Aberhart and Harper on Crusade

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neocons Stole my Country

2011-08-16T04:37:00.000-07:00

Maurice Vellacott's administrative assistant, Timothy Bloedow, once accused me of hating Christians. This was in response to my criticism of his critique of Dr. John Stackhouse's review of Marci McDonald's book: The Armageddon Factor.

(Did you get all that?)

Though Prof. Stackhouse was critical of McDonald for focusing too much on the Apocalyptic nature of some religious groups, he agreed with her concern for reconstructionism. "There are Christians about whom even other Christians should be wary, especially those who talk about things like theocracy and Christian government."

Bloedow runs a website called christiangovernance.ca, promoting just those things that we should be wary of.

In his new book Faith in the Halls of Power, D. Michael Lindsay reveals that the Moral Majority/Christian Right, was inspired by Francis Schaeffer, who ran a commune in Switzerland, promoting a second American revolution. This time they would not be taking on the British, but the Humanists, reclaiming the United States for Christianity.

Their brand of Christianity, where the Bible is not just the Truth, but the only Truth. Schaeffer writes that 'If we accept part of the Bible as a myth, we might as well be consequent and accept the whole Bible as a myth. Why, I can have more respect for a Teddy boy who tells me that killing a friend with a bicycle chain is all right. He at least has a philosophy.'

There is no compromise.

Schaeffer's commune became the launching pad for the Moral Majority/Christian Right. He encouraged his followers to become active, starting the anti-abortion movement, as a test for the power of pugnaciousness. Presidential hopeful (I hope not), Michelle Bachmann, claims that Schaeffer influenced her own views on abortion.

Lindsay tells us that while many Evangelical leaders initially agreed with the necessity for such a movement, others soon lost the taste:

Even though the Moral Majority succeeded in galvanizing evangelicals in the 1980s, as early as 1985, leaders within the group were growing uneasy about the alliance between religion and politics. Moral Majority vice president Cal Thomas resigned from the organization to pursue a career as a columnist. When I interviewed Thomas, he told me that evangelical political action at the time was — and according to him still is — "operating in the flesh and attaching God's name to it.... It's doomed to futility."

In 1996, Thomas and evangelical pastor Ed Dobson (no relation to Focus on the Family's James Dobson) wrote Blinded by Might, in which they asked, "How can [evangelicals] impose a morality on people that you can't impose on yourself?" Citing rampant materialism, sexual promiscuity, and evangelical hubris, Thomas and Dobson renounced their involvement with the Religious Right. (Lindsay p.56)

But the worst of them kept going, amassing fortunes, feeding off people's fears and prejudices.

Surprisingly, however, the most scathing denunciation came from Schaeffer's own son, Francis Jr.

In his book Crazy for God, he suggests that the movement is one of rampant racism, ignorance, perversion and greed.

Most of us would agree, but as expected, the right-wing noise machine sprung into action, launching attacks on their guru's son.

Everyone Has a Manifesto

Geert Wilders has a manifesto. Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist, has a manifesto (which is not unlike that of Wilders).

Francis Schaeffer himself, argued that the Communists had a manifesto and the Humanists had a manifesto, so the Christians should also have a manifesto.

A written statement declaring their intentions, motives, and views. So he wrote one, which became the guide for the Moral Majority/Religious Right.

After researching this movement for several years now, I've determined that somewhere there is a Canadian Manifesto. There has to be.

The connections between the Conservative-Reform-Alliance Party and the American Neoconservative/Religious Right movement, are too profound to be random.

So I've decided to make that the title of this particular body of research, as I organize my writings and thoughts. (Is that possible?)

The Canadian Manifesto will lay bare the war on women, gays and ethnics, and the attempts to turn Canada into a theocracy. It will also reveal how the real power in Canada has been sent South. The final chapter of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine.

Not a conspiracy theory, but in the words of Joe Friday, "just the facts". However, I will not change the names to protect anyone, since none are innocent.

The New anti-Abortionists: Young Political Activists or Youthful Vigilantes?

2011-08-09T06:54:00.000-07:00

I Burned my Bra For This? REAL Women of Canada and the Men Behind Them

The inspiration for the Moral Majority/Religious Right, in the United States, was the central government's passing of anti-segregation laws. However, the art of political activism by the movement, came from a man by the name of Francis Schaeffer.

If we are to understand the Harper government, we have to accept that everything they do or have done, comes from the U.S. Republican/Tea Party/Religious Right.

I could stop searching for these links, and instead focus on their truly Canadian-based actions, since it would be a much shorter list. The only problem is, that I haven't found any.

The election of Ronald Reagan in the U.S., gave the evangelical activists an "in". The election of Stephen Harper has done the same in Canada, and as Marci McDonald reminds us in The Armageddon Factor, they will now be a permanent fixture on Parliament Hill.

Francis Schaeffer and How the Evangelicals Stormed the Bastille

Reagan's 1980 victory, gave rise to many quasi-religious organizations, like Focus on the Family, who helped to finance Harper's 2006 victory, by placing radio ads on over 100 Canadian stations, against same-sex marriage. Harper's rallying cry.

The Canadian chapter of Focus on Family, was started by Stephen Harper's former chief of staff, Darrel Reid. The executive included two top ranking officials from their American parent organization, and $1.6 million from Dobson himself (Armageddon Factor, p.86), who claimed to be concerned with Canada's moral decay.

However, the notion that evangelicals should play a more active role in politics, came from Francis Schaeffer, the man who coined the term, or at least made popular the term, "secular humanism".

He believed that putting people above religion was wrong, and he was determined to do something about it. So he established a commune in Switzerland, L'Abri (shelter), devoted to Christian thought and activism. (There is a Canadian chapter on Bowen Island in B.C.)

When Michael Lindsay was researching his book: Faith in the Halls of Power, he found that many Religious Right leaders that he interviewed, had either visited the commune or had been heavily influenced by Schaeffer's writings.

One of the first campaigns that Schaeffer ignited, was the anti-abortion movement, that mobilized his followers to take action. It was perhaps the first time that orthodox Catholics and Protestants united for a common cause.

Gwen Lanholt, now president of REAL Women of Canada, was part of that movement.

And as a founding director of the Civitas Society*, the policy arm of the Harper government, she has a great deal of influence with the powers that be.

Youthful Vigilantes

Brian Lilley recently interviewed a young woman, named Alissa Golob, on his Fox News North/Sun TV Byline.

Golob is an anti-abortion activist, involved in a campaign to "shock" people into joining her cause, by posting images of aborted fetuses (emblazoned with a swastika). I've mentioned this in another post, because of yet another American inspired group, the Canadian Constitution Foundation, who had taken up the cause.

Golob believes that the graphic image campaign will work the same as MADD's (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) images of car wrecks and the police's of gang violence. However, they are about self-preservation.

No doubt the signs will impact some, but most of us have an idea of what an aborted fetus looks like.

However, this isn't really about the abortion debate, but the modus operandi of this new youth movement, attached to the broader neoconservative movement.

Golob brings up the work of her American counterpart, Lila Rose, a young woman who believes that abortions should be performed in the public square, so people can see how gross they are.

That may sound a little nuts, but Rose's involvement draws attention to a larger issue.

The benefactors.

Lila Rose is a graduate of Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute, (so is Rob Anders and Karl Rove) and friend of James O'Keefe. O'Keefe was involved in the demise of ACORN, an organization that worked for the poor, especially African-Americans. The Neocons wanted it gone.

So two young activists, O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, went undercover to discredit the organization, and though their videos were later determined to be "highly edited", they were able to paint the non-profit group as "pimps".

But they couldn't have pulled it off without the help of Fox News and Andrew J. Breitbart. You might remember Breitbart as the one responsible for destroying the career of Anthony Weiner.

This has gone from political activism to dangerous vigilante justice against their perceived enemies. They want to destroy anyone and everything associated with a progressive and just society.

For Lila Rose, it's Planned Parenthood. She helped to perpetrate a hoax against PP, to "prove" that they were sex traffickers.

Where Does Alissa Golob Fit in to All This?

At the beginning I mentioned Francis Schaeffer, who inspired the Moral Majority/Christian Right. Schaeffer was a dominionist, who believed that before the Second Coming of Christ, the U.S. must be returned to a Christian nation.

Canada's dominionism, aka reconstructionism, is championed by people like Darrel Reid and David Sweet (amoung many, many others), both involved in the Work Research Foundation, and Redeemer University. (Sweet also Canadian founder of Promise Keepers)

Redeemer University, a private for-profit school, received three million from the Harper government as part of the Canada Action Plan.

Alissa Golob is a graduate of Redeemer, one of many of her fellow students, turned activists for the movement. And while she claims to be pro-life, it's pretty clear that she is just anti-abortion. She does not encourage birth control or "safe sex".

Because those are some of the best defenses against abortion.

Better access to contraception, higher quality sex education and shifting social norms have contributed to a 36.9 per cent decline in Canada’s teen birth and abortion rate between 1996 and 2006, according to a report released today by the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada.

Other initiatives that Golob could adopt would be eradicating poverty and improving health care.

But that will never happen.

The group that Golob works for, Campaign Life Coalition, also has Planned Parenthood in their crosshairs.

The Harper government has already defunded them at home and abroad.

The Campaign Life Coalition also had a hand in the success of Stockwell Day, by selling 130,000 memberships to the Alliance Party, on his behalf.

So do you see what we're up against?

Fox News, the American Religious Right and Stephen Harper. Jagged lightening, rumbling thunder and gale-force winds.

Batten down the hatches, because it's going to be one hell of a storm.

Footnotes:

* Civitas Society: Founding President: William Gairdner (Reform Party)

Other Past Presidents: Tom Flanagan (Reform Party and Calgary School), William Robson, and Lorne Gunter

Founding Directors: Janet Ajzenstat, Ted Byfield (Reform Party), Michel Coren, Jacques Dufresne, Tom Flanagan, David Frum, William Gairdner, Jason Kenney, Gwen Landolt, Ezra Levant, Tom Long, Mark Magner, William Robson, David E. Somerville (National Citizens Coalition), Michael Walker (Fraser Institute)

Right-Wing Women and Their "Christian Values"

2011-08-07T04:55:00.000-07:00

I Burned my Bra For This? REAL Women of Canada and the Men Behind Them

The new women's movement, operating within the neoconservative movement, is bizarre to say the least. They are vocal opponents of rights for women, and advocate for a patriarchal society.

And they do this through the broader Christian Right revolution that is influencing many governments, including ours; all done under the banner of "family values" and "Christian values".

So what's it all about?

Hypocrisy is a "Christian Value"?

The catalyst for REAL Women of Canada was Liberal cabinet minister, Judy Erola, who championed women's rights.

For Beverly LaHaye and her Concerned Women of America, it was
feminist leader Betty Friedan.

For Phyllis Schlafly and her Eagle Forum, it was power.

Schafly was one of the original anti-feminist voices, who launched a decades long campaign against the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment). However, she stepped up her campaign when Ronald Reagan was elected, who himself stated, that he wanted it gone.

Reagan had run for the Republican leadership three times, but was rejected because he was considered to be too extreme, especially with his anti-communist stance.

The third time was the charm, but only because he allowed the Religious Right to handle his campaign, led by the late Paul Weyrich.

Once elected, he was forced to make good on his promises, and allow the "evangelicals" to take a leading role in policy making.

One of those evangelicals was Gary Bauer, who became Reagan's domestic policy advisor. Bauer gave Schlafly and her followers an "in".

Bauer's first order of business, after silencing his staff who were making outrageous statements to the press, was to "usurp the feminists".

Women belonged in the home, popping out babies and propping up papas. Career women were threatening the family, and children in daycare were being "brainwashed".

We get the message. But do they?

Bauer's wife was a career woman, and her children were put in daycare at the earliest possible moment. Carol Bauer claimed that she went back to work the day she came home from the hospital.

Beverly LaHaye once stated that she only felt fulfilled when she was working outside the home.

Phyllis Schafly is a Harvard educated lawyer, the author of several books, and twice ran for Congress.

Gwen Landholt, President of REAL Women of Canada, is also a lawyer. I'm pretty sure that's considered to be a career.

In fact, the women involved in this anti-feminist movement, have made CAREERS out of their involvement in this anti-feminist movement. There is a circuit of conferences that they attend, enormous numbers of publications that have to be printed and distributed, websites that need to be maintained, and interviews on radio and television, where they must make an appearance.

And most receive a pay cheque, while preaching against the very thing that they are doing.

So we could then say that hypocrisy is now a "Christian value".

Self Loathing is a "Christian Value"?

Combing through the websites of these anti-feminist organizations, you really get the sense that these people hate women. They have become so focused on raising the males to the level of domestic gods, that they have forgotten the importance of protecting, not only women's rights, which they believe should not exist, but women themselves.

When Statistics Canada released its report on domestic violence, Gwen Landholt went ballistic, claiming that men were often the victims of domestic violence too.

Phyllis Schafly opposes any money going to protect women from domestic abuse, or even raise awareness to the problem.

Feminist ideology about the goal of gender-neutrality and the absence of innate differences between males and females goes out the window when it comes to the subject of domestic violence. Feminist dogma is that the law should assume men are batterers and women are victims.

What nonsense.

Does passing laws against drunk drivers mean that we assume that every driver is intoxicated. It's about protection against those who are.

These right-wing women's movements fear that if we raise too much awareness, it will threaten their idea of the "family". It could lead to too many divorces, if battered women seek a way out.

They blame the woman for everything.

They believe that "single mothers" are a scourge, but what of the men who made them single mothers? The boyfriends who didn't want the responsibility of raising a child? Men who thought they'd found better or simply didn't want to be married anymore?

Their counterparts, like the Promise Keepers take care of that I guess, encouraging men to take responsibility, and not worry if they knock the little woman around now and then. The misogynist females will take care of that by attacking laws that could risk jail time.

They are the man. They are the god. Grunt, grunt!

What a horrible philosophy. You would think that if they really cared about "family values" they would not want to see children raised in an abusive home. But they don't care, just so long as that home includes both a mother and a father.

I shudder to think what some "conservative" women must endure, simply because they fear what would happen if they decided to opt out. Not only fear from the abusive husband, but fear of the wrath of people like Landholt and Schaffly.

So we could then say that "self loathing" in the form of female misogyny is now a "Christian value".

Love of money is a "Christian Value"?

In his new book, Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, Michael Lindsay reminds us that evangelism is entrepreneurial.

It's big business, and every big business needs a steady cash flow, if the business is to survive.

Lindsay tells us that in order to keep funds flowing, many of these groups need "a devil". Something they can demonize. And the only way they can effectively stave off this "devil" is with your money.

Gwen Landholt, president of REAL Women, stated that Paul Martin did them a huge favour with his same-sex marriage bill, suggesting that they owed him a debt of gratitude. Their membership swelled and the donations soared "for the first time since the abortion debate". (Armegeddon Factor, p. 74)

The Religious Right/Christian Right/Moral Majority is run like a huge multinational corporation, and many people are becoming enormously wealthy because of it. And remember that as "religious" organizations, they pay NO TAXES. They contribute nothing to the public purse, but want to dictate how it is spent.

And the money flows.

Anti-feminism, abortion, the "homosexual agenda". All money in the bank. Doesn't matter what their own personal views may be, it's what they can sell.

I'm reminded of a story told by former evangelical crusader, Charles Templeton, about Billy Graham. Both men did the circuit together, but Templeton was becoming disillusioned with what they were selling, especially the story of creation.

So he went to Graham, and asked him how he could accept creationism as 'fact' when there was irrefutable evidence that the world had evolved over millions of years. Graham, an intelligent man, told him "I've discovered something in my ministry: when I take the Bible literally, when I proclaim it as the word of God, my preaching has power." (Farewell to God, p. 7-8)

He didn't have to believe it, he only had to market it.

I have no real problem with Billy Graham, and respect the fact that he was the first modern day "crusader" to remove the ropes that separated black followers at these events. But that does say a lot about the movement.

So we could then say that the quest for money is now a "Christian value".

Racism is a "Christian Value"?

The newest fundraising campaigns for many of these organizations, is the "devil" of Islam, and the fear that Muslims will out breed the white race. Not unlike Harper's National Citizens Coalition, that ran a lucrative campaign in the early 1980s, when they raised the alarm that the Asians would soon out breed white Canadians. They had it all worked out.

Link Byfield, now a member of the Wildrose Party in Alberta, spoke at a REAL Women's conference, where he sounded the alarm over a new set of "breeders".

Mr. Byfield's talk was originally to have been on "The Effect of Feminism on the Media", but he declared that the topic was simply too depressing. He spoke, instead, on his view of "Three Futures for Mankind," two of which are quite dark, while one is bright. Which will become our eventual fate?

Scene I. If Islam Prevails

An invasion by Islam will not be by force of arms, as they do not have the technology for that. The power of Islam is in its birth rate. Islam cannot be removed or replaced, and it grows by way of its large families. In Britain, there are entire Muslim communities, with mosques going up everywhere. Although Muslims share the Christian notion of family, Islam also demands submission. Democracy is a Christian philosophy and, therefore, does not exist or, at best, is only a peripheral force in most Muslim countries.

Link's father, Ted Byfield, was one of the founders of both the Reform Party and the Civitas Society, the policy arm of the Harper government. About as "fundamentalist" as you can get, he once stated that the only thing that government should legislate was morality.

Link Byfield was also one of the founders of the Northern Foundation, which became an umbrella group for Canada's far right.

"... the Northern Foundation was the creation of a number of generally extreme right-wing conservatives, including Anne Hartmann (a director of REAL Women), Geoffrey Wasteneys (A long-standing member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada), George Potter (also a member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada), author Peter Brimelow, Link Byfield (son of Ted Byfield and himself publisher/president of Alberta Report), and Stephen Harper." (Of Passionate Intensity, p. 121)

Harper would later say that he was kicked out of the Northern Foundation because he wasn't right-wing enough. (Hard-Right Turn: The New Face of Neo-Conservatism in Canada, p.430)

However, I find that hard to believe, since their views are in line with his policies.

When it was learned that neo-Nazis had infiltrated the Reform Party, Harper and his boss Preston Manning claimed not to know. But one, Rob Overfield, insisted that he told the Reform Party leadership, and was assured that they had no problem with it. (Report to the Solicitor General of Canada Security Intelligence Review Committee December 9, 1994)

"The expulsion enraged the Heritage Front, which saw the Reform Party's policies as very similar to, if not indistinguishable from, its own. How could a party that went on record opposing immigration policies that "radically alter" Canada's ethnic make-up, turn around and shun a group like the Heritage Front, [Wolfgang] Droege asked, when the Heritage Front supports the very same approach? Privately, spokesmen for B'nai Brith and the Canadian Jewish Congress admitted that Droege had a good point." (Web of Hate p. 243-44))

How is Byfield's claim that Muslims will out breed us any different from the Heritage Front or the English Defense league?

Hatred has just gone legit.

Isn't it ironic though, that throughout the 1990s, we could refer to Stephen Harper as being from the extreme right, and his party as neoconservatives. Yet today, just linking him to the Chicago School, will get you fired.

However, I guess we could say that racism is now a "Christian value".

Why Can't Feminists be Christians?

"The package included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things." Stephen Harper speech to Council for National Policy

Why do these Religious Right groups assume that feminists are Godless? According to John Baldock, who wrote a wonderful book, Women in the Bible:

Apart from a few women such as Eve, Mary (the mother of Jesus) and Mary Magdalene, the women in the Bible are generally eclipsed by their male counterparts.

This state of affairs not only mirrors the status assigned to women in Western society over the last 2,000 years, it also reflects the patriarchal nature of both the Jewish and Christian religions. And yet a closer study of the Bible reveals that women were once regarded as the equals of men rather than subject to them. We read of women who were priestesses in the ancient religions of the Near East, who served as judges and prophets to the early Israelites, and who saved the Jewish people on more than one occasion from extinction at the hands of their enemies. Even Wisdom, which is described in the Book of Proverbs as the 'fountain of life', was personified as a woman. (Introduction)

Religious scholar, Rita Gross, has also written extensively on feminism and religion.

They can be at odds but don't have to be.

So why has feminism become such a catalyst for the right-wing evangelical movement?

It's because if women want equality and careers, they won't be home making babies. It's that simple. It's why they have convinced the Harper government to write tax laws favouring single wage earner, heterosexual, married couples.

Now that across Europe they are raising the alarm about the return of fascism, we should be able to have an adult conversation about it. When I was in my 20s, I became interested in the Nazi movement in Germany, not because I sympathized, but because I was curious how an uneducated gutter rat, was able to become one of the most powerful men in the world.

It did not happen overnight.

If you remove the shadow of the Holocaust, not by denying that it happened, because it very much did and was horrendous, but simply by studying the success of the movement; you can learn a lot.

At the time, people in Germany never thought of Hitler as a dictator. When his party came to power in 1933, most adopted a wait and see attitude, not sure that he could deliver on his many promises.

They grew to like his nationalist stand and his promotion of the military. And they liked the fact that he was trying to create a true German identity. Something they could be proud of.

In Hitler's Beneficiaries, Götz Aly writes that "From its earliest days the Hitler regime favoured families over single people and childless couples." They introduced "joint tax returns for couples" and graduated income tax.

None of these things are wrong, and the promotion of family is not a bad thing, so long as you include all families. Hitler supported a nuclear Aryan-German family. The Religious Right supports a nuclear Judeo-Christian family.

Aly also points out the Nazi love of polls and their use of think tanks to sell their message.

The Holocaust was the result of nationalism run amok.

In Europe, many are seeing a return of fascism, and anti-fascist protest groups are emerging. If Canadians can't see that this new right-wing movement, is a form of fascism, then I'll just call this my "European edition".

Sadly, most Christians in Canada don't share the beliefs of the movement, but the noisy Christian Right, are the only voices being heard.

Harper's War on Women Was Launched in the USA

2011-08-05T05:05:00.001-07:00

I Burned my Bra For This? REAL Women of Canada and the Men Behind Them

"The woman who is truly Spirit-filled will want to be totally submissive to her husband . . . This is a truly liberated woman. Submission is God's design for women."BEVERLY LAHAYE, The Spirit-Controlled Woman

One evening in 1978 Beverly LaHaye was watching television with her husband. On the tube Barbara Walters was interviewing the feminist leader Betty Friedan, who suggested that she represented many women in America.

According to the story that LaHaye has repeated countless times, she immediately sprang to her feet and declared, "Betty Friedan doesn't speak for me and I bet she doesn't speak for the majority of women in this country."

From that day on, or so the story goes, she vowed to rally other "submissive" women who believed, like her, that "the women's liberation movement is destroying the family and threatening the survival of our nation." (1)

Betty LaHaye's husband is Religious Right leader, Tim LaHaye, co-author of the successful Apocalyptic Left Behind book series. He is also a founder of the Council for National Policy, where Harper gave his 1997 speech, where he vilified Canadians and our socialist ways.

Betty LaHaye's "submissive awakening" was in direct contrast to what she had been preaching several years before. Then as a pastor's wife, raising four children, she felt unfulfilled and hated the drudgery of her day to day existence.

One very well-meaning lady said to me in the early days of our ministry, "Mrs. LaHaye, our last pastor's wife was an author; what do you do?" That was a heavy question for a fearful twenty-seven-year-old woman to cope with. And I began to wonder, "What did I do?" Oh yes, I was a good mother to my four children, I could keep house reasonably well, my husband adored me, but what could I do that would be eternally effective in the lives of other women? The answer seemed to come back to me. "Very little!" There was something missing in my life.

In my case it was not the major problems that succeeded in wearing me down; it was the smoldering resentment caused from the endless little tasks that had to be repeated over and over again and seemed so futile. Day after day I would perform the same routine procedures: picking up dirty socks, hanging up wet towels, closing closet doors, turning off lights that had been left on, creating a path through the clutter of toys. (1)

So despite the fact that her children were still young, she returned to work full-time, as a teletype operator for Merrill Lynch. This job she claimed helped her to "gain confidence" and fulfilment.

By 1978 her children were grown and forgetting her life before Merrill Lynch, she decided that she would be the voice of submissive women everywhere.

Lahaye helped to form the group 'Concerned Women for America', drafting women's policy for the Neoconservative/Religious Right movement. CWA also sparked similar organisations in other countries, including our own version 'Real Women of Canada', who have worked in Harper's various parties from the beginning of Reform.

A branch group of Real Women, Alberta Federation of Women United for Families, helped to get Conservative MP Rob Anders elected.

Members of Concerned Women, regularly speak at Real Women conventions, and Canadian members return the favour.

In fact several Conservative MPs have also made the trek to Betty LaHaye's anti-feminist kingdom, including Vic Toews and Stockwell Day.

Given this kind of support for anti-feminism, should we really be surprised that the Republicans are attacking any funding to vulnerable women? That Harper's tax policies ignore single mothers, and pander only to high income households with one wage earner? Or that the Neoconservative government of David Cameron in the UK, is also targeting women in their "austerity" budgets?

This all began when stocking footed Betty LaHaye stood up and vowed to offer an alternative voice for women, who could find happiness if they would just totally submit to their menfolk.

So kick off those shoes ladies and get back in the kitchen where you belong.

As for me, I'm experiencing a case of the vapours. Could just be that my corset's too tight.

Sources:

1. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, By Susan Faludi, Crown publishing, 1991, ISBN: 0-385-42507-4, Pg. 247-249

REAL Women, Promise Keepers and the Promotion of Violence

2011-07-31T10:45:00.000-07:00

I Burned my Bra For This? REAL Women of Canada and the Men Behind Them

It is a massive masculine shadow,
in a hall or crowded room,
lifting something indistinct up into the resonating night.
ROBERT BLY, "FIFTY MALES SITTING TOGETHER"

Robert Bly is an American author and poet who became the inspiration for the Mytho-poetic men's movement.

Fearing that the women's movement was turning men into "yogurt-eaters", Bly was determined to instead create a cabal of "wild men", who would seek traditional roles for the male species, many based on, believe it or not, Grimm's Fairy Tales.

The tales that portray the powerful king, the handsome prince, the beautiful maiden, and of course the witch determined to destroy them all. (He must have some mother issues)

No "round shouldered" men need apply.

Author Susan Faludi attended one of his few retreats that were open to women and asked why everyone was told in advance to bring a large stone. Bly's spokesperson explained that they were to build a monument to Hermes, but didn't want to go into too much detail, with women present.

An Olympic god. Of course. Patron of shepherds and cowherds. In fact, the spokesman, Walter Bliss, had legally changed his name to Shepherd Bliss, and his profession from army officer to psychologist.

Bly made his appearance to the sound of conga drums, and with the stance of a Viking, reminded those in the audience that he is Norse.

We no longer have images of "real men," Bly says, as the men continue the drum beat. Stereotypical sissies have replaced macho men. "Woody Allen is just as bad—a negative John Wayne," he says, raising his voice to a nasal squeak in imitation. "Men used to make models for what a man is from the Iliad and the Odyssey and places like that."

On the all-male weekend, he promises, he will bring back these role models for male edification: "One of the things we do is go back to the very old stories, five thousand years ago, where the view of a man, what a man is, is more healthy."(1)

A former peace activist, and strong opponent to the Vietnam war, Bly needed a new cause and found it in male bonding.

By the early '80s, he was, he confessed, starting to feel less than manly. "I began to feel diminished," Bly writes, "by my lack of embodiment of the fruitful male—or the moist male." It wasn't his loss of early prominence, however, that he identified as the problem. It was his "missing contact with men" and his overexposure to strong and angry women, including his own mother. (told 'ya)

He feared that he and men like him had allied themselves too closely with such women, and consequently taken "a female view" of their fathers and their own masculinity. He decided he'd made a mistake with his earlier recommendation: "If someone says to me now, 'There is something missing on your feminine side,' I say, `No, what is missing is the masculine,' " Bly told Whole Earth magazine in 1988. He worried that he was only "superficially" manly. Men had awakened their feminine principle only to be consumed by it. They had gone "soft." (1)

So he began running all-male workshops to reintroduce men to "the deep masculine."

This led to wilderness weekend retreats where men dressed in tribal masks and wild-animal costumes, beat drums and rediscovered "the beast within." His success inspired scores of imitators, creating a "cottage industry" for the men's movement.

And one of those "imitators" was the Promise Keepers. A New Age Journal article noted that Promise Keepers combined the secular men’s movement (founded by New Age poet Robert Bly) with the political evangelicalism of Pat Robertson. And the Atlanta Journal-Constitution stated that: "Promise Keepers combines the Jesus Saves preaching of Billy Graham with the male-bonding message of Robert Bly.

Promise Keepers was brought to Canada by Conservative MP David Sweet. In 2004, when he ran, he posted on his website, the fact that he had been instrumental in creating the Northern chapter.

Women read that, reminded us of what PK stood for, and he lost the election.

In 2006, he got smarter, and removed all mention of the "wildmen" club, only saying that he ran a non-profit organization. He continues to represent Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough- Westdale.

Bly's teachings also fit well with the anti-feminist groups, like REAL Women of Canada, who promoted so-called "family values". Bly attacked not only domineering women, but single mothers.

In short, the Great Mother's authority has become too great. "Men's societies are disappearing, partly under pressure from women with hurt feelings," he writes. Too many women are "raising boys with no man in the house." The single mother's son has become "a nice boy who now not only pleases his mother but also the young woman he is living with."

To restore the nice boy's male identity, Bly proposes, he must quit taking cues from mother and "go down into the psyche and accept what's dark down there." As a key guide to the journey, Bly offers "The Story of Iron John," borrowed from a Grimm's Brothers' fairy tale. In the story, a hairy "wild man" is locked up in an iron cage near the royal castle; the key to the cage is under the queen's pillow. One day the young prince loses his prized "golden ball" when it rolls into an abandoned pond, and he can only relieve it by stealing the key from mother and freeing the wild man. The young man, in the words of Bly's sidekick Keith Thompson, has to take back the power he has given to his mother and get away from the force field of her bed. He must direct his energies away from pleasing Mommy." (1)

At Bly's all-male weekends, the "wildmen" build lairs with plastic chairs, grunting and groaning, and whatever other male sounds they can muster.

Journalist Jon Tevlin, attended a weekend of frolic and fun, run by Bly, at a Bible camp in Mound, Minnesota. On the first night, Tevlin reports that Shepherd Bliss, dropped to his knees.

"Some of you may want to temporarily leave the world of the two-leggeds, and 'Join me in the world of the four-leggeds," he said. One by one, we slid from our orange Naugahyde chairs onto an orange shag carpet ripped straight out of the 1960s. "You may find yourself behaving like these four-leggeds; you may be scratching the earth, getting in contact with the dirt and the world around you."

As he spoke, people began pawing at the ground. . . . "You may find yourself behaving like the most masculine of all animals—the ram," Shepherd said in a coaxing voice. . . . "You may find unfamiliar noises emerging from your throats!" . . . There were gurgles and bleats, a few wolf calls. . .. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Shepherd coming toward me, head down, tufts of white hair ringing a bald spot. . . . Meanwhile, I felt a slight presence at my rear, and turned to see a man beginning to sniff my buttocks. "Woof!" he said. (1)

"Woof" indeed!

How to Handle Your Women

As men are given instruction on how to find their "beast within", they are also told how to treat their women, and "wrest the power from their hands".

Inspiration came from objects they were asked to bring from home, including a .380-caliber automatic pistol. A rather odd trophy for a what was called a "battle on the domestic front".

And what if women are not so enthused with their new butt sniffing menfolk?

Promise Keeper's Tony Evans says “I am not suggesting that you ask for your role back, I am urging you to take it back. There can be no compromise here.” .

Robert Bly is not so subtle.

At one seminar, with more than a thousand men in attendance, a man in the audience told Bly, "Robert, when we tell women our desires, they tell us we're wrong." To which Bly responded: "So, then you bust them in the mouth." (1)

People are not taking this movement seriously enough. Stephen Harper is tearing down the Status for Women, and reversing gains made over the past decades.

But the media look at all the women in his caucus, and determine that he is not a misogynist.

If we had to select one photo that would define this period in our history, the following would definitely be in the running.

A frightened Diane Finlay making an announcement, with Pierre Poilievre in a Gestapo style stance, watching on. Women in Harper's party are mere window dressing. They have no power.

When Jason Kenney rewrote the citizenship guide, he all but excluded any contributions made by women.

Historian Margaret Conrad said of the new guide, that it “represents a new kind of Canada, one that is less sympathetic with my personal sense of a progressive, forward-looking nation, but the new slant is no doubt in keeping with the sentiments of the current administration in Ottawa ... It's kind of like a throwback to the 1950s, ... It's a tough, manly country with military and sports heroes that are all men."

We are being written out, reduced to the "witches" in Grimms Fairy Tales.

Sources:

1. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, By Susan Faludi, Crown publishing, 1991, ISBN: 0-385-42507-4, Pg. 304-312

Allan Bloom Writes Harper's War on Women Strategy

2011-07-25T03:58:00.000-07:00

(Left to right, William Gairdner, Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom)
I Burned my Bra For This? REAL Women of Canada and the Men Behind Them

I first read Susan Faludi's 1991 classic, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, several years ago, and I remember thinking that we were lucky to be living in Canada.

We had our male chauvinists, but government policy reflected, at least the notion of equality for women. We certainly knew of the U.S. 'Moral Majority', which later became the 'Religious Right', but as of yet, we had not been inflicted.

Reading the book again, 20 years later, Faludi could be writing about the Harper government and Canada's Religious Right.

When she discusses the influences of the Chicago School, and their Committee on Social Thought, she could just as easily be talking about our own Calgary School, that has gifted us with Stephen Harper, Pierre Poilievre and other like minded neocons.

And just as Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, succinctly outlines western imperialism, Faludi's Backlash clearly lays out the neoconservative feminine agenda.

She devotes part of a chapter to Allan Bloom, a student of Leo Strauss, and author of the book, The Closing of the American Mind. Harper's counterpart is William Gairdner, a founding member of the Reform Party, whose misogyny is so profound, that in 2007, he became the topic of a paper written by Donna L. Lillian, Assistant Professor of Discourse and Linguistics in the Department of English at East Carolina University: A thorn by any other name: sexist discourse as hate speech, which centered around Gairdner, and analyzed "Canadian neoconservative discourse as racist, sexist, and homophobic."

"In arguing that at least some sexist discourse should be considered hate speech, I first demonstrate that the popular discourse of Canadian neoconservative author William D. Gairdner is sexist.... Sexism, the ideology and practice of relegating women to a lower rung on the social hierarchy than men simply by virtue of their femaleness, is an integral component of neoconservative thinking, and one way that such sexism is produced and reproduced is through language"

Gairdner has actually been compared to Bloom and his The Book of Absolutes: A Critique of Relativism and a Defence of Universals, is hauntingly similar to Bloom's Closing of the American Mind.

But it is Gairdner's The Trouble With Canada, that was sold at Reform Party assemblies, that best defines Harper's anti-feminist policies.

Allan Bloomberg and William Gairdner

The establishment came down with a constitutional package which they put to a national referendum. The package included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things. (Stephen Harper, 1997 speech to Council for National Policy)

Susan Faludi writes of Allan Bloom:

Ostensibly about the decline in American education, Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind dedicates page after page to an assault on the women's movement. Whether he's deploring the state of scholarship, the emasculating tendencies of music, or the transience of student relationships, the baleful influence he identifies is always the same: the feminist transformation of society that has filled women with demands and desires and depleted men of vim and vigor. "The latest enemy of the vitality of the classic texts is feminism," he writes; concerted attacks on the literary canon from '60s student radicals and minorities pale in comparison, he says. Even the sexual revolution, Bloom's other bete noire, cast as a mere warm-up exercise to the "grimmer" rule of feminist tyranny. "The July 14 of the sexual revolution," he writes, "was really only a day between the overthrow of the Ancient Regime and the onset of the Terror."

The bachelor Bloom writes very little of the problem with education, but a great deal of ink was used to paint the women's movement as a terrorist attack on America, and his paranoia that universities had succumbed to the terror of the radical feminist.

[Bloom] a Plato scholar teaches at the University of Chicago, where he has retreated to the conservative, and practically all-male, bunker of the Committee on Social Thought (which had only one woman on its faculty): "I'm protected in my eccentric ivory tower," he says. "It's worse in the departments." When venturing outside the committee's demilitarized zone, he treads warily. "It's hard to explain to people who aren't in the universities how extraordinary it is," he says, comparing his lot to a shell-shocked refugee bearing atrocity stories: "I'm like one of the first people out of Cambodia."

According to Bloom's report from the front, feminists have invaded every academic sanctuary—a view shared by the many male scholars denouncing "political correctness" in the early '90s. "One finds it in all the various departments. They have made tremendous changes in courses. But more than that, in the old established courses with traditionalist books, a huge number [of professors] are teaching from that point of view. You study American history now, and what is America but the history of the enslavement of women! There's no question but it's become the doctrine." (1)

Gairdner also speaks of "radical feminists" in Canada and how they too have influenced teaching, or what he refers to as "brain washing". He quotes the more extreme advocates for the movement, while ignoring the fact that there are legitimate grievances.

Instead, he suggests that men are the ones being victimized.

So woe betide us if men ever manifest the same lack of confidence in themselves as women have done for the past few decades and start a worldwide "masculinist" movement. That would have lots of fodder.

For example, men carry a disproportionate "death burden" in society. They die much younger than women do; there is a "life gap" favouring women all over the world. They are also vastly more often the victims of violent crime - than are women. They also suffer outright discrimination in wartime: over 120,000 Canadian men have been killed in battle, 150 in Afghanistan as of this writing; and a handful of women, of which three in Afghanistan. Men also suffer an unfair anti-emotional bias, and a stereotype-burden: we say "men can take it"—so listen, don't even think about crying, eh? Society also unfairly expects men (not women) to compete financially for their entire lives, and face scorn and failure if they can't hack it. Boys begin to feel this expectation in big way when they are about fifteen. They don't have the same safe harbour default option of homemaking and child-rearing as women do. (2)

Gairdner wrote those words in a follow up to The Trouble With Canada, The Trouble With Canada ... Still. Hard to imagine that he would think that way in 2010, but his arguments provide an excellent case for equality, to free both men and women from the "stereotype-burden".

As to men being the victims of violent crime more often than women, men also perpetrate violent crime more often than women. And few women have that "safe harbour default option of homemaking and child-rearing", even if they wanted it.

What this really boils down to for men like Bloom and Gairdner, is that they are losing their status, when just being male opened all the doors. They truly believe that men are superior and resent any notion that they're not.

Perhaps what troubled Bloom was not so much that the feminist-tainted American mind was closing—but that it was closing against him. In 1970, Bloom felt compelled to flee his Ivy League haven for Canada. -The guns at Cornell," as he characterized the student uprising, drove him out. While only a very few of the guns were in women's hands, they are the ones he most vividly recalls—and resents. "That's when I began encountering the feminists," he recalls of Cornell, which was one of the first college campuses to establish a women's studies program. "The feminists started speaking very strongly.... Some of them are students who have since become well known. They were mostly women doing comparative literature who got a lot of attention."

While these women were building their careers and collecting their kudos, he felt exiled for ten bitter years at the University of Toronto. "I was lost," he told a reporter later. Two years into his expatriate post, at the relatively young age of forty-one, he suffered a heart attack. Finally, after two years of negotiations, he received a faculty appointment at the University of Chicago. But even there he remained, in his word, a "nobody." (1)

Understanding the influence of the 'Chicago School', brought to Canada by the 'Calgary School', is important if we are to understand the Harper agenda.

This is not just about imperialism, neoconservatism, racism, sexism, and all the other 'isms'. It is a total "movement", influenced by men like Leo Strauss, Friedrich Von Hayek, Milton Friedman and Allan Bloom; and absorbed by Stephen Harper and the Reform Party (now calling themselves the Conservative party of Canada).

All of these men are deceased (with the exception of Gairdner), but their legacy lives on in the Republican Party, the Tea Party and the current Canadian government.

Defunding the Status for Women, promoting male sports and traditionally male occupations, is only part of the incremental steps in destroying everything so many women fought for.

Harper likes to suggest that he has many women in his cabinet and caucus, but they are women who sit down and shut up and do as they're told. They hardly represent us.

We'd better start paying attention.

Sources:

1. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, By Susan Faludi, Crown publishing, 1991, ISBN: 0-385-42507-4, Pg. 290-296

2. The Trouble With Canada ... Still: A Citizen Speaks Out, By William D. Gairdner, Key Porter Books, 2010, ISBN: 978-1-55470-247-3, Pg. 238-240

Gary Bauer's Focus is the Harper Government's Vision

2011-07-22T05:28:00.001-07:00

I Burned my Bra For This? REAL Women of Canada and the Men Behind Them

Another soldier in the war against American women, who helped to the launch a similar war against Canadian women, is Gary Bauer.

Bauer was with the Moral Majority/Religious Right political movement, that helped to run Ronald Reagan's campaign for President. As reward, he was appointed to the Education Department, as the "family policy" czar, and his first order of business was to "usurp the feminists" (1).

With that accomplished, the Department of Education, then directed the effort to crown the fathers. As Susan Faludi said, "If the "pro-family" movement was "pro" anything, it was paternal power". The same has been said of REAL Women of Canada. (2)

To many, the creation of a "family policy" office would suggest an office committed to helping families with things like financial aid, and medical or legal assistance, but that was not the case. Instead they churned out lectures on how the American family should "behave".

And in a further attack against the Civil Rights movement, Bauer told civil-rights leaders: "The values taught on the `Cosby' show would do more to help low-income and minority children than a bevy of new federal programs. . . . a lot of research indicates that values are much more important, say, than the level of welfare payments."

Not everyone could accomplish what the Huxtables accomplished, with a doctor father and lawyer mother, and that includes most white families. However, the Religious Right's attitude on racial issues has not changed since Reagan's time, as witnessed by their latest offspring, the FAMILY LEADER, and their suggestion that slavery was good for the black family.

However, women and blacks were not the only targets of Bauer's office"

[In 1986] President Reagan asked the surgeon general [C. Everett Koop] to prepare a report on AIDS as the United States confirmed its ten-thousandth case. Leaders of the evangelical movement did not want Koop to write the report, nor did senior White House staffers ..... Dr. Koop related to me, "Gary Bauer was my nemesis in Washington because he kept me from the president. He kept me from the cabinet and he set up a wall of enmity between me and most of the people that surrounded Reagan because he believed that anybody who had AIDS ought to die with it. That was God's punishment for them. (3)

Gary and Carol Bauer: Your Typical American Family

Bauer's office promoted the nuclear family, as laid out in a fifty-two-page diatribe, that senator Daniel P. Moynihan, referred to as "less a policy statement than a tantrum."

"The Family: Preserving America's Future" opens with a quote from Teddy Roosevelt: "If the mother does not do her duty, there will either be no next generation, or a next generation that is worse than none at all." The pages were filled with attacks on "women who work, women who use day care, women who divorce", and "women who have babies out of wedlock".

His "recommendations" to save the family included a list of punishments for girls and mothers: "bar young single mothers from public housing; revive old divorce laws to make it harder for women to break the wedding bonds; deny contraceptives to young women". Mothers who stay home, he suggested, should get tax breaks; "the more babies, the more credits".

With such strong opinions you would think that Bauer and his wife Carole, were living this desired family life. But they weren't.

It comes then as a bit of a surprise to learn that Bauer has subjected his own children to this leftist institution—for nine years. (Bauer called daycares "Marxist")

He can explain it, he says. His use of day care was "different" and "better" because he placed his children in "home-based" day care—that is, an unlicensed center run out of a woman's living room. (It's unclear how this is better: a national review of child abuse statistics at day care centers finds that the most incidents of abuse have occurred at such unlicensed sites.) At any rate, Bauer says, a bit defensively, it's not like his kids went directly from the maternity ward to the day care nursery. His wife, Carol, waited "at least three, four months" before she returned to work. (1)

However, wife Carol remembers it differently:

"Actually, I went back to work six weeks after Elyse was born," says his wife ... At the time of her daughter Elyse's birth in 1977, Carol Bauer explains, she was a top assistant to Congresswoman Margaret Heckler; she couldn't just quit.

A lack of federal assistance programs for mothers also played a role in her decision: "There's no set leave policy on the Hill," she points out. Financial considerations entered into it, too: "We had bought a house and we had a mortgage." And then there was that other impulse that she just couldn't seem to squelch: "It wasn't just economics. I enjoyed the intellectual stimulation of the work. I loved work." She laughs. "I mean, when I had Elyse, I literally took my work with me. After I got out of the hospital, I was working the next day at home."

For years, at eight o'clock every morning, the Bauers dropped off Elyse, and eventually their second daughter, Sarah, at day care, put in a full day of work, and then picked up the girls on the way home, usually after six o'clock. The children spent so much time at day care, in fact, Carol Bauer says, that when it came time for Elyse to enter kindergarten, they enrolled her in the school in the center's neighborhood rather than their own. How did the girls feel about day care? "Oh, fine," Carol Bauer says. "They were very happy there. For them it was normal."(1)

Like Beverly Lehaye, one of the founders of REAL Women's inspiration: 'Concerned Women for America', Carol Bauer only felt fulfilled when she was working outside the home. When she finally did drop out of the workforce, Bauer found "nesting" difficult, and was only happy when she spent most waking hours doing volunteer work.

Oh, and that "family values" man, Gary Bauer.

He was alleged to have had an affair with a 26-year-old staffer (deputy campaign manager Melissa McClard), prompting nine members of his staff to quit. He denied that it was an affair, but Charles Jarvis, Bauer's campaign manager, warned Bauer several times "in the clearest possible terms" that he was creating "the appearance of impropriety" by spending "hours and hours and hours behind closed doors with a young single woman."

Canada's "family values" man, Vic Toews, lost his deniability rights, when it was revealed that he had fathered a child with a young conservative staffer, breaking up his 30 years plus marriage.

From Women's Affairs to Foreign Affairs

"For Harper, the courtship of the Christian right is unlikely to prove an electoral one-night stand. Three years ago, in a speech to the annual Conservative think-fest, Civitas, he outlined plans for a broad new party coalition that would ensure a lasting hold on power. The only route, he argued, was to focus not on the tired wish list of economic conservatives or “neo-cons,” as they’d become known, but on what he called “theo-cons”—those social conservatives who care passionately about hot-button issues that turn on family, crime, and defence.

"Even foreign policy had become a theo-con issue, he pointed out, driven by moral and religious convictions. “The truth of the matter is that the real agenda and the defining issues have shifted from economic issues to social values,” he said, “so conservatives must do the same.

"Arguing that the party had to come up with tough, principled stands on everything from parents’ right to spank their children to putting “hard power” behind the country’s foreign-policy commitments ... " (4)

Gary Bauer continues to work the circuit of anti-feminist, anti-gay conferences, where REAL Women of Canada make regular appearances.

REAL also promotes Bauer's new group: American Values, in his attack on "leftie" judges.

Bauer is associated with Focus on the Family, a group that conservative MPs, Rob Anders and Maurice Vellacott belong to, and who helped Stephen Harper get elected in 2006, on his "anti-same-sex marriage" platform.

But the most alarming activities for Bauer, and indeed most of the Religious Right, is their dramatic shift to foreign policy.

Bauer is a member of the Project for the New American Century, that included neoconservatives like Steve Forbes, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and William Kristol. This group helped to draft the Bush Doctrine.

They have been critical of Obama's decision not to send ground troops to Libya, instead following the UN Resolution, which does not support a "regime change".

The Harper Doctrine has no such limitations, and in fact is very specific that only a regime change will do.

However, even more alarming is Bauer's new pet project: Emergency Committee for Israel's Leadership, an aggressive extension of Christians United for Israel, who support extended military engagement in the Middle East.

Jim Flaherty's pal, Charles McVety, heads up the Canadian chapter.

This group, like most in the movement, are Apocalyptic.

So what does it mean when they not only provide foot soldiers for Harper's war on women, but dictate his foreign policy? Or what Harper himself calls 'putting “hard power” behind the country’s foreign-policy commitments'.

Yet another reason why the media has to start paying attention.

Drop the 'Tory' nonsense, and report from the Neoconservative/Religious Right/Tea Party reality.

Sources:

1. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, By Susan Faludi, Crown publishing, 1991, ISBN: 0-385-42507-4, Pg. 263-267

2. "R.E.A.L. Women, Anti-feminism and the Welfare State, By Lorna Erwin, Resources for Feminist Research, 1988

3. Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, By D. Michael Lindsay, Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-19-532666-6

4. Stephen Harper and the Theo-cons: The rising clout of Canada's religious right, By Marci McDonald, The Walrus, October 2006

From Forlorn to Forbearing: Feminism Never Stood a Chance

2011-07-20T04:12:00.000-07:00

I Burned my Bra For This? REAL Women of Canada and the Men Behind Them

We all remember the scene in When Harry Met Sally, when Meg Ryan shows Billy Crystal how easy it is for a woman to fake an orgasm, and another patron declares "I'll have what she's having".

It was probably the funniest scene in the movie, but not everyone was laughing.

Two years before the movie's release, in November of 1987, Shere Hite published the last installment of her national survey on sexuality and relationships, Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress, and the reaction from the male population was immediate.

The media, unable to dispute the findings, since they were testimonials from flesh and blood women, instead attacked Hite personally, as a man hating flake.

I doubt many read all 922 pages, representing the views of 4,500 women, so instead thumbed through the summaries, questioning the numbers.

They also accused Hite of only distributing her questionnaires through women's rights groups, but that was not the case. Hite sent her surveys through a wide range of women's groups, including church societies, social clubs, and senior citizens' centers. And while their views were dismissed as "man-bashing diatribes", they sounded more forlorn than vengeful.

So why the uproar?

Says Susan Faludi, in her book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women: "the overheated denunciations of Hite's book suggest an emotion closer to fear than fury."

Hite revealed that women were more likely to experience orgasm through masturbation than intercourse, and panic set in. Test-tube babies were already a reality, so the fear for some men would be that they might be deemed to be obsolete.

A ridiculous assumption, but one shared by many just the same. Canadian neoconservative Link Byfield, spoke at a REAL Women of Canada conference, relating his fears"

To populate the nation, society has implemented the ideas set out in Aldous Huxley's book, "Brave New World." For example, we are increasingly playing with providing babies in nurseries without mothers and fathers and families, just as predicted by Mr. Huxley ...

Fortunately, most men don't really feel that way, enjoying more intimacy in an equal partnership, but it helps to reveal some of the fears, neocon males have of "radical feminists".

If women can support themselves, pleasure themselves, have and raise children themselves, where do they fit in? Will they have to audition for a place in society that they were once guaranteed, simply because of their maleness?

The Strange Case of Srully Blotnick

Eventually Shere Hite was forced to leave the United States and become a German citizen, she was so vilified.

And yet another expert on women, who was releasing the results of his survey, was glorified by the media. Srully Blotnick, a columnist for Forbes Magazine.

Blotnick asserted that his twenty-five-year study of 3,466 women proved that achieving career women are likely to end up without love, and their spinsterly misery would eventually undermine their careers as well. "In fact," he wrote, "we found that the anxiety, which steadily grows, is the single greatest underlying cause of firing for women in the age range of thirty-five to fifty-five." He took some swipes at the women's movement, too, which he called a "smoke screen behind which most of those who were afraid of being labeled egomaniacally grasping and ambitious hid."

Dr. Blotnick appeared everywhere and was quoted often. And his testimonials were not deemed to be female-bashing diatribes, but legitimate views of working women.

And Forbes magazine paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce still more studies about these "anxiety-ridden careerists". But there was a problem.

First off, if Blotnick had really been compiling his data for 25 years, using interviews with women, as he claimed; it would have meant that he had began when he was only 17. How many women are going to open up to a 17-year-old boy, about their anxieties over working outside the home, while still being expected to perform 80% of the domestic duties.

Or about their sexuality?

The biggest problem, however, was that Dr. Blotnick was not a doctor at all. His degree had been acquired through a correspondence course, and was not recognized anywhere. When the news broke, Forbes had him remove the "Dr." from his byline, but continued to print his columns.

And the media continued to quote him everywhere.

Why Was Forbes so Interested?

Eventually Forbes magazine did fire Blotnick, after a criminal investigation for practicing psychology in New York, without a license.

But why was a business rag so concerned with women's rights, that they poured so much money into this man's "research"? Keeping him on even after learning that he had lied about his credentials?

To understand the motivation of Forbes magazine is to understand it's editor-in-chief, Steve Forbes, a card carrying member of the Neoconservative movement.

Grandson of the magazine's founder, Forbes used the publication to endorse Ronald Reagan, and when Reagan became president, he brought Forbes into his administration as head of the Board of International Broadcasting.

Steve Forbes took a run at the presidency on his own, but failed. However, he continued to work behind the scenes, in many think tanks and AstroTurf groups, the most famous being the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy

Alykhan Velshi, Jason Kenney's former puppet master, was plucked from there to help put words into Kenney's mouth, and keep the boys in the backroom "election ready". However, now that Harper has a majority, Velshi has left, his work here apparently done.

AEI also helped to draft the "Clash of Civilizations" foreign policy, which according to Lawrence Martin in his book Harperland, is something that Stephen Harper has embraced.

The American Right has been the driving force behind Canada's movement for decades.

In fact, Steve Forbes was key adviser to Christie Todd Whitman's 1993 run for New Jersey governor, transforming her from "plain old Christie Whitman to a Christian Coalition Republican" (CNN Crossfire, January 20, 2000).

He brought on board some Republican heavyweights, including strategist Mike Murphy, who drafted a "common sense" revolution, with the promise of a 30 percent cut in New Jersey's income tax. As a result she beat out the incumbent Governor James Florio.

So successful was the campaign that the Neocons decided to replicate it, transforming plain old Mike Harris into "a *Christian Coalition Republican".

Whitman defeated a popular Democratic incumbent, Jim Florio, primarily on the basis of a Murphy-inspired campaign using a "common sense" slogan and pledging a 30 per cent tax cut. Since her victory, the activities of her government in implementing this plan had been carefully charted by Harris aide Bill King. In March 1994, Harris actually travelled to New Jersey to meet Whitman and discuss strategy. Two months later, the "Common Sense Revolution" with its 30 per cent tax cut was unveiled. (Hard Right Turn: The New Face of Neo-Conservatism in Canada, Brooke Jeffrey, Harper-Collins, 1999, ISBN: 0-00 255762-2 4, Pg. 166)

The Undeclared War Against American Women, is now the well documented War Against Canadian Women.

And the American neoconservative movement has expanded it's mandate, making Canada Chapter Twenty-two of The Shock Doctrine.

They didn't need a bloody coup to achieve their goals, only a willing partner, and no one was more willing than Stephen Harper.

When is our media going to wake up? The evidence is so overwhelming, that it is hitting them between the eyes, knocking them on the head and kicking them in the groin. Yet they still choose to ignore it, preferring instead to believe that Harper was sprinkled with happy powder and instantly turned into a "Tory".

A miracle only rivalled by those witnessed at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré.

Another man behind REAL Women of Canada was the late Ted Byfield. When Harper cancelled the Court Challenges program, Byfield wrote under the headline: Canadian Tories pull rug from feminist-gay revolution (World News Net, September 30, 2006)

Whether the challenges program is gone for good is, of course, still in doubt. It survived its last demise under Mulroney, [Lorne] Gunter recalls, by kicking up such a squawk that even the Tories themselves promised to revive it if returned to office. But the Conservatives of those days were the so-called "Red Tories," a species to which Harper & Co. do not belong.

Moreover, the conservative lobby groups are now considerably better organized. The SOW had barely got started in its mass-mailing campaign against the Harper axe when Gwen Landolt of the conservative REAL Women organization, pounced on them for using government funds to influence government policy. Her swift response was typical. It has been REAL Women, totally self-financed by thousands of members, which more than any other group finally put the boots to these detestable agencies. May they stay dead.

There is no argument that we've "had the boots put to us", but the question is: When are we going to start kicking back?

Footnotes:

*Later brought to Canada by Jason Kenney and company. Kenney would also use his Canadian Taxpayers Federation to endorse Mike Harris.

I Burned my Bra For This? REAL Women of Canada and the Men Behind Them

2011-07-12T11:30:00.000-07:00

I Burned my Bra For This? REAL Women of Canada and the Men Behind Them

"There is not much point in being minister for the status of women, when women have no status in this country!" Judy Erola

Erola was a cabinet minister in the government of Pierre Trudeau. Feisty and independent, she directed her argument toward the prime minister himself, when the "notwithstanding clause" threatened section 28 of the constitution, guaranteeing equality of the sexes. (1)

Can you imagine anyone in Stephen Harper's cabinet challenging him in such a manner?

But then Erola was no ordinary woman. Canada's first weather girl, breaking the barrier in 1953, and one of the first female network executives, she spent a lifetime fighting for women's rights. She is currently on the board of Equal Voice, an organization which seeks to assist Canadian women in running for political office.

But in 1983, she made waves when she proposed that the tax exemption for dependent spouses, be terminated.

Canada's Christian Right took action, and on September 3, 1983, REAL Women of Canada was born.

Fashioned after the American Religious Right group: 'Concerned Women for America', REAL, which stands for 'Realistic, Equal, Active, for Life', drew in women mainly from the pro-life movement.

It's misleading to call this a woman's movement, because it is clearly a movement that glorifies the male species in our society.

Their stated mission:

1. To reaffirm that the family is society’s most important unit, since the nurturing of its members is best accomplished in the family setting.

2. To promote the equality, advancement and well being of women, recognizing them as interdependent members of society, whether in the family, workplace or community.

3. To promote, secure and defend legislation which upholds what it considers the Judeo-Christian understanding of marriage and family life.

4. To support government and social policies that make homemaking possible for women who, out of necessity, would otherwise have to take employment outside the home.

5. To support the right to life of all innocent individuals from conception to natural death.

They claim to be non-partisan, but in fact helped to establish policy for the Reform Party, and constantly criticize the NDP and Liberal parties, on their website and in their publications.

Since Stephen Harper's Reform-Conservatives gained power in 2006, the influence of REAL Women of Canada can be seen in many of their policies, including increased tax relief for single-income families.

And remember that one of Harper's first actions after being elected was to remove the word "equality" from the charter of the NAC.

The Group's Priorities

REAL women claim to represent a silent majority of women within Canada. They promote male headed, single breadwinner families, and believe that women should be homemakers, mothers and wives, in direct contrast to the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and its umbrella organizations.

A key goal of the organization is to denounce the equal rights clause in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in addition to protesting feminist movements and organizations. They argue that government spending and funding of these feminist organizations was undermining traditional gender and family relations (2)

Other concerns are abortion, universal childcare, and the improvement of the economic situation of women, who may be encouraged to enter or remain in the workforce, while raising children.

Other things they oppose include anti family violence programs, which they claim encourage hatred toward men; no-fault divorce; and protection for gay and lesbian people. (2) As with most conservative groups, they want to return to the nostalgic 1950s when the nuclear family was the only accepted configuration.

I've been organizing my research and plan to compile it all into a series of essays, that I will upload on Scribed.

I'm choosing this government's complete change in direction on woman's issues first, because it's important to understand that with a majority, REAL Women of Canada, will play an important role in determining what funding will be scrapped and what new programs will be implemented.

There have already been many, but we can expect many more, especially when it comes to reproductive rights.

This group may be headed by women, but those women are being directed by men, and my aim is to expose as many as possible.

I also intend to show that REAL Women of Canada is just another cog in the wheel of the American Moral Majority/Religious Right, and the new right-wing movement that is destroying social democracies everywhere.

The Harper government couldn't ignore them even if they wanted to.

When you buy in, you have to accept the entire package, and they have done that to the letter. Every action, every word, comes from the Republican/Tea Party/Moral Majority.

And that includes rolling back many of the gains made by women over the past half century.

"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat." Rebecca West 1913

I'm blogging the essay in chunks before putting it together for Scribed, and will then post a link.

Sources:

1. Just Watch me: The Life of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, By John English, Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-676-97523-9, P. 511

2. "R.E.A.L. Women, Anti-feminism and the Welfare State, By Lorna Erwin, Resources for Feminist Research, 1988

Continuation

From Forlorn to Forbearing: Feminism Never Stood a Chance

Harper's War on Women Was Launched in the USA

Allan Bloom Writes Harper's War on Women Strategy

Gary Bauer's Focus is the Harper Government's Vision

REAL Women, Promise Keepers and the Promotion of Violence

Right-Wing Women and Their "Christian Values"

The New anti-Abortionists: Young Political Activists or Youthful Vigilantes?

The Neoconservative Passion for Alexis de Tocqueville

2011-07-05T04:11:00.001-07:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Neoconservative doctrine was written by academics and based on the writings of scholars, from Plato to Aristotle, Locke to Rousseau, and everything in between.

But one of the scholars often quoted, is Alexis de Tocqueville, a nineteenth century political thinker, who like many shaping the minds of young neocons, was born into wealth as a member of the aristocracy.

And he wrote of poverty as a man who had never known it, only observed it, yet his 1835 Essay on Pauperism, is used to justify the right's reluctance to help the poor.

What Tocqueville saw as a basic problem, was the definition of poverty.

"Among civilized peoples, the lack of a multitude of things causes poverty... In a country where the majority is ill-clothed, ill-housed, ill-fed, who thinks of giving clean clothes, healthy food, comfortable quarters to the poor? The majority of the English, having all these things, regard their absence as a frightful misfortune; society believes itself bound to come to the aid of those who lack them.... In England, the average standard of living a man can hope for in the course of his life is higher than in any other country of the world. This greatly facilitates the extension of pauperism in that kingdom."

So poverty is a state of mind? A comparative?

If our poor people are better off than the poor in central Africa, are they really poor?

Imagine going to your boss and asking for a raise and she tells you that you are already overpaid when compared to workers in Third World countries.

But workers in Third World countries aren't spending $1.30 a litre for gas to get to work, or 8 bucks for a box of cereal.

The definition of poverty has to be relative to how the rest of the population lives.

I'm not a socialist, and don't believe that if one family has a wide screen TV, then all families should have a wide screen TV.

However, I do believe that in a country with such vast natural resources as Canada, that everyone should be clothed, fed and housed. And everyone should have equal access to healthcare and education.

Neoconservatives do not.

David Frum is right when he says that government should never protect us "against the miseries caused by idleness", but is wrong when he says that only the indigent, or most destitute in society should be given handouts.

Remember the old Chinese proverb: “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.”

Neocons believe in the power and responsibility of the individual. Striving for equality will only bring those better off down to the level of those with very little. And they use that philosophy to justify pandering to the rich and ignoring the poor. A plantation mentality where the rich, (whose wealth is proof that they are smarter and more deserving than most), will in turn, take care of the poor.

What rot.

But it's that rot that determines Stephen Harper's actions.

“These proposals included cries for billions of new money for social assistance in the name of “child poverty” and for more business subsidies in the name of “cultural identity”. In both cases I was sought out as a rare public figure to oppose such projects.”(Stephen Harper, The Bulldog, National Citizens Coalition, February 1997)

I'm very concerned with the approaching perfect storm in Ontario. A Harper majority (with a cabinet of many ex Mike Harris disciples), Harris protege Tim Hudak, (whose wife Deb Hutton was Harris's gatekeeper), as premier of the province and Rob Ford as mayor of Toronto.

Like most neoconservative governments, Mike Harris's created the highest number of homeless people in the history of our province. And what was worse, he didn't care. One of his henchmen, Jim Flaherty, simply suggested that we throw them all in jail.

And if a person froze to death living in their car, at least they had a car.

Ford is already talking about selling off public housing in Toronto. Maybe he hopes to drive the poor out of his city, but will only drive them into the streets.

Hudak wants to eliminate or drastically reduce the public service, suggesting that because they make a good wage, small businesses can't compete with government in the labour market. What the fool doesn't realize is that those good wages keep many small businesses afloat.

When Mike Harris ran Ontario, we had a Liberal government federally. When Brian Mulroney was prime minister, we had Liberal and NDP governments in Ontario.

If Hudak takes Ontario, there will be no counterweight.

It's absolutely terrifying.

Zombie Youth and the Canadian Property Rights Research Institute

2011-07-04T14:30:00.000-07:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In November of 2009, the Canadian Press learned that a government program designed to recruit the best and brightest from Canada's universities, had been politicized for partisan interests.

Before being granted an interview, those seeking to enter the Accelerated Economist Training Program, had to first write an essay on the Conservative ad campaign, labelled the Economic Action Plan.

"It smells a little bit," said Leslie Pal, professor of public policy at Ottawa's Carleton University. "It places an unfortunate implication of inviting people to write glowing things about the economic recovery plan."

Pal said he sees no rationale for asking people looking for a job with the government to comment on current government policy, especially when that policy is so contentious. "I think this is not a good idea."

A further indoctrination of Canada's youth into the neoconservative cult.

In his book Not a Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy, Donald Gutstein writes of a program that the Fraser Institute runs to catch them when they're young.

The Fraser Institute launched a program in 1988 that would have far-reaching impact on advancing the corporate agenda. This program, aimed at students, is actually a half-dozen initiatives through which the institute "is cultivating a network of thousands of young people who are informed and passionate about free-market ideas and who are actively engaging in the country's policy debate"

Some of those involved in the program include Jason Kenney, Ezra Levant, Danielle Smith (possibly the next premier of Alberta), Rob Anders and a young man named Matthew Johnston.

Johnston came to the public's attention for his part in a radio hoax, on behalf of his boss Rahim Jaffer.

Due to a scheduling conflict, Jaffir had Johnston take his part in a radio interview. Jason Kenney and Ezra Levant paid the man off, suggesting that "$40,000 buys a lot of silence".

But Matthew Johnston was also behind the formation of a right-wing organization: Canadian Property Rights Research Institute. Other members included Danielle Smith, a former student of Calgary School's Tom Flanagan, and Rob Anders, both members of the Fraser's youth program.

Rahim Jaffer had taken CanPRRI's case to Parliament when Revenue Canada refused to grant them non-profit, tax-exempt status. It folded soon after.

However, a look at one of their publications, shows more than a connection to the Fraser and the Harper government. They are linked to a network of think tanks and advocacy groups, many created under the guidance of Milton Friedman, Friedrich Von Hayek and other Chicago school alumni.

With a Harper majority and accelerated attempts to put his stamp on every aspect of government, will only neoconservative youth be allowed access into the halls of political power?

Will there be more tests?

When Carolyn Bennett was in Kingston recently to discuss our crumbling democracy, she spoke of the different criteria for those entering political life.

At one time, they got into politics to make a difference, often in their chosen field. As a doctor she was concerned with health issues.

But now she says that many Conservative candidates are only interested in party politics. They have no interest whatsoever in the betterment of the country, only in furthering an agenda. This includes their staff.

Bob Rae refers to them as "25-year-old jihadis", who often make the decisions for the elected MPs.

I shudder to think what kind of country we will become as a result.

Why Friedrich Von Hayek Must be Barred From Canada

2011-06-24T03:46:00.000-07:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

I realize that Friedrich Von Hayek died in 1992, but he is one of the "scholars" who helped to draft neoconservative theory.

In Lawrence Martin's book Harperland, he states that he spoke with Harper insiders about Leo Strauss, deemed the primary neoconservative theorist, and they denied that Stephen Harper had ever read him. I'm not surprised. A bit too deep, though he does ascribe to his theory of "hidden messages". Calculated ambiguity, taught at neocon schools everywhere. Orwellian with a twist.

However, Harper's boys do suggest that their boss is an avid reader and follower of Friedrich Von Hayek, an Austrian economist, and author of The Road to Serfdom, which has become a Bible to neocon disciples.

I'm currently reading the Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, with introduction by none other than Milton Friedman, a colleague of Hayek's at the Chicago School's Committee on Social Thought.

In the first chapter, The Abandoned Road, Hayek speaks of the roots of western civilisation. The roots which he claims come from the Greeks and Romans. He also laments that we are abandoning the sage advice of Adam Smith, John Milton, Erasmus, Cicero, etc., etc., etc.

However, Canadian civilization was not based on the ramblings of the historic scholars, or the ancient Romans or Greeks. Our unique culture was based on the relationship between early European settlers and our First Nations.

When conducting trade on our river highways, they were not thinking of Adam Smith and the sovereignty of the consumer. Nor were they reading Milton's Paradise Lost or the philosophies of Marcus Tullius Cicero.

They were too busy trying to survive.

Von Hayek would never understand that. He grew up in Vienna, where his father was of minor nobility and his mother a member of the upper-class bourgeoisie. He led a privileged life, influenced by the intelligentsia of Viennese society.

So invoking the scholars was as natural to him as breathing, but understanding the needs of the general population, completely alien.

In his introduction to the Road to the Serfdom, he says that it was originally only meant to be a pamphlet, written for a British audience. He was surprised by it's success and especially the interest shown by the University of Chicago.

He even thought that he may have written it differently for the Americans. However, when he began to lecture in Canada, especially at the Fraser Institute, he should have written it differently for Canadians, because our culture is vastly different from that of the United States.

We don't thump our chests and chant "Canada, Canada, Canada", which doesn't mean that we aren't proud Canadians. We're just not annoyingly so.

And this is something that Stephen Harper doesn't understand. He's always been embarrassed by us. Socialists, lazy, a welfare state, mamby pamby Peacekeepers.

We needed to be more muscular. Tough soldiers behind state of the art heavy machinery. War toys to flaunt and intimidate others with.

He just doesn't get it.

Norm Jewison was interviewed several years and asked why he felt that Canadians were so successful in the entertainment industry. From Comedians like Jim Carey and Martin Short to directors like himself and David Cronenberg.

Jewison answered that it was because we only had six crayons, explaining to a confused interviewer, that Canadians have learned to make do. We never had the money that the American entertainment industry did, so we had to push the limits. Make do with what we had and turn those six colours into a kaledescope.

Martin Short once spoke of the successful series SCTV, that became the inspiration for Saturday Night Live. They ran the show on a shoestring, first writing the scripts, and then visiting the local Salvation Army thrift store for costumes.

Stephen Harper likes to tout our military history, without really understanding our military history. At Vimy Ridge, we were successful where so many other better equipped armies were not. And it's because we learned to make do with less.

Instead we focused on training down to the finest detail.

Stephen Harper instead follows the beliefs of people like Donald Rumsfeld, who felt that the man or woman behind the gun was not important. Only the size of the gun.

I watched a documentary about Iraq, and they interviewed several young American soldiers who admitted that they really had no idea what they were doing, or even how to properly handle those big guns. One young man said that before joining up he was working at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Now he was a member of the Intelligence Corp, charged with information gathering, and carrying a huge weapon.

Lester Pearson once said that the Americans may be richer than us, but that we were better off. We always thrived to be a nation that took care of its people.

This of course is anathema to the neoconservative, who believe that people should take care of themselves. This has never been the Canadian way. We do rely on ourselves, but also on our neighbours and our government.

Three and a half centuries ago, France sent shiploads of young brides, to help settle Quebec. Filles du roi, or 'King's Daughters. Men were told to select robust wives, capable of hard work and they were paid so much for every child born. Government intervention to encourage population growth.

My great grandfather was granted 100 acres of land in New Brunswick, for $3.00 and a set number of hours working to build roads. He also had to commit to clearing so many acres of land a year. Government intervention to build infrastructure and aid in prosperity.

A favourite social event for early settlers was the work 'Bees'. Logging bees, stumping bees, quilting bees. Communities working together. Collectivism to accomplish tasks beyond the ability of a single family. (from my Victorian Canada website)

We don't share the individualist attitudes of American history. It's rather telling that we selected Tommy Douglas as the 'Greatest Canadian'. The man who gave us universal healthcare, something Harper told the U.S. conservatives would "horrify" them.

Stephen Harper doesn't get us, he just wants to change us. Remake Canadians in the American image. An American image created by people like Friedrich Von Hayek.

In a 1997 CBC interview, Harper was asked "Is there a Canadian culture?" He replied: "Yes, in a very loose sense. It consists of regional cultures within Canada, regional cultures that cross borders with the US. We're part of a worldwide Anglo-American culture..."

Nope. He just doesn't get us.

Allan Bloom Writes Harper's War on Women Strategy

2011-06-21T06:12:00.000-07:00

(Left to right, William Gairdner, Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom)
A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

I first read Susan Faludi's 1991 classic, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, several years ago, and I remember thinking that we were lucky to be living in Canada.

We had our male chauvinists, but government policy reflected, at least the notion of equality for women. We certainly knew of the U.S. 'Moral Majority', which later became the 'Religious Right', but as of yet, we had not been inflicted.

Reading the book again, 20 years later, Faludi could be writing about the Harper government and Canada's Religious Right.

When she discusses the influences of the Chicago School, and their Committee on Social Thought, she could just as easily be talking about our own Calgary School, that has gifted us with Stephen Harper, Pierre Poilievre and other like minded neocons.

And just as Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, succinctly outlines western imperialism, Faludi's Backlash clearly lays out the neoconservative feminine agenda.

She devotes part of a chapter to Allan Bloom, a student of Leo Strauss, and author of the book, The Closing of the American Mind. Harper's counterpart is Willaim Gairdner, a founding member of the Reform Party, whose misogyny is so profound, that in 2007, he became the topic of a paper written by Donna L. Lillian, Assistant Professor of Discourse and Linguistics in the Department of English at East Carolina University: A thorn by any other name: sexist discourse as hate speech, which centered around Gairdner, and analyzed "Canadian neoconservative discourse as racist, sexist, and homophobic."

"In arguing that at least some sexist discourse should be considered hate speech, I first demonstrate that the popular discourse of Canadian neoconservative author William D. Gairdner is sexist.... Sexism, the ideology and practice of relegating women to a lower rung on the social hierarchy than men simply by virtue of their femaleness, is an integral component of neoconservative thinking, and one way that such sexism is produced and reproduced is through language"

The establishment came down with a constitutional package which they put to a national referendum. The package included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things. (Stephen Harper, 1997 speech to Council for National Policy)

Susan Faludi writes of Allan Bloom:

Ostensibly about the decline in American education, Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind dedicates page after page to an assault on the women's movement. Whether he's deploring the state of scholarship, the emasculating tendencies of music, or the transience of student relationships, the baleful influence he identifies is always the same: the feminist transformation of society that has filled women with demands and desires and depleted men of vim and vigor. "The latest enemy of the vitality of the classic texts is feminism," he writes; concerted attacks on the literary canon from '60s student radicals and minorities pale in comparison, he says. Even the sexual revolution, Bloom's other bete noire, cast as a mere warm-up exercise to the "grimmer" rule of feminist tyranny. "The July 14 of the sexual revolution," he writes, "was really only a day between the overthrow of the Ancient Regime and the onset of the Terror."

[Bloom] a Plato scholar teaches at the University of Chicago, where he has retreated to the conservative, and practically all-male, bunker of the Committee on Social Thought (which had only one woman on its faculty): "I'm protected in my eccentric ivory tower," he says. "It's worse in the departments." When venturing outside the committee's demilitarized zone, he treads warily. "It's hard to explain to people who aren't in the universities how extraordinary it is," he says, comparing his lot to a shell-shocked refugee bearing atrocity stories: "I'm like one of the first people out of Cambodia."

According to Bloom's report from the front, feminists have invaded every academic sanctuary—a view shared by the many male scholars denouncing "political correctness" in the early '90s. "One finds it in all the various departments. They have made tremendous changes in courses. But more than that, in the old established courses with traditionalist books, a huge number [of professors] are teaching from that point of view. You study American history now, and what is America but the history of the enslavement of women! There's no question but it's become the doctrine." (1)

Gairdner also speaks of "radical feminists" in Canada and how they too have influenced teaching, or what he refers to as brain washing". He quotes the more extreme advocates for the movement, while ignoring the fact that there are legitimate grievances.

Instead, he suggests that men are the ones being victimized.

So woe betide us if men ever manifest the same lack of confidence in themselves as women have done for the past few decades and start a worldwide "masculinist" movement. The would have lots of fodder.

For example, men carry a disproportionate "death burden" in society. They die much younger than women do; there is a "life gap" favouring women all over the world. They are also vastly more often the victims of violent crime - than are women. They also suffer outright discrimination in wartime: over 120,000 Canadian men have been killed in battle, 150 in Afghanistan as of this writing; and a handful of women, of which three in Afghanistan. Men also suffer an unfair anti-emotional bias, and a stereotype-burden: we say "men can take it"—so listen, don't even think about crying, eh? Society also unfairly expects men (not women) to compete financially for their entire lives, and face scorn and failure if they can't hack it. Boys begin to feel this expectation in big way when they are about fifteen. They don't have the same safe harbour default option of homemaking and child-rearing as women do. (2)

Perhaps what troubled Bloom was not so much that the feminist-tainted American mind was closing—but that it was closing against him. In 1970, Bloom felt compelled to flee his Ivy League haven for Canada. -The guns at Cornell," as he characterized the student uprising, drove him out. While only a very few of the guns were in women's hands, they are the ones he most vividly recalls—and resents. "That's when I began encountering the feminists," he recalls of Cornell, which was one of the first college campuses to establish a women's studies program. "The feminists started speaking very strongly.... Some of them are students who have since become well known. They were mostly women doing comparative literature who got a lot of attention."

While these women were building their careers and collecting their kudos, he felt exiled for ten bitter years at the University of Toronto. "I was lost," he told a reporter later. Two years into his expatriate post, at the relatively young age of forty-one, he suffered a heart attack. Finally, after two years of negotiations, he received a faculty appointment at the University of Chicago. But even there he remained, in his word, a "nobody." (1)

Understanding the influence of the 'Chicago School', brought to Canada by the 'Calgary School', is important if we are to understand the Harper agenda.

This is not just about imperialism, neoconservatism, racism, sexism, and the all the other 'isms'. It is a total "movement", influenced by men like Leo Strauss, Friedrich Von Hayek, Milton Friedman and Allan Bloom; and absorbed by Stephen Harper and the Reform Party (now calling themselves the Conservative party of Canada).

All of these men are deceased (with the exception of Gairdner), but their legacy lives on in the Republican Party, the Tea Party and the current Canadian government.

Defunding the Status for Women, promoting male sports and traditionally male occupations, is only part of the incremental steps in destroying everything so many women fought for.

Harper likes to suggest that he has many women in his cabinet and caucus, but they are women who sit down and shut up and do as they're told. They hardly represent us.

We'd better start paying attention.

Sources:

1. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, By Susan Faludi, Crown publishing, 1991, ISBN: 0-385-42507-4, Pg. 290-296

2. The Trouble With Canada ... Still: A Citizen Speaks Out, By William D. Gairdner, Key Porter Books, 2010, ISBN: 978-1-55470-247-3, Pg. 238-239

Harper's War on Women Was Launched in the USA

2011-06-19T04:34:00.000-07:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"The woman who is truly Spirit-filled will want to be totally submissive to her husband . . . This is a truly liberated woman. Submission is God's design for women."BEVERLY LAHAYE, The Spirit-Controlled Woman

One very well-meaning lady said to me in the early days of our ministry, "Mrs. LaHaye, our last pastor's wife was an author; what do you do?" That was a heavy question for a fearful twenty-seven-year-old woman to cope with. And I began to wonder, "What did I do?" Oh yes, I was a good mother to my four children, I could keep house reasonably well, my husband adored me, but what could I do that would be eternally effective in the lives of other women? The answer seemed to come back to me. "Very little!" There was something missing in my life.

In my case it was not the major problems that succeeded in wearing me down; it was the smoldering resentment caused from the endless little tasks that had to be repeated over and over again and seemed so futile. Day after day I would perform the same routine procedures: picking up dirty socks, hanging up wet towels, closing closet doors, turning off lights that had been left on, creating a path through the clutter of toys. (1)

So despite the fact that her children were still young, she returned to work full-time, as a teletype operator for Merrill Lynch. This job she claimed helped her to "gain confidence" and fulfilment.

By 1978 her children were grown and forgetting her life before Merrill Lynch, she decided that she would be the voice of submissive women everywhere.

Lahaye helped to form the group 'Concerned Women for America', drafting women's policy for the Neoconservative/Religious Right movement. CWA also sparked similar organisations in other countries, including our own version 'Real Women of Canada', who have worked in Harper's various parties from the beginning of Reform.

A branch group of Real Women, Alberta Federation of Women United for Families, helped to get Conservative MP Rob Anders elected.

Members of Concerned Women, regularly speak at Real Women conventions, and Canadian members return the favour.

In fact several Conservative MPs have also made the trek to Betty LaHaye's anti-feminist kingdom, including Vic Toews and Stockwell Day.

Given this kind of support for anti-feminism, should we really be surprised that the Republicans are attacking any funding to vulnerable women? That Harper's tax policies ignore single mothers, and pander only to high income households with one wage earner? Or that the Neoconservative government of David Cameron in the UK, is also targeting women in their "austerity" budgets?

This all began when stocking footed Betty LaHaye stood up and vowed to offer an alternative voice for women, who could find happiness if they would just totally submit to to their menfolk.

So kick off those shoes ladies and get back in the kitchen where you belong.

As for me, I'm experiencing a case of the vapours. Could just be that my corset's too tight.

Sources:

1. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, By Susan Faludi, Crown publishing, 1991, ISBN: 0-385-42507-4, Pg. 247-249

Shock Doctrined Through Think Tanks

2011-06-12T04:07:00.000-07:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada
I've been reading Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, and what I find interesting, is that American Imperialism over the past half century or so, has followed a pattern.

One laid out by the Chicago school and Milton Friedman. And it was done under the guise of fighting Socialism/Communism, but was really about taking over the economics of other nations, for corporate interests.

Chile provides an excellent example of how the system works.

In an attempt to combat the socialist principles of leading Latin American economist Raul Prebisch, the Chicago School offered free market courses at a Chilean university.

This was the brainchild of Albion Patterson, director of the U.S. International Cooperation Administration in Chile, and Theodore W. Schultz, chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago, who called on Friedman to work his magic.

The two men came up with a plan that would eventually turn Santiago, a hotbed of state-centred economics, into its opposite—a laboratory for cutting-edge free-market experiments, giving Milton Friedman what he had longed for: a country in which to test his cherished theories. The original plan was simple: the U.S. government would pay to send Chilean students to study economics at what pretty much everyone recognized was the most rabidly anti-"pink" school in the world—the University of Chicago. Schultz and his colleagues at the university would also be paid to travel to Santiago to conduct research into the Chilean economy and to train students and professors in Chicago School fundamentals. (1)

Friedman and his gang would also bring the media on board, and not surprisingly, the president of their largest newspaper, El Mercurio, would become Augustus Pinochet's economic minister after the U.S. led coup.

However, another important step in trying to turn the Southern Cone , and indeed the rest of the free world, to the right, came from another faculty member at the Chicago School, Friedrich von Hayek.

Hayek had come up with the notion of the corporate funded free market think tank, that he suggested should "present themselves as civil society". They churn out report after report, poll after poll, all to promote corporate interests.

And Chile was no exception. The most prominent are Libertad y Desarrollo (now the Latin American institute) and Centro de Estudios Públicos , both heralded as the saviour of Chile (next to Milton Friedman, bombs, guns and assassins).

Alejandro Chafuen wrote a piece in April of 2010: Think Tanks and the Transformation of the Chilean Economy

In it he not only praises Libertad y Desarrollo and Centro de Estudios Públicos , but also Canada's own Fraser Institute.

... the Fraser Institute in Canada, ranked today as the best market oriented institute outside the United States. Fraser has a huge influence in a Canada which is overcoming the US in economic freedoms, transparency, and several other areas.

But who is this Alejandro Chafuen?

He is the past President of the Atlas Foundation and a Senior Fellow at the Acton Institute. In fact the Acton Institute was started with funds provided by the Atlas Foundation, and is an extension of the Religious Right.

Atlas was, and is, a major sponsor of the Acton Institute run by former faith healer, evangelical, gay community organizer, and now Catholic priest, Bob Sirico. Sirico ran fundamentalist faith healing meetings until he came out as gay. Then he moved on to the Metropolitan Community Churches and started running the Gay Community Center in Hollywood ... Acton officials got heavily involved in the debate on gay marriage. With Sirico back in the closet (though some conservatives don’t think so) the position they have been taking has been to pander to bigots on the Religious Right.

The Atlas Foundation also helps to finance the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which was started in 2002, by Conservative MP John Weston. The CCF has ties to the Harper government and Canada's Neoconservative movement.

They were also behind attack ads run in the U.S. to oppose Obama's healthcare plan.

Donald Gutstein wrote an excellent book: Not a Conspiracy Theory, in which he exposes the myriad of think tanks and foundations propping up the Harper government. Gutstein tells us to follow the money, and the few connections I provided above, are only a tip of the iceberg.

If we are going to engage in non-violent civil disobedience, it's important to know what we're up against. The media is constantly quoting polls and reports from these groups, to defend or explain this government's policies.

We have to do what Gutstein suggests and follow the money. Google the name of the group or the person quoted. It won't take long to find they belong to some corporate funded think tank or "advocacy" group, many with planted MPs.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (Jason Kenney)
The Fraser Institute (Jason Kenney, Rob Anders)
The Montreal Institute (Maxime Bernier)
The Civitas Society (Jason Kenney)
The National Citizens Coalition (Stephen Harper and Rob Anders)

The list is endless.

Once you trace the origin, email the columnist or own the comments section. Our best weapon is education, including the education of the media. Maybe if we become enough of a pain, they may start providing some balance.

Brigette DePape started something here, putting her job on the line to make a statement. But its not enough to simply "stop" Stephen Harper. We must fight against the entire movement, before it destroys us.

Sources:

1. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, By Naomi Klein, Vintage Canada, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-676-97801-8

Calgary School, Chicago School and the Committee on Social Thought

2011-06-07T10:47:00.000-07:00

Canada's neoconservative movement has been slow to reach awareness in Canada, though throughout the 1990's, neoconservatism was a term used by many journalists and political pundits, to separate the conservatism of people like Mike Harris in Ontario, Ralph Klein in Alberta, Grant Devine in Saskatchewan and the Reform Party on the national scene; from the more traditional conservatism.

However, since Stephen Harper's "new" Conservative Party came to power, the mainstream media prefer to use the misnomer "Tory". A term that Stephen Harper himself, claimed to detest. "It's not my favourite term, but we're probably stuck with it." (Stephen Harper, Hamilton Spectator, January 24, 2004)

We are more familiar with American neoconservatism (on which our own movement is based), as represented by George W. Bush and his war mongers, and the free marketeers, who push deregulation, low or no corporate taxes, and the end of the welfare state.

However, the political philosophy is not simply about imperial wars or free market theories. It is a complete doctrine designed to change the way that we view the role of government.

Not a government that Abraham Lincoln famously claimed as being "of the people, by the people and for the people", but a government that is only there to serve the interests of profit.

The National Citizens Coalition, of which Harper has been a member for more than three decades, and once served as president, espouses the Milton Friedman theory of eliminating government altogether, except for "policing and the military" (1).

Policing to ensure that the poor don't touch the rich people's stuff, and the military, so we can lay our hands on the stuff belonging to the poor of other nations.

And this theory was galvanized at the University of Chicago, almost 60 years ago.

The Chicago School

In 1963, Time magazine ran a piece about the University of Chicago: The Return of a Giant, where they spoke of the difference a decade had made to the school.

In 1953 the University of Chicago was so close to academic anarchy that its graduate schools refused to honor degrees from its college, and only 141 freshmen entered the place. The limestone Gothic campus was marooned in a sea of slums and muggers; the trustees morosely considered moving the university out of Chicago. To sum up his problems, Chancellor Lawrence A. Kimpton told a story: "A Harvard professor about to come here went to his young son's room the night before they left Cambridge. The boy was praying: 'And now, goodbye, God. We're going to Chicago.'" (2)

What saved the school was a change in direction.

They couldn't compete for the academic liberalism of places like Harvard, so instead chose to create an academic conservatism, "where "classical" Economist Friedrich von Hayek ... [and] conservative Milton Friedman" became "Chicago's answer to Harvard's liberal John K. Galbraith."

However the economics of Friedman and Hayek, were not palpable to most Americans, and since they couldn't be pushed through the barrel of a gun, as happened in places like Chile and Argentina, it became necessary to change the way that people think.

And as sci-fi as that sounds, they set out to accomplish this with scholars, including Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt, who were encouraged to think outside the norm.

The Committee on Social Thought

The graduate studies in unorthodox thinking, had its own outpost:

The oddest graduate school in the U.S. is a far-out arm of the University of Chicago called the Committee on Social Thought. Physically, it is a dingy office under the eaves of the social science building. Its faculty, which includes Novelist Saul Bellow and Political Scientist Hannah Arendt, numbers only eleven. But its goal is as big as the world ... The committee is a generalist's elysium, a haven for "eccentrics" commanded to "think in new areas." If they do, the school gives them the degree of Doctor of Social Thought. (3)

Not all graduates churned out conservative essays, but the ones who did, very much changed the way the U.S. government did business.

In fact, one graduate who studied under Leo Strauss, the late Irving Kristol, called himself the "Godfather of Neoconversation".

He and scholars like him, flooded the market with books and essays, promoting free markets, and the freedom of the individual, including the freedom to be poor and sick, so long as you didn't expect the government to do anything about it.

The Calgary School

The first to use the term The Calgary School, as the Canadian equivalent of The Chicago School, was David J. Rovinsky, who wrote a paper for the Washington based Center for Strategic and International Studies, entitled: THE ASCENDANCY OF WESTERN CANADA IN CANADIAN POLICY MAKING.

In the paper he confirms that neoconservatism is more than just an economic theory, but a political argument, and that the Calgary School is part of an "international neoconservative movement".

So while Stephen Harper and his government have adopted the economic principles of Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, they represent something more profound.

An increasingly successful attempt at social engineering.

They want to completely change the way we view ourselves culturally and historically.

The rise of the west as a potent force in Canadian political life has had several consequences. It has turned federal and provincial governments toward fiscal conservatism, deficit reduction, and state retrenchment; led a reexamination of policies related to immigration and multiculturalism; and exposed the scope of judicial activism in the wake of the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to new political debate. Most important, it has induced the rest of English-speaking Canada to take a new hard line on the question of recognizing Quebec’s distinctiveness in the Canadian constitution, to the point of encouraging the French-speaking province to leave the federation. Western Canada’s embrace of classical liberalism, together with its increasing demographic weight within the country, has the potential to make Canadian political debate in the early 21st century much different, and probably less distinctively Canadian, than it was for the bulk of the 20th. (4)

And The Calgary School is helping to accomplish that.

Like The Chicago School, they challenge civil rights and what they term "judicial activism". In Chicago, law professors "lambasted the U.S. Supreme Court for being "a policymaker without proper judicial restraint. (2)"

And Stephen Harper in 1997, told leading American Conservatives, "And we have a Supreme Court, like yours, which, since we put a charter of rights in our constitution in 1982, is becoming increasingly arbitrary and important ... "

I often quote a line that appeared in the Vancouver Sun several years ago, describing Harper's Reform Party:

"Reform is somewhat un-Canadian. It's about tidy numbers, self-righteous sanctimoniousness and western grievances. It cannot talk about the sea or about our reluctant fondness for Quebec, about our sorrow at the way our aboriginal people live, about the geographically diverse, bilingual, multicultural mess of a great country we are."

The Reformers, or more specifically, the neoconservatives, do not want us to "talk about the sea, our reluctant fondness for Quebec or our sorrow at the way our aboriginal people live".

So instead they create alternative Canadian stories, not the least of which is Calgary School's Tom Flanagan's book First Nations, Second Thoughts. In it he diminishes the importance of our First Nations, reducing them to just another band of immigrants.

But he is not the only Calgary scholar to try to change our history or the way we view ourselves. According to Rovinsky,

A look at classical liberalism among western intellectuals almost necessarily begins with David Bercuson and Barry Cooper. Bercuson, a University of Calgary historian, and Cooper, a political scientist at the same institution, each have a track record of publishing that features interest in neoconservatism and the Canadian west as a region. Bercuson has written a number of pieces on regionalism, and edited Canada and the Burden of Unity. Cooper has co-edited a book of comparative essays on neoconservatism in English-speaking countries and has written a stinging critique of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Bercuson 1977, 1981; Cooper 1988, 1994). Yet they truly established their notoriety with their 1991 book Deconfederation: Canada Without Quebec. They state openly that the most important issue for constitutional reform is the preservation of Canada as a liberal democracy rooted in individual rights. The most significant threat to liberalism in Canada is Queberes call for special status and recognition of collective rights rooted in culture ...

And again to Harper:

"The establishment came down with a constitutional package which they put to a national referendum. The package included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things." (5)

This shows that the Calgary School is alive and well in the Harper government. And before suggesting that Harper has abandoned his views on Quebec, we have to remember another Flanagan goal "how to convince Canadians that we are moving to the left, when we are not".

However, there is a more important book written by the Bercuson/Cooper team: Derailed: The Betrayal of the National Dream. In it they lay out the agenda, in a 'head in the clouds' idealism.

Bercuson and Cooper divide Canadian history into periods of good government and bad government, the latter broadly covering the Pearson, Trudeau, and Mulroney governments. Good government essentially refers to a government that worries about economic growth and that assumes that other good things, like national unity and social harmony flow from abundant material wealth. (4)

I guess they didn't hear the old adage that "money is the root of all evil".

Because the problem with this philosophy, is that "abundant material wealth" is concentrated at the top, and the "trickle down" theory, a myth.

It's important to view neoconservatism in the big picture of excessive greed and human suffering.

Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, does an excellent job of exposing this. It was written in 2007, before the Wall Street induced "economic crisis", engineered to put the final nail in the coffin of the welfare state.

The Opposition has got to change their strategy, by changing the channel. When was the last time that healthcare was debated? I mean really debated?

When asked, Flaherty will stick to his one liner "we are not going to alter the transfer to the provinces." Not a word on protecting the Canada Health Act, that guarantees the right to universal healthcare for all citizens.

We have to understand that the neocon way is not the Canadian way. It is the American Republican way. The Calgary School way.

"Westerners, but especially Albertans, founded the Reform/Alliance to get "in" to Canada. The rest of the country has responded by telling us in no uncertain terms that we do not share their 'Canadian values.' Fine. Let us build a society on Alberta values." Stephen Harper

Getting rid of Stephen Harper anytime soon, is unlikely, but remember this. The Calgary School is already grooming Pierre Poilievre as his replacement. Oye!

Sources:

1. The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen: Canada and Democracy in the Age of Globalization, By Murray Dobbin, James Lorimer & Company, 2003, ISBN: 1-55028-785-0, Pg. 200-203

2. Universities: Return of a Giant, Time magazine, May 31, 1963

3. Universities: Generalist's Elysium, Time Magazine, January 03, 1964

4. THE ASCENDANCY OF WESTERN CANADA IN CANADIAN POLICY MAKING, By David J. Rovinsky, Policy Papers on the Americas, February 16, 1998, Volume IX Study 2

5. Full text of Stephen Harper's 1997 speech, Canadian Press, December 14, 2005

Raul Prebisch and Developmentalism

2011-06-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In 1964, delegates of 122 countries met in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss international trade relations.

One of the organizers of the event was Raul Prebisch, who had been head of the U.N.'s Economic Commission for Latin America from 1950 to 1963.

[Prebisch] told the delegates that the underdeveloped countries are draining off almost all the foreign aid that they receive because they have to pay so much to carry their foreign debts and because their export prices are falling.

Poorer nations were looking to the wealthier, for some relief. (1)

"You in the West tell us to work harder and we will get rich," said Nigeria's Minister of Commerce and Industry, Zanna Dipcharima. "Well, we are working hard, and we are getting poorer."

Not much was accomplished during the meetings, except the strengthening of an "us vs them" mentality.

...the underdeveloped nations moved toward creating a new alliance—along economic, not ideological lines. Though they bickered among themselves, they held fairly firm against the richer lands, both free and Communist. (2)

The wall put up by the West, especially the United States, was in response to the Developmentalism of Latin America, as espoused by Raul Prebisch.

Developmentalism and Marxism

As U.N.'s Economic Commissioner for Latin America:

Prebisch urged governments to take idle lands away from the rich, distribute them to the poor, modestly compensate the original owners with long-term bonds, force higher taxes on the high-living upper classes and use the money to build roads and power plants that would speed industrialization. Proposing and prodding from his U.N. post, he was the intellectual father of the thriving little Central American common market and the still-struggling Latin American Free Trade Area ... (3)

In response to post-war Keynesian policies, Prebisch carved out an economy that promoted education, healthcare, and the eradication of poverty. And he did it with a vengeance.

[this] mood was on the rise in the developing world, usually going under the name developmentalism, or Third World nationalism. Developmentalist economists argued that their countries would finally escape the cycle of poverty only if they pursued an inward-oriented industrialization strategy instead of relying on the export of natural resources, whose prices had been on a declining path, to Europe and North America. They advocated regulating or even nationalizing oil, minerals and other key industries so that a healthy share of the proceeds fed a government-led development process.

By the 1950s, the developmentalists, like the Keynesians and social democrats in rich countries, were able to boast a series of impressive success stories. The most advanced laboratory of developmentalism was the southern tip of Latin America, known as the Southern Cone: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and parts of Brazil. The epicentre was the United Nations' Economic Commission for Latin America, based in Santiago, Chile, and headed by the economist Raul Prebisch from 1950 to 1963.

Prebisch trained teams of economists in developmentalist theory and dispatched them to act as policy advisers for governments across the continent. Nationalist politicians like Argentina's Juan Peron put their ideas into practice with a vengeance, pouring public money into infrastructure projects such as highways and steel plants, giving local businesses generous subsidies to build their new factories, churning out cars and washing machines, and keeping out foreign imports with forbiddingly high tariffs.

During this dizzying period of expansion, the Southern Cone began to look more like Europe and North America than the rest of Latin America or other parts of the 'Third World. The workers in the new factories formed powerful unions that negotiated middle-class salaries, and their children were sent off to study at newly built public universities. The yawning gap between the region's polo-club elite and its peasant masses began to narrow. By the 1950s, Argentina had the largest middle class on the continent, and next-door Uruguay had a literacy rate of 95 percent and offered free health care for all citizens.

Developmentalism was so staggeringly successful for a time that the Southern Cone of Latin America became a potent symbol for poor countries around the world: here was proof that with smart, practical policies, aggressively implemented, the class divide between the First and Third World could actually be closed. (4)

But to the Americans, especially those economists at the Chicago School, what was happening in the Southern Cone, was the spread of Marxism.

The U.S. had already been involved in the successful coups of Iran and Guatemala, however,

Eradicating developmentalism in the Southern Cone, where it had taken far deeper root, was a much greater challenge. Figuring out how to achieve that goal was the topic of discussion between two American men as they met in Santiago, Chile, in 1953. One was Albion Patterson, director of the U.S. International Cooperation Administration in Chile—the agency that would later become USAID—and the other was Theodore W. Schultz, chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. Patterson had become increasingly concerned about the maddening influence of Raul Prebisch and Latin America's other "pink" economists.

.... The two men came up with a plan that would eventually turn Santiago, a hotbed of state-centred economics, into its opposite—a laboratory for cutting-edge free-market experiments, giving Milton Friedman what he had longed for: a country in which to test his cherished theories. The original plan was simple: the U.S. government would pay to send Chilean students to study economics at what pretty much everyone recognized was the most rabidly anti-"pink" school in the world—the University of Chicago. Schultz and his colleagues at the university would also be paid to travel to Santiago to conduct research into the Chilean economy and to train students and professors in Chicago School fundamentals.

What set the plan apart from other U.S. training programs that sponsored Latin American students, of which there were many, was its unabashedly ideological character. By selecting Chicago to train Chileans—a school where the professors agitated for the near-complete dismantling of government with single-minded focus—the U.S. State Department was firing a shot across the bow in its war against developmentalism, effectively telling Chileans that the U.S. government had decided what ideas their elite students should and should not learn. This was such blatant U.S. intervention in Latin American affairs that when Albion Patterson approached the dean of the University of Chile, the country's premiere university, and offered him a grant to set up the exchange program, the dean turned him down. He said he would participate only if his faculty had input into who in the U.S. was training his students. Patterson went on to approach the dean of a lesser institution, Chile's Catholic University, a much more conservative school with no economics department. The dean at the Catholic University jumped at the offer, and what became known in Washington and Chicago as "the Chile Project" was born.

"We came here to compete, not to collaborate," said Schultz of the University of Chicago, explaining why the program would be closed to all Chilean students but the few selected." This combative stance was explicit from the start: the goal of the Chile Project was to produce ideological warriors who would win the battle of ideas against Latin America's "pink" economists. (5)

However, despite this, Developmentalism continued to thrive.

Prebisch had warned that if more wasn't done to help third world economies, the conditions would be ripe for the rise of a demagogue.

So this became the Chicago School's next step.

Sources:

1. World Trade: Robin Hood at Geneva, Time magazine, April 03, 1964

2. World Trade: The Underdeveloped Get Together, Time magazine, February 21, 1964

3. Trade: When Poor Meets Rich, Time magazine, June 19, 1964

4. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, By Naomi Klein, Vintage Canada, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-676-97801-8, Pg. 64-65

5. Klein, 2007, Pg 68-69

Milton Friedman, the Southern Cone and "Authoritarian Democracy"

2011-05-31T09:05:00.000-07:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

The Southern Cone refers traditionally to the Latin American countries of Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, and often includes Brazil.

In the 1970's, the area was the hotbed of left-wing ideals, with Salvadore Allende becoming the first democratically elected Marxist, when he became President of Chile.

But not everyone saw Allende's victory as positive.

Allende was hated by the Chilean monied classes for understandable reasons: he expropriated their large estates for peasant co-operatives and supported policies of large wage increases in industry. When he nationalized all U.S.-owned copper companies whose mines had been developed with U.S. capital and technology in the early years of the century and were still lucrative, he made an implacable enemy of the United States and its president, Richard Nixon. Henry Kissinger, then U.S. secretary of state, openly stated American intentions after Allende's election in 1970 when he said, "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. " (1)

Fortunately for the monied classes, Chile already had a complement of free marketeers, who had been studying under the Chicago School of Economics. In the climate of the Cold War, a school was established in Santiago, to indoctrinate young students in the principles of neoliberalism.

Figuring out how to achieve that goal was the topic of discussion between two American men as they met in Santiago, Chile, in 1953. One was Albion Patterson, director of the U.S. International Cooperation Administration in Chile—the agency that would later become USAID—and the other was Theodore W. Schultz, chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. Patterson had become increasingly concerned about the maddening influence of Raul Prebisch and Latin America's other "pink" economists. "What we need to do is change the formation of the men, to influence the education, which is very bad," he had stressed to a colleague. This objective coincided with Schultz's own belief that the U.S. government wasn't doing enough to fight the intellectual war with Marxism. "The United States must take stock of its economic programs abroad ... we want [the poor countries] to work out their economic salvation by relating themselves to us and by using our way of achieving their economic development ... (2)

The economic policy of developmentalism, then rampant in South America, was viewed as "pinko", and just a step away from Communism.

The two men came up with a plan that would eventually turn Santiago, a hotbed of state-centred economics, into its opposite—a laboratory for cutting-edge free-market experiments, giving Milton Friedman what he had longed for: a country in which to test his cherished theories. The original plan was simple: the U.S. government would pay to send Chilean students to study economics at what pretty much everyone recognized was the most rabidly anti-"pink" school in the world—the University of Chicago. Schultz and his colleagues at the university would also be paid to travel to Santiago to conduct research into the Chilean economy and to train students and professors in Chicago School fundamentals.

What set the plan apart from other U.S. training programs that sponsored Latin American students, of which there were many, was its unabashedly ideological character. By selecting Chicago to train Chileans—a school where the professors agitated for the near-complete dismantling of government with single-minded focus—the U.S. State Department was firing a shot across the bow

But despite the fact that they were churning out hand picked neoliberals, the Southern Cone was still progressive.

But the Allende victory, gave Friedman, and what were referred to as the "Chicago Boys", an opportunity to create a laboratory, to test aggressive free market principles.

And to achieve this, it was necessary to engage in what Augustus Pinochet, the planted dictator of Chile, would call "Authoritarian Democracy". And Milton Friedman, the man who once accused President Kennedy of trying to create a police state, when he announced that he would be regulating the price of steel (Time. April 22, 1962), would oversee the project from start to finish.

And not just in Chile:

... the next fix came from other countries in Latin America's Southern Cone, where the Chicago School counter-revolution quickly spread. Brazil was already under the control of a U.S.supported junta, and several of Friedman's Brazilian students held key positions. Friedman travelled to Brazil in 1973, at the height of the regime's brutality, and declared the economic experiment "a miracle."" In Uruguay the military had staged a coup in 1973 and the following year decided to go the Chicago route.

Lacking sufficient numbers of Uruguayans who had graduated from the University of Chicago, the generals invited "Arnold Harberger and [economics professor] Larry Sjaastad from the University of Chicago and their team, which included former Chicago students from Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, to reform Uruguay's tax system and commercial policy. The effects on Uruguay's previously egalitarian society were immediate: real wages dropped by 28 percent, and hordes of scavengers appeared on the streets of Montevideo for the first time. (3)

And the revolution spread:

Next to join the experiment was Argentina in 1976, when a junta seized power from Isabel Perlin. That meant that Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil—the countries that had been showcases of developmental ism —were now all run by U.S.-backed military governments and were living laboratories of Chicago School economics. According to declassified Brazilian documents just released in March 2007, weeks before the Argentine generals seized power, they contacted Pinochet and the Brazilian junta and "outlined the main steps to be taken by the future regime. (3)

And despite the human atrocities throughout this period, Milton Friedman is still considered to be a hero.

It's important for us to understand the mind of this man, because his Chicago School begat the Calgary School, and the Calgary School begat Stephen Harper. And the late Milton Friedman was one of the most influential men in the Canadian neoconservative movement.

Sources:

1. Long Shadows: Truth, Lies and History, By Erna Paris, Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, ISBN: 0-676-97251-9, Pg. 428

2. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, By Naomi Klein, Vintage Canada, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-676-97801-8, Pg. 68-73

3. Klein, 2007, Pg. 102

Milton Friedman and the Destruction of Argentina

2011-05-29T04:54:00.001-07:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

It is just as important to study Milton Friedman as Leo Strauss, in understanding Canada's neoconservative movement.

Friedman is one of the authors of the "shock therapy" economic system, where disasters are created or exploited, by the corporate sector. Free Marketeers will call it progress. Others see it as shocking and inhumane.

Because in order for the U.S. to control a foreign nation's economy, an authoritarian is needed, and that authoritarian is often a ruthless dictator. Case in point, Augustus Pinochet in Chile.

If you read Lawrence Martin's Harperland, or Christian Nadeau's Rogue in Power, you'll see how Stephen Harper took control, using ruthless means, and is now in a position to implement Friedman's policies. A bloodless coup.

Argentina's Shock Therapy

In her memoirs, Margaret Thatcher says of Argentina:

Whatever the Argentineans thought about it at the time ... the Falklands War provided a shock which brought first democracy and more recently, under President Menem, the economic benefits of free-market policies. Inflation has been brought down and a far-reaching privatization programme has been undertaken. Subsidies, regulation and tariffs have all been cut. Economic growth has sharply accelerated.

A little "shock" was good for them, says the lady who once declared that there was "no such thing as society".

In their book Commanding Heights, Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, provide a bit of insight into the pre-coup Argentina, and what Thatcher called a "black economy".

Argentina had long been an economic paradox. How did a country that was one of the world's richest in the first decades of the twentieth century, end up in such economic disorder? A good part of the answer rested with Juan Peron. He is now best remembered, of course, as the husband of Evita, but in the years after World War II he was the embodiment of populism with an almost fascist tinge. Building on the prewar popularity of fascist ideas, Peron turned Argentina into a corporatist country, with powerful organized interest groups, big business, labor unions, military, farmers—that negotiated with the state and with each other for position and resources. He incited nationalist passions, stoked pretensions of grandeur, and pursued stridently anti-American policies. He nationalized large parts of the economy and put up trade barriers to defend them. He cut Argentina's links to the world economy which had been one of its great sources of wealth—embedded inflation in the society, and destroyed the foundations of sound economic growth. (2)

Viewed through a free-market lens, Peron would have been a disaster. So many opportunities for profit going to waste.

Peron was no saint, but according to Namomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine, life for Argentines was not as bad as suggested. Protectionism made many things unaffordable ($2000 just to install a phone), but the welfare state was alive and well. And like Chile, before their U.S. financed coup, the country had just undergone an intellectual revolution, where the arts thrived.

By the 1950s, Argentina had the largest middle class on the continent. Juan Peron had introduced Keynesian style economics "pouring public money into infrastructure projects such as highways and steel plants, giving local businesses generous subsidies to build their new factories, churning out cars and washing machines, and keeping out foreign imports with forbiddingly high tariffs." (3)

Naturally, this was anathema to the free marketeers, and when Peron died and his widow Isabel named leader, they sprang into action. From Henry Kissinger's records, recently made public, we learn that the U.S. were behind the 1976 coup that initiated the Argentine shock therapy.

Wages fell to 40% of what they had been and poverty became the norm.

But worse, was the wave of terror, under the planted dictator, General Jorge Videla, that followed the Chilean blueprint, to the Milton Friedman letter. According to Klein's Shock Doctrine:

When someone was targeted to be eliminated, a fleet of military vehicles showed up at that person's home or workplace and cordoned off the block, often with a helicopter buzzing overhead. In broad daylight and in full view of the neighbours, police or soldiers battered down the door and dragged out the victim, who often shouted his or her name before disappearing into a waiting Ford Falcon, in the hope that news of the event would reach the family.

Some "covert" operations were even more brazen: police were known to board crowded city buses and drag passengers off by their hair. In the city of Santa Fe, a couple was kidnapped right at the altar on their wedding day in front of a church filled with people."

The public character of terror did not stop with the initial capture. Once in custody, prisoners in Argentina were taken to one of more than three hundred torture camps across the country. Many of them were located in densely populated residential areas; one of the most notorious in a former athletic club on a busy street in Buenos Aires, another in a schoolhouse in central Bahia Blanca and yet another in a wing of a working hospital. At these torture centres, military vehicles sped in and out at odd hours, screams could be heard through the badly insulated walls and strange, body-shaped parcels were spotted being carried in and out, all silently registered by the nearby residents.

The Argentine junta was particularly sloppy about disposing of its victims. A country walk could end in horror because mass graves were barely concealed. Bodies would show up in public garbage bins, missing fingers and teeth (much as they do today in Iraq), or they would wash ashore on the banks of the Rio de la Plata, sometimes half a dozen at a time, after one of the junta's "death flights." On occasion, they even rained down from helicopters into farmers' fields."

All Argentines were in some way enlisted as witnesses to the erasure of their fellow citizens, yet most people claimed not to know what was going on. (much like Nazi Germany). There is a phrase Argentines use to describe the paradox of wide-eyed knowing and eyes-closed terror that was the dominant state of mind in those years: "We did not know what nobody could deny." (4)

As Canada is now in the throes of its own shock therapy, the need for torture chambers are not necessary.

We have our authoritarian leader in Stephen Harper, who allows no dissent. Witch hunts are now the norm, and while people don't disappear, their careers are ruined or threatened, if they dare to challenge.

The G-20 saw the worst human rights abuses and mass arrests in Canadian history; and police brutality at protests like the one over the Prison Farm closures, saw no age barrier. Those from 14 to 88 were victimized.

We are now part of the Shock Doctrine under the Harper regime, and what is happening in our country is just as shocking to many, as they were in places like Chile and Argentina.

And "the paradox of wide-eyed knowing and eyes-closed terror", was evident, when despite the horrors of the G-20, many Canadians simply shrugged and said "you should have stayed home".

Sources:

1. The Path to Power, By Margaret Thatcher, Harper Collins, 1995, ISBN: 0-06-017270-3, Pg. 583

2. The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy, By Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, Touchstone, 2002, ISBN: 0-684-82975-4, Pg. 242

3. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, By Naomi Klein, Vintage Canada, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-676-97801-8, Pg. 63

4. Klein, 2007, Pg. 106-107

The Deficit Cure: Acupuncture or Shock Therapy?

2011-05-27T05:31:00.000-07:00

When the neoconservative movement in Canada first appeared on the radar of many journalists, it was tied to the administrations of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Both of these leaders launched aggressive attacks on the welfare state, and left devastation in their paths.

Grant Devine in Saskatchewan, Ralph Klein in Alberta and Mike Harris in Ontario, all sought to experiment with the Thatcher/Reagan theories in their respective provinces.

On the federal scene, the Reform Party had their ideology in check, and were just waiting for their turn.

At the time, Thatcher and Reagan were not on tour, so Canada's neocons were taught strategy by New Zealand politician, Roger Douglas.

He held information seminars, speaking to the Harris caucus in Ontario, with Tony Clement, John Baird and Jim Flaherty in attendance; and Klein's in Alberta, indoctrinating Stockwell Day.

But the most important lecture, when it comes to the future of Canada, was presented to the Reform Party of Preston Manning and Stephen Harper, at their 1991 Assembly.

Douglas was introduced by Preston Manning, the only assembly speaker to be so honoured. And Manning told the delegates: There are three basic reasons why we have invited Sir Roger Douglas to be with us ... and three reasons why Reformers should pay close attention to what he has to say ... Sir Roger is an authority in fiscal reform and has advocated and promoted many of the fiscal reforms ... He is not only a reformer in word, he is a reformer in deed. Sir Roger deregulated the financial sector, phased down agricultural and other subsidies .. phased out import controls and drastically reduced tariffs levels. He instituted a 10% flat rate consumption tax (GST)*, with virtually no exemptions ... (1)

And Roger Douglas's most important message to his followers was "don't blink". Once you start cutting, keep going.

And if you developed a case of blepharospasm, uncontrollable eye blinking, a little acupuncture would fix you right up.

Because what Douglas failed to mention was how his policies affected New Zealand.

Dr. John Warnock, travelled to New Zealand to study the effects of what New Zealanders dubbed 'Rogernomics.' The figures tell a story of devastation - a word used by New Zealand's own agricultural minister to describe the state of agriculture in four years after the 'reforms': A 40 per cent drop in farm income; a 50 per cent drop in the value of farm land; a policy of paying 3,000 farmers incentives of $ 45,000 to leave and the suggestion that another 15,000 (out of 79,000) should follow them. Unemployment, which had been at 4 per cent before Douglas's reforms, jumped to over 12 per cent in just over a year and is still increasing.

"Douglas completely eliminated regional development grants and subsidies to rural services. Says Warnock, 'They had things like subsidized petroleum - regardless of where you were the price was the same - subsidized train service, bus service, airport service. They privatized all these things and the prices immediately skyrocketed.' A massive de-population of the countryside resulted, and approximately 40,000 New Zealanders per year have since left the country for Australia to find work ... (1)

He should have blinked.

Shock Therapy

While Roger Douglas may present us with a little trip down memory lane, Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty will probably forgo acupuncture for shock therapy.

This is the remedy prescribed by Milton Friedman, and articulated at places like the Fraser Institute. Friedman believed in taking advantage of disasters, like Katrina, but when none presented themselves, they could simply be created.

His most famous induced disaster, was the Chilean experiment.

In 1970, when a socialist, Salvador Allende, was elected president, many of Chile's elite, were not pleased.

Allende, a physician by training, understood the cost that malnutrition imposed upon the poor and set out to alleviate the grinding poverty in which so many Chileans were trapped. He ensured that every Chilean schoolchild had access to at least a half-liter of milk each day, and that their parents had access to jobs and the means to feed and educate their children. Median incomes began to rise dramatically in the first two years of Allende's term.

To pay for these social programs designed to create opportunities for the poor, rich Chileans who had lived all their lives off of rents, dividends and interest and who had never paid a dime in taxes, found themselves paying taxes for the first time and being forced to morally justify their lives of luxurious leisure at the expense of the poor. They didn't like it one bit. And they began to complain to their friends in Washington. (2)

Fortunately for them Washington was already aware of the situation, and with the help of several corporations, engineered a coup to oust Allende and place the murderous Augustus Pinochet in the presidential palace.

Friedman then took over, encouraging Pinochet to implement "shock therapy" on the people of Chile.

Friedman advised Pinochet to impose a rapid-fire transformation of the economy—tax cuts, free trade, privatized services, cuts to social spending and deregulation. Eventually, Chileans even saw their public schools replaced with voucher-funded private ones. It was the most extreme capitalist makeover ever attempted anywhere, and it became known as a "Chicago School" revolution, since so many of Pinochet's economists had studied under Friedman at the University of Chicago. Friedman predicted that the speed, suddenness and scope of the economic shifts would provoke psychological reactions in the public that "facilitate the adjustment." He coined a phrase for this painful tactic: economic "shock treatment." In the decades since, whenever governments have imposed sweeping free-market programs, the all-at-once shock treatment, or "shock therapy," has been the method of choice. (3)

And though Friedman and his Chicago School are still being hailed as heroes by Neoliberals/Neoconservative/Free Marketeers everywhere, his remaking of Chile was an absolute failure.

.. The country's period of steady growth that is held up as proof of its miraculous success, did not begin until the mid-eighties, a full decade after the Chicago Boys implemented shock therapy and well after Pinochet was forced to make a radical course correction.

That's because in 1982, despite its strict adherence to Chicago doctrine, Chile's economy crashed: its debt exploded, it faced hyperinflation once again and unemployment hit 30 percent—ten times higher than it was under Allende. The main cause was that the piranhas, the Enron-style financial houses that the Chicago Boys had freed from all regulation, had bought up the country's assets on borrowed money and run up an enormous debt of $14 billion.

The situation was so unstable that Pinochet was forced to do what Allende had done: he nationalized many of these companies. In the face of the debacle, almost all the Chicago Boys lost their influential government posts. (4)

So despite the fact that both of these experiments in economic reform were catastrophes, we know that it will not change Flaherty's or Harper's ideology.

Canadians will probably be subjected to a little "shock" in the upcoming budget, or if not then, in the not too distant future. The convoluted belief being that if we associate pain with social programs, we will not be too quick to want to reintroduce them (Friedman was a nut), especially if they convince us that they have been replaced with something better.

Poverty being good for the soul.

So slap on the electrodes boys. I'm ready.

Footnotes:

*The Reform Party was conflicted about the GST, with most wanting it scrapped if they came to power. Harper himself convinced them to keep the GST but eliminate any exemptions.

Sources:

1. Preston Manning and the Reform Party, By Murray Dobbin, Goodread Publishing, 1992, ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, pg. 113-114

2. Free Market Fundamentalism: Friedman, Pinochet and the "Chilean Miracle", By Scott Bidstrup

3. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, By Naomi Klein, Vintage Canada, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-676-97801-8, Pg. 8

4. Klein, 2007, Pg. 123

Milton Friedman and the Chilean Experiment

2011-05-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In 1970, Salvador Allende, was elected President of Chile, a progressive nation enjoying the rewards of an intellectual movement. Poets, artists, thinkers, all contributed to the culture of a socialist society.

But Allende made a huge mistake. He had campaigned on the promise of nationalizing his country's natural resources, raising concern with foreign business interests. A concern that would bring about radical and unwelcome changes, initiated by corporate giant International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT).

In the wake of the Allende victory ITT established close contacts with the State Department, the National Security Council, the U.S. Information Agency, the CIA, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and other agencies with the purpose of pushing the U.S. to intervene covertly in Chile. Efforts were made to prevent Allende from taking power, which he could do only with the help of the centrist Christian Democrats. The CIA immediately implemented a program of economic destabilization to demonstrate to the Christian Democrats the folly of supporting the inauguration of Allende as president. When that failed, tactics changed. An ITT memo from field operatives in Chile read: "A more realistic hope . . . is that a swiftly deteriorating economy (bank runs, plant bankruptcies, etc.) will touch off a wave of violence resulting in a military Coup." (1)

ITT had already stated that they were "prepared to assist financially in sums up to seven figures." The tactic worked, and the civil unrest caused by the destabilization, resulted in the predicted military coup.

Finally, on September 11, 1973, as President Allende watched the tanks roll in to lay siege to the presidential palace, he made one final radio address, still defiant though clearly beaten:

"I am certain that the seed we planted in the worthy consciousness of thousands and thousands of Chileans cannot be definitively uprooted. They have the strength; they can subjugate us, but they cannot halt social processes by either crime or force. History is ours, and the people make it." (2)

Sadly, he was unaware of the force of a 5' 2" bundle of evil, Milton Friedman, and his disciples at the Chicago School of Economics.

Friedman had been waiting for just such an opportunity to test his free market theories.

Friedman advised Pinochet to impose a rapid-fire transformation of the economy—tax cuts, free trade, privatized services, cuts to social spending and deregulation. Eventually, Chileans even saw their public schools replaced with voucher-funded private ones. It was the most extreme capitalist makeover ever attempted anywhere, and it became known as a "Chicago School" revolution, since so many of Pinochet's economists had studied under Friedman at the University of Chicago. Friedman predicted that the speed, suddenness and scope of the economic shifts would provoke psychological reactions in the public that "facilitate the adjustment." He coined a phrase for this painful tactic: economic "shock treatment." In the decades since, whenever governments have imposed sweeping free-market programs, the all-at-once shock treatment, or "shock therapy," has been the method of choice. (3)

And Pinochet was the perfect authoritarian leader to impose these radical changes. Torture and massacres were the remedy for dissent.

And though fully aware of this, Friedman felt no compassion for the victims. According to Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine:

After his meeting with Pinochet, Friedman made some personal notes about the encounter, which he reproduced decades later in his memoirs. He observed that the general "was sympathetically attracted to the idea of a shock treatment but was clearly distressed at the possible temporary unemployment that might be caused."

At this point, Pinochet was already notorious the world over for ordering massacres in football stadiums; that the dictator was "distressed" by the human cost of shock therapy might have given Friedman pause. Instead, he pressed the point in a follow-up letter in which he praised the general's "extremely wise" decisions but urged Pinochet to cut government spending much further, "by 25 per cent within six months ... across-the-board," while simultaneously adopting a package of pro-business policies moving toward "complete free trade." Friedman predicted that the hundreds of thousands of people who would be fired from the public sector would quickly get new jobs in the private sector, soon to be booming thanks to Pinochet's removal of "as many obstacles as possible that now hinder the private market. Friedman assured the general that if he followed his advice, he would be able to take credit for an economic miracle ... he "could end inflation in months" while the unemployment problem would be equally "brief—measured in months—and that subsequent recovery would be rapid." Pinochet would need to act fast and decisively; Friedman emphasized the importance of "shock" repeatedly, using the word three times and underlining that "gradualism is not feasible.""

Friedman was wrong however, and it would be several years before the employment situation improved.

But that was not really his concern. Nor were the 30,000 people killed, in order to implement his plan.

It's interesting how neoconservative disciples, view the Chilean experiment. In her memoirs, Margaret Thatcher acknowledges the "authoritarian" style of Pinochet, but marvelled at how easy it was for the country to return to normal under a free market system. Of course she credits Friedman for the transformation.

Praise is still being given three decades later. But is it earned? Not according to Klein.

The facts behind the "Chilean miracle" remain a matter of intense debate. Pinochet held power for seventeen years, and during that time he changed political direction several times. The country's period of steady growth that is held up as proof of its miraculous success did not begin until the mid-eighties, a full decade after the Chicago Boys implemented shock therapy and well after Pinochet was forced to make a radical course correction.

That's because in 1982, despite its strict adherence to Chicago doctrine, Chile's economy crashed: its debt exploded, it faced hyperinflation once again and unemployment hit 30 percent—ten times higher than it was under Allende. The main cause was that the piranhas, the Enron-style financial houses that the Chicago Boys had freed from all regulation, had bought up the country's assets on borrowed money and run up an enormous debt of $14 billion.

The situation was so unstable that Pinochet was forced to do what Allende had done: he nationalized many of these companies. In the face of the debacle, almost all the Chicago Boys lost their influential government posts. (2)

Today Chile's economy is stable, but the country suffers from very high income inequality. Many Chileans live well below the poverty line, a situation that the government is looking to eradicate.

Salvador Allende died on September 11, 1973, the day the tanks rolled in, and his death was put down to suicide, something his family never accepted. His remains are now to be exhumed and we may finally learn what happened on the fateful day.

However, despite the obvious failure of Friedman's Chilean experiment, others are trying to replicate the disaster, including it would seem, our own government.

We now have an authoritarian in complete control, and our record debt and deficit, presents a perfect situation to begin to implement a bit of "shock therapy".

Relax. It won't hurt a bit.

Sources:

1. The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen: Canada and Democracy in the Age of Globalization, By Murray Dobbin, James Lorimer & Company, 2003, ISBN: 1-55028-785-0, Pg. 77-79

2. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, By Naomi Klein, Vintage Canada, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-676-97801-8, Pg. 123

3. Klein, 2007, Pg. 8

The End of Public Healthcare. Are we Really Ready For This?

2011-03-30T06:26:00.000-07:00

On May 8th, 2005, then leader of the Opposition, Stephen Harper, made a bold announcement. He promised that if he was elected Prime Minister of Canada, one of the first things on his agenda would be to privatize the Canadian Healthcare System. (1)

This was just a week after he gave a lecture at the Fraser Institute, where he was in fact introduced as Canada's next PM.

He doesn't speak about that now, but then he doesn't really speak about anything of substance. Have his views changed since 2005? Hardly. On a visit to the United States during the debates over Obama's healthcare plan, he was asked by CBS about Canada's healthcare system, which is the envy of many other nations. He told the reporter that he really didn't know much about it, because it was a provincial issue.

The CANADA Health Act and the country's leader claimed not to know much about it? Given that he once headed up the National Citizens Coalition, a group founded to abolish public healthcare in this country, I contend that he probably knows the Canada Health Act better than most.

Then and Now

In the Spring of 2005, many were worried about the direction of our medicare. Preston Manning and Mike Harris had just released a Fraser Institute report calling for more healthcare privatization. The report said that those who could afford it, should have the "freedom" to choose their own healthcare – whether it is for-profit or non-profit.

The report failed to recognize the demise of the non-profit healthcare system for everyone, once for-profit health care is allowed to escalate.

Why should we care? I can give you an example.

When Mike Harris was premier of Ontario he began to introduce user fees. My daughter, who is disabled and on the Ontario Disability Support Program, injured her knee when at a soccer tournament for the Special Olympics. The injury required surgery, and the surgeon recommended physical therapy, during the healing process. But there was a catch. We were told that if she wanted to use the public healthcare system, she would have to go on a waiting list, and it could be months before she was called.

Or, she could attend a private clinic, partially subsidized, which would cost her $15.00 per visit. I know that doesn't sound like much, but the doctor recommended three visits a week. ODSP wouldn't cover it since there was a public option available.

$45.00 per week for someone on a pension, or who is a member of the "working poor", is a fortune. It means roughly $200.00 out of the monthly budget. She couldn't afford it so we paid for her therapy sessions. I was later told by her worker that if we gave her money for this, she was supposed to claim it, to be deducted from her benefit.

I don't think that worker ever recovered from the strip I tore off her. I was livid. She never pursued it further. (they have since laxed the rules but only slightly) Of course what this means, is that only the wealthy will get top rate care, while everyone else is at the mercy of what will eventually be a virtually bankrupt public system.

And in the spring of 2005, the hot topic at Canadian water coolers was the future of something, that we by then took for granted (2). That the letter and spirit of the Canada Health Act guaranteed the same level of medicare for everyone, and that this was now being threatened.

It didn't help the Neocons that the Alberta premier at the time, Ralph Klein, was traversing about praising the fact that there would be lots of money to be made in the industry (3). And now Stephen Harper had come out publicly with his pledge. And while Harper retracted his statement six years ago, what has he done since becoming prime minister to strengthen, or at least not further weaken, our medicare?

Our health minister has snubbed important medical conferences, prompting the question: "Does Canada still have a federal health minister? And, more important, does it have a government with the slightest interest in maintaining the national health-insurance program called medicare? For all practical purposes, the answer to both of those questions is a resounding “No.”

Erroll Mendes, lawyer, author and Professor of law at the University of Ottawa, was interviewed recently about the Contempt of Parliament charges against the Harper government, and he brought up another important point. Renegotiation with the provinces and the Canada Health Act, is scheduled for 2014.

With Stephen Harper refusing to provide the costs of big ticket items like the fighter jets, corporate tax cuts and his new law and order agenda, how will Parliamentarians know whether or not there is any money to sustain medicare?

Which brings us to another concern. Instead of allowing Parliament to examine the issue, Harper has handed it over to the unelected senate. A senate that he now controls.

Healthcare vs Sickcare

Another issue with the corporate sector taking over the industry, is that the focus will be on what Liberal health critic, Carolyn Bennett, calls "sickcare". An auto mechanic doesn't care what kind of car you buy or its gas mileage. Their only interest is fixing it when it breaks down.

With health becoming a for-profit industry, again the focus will only be on fixing you when you break down. We will be reduced to a series of pay scales, based on the plan that we or our employer has purchased. There will be free plans for the poor, but what quality of care will they receive?

But healthcare is about more than just tending the sick. It's also about prevention of illness, and under corporate care, prevention is a word to avoid at all costs.

Those in the medical profession understand the need to eat healthy and maintain a healthy lifestyle. But poverty is one of the root causes of illness. So healthcare must also address feeding and housing the poor, if we want to keep everyone as healthy as possible.

The working poor or those engaged in precarious employment, often have no sick leave plan, so they go to work when they shouldn't, not able to lose even a day's pay. Under a corporate system none of these things will be factored in. The more sick people, the more profit. Healthcare should not only be an election issue, but it should be the election issue. And remember, just because Stephen Harper no longer discusses it, does not mean that he has changed his plans. He's just hoping we won't notice until it's too late.

Sources:
1. Stephen Harper Promises To Privatize Canadian Healthcare, Lilith News, May 17th 2005

2. What separates a wrestling match from a health care, Globe and Mail, April 28, 2005

3. "Tories to Klein: keep your mouth shut", cupe.ca, April 28, 2005

The Remaking of Canada. Are we Really Prepared for This?

2011-03-29T13:27:00.000-07:00

Like many people living in Canada, I am ashamed of our current government. I am ashamed and I am appalled by the actions it has undertaken, and continues to undertake, in our name. I have never been particularly patriotic, but I do have a Canadian passport and I do pay taxes to the Canadian state. By virtue of these simple facts, I am responsible, like any citizen, for my government's initiatives. For this reason, I have to take action because feeling ashamed is not enough. I have to understand who I am dealing with, exactly what it is that they want, and why this government, with considerable success to date, is changing the face of our Canadian institutions.
That is the opening paragraph to Christian Nadeau's new book, Rogue in Power, and his words are chilling. I've often wondered myself just what Stephen Harper does want with us, and why a majority is so necessary, given the enormous amount of control he currently has over every aspect of government, and all Canadian institutions.

In fact, can I still call them 'Canadian institutions', or are they 'Harper institutions' now? Much of the political discourse today centers on the bogey-man coalition, with the Harper team keeping it alive to deflect attention from other things, like their Contempt of Parliament charge. And unbelievably, there are many in the media applauding his strategy. But what is that doing to our democracy?

During an election campaign we should be presented with the issues and that's the only thing that should matter. Yes, politics is a blood sport, and attack ads par for the course, but the Conservatives have been engaged in visceral assaults on their adversaries for five years, especially on the Liberals. As Andrew Cohen writes in the Ottawa Citizen:

There is a story of a meeting between Stephen Harper and a visiting head of government. During the conversation, which took place in the Prime Minister's Office, the two leaders eventually discussed the parliamentary opposition in their respective countries. What struck the visitor was Harper's antipathy toward the opposition, particularly the Liberals. "I don't like my opponents," the visitor allowed afterwards, "but I don't hate them. He hates his opposition!"

Hatred is a strong word. Whenever we spat "I hate you!" in the schoolyard, teachers told us to watch our tongues; you disliked the bully who washed your face with snow, but, really, you didn't hate him. You have to wonder about how little personal regard Stephen Harper has for his opponents and how it affects how he runs a government and fights an election. More than any other politician in this country, this is a man with animus.
Others in his circle have said that he can't be nice. "It's not in his DNA".

We know that the coalition flap has a shelf life, and after that I shudder to think what his next move will be. To date his policies are only getting negative attention. Can we expect even more poisonous darts thrown Ignatieff's way?

The fact that he's still standing says something of the Liberal leader's strength of character. I'd have been reduced to whimpering mass months ago.

Ezra Levant already wrote of an Ignatieff ancestor who was anti-Semitic. How relevant that is today is beyond me. When I was doing my family history, I discovered that some of my Acadian ancestors, who helped to settle Louisiana, owned slaves. It hardly makes me embrace slavery.

But what does all of the poison, all of the anger, the hatred, the bullying, the secrecy and contempt, really mean? What is the endgame? Is it simply power or is it something more? Nadeau believes that "the primary danger represented by the Conservatives lies in their profound belief in certain ideas and values and in their willingness to impose those ideas and values on Canadians." But I think that's only part of it.

Tom Flanagan has said in the past that Stephen Harper himself is not a social conservative. He only sees the Religious Right in his party as a means to an end. But he is willing to allow them to impose their version of morality on the rest of us, for his sole benefit. His new tax plan for families, only helps the nuclear family. Husband, wife, children. Not single families, same-sex relationships or any other configuration. This is clearly written to draw that conservative Christian-Judeau support. They are the ones with the websites and mailing lists who can bring him the votes.

Most religious organizations are worried about the poor and homeless, not whether gays want to marry and raise families.

This same strategy, was no doubt behind his decision to drop license fees on guns, which will reduce our revenue by $21 million. Gun enthusiasts see his party as the only one willing to take up their cause. It's interesting that the budget only mentions 'sports shooters' and 'hunters'. Not farmers this time.

So if all of his policies are designed for the sole benefit of religious fundamentalists and the gun totin' crowd, what happens to the rest of us? And why should we care?

There is a reason why Stephen Harper draws on the radical right for support, and it has nothing to do with his moral values. His is a government that operates solely for the benefit of multinational corporations. Canada or Canadians rarely cross his mind, except to exploit for political gain, in a fierce, albeit ambivalent nationalism.

In the video provided at the bottom of the page, you'll hear Harper first tell the Canadian media that we will not be expected to "surrender our sovereignty", yet in his speech to the G-20, he's pretty clear that he understands why people oppose the notion of global governance, because it "means a loss of national sovereignty". He also goes on to say that there is no longer a Canadian economy only a global economy.

Did we miss the memo? Or do Canadians really not care if we are still a united Canada? For all the hoopla over the Bloc wanting to break us up, it would appear that there may be nothing to break up. His speech certainly doesn't sound like a commitment to this country. His only commitment is to a Global economy. Multinational corporations.

Policy is designed to keep us passive. And if he can't pacify us, he'll turn us off the entire process, by making Parliament so toxic we no longer have the will, or even the desire, to save ourselves.

Journalist Russell Wangersky has a suggestion: "So, while you’re out there, caring about your wallet and the economy and little else, ask yourself this: regardless of how you’re going to vote, is that the kind of place you really want to live? It’s certainly a different country than the one I grew up in, and treasure."

We cannot give this man another mandate. It's that simple. Sources:

1. Rogue in Power: Why Stephen Harper is remaking Canada by Stealth, By Christian Nadeau, Lorimer Press, ISBN: 978-1-55277-730-5

Harper's Claim That Canadians Don't Care About Contempt Charges, is Only Showing Further Contempt

2011-03-29T06:09:00.000-07:00

Stephen Harper claims this week that Canadians don't care that his government was charged with Contempt of Parliament. And indeed, given it's toxicity, in some respect he's right. I've been a little contemptuous of it myself.

However, let's imagine for just a moment, a board meeting at a corporation, where the pitch for a new product line is being presented. Those involved in the design believe it to be a good product. But when board members notice that there is no cost analysis, they question those with the sparkly eyes.

"What's it going to cost?"

Now imagine being told that the cost was none of their business. Or when pressed, a box of receipts was dumped in the middle of the table, with the message "figure it out for yourself".

How long do you suppose it would take for board members to call security?

Here's another scenario. Your company enters into an agreement with a supplier. Contracts are drawn up and duly signed. But then an employee decides to change the contract AFTER those involved bargained in good faith.

By changing one word to 'not' it nullifies the entire thing. But worse yet, it is made to appear as though the signatories agreed to 'not' being paid, or 'not' being granted the contract for future services.

How long do you suppose it would take for that employee to be fired? Because that's what Bev Oda did.

As Thomas Walkom wrote recently in the Star: Yes, contempt of Parliament does matter

Contempt of Parliament means that you hold contempt for those that we elected to represent us. Thus it means that you hold contempt for us.

I would like to ask Conservative candidates this question. If your boss and your party have such little regard for Parliament, why do you want us to put you there? Wouldn't it be more like a sentence, than the honour it is supposed to be?

We Can't Think About a Harper Majority. We Have to Focus on a Harper Unemployed

2011-03-28T11:21:00.001-07:00

Heather Mallick asks: What if Harper's dream of a majority comes true? It should read what if our nightmare of a majority comes true. But it won't. We won't let it happen.

A Harper majority government would be dishonest. That's an easy one, they're Dodgy Inc. now, with their in-and-out campaign financing, lying to Parliament, allegations of illegally blocking freedom of information, killing the long-form census to cater to invented online outrage, wildly underestimating the cost of those Lockheed Martin jets, padding the Senate they previously vowed to reform, accepting fat MP pensions they once decried . . . I could go on but lack the space and sometimes the will to live, frankly.

A recent poll shows that Canadians know the Harper government tells whoppers. For the Harper regime, lying is a core value, to the point where there's a bouncy aggressive incredulity when they're questioned about it in the House of Commons. They regard opposition MPs as dogs lunging at a G20 wire fence when they've already been trained with electroshocks to never do that again.

Murray Dobbin in the Tyee is also Contemplating the Unthinkable Harper Majority. Five years of minority has frustrated their ambitions:
They couldn't slash Medicare or gut the Canada Health Act. They couldn't cut transfers to the provinces, or further weaken EI. They left the public services unions with their rights intact. They had to leave education alone (more or less). And they didn't risk slashing the civil service they hate so much. Even the CBC has been spared (though they raised millions from their loyalists attacking it in fundraising letters).

The frustration level, especially for Harper, must have been almost unbearable. Remember, this is a man who got so frustrated being in Opposition as right-hand man to Preston Manning that he bolted from politics altogether. The place he chose to cleanse himself after all those years having to play the democrat was the National Citizens Coalition, by a big margin the most right-wing organization on the national scene. He said he was glad to be out of politics so he could say what he really thought.
So we can't even use the "M" word anymore than we can use the "C" word. And in fact, we can't even contemplate another mandate. I have to be able to sleep nights.

Jason Lietaer and Stephen Harper's Tea Party Campaign Not Going so Well

2011-03-28T04:32:00.000-07:00

I watched Power and Politics yesterday, something I haven't done in quite awhile, and despite the fact that the whole 'reckless coalition' mantra is tanking, Harper's communication point man, Jason Lietaer, suggested that it would continue to be at the center of their campaign.

A big mistake.

It took just two days for the media, with the help of Gilles Duceppe, to nullify. Stephen Harper did indeed try to become Prime Minister in 2004, with the full support of the Bloc. Duceppe is far more credible on this because he not only has the original letter, but also video and Tom Flanagan's book. It's time to move on.

This only validates what Harper's critics have said all along. That he is deceitful.

It took a lot of courage for Duceppe to go public with this, because across Quebec people are saying "you've get to get rid of Harper", so admitting that he was once prepared to be kingmaker for him is a risky move. It's also interesting that Jack Layton is stepping away from it, despite the fact that he was key to both coalitions, and instead is allowing Michael Ignatieff to shoulder all of the "blame".

But I don't want to talk about the "C" word because it's enough already. On the weekend Gilles Duceppe referred to Stephen Harper's Tories 'as a retrograde Tea Party', and I think that's one of the things the other parties should focus on.

Not only on Harper's long and deep connections with the Republican Tea Party, but his style of campaigning. Stick to a few talking points and hammer them home. This might work in the U.S. where their battle cry is "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness", but in Canada, we follow the creed of "Peace, Order and Good Government".

In his five years, Harper has made no attempt to be peaceful, orderly or to provide good government. Instead it has been just a never ending election campaign, much of it at the expense of the Canadian taxpayer. His caucus rarely answer questions in the House, preferring to be glib and stick to their scripts. They have a 200 page manual instructing them on how to make committees dysfunctional, to avoid accountability. And they have a vetting system for handling access to information, that would rival Joseph Goebbel's.

So pitting himself against the other parties in such a manner, only validates what his critics have said all along. That he is impossible to deal with. I also found his choice of those to lead his campaign interesting. Guy Girorno, a corporate lobbyist, who once choreographed Ontario Premier Mike Harris's every move, and Jason Lietaer, another lobbyist and Mike Harris top aide.

It was once thought that Lietaer might replace Kory Teneycke as what Kady O'Malley called Director of Uncomfortable Silences. Even Jane Taber, top Harper cheerleader, listed him as one of the lobbyists in Harper's revolving door.

Which only validates what Harper's critics have said all along. That his government is run by corporate lobbyists.

This brings me to the second talking point of this campaign. That "only Stephen Harper can lead us to economic stability". They cite the fact that we did better than most countries during the collapse, despite the fact that many in the financial world agree that it was only because of measures put in place by the former government, many of which have since been torn down by Harper and Co. However, it would appear that our economic prowess was only in the short term. Many other countries are now leaving us in their dust.

That could have something to do with the fact that we were the only ones who saw the need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on "aren't we doing a great job" ads and signs, instead of focusing on the actual economic strength of recovery.

The Montreal Gazette gives us a Reality 'cheque': Harper's claims on the economy

- Canada's economy has been improving, but not at the same rate as the leading economies. Australia and Sweden are expected to lead in economic improvement in 2011, according to the report

- "Any likely post-election government can also be expected to stay on a course aimed at deficit reduction, with only the specific mix of spending and tax policy priorities under real debate."

- The Harper government increased program spending faster than the inflation rate. Between 2006-07 and 2008-09, program spending increased by an annual average of 5.1 per cent.

And the suggestion that only Stephen Harper can handle the economy, and not the Conservatives, validates yet another criticism, and perhaps the most important of them all.

Stephen Harper is a government on one. He listens to no one, not even the Canadian people.

It took just two days to tear down the entire Conservative strategy. They'd better change the channel soon because they've still got a long way to go

My Conversation With Irving Kristol on Welfare and Wages

2010-12-29T03:53:00.000-08:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

The late Irving Kristol (d. 2009) was a self-proclaimed Straussian and by his own labelling, the "Godfather of Neoconversation". He wrote a series of essays and books that became the basis for the movement.

In one he discusses "welfare" or "relief" and why he finds the concept absurd. I would like to challenge Mr. Kristol, because I find his arguments absurd.

Leo Strauss often had "conversations" with Plato, or at least at times his challenges and insights read like conversations, so I would like to converse with and challenge Irving Kristol.

I realize that he was an intellectual and certainly out of my league, but I'm going to invoke Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition. "What I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more than to think what we are doing."

There is too much compliance to what we are told is good for us, and not enough thinking. Because when you break it down, it's pretty simple.

We are continually transferring huge amounts of money to a government who is supposed to be using that money for the betterment of all citizens, and instead are using the money for the betterment of a chosen few.

And that is something, I "think" about often.

Essay on Pauperism

"In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance. " - Stephen Harper (1)

Irving Kristol begins his musings on welfare by invoking Alexis de Tocqueville's, 1835 Essay on Pauperism. Tocqueville asks why, in the most "opulent" nation in the world [England], was there such an extraordinary problem of "pauperism".

Concluding that too much public assistance can create idleness, he and Kristol also see a problem with the definition of poverty or pauperism. To the peasant, the ultimate goal was to have enough to eat. There was no desire to accumulate wealth. The only concern was survival.

However, in a modern city, the standards were different.
... in an "opulent" society, the idea of poverty itself undergoes a continual redefinition. The poor experience not only the need for a guaranteed minimum; they also suffer from what a modern sociologist would call "relative deprivation." Tocqueville puts the matter this way: "Among civilized peoples, the lack of a multitude of things causes poverty... In a country where the majority is ill-clothed, ill-housed, ill-fed, who thinks of giving clean clothes, healthy food, comfortable quarters to the poor? The majority of the English, having all these things, regard their absence as a frightful misfortune; society believes itself bound to come to the aid of those who lack them.... In England, the average standard of living a man can hope for in the course of his life is higher than in any other country of the world. This greatly facilitates the extension of pauperism in that kingdom." (2)
So the definition of poverty in the city, is different than that in the country.

The reasons for that, at least when this was written almost two centuries ago, was first off that those living in poverty in the city, had no land to work for food. But also their impoverishment was visible to those who took so much for granted.

How can you live conscience free, in a society with so much disparity?

The Welfare Explosion

The next body of work that Kristol critiqued was Regulating the Poor: The Function of Public Welfare by Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward. He calls their book "simpleminded", and "so crude in a quasi-Marxist way, that one is embarrassed to summarize it."

He scoffs at the notion from Piven and Cloward, that "Relief arrangements [under capitalism] are not shaped by the impulse to charity ... [they are] created and sustained to help deal with the malfunctions inherent in market economies."

Poverty in a modern society is often created by unemployment, and unemployment is often created when the "market economy" is in turmoil. The first to be cut by the corporate sector, during hard times, is the labour force, which creates a downward spiral.

The misguided notion that by giving more money to the corporate sector, jobs will be saved or created, has been proven over and over to be a myth. When companies were bailed out at the beginning of the latest "downturn", much of the money was used to give bonuses to executives and to buy up other companies that had gone bust.

Unemployment is still high, yet headlines in financial sections of newspapers, repeatedly include the words "record profits".

Piven and Cloward also wrote:
Relief arrangements are usually initiated or expanded in response to the political disorders that sometimes follow from the sharp economic downturns or dislocations that periodically beset market systems. The purpose of relief-giving at such times is not to ease hunger and want but to deal with civil disorder among the unemployed. (2)
Revolutions are often ignited by the lack of bread, real and metaphorical. And since Canada's crime rate is now at the lowest in our history, could this be why Stephen Harper is so intent on building more prisons?

"Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" - Ebenezer Scrooge

So My Dear Mr. Kristol. This is What I "Think"

“These proposals included cries for billions of new money for social assistance in the name of “child poverty” and for more business subsidies in the name of “cultural identity”. In both cases I was sought out as a rare public figure to oppose such projects.” - Stephen Harper, (The Bulldog, National Citizens Coalition, February 1997)

Tocqueville also wrote that "There are two incentives to work: the need to live and the desire to improve the conditions of life." The basis of Neoconservatism or Libertarianism, is that everyone should look after themselves. But how can you find work when you have no clothing to wear, no food to eat, or no roof over your head?

Maybe if we take care of the first incentive, the second one will have a better chance of prevailing. We can always find money to give to Big Business or war, so there is no excuse not to channel a bit to our nation's disadvantaged, who might actually want to get out of the cycle of poverty.

Apparently the NDP and Conservatives are negotiating terms for the acceptance of the January budget. NDP finance critic, Thomas Mulcair, wants "future corporate cuts to be more targeted to ensure companies are investing in jobs and productivity."

"Future corporate tax cuts"? What happened to the NDP? Those terms should have been compulsory 50 billion dollars ago. From the day that Stephen Harper invited his corporate backers to slurp from the public trough. That is our money and we don't want "corporate tax cuts" that promise so much and give so little.

That money could have gone, and should be going, to actual job creation. If the NDP buy into this, they are going to lose most of their base.

Maybe they need to read Linda McQuaig's column: The growth of extreme inequality in Canada
The massive upward flow of income has largely been invisible to the public, even though it may well amount to the most significant change in Canadian society in decades. The impact on Canada's social fabric is huge and likely to grow. Recent research -- particularly the work of British epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett -- shows that less equal societies almost always have more violence, more disease, more mental health problems, higher infant mortality rates, reduced life expectancies, as well as less social cohesion. The effects are most pronounced at the bottom, but are evident throughout the society.
Or John Grace's review of the new book, Spirit Level, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, that he wrote for the UK Guardian.
They say, it's not just the deprived underclass that loses out in an unequal society: everyone does, even the better off. Because it's not absolute levels of poverty that create the social problems, but the differentials in income between rich and poor.
That is the only issue that the NDP should be raising. Not what to do with "future corporate tax cuts".

Irving Kristol speaks of the fact that welfare payments were based on the poverty level, which means that they are at the same as the lowest wage earner's income. But the problem is not the amount of "relief" but the fact that wages are so low. There's no reason for it.

And if he felt that this meant that people wouldn't work, as a result, he might want to think about a national childcare plan, because often those on assistance are single parents, who can't work for poverty level wages, and pay someone else to look after their children while they work.

He also felt that welfare took away a man's masculinity: "... welfare robs the head of the household of his economic function, and tends to make of him a "superfluous man." And he suggests that if single mothers are paid to raise their children, they will stay single or get rid of their male partner.

Notwithstanding the inequality of that notion, the problem again relates not only to unemployment, but the ability of people to work. Food, clothing, shelter and childcare. Those needs must first be met.

And jobs paying higher than the poverty level, provide revenue from income tax, that can go to helping others to abandon their pauperism.

Yes, there will always be cheats, just as there will always be Big Business demanding more and more of our tax dollars, in some perverse sense of entitlement.

So my dear Mr. Kristol. Neoconservatism is failing society, but thanks for playing. And to my dear Mr. Mulcair. Give your head a shake.

"Courage, my friends; 'tis not too late to build a better world." - Tommy Douglas

Soures:

1. Full text of Stephen Harper's 1997 speech, Canadian Press, December 14, 2005

2. Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, By Irving Kristol, The Free Press, 1995, ISBN: 0-02-874021-1, Pg. 43-49

One-Eyed Shieks and Holy Wars. How we Got it so Wrong

2010-12-17T04:05:00.000-08:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

U.S. President Obama has come out this week suggesting that gains are being made in Afghanistan, though the progress is fragile.

In other words, they have no idea what they're doing.

U.S. intelligence supports my assessment.

The Americans drew the Soviet Union into invading the country in 1979, giving them their Vietnam, and are now caught in an unwinnable war that has gone on longer than the Soviet occupation, and threatens to continue for several more years.

15,000 Soviet soldiers were killed against about 1,000,000 Afghans, between 1979 and 1988.

And when you look at the rate of casualties in the American led invasion of Afghanistan, as represented by the chart below, we sure aren't fairing much better. And these are just the coalition forces. Thousand more civilians have fallen.

If the Americans wanted to give the Soviets their Vietnam, to weaken their military build up, they are getting it back. And while Stephen Harper has Canada trapped in the Afghan underworld, his answer is that he will now be directing the war himself, from the safety of his office. Rick Hillier calls it "crap!" I agree.

So How Did we Get it so Wrong?

The end of the Second World War brought on the Cold War, and the world's super powers spent enormous amounts of money building up an arsenal of advanced weaponry, in what Hannah Arendt described as an "apocalyptic chess game".
The technical development of the implements of violence has now reached the point where no political goal could conceivably correspond to their destructive potential or justify their actual use in armed conflict. Hence, warfare—from time immemorial the final merciless arbiter in international disputes—has lost much of its effectiveness and nearly all its glamour. (1)
It was a spy war as they all kept a close watch on each other, no one really wanting to use their weapons in what would have been a "universal suicide".

But this created another problem, because as the super powers became both omnipotent and impotent, smaller nations were left virtually unrestricted in the game of one-upmanship.
... in conventional warfare the poor countries are much less vulnerable than the great powers precisely because they are "underdeveloped," and because technical superiority can "be much more of a liability than an asset" in guerrilla wars. What all these uncomfortable novelties add up to is a complete reversal in the relationship between power and violence, foreshadowing another reversal in the future relationship between small and great powers. (1)
So the threats did not necessarily come from countries with nuclear capabilities, but from small groups "able to upset the strategic balance", by launching attacks that cost them very little.
And this bears an ominous similarity to one of political science's oldest insights, namely that power cannot be measured in terms of wealth, that an abundance of wealth may erode power, that riches are particularly dangerous to the power and well-being of republics. (1)
And since many of these new "armies" were stateless, who could the super powers wage war against? The CIA kept track of known terrorist cells, and did their best to keep them contained, but it was still presenting a huge problem for the military-industrial complex.

They had enormous weaponry but few targets, that allowed their use on any large scale.

Enter the Neoconservatives and Their "War on Terror"

In his 'Battlefields of the 1980s', General Andre Beaufre points out, that only "in those parts of the world not covered by nuclear deterrence" is war still possible, so the challenge for the Neoconservatives was to wage war in areas unrestrained by "nuclear deterrence".

But how to get Americans on board. They had already interfered in the affairs of the oil rich Middle East, but needed something bigger.

An enemy. A face. And fear.

Then 9/11 provided the perfect trifecta, though it was only the catalyst. The planning for this had been taking place for several years beforehand, when Bernard Lewis adapted Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, into a blueprint for war.

And through clever messaging, the American Neocons were able to sell the notion of an enormous Jihad. One launched by "savages" who had to be destroyed or their entire country would be demolished.

They "didn't start it", but they were sure going to finish it. Eyes lit up, keyboards clicked away and the landscape was awash in yellow ribbons. Meanwhile, the Bush administration used homey rhetoric to reach the masses, knowing that few intellects would find their theory of a massive Jihad against America logical.

Not that terrorism isn't real, but there are other ways of keeping it contained, without the senseless slaughter of so many.

The Blind Leading the Blind

Though Osama Bin Ladin went to his grave in 2001, denying any involvement in 9/11, he became the face of the war. Every now and then an actor would come out and make another tape, to keep fear at just the right level. It didn't make Bin Laden any less dead, but who was going to question?

However, even before Bin Laden became a household name, the Jihad against America had a leader. Omar Abdel Rahman, also called the "One-Eyed Sheik". He was apparently behind the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre, which at the time, was not considered the work of a mastermind.

However, it did prove to be an embarrassment for the CIA and others, especially when the person who allegedly planted the bomb, returned to the rental agency requesting a refund because the van he rented blew up. (2) I know there's a lot more to that story, but suffice it to say they were not that organized.

But that didn't stop the Bush Administration from linking this incident to their notion of a massive Jihad.

In neoconservative Andrew C. McCarthy's book, Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad, we see just how they created a powerful enemy from several smaller "underdeveloped" ones, by using myths and creative language. And yes I do on occasion read books by neocons. It's the only way I can get inside Stephen Harper's head. (have you seen the movie Jacob's Ladder? It kinda' looks like that in there. I scream a lot)

He starts out complaining that the government's main focus after the 1993 incident, was handling the fall out. Aghast, he questions why, after "the most brazen attack against the American homeland since Pearl Harbour had taken place". (3) Really? Since Pearl Harbour?

He then fancifies Rahman, who was indeed a horrible man, and currently in prison with no chance of ever being released. But to equate him those who planned the attack on Pearl Harbour, is a bit of a stretch.

But then McCarthy reminds his readers of the seriousness of the situation. Intelligence and containment wasn't enough. This was "war".
In terms of actual national commitment, such wars translate into a somewhat higher priority than the dogged pursuit of tax cheats and corporate fraudsters. To be sure, jihad differs from Wars on Drugs, Poverty, Disease. Incivility, Intolerance, Greenhouse Gases, or whatever the next Flavor of the Month may be. Jihad, after all, actually does involve warfare: real bombs, real victims, and real death. But the distinction is lost when the side that declares only rhetorical war is exclusively on the receiving end of the blows ... (3)
America was the "victim". They had been taking all the blows, and never fought back. So forget all the other nonsense. Pardon the corporate fraudsters (as George Bush did). Forget about poverty, disease and Global Warming (as George Bush did). Heck you could even forget being civil to each other.

Every waking moment and every red cent had to be put into fighting this Jihad. (as George Bush did)

And where did it get them? Iraq is in a mess and Afghanistan has been taken over by the criminal element. They are still chasing ghosts, while all but ignoring domestic problems, that are spiralling out of control.

And to top it off, the Jihadists are more powerful than ever, because the invasion has only increased the recruitment.

Again, Neoconservatism is the god that failed and we need to rethink this war.

Sources:

1. On Violence, by Hannah Arendt, Harvest Books, 1970, ISBN: 978-0-15-669500-8, Pg. 3

2. He wanted his money back: Insistence on a Refund for a Van Led to the Arrest of Blast Suspect, by Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times, March 5, 1993.

3. Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad, By Andrew C. McCarthy, Encounter Books, 2008, ISBN: 13-978-1-59403-213-4, Pg. 5

Hannah Arendt and the Canadian Conservative Movement

2010-12-13T06:39:00.001-08:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

My favourite political philosopher is Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), who wrote extensively on the nature of power, politics, authority, and totalitarianism. Unlike Leo Strauss, who invokes the ancients and uses "hidden dialogue", intended to speak primarily to the intellectual elite; Arendt writes in a clearer language.

And no matter how many times I read an essay or passage that she has written, I continue to have light bulb moments.

In one chapter of The Origins of Totalitarianism (my copy, 1968), she discusses Ideology as the basis of a political movement. That is a word heard often when describing Stephen Harper and indeed the neoconservative movement as a whole, and I was able to draw many parallels between her book and our current government.

We could argue that we are not really living in a true totalitarian state, but we are moving toward a form of totalitarianism, in it's broadest definition. I'll call it "Totalitarianism Lite".

Wherever it rose to power, it developed entirely new political institutions and destroyed all social, legal and political traditions of the country. No matter what the specifically national tradition or the particular spiritual source of its ideology, totalitarian government always transformed classes into masses, supplanted the party system ... started to operate according to a system of values so radically different from all others, that none of our traditional legal, moral, or common sense utilitarian categories could any longer help us to come to terms with, or judge, or predict their course of action. (p. 158)

Arendt says that this is not the same as a one-party dictatorship, but is rather a mass movement. Harper MP Rob Anders refers to their brand of politics as "movement conservatism", which has taken over the Tory Party in Canada and the Republican Party in the United States.

And while the best opportunity for the success of such a movement is the 'failure of the traditional political forces—liberal or conservative, national or socialist, republican or monarchist, authoritarian or democratic' (p. 158), these failures can also be contrived.

In post-war Germany, the time was right for Nazism, because of the failure of the Weimar Republic to create order after the devastation of the Great War. Unemployment and underemployment was high and crime was escalating. But in Canada and the U.S., when neoconservatism first entered the political arena, there was no real crisis, so one had to be created. In it's early stages it was the threat of communism. Then it became "Deficits", "Taxes" and "Government" that had to be annihilated.

And they have spent several years building an infrastructure of think tanks and foundations, while taking over the bulk of the media, especially in Canada, to sell their message.

Arendt refers to ideologies as "isms", and following are a few points made in the book, and their modern manifestations.

Anti-Intellectualism

Not before Hitler and Stalin were the great political potentialities of the ideologies discovered ... Ideologies are known for their scientific character: they combine the scientific approach with results of philosophical relevance and pretend to be scientific philosophy. (p. 166)

It is now accepted by most, that neoconservatism is in part, an anti-intellectual movement. Things like "facts" only get in the way of the "idea". Their ruling elite has defined the premise that they will spoon feed to the masses, so "University types" are vilified and shunned.

In order to impose an ideology, transforming an idea into a premise, you must allow no contradictions or interruptions. It is a "coercion of logic" that will assume that the "idea" is "sufficient to explain everything".

Individualism

Anytime I discuss politics, whether in a group or with a friend, one of the common complaints I hear is that people are so self involved now, making mass movements difficult. Gone is the sense of community.

This is not an accident.

Though not really libertarianism, neoconservatism promotes the libertarian notion of the freedom of the individual. Everyone must take care of themselves. If the government engages in group policies, it creates collectivism which leads to socialism/communism

Individualism creates '...a situation in which I cannot act, because there is nobody who will act with me.' (P. 172)

Terrorism

Though "terrorism" has come to define a radical Islamic movement, the definition of terrorism is simply:

- the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
- the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
- terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

In totalitarian movements, terrorism is used to keep people in line. It can be state sanctioned witch hunts, brutality and mass arrests, or something as simple as the fear of losing your job or career.

In Canada it has been called the "politics of fear".

Dictatorial terror [is] distinguished from totalitarian terror insofar as it threatens only authentic opponents, but not harmless citizens. (p.20)

Isolationism

Another important element to the success of totalitarianism/neoconservatism is a sense of isolation. Canada is gradually becoming isolated from the rest of the world. This became evident when we lost our bid for a seat on the UN Security Council.

Stephen Harper's neocon Reformers, always detested the United Nations, feeling that they had become too intrusive. So while he postured over the the loss of the seat, it was actually a blessing.

Isolation is, as it were, pretotalitarian; its hallmark is impotence insofar its power always comes from men acting together, [it] presses masses of isolated men together and supports them in a world which has become a wilderness for them. (P. 172)

Under George Bush the American people became extremely isolated, in a "you're with us or against us" climate. They soon learned that most of the world was against them, but 9/11 gave the neocons the necessary "crisis" that allowed the majority of Americans to be OK with this, at least for a while.

And it allowed them to accept unheard of measures to suspend civil liberties, creating a "fertile ground" for totalitarian measures.
It bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences.
And that loneliness was filled with unbridled patriotism and an unnatural sense of superiority.

Totalitarian government does not just curtail liberties or abolish essential freedoms; nor does it, at least to our limited knowledge, succeed in eradicating the love for freedom from the hearts of man. (P. 164)

Though personal freedoms were all but abolished after 9/11, many Americans believed that it was actually their enemies: Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Islamic fundamentalists, who were trying to destroy their freedoms.

And this mindset created what columnist Dan Gardner recently called a bigger threat to liberty than terrorism.
On Sept. 12, 2001, George W. Bush said something he had avoided saying the day before. “The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror,” he told reporters. “They were acts of war.” The decision to frame the response to 9/11 as a “war” was a fateful one.

Before that moment, Western democracies would never have sent their soldiers to fight endless battles in distant and obscure deserts. Imprisonment without charge or trial would never have been advocated by leading politicians. Torture would never have been supported by much of the population. And calls for the assassination of a man who leaked documents would never have been heard from leading journalists.
This beating of the war drum became the means of isolating the American people, not only from the rest of the world, but from the truth.

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist. (P. 172)

Arendt reminds us that the threat of totalitarianism as a movement, did not end with the deaths of Hitler or Stalin. It's potential is too phenomenal to ignore.

That's why it's important to recognize that this is not a traditional political party, but is a radical movement, that stands to drastically alter the traditional legal and moral foundation of our just society.

We Need a Lot More Attlee and a Little Less Churchill

2010-12-07T11:49:00.001-08:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

At the end of World War II, Britain should have been riding high. They had defeated the Axis, led to victory by Winston Churchill.

And yet when an election was held in 1945, they did not choose Churchill to continue to lead the way. Instead a social worker named Clement Attlee was elected prime minister.

The people had grown weary of war and tired of bluster. They were looking for compassion and a return to some form of normalcy.

My mom was a nurse in England during the Blitz and I asked her once how she felt when the war was over. She described a brief feeling of elation, not because they had won, but just that they could finally put it all behind them.

She had seen so much and that she rarely talked about.

Attlee offered something different.
Britain was no longer to be led by this extraordinary figure [Churchill], once called "the greatest adventurer of modern political history" descendant of the duke of Marlborough, cavalry officer and Boer War hero, swashbuckler and master prose stylist, liberal reformer-turned-defender of Empire. Instead, he was replaced by Clement Attlee, moved by the poverty and despair ... and inspired by what he called "Christian ethics". (1)
Yes, believe it or not there was a day when "Christian ethics" and "Christian values" meant caring about poverty and despair. Now the only Christians we hear from, as represented by the Religious Right, are those motivated by greed and hatred, while judging the rest of us who don't think as they do.

Like Tommy Douglas, Attlee was a socialist. Not animated like Douglas, but quiet and reserved. And he was just what Britain needed at the time, creating an intellectual movement that focused on ideas.
[and] established free medical care under a newly constituted National Health Service, created new systems of pensions, promoted better education and housing, and sought to deliver on the explicit commitment to "full employment." (1)
In the 1930s unemployment was at 12%. By the late 1940s it had been reduced to 1.3%.

And while the state of Britain's finances, due to the enormous cost of the war, prevented him from doing everything he would have liked, he accomplished something miraculous. He put people first, and in 2004, was voted the greatest British prime minister of the 20th century, in a poll of 139 professors.

He had presided over the start of the Welfare State, that focused on the well being of the nation's citizens.

We need a return to that kind of thinking.

Our occupation of Afghanistan has now outlasted that of the Soviet Union. Canadians are weary of war and tired of bluster.

In the U.S., Obama supporters are angry over his extending the ridiculous Bush Tax Cuts. They should be. Not that he really had a choice. Today's conventional thinking is so twisted, that somehow giving the rich more money is supposed to make sense.

I mean they've done so much for us, haven't they? Led us into a recession and while crying "Free Markets", came running to us with their hands out when things went bust.

And like idiots we gave them more money.

One of the accomplishments of Attlee that I found inspiring was the replacing of the gold standard, with a "full employment standard."
The economy was to be judged not by how many troy ounces there were to the British pound but by the number of jobs it could deliver to a population willing to work. (1)
Imagine that.

Sources:

1. The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy, By Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, Touchstone, 2002, ISBN: 0-684-82975-4

Common Sense and Hookers. How Mike Harris Stole my Vote

2010-12-05T05:19:00.000-08:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

I came across something the other day, that I hadn't realized I had kept. (I really having to start throwing stuff away)

It was a videotape with a white cardboard cover, and the dire warning to 'View Before June 8' [1995]; the [former Ontario premier] Mike Harris's campaign video when he was flogging his so-called Common Sense Revolution.

So I popped it in the VCR last night, in an attempt to understand what drove me to vote for this party through their local candidate Bill Vancoughnet. And I realized that it was as much about the language used to sell it, as the product.

The art of ambiguity helped to mask their true intent.

Mind you at the time, few Canadians understood the concept of neoconservatism, so we trusted the basic good of the Canadian identity, not realizing that much of this campaign was imported from the United States.

The two key elements that were hammered out by Vancoughnet and Harris on the tape, were taxes and the reduction of government waste. They promised four billion dollars in "tax rebates", a much better choice of words than "tax reduction", since they imply a cheque in the mail.

They also promised to "eliminate the barriers to job creation" - the removal of environmental restrictions.

"Cut the size of government by involving the private sector" - costly and service reducing privatization

"Arms length involvement by eliminating red tape" - the removal of health and safety concerns.

Welfare Reform

In 1975, Andrew Armitage wrote one of the first comprehensive books on Canada's social welfare system, and he stated that the way that Canadians view welfare or social assistance, is not with an eye to eliminating it, only to making it fairer.

He said that it had to be about not simply a transfer of funds, but an "exchange". That is why we liked Harris's notion of Workfare. The able bodied expected to pull their weight.

But the way this was presented to Ontarians was fundamentally flawed, and yet Harris was able to sell it not only to the working class, but to those receiving assistance.

He sold it to the first group as getting "those lazy bums off the couch", and to the latter, as finding them jobs. But what we got instead was one of the most vile attacks on struggling citizens in modern history.

They cut the welfare rolls in half and drastically reduced benefits. The McGuinty government has attempted to raise the rates since then, but they are still far below pre-1995 levels. Thousands of people were thrown into the streets as a result, many freezing to death in their cars or in allies. The use of food banks rose and for many it was a return to depression era conditions.

And the promised jobs never materialized. Those on assistance were told they had to work, but also had to find their own employment in an already overstretched job market.

But a handful of people got filthy rich. A neoconservative success story.

Transfers and Exchange

The Harrisites were able to find willing accomplices to their inhumane policies because of stories. We all knew some.

Like the cab drivers who told of welfare recipients using their taxi chits to have them deliver cigarettes. Or the single moms with eight kids receiving thousands of dollars a month. Or welfare cheques going for booze or drugs.

The stories were true but not as common as we were led to believe.

I recently spoke with a woman who has worked in the system for three decades. She remembers the Harris era well and said that she can't remember a day during that time, when she didn't feel sad. Many of her clients were axed and she worried about what became of them, fearing the worst.

And as to the lazy "welfare bums", she told me that most of her clients wanted to work and hated having to accept what they thought of as "charity".

But we allowed a few "cheats" to define the entire system, and few raised a hand to stop "Chainsaw Mike" (those who did felt that wrath of the "Riot Police", a common view in Harrisland).

So maybe it's time to tap into the notion of "transfer and exchange". What are we getting from our government in exchange for the enormous amounts of our money we entrust them with?

In Ontario back in the day, we entrusted John Baird with millions to fix the welfare problem. In exchange we got a boondoggle computer system that never worked, and a contract with Anderson Consulting of Enron fame, who charged us 4 to 1, what the job would have cost using a civil servant.

In exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars for infrastructure projects, transferred to the Harris government, we got signs, glossy pamphlets and self-promotion advertising. In other words, taxpayers funded his re-election campaign.

And yet we transferred the same hundreds of millions of dollars to the Harper government, for the same signs, pamphlets and self-promotion advertising.

We have also transferred billions to the war in Afghanistan and have no idea what we got in exchange. Or maybe we do. A request for more billions.

Ontarians were lured into complicity, because the Harris government focused on the cheats. Yet any system involving money is always open to exploitation.

And that also includes John Baird billing us $61,000 for his vacation to Bali (since he did nothing to address climate change), or Tony Clement $11,000 to deliver a cheque that he could have mailed. Or Christian Paradis presenting a claim of $5,000 for an $800 coat.

Cheats are cheats.

We will now be transferring more funds for an extension of stimulus money, and what will we get in exchange? Nobody knows because nobody asks. Tom Walkom believes it is to help pay for Stephen Harper's election campaign, and has nothing to do with the jobs he's promising.

In fact, job figures are looking better, simply because many out of work Canadians are simply giving up. In exchange for this transfer of funds we should demand that the money go to areas hardest hit by unemployment, but we know it won't. It's going to the 905 in an attempt to buy 10 seats.

In the United States the Republicans have blocked plans to cancel further tax cuts for the richest Americans, while the U.S. unemployment rate remains high and thousands are set to lose their benefits. What will the American people get in exchange for this enormous transfer of funds from the working class to the ultra-rich?

What will Canadians get for the enormous transfer of our tax dollars to the ultra-rich (60 billion in total come January)? An abstract promise of job creation.

But a handful of people will get filthy rich. Another neoconservative success story.

Epilogue

Another man appearing on the tape was Mark Mullins, referred to simply as an economist. He said that he had reviewed the Harris plan and confirmed that it would create 725,000 jobs.

Mullins went on to become an advisor for the Alliance Party and CEO of the Fraser Institute.

Bill Vancoughnet would be forced out of politics for soliciting an undercover cop in Toronto. The charges were dropped on the promise of his attending 'John' school.

Mike Harris's lap dog, Tim Hudak, husband of the infamous Debbie Hutton (Harris's gate keeper), is now heading the PC Party in Ontario, hoping to be our next premier.

Another neoconservative success story.

Political Theology, Neoconservatism and the Religious Right

2010-12-01T05:22:00.000-08:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

To achieve a better understanding of how the neoconservative movement has been so successful, you have to go back to the start of it all, to make any sense of it all.

It is such a foreign concept, especially in Canada, that the media and pundits are often scrambling for an angle.

Stephen Harper is authoritative. Stephen Harper is secretive. Stephen Harper is a bully. Stephen Harper is dishonest.

But the essence of Stephen Harper can be summed up in a single word: Neoconservative. That political entity requires all of those things.

And the essence of neoconservatism can be summed up in two words: Political Theology. That was the theory of Carl Schmitt who had an intellectual relationship with Leo Strauss, the man deemed to be the father of the neoconservative movement.

Strauss had written to Schmitt, critiquing his Concept of the Political, and his suggestions were included in future publications of the book.
Just as the Concept of the Political has an exceptional position among the works of Carl Schmitt, so are the "Notes" of Leo Strauss exceptional among the texts about Schmitt ... The Concept of the Political is the only text that Schmitt issued in three different editions.' It is the only text in which the changes are not limited to polishing style, introducing minor shifts in emphasis, and making opportunistic corrections, but reveal conceptual interventions and important clarifications of content.' And it is the only text in which, by means of significant deletions, elaborations, and reformulations, Schmitt reacts to a critique.

Only in the case of the Concept of the Political does Schmitt engage in a dialogue, both open and hidden, with an interpreter, a dialogue that follows the path of a careful revision of Schmitt's own text. The partner in the dialogue is the author of the "Notes," Leo Strauss. He is the only one among Schmitt's critics whose interpretation Schmitt would include, decades later, in a publication under Schmitt's name,' and Strauss is the only one Schmitt would publicly call an "important philosopher."' (1)
This is quite compelling seeing as how Carl Schmitt was a Nazi and Leo Strauss a Jew. In fact Schmitt was responsible for removing Jewish content from university holdings, and yet he included "Jewish content" in the revisions to his book. He remarked to a friend after reading Strauss's notes: "He saw through me and X-rayed me as nobody else can."

And the notion of Political Theology is probably the best explanation of the resulting movement. It is more than mere ideology. It is a dogma. The infallible belief in what they are doing. They let nothing in, that contradicts their acceptance of corporatism.

In that way it was a natural marriage with the Religious Right. They were betrothed at birth.

Becasue who better to bring in to the fold, than a group already enormously successful at turning myths into truths. That's not an attack on any one's religion, but let's face it. The Religious Right does not represent mainstream beliefs. They have distorted religion for financial gain.

Most evangelicals do not share in the hatred and greed that has come to define them. They have embraced corporatism as the route to salvation, and as a result, are able to bestow greatness on a political leader. Another confliction with true evangelism.

A good example of this is the case of Bob Sirico, once a gay rights activist, and now a Catholic Priest. According to the Heartland Institute:

One often hears priests, preachers, and rabbis endorse an activist government able to solve social, economic, and perhaps even moral problems. Fr. Sirico offers a powerful challenge to this conventional wisdom. Religious principles, he says, require that men and women be free to practice virtue or vice, and freedom in turn requires a limited government and vibrant free-market economy. (2)

Have you ever heard anything so twisted? I attended Catholic school and not once do I remember the nuns catechizing a free-market economy.

So if we accept that neoconservatism is not so much a poltiical philosophy as a political theology, everything else falls into line. We are dealing with a religion that has a fundamental set of beliefs and practices.

Their followers are referred to as Straussians.

But perhaps the biggest victim of neoconservatism, is Leo Strauss himself. He would never have promoted Imperialism and would no doubt have scoffed at the fanaticism now represented in the Republican Party, the Tea Party and the Reform-Alliance (Conservative Party of Canada).

As journalist Michael Lind once wrote in the Washington Weekly: "Whatever one thinks of Strauss as a philosopher, he cannot be blamed for the opportunism of his followers."

Sources:

1. Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue, Translated by J. Harvey Lomax, University of Chicago Press, 1995, ISBN: 978-0-226-51888-6, Pg. 6-8

2. "Religion and Freedom", by Joseph Bast, Heartland Institute. January 1, 2007

The Art of Ambiguity and Preston Manning's Bait and Switch

2010-11-26T03:46:00.001-08:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Many politically engaged Canadians are now fully aware that the Conservative Party that Stephen Harper currently heads, did not descend from Canada's traditional Tory Party, but from the Reform movement, and even further back than that, Social Credit.

As early as 1967, the Mannings, Ernest and Preston, envisioned a new national party, and they laid out the platform for such a party in a book called Political Realignment.

Ernest Manning had been approached by a group of wealthy businessmen who told him that money would be no object, if he would be open to starting a party representing corporate interests, but he instead suggested that they simply work through the existing Progressive Conservative party, and swing it to the right.

But the PCs at the time wanted nothing to do with them, so they opted instead to wait for the next wave of anger.

It would take almost two decades.

And the anger would come over several moves by the Trudeau government. An attempt to close tax loopholes and make Canada's rich pay their share, the National Energy Program and official bilingualism.

This was sold to Westerners as an attempt to make them support the rest of the country by syphoning off their oil profits, and a pandering to Quebec. They never mentioned the "fair taxes" initiative, or they might not have received the same support.

Not that Western grievances weren't real, but they were definitely inflated and exploited.

The Reform Movement (including the new Republicans and Tea Party) has so many layers, that if you try presenting them to someone, their eyes glaze over. It is so overwhelming. "Neoconservatism", "Leo Strauss", "Religious Right".

But if you take it down to a few important points, it all makes sense, beginning with the fact that it is a movement based solely on lies. And to sell the lies, those on both sides of the border, have succeeded because they have been able to finely hone the art of ambiguity.

Utilizing intellect and emotion, they craft their messages so that they mean different things to different people. The basis of Leo Strauss's thought.

The wonderful Murray Dobbin had already figured this out after attending early Reform assemblies. When Preston Manning or Stephen Harper were speaking, it was clear that their messages were not clear at all.

Dobbin referred to it as "calculated ambiguity".

Manning took all the grievances he could find, put them in a big box and tied them up with a green bow. Then he began making "promises" based on what was in the box. They were empty but they were passionate.

He would end special favours for Quebec, bilingualism, multiculturalism, turban wearing in the RCMP, the Charter of Rights, abortion, gay rights, the gun registry, the "patronage" position of the Governor General. It was a long list.

But he was able to join together all of the right-wing fringe groups, who finally saw hope, no matter how outrageous their demands. It didn't matter. He never intended to meet their demands only dangle them like a carrot to keep them running.
... the fringe parties were a genuine, albeit extreme, reflection of a right-wing resurgence in the West during the early 1980s. To the extent that extremism is succinct and clear, these parties provide a useful analytical prelude to the later emergence of the Reform party. (1)
Manning had them all transfixed. But he had to move slowly.

The biggest issue was Quebec and as such, while the ultimate goal was a national party, he postured, and vowed to stand tough when prime minister. If Quebec didn't like it they could leave.

And while expanding Eastward into Ontario, this still had all the markings of a Western protest party. At least until the hierarchy pulled a fast one.
Though the party remained constitutionally and politically a western party after the 1989 Assembly, the policy book based on that assembly was completely purged of any mention of "the West." Manning's foreword in the 1988 edition talks of the likelihood of a divided Parliament after the next election in which "Western Reformers would be in a powerful position to pursue our agenda." The booklet is peppered with phrases like, "A fair shake for the West," "Reform MPs will look out for Western interests," and numerous derogatory remarks about "Central Canada" and "Central Canadian interests," "Central Canadian terms" as well as "Quebec-centred" biases of Mulroney.
Virtually all of this western, anti-central Canada terminology was purged from the 1989 edition of the booklet. In Manning's two-and-a-half page foreword, entitled "The New Canada," there is not a single reference to the West or westerners. Gone, as well, was the "Declaration of Adoption" in the 1988 book, which recognized "the supremacy of God."
The sanitizing of the policy book was done by the Party Policy Committee (PPC), without any mandate from the assembly. It was a body which would play a major role as Manning guided the party away from its western orientation towards national party readiness. Appointed by the party's Executive Committee, and chaired by Preston Manning, its key members were Stan Waters and Stephen Harper. Harper was the Chief Policy Officer of the Party and the only other person, besides [Deb] Grey and Waters, whom Manning trusted to speak for the party.
With a policy book completely cleansed of any reference to the West and most of its specifically western policies, plus the assembly's authority to take the Reform message to the East, the stage was set for the next phase in Preston Manning's plan to create a new conservative party. (2)
The old bait and switch.

Stephen Harper will still play the Western grievances/Quebec card when necessary, as he did with the "separatist" cries during the 2008 coalition crisis. Or more recently with the Edmonton Expo bid and the Quebec arena.

David Staples in the Edmonton journal, under a photo of Harper in Quebec, discusses Jean Charest's promise of funds for the new NHL arena: Premier Jean Charest announced he was willing to put $175 million from his budget (a.k.a. transfer payments from Alberta) towards a Quebec City arena.

"a.k.a. transfer payments from Alberta"?

In the end, they won't blame Harper, but will instead blame Quebec.

This is why Stephen Harper will not give in to too many demands from his "base", because if he does he loses the passion of discontent, that has gotten him to where he is now. What he instead implies is that he will only grant their wishes, if they can grant him his. A majority.

Sources:

1. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada, By Trevor Harrison, University of Toronto Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6, Pg. 80

2. Preston Manning and the Reform Party, By Murray Dobbin, Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing, 1992, ISBN: 0-88780-161-7 4, Pg. 85-86

The Success of Neoconservatism is Based on Emotionally Fuelled Ambiguity

2010-11-25T04:38:00.000-08:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

There are many arguments about Leo Strauss and his position as the father of Neoconservatism. He has been blamed for everything from the Iraq War to the economic collapse, but how justified is that?

I admit that I've had to rethink some of my earlier assessments, but I've come to the conclusion that many self proclaimed Straussians, inadvertently learned something else from the German Philosopher.

The art of ambiguity. And they have indeed taken it to an art form.

In his review of the book, Leo Strauss and the American Right by Shadia B. Drury, Michael Lind writes in the Washington Review:
Straussian thought is hard to wrap your mind around, in part because Strauss and his disciples write in a highly abstract style that keeps trespassers out ... Strauss believed that many if not most philosophers, for fear of persecution, wrote in ways that concealed their views as much as they revealed them. (1)
In 2003, Strauss's daughter Jenny (actually his niece. He adopted her after his sister and her husband were killed in an accident), wrote an Oped piece for the New York Times, hoping to correct many of the misconceptions of her father. She had a little different take on this.

She discussed his love of reading, believing that it was not a passive exercise. Many people read the works of a variety of thinkers and only take from them, what validates their own opinion. And Strauss felt that this was not accidental.
The fact is that Leo Strauss also recognized a multiplicity of readers, but he had enough faith in his authors to assume that they, too, recognized that they would have a diverse readership. Some of their readers, the ancients realized, would want only to find their own views and prejudices confirmed; others might be willing to open themselves to new, perhaps unconventional or unpopular, ideas. I personally think my father's rediscovery of the art of writing for different kinds of readers will be his most lasting legacy. (2)
Maybe not intentionally vague, but ambiguous none the less.

And this is the most important weapon in the neoconconservative 'Reform' arsenal. If they told us what they really wanted to do, hand government over to the corporate world, they'd never stand a chance.

Canada's Reform (?)

Whether you want to call the Canadian 'Reform' a party or a movement is irrelevant. No matter what it is, the fact remains that it was behind the new Conservative Party of Canada. And to understand the secret to their success, you have to go back to a variety of right-wing players, that include media, think-tanks, foundations, federations and coalitions, all providing the infrastructure for the intentional change of our political culture.

How many people do you know who realize that this has been taking place for decades? Who saw it coming? Even Harper's critics believe that he came from nowhere, with an unquenchable thirst for power.

But Harper is just the latest face. He embodies everything that the leader of this movement requires. Malignant narcissism, a lack of empathy and an unflinching belief in the doctrine of corporate rule. And while he keeps everyone in line with an iron fist, he is not without his puppet masters.

David Somerville, the former President of the National Citizens Coalition, a corporate controlled AstroTurf group (Stephen Harper also acted as both the vice president and president of the NCC), told his followers that they must tap into both intellect and emotion (3), to achieve their goals.

They would create the story and use passion to sell it.

This is why it became so necessary to tap into religious fervour, though it is not exclusive. They also use the passion for guns, race and country, among other things.

I think one of the best earliest examples of the success of ambiguity and passion that drives this movement, took place in 1984, and involved the NCC, the pro-life movement, and Bill C-169.

Bill C-169 was designed to block spending in elections unless it was approved and accounted for by the party that stood to gain from the spending. Third party spending.
According to writer Nick Fillmore, until 1984 "the [National Citizens] coalition was very much an unimportant right-wing fringe group, paid little attention by most politicians, the media and even shunned by other right-wing lobby groups. The first breakthrough came in July, 1984, when the NCC successfully used the Alberta Supreme Court to overturn the federal government's bill C-169, a law aimed at preventing third parties from advertising a political position during an election campaign." Judge Donald Medhurst in striking down the law said there had to be proof that such spending undermined democracy before any government could impose limits on the freedom of expression guarantee in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms .... The NCC's court victory opened the door to virtually unlimited corporate spending in the 1988 federal election, arguably the most important election in Canada in decades. Advocates of free trade were able to far outspend opponents. (4)
This corporate funded initiative was a direct attack on our democracy because it gave power to money. But what I found interesting was how the righteous viewed the decision. From a pro-life publication: 'The Interim'.
It is a great pro-life victory that Bill C-169, the amendments to the Canada Elections Act, has been thrown out by the Alberta Supreme Court. On June 26, 1984, Justice Donald Medhurst of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench ruled that [out?] the changes made to the freedom of expression guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The National Citizens Coalition and its president, Colin Brown of London, Ontario had asked the court to strike down the amendments contained in Bill C-169. The decision means that individuals and groups (including pro-life individuals and groups) will again be free to oppose or promote political candidates during a federal election campaign. (5)
This was obviously sold to the pro-lifers by the NCC, as an assault on their "freedom of expression" and they were no doubt able to solicit a lot of funds based on that passionate plea. Would it have been as successful if they had called it a corporate move to set the government's agenda? Not likely.

The art of ambiguity. People saw what they wanted to see and I doubt that it was not intentional. It would be interesting to hear other groups opinions of Medhurst's decision. What they 'heard' from the NCC's campaign.

Preston Manning and Stephen Harper used that skill when creating the Reform Party.
... policies regarding agriculture, labour, tax reform, foreign policy, social policy, and immigration are so muddied by calculated ambiguity that they leave the Reform Party and its leader enormous flexibility in fashioning actual policy. (6)
And though this was supposed to be a populist, grassroots party, it wasn't long before some of the more aware members began to realize that it was being run by a 'Calgary clique'.
The "clique" which was being criticized in 1990 consisted of Manning and four of his staff members. One of the key members was thirty-two-year-old Stephen Harper, a founding member of the party, its Chief Policy Officer, and the man who became known as Manning's chief political lieutenant. Though only a staff member, he often made speeches and was one of the two people, the other being [Stan] Waters, whom Manning trusted to speak for the party .... The charges of elitism and control of the party by a Manning clique struck a very sour note in an otherwise spectacular rise in party fortunes. (6)
An "elite" group using ambiguity and emotion to tell their story.

Ambiguously, when I say "elite group" I could mean the NCC, the Reform Party or Harper's PMO. All one and the same, I'm afraid.

Can't wait to see how the "story" ends.

"Those who tell the stories rule society." — Plato

Sources:

1. Leo Strauss and the American Right, By Michael Lind, Washington Monthly, November 1997

2. The Real Leo Strauss, By Jenny Strauss Clay, New York Times, June 07, 2003

3. The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen: Canada and Democracy in the Age of Globalization, By Murray Dobbin, James Lorimer & Company, 2003, ISBN: 1-55028-785-0, Pg. 197

4. Dobbin, 2003, Pg. 202

5. The NCC provides a Canadian pro-life victory, The Interim, August 29, 1984

6. Preston Manning and the Reform Party, By Murray Dobbin, Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing, 1992, ISBN: 0-88780-161-7 4, Pg. 215

7. Dobbin, 1992, Pg. 122

Lies Become Truths When Enough People Believe Them

2010-11-23T10:36:00.000-08:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"Those who tell the stories rule society." — Plato

One of the books I'm currently reading is Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis, a collection of reflections on the 2008 coalition attempt and Stephen Harper's reaction to it.

One of the book's contributors, Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Toronto, Lorraine E. Weinrib, discusses the lies used to justify the resulting prorogation, and how they became believable, simply because the government refused to address anything that might contradict their version of events.

In this way they were able to persuade the Canadian public of the truth of the lie. In religion mythology becomes fact when enough people believe in it, and the same can be said for history and politics.

Weinrib focuses on John Baird, but includes much of the false information that was never corrected, not the least of which was the fact that this was not a Coup d'Etat as the Conservatives claimed, but a legitimate action in a functioning Parliamentary democracy.
The near collapse of a minority government is not a significant event. The circumstances that surround this near collapse, however, signal that there may be further serious repercussions arising from the events of December 2008 to January 2009 ... these events reflect a pattern of disregard by Harper of a number of deeply embedded constitutional principles and practices. Each individual element poses cause for concern. The accumulation suggests that Harper is capable of precipitating a serious constitutional crisis to avert responsibility for his own mistakes and miscalculations and to stay in power. (1)
And after getting away with this, he has continued to challenge our constitution. Another self-serving prorogation, refusal to hand over documents relating to the torture of Afghan detainees, killing a climate change bill that already had the approval of Parliament and his latest attempt to extend the war in Afghanistan, without debate.

But back to the 2008 contrived "crisis".

When talking to Don Newman, John Baird suggested that the acceptance of the throne speech was proof that his government had the confidence of the House, but as Newman reminds him (video below): "You only have the confidence of the House until you lose the confidence of the House". Baird simply ignores this.

Weinrib wonders how far they were willing to take this. Would they replace the Governor General with one more compliant, if their request was denied? We have since learned from Lawrence Martin's book, Harperland, that they were actually going to go to the Queen if they didn't get their wish.

Ultimately their success was sticking to their lies, and repeating them often enough until they became fact. The fact that they weren't fact, but fiction, was not important.

And one of these was the notion that the coalition was with separatists who would have veto powers. But as Weinrib reminds us:
Harper had engaged in a similar coalition-building plan to oust the Liberal minority government of Paul Martin, a plan that included a signed agreement with the leaders of the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois. The taint of support from a separatist party didn't seem to bother Harper when that support worked in his favour.
Every time this was brought up, the Conservatives changed the subject. They didn't have to call it a lie, simply because they couldn't. There was irrefutable proof. But by screaming "separatist" loud enough, they were able to keep the "truth" from the conversation.

I remember being particularly upset, when Gilles Duceppe brought in a letter showing that 2004 was not the first time those from the government side of the House had approached him about forming a coalition. In 2000, when Stockwell Day was leader of the Alliance, he presented a letter of intent, should Jean Chretien win with a minority. (he was returned with a majority)

Day not only denied that he had done such a thing, but stated that it was not in his DNA to join forces with separatists. He must have chuckled to himself, given that his father, a contributor to that DNA, belonged to the Western separatist party of Doug Christie, the Western Canada Concept. And in fact the Sr. Day ran as a WCC candidate against Tommy Douglas in 1972 (2).

But little of that came out in the media. Headlines were filled with "coup", "socialists" and "separatists". A few tried to correct the disinformation, but they were mostly ignored.
Harper played on the ignorance of the Canadian public as to the constitutional framework within which our parliamentary system of government operates. Polling at the time confirmed the public's lack of familiarity with the working of a minority government, in particular the governor general's role in the changing of governments. It is a matter of concern that a prime minister would feel comfortable exploiting, indeed encouraging, views that were inconsistent with some of the most basic features of our system of government. (1)
The hyperbole also had an impact on those already on the fringe. I watched a video on YouTube by a citizen who called this an attempt by Marxists to take over Canada. And Dennis Pilon, a political scientist at the University of Victoria, stated that : "the actions of this prime minister are coming dangerously close to inciting mob rule." (3)

There has been much discussion over whether or not Michaëlle Jean did the right thing, or whether the coalition would have provided a stable government. But that is not the issue here.

What is at issue is that our prime minister deliberately perpetrated a fraud to save his job. Repeating Weinrib: "... these events reflect a pattern of disregard by Harper of a number of deeply embedded constitutional principles and practices. Each individual element poses cause for concern. The accumulation suggests that Harper is capable of precipitating a serious constitutional crisis to avert responsibility for his own mistakes and miscalculations and to stay in power." (1)

Allan Gregg in his review of Martin's Harperland, shares this concern.
Even though it has become a cliché to refer to Stephen Harper as a control freak, the power of Martin’s argument hits you like a jackhammer. Those of us who follow these things quite closely remember a number of occasions when the Conservatives have found themselves in hot water because of allegations of abuse of power, but we tend to forget just how frequently this has occurred ... In total, Martin cites some 70-odd cases of these types of abuse and the combined effect is almost dizzying. (4)
It's the accumulation and frequency of the assaults on our democracy that are at issue, along with the ease with which this government can lie to us.

"The elite must, in a word, lie to the masses; the elite must manipulate them—arguably for their own good. The elite employ "noble lies," lies purporting to affirm God, justice, the good. ... These lies are necessary in order to keep the ignorant masses in line." - Leo Strauss

Sources:

1. Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis, Edited by Peter H. Russell and Lorne Sossin, University of Toronto Press, 2009, ISBN: 978-1-4426-1014-9. 2, Pg. 65-68

2. Stockwell Day - Early life and career: Encyclopedia II

3. Losing Confidence: Power, Politics and Crisis in Canadians Democracy, By Elizabeth May, McClelland & Stewart, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-7710-5760-1, Pg. 226

4. Negative Statesmanship: Stephen Harper may end up being known for what he does not do more than for what he does, By Allan Gregg, Literary Review

Democracy in Crisis: Governing Under a Cloud

2010-11-21T08:13:00.000-08:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Susan Delacourt has a column in the Star today: Is Canadian democracy in real danger?

I believe it is.

She discusses the reflections of political scientist David Docherty, who believes that the House of Commons should be the centrepiece of Canada's democracy. But instead it is being abused as a place to take cheap shots without reprisal, while seemingly lacking validity, over issues of importance; like the climate change bill and the decision to throw Canadians into War for three more years, without input or debate.

There is an excellent book: Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis, that discusses the importance of Harper's first prorogation, when it became painfully clear that he had no intention of governing based on the will of the people. Parliament was an inconvenience, which of course meant that we were an inconvenience.

There were several constitutional and Parliamentary experts who contributed to the book, including Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Toronto, Lorraine E. Weinrib. She discusses Stephen Harper's "time out" and it's important significance.

This man had lost the confidence of the House, which meant that he could no longer legitimately be our prime minister. And when Governor General Michaëlle Jean allowed him to prorogue Parliament in December of 2008, to avoid the inevitable confirmation of this, there should have at least been some restrictions on his power, seeing as how he was actually on probation.
Some commentators considered the situation so exceptional as to call for conditions restricting Prime Minister Stephen Harper's powers to routine
matters for the duration of the prorogation of Parliament. No conditions were imposed. The prime minister went on to appoint one Supreme Court justice and eighteen senators during the period of prorogation – hardly routine matters – when the question of his support in the House was under a cloud. (1)
So how did he get away with it? It boggles the mind. And yet he did. And since that time he has continued to get away with increasing attacks on the democratic process and the principles of responsible government.

The events that led to the prorogation of Parliament demonstrate the fragility of one of the basic principles of British parliamentary government, the principle of responsible government. This principle stipulates that a particular government continues in office only as long as it enjoys the confidence of the elected members of the House of Commons. For this reason, minority governments are by definition less stable than majority governments. They are particularly unstable when a prime minister's preference is to denigrate the opposition parties and their leaders, rather than to build upon common ground. Delaying a vote of confidence is a serious matter because it creates the possibility of the democratically illegitimate exercise of public power. (1)

He had gotten himself into this mess. It was not a coup, but a reaction to his negative policies, after promising to play nice.
Why did Harper throw down this partisan gauntlet? Presumably, he wanted to take the first opportunity to establish his dominant authority over the new minority Parliament. (1)
He was counting on the perceived weakness of Stéphane Dion, and the fact that the Liberals couldn't afford another election.

The media are always singing the praises of the Conservatives because they have more money than anyone else. Why should that matter in a democracy? That's exactly what we want to avoid, is political success dependant on cash. Yes, the Corporate Welfare Bums take care of him very nicely, and he in turn takes care of them. But who is going to take care of us?

Canada is supposed to be a democratic country. But we now have a man in power, who is doing his utmost to change that.
Each individual element poses cause for concern. The accumulation suggests that Harper is capable of precipitating a serious constitutional crisis to avert responsibility for his own mistakes and miscalculations and to stay in power. (1)
I believe that Weinrib is right.

Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Manitoba, has studied authoritarianism, and the phenomenon of a willing populace. When he wrote his thesis The Authoritarians, George Bush was still in power, and Altemeyer suggests:
There has never been a more obvious, appropriate, and pressing time for this discussion. The threat that authoritarians pose to .. democracy has probably never been clearer. It is just a coincidence, but human affairs have provided the foremost example of how badly right-wing authoritarianism can damage ... George W. Bush has been the most authoritarian president in my lifetime, as well as the worst. And that’s not a coincidence.
Stephen Harper is clearly the most authoritarian prime minister we have ever had, as well as the worst. And that’s not a coincidence either. But why should he be accountable when we don't demand accountability?

Our democracy is being undermined from below, simply because we are allowing tyranny from above.

“The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy” - Charles de Montesquieu

Sources:

1. Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis, By Peter H. Russell and Lorne Sossin, University of Toronto Press, 2009, ISBN: 978-1-4426-1014-9. 2, Pg. 63-65

2. The Authoritarians, By Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, 2006

The Patriot Game: The Charter of Rights

2010-11-19T06:27:00.000-08:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"And we have a Supreme Court, like yours, which, since we put a charter of rights in our constitution in 1982, is becoming increasingly arbitrary and
important ... The establishment came down with a constitutional package which they put to a national referendum. The package included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things." Stephen Harper (1)

In April of 2007, Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms celebrated it's 25th anniversary. Stephen Harper refused an invitation to be the keynote speaker at an event marking the occasion.
The Harper government is passing on a major Ottawa conference marking the 25th anniversary of the Charter of Rights, with the Prime Minister and three Cabinet ministers turning down invitations to speak. In fact, the milestone anniversary will be a muted affair within the government ranks ... Mr. Jedwab said Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, Heritage Minister Bev Oda and former justice minister Vic Toews were also invited to address the April 16-17 event, but they declined. (2)
The fact is that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has always been a thorn in the side of the Reform movement. Preston Manning preferred that it would have been more like the American model.
On the Charter of Rights, Manning takes the position that Canada should have, like the U.S., a concept of rights which makes no mention of race, gender, or language. His support for triple-E Senate is modelled after the U.S. Senate and is proposed for Canada in spite of the fact that a similar model "often makes government impossible" in Australia, according to Desmond Morton.

Last, Preston Manning wishes to emulate the U.S. by including a provision for property rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights. This concept is rooted in American individualism and free-enterprise culture. However, it may be less appealing in Canada, which has had a more co-operative and collective approach to life and to government. (3)
Stephen Harper's views were similar to Manning's but based a lot on the book The Patriot Game by Peter Brimelow, who saw both the patriation of the Constitution, and the Charter as not only an attack on Anglo Canadians, but the endowment of too much power on the judiciary.
Certain aspects of public policy were entrenched, however, notably bilingualism, and a "Charter of Rights and Freedoms" was added .. the new constitution clearly does pose a legal threat to much of its nationalist legislation restricting the use of English. More subtly, the constitution represents a break with the British tradition of common law, custom and precedent, and greatly enhances the power of the judicial branch. (4)
What Brimelow opposed the most, and what was reflected in the views of the Reform party members, was that in his mind the English had conquered the French in Canada, so they should accept the Anglo hierarchy. What he failed to understand was that Quebec and French Canadians, were to be equal partners in Confederation as one of our country's founding peoples.

So the Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms set out to right a wrong.
The difficulty Francophones faced in the civil service ... the one addressed by the resulting bilingualism policy, was not discrimination against Francophones as such, but the fact that at the higher levels they had to work in English. Francophones who were prepared to speak English could always in effect resign from their race in working hours, unlike the American blacks. (5)
"Resign from their race in working hours"?

And this was the logic that Stephen Harper found so compelling that he went out and bought ten copies of Brimelow's book to give to friends. And when Harper addressed the Reform Party Assembly in Saskatoon in 1991, and stated emphatically that there would be no special privileges for Quebec, his mind was made up.

And we have to remember that his political views are not organic, but set in stone. He only gave Quebec special status, because he said that he needed to "suck up to them."

Another bone of contention for the movement was the entrenching of rights, including those for women, ethnic groups and Aboriginals, but especially for homosexuals.

One of the Reform Party founders, Ted Byfield, stated that the only thing that should be legislated in Canada was morality, but this charter actually, in his view, attacked morality, by protecting "sin". And protecting that sin was the judiciary.

This would start a war. One that is ongoing.

On June 12, 2000, Harper railed against biased judicial activism. "Serious flaws exist in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and there is no meaningful review or accountability mechanisms for Supreme Court justices" (6)

And on September 2, 2009, at a closed-door speech to Conservative supporters in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., he spoke against judicial independence and made it clear that if he ever obtains a majority, he will stack the bench with judges who are not "left-wing ideologues." (6) "I ask you for a moment to imagine how different things would be if the Liberals were still in power. . . . Imagine how many left-wing ideologues they would be putting in the courts. . . ."

Maurice Vellacott had accused Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of calling herself God, and though it was a lie and he made a meager attempt at an apology in the House of Commons, the sentiment remains.

One of the worst attacks however, has been on Louise Arbour (shown above right). Arbour is the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and the Court of Appeal for Ontario and a former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. She has since July 2009 served as President and CEO of the International Crisis Group.

Someone all Canadians should be proud of. And yet Harper’s ministers refused to recognize her work, while Vic Toews launched a personal attack, as part of his party's policy.
The Conservative grenade hurlers couldn't help themselves. Next up to the plate was Treasury Board Secretary Vic Toews, whose target was Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and a former Supreme Court justice. Arbour had a far more distinguished reputation than Toews did, but that didn't stop him from labelling her a national "disgrace" when she praised a new Arab human rights charter and chastised both sides in the conflict between Israel and Lebanon. Toews hollered "Shame on her!" when the matter was raised in the Commons. (7)
Yes shame on her. How dare she stand up for human rights abuses, earning enough of an international reputation that she would be given such high positions.

We need to start recognizing and supporting our public intellectuals, who have been taking a beating since Stephen Harper came to power. Canadians have always taken pride in the accomplishments of it's citizens and this government would prefer that we forget them, so they can be free to pursue their agenda of Americanization.

U.S. style prisons. U.S style courts. U.S. style justice.

Canadians should be proud of their Charter of Rights and Freedoms and proud of the fact that we have for decades been seen as a Just Society. Harper's law and order agenda is a wrong fit for us. It's not who we are, just who he would like us to be.

One of my favourite quotes about the Reform movement came from the Vancouver Sun, and I share it often:
"Reform is somewhat un-Canadian. It's about tidy numbers, self-righteous sanctimoniousness and western grievances. It cannot talk about the sea or about our reluctant fondness for Quebec, about our sorrow at the way our aboriginal people live, about the geographically diverse, bilingual, multicultural mess of a great country we are." (8)
Sources:

1. Full text of Stephen Harper's 1997 speech, Canadian Press, December 14, 2005

2. PM passes on marking Charter anniversary; Rejects invitation, By Janice Tibbetts, National Post, April 11, 2007

3. Preston Manning and the Reform Party, By Murray Dobbin, Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing, 1992, ISBN: 0-88780-161-7 4, Pg. 190

4. The Patriot Game: National Dreams and Political Realities, By Peter Brimelow, Key Porter Books, 1986, ISBN: 1-55013-001-3, Pg. 34

5. Brimelow, 1986, Pg. 191

6. The Hill: Harper challenged as silence of the jurists ends, By: Richard Cleroux, Law Times

7. Harperland:The Politics of Control, By Lawrence Martin, Viking Press, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-670-06517-2, Pg. 130

8. Vancouver Sun, April 8, 1994

The Patriot Game: Western Separation

2010-11-18T13:12:00.001-08:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In 1965, a student at Winnipeg College climbed to the roof of the school to hoist a nine-foot Red Ensign when the Canadian flag was first being raised. His name was Doug Christie and he would become a life long separatist, advocating for the Western provinces and territories to split with Canada and strike out on their own.

His movement would gain some support in 1980 when Quebec was holding a referendum and the government of Pierre Trudeau had announced the National Energy Policy. However, it wasn't the NEP that created the uproar but changes to the tax laws in Alan MacEachern's budget.
MacEachen's senior advisers soon focused his attention on how billions of dollars were being lost yearly to scores of dubious corporate tax breaks. Finance officials put together a tax reform package designed, among other things, to eliminate 165 of the most costly and counter-productive tax expenditure measures and in the process increase revenue by close to $3 billion.

When he introduced the legislation it caused a firestorm of protest from the corporate elite. Neil Brooks, now professor of tax law at Osgoode Hall Law School, was working for the finance department on the tax reform package and has recalled the tactics of the large corporations. "It's almost a classic example of what's called a capital strike. I mean, business simply said to the government that if you go ahead with these measures we will stop investing in Canada." The development industry reacted instantly. "Literally the next day they were closing jobs down and . . . pulling cranes off construction jobs."

Life insurance companies had their own strategy. The industry, which for years had paid income tax rates of close to zero, wrote to every one of its policyholders, telling them the new measures to tax investment revenue would greatly increase their premiums. "The government," says Brooks, "at one point was receiving thousands of letters a day from people across the country."(1)
But in the west, they couldn't sell it as the wealthy fighting against tax increases, so instead made it about Ottawa pandering to Quebec and Ontario, at the expense of the western provinces, especially Alberta. The National Energy Policy then became the enemy, despite the fact that many wealthy westerners liked the new policy, because it promoted 50% Canadian ownership and allowed further development of government lands.
Soon after the announcement of the NEP, [Alberta Premier Peter] Lougheed fired three effective salvos: a constitutional challenge to the natural gas tax; a staged reduction in shipments of oil to other provinces; and a freeze on the oil sands, whose development the NEP encouraged. Although the Petroleum Club and the radio talk-shows in Alberta cheered the premier, and bumper stickers declared "Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze," [energy minister Marc] Lalonde had included provisions in the NEP that attracted key Albertan players.
These entrepreneurs and their lawyers rightly saw the provision that there must be 5o percent Canadian ownership on the Canada Lands —those potentially rich areas under government control—as highly beneficial. Dome Petroleum, Nova, and Petro-Canada therefore complained about the new taxes on gas and oil but did not join Lougheed's general denunciation of the NEP. The influential Bob Blair of Nova, a major figure in the oil patch, openly declared his Liberal allegiance and remained in close touch with both Trudeau and Lalonde. "Smiling Jack" Gallagher of Dome most enthusiastically embarked on the acquisition of foreign oil companies, which were eager to abandon Canada in the wake of the NEP. (2)
Unfortunately, after the 1980 election that ended Joe Clark's brief governance, those fuelling the separatist campaign, went into action.
Highlighted against the rise and fall of the abbreviated Tory reign, the 1980 election aroused immediate anger and concern in the West. In Alberta, a sixty-year-old Edmonton millionaire and car dealer, Elmer Knutson, sent an angry letter to the Edmonton Journal the day after the election."' The letter, which has acquired an almost mythic stature in western separatist folklore, adumbrated a series of themes which were to be the staples of western separatists and other right-wing elements in subsequent years."' It especially complained of a French-dominated Ottawa, as exemplified in such policies as bilingualism, and the fear that Trudeau's majority Liberal government would now proceed with constitutional reforms which would reinforce French domination of the rest of Canada. Knutson's solution to this perceived threat was simple: Quebec must be made to leave Canada.

Knutson was not a stranger to political matters. In the late 1970s he had been co-chair of the One Canada Association, an organization 'committed to increasing police powers, ending bilingualism, and tightening immigration policies. Then, in December 1979, Knutson lost the Edmonton South Tory nomination to incumbent Douglas Roche, whom Knutson once described as 'a socialist masquerading as a conservative But the response to his Journal letter — 'One lousy little letter,' in Knutson's words — astonished even him. In one month, Knutson received 3800 replies, most of them positive.' As a result of this public response, Knutson formed the Western Canada Federation (West-Fed) in March 1980. At almost the same time, the results of the federal election breathed new life into the faltering political career of a thirty-four-year-old Victoria lawyer, Doug Christie. (3)
Peter Brimelow, author of The Patriot Game, the book that was a Bible for Stephen Harper's early political leanings, saw things a little differently. This was an attack on English Canada:
In the fall of 1980, after the federal Liberals' return to power and their imposition of the National Energy Program, reports began to filter back to Central Canada that the natives on the western frontier beyond the Ontario boundary were unusually restless. Several organizations had sprung up advocating that the West - the Prairie provinces, British Columbia and the federally administered Yukon and Northwest Territories - separate from Canada. The two most important were the Western Canada Concept Party, begun in British Columbia and headed by Doug Christie, a Victoria lawyer; and the Western Canada Federation Party, based in Alberta and led by Elmer Knutson, an Edmonton farm equipment millionaire.

Both these parties argued that, to adapt Joe Clark's Shawinigan comment during the Quebec referendum campaign, the Canada to which they had wished to belong no longer existed. The conditions of Confederation had been changed, and they wanted out. Less active but worth a footnote was the Unionist Party, which directly advocated joining the U.S.: it was founded by Dick Collver*, until 1979 leader of the Saskatchewan Progressive Conservatives, who shortly afterwards acted on his beliefs and moved to Arizona.

Suddenly, Christie and Knutson were attracting crowds of thousands to their meetings. Prominent Western figures were expressing sympathy, notably Carl
Nickle, a well-known oilman and former Tory federal MP, who had even been considered a candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Alberta the previous year but who told a luncheon gathering of 700 Calgary businessmen in October that after the NEP he had "sorrowfully" become a separatist. At the same time, the Edmonton Journal ran a poll showing that a startling 2 3% of Albertans supported an "independent West." There were angry exchanges in the House of Commons in Ottawa when Tory leader Joe Clark drew attention to the phenomenon. He was immediately accused of thereby "aiding and abetting" it. Pierre Trudeau offered the helpful opinion that Western separatism was "nil and non-existent," being at, root "a fight about money" in no way comparable with Quebec's grievances. This naturally inspired redoubled efforts to prove him wrong. (4)
He was right of course. The uproar was over the closing up of the tax loopholes, but instead was channeled against the NEP. And Quebec's grievances were completely different. Many of the French-Canadians had been living like plantation slaves in their province.

The NEP wasn't perfect but it wasn't the disaster it was made out to be. But that didn't stop the Reform Party from reviving it for political gain.

Doug Christie's Western Canada Concept Party had one seat in the House of Commons, but only for a few months. He was joined by another disgruntled Anglophone, who had left Quebec during the Quiet Revolution. He would run as a WCC candidate against Tommy Douglas, but of course lost. His name was Stockwell Day Sr. and his son is now in the Harper government.

Footnotes:

Dick Collver moved to Arizona, coming back to testify during the trial of Colin Thatcher. According to Collver, Thatcher had visited him on his Arizona Ranch, asking him where he could hire a hitman.

Sources:

1. The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen: Canada and Democracy in the Age of Globalization, By Murray Dobbin, James Lorimer & Company, 2003, ISBN: 1-55028-785-0, Pg. 168

2. Just Watch me: The Life of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, By John English, Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-676-97523-9, Pg. 488

3. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada, By Trevor Harrison, University of Toronto Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6, Pg. 57-58

4. The Patriot Game: National Dreams and Political Realities, By Peter Brimelow, Key Porter Books, 1986, ISBN: 1-55013-001-3, Pg. 240-241

Redefining Populism and The Canada West Foundation

2010-11-17T06:29:00.000-08:00

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"We have Rightwing protectionist Conservatives, championing free enterprise -with no interest in social reform. We have Leftwing socialism trying to build reform. There is a large intelligent mass at the centre that is demanding a more enlightened approach - Fiscal responsibility + social reform. Free to own, free to achieve, free to grow and to change but who want their government to take responsibility for stimulating growth ... Only thru liberalism can we have both a free society and a quality of life." Stan Roberts Founding Reform Party Member

The Canada West Foundation was founded in 1971 and was funded by individual memberships, corporate donations, as well as provincial and territorial grants. It's aim was to conduct research into the economic and social characteristics of the West and the North, and to make proposals regarding it's development.

It was not partisan and it's founding members included Duff Roblin, former Tory premier of Manitoba, and Liberal MP James Richardson. Other prominent people who filled their ranks, were the media king Izzy Asper, political columnist Gordon Gibson, former governor general of Canada, Edward Schreyer; and Jim Gray, vice-president of Canadian Hunter Exploration. The chairman was president of Burns Meats, Arthur Child. Child was a millionaire and, according to writer Peter Newman, a member of Calgary's 'nouveaux riches'.

But the most prominent member of the CEF was its president, Stan Roberts. a former Liberal MLA. In 1970 he wrote a note to himself, possibly intending it to be part of a speech, but this was how he felt about the federal political climate.
If NDP had been elected two years ago - inflation. If PCs had been elected two years ago - 2 countries. (1)
Roberts could probably best be described as a Social-Democrat. He was a fair and intelligent man, who would later help to create the Reform Party. In fact, he challenged Preston Manning for leadership of the Party, fearing that Manning was bringing in too many from the Right-Wing fringe, and he had the backing of the man who provided the seed money, Francis Winspear. He was right of course, but through crafty maneuvering, Manning won the day.

I think it would have been a much different party had Roberts headed it up, but he died soon after, so I guess we'll never know.

Roberts was part of the Task Force on National Unity headed by former Liberal cabinet minister Jean-Luc Pepin and former Ontario premier John Robarts, to address the Quebec Question after the election of René Lévesque .
By 1978, he had become convinced that western Canada had to become more involved in the constitutional process. In his own words: 'What has happened in Quebec may have precipitated the crisis, but it's not an Ontario-Quebec debate. It's a Canadian debate and we in the west have a part in it.' (1)
Canada West Foundation and the Quebec Question

In 1976, the CWF commissioned a report by M & M Systems Research Ltd. of Edmonton examining how a new balance of national and regional interests and aspirations could be achieved within Canada, 'while maintaining the unity and integrity of Canadian Confederation.""

And of course, M & M was owned and managed by Ernest and Preston Manning. It would later be renamed Manning Consultants Limited, in 1969, a year after the elder Manning's resignation as Alberta premier. The Mannings had never been too far from the political arena and had forged strong ties with big business.

Through their work with NPARF and the National Citizens' Coalition, they envisioned a New Canada, one run by the corporate sector. In 1970 they had drafted a paper that became a blue-print for neoconservatism in Canada.
In 1970, M & M produced its first paper, entitled Requests for Proposals and Social Contracts. Based on the system of contracting used by such American agencies as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and written in the now familiar language of systems theory, the paper advocated the provision of social programs by private industry and commerce." ... neo-conservative solutions to the increasing fiscal problems of the liberal welfare state. (1)
It all looked good on paper.
The Mannings' paper was used as the basis for discussions held at public meetings throughout western Canada, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories during September and October 1977. Then, in December 1977, the foundation commissioned three reputable political scientists - David Elton and Peter McCormick, of the University of Lethbridge, and Fred Engelmann, of the University of Alberta - to study federal systems of government existing elsewhere in the world.

Their study, entitled Alternatives: Towards the Development of an Effective Federal System for Canada, came out in February 1978, and made several specific proposals, notably that the Senate be replaced by a House of Provinces consisting of delegates from the provincial governments. The intent of this proposal was to bring the regions into the federal decision-making process, while not fundamentally weakening or decentralizing federal authority. The study also made clear where the authors stood on the Parti Quebecois's proposal of sovereignty-association: 'There is no question but that French Canadians have legitimate grievances ... [However, the] fuzziness of political independence and economic association would generate feelings of exploitation of both sides of the new divide ... Quebec would [succeed] in creating in political reality that which until now has seldom existed outside her nightmares – a politically unified English Canada facing an isolated Quebec.

This study subsequently became a discussion paper at the CWF's Alternatives Conference held in Banff, Alberta, on 27-9 March 1978. Among the many funders of that conference was the Winspear Foundation, named after Francis Winspear, the disenchanted former Liberal. The conference attracted 300 delegates from across the country, including 50 from Quebec, and several high-profile speakers, including Flora MacDonald, the federal Tory critic for federal-provincial relations, Alberta premier Peter Lougheed, and Saskatchewan premier Allan Blakeney. In the end, Elton, Engelmann, and McCormick's proposals were generally endorsed by the delegates. Stan Roberts noted: 'with a clear consensus the delegates supported the concept of a strong central government . (1)
And it received a lot of praise from all quarters. But it never got off the ground. It came at a time of much political turmoil. Joe Clark won the election in 1979, only to lose another several months later. Quebec was holding a referendum and the battle lines appeared to have been drawn.

The CWF took on a more combative role, with their director Arthur Child, and the west was about to rise up again.

And within a decade Preston Manning found the time was right to start a new party, founded on Western grievances. But any organization or political party founded on anger is eventually going to be consumed by it. And when the Reform Party made their way to Ottawa, they came ready for a fight.

And under their new name, the Conservative Party of Canada, and new leader Stephen Harper, they are just as combative, and unwilling to compromise.

What Allan Gregg calls Negative Statesmanship.
Now, with the publication of Harperland: The Politics of Control, Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin has entered this fray and one-upped past observers by claiming that Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has taken “the politics of control” to an entirely new level—and in this case, the intent is most emphatically personal. For Martin, this tendency is no mere response to a more fractured and frenzied media, but a studied, long-term strategy designed “to break the [Liberal] brand.” The result has become “a Soviet-style monitoring maze” and “a vetting operation unlike any ever seen in the capital” that demands all aspects of government pay unwavering obedience to the Prime Minister’s Office.
And Stan Roberts' notion that "only thru liberalism can we have both a free society and a quality of life", his vision of a new party that might be termed "capitalism with a human face" (1), has been lost in the ideology of 'only thru corporatism can we lose the notion of a free society and destroy our quality of life'.

Capitalism with the face of a monster.

Sources:

1. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada. By Trevor Harrison Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6, pg. 65-69

2. Negative Statesmanship: Stephen Harper may end up being known for what he does not do more than for what he does, By Allan Gregg, Literary Review