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

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

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

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?

Political Theology, Neoconservatism and the Religious Right

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 Tea Party and Being Careful What You Wish For

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

"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." - Oscar Wilde

The new Tea Party in the United States is trying to revive the Boston Tea Party and the revolutionaries who fought against taxes imposed by Britain.

T.E.A. stands for 'Taxed Enough Already", but in fact, the Tea Party want taxes reduced even more, while still paying down the deficit. They also want the government to butt out of their lives.

A tragedy in the making?

What was the Boston Tea Party Really About? According to American historian Ray Raphael:

We all know and celebrate the climax to the Boston Tea Party. On December 16, 1773, several dozen men dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded three ships belonging to the East India Company, cut open 340 chests of tea and dumped the contents in Boston's harbor. We fondly remember the carnival-like drama as a catalyst for the American Revolution, and over the years both liberal and conservative protesters have laid claim to its irreverent legacy. (1)

And yet Revolutionary-era Americans did not celebrate the event.

... many patriots viewed the destruction of tea as an act of vandalism that put the Revolution in a bad light. Patriots also downplayed the tea action because of its devastating impact. That single act precipitated harsh retaliation from the British, which in turn led to a long and ugly war. (1)

The Boston Tea Party Was Not About Lower Taxes

Though the modern day version believe that the original Tea Party was about lower taxes, it was not. It was about collecting their own taxes. Whoever levied taxes got to call the shots, including how to spend the money.

The Tea Tax was nominal and in fact "Land taxes and poll taxes assessed by their own colonial assemblies, as well as long-standing import duties on sugar, molasses and wine, were a much greater burden." (1)

And after the Revolutionary War, the Americans were taxed even heavier than before to pay for war debts. Property was seized and debtors thrown in prison.

This prompted an armed rebellion led by Daniel Shaye, a veteran of the American Revolutionary war. And Shaye's Rebellion used symbols like "liberty poles" and "liberty trees" to represent their cause.

They would probably better represent the modern Tea Party than the original Tea Party.

According to a farmer at one of their meetings:

"I have been greatly abused, have been obliged to do more than my part in the war; been loaded with class rates, town rates, province rates, Continental rates and all rates...been pulled and hauled by sheriffs, constables and collectors, and had my cattle sold for less than they were worth...The great men are going to get all we have and I think it is time for us to rise and put a stop to it, and have no more courts, nor sheriffs, nor collectors nor lawyers." (2)

And while today the "patriots" often carry signs with the image of George Washington, Washington actually came out of retirement to advocate for a stronger national government after the failure of the revolt. He did not not want less, but more, government "intrusion".

What if the Tea Party Gets What it Wants?

In the BBC documentary Crashing the Tea Party, commentator Andrew Neil speaks with two men about the questions of taxes, and why they cannot be eliminated. The protesters don't understand that taxes pay for vital services like fire departments , paramedics and police. They pay for schools, roads, bridges. They keep people safe.

One Obama critic claimed that the president was trying to control their air and water. They want less "red tape". This means that corporations would be free to pollute with no safeguards for the public.

What if their children get sick because of toxins in the water? They can't very well go after those who put them there, because they would not be breaking any laws.

Tainted food? No laws.

Unsafe products? No laws.

They need to be careful what they wish for.

Sources:

1. Debunking Boston Tea Party Myths, By Ray Raphael, History Net

2. Wikipedia

Is the Tea Party a Social Experiment or a Social Tragedy in the Making?

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

The late Lester Milbrath, an American political scientist; once categorized the citizens of democratic nations, as three distinct groups:

Apathetic - those who rarely, if ever, become engaged in politics. They may vote out of a sense of duty, but that's as far as it goes.

Spectators - those who do engage in political discussions, especially when they centre around single issues. Spectators almost always vote.

Gladiators - those who become actively involved in politics, campaigning or running for office.

Canadian political scientist, Brooke Jeffrey, takes this one step further, when she's discussing the neo-conservative movement; and includes a category for 'Ignorant Gladiators'. These are people who enter the political arena on a wave of anger and resentment, with few qualifications to actually lead.

They are the anti-government politicians, who only want to tear down, with few plans to rebuild. They offer no solutions to bring a nation, province or municipality forward. They only come prepared to dismantle and discredit.

Her book, Hard Right Turn was written a decade ago so the only 'Ignorant Gladiator' (1) governments she referenced were Ralph Klein's (Alberta) and Mike Harris's (Ontario). Neither man was terribly well educated, but they talked tough; feeding off the 'spectators' with hot button issues and private resentment.

But Jeffrey did speak a great deal about the Reform Party and their rise to power, and how they fed off ignorance. Their leader of course, was a very smart man. Smart enough to know where his base was. So messages were always simple but explosive.

No one suggests that there is only one career path or appropriate set of credentials for those who plan to run for public office. Life experience as much as education, could give individuals the ability to manage ... Unfortunately, few of the individuals attracted to the neo-conservative ideology have demonstrated these qualities. The greater the neo-conservative leadership's emphasis on moral and social conservatism, the more likely the supporters will be uncompromising in their views. (1)

In the United States the media has been aware for some time of the threat imposed by ignorant gladiators, especially those steeped in religious fundamentalism. But the Neocons knew they needed that passion to advance their cause.

So negative policy was wrapped in ambiguity, while they sang loud and clear the things they knew their followers wanted to hear. "Don't take our guns". "Hang 'em high". "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition."

But while many in the American media were sounding the alarm, in Canada few spoke of it. The movement was given free rein, until it was almost too late.

Marci McDonald, who had spent a great deal of time in the U.S. as a journalist, knew the signs, so when she returned to Canada was shocked that the Neoconservative/Religious Right movement had gained so much ground.

So she wrote a book: The Armageddon Factor*, and the outrage was immediate, from both the right and the left. An exaggeration. She was a bigot. She hated Christians.

So the mainstream media mostly ignored her warnings, not wanting to upset their readers. There was a general consensus that we were merely following the United States, and since it took 30 years for their movement to bear fruit, we had a few decades to prepare ourselves.

But what they failed to realize was that this movement was running simultaneously, north and south of the border. We didn't need 30 years or even 30 days. It was here.

Last night I watched a BBC documentary that I had taped: Crashing the Tea Party. Commentator Andrew Neil interviewed many people involved in what has been described as the fastest growing political movement in the United States, and I was immediately struck with a feeling of Déjà vu .

This is Reform Party replay. And in the same way that the Reformers infiltrated and then took over Canada's conservative party, the Tea Party has now done the same with the Republicans. In fact one of their spokesmen, Matt Kibbe, when asked if they had infiltrated the Republican party, said that he preferred to think of it as "a hostile takeover".

They want to "purify" the Republicans and move them further to the right. How much further to the right can they go?

I guess we're about to find out.

And sadly the few remaining moderates in the party are being pushed out.

But what I found alarming was that the signs many of the tea party-ers carry could have been written at Reform Party headquarters 20 years ago. "Silent Majority no more". "No new taxes". "Stop the spread of socialism".

It's absolutely frightening.

When the Republicans decided to open this box, I don't think they realized what they were doing. They saw the "charged up" as their ticket to power. But now they have clearly lost control. The "Ignorant Gladiators" are taking over.

They are angry, they are righteous and they are armed. And they are eating the Republicans alive.

I've been reading Bob Altemeyer's online book: The Authoritarians, written before the Tea Party began. He was optimistic after the 2006 mid-terms believing that there may be some return to sanity. But he warned us not to get too comfortable.

The mid-term elections of 2006 give hope that the best values and traditions of the country will ultimately prevail. But it could prove a huge mistake to think that the enemies of freedom and equality have lost the war just because they were recently rebuffed at the polls. I’ll be very much surprised if their leaders don’t frame the setback as a test of the followers’ faith, causing them to redouble their efforts. (p. 3-4)

And redouble their efforts they did, reaching even further into the sess pool, and it could very well prove to be their undoing.

Footnotes:

*The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, By: Marci McDonald, Random House Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-307-35646-8 3

Sources:

1. Hard Right Turn: The New Face of Neo-Conservatism in Canada, By Brooke Jeffrey, Harper-Collins, 1999, ISBN: 0-00 255762-2, Pg. 396-402

Why do Minorities Work so Hard to Destroy Themselves?

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

"With [Ronald] Reagan's outspoken opposition to the Civil Rights Act in 1964, Republican strategists knew that they would have to write off the black
vote. But although 90 per cent of black voters cast their ballots for the democrats, only 30 percent of eligible black Americans voted. Republican ... strategist Paul Weyrich* stated "I don't want everyone to vote ... our leverage in the election quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down. We have no moral responsibility to turn out our opposition." (1)

And of course we know that Ronald Reagan won not only that, but the following election, in part because black voters decided to stay home. I'm sure we could get into a lot of reasons for that, including the Democrats failure to inspire, but the story here is that bigotry was used as an election strategy.

And so was religion. Paul Weyrich* was one of the founders of the American Moral Majority which eventually became a mass movement now called the Religious Right. And the Moral Majority had little to do with their definition of 'morality'. They were not founded to oppose the abortion case of Roe vs Wade, as many believe, but to oppose moves to end segregation.

Evangelicals withdrew from politics for most of the last century until the rise of the religious right in the late 70’s. This rise was not in response to Roe v Wade, as their organizers would have us believe but in response to a civil rights issue, namely the Supreme Court decision that ruled that institutions that practiced segregation would forfeit their tax exempt status. This decision led to the withdrawal of tax-exempt status for Bob Jones University, who among other things, did not admit Blacks, and when they did, had a policy against interracial dating. (2)

Weyrich and co-founder Jerry Falwell, found an ally in Reagan, so they mobilized their forces to help get him elected.

With the rise of the Tea Party and "wacky" Republicans becoming the norm, it's interesting reading commentary from across the United States. But one thing I've learned as many of the more extreme candidates trash the United Nations, is that their main concern is that they are just so darned "colourful". They wrap this up in ambiguity, but you don't have to be a scholar to know what they're saying.

I used to think that Harper's base opposed the UN because they impeded their agenda toward Israel and Armageddon. But I think only a few of the really hard core believe that. They just don't appreciate this "colourful" group trying to dictate to them, on issues like spanking, women's rights, aboriginal rights, etc.

And while they continue to blame Michael Ignatieff for our losing the security seat, they are actually pleased, because it now means we can legitimately oppose a UN, human rights agenda.

Stephen Harper and His Anti-Immigration Policies

Did you ever wonder why the Reform Party hierarchy, like Preston Manning and Stephen Harper did so little to silence what former Reform Party MP Jan Brown called the "rampant racism of the God Squad"?

And why they aligned themselves with anti-immigration groups like Paul Fromm's C-Far and Peter Brimelow's V-Dare? Both of these men spoke at Reform Party conferences and those of the ultra right-wing Northern Foundation, of which Stephen Harper was a member? (3)

It was because they knew it would inspire this rock solid "base" to vote and contribute funds. They were the party of the white man. And they did nothing to discourage this belief.

But then they realized that if they wanted to advance and become more appealing to the rest of the country, they could no longer bash the immigrant population, but would need to exploit them instead. And exploit them they did, finding the perfect wedge issue: same-sex marriage.

Party officials concluded that the six-percentage-point drop for the Liberals was probably made up of small-c ethnic supporters, and decided at that point to begin running controversial newspaper ads opposing gay marriage. "We're the only ones who win under that calculation" ... Aside from the advertisements, which ask readers "Where do you draw the line?" the party leader began actively making his case at multicultural events, like at a Sikh meeting in Toronto a week ago. According to a senior party organizer, Conservatives believe they have potentially tapped into a well-spring of insecurity among ethnic groups, some of whose members feel the Liberal bill will force their clergy to perform same-sex marriage. (not true)

.... Mr. Harper drew criticism not only from within his own party, but from some of the very people he had hoped to attract. "Mr. Harper is ignorant about immigration issues, and his statement reflects that ignorance," said Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress, a grassroots group with a membership in the hundreds. "What he's saying is that people can only be gay if they're white Anglo-Saxons." (4)

And even if that angered the gay community, they didn't care. They knew they could never count on the gay vote. This is why they did little to silence homophobic remarks from their caucus, refuse to let John Baird "come out" and allow Jason Kenney to remove the notion of gay rights from our citizenship guide.

It's all political strategy.

Gay rights activists continue to advocate, but they should be encouraging their members to vote. Every single one of them. Because there's no hope of reversing this trend until we get rid of this government. The Conservatives are the only party with an aggressive anti-gay agenda. But the good news is that the other four parties are not intolerant. Pick one.

Hold rallies not as gay Canadians where the Conservatives can use their "base" to ridicule, but as Canadians concerned with intolerance of any kind. Other minority groups must do the same, preferably together as a more powerful voice.

Latinos For Reform

Between April 2 and 3 of 2009, Canada Border Services carried out the largest workplace raids in Canadian history. One of those rounded up was a woman who had launched a complaint of sexual harassment against her boss. (5)

Last June, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney publicly questioned the legitimacy of refugee claims made by Roma coming from the Czech Republic, saying they faced no real risk of state persecution. And yet according to foreign correspondent Peter O'Neil:

[Roma] face a constant threat of neo-Nazi attacks and hateful demonstrations, where marchers head into Roma communities and call them "parasites," organized by increasingly sophisticated organizations such as the far-right Workers' Party."We are afraid for our lives" ... Growing neo-Nazi violence, as well as discrimination and even segregation in areas such as health, housing, education, criminal justice and employment, have been reported in numerous publications issued by the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the U.S. State Department and Amnesty International. (6)

And while promoting migrant workers to help the corporate sector, they are also further destroying our international reputation by siding with the "elite" oppressors:

Hundreds of Guatemalan migrant workers and their community allies marched through Guatemala City to the steps of the Canadian embassy on Wednesday, to protest the abusive treatment of migrants under Canada's Temporary Foreign Workers program. The workers at the protest had been fired and repatriated for defending their labour and human rights while working in Canada. (7)

Many of us wonder why the immigrant community is turning to a party that has always been anti-immigration and anti-multiculturalism. Are they unaware or is it self-preservation? Don't make waves or they could be the next target.

Several people believe that again strategy is being used, where the Harperites go after those Canadians who belong to groups who are natural enemies of their Canadian counterparts. Many Czechs dislike Roma, so they won't lose Czech support because of this. (I'm actually working on a story that I believe will help to prove this theory)

Which brings us to the U.S. mid-terms and Latinos for Reform.

This group has been running ads encouraging the Latino communities not to vote. (You can watch the video below).

And to help accelerate this campaign, many Republican candidates are beefing up their anti-immigration rhetoric, obviously hoping to recapture the Paul Weyrich strategy of turning minority voters away from the polls to help their cause.

Univision, the Spanish-language network refuses to run the ads.

"Univision will not be running any spots from Latinos for Reform related to voting," Univision spokeswoman Monica Talan told Politico. "Univision prides itself on promoting civic engagement and our extensive national campaigns encourage Hispanics to vote."

So what is this really about? If this group cared about Hispanics they would encourage them to make sure that a party openly anti-immigration, and anti-Hispanic, never came to power.

It's political strategy.

The founder of this group, Robert de Posada, was the Republican National Committee's director of Hispanic affairs and worked for the Bush administration and a group founded by Tea Party leader Dick Armey. (8)

The TV ad is suggesting that after two years Obama has not kept his promises. And yet this same group was behind an attack in 2008 against the current president, before he was even president.

It's Weyrich all over again, creating a campaign where only 30 percent of eligible black Americans voted. "I don't want everyone to vote ... our leverage in the election quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

This is democracy?

Paul Weyrich, also co-founder of the horrible Heritage Foundation, is now deceased, but his words linger:

“Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome — good government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now."

Again. This is democracy?

Footnotes:

Paul Weyrich is also a member of the Council for National Policy, a branch of the U.S. Religious Right. It was at one of their annual meetings, where Stephen Harper delivered his infamous "I hate Canada" speech in 1997. The CNP had already approved of Harper as one of them, so in 2006 when he asked Weyrich to do what he could to ensure that his people didn't speak to Canadian journalists trying to find out just how connected Harper was to this movement, Weyrich was more than happy to oblige.

A top U.S. conservative commentator now says he authorized an e-mail warning right-wing American groups not to talk to Canadian journalists before the election for fear of scaring voters and damaging Stephen Harper's chances. Paul Weyrich, head of the Free Congress Foundation, told The Canadian Press last week that the widely distributed message was the product of an overzealous staff member of the research group ... But in a commentary on the foundation's website this week, in which he calls Canadians too "hedonistic" to change course quickly, Weyrich admits he asked an associate to write the e-mail. (9)

Sources:

1. Hard Right Turn: The New Face of Neo-Conservatism in Canada, Brooke Jeffrey, Harper-Collins, 1999, ISBN: 0-00 255762-2, Pg. 22

2. Yom Kippur Sermon 5769: A critical analysis of the Jewish alliance with the Christian Right regarding Israel, By Rabbi Caryn Broitman, Yom Kippur 2008

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 3 7, Pg. 120-122

4. Harper uses same-sex to tap into ethnic vote, By Brian Laghi, Anthony Reinhart and Roy MacGregor, Globe and Mail, February 12, 2005

5. Jason Kenney's Doublespeak Exposed: Tories Unleash Canada Border Services on Migrants, By S.K. Hussan and Mac Scott, The Bullet, April 22, 2009

6. SAVING ROMA: Roma, once known as Gypsies, face discrimination, attacks in Czech Republic, By Peter O'Neil, Europe Correspondent, Canwest News Service, May 11, 2009

7. Migrant Workers Protest at Canada's Embassy in Guatemala: Migrant Workers in Guatemala Raise Their Voices to Denounce Abuse and Exploitation Under Canada's Temporary Foreign Workers Program, UFCW, September 1, 2010

8. Latinos for Reform Head Robert de Posada Defends Controversial 'Don't Vote' Ad, ABC News, October 21, 2010

9. Harper's U.S. neocon booster changes his story, By Beth Gorham, Canadian Press, January 27, 2006

The Politics of Obscurantism: Anti-Intellectualism

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

In restricting knowledge to an élite ruling class of “the few”, obscurantism is fundamentally anti-democratic, because its component anti-intellectualism and elitism exclude the people as intellectually unworthy of knowing the facts and truth about the government ... (1)

The late Dalton Camp, formerly president of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, was not an alarmist. He was intelligent and a well respected columnist and author.

So when he began warning Canadians of the dangers of the Reform Movement, almost two decades ago, we should have listened. He understood their ideology and was concerned with the Republicans they had aligned themselves with. The same people who are now destroying American politics, as card carrying members of the Religious Right and the Tea Party gang.

In the introduction to his book; Whose Country is This Anyway?, Camp quotes Friedrich Nietzsche from The Will to Power: "The great majority of men have no right to existence, but are a misfortune to higher men."

This is a codicil for the comfortable, the affluent, and the obscenely rich in our time, as it was the inspiration for fascism earlier in our century. The new order is not without its coterie of apologists and intellectual dandies. Indeed, it even has a political party of its own, called—irony of ironies—the "Reform" Party. (2)

Germany under Hitler was fascist, because it was run by industrialists, who profited from war and the build up of the country's military. The German people, while manipulated with propaganda, were nothing more than "a misfortune to higher men."

The notion of anti-intellectualism can mean simply that Stephen Harper has always opposed public education, referring to it as "union run schools", and bragging that "Universality has been severely reduced: it is virtually dead as a concept in most areas of public policy... These achievements are due in part to the Reform Party..." (3)

It can also refer to his attacks on the well educated who challenge his policies, dismissing them as "university types" ... "elites".

But in the theory of Obscurantism, it's something much more profound. It's a deliberate attempt to paint themselves as being part of the anti-intellectual crowd, despite the fact that many in the movement have university degrees, including several PhDs. And they do this to convince the populace that they are just "ordinary folk", who see danger in listening to intellectuals who don't have their best interests at heart.

A deliberate obscuring of the facts.

Betty Plewes recently wrote a column for the Mark News, the topic of which was Canada's abandonment of the Non-Profit sector. She mentions a speech given by Lawrence Cannon in Krakow, to the Working Group on Enabling and Protecting Civil Society. She found the speech enlightening and articulate, but was surprised that "a transcript of the speech was not posted on the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) website and is very difficult to obtain." (4)

She contributed that to the fact that Stephen Harper has no interest in charitable pursuits, but while that is true, there is another reason for this. Cannon's speech would contradict their image of "folks" and their notion that intellectuals are the scourge of society.

The Edmonton Journal recently asked: What would Harper Fellowship look like a decade after his departure? They suggested:

Some criteria for evaluating the body of work put forward for recognition might include:
- -Best description and "proof" of a national social problem without the use of statistical analysis;
- -Best policy proposal for the betterment of Canadian society based solely on anecdotal "evidence";
-Best application of the concept of "truthiness" to future Canadian policy directions. (5)

What would a Harper fellowship look like, when his political strategy is anti-intellectualism? Having his party play dumb to appear dumb? Only their leader has any smarts and that's why he has to exert so much control over them.

When the Reform Party had their first real electoral success in 1993, the media dismissed them, often asking "who are these yokels and who voted for them?" The Sun referred to them as a " ribald bunch of dung kicking rednecks", and Preston Manning with his squeaky voice was compared to a country preacher.

And yet Manning is a brilliant physicist and many in the party's hierarchy (now called the Conservative Party of Canada) have university degrees. So why did they not defend themselves against this belief? In a word: Obscurantism. If they appear to be country bumpkins, how could we possibly fear them?

And if anyone points this out, they become "elites", and are immediately silenced, to the cheers of their supporters.

Stephen Harper is a Straussian, and Leo Strauss a follower of the belief in the necessity of obscuring facts. And Strauss's beliefs came from the methods used by the Nazi party to earn and hold onto power. He escaped Germany, but several of his family members died in Concentration camps. As a result he felt that an authoritarian style government was the only solution to stave off a recurrence of Nazism. The ignorant masses only had to be controlled, in a large part by keeping secrets and obscuring the truth.

When political philosopher, and colleague of Strauss, Hannah Arendt, attended the trial of Adolf Eichmann at Nuremberg, she was surprised at how "Unimaginative, ordinary and unthinking" he was.

Others may have hoped to see Bluebeard in the dock, she wrote, but for her, the horror lay in the fact that "there were so many like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic ... [but] terribly and terrifyingly normal." (6)

She was one of the first to refute the "monster theory" of less-than-human Nazis. She called them "banal". But as Erna Paris, author of Long Shadows: Truth, Lies and History, points out. Many Nazis were well educated, and several had doctorate degrees.

So what would have made her think that they were banal?

Maybe their chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels, himself a PhD, explains it best.

"It would have been very unwise if we had given exact explanations to the Jews, prior to the Seizure of Power, of what we intended to do with them.... It was quite good that [they] did not take the National-Socialist movement quite as seriously as it actually deserved. . . ." (7)

We did not take the Reform "movement quite as seriously as it actually deserved." And while they are not planning a domestic genocide, they do have an aggressive foreign policy agenda, from a prime minster that Lawrence Martin claims sees the world as a "clash of civilizations" rather than as "one big family". (8)

Dalton Camp did not suggest that the Reform Party was stupid, but called them "intellectual dandies". He did however, suggest that they were dangerous, in part because of the company they kept. American Straussians.

Sources:

1. Obscurantism - Wikipedia

2. Whose Country is This Anyway? By Dalton Camp, Douglas & McIntyre, 1995, ISBN: 1-55054-467-5, Pg. 18

3. Stephen Harper, speech to the Colin Brown Memorial Dinner, National Citizens Coalition, 1994

4. In Search of Canada's Non-Profit Policy, By Betty Plewes Former President and CEO of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation; member of the McLeod Group, The Mark News, October 18, 2010

5. What would Harper Fellowship look like a decade after his departure? By The Edmonton Journal, October 4, 2010

6. Long Shadows: Truth, Lies and History, By Erna Paris, Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, ISBN: 0-676-97251-9, Pg. 318

7. June 1944 speech at Nuremberg.

8. Harperland:The Politics of Control, By Lawrence Martin, Viking Press, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-670-06517-2

The Politics of Religious Nationalism: Taking us Down a Dangerous Path

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

'War is always at the most unrestrained when religion vests it with holy purpose.' Michael Ignatieff - Warrior's Honour

In light of our recent rejection by the United Nations, it's time to revisit Harper's foreign policy from his ideological perspective.

I'm doing a separate posting on those who influenced his early political thought. People like Peter Brimelow, Paul Fromm, Donovan Carter, Stan Waters, Peter Worthington, etc., all militantly anti-Communist, which made them viscerally anti-Liberalism.

But while the UN snub is bad for Canada's image, it might play right into Stephen Harper's hands. He will no longer have to pretend to support this international body, and can now focus on his long term plans, as dictated by the Religious Right.

Author Marci MacDonald had sat in on a meeting of the Civitas Society where Stephen Harper gave a speech:

... 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 ... 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 ..." (1)

"Hard power" behind our "foreign-policy commitments".

Funny. I don't remember him campaigning on that.

In Alfred Rosenberg's book, "Mythology of the Twentieth Century", he also outlines a plan to combine religion with fierce nationalism and foreign policy (from above newspaper clipping, May 30, 1938).

"The religion of Jesus was undoubtedly the preaching of love, but a German religious movement which wishes to develop into a people's church must declare that it unconditionally subordinates the ideal of neighborly love to the idea of national honor."

and

"The essential condition of all German instruction is the acknowledgment of the fact that Christianity did not bring us civilization but that Christianity owes its enduring values to the German character."

The official "philosophy," as the Times points out, if it means anything means that the millions of Nazi soldiers, the millions of workers in the "Labor Front" are now having their minds made over, after a thousand years of painful history, to accommodate a special Nazi religion.

A broad coalition vested with a holy purpose.

And before you think this is hyperbole, as Lawrence Martin points out in new book Harperland:

His devotion to the war effort and the revitalization of the armed forces were part of an effort to shape a Tory patriotism, one predicated on symbols and traditions .... He had progressed since the days of his Alberta-centric regional thinking. Now he was sounding like he wanted to build a firewall around the entire country.

And that's what he's been doing. Isolating Canada, while attempting to build a nationalistic, militaristic nation, not unlike the vision outlined for Germany, by Alfred Rosenberg in 1938.

And as Martin reminds us, Stephen Harper does not like the "soft power" we've become, but views our foreign policy as a "clash of civilizations", rather than as "one big family" living peacefully. And the Religious Right, Armageddon crowd have given him their full support, because they cannot feel the rapture until the world is rid of Communism once and for all.

You can hear their guru, Tim Lehaye, describe it to Rachel Maddow. In fact this entire segment sounds like our current government. But she explains how communism is a battle cry to the Religious Right. And Stephen Harper is allowing them to dictate our "clash of civilizations".




And back to the 1938 newspaper article:

It seems to be definitely anti-Christian in principle. But it is more. Stripped of non-essentials, what Herr Rosenberg means by substituting "neighborly love" with "national honor" is the displacement of civilized orderliness by an aggressive fanaticism. There is something rather childish in these attempts to deliberately divert the stream of historic culture. But when adults in power indulge in it, the farcial side of it is overshadowed by the tragic and the dangerous.

Pay attention people.

There are some very good columns on Canada' fall from grace since Stephen Harper decided to put "hard power" into our foreign policy to appease the theocons. He once wanted to build a firewall around Alberta, and now he is building that"wall" around us.

1. Harper's U.N. debacle shows how his disrespect for foreign affairs was noticed, By Yves Engler, October 18, 2010

In a stunning international rebuke, Stephen Harper's government lost its bid for a U.N. Security Council seat last week. The vote in New York was the world's response to a Canadian foreign policy designed to please the most reactionary, short-sighted sectors of the Conservative Party's base -- evangelical Christian Zionists, extreme right-wing Jews, Islamophobes, the military-industrial-academic-complex, mining and oil executives and old Cold-Warriors.

2. With the glory days of Pearson’s internationalist foreign policy behind us, Canada needs a new brand, By Daryl Copeland Adjunct Professor and Senior Fellow, Munk School of Global Affairs, U of T, Mark News, October 16, 2010

Policy? Capacity? Leadership? Any way you cut it, this is a signal moment for Canada, and a full assessment will take time and require concerted analytical attention. In that respect, it is unfortunate that the dramatic resolution of the Chilean mining disaster came on the same day as the UN elections. In Canada, that human interest mega-tale immediately bumped the Security Council story from top place in the news cycle on Oct. 12. As coverage this week of the rescue’s aftermath has continued to dominate the media, attention to the implications for Canada of its repudiated candidacy has waned. That’s too bad, because there remains much to consider and reflect upon. It seems to me that a larger and longer-term consequence of the defeat may reside in the impact on Canada’s image and reputation, expressed in terms of both how others see us and how we see ourselves.

Copeland also cites the unprecedented control on communications, as knee capping any serious bid.

3. Why the World Doesn't Like Canada's New image: Harper’s aggressive foreign policy is the reason Canada was denied a UNSC seat, By Saeed Rahnema Professor, political science, York University; media commentator on the Middle East, The Mark News, October 15, 2010

Despite significant lobbying efforts to get a seat on the powerful UN Security Council, Canada failed to receive the backing of two-thirds of the UN General Assembly. Canada withdrew its bid after coming behind Portugal in the second ballot. It was disappointing, but perhaps not surprising, that Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurence Cannon blamed this failure on Michael Ignatieff’s lack of support. In reality, Stephen Harper’s government has no one to blame but itself and its misguided foreign policy.

Canada has never been an aggressive nation, and I'm pretty sure that had Stephen Harper campaigned on a "clash of civilizations", he would never have been elected.

Previous:

The Politics of Contempt: The Nixon-Harper Ticket

The Politics of Hate: Where Will it Lead?

The Politics of Conceit: "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better"

The Politics of Opportunity: Election Tampering

The Politics of Jabberwocky: As Canada Plummets Down the Rabbit Hole

The Politics of Ballyhoo: David Emerson and the Soft on Sovereignty Trade Deal

Sources:

1. Stephen Harper and the Theo-cons: The rising clout of Canada’s religious right, Walrus Magazine, October 2006)

Stephen Harper, Deceit, and the Exploitation of Religion

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

I was combing through Tom Flanagan's book Waiting for the Wave, which was written in 1995 when the Reform Party was first entering the political arena; and came across an interesting passage.

[Preston] Manning does have an increasing tendency to surround himself with evangelical Christians, not for policy reasons but because a common approach to religion encourages rapport and loyalty. Strikingly, all five officers in the first Reform caucus (nominated personally by Manning) were Evangelical Christians. Yet non-evangelicals such as Cliff Fryers, Gordon Shaw, Stephen Harper, and Rick Anderson have also played key roles as organizers and advisers. (1)

"Non-evangelicals such as ... Stephen Harper"?

It has been suggested by many, including Lloyd MacKey who wrote a book on the topic: The Pilgrimage of Stephen Harper, that Harper's route to salvation was a cerebral journal. However, he had to actually call the Conservative leader's pastor to verify that he was a member. I know several Evangelicals and they do not hide their beliefs, but allow them to direct their lives.

Douglas Todd once wrote in the Vancouver Sun:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is damned if he does talk about his evangelical beliefs and damned if he doesn't. If he continues to avoid answering questions about his religious convictions, political observers say he appears secretive, like he's hiding something. But, at the same time, most Canadians do not share the moral convictions of his evangelical denomination, the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church. (2)

However, I don't think that Stephen Harper shares "the moral convictions of his evangelical denomination, the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church." I think the whole thing was a scam and part of creating his public persona. He would never gain the financial support of the Religious Right if he was not seen as "one of them".

He would have assuredly lost to Stockwell Day, who wears his Evangelism on his sleeve.

In fact during the leadership race, Stephen Harper went public with Stockwell Day's exploitation of religion:

Stockwell Day yesterday continued to seek support from evangelical Christians with a barely publicized campaign stop at Canada's largest Bible college, even as one of his opponents warned the Canadian Alliance leadership race risks being "perverted" by a single-interest group. Mr. Day held a campaign rally at Briercrest Bible College in Caronport, Sask., an event that attracted hundreds and was not included in the public itinerary posted on the candidate's Web site. He campaigned earlier in the day at the evangelical Victory Church in Moose Jaw, Sask.

Mr. Day lashed out at rivals Stephen Harper and Grant Hill for accusing him of aiming his campaign primarily at devout Christians and opponents of abortion ... Last week, organizers for Mr. Harper went public with concerns that Mr. Day is appealing to a narrow base of religious groups -- including orthodox Jews, Pentecostals and anti-abortion Catholics -- in a bid to regain the leadership post he was forced to relinquish late last year. (3)

But then after winning the leadership, Stephen Harper realized just how beneficial hooking your wagon to the Religious Right could be.

The only route, he [Harper] 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.” (4)

Preston Manning was often accused of bringing religious fanaticism to politics. However, I never really thought of Manning as a fanatic, certainly not in the same vein as Stockwell Day or Jason Kenney. His political views were based on both "the will of the people and the voice of God". (5)

But because he was evangelical, his thought process was based a large part on his personal beliefs. However, Stephen Harper has never really held any personal faith, and I don't think that he was ever himself an evangelical.

In 1995 Tom Flanagan, his close advisor, knew that. Harper was 35 at the time, and yet when he was on the the Drew Marshall program in 2005, he told the host that he had "found Jesus" when he was in his 20's.

In his 20's he was dating Cynthia Williams. In fact they were engaged. But when Harper's Biographer, William Johnson asked her about her former fiance's religious beliefs, she became embarrassed and simply said that they never went to church or anything. (6)

The pastor at the Christian Missionary Alliance told Marci MacDonald that he rarely attends, and he has never met Harper's wife. They were married in a civil ceremony.

Harper's VP when he was with the National Citizens Coalition, also confirmed that his colleague never mentioned his faith. He only called himself a "born again Christian" when it became politically expedient. Leo Strauss would be impressed. Me, not so much.

By pretending to be Evangelical, he misses the basics of Evangelism. Deceit is not a virtue. And by tapping into the worst of fundamentalism, he has painted them all with a fanatical brush, furthering the divide.

I think he always believed he could shed the fanatics once in power, but now he finds that they may be all he has left. Centrists have abandoned him and Progressive Conservatives have realized that this is not a party of fiscal conservatives.

I've asked original Reform supporters if they find the excesses of the G-20 and G-8, or the abuse of tax dollars with the bogus Canada Action Plan, principled. I can't imagine any of them condoning this kind of corruption.

But I'd like to also remind his religious supporters, of something they probably already know in their gut. Stephen Harper is not, nor has he ever been, an Evangelical.

Like almost everything else he claimed to be, this was just another part of Strauss's Big Lie.

It's time for him to make an exit.

Sources:

1. Waiting for the Wave: The Reform Party and Preston manning, By Tom Flanagan, Stoddart Publishing, 1995, ISBN: 0-7737-2862-7, Pg. 9

2. Why Stephen Harper keeps his evangelical faith very private, By Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun, September 10, 2008

3. Day slips into Bible college for Rally, By S. Alberts, National Post, February 13, 2002

4. Stephen Harper and the Theo-cons: The rising clout of Canada’s religious right, By Marci McDonald, The Walrus, October 2006, Pg. 2

5. Flanagan, 1995, Pg. 3

6. Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, by William Johnson, McClelland & Stewart, 2005, ISBN 0-7710 4350-3

Corporations and the Religious Right Are Creating a World With no Moral Compass

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

The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

They claim to be superpatriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjugation. (1)

Those words were published in the New York Times on April 9, 1944, in response to a question posed to then American vice president Henry Wallace: What is a fascist?

I used to get angry with the media when they would question Stephen Harper's moves, suggesting that they did not reflect conservative values. The reason of course, is that Stephen Harper is not a conservative. He's a neoconservative, and there's a vast difference.

Rick Salutin got it and posted a column in the Globe recently: Stephen Harper – the last Straussian? Referring of course, to the father of neoconservatism, Leo Strauss. Salutin highlights the basic characteristics of neoconservatism, including secretiveness, religion, nationalism, populism and contempt. All of the ingredients, Strauss believed, to keep the "ignorant masses" in line.

Elizabeth Littlejohn understands what all of that really means.

Historically, when a society's parliamentary process is suspended and disrupted, trade unions undermined, and people of property, such as the rightwing press, banks and big business, are privileged, these policies are the precursors to a fascist state. I use this term with full cognizance of its weight and implication. (2)

Smart girl that Elizabeth. Because neoconservatism is just a fancy word for Fascism. It is a country run by corporations, that uses religious fervour, deceit, military tactics, secretiveness and fierce nationalism to control it's citizens and keep them, as former VP Wallace said "in eternal subjugation".

I'm currently reading American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, By Chris Hedges, and it's been like an awakening. He lays out the Harper agenda succinctly, though he never mentions our prime minister. But this is a blueprint for a fascist nation first visualized by Wallace in 1944. It's neoconservatism.

And Hedges is a religious man, graduating from the seminary at Harvard Divinity School. He was also a foreign correspondent for the New York Times for almost twenty years, so he speaks from experience and with a knowledge of the subject.

The Gospel of Prosperity

... the gospel of prosperity—which preaches that Jesus wants us all to be rich and powerful and the government to get out of the way—has formulated a belief system that delights corporate America. Corporations such as Tyson Foods—which has placed 128 part-time chaplains, nearly all evangelicals or fundamentalists, in 78 plants across the country—along with Purdue, Wal-Mart, and Sam's Wholesale, to name a few, are huge financial backers of the [Religious
Right] movement. (3)

This concept is not new, nor is it confined to corporate America. Ernest Manning held the same beliefs when he headed the Social Credit party of Alberta. "... a free-enterprise party extolling the virtues of individual liberty, the traditional family, and the supremacy of God." (4)

And the supremacy of God got all twisted up in the supremacy of the corporate world. And Preston Manning followed in his father's footsteps when he started the Reform Party:

" Don't like Big Government? Try corporate government instead, they seem to say, reiterating the sort of do-as-we-say mentality that flourished under the likes of Aberhart, Manning Sr. and W. A. C. Bennett. It's a woefully limited conception of democratic freedom, where free-market worship is offered up as a surrogate for genuine political engagement. (5)

The exploitation of workers, suspension of human rights, removal of social programs like health care and pensions, are simply part of our "democratic freedoms". We are free to die in poverty, after all.

The good union jobs are disappearing and the newest growth industry is the working poor. And this has not been by accident but by design. Since NAFTA was signed the loss of manufacturing jobs have been astronomical and “The Conservative government has overseen the greatest loss of manufacturing jobs in Canadian history.” (6) Most of these were good union jobs.

And according to Littlejohn, things are only going to get worse.

Harper deliberately prorogued parliament a second time to enact a bill, more powerful than NAFTA to undercut our sovereignty, the Canada-European Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). This far reaching bill will provide sub-national access to municipal services, and undermine the public sector even further, losing thousands of good, Canadian jobs to international outsourcing. Put it together. Civil society is no longer prioritized by our government, our country is being sold off to corporations and banks, enabled by a newly armed police state, and expanding prison system, and jobs in our public sector are about to be slashed for international corporations to profit through CETA. (2)

Hallelujah and Amen.

Privatizing Morality

Hedges also points out that morality has become privatized, as the Religious Right have thrown their lot in with the Corporate world. It's like a modern day Soddom and Gomorrah, where greed is the new sensuality and our nation has become the victim of gang rape.

And instead of charging the greedy, who have created an age of greater and greater inequality, the self-righteous turn their anger toward "welfare bums" and "sinners". If they find themselves down on their luck, they don't look at the record profits of the corporate sector, but blame their troubles on those "feeding from the public trough". And for those able to afford to be charitable, it's a charity not born of goodness, but judgement, and "carries with it a condemnation." (Hedges)

And when a member of the Religious Right becomes wealthy, they flaunt their wealth like a halo to their goodness. They are the favoured ones. God chose them.

What a screwed up belief system.

In November of 2006, Arnie Seipel, an American journalist visited Canada, and already noticed the change. Harper had been in office for less than a year, but the signs were already there. Writing for CBS, Siepel stated:

When things get bad in the United States, it is reassuring to turn to Canada, a country with a high standard of living, a small military and a national health care plan. Canada always seemed to be, if a bit duller than America, also a bit saner. But this is changing. The new Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, inspired by the neocons to the south, appears determined to visit the worst excesses of George Bush's presidency on his own country.... Harper is rapidly building an alliance with the worst elements of the U.S. Christian right. [He] has spent the past three years methodically knitting a coalition of social conservatives and evangelicals that looks ominously similar to the American model. (7)

And Siepel asks himself:

"As I walk the windy streets of Toronto I wonder if those who push past me will wake up and see in Harper's government our own malaise or watch passively as Canada becomes a demented reflection of George Bush's America." (7)

"A demented reflection of George Bush's America." He saw that in the first year, and where are we now?

Littlejohn laments: "I have never been so concerned about the future of Canada ..." (2) I share her concern, as do many others. This next election may be the most important election in the history of this country. It won't be good enough to simply be concerned, but we have got to take action, by voting and making sure that everyone we know votes.

Because we will not just be voting for a political party or leader, but will be voting for our democracy. The Fascist Neocons and the Christian Right have also waged war on Canada, and advocacy or protest will not be enough. If we give Harper another mandate, or worse still, a majority, it will render it all useless. There will be no one to listen.

Sources:

1. American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, By Chris Hedges, Free Press, 2006, ISBN: 10-978-7432-8443-7, Pg. 199

2. Stiffed with the bill: A private banquet at civil society's expense, By Elizabeth Littlejohn, Rabble News, September 22, 2010

3. Hedges, 2006, Pg. 22

4. Preston Manning and the Reform Party, By Murray Dobbin, Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing, 1992, ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, Pg. 1

5. Slumming it at the Rodeo: The Cultural Roots of Canada's Right-Wing Revolution, Gordon Laird, 1998, Douglas & McIntyre, ISBN: 1-55054 627-9, Pg. 55

6. Timeline: History of manufacturing jobs in Canada

7. Evangelicals, To The North: With Bush Ally As Prime Minister, Canada's New Christian Right Rises Up, By Arnie G. Seipel, November 9, 2006