...Because they contradict the neo-con worldview.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Reality has a liberal bias.
If you were to look at the facts - that the crime rate in Canada has been declining for the past 20 years, and that in a poll with a margin of error of 2.5% only 1% of Canadians think crime is the issue that the government should focus on the most - would you embark on a multi-billion dollar, prison-building, tough-on-crime spree?
Well, the Harper government doesn't care about facts. It does not care about what the country needs, or what the Canadian people want. What Harper and his cronies care about is shifting Canada's Overton window to the right. They're concerned with ideology, not reality.
Perhaps so.
ReplyDeleteThis Conservative has, ironically, made the same general commentary respecting the drive to "get tough on crime" suggesting we need less "fundamentalism" in conservative circles.
But that sword does cut both ways.
ie) Gun Registry.
Let's be frank.
It has less to do with moving the "Overton Window" than it has with modern political thought which is that to consolidate your base, you need to create mini "zealots" by instilling as much fear as possible in those who are in "your camp" and by diminishing rational discourse.
And Ignatieff did the same thing with the foreign-aid package, raising the spectre of "Abortion" in the same sort of desperate effort to appease and consolidate the base.
A little more "reality" and a little less "ideology" would be nice from both major paries these days.
Oh.
ReplyDeleteAnd "neocon" is one of those ideological short-cuts to avoid acknowledging the reality that not every conservative sees ever issue in "black and white" terms.
But hey, I guess you have to maintain the polarization of your base.
But - at the risk of not being confrontational - nice blog layout and, really, a valid point that I would like more conservatives to apply their rational minds to.
ReplyDeleteNo, Harper's Conservatives really are committed to moving Canada's political spectrum to the right. I hate to say, "I read it in a legitimate source" without providing a citation, but I'm going to have to - it was an interview with someone associated with the CPC, and it might have been in McLean's, but I forget.
ReplyDeleteI do like to use "neocon" because it is more specific than "conservative" and it better describes the philosophy I have a problem with. That is, the conservativism that came about in the Reagan/Thatcher era, as opposed to the classic conservativism of, say, Burke. I have issues with Burke as well, but in this post I'm focusing on neocons.
And I think that whether or not our maternal health aide includes funding for birth control and abortion was an important issue. And that it was an issue of Harper's ideology getting in the way of useful policy, rather than an example of Liberal ideology.
ReplyDelete