "Oh yeah! Lise St. Denis! Bruce Hyer! I totally forgot about them!" when you read that?)
The NDP is, by and large, made up of Principled Progressives who decry the direction the party is taking, long and loud. But they are still progressives, so you'll find plenty of headlines about how the NDP is doing fine despite these little bumps in the road. Even though Brad Trost, Mark Warawa, and Stephen Woodworth are still members of the CPC caucus, somehow the narrative is that that CPC is less united than the NDP.
The idea of Harper's majority ripped apart by loose-lipped pro-lifers -factual or not- is just too good to let go of. Harper-as-dissent-squelcher is nowhere near as good, but people will buy that in a pinch if they have to. And while those Principled Progressives may nod their heads in support of Harper violently squelching dissent on the question of abortion, those nods is all Harper is like to get from them. Because whether he's pro-life or not, Harper is still a conservative of some measure and is therefore always fair game, even if it's an obvious damned if you do, damned if you don't. You just don't get any points from the left for meeting them halfway.
Harper will go down in history as the most hated PM of all time, regardless of what he does between now and the time when he is no longer PM. It will be like Thatcher in the UK. That will be his epitaph, as written by the overwhelmingly progressive consensus that is Canada.
The other big political news story of the week was, of course, Rob Ford. And while Ford is nowhere near as disciplined as Harper is, that doesn't mean media outlets like the Toronto Star aren't trying just as hard to put him underground.
Yeah, yeah. Ford causes a lot of problems for himself. But somehow- as Bob Hepburn himself admits in today's Star- lots of people agree with Ford when he paints himself as the victim of a conspiracy.
And do you know why that is? Because even though Ford is the architect of his own misery, and the Star is just doing its job as a paper, that does not change the fact that the Star loathes Ford, and all conservatives, so much, that the idea of the Star trying maliciously to destroy Ford is entirely plausible.
It is just possible- only just- that the Star wants to see all conservatives buried, and that Ford makes it easy for them to do so in his case, and that Harper makes it more difficult for them to do so in his case. Mealy-mouthed denials from the Star's editorial board will not convince that they are innocent in all this. The hilarious thing is- if the Star was honest about their desire to destroy Ford, more Torontonians would be likely to support them!
The Star hates conservatives. Progressives hate Harper. Nothing is going to change that. If Harper or Ford say 2 + 2 = 4, the Star and all the rest of the progressives are going to check their figures.
Now for the obligatory segueway into provincial politics. The big story in that arena this week was that the NDP and Liberals came together to cut auto insurance rates and stave off an election for another few months or years. Yippee skip. Meanwhile, the PC Party of Ontario trumpeted their policy papers for the 897th time and proclaimed loudly that they are the only party serious about bold ideas.
Does anyone remember why the Ontario PC's started out with these white papers in the first place? Because in the last election, everyone criticized them for having a half-baked platform with no serious ideas and taking the electorate for a bunch of fools. Now, a year and a half later, Hudak has all these serious ideas, and nobody wants to hear them. All anyone wants to hear about is cooperation, smiles, sunshine, "working together", "conversations", an end to "divisive politics", and kumbaya, and Hudak is "too aggressive" and "too negative."
Kathleen Wynne is looked at as the Great Conciliator even though an auto insurance rate cut is not going to do diddly squat when it comes to the deficit or the economy. During the 2011 election, however, Dalton McGuinty framed himself as the steady hand on the till on the economy whereas the PC's weren't that serious, and everyone seemed to buy that with a minimum of grumbling.
So, here is the takeaway from all three of these examples. Whatever the Liberals and other progressives are putting out is right, and anything conservatives put out is wrong. You can have a disciplined PM or an undisciplined mayor, bold ideas or Changebook, abortions or no abortions, good economies or bad ones, and it all amounts to the same thing in the end. And Canadians know it. Any excuse to dislike conservatives will do.
In the event that Liberals become supremely useless, Canadians will elect conservatives, but they will spend every waking moment disliking whatever they do. And when Liberals are elected, Canadians will spend every waking moment trying to avoid the realization that things are not getting any better. And so it will go, until we have Justin Trudeau as our Prime Minister, either implementing the Hugo Chavez method, or a continuation of Harper's policies, or both, or neither, and being praised by everyone for doing whatever he's doing.
Decades before I was born, Tory leader Robert Stanfield was whining about how he could have walked on water, and the headlines would read "Stanfield can't swim." Even back in that primitive era, our forefathers had grasped that the playing field wasn't exactly level, but they decided to do the honourable thing and wait for the Liberals to combust instead of taking control. Then, as now, the Liberals do what they do, and we do what we do, and the results are what the results are.
Now, if everyone is happy with this state of affairs- with waking up every single morning to Toronto Star headlines and the endless progressive grind in all its forms- then I guess I have nothing to complain about. I guess Kathleen Wynne is right, and it's all about smiles, sunshine, positivity, and having conversations.
I guess she's right about writing off conservative opposition as passive-aggressive whining, too. She would kind of have to be.
So I finally got around to watching that new OPSEU video- the one that is supposedly an attack on Tim Hudak.
The last time these people put together an anti-PC Party video, it was a $20,000 exercise in surrealism that nobody but me even paid attention to, so that's what I was expecting this time around. Funny thing is- this one isn't an attack on the PC's. It's an attack on their own members, but we'll get to that in a minute.
First, I want to establish that these videos that attack conservatives are the work of people who have never even spoken to or seen a conservative before, and that's why watching them is so jarring. They are not willing to examine the basic assumptions conservatives make and understand them on an intellectual level before tearing them apart. And because they aren't willing to think about our ideas, there is no reason to believe that they would accept anything Tim Hudak or any conservative would say. They, like all progressives, just don't like conservatives and believe that whatever we say is wrong before we've said it.
In this way, those on the left are fundamentally conservative in their own thinking. They are unwilling to accept anything conservatives have to say and want to keep their minds completely pure of anything that we say that might influence them. They are also fundamentally insecure in their own thinking, in that they are unwilling to engage people like me in debate. For my part, since I started my recent series of posts analyzing the way the far left thinks, not one of them has tried to challenge my assumptions about them. Ever since I tried looking at what these people actually believe, I feel a lot more confident about debating them. I feel a lot more confident that I can poke holes in their arguments. But they don't want me to poke holes in their arguments. There's nothing I can teach them and there's nothing worthwhile I have to contribute, and most importantly, they don't want me to challenge their illusions.
Ask yourselves: When's the last time you sat down with a dyed-in-the-wool leftist and just had a conversation with them? When's the last time one of them tried to initiate a conversation with you?
With this video, OPSEU is trying to fight an enemy that they don't understand, and that they don't want to understand.
Now let's talk about the video itself. In it, a taxicab passenger tries and fails to argue the point that he doesn't have to pay a fare if he doesn't want to. He thinks he can get the titular "free ride" and ends up getting hauled off to jail because of it. Then, union boss Warren "Smokey" Thomas shows up, giving the camera the side-eye and talking to his union members about their collective agreements and the sacrifices that have been made to establish them, and how as union members, they should not expect to enjoy the benefits of those collective agreements without paying union dues.
So, not only does this video not even attack Tim Hudak, it totally misses the point of the PC union proposal. We're trying to make sure that union members aren't bullied by their leadership into paying for causes they don't believe in. And how does OPSEU react to such a suggestion? They create a video that tries to bully their membership into paying for causes they don't believe in. If we hadn't had proof that union bosses intimidate their members before (which we did), we can now point to this video as proof.
If they understood that we had a problem with union bullying, then they wouldn't have created a video that deliberately took an aggressive tone against their own people who might have been considering voting PC. Or maybe they did understand and they deliberately chose to go down that path. They either imagined the PC proposal to be something other than what it was, or deliberately misrepresented it as something other than what it was. It's impossible to tell. Either way, they didn't consider our proposal before rejecting it outright.
Now think about how those on the left expect the government to listen to them and to change their ways. But why should the government listen to them? Why, for example, should Harper pay heed to people who so obviously despise him? What is the point? What is to be achieved? What is the benefit of entering into a dialogue with these people?
I am willing to take the time to think carefully about ideas people on the left have. They aren't willing to do the same. When I tell people about what I've discovered these past few months, they say, "Mr. J., there's no reason why you should associate yourself with these people or trouble yourself with their crazy ideas. They're nuts. Leave them alone." Well, yes. But what I am trying to do here is a proof of concept, and I plan to keep right on doing it.
Because those on the left are unwilling to think about my ideas the way I'm thinking about theirs, and because they associate me with their caricatures of what they imagine conservatives to be all about, we can be sure that they are to blame for the breakdown in communication. It is their basic unwillingness to be satisfied that is the problem. It is their fault.
They do not understand that I, and conservatives like me who are willing to entertain their wacky notions, to actually think about them, before throwing them out, are the best deal they are going to get.
It's a better deal than they are willing to give us.
