In a speech, today, Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper outlined his plan to force our country down the same path to bankruptcy and self-destruction that the United States has relentlessly pursued over the last generation. It’s first purpose is to destroy our domestic industry (especially in Ontario) and reduce us to abject submission to “Big Energy”, the global communism of oil sheiks, dictators and multinational gangsters. It’s secondary purpose is to escalate economically paralyzing military spending, and make us even more available as mercenary canon fodder to our global masters. Canada’s industrial base is rapidly disintegrating. Just today, the closure of another major industrial facility in Ontario was announced. Canada’s currently “strong” economy is being propped up by oil and gas production, and prosperity is confined to the exportable resource regions. Oil, gas, mining. The Conservative regime is forcing us back into the pathetic “hewers of wood and drawers of water” status that it took us a century of struggle to free ourselves from. The decade of balanced budgets and surpluses generated by Liberal governments has been canceled out ― pillaged by the Conservative regime ― and we will soon be plunging into debt. This is the result of importing the obnoxious, freedom-hating Conservative ideology that has crippled and dishonoured the United States ― an ideology that would far more accurately be named “Neo-Communism”.
Ironically, there is plenty of evidence that Americans are summoning the courage to rebel against the disease of Conservatism. It’s not certain whether this rebellion will succeed. At present, it seems to consist of nothing more than an unfocused discontent, a resentment of constantly being lied to, and boredom with the ranting of Conservative aparatchiks and True Believers. Americans want “change”, but do they have any idea what they want to change, specifically? It seems certain that Barak Obama will become President, but in a political system in which only personal charisma and mystical symbolism determine results, there is little discussion of what policies and strategies might get Americans out of the hole they have dug for themselves. Optimism and hope are nice, but optimism doesn’t pay debts, or rebuild a rotten economy, or rekindle the flame of freedom ― reason and hard work do. Conservatism has systematically undermined the ability of Americans to either reason or work. It has poisoned the moral impulse. Is this current shift in mood a genuine desire to reform the society, or is it just another version of screaming to get the teddy-bear back, and return to passive dependence? To tell you the truth, I don’t know. Such things can’t be judged by following the media. I would have to live in the U.S. again to form an opinion.
America’s shift to a vague desire for “something different” is driven by discontent and ennui, a psychological state that Canadians don’t find themselves in. Our current Conservative regime is a second-hand cast-off of the American article, a mechanical aping by those among us who have the habit of importing out-of-date trends. Some of us are always adopting some American or European idea after it is old-hat and worn out. But, after many years of economic solidity and sensible finances, generated by Liberal government, there is little discontent in the land. The first cracks in the foundations are not being noticed, or taken seriously. So it is still possible for Harper to peddle to Canadians imported ideological trash that Americans are sick of.
So the question before us, in both countries, is: What Is Progress? What Is Progressive? The vague jumble of incoherent ideas and trends that are labeled “liberal” in the United States ― and successfully demonized by the highly organized propaganda machine of the Conservative aristocracy ― doesn’t offer any kind of alternative. It is merely a reactive impulse. The people labeled “liberal” in North America are the perfect suckers, the perfect chumps. They seldom see through lies, and can be manipulated with ease. They never seem to catch on to the fact that Conservatives always do the exact opposite of what they say. Conservatives yap about freedom, and build concentration camps. They yap about patriotism and hand over the country to foreign tyrants. They yap about “morality” and wallow in filth and corruption. They yap about “free markets” and run the biggest state-managed and state-interventionist, collectivist regime in human history. They yap about opposing “big government” and relentlessly pursue the inflation of government power and an omnipotent Imperial presidency. They yap about the evils of “tax-and-spend Liberals” and indulge in an insane spending frenzy that has bankrupted the world’s most powerful economy.
The pathetic creatures called “liberals” in the U.S. invariably react, not to what Conservatives do, but only to what they say. So, if Americans, caught in a sad dualistic “left-right” mentality, try to change things, they invariably embrace precisely the values that Conservatives really want. Bigger government with bigger powers, bureaucratic mega-projects, more alphabet agencies with draconian authority and no accountability, more “bigness”, more megalomania, more razzle-dazzle and pomp, more social engineering, more direction from the top down. These are Conservative values, not “liberal” ones. And the real Conservatives will always come back into power, because they are the genuine article. In the next round, they will gleefully inherit the greater state powers, handed to them on platter by the predictable reactions of “liberals”.
Take, for example, one of the few areas of policy for which Democrats in the U.S. have specific plans. They are proposing a national health-care insurance system. Predictably, the system they propose is actually one that was devised by Conservative “think-tanks” — one that is inefficient and unworkable on purpose. Good luck with that. Because of the two-dimensional “left-right” nonsense, Americans are led to believe that this is a form of “socialized medicine”, that it exists on a continuum with their existing setup at one end, and state-managed, collectivised medicine at the other. This is nonsense. but it is believed equally by supporters and opponents of health care reform. Because of this nonsensical system of classification, attempts to provide universal health care are bound to end up with a big mess, instead of improved health care.
I’ve examined the data as carefully as I could, and there is absolutely no question that Canadians get a much better health care deal than Americans do. A visit to an American hospital convinced me of that within fifteen minutes. But I have relied on internationally and objectively generated data to form my conclusions. The Canadian system, which is not “socialized medicine” at all, does two things: 1) it provides better quality health care at half the price that Americans pay, and 2) it promotes greater individualism and personal independence. Those are the purposes of any practical risk-reduction scheme, and the essence of a democratic response to any large-scale social problem. But, because of absurd ideological gibberish, most Americans, and even many Canadians, profoundly misunderstand this system.
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