Fourteen of the sixteen most recent police officers to be killed with guns in Canada were shot with long guns.
Overwhelmingly, police chiefs across the country regard the gun registry as a vital tool that protects their officers especially when they are dealing with domestic disputes. Frank Eisner, chief of police for Greater Sudbury, right in the heart of long gun country in northern Ontario, who strongly supports the registry, has made the point that Sudbury police use the registry, in particular, when called out on cases of domestic disputes and violence in the home.
As Mavis Moore, a seventy-two year old Saskatchewan woman who has been an avid hunter over the years, told the Toronto Star, the gun registry question is “not a matter of rural versus urban. It’s a public safety issue. How many women and children in rural Canada are threatened in their own homes with a gun? More than we want to know, I think.”
Moore, who enjoys guns, supports the registry, not least because she can still remain the time she looked up the barrel of a .22 a man was pointing at her and her mother when she was four years old.
A recent Harris/Decima poll found that 47 per cent of rural women want to keep the registry while 40 per cent would abolish it.
Conservative House leader John Baird ignores the concerns of police officers and rural women.
He represents a riding in the west end of Ottawa where not much more moose hunting goes on than in downtown Toronto. But it’s the dastardly “Toronto elites”, Baird says, who are out to thwart the will of rural Canadians on the issue of the registry. According to Ontario Liberal cabinet minister Glen Murray, when Baird is not out fulminating against “Toronto elites”, he’s hanging out with them enjoying cosmos----a cocktail made with vodka, Triple Sec, cranberry juice and fresh-squeezed lime juice or sweetened lime juice---in the glamorous Byzantium Toronto bar and restaurant. That’s where Rusty (Baird’s nickname) can just get on with being an unabashed member of the elite he claims to disdain.
Baird and Stephen Harper are well aware that polls consistently show that a plurality of Canadians favour keeping the registry. The Harris/Decima poll found 48 per cent of those polled favouring retention, with 38 per cent supporting abolition. But they refuse to compromise on the issue. Changes could be made to the rules of the registry to ensure that it will always be free, easy to access, and with no threat of criminal charges for non-compliance for the first two violations.
The last thing the Conservative high command wants is a solution on the issue that would suit almost everybody. They only care about it as a wedge. They want to wave the bloody shirt of the nefarious registry during the next election.
Baird’s calculation is that even though most of his constituents undoubtedly favour retention of the registry, he won’t pay a political price for his abolitionist stance. He figures that those who are passionate about killing the registry are much more likely to make this the issue that will determine how they vote than is the case for the larger number who would keep the registry.
Good for Baird. He can go on being a poseur on behalf of gun owners, while enjoying cosmos in the heart of wicked Toronto, and seeking the support of Ottawa voters.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
Peacocks and Buzzards: Coming Soon to a Neighbourhood Near You
In these post-crash times, as governments switch from stimulus to cutbacks, North America and Europe are resigning themselves to a long stretch of bad economic times. Unemployment and underemployment, public servant and union bashing and doors closed to the young are hallmarks of this dismal time.
For a few, though---bad times for the many create golden opportunities. Not everyone is hurt by the low wages that accompany high unemployment, or the prospect of a long spell of flat or falling (especially in the U.S.) real estate prices.
While low taxes for the well-heeled do next to nothing to spur economic growth, they do help make life sweet for the haves.
Two types of people who have money---we’re not talking about the super-rich---and who are adapting well among today’s fauna, can be called the peacocks and the buzzards.
The peacocks are a lot richer than the buzzards, but both of these feathered species have found places to sun themselves. Peacocks are those with high incomes----think of partners in corporate law firms----and are typically in their fifties. They’ve spent a ton of money sending their kids to private schools where they learn to network with others of their class. (The education is optional, but high grades are guaranteed even for the mediocre and the lazy, to complement the tuition.)
Even when the peacocks are still groaning under the weight of the bills to dispatch their offspring to Ivy League universities where grade inflation is a la mode, they’ve reached the stage where they want something big for themselves. They’re old enough to hunger for something permanent, a monument to their personal achievement. Flashy cars are no longer enough.
By the time they’re in their fifties, even the wealthy experience shuddering glimpses of their own mortality.
Through the ages, the monument chosen by the rich and the powerful to commemorate themselves has been the grand house, or more accurately the personal mausoleum.
The pharaohs of Egypt oversaw the building of the pyramids where they would be entombed. In them, they planned to luxuriate with their belongings in the next, and eternal life.
Later members of ruling classes had castles and mansions constructed to accord them a measure of immortality.
Today’s peacocks are the latest to display their brilliant tail feathers as they seek the permanency that goes with the grand dwelling. To this end, they purchase large abodes even after their descendants have flown the coop. Just as often, they oversee vast makeovers of their existing homes in fashionable districts.
In these super-renos, everything is torn out of the shell of the existing house, including staircases and walls. Rooms are enlarged, shrunk or jettisoned. Huge new island strewn kitchens are created for the peacocks, as are enormous bathrooms. What people do in these lavish Water Closets, I don’t want to know. Home design and paint specialists are brought in to advise. Temperature controlled wine cellars are installed. Typically, the existing stock of furniture is replaced with the latest designer pieces to go with the renewed edifice.
One man I know of mounted a large Rembrandtesque oil portrait of one of his ancestors along a soaring staircase. He has taken to calling himself William Peter the fifth.
While renoing, the peacocks rent another fashionable house for six or eight months.
Peacocks preen for other peacocks.
Not surprisingly, the peacocks, who are far from being billionaires, are ferociously opposed to any suggestion that they ought to pay higher taxes or should compensate those in their direct or indirect employ more handsomely. Bus drivers, garbage collectors, nurses and teachers are all over paid as far as they are concerned.
Then there are the buzzards, far less elegant than the peacocks, but with a shrewd eye for their own advantage nonetheless. To date, the buzzards have been more common in the United States than in Canada, as a consequence of the shattered housing market in so many American regions. But they are on their game in Canada as well, and the dim outlook for many real estate markets in this country bodes well for these sturdy carrion-eaters.
Buzzards migrate where housing markets have crashed and foreclosures are common. Among their favourite feeding grounds are California, Ohio, Michigan and Florida. Buzzards pick up fairly new homes for as little as twenty per cent of their pre-crash prices in America’s foreclosure capitals.
The expelled former owners and their families have gone who knows where. The buzzards settle where jobs are scarce, pay is low, crime rates are high, biker gangs thrive and parents often turn up with their kids to partake in the offerings at pre-school breakfast programs.
Buzzards hire cheap help to do up their houses and tend their lawns. At the local Wal Mart and second hand stores, they pick up furnishings and appliances at depression prices.
Buzzards are at work in a string of industrial cities in Southern Ontario, from Windsor and St. Catharines, to Welland, Brantford and Hamilton.
Peacocks and buzzards have clawed out spaces for themselves in our Darwinian world.
For a few, though---bad times for the many create golden opportunities. Not everyone is hurt by the low wages that accompany high unemployment, or the prospect of a long spell of flat or falling (especially in the U.S.) real estate prices.
While low taxes for the well-heeled do next to nothing to spur economic growth, they do help make life sweet for the haves.
Two types of people who have money---we’re not talking about the super-rich---and who are adapting well among today’s fauna, can be called the peacocks and the buzzards.
The peacocks are a lot richer than the buzzards, but both of these feathered species have found places to sun themselves. Peacocks are those with high incomes----think of partners in corporate law firms----and are typically in their fifties. They’ve spent a ton of money sending their kids to private schools where they learn to network with others of their class. (The education is optional, but high grades are guaranteed even for the mediocre and the lazy, to complement the tuition.)
Even when the peacocks are still groaning under the weight of the bills to dispatch their offspring to Ivy League universities where grade inflation is a la mode, they’ve reached the stage where they want something big for themselves. They’re old enough to hunger for something permanent, a monument to their personal achievement. Flashy cars are no longer enough.
By the time they’re in their fifties, even the wealthy experience shuddering glimpses of their own mortality.
Through the ages, the monument chosen by the rich and the powerful to commemorate themselves has been the grand house, or more accurately the personal mausoleum.
The pharaohs of Egypt oversaw the building of the pyramids where they would be entombed. In them, they planned to luxuriate with their belongings in the next, and eternal life.
Later members of ruling classes had castles and mansions constructed to accord them a measure of immortality.
Today’s peacocks are the latest to display their brilliant tail feathers as they seek the permanency that goes with the grand dwelling. To this end, they purchase large abodes even after their descendants have flown the coop. Just as often, they oversee vast makeovers of their existing homes in fashionable districts.
In these super-renos, everything is torn out of the shell of the existing house, including staircases and walls. Rooms are enlarged, shrunk or jettisoned. Huge new island strewn kitchens are created for the peacocks, as are enormous bathrooms. What people do in these lavish Water Closets, I don’t want to know. Home design and paint specialists are brought in to advise. Temperature controlled wine cellars are installed. Typically, the existing stock of furniture is replaced with the latest designer pieces to go with the renewed edifice.
One man I know of mounted a large Rembrandtesque oil portrait of one of his ancestors along a soaring staircase. He has taken to calling himself William Peter the fifth.
While renoing, the peacocks rent another fashionable house for six or eight months.
Peacocks preen for other peacocks.
Not surprisingly, the peacocks, who are far from being billionaires, are ferociously opposed to any suggestion that they ought to pay higher taxes or should compensate those in their direct or indirect employ more handsomely. Bus drivers, garbage collectors, nurses and teachers are all over paid as far as they are concerned.
Then there are the buzzards, far less elegant than the peacocks, but with a shrewd eye for their own advantage nonetheless. To date, the buzzards have been more common in the United States than in Canada, as a consequence of the shattered housing market in so many American regions. But they are on their game in Canada as well, and the dim outlook for many real estate markets in this country bodes well for these sturdy carrion-eaters.
Buzzards migrate where housing markets have crashed and foreclosures are common. Among their favourite feeding grounds are California, Ohio, Michigan and Florida. Buzzards pick up fairly new homes for as little as twenty per cent of their pre-crash prices in America’s foreclosure capitals.
The expelled former owners and their families have gone who knows where. The buzzards settle where jobs are scarce, pay is low, crime rates are high, biker gangs thrive and parents often turn up with their kids to partake in the offerings at pre-school breakfast programs.
Buzzards hire cheap help to do up their houses and tend their lawns. At the local Wal Mart and second hand stores, they pick up furnishings and appliances at depression prices.
Buzzards are at work in a string of industrial cities in Southern Ontario, from Windsor and St. Catharines, to Welland, Brantford and Hamilton.
Peacocks and buzzards have clawed out spaces for themselves in our Darwinian world.
Thursday, September 09, 2010
Rob Ford: The Man with the Midas Touch
Toronto mayoral candidate Rob Ford has unveiled his transit plans for the city he hopes to lead.
Ford is a lover of cars and a hater of cyclists. He plans to relegate two wheeled vehicles to the ravines of the city where they can spend time with four legged creatures. He’d like to send trade unionists and public employees to the ravines, as well.
As for streetcars, with or without dedicated lanes, Ford wants fewer of them. They slow down the flow of the SUVs.
To help move transit riders, he hopes to put the big bucks into building subways. His plan, with a price tag of $4.8 billion, was likely costed on the back of a lottery ticket. It bears about that much connection with reality.
Ford is supposed to be the “stop-the-gravy-train” guy. He spends sleepless nights counting rate-payers jumping over a fence.
That’s why his transit plan is so remarkable. New subways are by far the most expensive way to extend public transit. For every kilometer of additional subway, you can build more than fifteen kilometers (that’s a low estimate) of above ground transit lines.
How does Ford plan to pay for his “plan”? He’s going to try to hit up Queen’s Park for the money. And who pays the bills at Queen’s Park? Taxpayers----a lot of them living in Toronto! So while Ford safeguards the coins in your front pocket, he hopes to extract the folding money from your wallet.
With his Cadillac taste, Rob Ford is Toronto’s Goldfinger, the man with the Midas Touch.
Ford is a lover of cars and a hater of cyclists. He plans to relegate two wheeled vehicles to the ravines of the city where they can spend time with four legged creatures. He’d like to send trade unionists and public employees to the ravines, as well.
As for streetcars, with or without dedicated lanes, Ford wants fewer of them. They slow down the flow of the SUVs.
To help move transit riders, he hopes to put the big bucks into building subways. His plan, with a price tag of $4.8 billion, was likely costed on the back of a lottery ticket. It bears about that much connection with reality.
Ford is supposed to be the “stop-the-gravy-train” guy. He spends sleepless nights counting rate-payers jumping over a fence.
That’s why his transit plan is so remarkable. New subways are by far the most expensive way to extend public transit. For every kilometer of additional subway, you can build more than fifteen kilometers (that’s a low estimate) of above ground transit lines.
How does Ford plan to pay for his “plan”? He’s going to try to hit up Queen’s Park for the money. And who pays the bills at Queen’s Park? Taxpayers----a lot of them living in Toronto! So while Ford safeguards the coins in your front pocket, he hopes to extract the folding money from your wallet.
With his Cadillac taste, Rob Ford is Toronto’s Goldfinger, the man with the Midas Touch.
Monday, September 06, 2010
Why the Gun Registry Vote Matters to the NDP
The outcome of the upcoming vote in parliament on the long gun registry matters to the NDP because the party has been suffering from a “What do you stand for" problem.
People with long memories know what the NDP has contributed to Canadian life. Medicare tops the list, followed by public auto insurance in a number of provinces, the championing of social programs, including decent pensions, and access for everyone who qualifies to post-secondary education. Once upon a time, the NDP fought for Canadian control of the Canadian economy, pushed for the creation of a publicly owned national petroleum company, Petrocan, opposed NAFTA, and even discussed the idea that wage and salary earners should someday own and control the enterprises for which they worked.
The CCF-NDP was established during the Great Depression to provide a sweeping program for the re-construction of Canadian society and the economy to replace capitalism with a broadly egalitarian alternative. Some called it the cooperative commonwealth, others social democracy and still others socialism.
The premise that drove the party and movement for decades was clear: by its very nature capitalism is an exploitative system that can never deliver true equality. The vision of a new kind of society motivated tens of thousands of Canadians to devote their lives to building the party.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the ideas and values alluded to above have very little to do with today’s NDP. If I were to tell a class of my students that the NDP currently stands for the transformation of Canadian society, they’d look at me with the smiles one reserves for those who ought to hang up their skates and give others a little ice time.
For the past quarter century, those who run the federal NDP have been dedicated to the proposition that the party should position itself close to the centre of the political spectrum, and should advance proposals that are pragmatic and practical. If fully implemented, the current NDP platform might slow the widening of the wealth and income gaps in Canada. That’s not a bad thing. But the party has trashed the vision thing. For those who believe that capitalism is a fundamentally flawed system, that Canada is unwise to put all its eggs in the basket of the American Empire, or who think that we have little time to halt the onset of irreversible environmental catastrophe, the NDP offers very little. Today’s New Democrats are liberals who are not even in much of a hurry.
That’s why the long gun registry vote matters so much to the federal NDP.
Once upon a time, the CCF did have a genuine base in rural Canada. When Tommy Douglas led the Saskatchewan CCF to office in 1944, the central plank in his platform was to protect a farmer’s home quarter section of land from foreclosure by the banks. Since then, the farm base of the NDP has steadily eroded as family farms have disappeared to be replaced by agribiz. Today, the NDP’s rural base is centred in regions where mining and forest products are the dominant sectors. Plenty of people in those regions own long guns and hunt.
For years, the gun lobby in Canada has propagated the idea among rural gun owners that there’s a basic difference between registering a car and a gun. Unlike the case of a car, registering a gun, the lobbyists say, is about freedom. The state ought not to know how many guns you have in your possession. Even if you make the registration free, and reduce the penalty for failure to register a fine of one dollar, they will object. For them, this is an issue of principle.
The principle, of course, has nothing to do with the Canadian experience. It is an outgrowth of the American Revolution and the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which the U.S. Supreme Court interprets as giving individual Americans the right to bear arms.
Pushing the Second Amendment north into Canada is exactly what the gun lobby wants. This is a game for Tea Party wannabes, such as the Harperites. It makes no sense for New Democrats to be sucked into this maelstrom. Even if some members of the NDP are prepared to play games about the validity of registering long guns, the party cannot win a battle about who is prepared to serve up the biggest Tea Party.
Let the Harperites occupy that ground. As the facts come out, it becomes ever more clear that the long gun registry is a worthwhile and quite inexpensive law enforcement tool that saves lives. Plenty of people, it turns out, use long guns to assault other people and to take their own lives. Weapons need to be registered.
The flip side in urban Canada is also clear for the NDP.
If NDP votes in the House of Commons make the difference in killing the long gun registry, the Liberals will never let urban voters forget it. It will be their rallying cry in the cities in the next election. They will say that a vote for the NDP is a vote for Harper.
The last time that tactic worked big time for the Liberals was in 1993. I canvassed in Spadina in Toronto for the NDP during that election. At the door, I met people who were quite well disposed to the NDP but who were desperate to boot out the Conservatives. They planned to vote Liberal to get the job done. The fear of Harper’s dictatorial and irrational policies has been growing all summer. The desire to boot out Harper and to use whatever instrument is available to get the job done is on the rise.
The NDP, a party that doesn’t seem to have stood for much for a long time, is in danger of watching its votes slip away to the Liberals. And the clincher could well be the gun registry, an issue that is both substance and symbol. If the NDP can credibly be blamed for the demise of the registry, plenty of people in the cities will use that as their rationale for voting Liberal.
Watch out Jack.
People with long memories know what the NDP has contributed to Canadian life. Medicare tops the list, followed by public auto insurance in a number of provinces, the championing of social programs, including decent pensions, and access for everyone who qualifies to post-secondary education. Once upon a time, the NDP fought for Canadian control of the Canadian economy, pushed for the creation of a publicly owned national petroleum company, Petrocan, opposed NAFTA, and even discussed the idea that wage and salary earners should someday own and control the enterprises for which they worked.
The CCF-NDP was established during the Great Depression to provide a sweeping program for the re-construction of Canadian society and the economy to replace capitalism with a broadly egalitarian alternative. Some called it the cooperative commonwealth, others social democracy and still others socialism.
The premise that drove the party and movement for decades was clear: by its very nature capitalism is an exploitative system that can never deliver true equality. The vision of a new kind of society motivated tens of thousands of Canadians to devote their lives to building the party.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the ideas and values alluded to above have very little to do with today’s NDP. If I were to tell a class of my students that the NDP currently stands for the transformation of Canadian society, they’d look at me with the smiles one reserves for those who ought to hang up their skates and give others a little ice time.
For the past quarter century, those who run the federal NDP have been dedicated to the proposition that the party should position itself close to the centre of the political spectrum, and should advance proposals that are pragmatic and practical. If fully implemented, the current NDP platform might slow the widening of the wealth and income gaps in Canada. That’s not a bad thing. But the party has trashed the vision thing. For those who believe that capitalism is a fundamentally flawed system, that Canada is unwise to put all its eggs in the basket of the American Empire, or who think that we have little time to halt the onset of irreversible environmental catastrophe, the NDP offers very little. Today’s New Democrats are liberals who are not even in much of a hurry.
That’s why the long gun registry vote matters so much to the federal NDP.
Once upon a time, the CCF did have a genuine base in rural Canada. When Tommy Douglas led the Saskatchewan CCF to office in 1944, the central plank in his platform was to protect a farmer’s home quarter section of land from foreclosure by the banks. Since then, the farm base of the NDP has steadily eroded as family farms have disappeared to be replaced by agribiz. Today, the NDP’s rural base is centred in regions where mining and forest products are the dominant sectors. Plenty of people in those regions own long guns and hunt.
For years, the gun lobby in Canada has propagated the idea among rural gun owners that there’s a basic difference between registering a car and a gun. Unlike the case of a car, registering a gun, the lobbyists say, is about freedom. The state ought not to know how many guns you have in your possession. Even if you make the registration free, and reduce the penalty for failure to register a fine of one dollar, they will object. For them, this is an issue of principle.
The principle, of course, has nothing to do with the Canadian experience. It is an outgrowth of the American Revolution and the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which the U.S. Supreme Court interprets as giving individual Americans the right to bear arms.
Pushing the Second Amendment north into Canada is exactly what the gun lobby wants. This is a game for Tea Party wannabes, such as the Harperites. It makes no sense for New Democrats to be sucked into this maelstrom. Even if some members of the NDP are prepared to play games about the validity of registering long guns, the party cannot win a battle about who is prepared to serve up the biggest Tea Party.
Let the Harperites occupy that ground. As the facts come out, it becomes ever more clear that the long gun registry is a worthwhile and quite inexpensive law enforcement tool that saves lives. Plenty of people, it turns out, use long guns to assault other people and to take their own lives. Weapons need to be registered.
The flip side in urban Canada is also clear for the NDP.
If NDP votes in the House of Commons make the difference in killing the long gun registry, the Liberals will never let urban voters forget it. It will be their rallying cry in the cities in the next election. They will say that a vote for the NDP is a vote for Harper.
The last time that tactic worked big time for the Liberals was in 1993. I canvassed in Spadina in Toronto for the NDP during that election. At the door, I met people who were quite well disposed to the NDP but who were desperate to boot out the Conservatives. They planned to vote Liberal to get the job done. The fear of Harper’s dictatorial and irrational policies has been growing all summer. The desire to boot out Harper and to use whatever instrument is available to get the job done is on the rise.
The NDP, a party that doesn’t seem to have stood for much for a long time, is in danger of watching its votes slip away to the Liberals. And the clincher could well be the gun registry, an issue that is both substance and symbol. If the NDP can credibly be blamed for the demise of the registry, plenty of people in the cities will use that as their rationale for voting Liberal.
Watch out Jack.
Sunday, September 05, 2010
Harper’s Party: The Curious Case of the Missing Conservatives
Despite its label and occasional bows to the lineage of John A. Macdonald, Harper’s Party is without conservatives.
Harper’s bazaar is inhabited by enthusiasts from the Christian Right, anti-government devotees, advocates of economic and political union with the United States, opponents of abortion, people fearful of gay pride festivities, haters of trade unions, those who think you should be nice to everyone who is not different, lobbyists for the oil industry, and those who fear that global warming is a pointy-headed conspiracy. Binding them together is a proverb: To those who have much, more shall be given; to those who have not, less is only plenty.
Missing in this potpourri are conservatives. Traditional conservatives are not frightened of the state. They don’t fear the census, and they don’t believe that registering cars, or guns is step one on the way to the shadowy men in the black helicopters swooping down and taking our shotguns away. They don’t think that someday those with four-wheel drive vehicles may have to take up arms against the state.
They didn’t support the original Tea Party in which white men dressed up as native people threw tea into Boston Harbour; and they don’t support today’s Tea Party, financed by billionaires, and dedicated to the proposition that ignorance is a qualification for political leadership. They are inclined to the view that the state should control the means of violence and do not adhere to the notion that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution(that the U.S. Supreme Court interprets as giving Americans the right to bear arms) is the fount of liberty.
Traditional Canadian conservatives regarded the strong state as essential for the construction of a country next door to the United States. They were prepared to underwrite railways they thought were necessary for the creation of a transcontinental Canada. When they were convinced that it was required---as in the cases of hydro electricity, bankrupt railways, the sale of liquor, and broadcasting----they were prepared to use crown ownership to achieve their ends. They were elitists, who acted on behalf of big business; they were skeptical about democracy, and they didn’t have a populist bone in their bodies. For a socialist like me, they were not to love.
But let’s not confuse conservatives with Harper’s crowd. On both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, the elements that make up today’s political right constitute a combustible, unstable force that threatens the viability of democracy. In the U.S. where they are stronger and can rally vast throngs in the streets, they have immobilized a timid Democratic administration and its Congressional allies. In Canada, where they hold office in Ottawa, they have to be more circumspect, waiting for the day when they have a majority and can let loose their full dictatorial impulses.
If any traditional conservatives are worried by the spectacle before us, now is the time to speak up.
Harper’s bazaar is inhabited by enthusiasts from the Christian Right, anti-government devotees, advocates of economic and political union with the United States, opponents of abortion, people fearful of gay pride festivities, haters of trade unions, those who think you should be nice to everyone who is not different, lobbyists for the oil industry, and those who fear that global warming is a pointy-headed conspiracy. Binding them together is a proverb: To those who have much, more shall be given; to those who have not, less is only plenty.
Missing in this potpourri are conservatives. Traditional conservatives are not frightened of the state. They don’t fear the census, and they don’t believe that registering cars, or guns is step one on the way to the shadowy men in the black helicopters swooping down and taking our shotguns away. They don’t think that someday those with four-wheel drive vehicles may have to take up arms against the state.
They didn’t support the original Tea Party in which white men dressed up as native people threw tea into Boston Harbour; and they don’t support today’s Tea Party, financed by billionaires, and dedicated to the proposition that ignorance is a qualification for political leadership. They are inclined to the view that the state should control the means of violence and do not adhere to the notion that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution(that the U.S. Supreme Court interprets as giving Americans the right to bear arms) is the fount of liberty.
Traditional Canadian conservatives regarded the strong state as essential for the construction of a country next door to the United States. They were prepared to underwrite railways they thought were necessary for the creation of a transcontinental Canada. When they were convinced that it was required---as in the cases of hydro electricity, bankrupt railways, the sale of liquor, and broadcasting----they were prepared to use crown ownership to achieve their ends. They were elitists, who acted on behalf of big business; they were skeptical about democracy, and they didn’t have a populist bone in their bodies. For a socialist like me, they were not to love.
But let’s not confuse conservatives with Harper’s crowd. On both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, the elements that make up today’s political right constitute a combustible, unstable force that threatens the viability of democracy. In the U.S. where they are stronger and can rally vast throngs in the streets, they have immobilized a timid Democratic administration and its Congressional allies. In Canada, where they hold office in Ottawa, they have to be more circumspect, waiting for the day when they have a majority and can let loose their full dictatorial impulses.
If any traditional conservatives are worried by the spectacle before us, now is the time to speak up.
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