In a comment left on Kelly McParland’s National Post blog last week (the original subject of which was a small liberal movement on Facebook, in opposition to the Prime Minister), somebody asked why progressives are so twisted up about Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue Parliament until March, and then by extension, asked just what it is that’s stopping the Liberals from aligning with the New Democrats and the Bloc and effectively toppling the government. Riddled with snide sarcasm and an undertone of disdain for All Things Liberal, it is a typical NP blog comment, not necessarily germane to actual conservatism, but to an amusing — if not tiring — culture of condescension and division that is growing ever more prevalent in today’s political discourse:
Please. Can any left wing poster here explain why Harper is still in power even though the Opposition has the clear power to force him out at their leisure? Harper clinging to power is completely natural behaviour for a minority government. What seems unnatural to me is the leftie opposition supporting him in Parliament, and then crying that he’s destroying democracy and the nation in the media. Really, get it straight. Or is it a secret cabal; Iggy, Layton and Duceppe are actually Evil Harper clones defying the ‘clear’ wishes of the massive ‘grassroots’ that they keep quoting. That they too want the destruction of democracy and the nation.
Pretty mild, right? But yes, typical. Do a random scroll-and-stop on the comments section of just about any blog posting over at NP and you’ll land on one just like it. The next comment, in response to the above:
Because they are all sock puppets and the puppeteer has no script that people will buy, nor financial resources to advertise the show.
I tend to read conservative blogs for two reasons: First, because as a liberal (lower-case), there is not much to be gained from reading the complaints and concerns of like-minded people; I would rather discuss and debate our problems than commiserate them. Second, there is nothing whatsoever to be gained from reading the complaints and concerns of rabid anti-conservatives who dig their heels in and refuse to budge on general “principle.” A liberal sycophant is just as useless to me as a conservative one. At NP, you have to search sometimes for fifteen or twenty minutes to find a comment left by a reasonable, multidimensional thinker. The two gentlemen who left the above comments would likely assume that by reasonable and multidimensional I mean progressive, but what I really mean is anyone not representing The Fringe. On either side.
Having said that, I find that I have disengaged from the political debate in recent months. There was a time when I would spend an alarming number of hours through the week getting in little scuffs with total strangers over the merits and perils of universal health care, over organized religion, over crime, the Iraq war, Afghanistan, gay rights, climate change. There was also a time when such conversations occurred to me as being not only invigorating, but necessary. Nowadays, not so much. Nowadays, the debate appears to be dominated by “liberals” who think conservatives are gun-waving morons and “conservatives” who think liberals are communists. It is a conversation shaped by a media apparatus that is neither liberal nor conservative, but a network of irresponsibly sensationalist “news” organizations which — fearing denial of access — serves only as a mechanism to prop up our elected representatives by staunchly refusing to penetrate beyond their manufactured bullshit toward the truth.
Is there no longer a market for truth?
Let me jump back for a second. To answer the first question, the reason the opposition parties refuse to form a coalition in order to remove Stephen Harper is because they already tested those waters about a year ago under Stephane Dion, and were met with a defiant, even enraged, public response. That Michael Ignatieff went through a Twilight Zone period in the months thereafter, actually threatening to do the same thing again, demonstrated not just to conservatives, but to anybody outside the LPC/Anti-Harper fringe that our newly anointed Liberal leader was not exactly playing with a full deck. I don’t put a significant amount of trust in Stephen Harper. Nor do the majority of Canadians. But how much faith can we have in a man who seemed inexplicably serious about committing political suicide by sticking to his guns in the face of overwhelming public opposition, promising to do something that nobody wanted him to do?
The reason they don’t overthrow the Harper government is because in the last several months, they hired a political consultant fresh out of university who patiently explained to them that even if they were successful, there would eventually be a federal election, and in that election, the Conservative party would finally achieve its House majority, if for no other reason than public spitefulness.
Smart people understand this. Hell, stupid people probably understand this. The person who asked the question probably even understands this. But the question was asked anyway, as a method for painting liberals with that same, tired brush, as people who all think the same way, who uniformly see Stephen Harper as evil, who want to see his tenure end by any means possible, who want to have in power a fictional group of men and women who will take the money out of your pocket and do nefarious, unconstitutional things with it. The responses to that blog article are littered with the words “liberal” and “left,” nearly all of them punctuated with derision. There are a couple references to socialism. One commenter makes the following statement: ”The Star is always showing it’s communist (ok fine, I’ll go with the tamer “liberal” here..) bias and here is another case of it.”
How do you have a serious discussion with people like that? How do you engage in intelligent conversation with someone who has such a manifestly uninformed interpretation of communism, or even liberalism? The truth is that no rational liberal wants to see Ignatieff as Prime Minister. The truth is that the Liberal Party of Canada does not represent most liberals. It is, if anything, an almost imperceptibly left-of-center party whose greatest opponents aren’t proper conservatives, but a small group of people so far to the right that even centrist ideals are mistaken for socialist, or (sigh) communist, principles. (Speaking of: If these people actually equate the Liberal Party with socialism and communism, which are not, by the way, the same thing, then to what do they compare the NDP?) Real liberals, people like myself and most of the people I know and enjoy, are concerned with the most fundamental social issues which ensure that we each of us can be considered equal amongst our peers, and that we all get a fair shake. I’m not talking about handouts, either, or (God give me strength) “wealth distribtution.” Just giving people the opportunity to make it on their own, to grow and live with dignity. Caring about our fellow citizens, treating them, as a famous man was once said to have endorsed, the way we ourselves would like to be treated. Because when you can remove yourself from the ugly harness of selfishness, you see rather plainly that we do not all begin from the same starting line, that we are not all born with the means to create healthy, prosperous lives. It is confusing, if not dismaying to me, that the same people who would so adamantly fight to deny an impoverished woman’s right to have an abortion would then, in the months and years following, turn their back on her child, muttering complaints about the socialist welfare system.
The implication behind a lot of these silly, paranoid, fringe arguments is that socialism itself is evil, and that the majority of Canada is proudly conservative. Ignatieff is consistently referred to as being out of touch with the average Canadian, and maybe he is, but it isn’t because we live in a conservative country. If it came to a national referendum, where in the privacy of a voting box, far removed from the catty political blogosphere, we were allowed to be completely honest with ourselves, how many Canadians would actually vote to repeal our universal health care system? Don’t just ask the question of yourself, of what you would vote for. Ask yourself what the majority of this country would do.
Done? OK.
Do we even need to bother comparing our answers?
We do not live in a socialist country. We do not live in a purely capitalist country. We live in a country that promotes, and sees the value in, both systems. And I’d suggest it’s worked out pretty well for most of us. I live in a province where everything from liquor stores to utility providers are government controlled. Do I think it would be more beneficial to the general public if the crown corporations were dissolved to make way for private owners who would (at least theoretically) fight for my business through competitive pricing? Sure. Do I like the idea of the provincial government having a de facto monopoly on these industries? Not at all. But we’re talking phone bills and Beefeater, here. On the other hand, I would leave this country in twenty minutes flat if one day I were to wake up and discover that Blue Cross was my sole medical insurance benefactor. Our health care system is by definition a socialist enterprise, and it is something so profoundly part of our Canadian identity that we laud it over Americans who have for generations been poisoned with the absurd notion that only those with jobs (and for that matter, job security) and expendable income should be able to access hospitals. And really, even the most obtuse and partisan among us realize that just because you have private insurance, the net beneath you is by no means secure.
This is something I wish more people would take ten seconds to contemplate before dismissing any argument or policy they disagree with as an attempt to take away their freedom. (As it happens, most people I come across who habitually play the Freedom Card are opposed to gay rights. Go figure.) Before they compare Michael Ignatieff — colossal doofus that he may be — to Joseph Stalin, or paint pictures of an LPC-led Canada as East Berlin in 1983. And the same goes for the knee-jerk fringe on the other side who depict Stephen Harper as a Machiavellian despot intent on destroying our country. We could do, and have done, far worse than Mr Harper. We could even do worse than Ignatieff or Layton, especially because in today’s political climate, where truth and logic are the first casualties and we do not ask nearly enough from ourselves… well, in this world, we could always do worse.
I can’t describe the value I place on good debate, or how exhilarated I am when I encounter and talk with people who have firm ideological beliefs but do not subscribe to any one political platform. I learn the most from conservatives who, while I may disagree with, and even be angered by their views, can at least admit that Stephen Harper does not walk on water. Or liberal Americans who have severe reservations about some of President Obama’s decisions during his first year in office. Or people in general who don’t compare anyone to Hitler or confuse “elite” (good) with “elitism” (bad). It’s regrettable that so many people have been trained (or have trained themselves) to Hate The Other Side. That so many of us seem to vote against someone, rather than in support of someone. That in nations as developed and advanced as Canada and the United States, we treat our fellow brothers and sisters as the enemy. That conservatives are so afraid of liberals, and liberals so afraid of conservatives. That we are still a civilization which feels most comfortable when it is split up into a left/right dichotomy.
My guess is that most people fall in between these imaginary lines, or simply don’t care. I used to take the piss out of people like that. But maybe they were on to something. Because ultimately, the fringe may dominate the debate, but they don’t control the country, and they most definitely do not speak for the majority. They only think they do. It’s easy to be one of them. To be immovable. To shout in the dark.
Much harder to appeal to the one thing that separates us from every other species on earth.
